This message is one of the Times Square
Church Pulpit Series.
It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times
Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
You're welcome to make additional cassettes of this
message for free distribution to friends.
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Is to the book of Luke, the 23rd
chapter, Luke the 23rd chapter.
And we will begin reading at the 32nd
verse, Luke 23, 32.
And when we, when you get there, brothers
and sisters in your Bibles, would you please
pray with me that the Lord might be
glorified in our midst.
Lord Jesus, we so love you.
We are so in awe of you.
Every day, you make your great love so
obvious, so evident to us.
And Jesus, we thank you that we can
look to you right now.
That we don't have to depend upon ourselves.
We don't have to look to our own
strength.
We don't have to look to our own
experience, Lord.
To our own enthusiasm, to our own education.
Lord, we can finally look to you and
say, God help us.
Lord, we are in utter need of you,
Lord.
And we enjoy that.
Lord, we enjoy that reality.
We enjoy the fact that we look to
you with everything that we are.
That we have nothing in ourselves of God.
And now we ask you, Lord, for your
own namesake, for your own glory, to speak
to us tonight so that the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ might be even that
much more glorious in our eyes.
Oh God, we long to hear from you
tonight.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
Praise the Lord.
My brothers and sisters, I want to talk
to you tonight on this topic.
The fear of the Lord and the cross
of Christ.
The fear of the Lord and the cross
of Christ.
Oftentimes as Christians, we find these two concepts
on either side of a particular spectrum.
Where either we hear or we talk about
the fear of the Lord or over against
that we talk about the cross of Christ.
As though these are two mutually exclusive considerations.
As though either we are in a church
that walks in godly fear or we are
in a church where people concern themselves with
the grace of God and the cross of
Christ.
And as I spoke to you the last
time that I was here, what God has
been asking me to do as a student
of the word, as a Christian person and
as a minister of the gospel, is to
find a reconciliation between these two realities.
Because in the holy scripture there is a
reconciliation.
So what I want us to do is
look at the passage of scripture that I
spoke to you about.
The 32nd verse of Luke 23.
It says, There were also two others, criminals,
led with him to be put to death.
And when they had come to the place
called Calvary, they were crucified with him.
And the criminals, one on the right hand
and the other on the left.
Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they
do not know what they do.
And they divided his garments and cast lots.
And the people stood looking on, but even
the rulers with them sneered, saying, He saved
others.
Let him save himself, if he is the
Christ, the chosen of God.
The soldiers also mocked him, coming and offering
him sour wine and saying, If you are
the king of the Jews, save yourself.
And an inscription was also written over him
in letters of Greek, Latin and Hebrew.
This is the king of the Jews.
Then one of the criminals who were hanged,
blasphemed him, saying, If you are the Christ,
save yourself and us.
But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Do
you not even fear God, seeing you are
under the same condemnation?
And we indeed justly, for we received the
rewards of our deeds.
But this man has done nothing wrong.
Then he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me
when you come into your kingdom.
And Jesus said to him, Assuredly, I say
to you today, you will be with me
in paradise.
Brothers and sisters, I've heard this passage spoken
about before.
And usually the idea is that there is
a man who is a thief.
He's a lifelong criminal, as it were.
He's a person who doesn't love the Lord,
a person who doesn't go to church, a
person who doesn't concern himself with the things
of God.
And, you know, at the latter part of
his life, the late part of his life,
he's about to die.
And there's a sort of a death bed
conversion where, you know, and the moral of
the story is if you are a person
who doesn't like the Lord and you don't
know his way and you don't understand his
truth, and you've been a lifelong sinner, even
at the very last minute of your life,
you can open up your mouth, acknowledge the
fact that Jesus Christ died for you on
the cross, that he saved, he died to
save your soul.
And if you put your trust and your
faith in him, by the grace of God,
you will and can be saved.
Now, I believe that 100%.
But I do not believe that that's what
this passage is talking about.
This passage is talking about a different kind
of thief.
In the Greek language, there are two words
for thief, particularly two words.
