Turn to Luke 23. We read in Luke 23:39-43:
And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
This is a passage that really gives great hope. This gives great hope to anyone because as long as a person is alive, from our perspective, there is hope that they could be saved, that God might have mercy on them, that God might give them the gift of the “faith of Christ” and salvation. This really is encouraging at this time especially because we are coming to the end, to the end of “the acceptable year of the Lord,” to the end of salvation, to the day when God will close the door on salvation for the world. We are not too far away from this. In just a few more days, this will be here. Once this day comes, which is May 21, 2011, then the door is shut and that will be it. There will be no more salvation.
We looked at this before, but turn to Luke 13:24. This says:
Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.
A gate or a door is basically the same thing. This is pointing to the entrance to Heaven, the narrow way.
Here God is saying to us today, for each of us, that we are to strive now and put forth effort. Yes, we are to work and do what we can do to enter into this gate. Of course, whenever we say this, we have to quickly follow up with the fact that the Bible teaches that there is no work that we can do to get ourselves saved. This is because we are not justified by works in any way. We are justified by the “faith of Christ.” Yet, at the same time, God is saying, “Strive.” That is, do what we can do, what He allows for someone to do, which is what? We can read the Bible.
Is it a work to read the Bible? Yes; God gives the command in 1 Timothy, “Give attendance to reading.” We are not to neglect an “attendance to reading”; that is, to read the Bible. He commands us to read the Bible. We read this in 1 Timothy 4:13:
Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
So here is the command to read the Bible. Therefore, if you or I read the Bible, this is a work. Reading the Bible will not get us saved as far as trying to obey this command, but we do know that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Let us say that someone says, “I am going to read the whole Bible between now and May 21st,” or, “I am going to read the Bible five times between now and then,” this is not going to save them. But anyone who says, “I know that God saves through His Word; and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word; therefore, I am going to read the Bible in order to place myself in the position where God might bless His Word to save me,” this would also be obeying the command, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate.”
Since this is another command, any attempt to obey this is a work; but God does allow certain things. He allows people to read the Bible, as long as they have the right understanding that Bible reading in and of itself or that putting time in and flipping the pages as quickly as possible to read as much as they can is not going to save them. Salvation takes God’s blessing the Word to someone’s heart.
The other thing that God allows is prayer, crying for mercy; but some people do not like this. They think that we should not have to cry to God for mercy, even though this is throughout the Bible. God indicates that, yes, do go to Him, “Come boldly unto the throne of grace.” He tells us in Hosea that when we come, we are to “take with you words.”
So we can take Psalm 51, “Have mercy upon me, O God.” We can take the words of the Publican as he smites his breast and says, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” We can find many passages and go to God boldly. It is bold of us in the sense that we are going before Him at all. We should not go arrogantly, because He is the great King and we are the rebels who have transgressed His Law. We deserve what we are going to get. The approach to Him is bold; but we go humbly in this approach, beseeching Him, “O Lord have mercy upon me.”
God allows this. Why does He allow this? He allows this because when we are beating our breast and saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner” and we are not even looking up to Heaven, this is a reinforcement of the truth that we cannot do anything to get ourselves saved. This is something that God allows.
Again, crying for mercy, in itself, is not going to save anyone. This is not going to save anyone, but this is something that the Lord allows. Then again, He tells us how merciful He is. He gives us the example of the Ninevites who cried mightily unto God and how He saved them, as well as many other things that God tells us about His nature, that He is compassionate and gracious and kind. In other words, He is encouraging us to come, to approach Him; and so we should continue to do this and not stop, not cease.
This is the other thing that we learn by reading about the thief on the cross. We might look at ourself and others and just give up, “I have done this for so long.” There are different periods of time that we could apply to this, “I have cried for mercy for years; I have read the Bible for years, and God has not saved me yet,” or, “I have prayed for my mother or my father or my other family members and they are still the same; there has been no change.” So we tend to think, “Why continue? Why keep praying?”
God answers this in Luke 18:1 where He says:
And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
We are not to faint. A common attitude amongst people is that we tend to give up.
My wife sometimes tells me that I do this when it comes to driving somewhere. I am driving along and it seems like I have gone off-course from the directions. I will want to turn around, go back, and start over, but my wife will say, “No; go a little further.” What has happened many times is that we will go a little further and, yes, it is right ahead. I wanted to quit. I wanted to turn around and to start over; but she often says this to me and she is basically calling me a quitter. She just says, “You just need to keep going. Keep going.” This is what God is saying. He is saying, “Do not quit. Continue praying. Do not give up.”
