Hello and welcome to Trinity Sermons and thanks for joining us for our weekly sermon here
at Trinity Church, Streetsville. Trinity is a church in the heart of the village of Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario. We are a welcoming family of people who in our own time are seeking
to love Jesus, live like Jesus and lead others to Jesus. This is episode one of our new sermon
series, Famous Last Words, where Rob will be with us and looking at the final words Jesus spoke on
the cross. Now before we begin, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast to stay up to date with
all of our episodes. Thanks so much for listening today. God bless. A reading from the Gospel of
Luke chapter 13 beginning at verse 26. As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from
Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind
Jesus. When they came to the place called the skull, they crucified him there along with criminals,
one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know
what they are doing. And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. The word of the Lord. When
someone was crucified, their death was not from blood loss. No, the Romans had perfected the art
of crucifixion and they knew not to pierce any major veins or arteries when somebody was
crucified. So their goal was actually to keep you alive for as long as possible to torture you as
long as possible to humiliate you for as long as possible so that passersby might look up at you
and see you there and say, I will never ever, ever, ever do whatever that person did that landed them
up on that cross. No, they didn't want you to die too quick. And sometimes you would last for hours.
Sometimes you would even last for days. No, when you died from crucifixion, you died from asphyxiation.
You just couldn't breathe anymore. You know, the angle that you were positioned on the cross made
it difficult for your diaphragm to catch a good breath. And so what you would end up doing is you
would end up taking lots of shorter breaths. And that actually then could lead to hyperventilation.
And then from that, you know, the rest of the problems began to settle in. You'd have fluid kind
of gather around your lungs, fluid gather around your heart. And that only made it even harder to
breathe. And the only way to get a really good breath would be to actually press your weight down
on the hands that had nails in it and on the ankles that were nailed to the bottom of the cross and
push yourself up high enough to expand your lungs, to expand your diaphragm. Take a good breath and
then slump and settle back down into the position you were before. Very, very difficult to take a
deep breath. Now from time to time, the victims would try to say something. It's very difficult
to say something from across, at least something loud enough for people to hear. And in order to
speak, of course, you would have to push yourself up, take a good deep breath, speak your word, and
then again, settle back down, which is why those who were crucified actually spoke very little. It
was just so, so painful and torturous. And yet seven times over the six hours that Jesus spent on the
cross, he spoke a word, he spoke a phrase. And if he was going to force himself to speak, then you
can bet he wanted us to hear it. Today we're starting a brand new teaching series. It's going to take us
all through Lent called Famous Last Words. And over the next six weeks, we're going to be exploring
those seven final phrases that Jesus spoke in his final moments. We're going to take each one of
those phrases and we're going to listen to it very, very carefully because these words were carefully
preserved for us by the early church and all through history and brought down through the scriptures
for us so that we could hear them today and we could meditate on them today. They thought it was
very important. We heard these words and that's what we're going to do. What did Jesus want us to
hear in his dying words on the cross? What did he mean? What did his words tell us about who he was
and what do his words tell us about who we are, ourselves? And so today we begin in Luke 23 verse
34, hearing Jesus say, or rather Jesus pray, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Now, before we go any further, it's important to point out a couple of things about this verse.