One is kleptis, and that's where we get
our word kleptomaniac.
It's somebody who steals stuff.
And this is somebody who basically is a
lifelong criminal, a burglar, whatever the case might
be.
The other word is the word that's used
here.
The word is lestes.
It's oftentimes translated a brigand.
And it is oftentimes translated an insurrectionist.
An insurrectionist is somebody who rises up and
in their own strength, they try to overthrow
a particular power.
That's what this man was.
Among the Hebrews in those days, there were
many people who were finding out the things
about God, considering the things of God, the
Pharisees were one of them.
The Sadducees were another of them.
You've heard about the Essenes and the Qumran
community and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they
were another group.
But then there was another group called the
Zealots.
Now, these were people who were considered so
zealous for the things of God that they
believed that they could rise up militarily.
And in their own strength and in their
own power, they could overthrow the nations that
they at that point were subject to.
So these were people who thought that they
could overthrow the Romans in their own power.
These were not an irreligious people.
In fact, these were the people who were
so zealous for the things of God that
they were actually willing to die and to
kill so that the name of the Lord
might be glorified again.
If you understand what Jesus was crucified for,
if you understand the crime that he was
supposedly to have committed, it was because he
was an insurrectionist.
He was somebody who rose up against the
government.
Remember the Jews said, this is a man
who's making himself out to be a king,
but we have no king but Caesar.
And remember the kind of person that he
was switched for when they were saying, we
have to let one person go at this
time of year, who would you rather it
be?
And they said, give us Barabbas.
Now the Bible says Barabbas was what?
A robber.
He was a man who had killed somebody
in the insurrection.
He was a man who had tried to
raise himself up.
And for the glory of God, for the
name of God, according to what he believed
to be the will of God, he was
going to overthrow the power of the enemy
in his own strength for the glory of
God.
Now this is the kind of a man
who the people asked for instead of Jesus.
Now the two people that were hung on
either side of Jesus were of the same
cloth.
They were people who decided that in their
own strength, according to their own power, according
to their own zeal, they were going to
go forth and they were going to bring
glory to God even if it killed them.
They were going to do anything and everything
that they could so that the name of
the Lord might be glorified even if it
totally destroyed them.
These were the kind of people who were
hung on either side of Jesus.
The ones who said, you know what?
I believe that what God is saying is
true.
I just think he's moving a little bit
too slow.
I believe that God has a great design
for our nation but I'm also convinced that
he has not in his own heart or
in his own hand or whatever the case
might be.
In other words, he is not willing to
or able to make the things happen that
I want to see happen as quickly as
I want them to see happen.
So all I need to do in essence
is to lay my own hand to the
plow in my own strength make these things
happen myself.
Or maybe it was a person who said,
you know what?
According to the way I read the scriptures
God is waiting for me to bring in,
as it were, the kingdom.
He's waiting for me to make these things
happen.
And he's saying to me, in my own
strength I have to work these things out
until people misinterpret passages like, you know, work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
And they misinterpret it because they never read
the next passage that said, for it is
God who is working in you both to
will and to do.
In other words, it's God who's making you
willing and God who's making you able to
do these things that he's calling you to
do.
He is not asking for you or for
me to do anything in our own strength.
Now what usually happens, my good brothers and
sisters, when we try to do things in
our own strength according to our own power
is after a while it gets very, very
frustrating.
And we get to the point where the
cross of Jesus Christ becomes an offense to
us.
It becomes a stumbling block to us.
Because it's for one of two reasons.
One, because the cross is too hard.
We say, God, you asked me to take
up my cross.
You asked me to do this thing and
to do that thing.
And because we've tried to do it in
our own strength, we've forgotten the passage that
Pastor Carter talked about today where he said,
you know, my burden or my yoke is
easy, my burden is light.
We forget about that part of it.
And we try to take up the cross
in our own strength.
We get frustrated with it.
And we begin, as this man did, to
blaspheme Christ.
We begin to say, if you are the
Christ, why are you allowing this cross in
my life?
If you are the Christ, why don't you
take yourself down from this cross and me
too?
