Introduction

Inclusive and Church has been all over the newspapers, the telly and the internet this week … you might have noticed … and these loud voices have been calling for the Church to be their definition of inclusive.

You might have found it confusing, because the definition they are using of inclusion is not the Biblical definition of inclusion and the view that it implies of God is not the Biblical one.

Let me tell you how I steer my way through this.

This might surprise you but, I do the cooking in our house.

Oh yes.

It’s not just that I’ve got a sink and I know how to use it … I can do cupboards and cooker as well!

(I hope you are duly impressed.)

You see, in my kitchen there is a cupboard with a sink on top of it … just under the kitchen window there, so you can look out at the grass and trees when you’ve got your hands in the sink.

And then if you turn 90 degrees to your left, there’s the thing you burn your hands on … but hopefully not your family’s dinner … the cooker.

And if you turn 90 degrees to your left again there’s this flat surface where you can park things and process thing and there are cupboards under that as well.

What I’ve learned about cooking is that you need to know the difference between those three things and what their different uses and roles are in the process of getting everyone successfully to and from the trough … the table.

Now, there are these two different cupboards opposite each other.

The one under the sink contains the bin bags and the cleaning materials … soap, dishwasher tablets, furniture polish, fly spray, disinfectant … chemicals of all sorts.

The one under the worktop opposite has got a left hand door with salt and pepper and garlic and spices and things we put with food to enhance it and the right hand cupboard has got the flour and rice and … all sorts of stuff to bulk it up.

I think the most important thing to know about cooking in my kitchen is not to include the contents of both those two opposite cupboards in your cooking.

You see, ‘inclusive’ sounds nice but it can be deadly.

And Jesus isn’t inclusive.

He doesn’t show ‘unconditional’ love in the sense that He will have anything from us.

The Bible isn’t inclusive in the sense that anything goes and can be happily incorporated into the Christian Way.

He receives people who turn from sin to trust in Him but that does NOT mean you can bring anything you like in with you.

The Christian Gospel requires repentance as well as faith and certainly isn’t saying that anything goes and should be included.

And that’s VERY evident from the way Luke describes for us how a. condemned man gets included in God’s Kingdom by Jesus … so late in the day you could almost miss it!

On this first day of ‘Lent’ (if you celebrate that) we’ll be looking into the circumstances of Luke 23:42.

To set the scene:

Jesus is hanging on the Cross

A ‘thief’ (or brigand or terrorist or whatever … it’s not relevant to the point or we’d be told more clearly) hangs on each side of Jesus, two men with VERY different attitudes to Jesus.

And what’s the big issue here at this point in Luke’s account?

1) The big issue: are you really the Messiah? Vv. 35, 36-7, 38 & 39

Luke 23:35-39: “The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

As Jesus hangs dying on the Cross in Luke’s Gospel, everybody seems to be having a go at Jesus about Him not looking much like a very good Messiah … in fact it’s not just ‘not a very good Messiah’.

The big issue is how CAN He be the King of the Jews, the Messiah?

There was a text they all knew from Deuteronomy 21:23 which said that anyone hung up in this way was accursed … this was a large part of what made crucifixion such a terrible punishment to the Jewish people … they were so conscious of this that the idea of a crucified Messiah made no sense to them at all.

a) The rulers of the Jews, v. 35

V. 35: “the people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. 

They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

Now, given that all their inter-testamental theology led them to expect a military Messiah who would come along, beat up the invading Romans, boot them up and give them the life of Reilly … this made perfect sense to them.

This Jesus had not delivered to them what they wanted the Messiah to do for them.

They had a ‘BETTER’ idea of the sort of Kingdom of God they wanted, and they didn’t want anything to do with the one Jesus had brought them.

The religious guys wanted to dictate their vision of the Kingdom of God not accept Christ’s.

That’s not the way to get ‘included’ … no ‘inclusive’ Kingdom of God for them.

b) The Roman soldiers, v. 36-37

Vv. 36-37: “The soldiers also came up and mocked him. 

They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

The brutal warrior types enforcing the will of the invaders on the day … the mighty ones … had no theological critique of Jesus as Messiah to offer, but as ever, where rationality and reason fail, rejection resorts to mockery to justify itself.

The horror of this is quite remarkable.