Do you remember the historical parable of Jacob when He wrestled with God? This was an historical parable because this was true in history. Jacob wrestled with God all night, and what did God say to him?
Let us turn to Genesis 32:24. It says:
And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
This “man” is God. This is the Lord and the “breaking of the day” is approaching.
Then we read in Genesis 32:25-26:
And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said…
This is God speaking:
And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh…
The “day” is about to break upon us, the Day of Judgment, the day of the fulfillment of all things that the Bible has ever spoken about.
God here was trying to discourage Jacob, who was a child of God and one of His elect, and so He was not wrestling with an unsaved person. He was wrestling with someone whose sins God had already paid for from before the foundation of the world. God knew this and yet it seems that God was trying to discourage Jacob when He said, “Let me go. Stop holding on, clinging to Me, wresting with Me, because the day is about to break.”
Jacob’s response was in Genesis 32:26:
…And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.
This shows real determination, but we have to remember that, of ourselves, we are definitely going to let go. We cannot continue with God in our own strength; and so what God is doing here is that, on one hand, He is pushing Jacob away, “Let me go”; on the other hand, God is holding Jacob fast.
God did the same thing with the Syrophenician woman. We read about her in the New Testament when she came to Jesus on behalf of her daughter who needed healing. At first, Jesus totally ignored her. What an odd thing this was. He was the Saviour, the Messiah, the great miracle worker whom she must have heard tremendous reports about as He went about healing this person and that person, as He gave sight to the blind, ears to the deaf, a tongue to the dumb, and legs to the lame. She must have heard about all of these things. This is why she would have gone to Him. She probably heard nothing but amazing stories about this Man, and yet He ignored her.
Have you ever tried to talk to someone who was ignoring you? What did you feel like doing since they were not even listening? You probably decided to just walk away.
So Christ initially ignored her, but then He did speak to her. He told her that the Gospel was for Israel. He was referring to the spiritual Israel of God, but she could have easily taken this to mean that it was for the Jews only and not for her, not for any Gentile; yet then there was that great statement that she made, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Christ had identified her as a dog when He stated, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to dogs,” and she just accepted this.
So there are these instances in the Bible where God acts like He did not hear, like the blind man crying out to Him and He continued on as though He heard him not, even though He heard. In these accounts, God is telling us to continue, even though there might be circumstances in our lives that have led us to finally think about giving up. Maybe we are just tired and weary or cast down, whatever it is, and we want to give up, but God says to not give up and to not stop praying.
Let us go back to Luke 18:1. It says again:
…men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
Then He gives this parable. We read in Luke 18:2-4:
Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while…
Notice this:
…And he would not for a while…
This is exactly what God did to Jacob and this is exactly what Christ did to the Syrophenician woman. “He would not for a while,” even though He was dealing with elect people; and so it does not mean that because someone is elect that God has to immediately hear them the first time that they offer up a cry for salvation. It does not mean this at all.
This is one of the great teachings of the thief on the cross. He lived his whole life outside of the Kingdom of God. He was a thief. When Jesus was performing miracles in Israel of that day, great crowds would gather around. It would not have been surprising if the thief was going through their houses at that time. Many would have come out to see this miracle worker. Then we have this thief, who was maybe a partner with the other thief, and he could have been going through the houses. This is speculation. We do not know that he was doing this at that time, but he could have been.
One thing that we do know is that Jesus was going about for three and a half years doing all kinds of tremendous things that they would have known about, like everyone in that day, and it did not impact the thief at all. This did not impact either one of them because they continued being thieves. They continued living their lives apart from God, living sinful lives. This finally led to them being caught, taken by the Roman authorities, judged and condemned. I guess that the Romans did not mess around with thieves. They just put them to death.
So these men had no inclination or desire or interest in going to Christ. They did not go to Jesus like others who crowded around Him. They, instead, were out in the world and doing their own thing.
Again, here in Luke 18, we read in Luke 18:4-6:
And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.
This is an “unjust judge,” where God is the just Judge of all of the earth, and continual coming persuaded an evil judge. God is a good Judge and He is encouraging us to latch on to Him. Latch on and do not let go, like Jacob. Wrestle with God; keep going to God. Go ahead; try to weary Him.
If someone determined today, “I think that May 21 is going to be Judgment Day. I really believe this, but I am not sure if I am saved. I am not sure because there are certain things in my life. But you know what? I am going to try to go to God today and pray and beseech Him for mercy, and I am going to continually try this.”
When you go to God in prayer, a good thing to pray would be, “O Lord, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy upon me.” Then when you are tired of doing this today and before you stop praying, pray, “O Father, give me this mind tomorrow so that I can come to You tomorrow.” That is, pray to God that you would continue to pray, that you would not quit, that you would not faint, that you would not give up, because this is the time to pray.