If you are the Christ, why don't you
make this life a little bit better?
Make it a little bit easier.
Whatever I might be going through, whatever difficulty
I might have to undergo, take this thing
away from me.
It is hard.
It is difficult.
It is more than I can bear.
There is an anger that rises up in
us whenever we try to walk this thing
out in our own strength.
We might start out with the best intentions
in the world, but it will become very
frustrating to us after a certain amount of
time.
And whether we do it as blatantly as
this man did, or whether we do it
in some other way, we find ourselves saying
to Jesus, why are you allowing me to
go through this type of difficulty?
Haven't I been trying to serve you?
Haven't I been trying to bless you?
Haven't I been trying to live my life
for you?
Why are you allowing this cross into my
life?
And there becomes this thing that the Bible
calls blasphemy.
We usually think of blasphemy as saying something
really bad about the Lord, but now here
these people are simply saying something bad about
his cross.
And they are saying, why don't you take
me down from this cross?
The other side of course, when people have
a problem with the cross, is when they
think it's just too easy.
See, there's no room for boasting.
There's no room for me to lift myself
up.
And I don't like the cross because it
causes me to think that I don't have
anything in myself of any significant power.
That in and of myself I am weak.
And of course, I don't have anything to
boast about.
I can't boast in my infirmities.
I can't boast in my weakness because in
this generation, in this day and age, in
our culture, we boast in strength.
We boast in being able to overcome.
We boast in being able to stand against
the power of the enemy.
We boast in being able, in a very
real sense, to overthrow the power of the
enemy in our own strength, by our own
will, by our own tenacity, by our own
perseverance, by our own desire to lock ourselves
in, you know.
But ultimately, what we find the Lord saying
to us is, as Pastor Carter mentioned earlier,
we have not been asked to do anything
in our own strength.
You see, this man was at a place
where he thought to himself that I can
do this in my own strength.
And if I can't, then I have the
right to be mad at God.
See, when I come against that brick wall,
that says you have no strength to do
this thing, you can't walk this out in
your own power.
When I come against that brick wall, there
is usually frustration.
That says, God, every day I'm trying to
serve you.
Every day I'm clenching my fists and I'm
gritting my teeth and I'm doing everything I
can to hunker down and I'm doing everything
I can to get myself entrenched into your
word.
And Lord, it is getting frustrating.
If you are the Christ, take me down
from this cross.
If you are truly loving, if you are
truly kind, how many times do we hear
people say that to Jesus even in the
Bible?
If you really cared, if you had cared
or if you had been here, my brother
wouldn't have died.
Lord, don't you care, we're drowning.
Time and time again, it is natural for
us to say, God, don't you care?
I'm trying to live this life out and
it doesn't seem to be working.
I'm trying to live this life out and
it doesn't seem to be moving along.
The Bible says that initially both of these
men on either side of him, both of
these zealots were saying to him the same
thing.
But the Bible also says that at a
certain point, and I'm not quite sure when
it happened in this particular man's life, but
at a certain point when he was saying
to God, if you had truly cared, if
you truly had strength, or if you truly
had compassion, you would take us down from
this cross.
Right about the time when his neighbor and
himself were chiming in against the Lord and
railing against the Lord, it seems that there
was this turning point in this particular man's
life.
I want to say to you, it was
a time of godly fear.
It was a time when the man realized
that I am not in a position to
tell God how to be God.
When he said, I am not in a
position to attempt to be God in my
own strength.
I have no power to be God and
I have no power to tell God how
to be God.
At a certain point, the Bible says that
there was a godly fear that came upon
him.
Not quite sure when it happened, but at
some point he called out to his neighbor.
And in the midst of his railing against
his neighbor, you can imagine how difficult it
was to speak being hung on a cross.
But at one point he was taking all
of the last little bit of energy that
he had to question God's power and question
God's motive.
And at some point he simply looked over
to his neighbor.
And I think in a word of exhortation
and in a word of encouragement, he simply
looked at his neighbor and said, don't you
fear God.