If you were to look it up in your Bible, Luke 23 verse 34, you would notice just a little footnote
by that verse. And what it says is this phrase does not occur in some of the earliest versions
of Luke's gospel. There's a couple of reasons for that, why it didn't appear in the earliest copies
of Luke gospel. And, you know, here's a couple of thoughts. One thought out there is that actually
the early Bible copyists who made the copies of the Bible just could not stomach the idea that Jesus
would want to forgive his executioners. And so they just cut it out of their Bible copies as they made
it. But there's also another explanation too. It could be that this verse we have only because of
a boy named Rufus who was standing near the cross on the day that Jesus was crucified, Rufus, the son
of Simon of Cyrene. There's a scholar and author named Adam Hamilton who suggests that Luke, who was
a historian of course, would have recorded all these details of Jesus's life by interviewing
people and all that stuff. But in the first wave of interviews that he did, nobody knew about this
thing that Jesus said from the cross. They knew lots of other things Jesus said, lots of other
things Jesus did which made it into Luke's gospel. But when Luke's gospel later begins to be copied
and spread around the Mediterranean area, finally it ends up in the city of Rome, maybe 20, 30, 40
years later. And in the city of Rome there happened to be a young man who when he was a child was
actually standing by that cross and that young man's name was Rufus. In fact, Paul in his letter to
the church in Rome actually sends greetings to a guy named Rufus and his mother and it is believed
this is the very same Rufus that is mentioned as we just saw in Mark's gospel that Luke didn't
mention by name in his gospel. But in the city of Rome, Rufus relocated to that area and one day
Luke's gospel shows up in Rome and they're reading it and Rufus says, oh my goodness,
it's amazing. Yes, it happened, it all happened, but there's something else, there's something
that they're missing. And so Rufus would have added in that line that said, father, forgive them,
they know not what they do. And then presumably that gets copied out from the Roman versions of
Luke's gospel and eventually becomes a standard text of our gospel today. So that could very well
be how these words came to us today, but in some ways that's secondary. And the real thing we want
to ask is what are we supposed to learn from these words that have come to us today? So I want to
share with you four thoughts this morning. The first thought is this, I think one thing we're
supposed to understand is we are the them. When Jesus says father, forgive them, who is he talking
about? Certainly you could say he's talking about those Roman soldiers that are down there
gambling for his clothes, laughing, having just beat him to near death. Jesus says father, forgive
them. He could be looking over here at the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, the chief priests
who are smiling smugly because Jesus is finally getting what he deserves. Father, forgive them.
Maybe he's thinking of Pontius Pilate, Pilate who just hours ago had sentenced Jesus to death,
let them lead him away to death. Even though there was nothing, no case could be made against
him. Pontius Pilate was supposed to be the one who made sure justice happened. And here he had let
this great injustice happen. Father, forgive them, forgive him. Or maybe he's looking at his disciples,
the one who betrayed him or the others who abandoned him in his time of need. Father, forgive
them. But is there anyone else he's praying for when he's there on the cross saying father,
forgive them? Well, the church throughout history has always believed that he's praying for us,
for every person who has ever been born, father, forgive them. There's this old gospel hymn,
but we sometimes sing even here at Trinity on Good Friday. It's called, Were You There?
And the lyrics to the song go, Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Or were you there
when they nailed him to the cross? Or were you there when they laid him in the tomb? What's the
answer to that question? Well, on the one hand, no, we weren't there, of course. But on the other
hand, the implication is yes, we were there. We were there. We are the them. NT Wright wrote that
when Jesus prays for the forgiveness of his executioners, he's praying not just for them,
but for all, all who have ever fallen into the grips of the spiral of violence and hatred,
which are all with spirals of sin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer years earlier said, we are all
responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. So when Jesus hangs on the cross and he looks down into
that crowd and he says, father, forgive them, he's looking into that crowd, but he's also looking
past that crowd. He's looking past that space. He's looking down through time. His eyes are scanning
through all of time until they finally lock eyes with mine. And he says, father, forgive Rob,
for he does not know what he's doing. Father, forgive JP. He doesn't know what he's doing.