The latest Family Radio billboard image is very good. It says this: “May 21, 2011; Cry mightily unto God for His mercy.” This is where we are. It is time. It is time right now for people to pray like they have never prayed before. Actually, it is “high time,” as it says in Romans 13:11-12:
And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand…
“The day breaketh,” like God said to Jacob in Genesis 32:26:
…Let me go, for the day breaketh.
But Jacob said:
…I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.
Although this day is about to break, the night is almost over. If we would put 13,000 years on some kind of timescale, maybe we would have a couple of seconds left in comparison to all of time. I do not know how this would work out exactly, but “the night is far spent” and it is almost over. Christ is likened to the “day” and He is about to break.
So it is “high time,” is it not? Is it not “high time” to go to God in prayer and beseech Him like we never have before? If we find that we are doing this, we can thank Him, “Thank You Lord that You have given me this kind of mind and that I am thinking this way. May You continue to work in me that I would keep praying.”
The thief on the cross is great encouragement to us because it was the end of his life. He was finally at the end of his life. We do not know how old he was, but we know that he died on the cross. In a couple of hours, both thieves would die on the cross. He had no more time. He was down to his last couple of hours. He was going to die and his eternal fate would be sealed.
This shows us the great truth that God will save His elect. God will save His elect at some point during their life before it ends. This is guaranteed. The elect might be like John the Baptist who was saved very early in his life while he was yet in the womb, or they might be like the thief on the cross and become saved right before their death; but God will save His elect people, as Jesus says in John, or the Fourth Gospel, 6:37-39:
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
On one hand, there is nothing to worry about, nothing at all, because God will save every one of His sheep. He is not going to lose any one of them. So before we move on with the thief on the cross, let us take a look at election. Let us turn to Ephesians 1:3-5. It says:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Here God is referring to choosing us, the elect, in Him, before the foundation of the world. Christ died for the sins of His people before the foundation of the world. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Also, all of the elect were chosen at that time. Their sins were placed upon Christ and He paid for all of their sins before the world was created, before the world began. Since they were paid for, He cannot allow for one of them to perish. This is an impossibility. Every one of the elect has already had their sins paid for.
From our perspective, things might get interesting sometimes, because it can seem like God is waiting for the last possible second to save an individual, like the thief on the cross. All that God guarantees is that at some point in a person’s life, He will apply what He had done before the world began. He will redeem them in the “fulness of the time,” according to God’s plan for any individual whom He has chosen to save, and He will save them. It could be a baby or it could be someone on their deathbed or it could be someone like the thief on the cross. God has guaranteed and obligated Himself to save them and He will lose none of them, not one.
So we have great confidence when we share the Gospel that God will find His people. We do not have to worry about this or try to convince anyone. God will seek His sheep, He will find the lost ones, and He will save them.
There is no way that this cannot be. There has never been a time in history when an elect person lived and died without becoming saved, never in the history of the world. In every generation, God saves His people.
Now, at this time, there is no difference. There are a lot more of His elect who are living today, as we have come to realize that there is a great multitude that He is saving, and He is going to save every single one of them.
This is from God’s perspective. He knows who they are. We do not. We have no idea who the elect are, and so we share the Bible with everyone.
So it says here again in Ephesians 1:4:
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world…
Then look at the Fourth Gospel (John) 15:16 that has this same word, and this word is related to the word “elect.” It says:
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you…
This should put to rest the whole idea of free will and that we can accept Christ, that it is our choice. Jesus says:
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you…
When did He do this? According to Ephesians 1:4, He did this:
…before the foundation of the world…
This is when He made the choice and when He elected and predestinated certain ones to salvation. The whole idea that many churches are involved with where they are encouraging people to choose Christ is contrary to the Bible. This is completely against the Bible.
Again, the Fourth Gospel (John) 15:16 says:
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you…
This is also as it says in the Fourth Gospel (John) 1:12-13:
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born…
That is, born again. It continues:
…not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Where is free will? We cannot choose Him because He chooses His elect. We cannot exercise our will, because salvation does not come by man’s will. Man is not born again by the “will of man.” We are born again by the will of God. It is His action. It is His work. It is not our faith; it is the “faith of Christ.” The Bible is very clear about this.
It is very sad when individuals are encouraged by others to exercise their will, to make their choice, and to believe with their faith, because none of this will save them. This is all contrary to the Bible. God indicates that He has chosen a people to salvation, known as His elect, before the world began.