You see, right in the midst of his
neighbor railing against God and right in the
midst of his own railing because he's in
a situation where he tried it in his
own strength and it became very frustrating to
him.
But right smack in the midst of that,
I don't know what it is.
I think God just supernaturally moved upon the
man and caused him to realize what he
was doing and who it was that he
was speaking to.
And there was a fear that rose up
in him.
I say a godly fear, my brother and
sister.
And he looked at his neighbor and he
said, don't you fear God.
Don't you feel a little bit strange speaking
this way to the Lord?
Isn't it just a little bit upsetting to
you that you are speaking to God as
though he doesn't care, as though he doesn't
know, as though his hand is not stretched
out towards you, as though he is not
looking to bless you in every particular.
He said, yeah, we're in a place of
hardship and of difficulty.
Yes, we're in a place, he said, of
condemnation, yes.
But what he was saying was this.
Now understand the concept here.
He was saying that there is Jesus dying
on the cross for my sins, dying to
save my soul, pouring out his life blood
for me.
And here am I in a place where
I cannot save myself, where I cannot help
myself, where I cannot do anything for myself.
Is it wise for me to speak evil
or to speak blasphemy against this only one
who can save me?
He said, if I'm going through any struggle,
if I'm going through any difficulty, then it
is properly so.
I'm saying to you, brothers and sisters, for
those of us who are in this congregation,
there are some who are not saved, who
don't know the name of the Lord.
And they say, I'm going through a time
of difficulty.
I'm going through a hardship.
And God is beginning to cause us to
say, you know, beginning to ask us to
say, is it not appropriate then to fear
God?
And to say, Lord, whatever I'm going through,
it is because I have turned my face
from you.
And I need now to look to you
and to trust you.
On the one side, this is the case.
Now, I also want you to bring it
home a little bit.
For those of us who are walking with
the Lord.
And I want us to be able to
say, firstly, I've tried to do some good
things and I've tried to do them in
my own strength.
And those things have backfired.
As I've tried to do these things in
my own strength, they have proven unhealthy.
And I got a little bit mad at
God.
I got a little bit upset with God.
And I began to say, God, why are
you allowing me to encounter the cross?
Why are you allowing me to go through
this difficulty or that difficulty?
Why are you not allowing me to work
these things out of my own strength or
to come out of this situation in my
own strength?
Why are you not allowing me to take
what I believe to be a victory?
And I say to you, brother and sister,
at a certain point, there is a godly
fear that says, you know what?
Whatever the Lord allows in my situation, whatever
kind of difficulty He allows me to encounter,
I must say, ultimately speaking, Lord, I deserve
anything that happens in my life and hell
to boot.
It's not an easy thing.
Sometimes people, like I said, people don't come
to me for counseling very much.
I will tell you.
Because there might be some times when I
say to them, look, I know what you're
going through and I sympathize with you.
Don't get me wrong on that.
But understand, you and I have no right
to say that God is unfair.
Let God be true in every man alive.
God is always right.
And He said, hey, whatever we're going through,
we deserve.
Now, Christian, you are not under condemnation.
But whatever difficulty you might have to struggle
with, you want to be able to say,
God, one thing is certain.
You are right.
You are just.
You are good.
And this man looked at his neighbor and
said, don't you fear God?
Whatever we're going through, we deserve it.
Justly so.
But this man has done nothing wrong.
You see, my brother and sister, whenever we
find ourselves trying to work out our own
salvation in our own strength, we tend to
blame God because he is not joining our
party.
Because he is not changing his word.
He said we can't do it in our
own strength, and he is not going to
change my brother and sister.
When we realize that, we will stop blaming
him for not acknowledging our own strength.
You see, that was God's design.
He said this man has done nothing wrong.
And then he says something that I want
to speak to you about for the next
few minutes.
He said, remember me when you come into
your kingdom.
See, he went from being a person of
self-provision, a person who was trying to
establish, as it were, a kingdom for God.
And now he's at a person saying, God,
I need you to remember me.
I need you to consider me.
See, I cannot do it in my own
strength anymore.
