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Hello and welcome to Trinity Sermons and thanks for joining us for our weekly sermon here

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at Trinity Church, Streetsville. Trinity is a church in the heart of the village of Streetsville

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in Mississauga, Ontario. We are a welcoming family of people who in our own time are seeking

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to love Jesus, live like Jesus and lead others to Jesus. This is episode one of our new sermon

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series, Famous Last Words, where Rob will be with us and looking at the final words Jesus spoke on

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the cross. Now before we begin, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast to stay up to date with

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all of our episodes. Thanks so much for listening today. God bless. A reading from the Gospel of

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Luke chapter 13 beginning at verse 26. As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from

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Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind

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Jesus. When they came to the place called the skull, they crucified him there along with criminals,

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one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know

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what they are doing. And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. The word of the Lord. When

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someone was crucified, their death was not from blood loss. No, the Romans had perfected the art

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of crucifixion and they knew not to pierce any major veins or arteries when somebody was

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crucified. So their goal was actually to keep you alive for as long as possible to torture you as

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long as possible to humiliate you for as long as possible so that passersby might look up at you

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and see you there and say, I will never ever, ever, ever do whatever that person did that landed them

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up on that cross. No, they didn't want you to die too quick. And sometimes you would last for hours.

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Sometimes you would even last for days. No, when you died from crucifixion, you died from asphyxiation.

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You just couldn't breathe anymore. You know, the angle that you were positioned on the cross made

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it difficult for your diaphragm to catch a good breath. And so what you would end up doing is you

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would end up taking lots of shorter breaths. And that actually then could lead to hyperventilation.

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And then from that, you know, the rest of the problems began to settle in. You'd have fluid kind

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of gather around your lungs, fluid gather around your heart. And that only made it even harder to

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breathe. And the only way to get a really good breath would be to actually press your weight down

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on the hands that had nails in it and on the ankles that were nailed to the bottom of the cross and

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push yourself up high enough to expand your lungs, to expand your diaphragm. Take a good breath and

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then slump and settle back down into the position you were before. Very, very difficult to take a

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deep breath. Now from time to time, the victims would try to say something. It's very difficult

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to say something from across, at least something loud enough for people to hear. And in order to

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speak, of course, you would have to push yourself up, take a good deep breath, speak your word, and

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then again, settle back down, which is why those who were crucified actually spoke very little. It

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was just so, so painful and torturous. And yet seven times over the six hours that Jesus spent on the

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cross, he spoke a word, he spoke a phrase. And if he was going to force himself to speak, then you

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can bet he wanted us to hear it. Today we're starting a brand new teaching series. It's going to take us

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all through Lent called Famous Last Words. And over the next six weeks, we're going to be exploring

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those seven final phrases that Jesus spoke in his final moments. We're going to take each one of

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those phrases and we're going to listen to it very, very carefully because these words were carefully

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preserved for us by the early church and all through history and brought down through the scriptures

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for us so that we could hear them today and we could meditate on them today. They thought it was

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very important. We heard these words and that's what we're going to do. What did Jesus want us to

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hear in his dying words on the cross? What did he mean? What did his words tell us about who he was

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and what do his words tell us about who we are, ourselves? And so today we begin in Luke 23 verse

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34, hearing Jesus say, or rather Jesus pray, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

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Now, before we go any further, it's important to point out a couple of things about this verse.

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If you were to look it up in your Bible, Luke 23 verse 34, you would notice just a little footnote

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by that verse. And what it says is this phrase does not occur in some of the earliest versions

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of Luke's gospel. There's a couple of reasons for that, why it didn't appear in the earliest copies

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of Luke gospel. And, you know, here's a couple of thoughts. One thought out there is that actually

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the early Bible copyists who made the copies of the Bible just could not stomach the idea that Jesus

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would want to forgive his executioners. And so they just cut it out of their Bible copies as they made

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it. But there's also another explanation too. It could be that this verse we have only because of

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a boy named Rufus who was standing near the cross on the day that Jesus was crucified, Rufus, the son

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of Simon of Cyrene. There's a scholar and author named Adam Hamilton who suggests that Luke, who was

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a historian of course, would have recorded all these details of Jesus's life by interviewing

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people and all that stuff. But in the first wave of interviews that he did, nobody knew about this

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thing that Jesus said from the cross. They knew lots of other things Jesus said, lots of other

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things Jesus did which made it into Luke's gospel. But when Luke's gospel later begins to be copied

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and spread around the Mediterranean area, finally it ends up in the city of Rome, maybe 20, 30, 40

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years later. And in the city of Rome there happened to be a young man who when he was a child was

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actually standing by that cross and that young man's name was Rufus. In fact, Paul in his letter to

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the church in Rome actually sends greetings to a guy named Rufus and his mother and it is believed

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this is the very same Rufus that is mentioned as we just saw in Mark's gospel that Luke didn't