They had mocked Him in the praetorium before bringing Him out here to this accursed hill outside Jerusalem where they made a regular appearance to nail men through their arms and feet to be tortured to a suffocating death:

‘Hail King of the Jews’.

And having blindfolded and struck Him: ‘Prophesy - which of us just hit you?’

And there they had driven nails through His body and taunted Him as they stretched Him out to bleed and suffocate as the strength He needed to push up on the nails to ease His ability to breath ebbed away, and then eventually to die.

They are not the theologically sophisticated excluding themselves from God’s inclusive Kingdom.

THEY are the strong, the powerful, the playground bullies … shutting themselves out by their brutal rejection of Christ’s Messiahship from the prospect of inclusion  in the Kingdom of God.

c) Pilate (the written notice), v. 38 

And then there’s ‘the written notice’ nailed to the Cross above Jesus’s head:

“There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.”

Who is behind this?

John 19:19 tells us: “Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews.”

This is the authorised agent of the Roman Empire who had made whether Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews or not the issue at Jesus’s trial before Pilate, now nailing in mockery this notice where the charge sheet of the crucified criminal would be put sarcastically hailing Jesus as the King of the Jews to demonstrate what Rome would do to anyone else who made such an attempt on Rome’s sovereignty and authority.

This is political power excluding itself by its actions from inclusion in the Kingdom of God.

d) The criminals, v. 39 

V. 39

“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

Finally we come to a helpless person.

The others dismissed all that could get them inclusion from Jesus from a position of earthly or human power or authority.

This one turned away from everything that could have got him included rather than excluded from God’s Kingdom:

1. Right at the brink of eternity, and

2. From a position of weakness and frailty with nothing else going for him

All sorts of people in all sorts of positions and circumstances of life … strong and weak … are mocking the very idea that Jesus could be their King-Messiah and Saviour.

All sorts.

But why is Jesus’s King-Messiahship the issue here?

e) Why is this the big issue?

•Jesus has been doing the works of the Messiah

For the last three years or so Jesus has been going around the land doing the works of the Messiah.

Isaiah 35 gives us the inside track on this when it prophesies about the day of redemption that God would send:

Isaiah 35:3-8: “Strengthen the feeble hands,

    steady the knees that give way;

4 say to those with fearful hearts,

    “Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

    he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

    he will come to save you.”

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

    and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,

    and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

    and streams in the desert.

7 The burning sand will become a pool,

    the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay,

    grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

8 And a highway will be there;

    it will be called the Way of Holiness;

    it will be for those who walk on that Way.

The unclean will not journey on it;

    wicked fools will not go about on it.”

Jesus has been doing that stuff.

The blind, the lame, the deaf, the mute … They’d never had a time like THIS before!

Here was the One Who could demonstrate the authority of God to speak the Word and command the forces of chaos in creation (like storms a sea), the forces of chaos in humanity (healing the sick and raising the dead) and the forces of chaos in the cosmic sphere (casting out demons and liberating trapped and tormented souls like the Gadarene demoniac).

He’s doing the prophesied things that demonstrate He’s the One Who was to come, the Redeemer of His people, the King over the incoming Kingdom of God … Jesus the Messiah.

That’s why it’s the defining issue as He hangs on the Cross there and dies.

But if He’s hanging there on the Cross dying, HOW can He possibly be the Saviour of God’s people, the coming King-Messiah, the Lord?

That is why this is the big issue.

• Jesus has been teaching about His coming Kingdom

Moreover, Jesus has been teaching them all about the Kingdom of God as if HE is the One Who makes the rules for it.

When Jesus goes up a mountain to give definitive teaching He is so clearly evoking Moses and the Mountain.

But when Moses goes up Mount Sinai He comes down not giving God’s Word Himself but just transporting it carved on two tablets of stone.

When Jesus goes up the Mount of Beatitudes above the Sea of Galilee He speaks as God Himself bringing His Word by an authority that He Himself carries … ‘you have heard that it was said to the men of long ago {quotes Moses}, but I say to you …’

Jesus has been teaching about HIS coming Kingdom, and setting down the criteria in terms of lifestyle for being part of the Kingdom He is establishing now decisively on earth.

Of COURSE this is the issue.

The person Who’s been doing these things is being destroyed by the contrivance of the religious leaders and the power of the godless invading enemy.