Father, forgive Annette. She does not know what she's doing. Father, forgive Mandy. She doesn't
know what she is doing. Who are the them? We are the them. And if that's true, then this second
point presents itself to us this morning. If we are the them, then it seems clear that we have a
problem. Because if someone says, I forgive you, then that means that person has wronged you in
some way. You don't forgive someone who hasn't done something to hurt you. So when Jesus says,
father, forgive them, that means that all those people and us people too, we are the them. We have
violated God in some way straight from the path sin. Sin is this condition that causes us to stray
from God's path. Sin in some ways could just be translated as straying. There is this way that
we're called to go and that we ought to go. And if we were to go in this way, the world would be at
peace. Nobody would ever be hungry. Nobody would ever be sleeping on the streets. There would be no
hatred. There would be no wars. There would be no affairs. There would be no divorce. There would be
none of that. That's the way we are called to go. But we don't walk in that way. We walk in another
way. And so in this path, we do all sorts of harm to ourselves, to others, and even to God. And so
when Jesus says, father, forgive them, it's a reminder we've got a problem, right? There is
something wrong with us in here and we need to be fixed somehow. I can remember when I was a
eight year old boy and my mom took me into a corner store and I asked her, mom, can I get some
double bubble, something like bubble gum or whatever? And I remember she said, no, but that
didn't matter. I just stole some anyways, which wasn't actually like me, but I did. I stole it and
I stuffed it in my pocket. And as we were walking back to the car, I was not a very smart thief,
but I decided to just try to unwrap it. I was holding hands with this hand and I decided to
try to unwrap it with my other hand. And she was like, what are you doing? She saw all the mess,
the wrappers and everything. She grabbed me by that hand, dragged me back to the store
and made me put that stuff back on the counter. I was thoroughly embarrassed. I've never been so
embarrassed in my life, I don't think. Cause even at the age of eight years old, I was a thief.
What was wrong with me? I had a problem. I still have a problem. You have a problem. We all have a
problem. We stray from the path. And the good thing about Lent is it's kind of a 40 day period,
which we're invited to look inside ourselves and look at that problem and look at the ways we stray
and look at the brokenness inside us and say, where am I sick? You know, where is my heart blocked?
What is my problem? Now I just want to say, I know some people are visiting Trinity,
most Sundays people are, some are someone visiting Trinity and you may say, oh, I hate going to
church because whenever they go to church, they, you know, whenever I go to church, they just talk
about sin and I don't want to talk about sin and I don't want another guilt trip. And I totally
understand that that some people go to churches and they come back feeling worse than when you
left to go to church. I just want to say, I don't think that actually describes Trinity.
And I think it's actually really too bad that that happens at all because what Jesus is saying from
the cross, what he is praying from the cross is not about making us feel bad or guilty. That's
not the focus of what he's saying. Right? If you hear Jesus, please, he's not so much saying
you're a sinner as he's saying, I'm a savior. He's not so much saying you're guilty. He's saying,
I have grace for you. Now you can't obviously appreciate that grace until you know you've got
a problem. I use this example earlier on at our early service, but imagine for example, one day
you start to develop chest pains and you think, oh, it could just be anxiety or heartburn or
something like that. But then what happens is you start to get shortness of breath and you start to
feel pain shooting down your arm. And at that point you're like, Ooh, I think I better go to
the doctor. So you go to the cardiologist, they do some tests on you. They say, sir, I have got some
very bad news, some good news, but some very bad news for you. And that's that you have some serious
heart blockage and we have to do emergency surgery right now, or you are going to die.
So what do you say? Man, that doctor is such a downer. You know, I don't want to hear that.
I'm going to, I'm going to go find a doctor. It makes me feel good. Someone is a doctor. It tells
me some good things about my heart, right? I want good news, not bad news. You would never say that.
You would never say it. You would say, thank you, doctor. Thank you. What can be done? Oh,
you mean there's a cure. You mean there's, there's a way to be healed from this. Please let's do the
surgery. And you'd actually be slightly relieved. I think. And that is the thing about what Jesus
is saying. He's saying, yes, we have this thing in us, sin that causes us to stray, but there is
a cure for our heart condition. And therefore Jesus's prayer from the cross should not make us
feel guilty. Should actually make us feel glad, make us feel joyful. There's a cure for our
condition. And that brings us to the third point I want to raise with you this morning.
Not only are we the them and not only do we have a problem, but we have been forgiven.