I can't make myself out to be this
or that anymore.
I cannot develop myself.
I cannot establish myself.
I need you.
So he went from being a person who
was establishing himself to a person who said,
Lord, remember me.
From somebody who thought he could build God's
kingdom to somebody who realized God's kingdom is
his own.
That the Lord establishes his kingdom and establishes
us in his kingdom.
That it is God's design.
That it is God's power.
That it is God's influence.
So this man went from a place where
he was saying, it is up to me
to say, God, remember me.
Lord, I have no strength in myself.
God, I can't do any good thing in
myself.
I can't bring it to pass.
I need you to remember me.
I want to say to you, my good
brother and sister, when we walk in the
fear of the Lord, when we begin to
understand godly fear, it is then that we
truly avail ourself to the cross.
These are not mutually exclusive concepts.
It is not either godly fear or the
cross.
Either we walk in trembling or we walk
in this sense of grace.
No, we never truly appropriate grace on the
level that God would have us to appropriate
it until we begin to walk in godly
fear.
Until we begin to say, God, if you
don't have grace upon me, I am a
dead man.
God, if your grace does not come upon
me, I have absolutely no hope.
God, if your grace is not covering me,
then I am in a just condemnation and
I need you, O God.
I need you.
I can't take one step without you.
This man went from having his own strength
in his own right hand to saying, God,
you alone are my strength.
You alone are my hope.
You alone are my healer.
You alone are my redemption.
God, there is no hope outside of you.
This is godly fear.
This man looked over to his neighbor and
said, are you not tired of trying to
work this thing out in your own strength?
Are you not tired of trying to clench
your hands and grit your teeth and make
something happen?
Are you not tired of trying to be
a god unto yourself?
Is it not time to put your faith
in God?
Is it not time to put your hope
in Jesus?
Is it not time to look over to
your brother and to your sister or look
deep into your own heart and say, don't
you fear God?
Brother and sister, this is the beginning of
joy because Jesus spoke a word to him
and he said, today, this day, you will
be with me in paradise, in paradise.
Now, I want you to look at a
particular scripture in the book of 2nd Corinthians.
2nd Corinthians, beginning at chapter 12 and look
at the first verse and we'll read that
verse down to about verse 10.
It is doubtless not profitable for me to
boast.
I will come to visions and revelations of
the Lord.
2nd Corinthians 12, verse 2, I know a
man in Christ who 14 years ago, whether
in the body, I do not know or
whether out of the body, I do not
know.
God knows.
Such a one was caught up to the
third heaven and I know such a man,
whether in the body or out of the
body, I do not know.
God knows.
How he was caught up, where?
Into paradise.
And what?
Heard inexpressible words, which is not lawful for
a man to utter of such a one.
I will boast yet of myself.
I will not boast except where?
In my infirmities, for though I might desire
to boast, I will not be a fool
for I will speak the truth, but I
refrain, lest anyone should think of me above
what he sees me to be or hears
from me.
Unless I should be exalted above measure by
the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in
the flesh was given to me, a messenger
of Satan to buffet me, lest I should
be exalted above measure concerning this thing.
I pleaded with the Lord three times that
it might depart from me.
And he said to me, my grace is
sufficient for you for my strength is made
perfect in weakness.
Therefore, most gladly, I will rather boast in
my infirmities that the power of God may
rest upon me.
Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches,
in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's
sake, for when I am weak, then I
am strong.
This is a man who saw the paradise
of God.
You see, when this man decided, you remember
Paul, he was strong in his own strength
and in the power of his own might.
You remember him speaking against the cross of
Christ?
But you remember this man knocked off his
high horse on the Damascus road?
This man infused with a healthy dose of
godly fear.
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
And you remember this man turning, repenting.
And this man saw a vision of God,
the Bible says, outshining the noonday sun.
And now he talks about himself in the
third person as though it's somebody else in
humility.
And he says, this man went to paradise.
He saw paradise.
Now remember what Jesus said to this man,
this day you shall be with me in
paradise.