It raises the question: ‘how can THIS guy being crucified right here POSSIBLY be the King over God’s incoming Kingdom?’

• Now He’s a crucified Messiah

The reason that these detractors of Jesus highlight the Messiah doubt about Him in this passage is no doubt because Deuteronomy 21:23 says anyone hanged on a tree as a capital punishment is accursed … and how can the blessed one, the Messiah, be hanged on a tree and therefore accursed by God?

Well, you can see their point … and this is probably why the leaders of the Jews were so keen not that Jesus should simply be killed (an assassin could have sorted that out for them) but that He should be crucified and therefore (they thought) discredited in His claims to be the Messiah.

Paul makes sense of all of this for us in Galatians 3:13-14 (get this, it’s MARVELLOUS!)

Paul shows us it was NECESSARY for Christ to die this sort of death to achieve His redemptive purpose:

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’’

That’s a reference to Deuteronomy 21:23 … Paul goes on :

 “14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, 

so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.”

•They’re all saying He just CAN’T be the Messiah

So this is the big issue here because all these people … the religious big-wigs, the Roman strong-arms, the Roman political establishment, the Christ-rejecting and taunting ‘other’ thief …

ALL these people are crying for their own rights or asserting their own superiority and avoiding Jesus’s well-evidenced claims to Messiahship by denying He could POSSIBLY be the Messiah with the authority to rule and establish the laws of His Kingdom.

By contrast there is just one Christ exalting , Messiah-acknowledging voice in this whole account.

And the things he says and asks of Jesus are the touchstones and essential criteria for inclusion in the salvation and the Kingdom of God.

2) One lone supporting voice, vv. 40-42

Vv. 40-42: “But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”

This is NOT a man prepared to call wrong ‘right’, not even when the wrong is his own … and this is the man Christ promises His Paradise to.

What are the essential elements that define the person who is included by Christ in His Kingdom?

a) Fear God, v. 40

“But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?”

All these people feared Rome … some. Of them were in fear of the Jews (particularly the disciples as Acts 1 tells us they were) but shouldn’t you fear God, asks this repenting thief?

The dying thief was addressing his fellow convict and possibly doing so conscious of others there that were listening, but the irony is that he could equally have been addressing the Jewish leaders, the Roman soldiers, the Roman Governor (Pilate) who wrote the notice over the Cross of Christ AS WELL AS his fellow criminal hanging there!

Now, do I need to explain that term ‘fear God’?

We always think these days that fear is wrong, or rather that it should not be caused to anyone because THAT is deemed to be wrong … but no-one raised a child without at some point instilling in them a fear of disobeying their parent.

Not (I hope) a craven fear, an oppressing fear, a personality or character-destroying fear.

We see that sometimes and that IS wrong.

But being afraid to cross the line and do something actually harmful, actually wrong or (often) actually dangerous but the child doesn’t see it as such yet … different category altogether.

The fear that I had of my mother’s right hand was a fear not just moderated by but motivated and governed by her loving care.

Well, this isn’t a sermon about the fear of God but this dying thief raises the issue in a context in which it was understood and where it should be keeping this mocking thief from going to his Maker as a blasphemer and an enemy of God.

To mock Jesus, in OUR thief’s clearly held view, is a fearful and a God-opposing act.

Jesus is clearly God’s person, to this man here.

b) Why fear God? V. 41a

What should have motivated the mocking thief to fear God?

This faithful thief is very clear about this matter:

V. 41 “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

The door to death and judgement has swung open on them and this man knows he has reason to tremble at the prospect that’s before him as he heads to the judgement seat of Christ with lots of incriminating stuff on his charge sheet.

He has a clear idea that he stands condemned as a sinner before God … God’s definition of sin not one he’s developed for himself to fit around his sinful nature’s preferences.

We see no such awareness of matters in the contemporary culture of ‘inclusivism’.

It WANTS to put the dishwasher tablets in the cup cakes.

Our dying thief has a clear view of his sin and his need to turn from it to embrace the Saviour’s grace.

And not only does he take Scripture’s view of his sin, he takes Scriptures view of the sinlessness of the Saviour … he’ll broach NO criticism of the Lord Jesus …

c) We deserve this, but this man’s done NOTHING wrong, v. 41b

We deserve what we’re getting, our thief says,

“But this man has done nothing wrong.”