And intentionally I want to use that in the past tense. We have been not you can be,
but we have been forgiven. Cause let me ask you this question. Do you think that God answered
Jesus's prayer that day father forgive them? They do not know what they are doing. Did God answer
that prayer? If your son was dying, wouldn't you do anything? Wouldn't you give anything?
Wouldn't you give anything? Wouldn't you move heaven and earth to respond to whatever plea or
whatever they asked you to do. Jesus, they're hanging on the cross father. I have a plea.
I have a request. Forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Even as they're torturing me,
even as they're making me suffer, even as they're laughing and mocking and sinning father, forgive
them. I have to believe God answered that prayer at that moment. He forgave them. And why? Because
his son asked, which means we are already forgiven. Remember we are the them before you were born,
before you did any of the cruddy, nasty, or you know, despicable things we've all done in our lives,
right? Before you asked for forgiveness or acknowledged your wrongdoing, God already answered
his son's prayer and forgave you in advance. He did everything to redeem you. It's kind of confusing
to figure out why Jesus dying on the cross forgives us of our sins. And there's lots of
different theories out there. They call them theories of the atonement. But I thought maybe
I could just share one story with you today from the Old Testament that I think might help us
understand a bit of what's going on there. You see in the Old Testament, that's the older part
of the Bible. In fact, from one of the oldest books of the Bible, the book of Leviticus, the third book
in the 66 book Bible, we read that there was a strange ritual that the Israelites used to go
through. And what would happen is that, you know, the priest would from time to time, I think annually,
they would take a goat out to the edge of town, and the priest would lay his hands on the goat.
This is where the phrase scapegoat comes from, by the way. And then he would confess over the head
of that goat all the sins and all the wickedness and all the rebellion of the Israelites, all their
sins on this live goat. And then he would send the goat out into the wilderness and off the goat would
go and you would never see the goat again and presumably got eaten by some wild animal or maybe
it just, hey, started to live in the wilderness somewhere. But the point is you never saw it again.
It was gone. Now, my question is, did this goat really take everyone's sins into the desert?
I don't think so. But there is a visual image there that people's sins had just been carried away
and they saw it. They saw the goat leave. They saw it disappear. I don't necessarily think it was
that all the sins were heaped on the head of this goat, but it was that God was going to forgive
their sins. Yes, God was going to forgive their sins, but he wanted them to understand that it's
going to cost a living creature. It's life. So when Jesus is dying on the cross, we see all the
sins of the world, all the hatred, all the bigotry, all the prejudice, all the poverty, all the
injustice. It's all placed upon him. The lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And the
point is the same. We're meant to see the costliness of that forgiveness. Our sin is not a
trifling thing. The son of God was crucified for it. And so when you ask God for forgiveness, you
know that price has already been paid. You know, there was a fellow named John Wesley, kind of a
theologian, pastor, songwriter who called this idea God's prevenient grace, which is God's grace
and forgiveness that had been given even before you asked. You just have to unwrap it. Reminds me
that my sister, two Christmases ago, gave our family a gift certificate to Blue Mountain. Her
name's Elaine. She gave us this gift certificate and it was so that we could go spend a weekend at
Blue Mountain. And you know what? We never got around to using it. And a whole year went by and
now it's been over a year and we still intend to use it, but we haven't used it yet. And so in some
ways she paid for it long ago. She bought the gift certificate. She packaged it all up. She sent it
off to us. We already have it. It's all paid for, but we just haven't cashed it in yet and we just
haven't enjoyed it yet. That's how God's mercy is. God has already done everything. He's already paid
everything necessary to save us and forgiveness. All we got to do is cash it in. All we got to do
is open the gift and enjoy that mercy and that forgiveness. Paul kind of said it this way. He
said, while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will
anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, someone might actually dare to
die, but God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Already
done, just waiting to be opened up. If you're here today and you are struggling with some kind of
guilt, something that happened in your past, I can't believe I did this or I can't shake this
feeling and you can't imagine that God would ever forgive you. Do you know that when Jesus was on the
cross, he prayed, Father, forgive, insert name here, insert your name here, right? Do you know the
father has already prayed that prayer or Jesus already prayed that prayer and the father has
already answered that prayer already? You've been forgiven. And a little later in our service, we
are going to get a time of confession and you're going to get the chance to experience the joy of
forgiveness, not the guilt. So first, we are the them. Second, we have a problem. Third, we have
been forgiven. But fourthly, we now have this wonderful model. Jesus didn't come just to die
for us, but to show us how to live. While we maybe have straying down this path, doing things that
hurt ourselves and hurt others, Jesus comes along and says, I want to show you another path. I want
to show you another way to be human, another way to experience the fullness of life. Come follow me.