Now I want to say to you brothers
and sisters, we are as Christian people, thank
God, we are all going to heaven.
But I want to say to you as
a Christian person, that if we decide to
walk in the fear of the Lord, to
no longer try to work the works of
God in our own strength, but to say
to God, Lord, I choose the fear of
the Lord.
I know I can't do anything in my
own strength, Lord, and I know that if
I continue to try, then I am in
a place of very serious difficulty.
But when I decide to choose the fear
of the Lord and to turn away from
my own strength, my own power, and I
begin to say I would rather rejoice in
my weakness and in my infirmity, don't you
know I enter into a place that Paul
describes as the paradise of God.
See, Paul didn't die at that point, he
was still alive.
And he said, I don't know whether it
was in the body or out of the
body, I don't know.
But he was simply saying this, there is
a place on this side of eternity that
the Christian person can attain to.
If we stop trying to attain to anything
in our own strength, it is a place
of godly communion.
See, when he described this place, he didn't
describe it the way we describe heaven as
streets of gold and so on and so
forth.
This place was very specific.
It was a place of communion.
It was a place where we could hear
the voice of God.
It was a place where the truths of
God were uttered to us, where we could
hear His voice, where we could hear His
word, because we became a weak people.
We became a people who could do nothing
in our own strength.
A people who had no power in ourselves.
A people who would say, God, take me
where you want to take me.
If you want to bring me into the
wilderness to be buffeted by the enemy, so
be it.
As Jesus was led by the hand into
the wilderness to be tempted of the devil,
Lord God, wherever you want to take me,
if you want me to be shifted as
Peter was shifted, so be it, oh God.
If you want there to be a messenger
of Satan to buffet me, so be it,
oh God.
Whatever you want to do, you want me
to go to the cross, then that's where
I'll go.
There is no room for me to say,
if you're the Christ, take me down from
this cross.
But you say, God, you take me where
you want.
You see, because the thing that I value
in this life is the voice of God.
Hallelujah.
And I don't care where I have to
hear that voice from.
Hallelujah.
If I have to hear it from a
cross, then I'll hear it from a cross.
If I have to hear it from a
wilderness, I'll hear it from a wilderness.
Wherever God wants to speak to me, he
said to Jeremiah at a certain time, go
to such and such a place, go to
the potter's house or whatever the case, and
I will speak to you there.
Sometimes he will say to us, go to
a place of difficulty.
Go to a place of hardship.
Go to a place of pain.
Go to a place called Bethany, Bethany, a
house of pain.
Go to a place of suffering.
And I will talk to you there.
I will meet you at Lazarus's grave sometime.
Or I will meet you on the tempestuous
and the windy and then the thunder-ridden
waters sometime.
I will meet you in front of your
loved one's coffin sometime, my brother and sister.
But I will speak to you.
I will give you my own heart.
I will give you my own word.
I will speak to you.
He said words, unutterable.
Sometimes it's a special word just for you.
You try to pick up the phone and
call your neighbor and something says, no, that
one was for you.
That was your word, an unutterable word.
I want you to understand it.
I want you to know it.
I want you to take it to heart.
See, at a certain point, the man got
tired.
Even of hearing his own neighbor complain about
how unfaithful God is.
And he, you know, in love, I think.
I think it was in love.
You think so, brother and sister?
He said, shut up.
And he said, don't you fear God.
I would rather hear the voice of God
than somebody complaining on my cell phone.
Hallelujah.
Praise God.
Promise to you and to me, I'm going
to talk to you.
But I may ask you to come to
the cross to hear me.
I'm going to talk to you.
But I may ask you to walk with
me into a time of difficulty, a time
of hardship.
Brothers and sisters, at that time, it's good
to fear God.
To say, Lord, if you don't take care
of me, I'm going to die.
If anybody in this room right now says,
God, if you don't take care of me,
I'm going to die.
Praise the Lord.
Praise God.
Would you stand with me, my brothers and
sisters?
I want to pray with you tonight.
I want to pray with you.
Lord, bless you so much.