There is here an appreciation of the sinlessness of the Saviour, which is crucial if He be dying not for His sin but mine, and be able to take my sin to his account and put His righteousness to mine … which is the heart of the application of the Gospel to individual sinners like you and like me.

He acknowledges his own sin and the sinlessness … the righteousness … of Christ.

That’s not the basis the inclusivists actually work on.

Christ and His Word in their view have got it wrong, and we need to adapt them to accommodate their preferences.

On the basis of understanding of things spiritual our thief has come to, he now does EXACTLY what he needs to do to be saved.

d) One dying plea, v. 42

“Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Let’s just take a moment to sum up where this is coming from.

He stands out from the crowd

He stands up against prevailing opinion

He stands out against the evidence of a crucified Messiah

He stands out against all the powerful in the land

That’s the first thing.

He acknowledges the justice of God … don’t you fear God?

He doesn’t complain that God’s not nice for being just, because …

He acknowledges that he has sin and guilt to answer for

Furthermore he acknowledges the spotless Lamb of God in the Lord Jesus … this man has done NOTHING wrong.

He then acknowledges Jesus as his Lord and Messiah … turns his back on the deeds he might have done that were thought of as ‘good’ … and casts himself on the sheer mercy of the Saviour

V. 42: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

That my friend, is exactly what it takes.

The abandonment of self-justification.

The cessation of wriggling to get your sin off the Gospel’s hook.

‘Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy Cross cling’.

Conclusion

Our dying thief has recognised himself for who he is.

Furthermore our dying thief has recognised Jesus … against the flow of opinion and the appearances of the situation … as the CRUCIFIED coming King, the Saviour-Messiah, FULFILLING redemption by the curse of the hanged one in Deuteronomy.

This dying thief simply wasn’t aware of any of that theology which Paul later spells out in Galatians 3, so (here’s the point) but he trusted Jesus even though there seemed to be so much conventional, accepted wisdom about the Messiah and crucifixion.

He has trusted Jesus as Messiah in spite of all the received wisdom to the contrary.

He has stood out against the wrong and evil of his day.

Furthermore, this dying thief made no excuses for his own bad behaviour, nor (crucially) has he sought to excuse it or have it INCLUDED in what people consider to be acceptable or right.

But he has cast himself on the mercy of the Saviour.

Those mocking soldiers might well have stuck him quite securely to his own cross of wood, but this dying thief could easily have sung there to Jesus:

‘Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy Cross I cling.

… Rock of Ages, cleft for me.

Let me hide myself in Thee’

And here’s the best bit.

It was to none of the Jewish leaders, soldiers, other condemned men not even His own disciples that day but to the confessing and committing criminal just to the side of Him that Jesus looked over and said:

V. 43: ““Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Who does Jesus grant inclusion to? 

To whom does He extend inclusivity?

Not the religious nor the other-religionists (like Pilate who wrote the notice on the top of Christ’s Cross) nor the irreligious malefactors crucified there with Him.

He extends His welcome into Paradise with Him to the wrong-doer who acknowledged his own culpability, the validity of God’s judgement on his own sin (as defined by God’s Word not his own personal preference) and cast himself publicly, openly on the mercy of his new Lord and Master when Christ came into His Kingdom.

So when it comes to being ‘inclusive’ where the Kingdom of God, the things of God and the definition of who’s included and who and what is NOT to be ‘included’ in Christian theology and lifestyle is involved … this dying thief embodies the criteria for exclusion and inclusion.

To use the analogy of my kitchen cupboards, you certainly don’t put the dishwasher tablets in the cup cakes.

And this man will not ever again try to do so.

The question quite plainly is this:

When our emotions and our hurts and our personal pains come into play, when our relationships, the people we love and the pressure we’re under from our peer group and the society we live in get involved …

How do we decide who and what to include.

It is to no-one trying to accommodate to politicians, the strong-arm people, the religious leaders or anyone else to whom Jesus turns and pours out His inclusive welcome … but to the sin confessing, Christ acknowledging desperate dying sinner that casts himself on the mercy of the Saviour that Jesus pours out His promise of acceptance.

Here it comes: today YOU will be with me in paradise.