Let me show you how to live. And one of the things that Jesus showed us more than anything else was
how to forgive one another over and over again. In Jesus's teaching, he's always showing, he's
always modeling, especially even down to his dying breath, he's modeling how to forgive one another.
In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
His disciples heard him say things like, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.
And then he taught his disciples in the Lord's Prayer, which we're going to pray a little
later on in the service, he said, our Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
who trespass against us. You have to understand Jesus is there, he's hanging on this cross,
he's praying this prayer, but in so doing, he's also saying, forgive one another. Do you see what
I'm doing? This is how I want you to live. This is what it means to follow my way. This is the answer
to so much of the pain in the world, the hatred and the war that we find ourselves in, the constant
one-upmanship, always wanting to get back, the vengeance, the revenge with each other.
Follow this way. Look at what I'm doing. I'm modeling something for you right now.
You can't have a marriage that lasts longer than a year without learning to say, I'm sorry.
You can't have a friendship that lasts over the long haul unless you're willing to forgive
one another. Even if you have a business or you work in some industry, you're a leader,
you're going to be the most miserable person in the world to work around if you're constantly
carrying a grudge. In church, we'll never experience unity in a church like Trinity unless
we're willing to forgive one another. I like to think that I'm kind of a forgiving person,
and yet sometimes I feel it. I feel it welling up. I feel this resentment building up and my stomach
begins to churn and then I'm like in the shower and I'm having this imaginary conversation with
that person and I'm telling them how bad they are and I'm really giving them the gears and
and when I'm doing that, I got to tell you the only person who's really getting hurt,
the only person who hears what I'm saying is me. And it's like the old quote goes that, you know,
unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
The only way there's going to be joy for me is to learn to pray, Father, forgive them.
And in the end, the only way to find the reconciliation is when we're willing to forgive
even before the other person has thought to ask for it. Now, that doesn't mean we don't need to be
smart and there aren't some consequences. It's okay to say I forgive you, but it doesn't necessarily
mean we have to be around that person all the time. If it's not healthy, boundaries are important,
but forgiveness still needs to flow. So let me just say this, if you're ever tempted to say, oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah, but Jesus wouldn't understand my problem. Jesus wouldn't know what this person
did to me. If Jesus had been through what I've been through, then he would never be saying,
Father, forgive them. But really, come on. This is a guy hanging on a cross, tortured,
and he prays this prayer. And he's inviting us to pray this prayer with him. We are the them.
We are the people who need forgiving. We have a problem. It's called sin. But we have already
been forgiven. God's grace is given to us. All we got to do is open it up and enjoy it.
And we have a model. Jesus shows us how to be people of mercy as we follow his way of forgiveness.
Father, forgive them. Yeah, that's those are the words Jesus spoke. But those are the words Jesus
wants us to live as well. So thanks be to God. Amen. Thanks for joining us today. And we hope that
you found this sermon important as we remember, we are the them Jesus spoke about on the cross.
And make sure to come back next week as we unpack yet more words Jesus spoke while he hung on the
cross in his final moments. Thanks again for joining. This is the
sermon was taken from the February 18 2024 sermon at Trinity Church streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.