My brothers and sisters on the ground floor,
the balcony and the annex.
I'm going to ask you to come to
the front and pray in a minute.
And here's what my prayer is.
Here's what God has asked us to pray
tonight.
There are some of us who are saying,
Lord, I'm tired of trying to work anything.
And I want so much for you to
say, today, you can be with me in
paradise.
You can hear my voice.
You can know my name.
You can hear words.
He said, but understand, there are going to
be times when I'm going to call you
to places of hardship, of difficulty.
And you're going to hear me there.
I'm going to speak to you.
And you're going to cry out to me.
It may be from the belly of the
whale, but you will cry out to me.
And you will hear my voice.
Brothers and sisters, if you're saying, Lord, I
want to hear your voice.
And it doesn't matter what I have to
go through.
It doesn't matter where you have to take
me.
God, I want to hear your voice.
I want to rejoice in who you are
and what you've done.
I want to say, brothers and sisters, come
to the front now.
Even as we're talking, just come to the
front because we're going to pray.
And we're going to say, God, wherever you
want to take me, however you want to
speak to me, under whatever circumstance, I am
willing to go.
On the ground floor, on the balcony, in
the annex, take the time to come to
the front.
God wants to speak today.
He wants to move on your heart today.
Today, he said, today, you can be with
me in paradise.
Today, would you begin to come, my brothers
and sisters?
I want to remind you, my brothers and
sisters, if there's somebody who's saying, I'm not
a Christian here, and I am under condemnation.
And I acknowledge that.
But I want to know the fear of
the Lord.
And I want to turn to the cross
of Jesus.
I want to put my faith in him.
I want to know him today.
I also invite you to come and pray
that Jesus Christ might right now receive your
soul as his own, and that the Holy
Spirit might immerse you into the body of
Christ.
Brother and sister, this is a time to
enjoy the paradise of God, the communion, the
sweet communion of God in Christ Jesus.
Would you pray with me, my brothers and
sisters?
Lord Jesus, we thank you so much that
we can come to you right now.
Lord, those of us who don't know you,
who have not known you, who are in
true condemnation, who can say, Lord, unless you
save me right now, I am doomed.
But I look to the cross of Jesus
Christ.
And by the grace of God, I put
my faith in what you have done for
me on Calvary and in who you are,
O God, that you laid your life down
for me, that I might never die, but
that I might look into the glorious countenance
of the great God because of the mercy
of God in Christ.
And Lord Jesus, those of us who are
here who say, I know Jesus and I
love him with all my heart and all
my soul.
But every now and again, there is a
tendency in me to try and work these
things out of my own strength.
Lord Jesus, if I have spoken evil against
you, if I have spoken evil against your
cross, right now I say, by the grace
of God, Lord, receive my apology, my heartfelt
apology.
And God, just draw me closer to yourself.
Hallelujah.
And those of us, Lord, who say, God,
I'm afraid of that cross.
I'm just afraid of it.
And I know you want to speak to
me there.
I know that you said to me, I'm
sort of like what you said to Jeremiah
when you told him to go to this
particular place and I'll speak to you there.
But you said, come to the cross, not
simply to be saved, but to that place
of sacrifice, that life, that crucified life.
Lord, come to this place and I will
speak to you there.
That place where we say, Lord, I can't
do anything in my own strength.
That place that says, Lord, I would rather
boast in my infirmities.
Lord, whatever it is that you're asking me
to be or to do, Lord, I know
it's only in your strength and your grace.
Lord, as you call me to that place,
God, let me lift up my heart, my
hands and say, oh God, it's in your
hands now.
Lord, as our pastor said earlier today, Lord,
Lord, you asked us to come to you.
You said this day you will be with
me in paradise.
Lord, you asked us to come to you
because your yoke is ease, your burden is
light.
And we thank you so much for that.
Oh, God, we thank you for godly fear
that reminds us about great need of the
cross.
We love you for that.
Oh, Jesus, and we thank you for it.
Amen and amen.
Praise the Lord.
The Lord Jesus bless you.
This is the conclusion of the message.