He gives an example of what this is all about in Romans 9. We read in Romans 9:10-13:
And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born…
This is referring to the twin brothers, Jacob and Esau. This is referring to when they were still in their mother’s womb and not yet born. It continues:
…neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand…
God is giving us an example of what it means when He elects people. This is a good example because these were twin brothers. They were very close to one another. As far as people go, we cannot get much closer than twin brothers, and yet God is saying that it was before they did good or before they did evil:
…that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works…
This is why He is emphasizing that they had not done “good or evil.” It continues:
…but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
God made the choice. He selected one of them and not the other. He chose Jacob:
…Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
Esau remained in his sins. This had nothing to do with their sacrifices or with their occupation or with how moral they were or how they responded to the Law of God. It had nothing to do with any of this. This happened before they were born. Before they had done any works, good or bad, God said that He would take this one and that He would leave that one. He gave one a new heart, but not the other. It had nothing to do with Jacob and Esau themselves. They were as alike as man can be, and yet God decided to save one and not the other.
Why does God save the elect? Was He looking down the corridors of time at people and seeing that certain ones would please Him in some way? No. Before the foundation of the world, He made a selection.
He tells us why in Ephesians 1:5:
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Why did God save one brother and not the other brother? He did this because it was His “good pleasure.” It was due to nothing within the brothers. It was His “good pleasure” that He did this; and in this life, I do not think that we are going to get more information than this. It has nothing to do with what is within people. It is all according to God’s “good pleasure.”
When we read the Bible, it is actually very clear that God saves through election and that He makes the choice. God guarantees that He is going to save His elect. Those who are not elect will never become saved.
All of this is true; and yet because of these things, some think, “Why should I do anything? Why should I even be concerned? Why can I not just go and live my life and do what I want to do? If I am elect, God will save me. If I am not, I will never become saved anyway.”
But this is a wrong attitude. If anyone holds this kind of an attitude, they are all but guaranteeing that they will perish. This is because it is only from God’s perspective as to whom He saves, who His elect are, whom He passes by. From our perspective, we do not know who these will be.
Some say this same thing about witnessing, “Why bother going on a missions trip? Why bother bringing the Gospel since we know that God is going to save His elect?” But we do this because God commands that we do this. He wants the Gospel to go to all the world, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” It is not up to us. This is not our position to think that one is elect and the other is not. We do not know, and so we bring the Gospel to everyone.
This is the same thing for all of us as God says that we are to go to Him in prayer. We are to hold on and not let go. We are to continually go to Him. But some say, “I know that I am not one of the elect, and so I am not going to go to Him in prayer,” or they start saying that this is hopeless, “There are seven billion people in the world. It seems that God is going to save, in all probability, 200 million. This leaves over six billion, eight hundred million who will not become saved, and so what are the odds?”
This is why it was so good when Mr. Camping was talking about these odds awhile back. Do you remember this? We know that God will save about 200 million, which works out to be 1 in 70 out of the estimated 14 billion who have ever lived.
If the odds were 1 in 70 for the lottery, how many people would be running down to the gas station to buy all of the lottery tickets that they could get? But the odds are way better than even this because the vast majority of these 200 million are living at this time. I do not know what the previous numbers were. We do know that in previous history, God saved maybe a handful of maybe one million. He has now saved the best for last as He plans to save in our day “a great multitude, which no man could number.”
So, basically, this cuts the odds in half. The odds are basically 1 in 35. Plus, if you manage to stay outside of the church where there are about two billion professing Christians and none of them are being saved, this means that this 200 million is going to come from the five billion who are outside of the churches. This means that the odds are actually more like 1 in 25 that you or I or anyone could be one of God’s elect.
Have you ever been at work when the people all pitch in and buy the lottery tickets? It is very annoying to hear them discuss all the day long what they plan on doing with the money. What are the odds that they are going to win? It is basically one in five or ten million, and yet all the day long they are having a fun time telling each other what they plan on doing when they get their share.
But looking at our day, we see that, basically, 1 in 25 have a chance of becoming saved if they are outside of the church, and yet people say, “There is no hope. There is no hope for me.”
This is not humbleness. This is arrogance and pride. This is taking the place of God. Let us let God decide who there is hope for. He tells us to go to Him and to beseech Him and that He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy. He has demonstrated how merciful He is.
If you are going to say that there is no hope, then you should read Jeremiah 18 sometime to see how God admonishes those who say that for them, “There is no hope.” There is actually great hope and the thief on the cross gives each one of us hope right up until the very last hour. God might have mercy and He might save either ourselves or someone in our family whom we have been praying for. We know that He will continue to save right up to this day that is coming.
Let us stop here.