This is your daily reminder. God has not run
out of mercy, not for you, not today. Welcome
to the New Mercies Podcast. Welcome back to the
New Mercies podcast. Today is Friday, March the
27th, and our reading plan takes us back to the
book of Luke again. Before we jump into it, I
do want to say welcome. If it is your first time
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Our church goes through a reading plan. This
reading plan helps to lead toward what is coming
up on Sunday that will be preached from the pulpit.
And so we are always jumping. into God's Word
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that stuff. Now, Luke 23, verses 26 through 56,
through the end of the chapter, is where we are
today in our reading. I am very excited to be
able to preach this on Sunday. I'm looking forward
to this and seeing how the Lord will work this
all altogether. There's a lot that happens in
this section of verses, so I just want to pull
a little bit out today, specifically what happens
when Jesus is on the cross. Now, there are other
gospel accounts that will give a little bit more
insight into a few more things that happen that
Luke doesn't record, but there's a total of seven
sayings of Jesus on the cross. You can find those
in the book of Luke, the book of Matthew, and
the book of John. They will overlap one another,
and you can see how it is all laid out. But today
I want to focus in on what Luke says about when
Jesus is on the cross. Something amazing happens
as I looked at it today, just jumped off the
page to me, and I want to share that with you
in our podcast. It's a good time to do that.
So I want to read a couple of verses to you in
Luke chapter 23. Check this out down in verse
number 32. The Bible says this, Two others who
were criminals were led away to be put to death
with him. And when they came to the place that
is called the skull, there they crucified him
and the criminals, one on his right and one on
his left. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do. And they cast
lots to divide his garments. I want to stop there
for just a minute. Point this out. I've read
this story a hundred times. I have been in church
my whole life. I have heard of the crucifixion
of Jesus. I've watched it play out in my mind
as I've read, as I've studied. And I just cannot
get over the fact that the first thing that Jesus
does when he is on the cross is he prays for
those who are persecuting him, who are putting
him on this cross. He says, Father, forgive them.
Notice he does not say, Father, forgive me. Why?
Because Jesus was sinless. He didn't have anything
to be forgiven of. He did nothing wrong. He says,
Father, forgive them. They don't know what they
do. Do you know, I have said before, and the
more I think about it and the more I pray, the
more I read through Scripture, the more I realize
Jesus loves prayer. He absolutely loves prayer.
The disciples saw Jesus' prayer life and said,
we want this prayer life. How do we pray like
you pray? We want you to teach us how you pray.
And then I look into the New Testament, into
the book of Romans. What is Jesus doing right
now? He's seated at the right hand of the Father
making intercession for us. He's praying for
us right now. Every time I look through the scripture,
Jesus is found praying. When he needs spiritual
power, he prays. Whenever the disciples ask,
they miscalculated how to cast out a demon. They
don't know how to do it. They've miscalculated.
They don't know how it happens. And they ask
him, they say, teacher, how do we do this? And
he said, well, this kind of demon only comes
out with prayer. I always ask, what were the
disciples doing whenever they were trying to
cast this demon out? He says, listen, you got
to pray. You got to pray. You got to pray. Here
we find him on the cross, and he is our mediator
once again. He is going between us and God and
making the connection. Even while he was on the
cross, he was praying. He was praying and trying
to connect us back to God. There's a part of
me that thinks the angels in heaven are ready
to come down and just wipe out mankind. How dare
they slay the very son of God himself and the
person who created all the things. And a part
of me thinks that these angels were about to
come and Jesus was like, forgive them. It's not
an act of retaliation. It's an act of love. He
is saying forgiveness will win. He is going to
forgive, and he asked the Father to forgive them.
There Jesus is mediating for us once again. A
couple of things I will see, you will see as
you keep reading this text today, you'll see
a couple of things show up. Number one, the first
people that scoff at him are the religious leaders.
Those who are supposed to be the ones who are
yearning for the Messiah, and they are the first
ones to mock him, to scoff at him. Then the next
group that does that, and this is just a few
verses right after, right? Go read it. See it
for yourself. They begin to scoff at him and
mock him. Then the soldiers begin to mock him.
And then the next thing you see, the criminals
begin to mock him. Now, one of the criminals
ends up blaspheming against Jesus, and the other
one, he's rebuking him. He's saying, listen,
we did nothing wrong. We deserve this. This guy
did nothing wrong. What are you doing? And then
he begins to have a conversation with Jesus.
Beautiful story, incredible story. I think about
this and just wonder, how did he know that Jesus
did nothing wrong? There was something different
about his demeanor. They probably knew about
this Jesus. Most people in the town probably
knew about this Jesus. This was a big trial.
Whenever he came into town just earlier that
week, there was a big triumphal entry. There
was a massive parade that led him into town.
People knew who he was. And yet here we see the
religious leaders leading the charge in mocking
and scoffing at him. Then the soldiers mocking
him and casting lots about his clothing and trying
to gather everything for themselves, being selfish.
And then we see the criminal beside Jesus who
is just mocking him and blaspheming him and calling
out these cursings against him. And this other
criminal who is the voice of reason. I think
about why weren't those religious leaders the
voice of reason? It just says over and over again,
everybody was just looking, watching this thing
happen. They were just beholding as this was
all taking place. I don't want us to think today,
like, what if we were in that side of the story?
What would we have done? How would we have been
there? We don't know. We don't know. If you were
put in that situation and taken back there, you
don't know which part of the story you'd be in,
right? Here's what I do want to do. Today, you
have a choice and a decision. You have an absolute
obligation as a believer. You are compelled by
the love of Christ to serve him and serve him
to the absolute fullest. So the challenge for
you today is don't put yourself in the story
and figure out which position you would be. Know
the story. Know what Jesus has done for you.
And let's live for that today. Let's do that
today. Maybe you need to up your prayer life.
Maybe that's what you need to do. Jesus' act
on the cross was to pray for us, pray for those
who were persecuting him in that moment. Man,
he prioritized prayer so much, and we let it
fall to the wayside for absolutely nothing. We
don't even count it as anything of any power.
And Jesus says it's the most powerful thing he's
got. He's still doing it for us today in heaven
until the day he mounts a horse and comes back.
He's praying. That's what he's doing. I think
we need to pray more. I just do. Even in Jesus'
death, the greatest moment of love and sacrifice
in all of human history, and he is still praying.
for those around him. I want to encourage you
today. Maybe you need to start praying a little
more. Maybe you need to up your prayer life.
Maybe you need to spend more time knowing and
tapping into that type of power. Or maybe today
it's that you need to realize and recognize the
act of love he did, and let's live for that.
Let's be the people that promote this Jesus more
than anything else in our life. When people see
you, may they recognize him.