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mention by name in his gospel. But in the city of Rome, Rufus relocated to that area and one day

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Luke's gospel shows up in Rome and they're reading it and Rufus says, oh my goodness,

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it's amazing. Yes, it happened, it all happened, but there's something else, there's something

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that they're missing. And so Rufus would have added in that line that said, father, forgive them,

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they know not what they do. And then presumably that gets copied out from the Roman versions of

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Luke's gospel and eventually becomes a standard text of our gospel today. So that could very well

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be how these words came to us today, but in some ways that's secondary. And the real thing we want

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to ask is what are we supposed to learn from these words that have come to us today? So I want to

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share with you four thoughts this morning. The first thought is this, I think one thing we're

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supposed to understand is we are the them. When Jesus says father, forgive them, who is he talking

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about? Certainly you could say he's talking about those Roman soldiers that are down there

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gambling for his clothes, laughing, having just beat him to near death. Jesus says father, forgive

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them. He could be looking over here at the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, the chief priests

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who are smiling smugly because Jesus is finally getting what he deserves. Father, forgive them.

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Maybe he's thinking of Pontius Pilate, Pilate who just hours ago had sentenced Jesus to death,

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let them lead him away to death. Even though there was nothing, no case could be made against

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him. Pontius Pilate was supposed to be the one who made sure justice happened. And here he had let

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this great injustice happen. Father, forgive them, forgive him. Or maybe he's looking at his disciples,

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the one who betrayed him or the others who abandoned him in his time of need. Father, forgive

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them. But is there anyone else he's praying for when he's there on the cross saying father,

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forgive them? Well, the church throughout history has always believed that he's praying for us,

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for every person who has ever been born, father, forgive them. There's this old gospel hymn,

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but we sometimes sing even here at Trinity on Good Friday. It's called, Were You There?

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And the lyrics to the song go, Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Or were you there

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when they nailed him to the cross? Or were you there when they laid him in the tomb? What's the

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answer to that question? Well, on the one hand, no, we weren't there, of course. But on the other

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hand, the implication is yes, we were there. We were there. We are the them. NT Wright wrote that

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when Jesus prays for the forgiveness of his executioners, he's praying not just for them,

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but for all, all who have ever fallen into the grips of the spiral of violence and hatred,

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which are all with spirals of sin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer years earlier said, we are all

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responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. So when Jesus hangs on the cross and he looks down into

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that crowd and he says, father, forgive them, he's looking into that crowd, but he's also looking

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past that crowd. He's looking past that space. He's looking down through time. His eyes are scanning

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through all of time until they finally lock eyes with mine. And he says, father, forgive Rob,

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for he does not know what he's doing. Father, forgive JP. He doesn't know what he's doing.

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Father, forgive Annette. She does not know what she's doing. Father, forgive Mandy. She doesn't

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know what she is doing. Who are the them? We are the them. And if that's true, then this second

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point presents itself to us this morning. If we are the them, then it seems clear that we have a

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problem. Because if someone says, I forgive you, then that means that person has wronged you in

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some way. You don't forgive someone who hasn't done something to hurt you. So when Jesus says,

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father, forgive them, that means that all those people and us people too, we are the them. We have

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violated God in some way straight from the path sin. Sin is this condition that causes us to stray

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from God's path. Sin in some ways could just be translated as straying. There is this way that

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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

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peace. Nobody would ever be hungry. Nobody would ever be sleeping on the streets. There would be no

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hatred. There would be no wars. There would be no affairs. There would be no divorce. There would be

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none of that. That's the way we are called to go. But we don't walk in that way. We walk in another

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way. And so in this path, we do all sorts of harm to ourselves, to others, and even to God. And so

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when Jesus says, father, forgive them, it's a reminder we've got a problem, right? There is

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something wrong with us in here and we need to be fixed somehow. I can remember when I was a

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eight year old boy and my mom took me into a corner store and I asked her, mom, can I get some

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double bubble, something like bubble gum or whatever? And I remember she said, no, but that

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didn't matter. I just stole some anyways, which wasn't actually like me, but I did. I stole it and

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I stuffed it in my pocket. And as we were walking back to the car, I was not a very smart thief,

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but I decided to just try to unwrap it. I was holding hands with this hand and I decided to

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try to unwrap it with my other hand. And she was like, what are you doing? She saw all the mess,

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the wrappers and everything. She grabbed me by that hand, dragged me back to the store

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and made me put that stuff back on the counter. I was thoroughly embarrassed. I've never been so

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embarrassed in my life, I don't think. Cause even at the age of eight years old, I was a thief.

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What was wrong with me? I had a problem. I still have a problem. You have a problem. We all have a

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problem. We stray from the path. And the good thing about Lent is it's kind of a 40 day period,

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which we're invited to look inside ourselves and look at that problem and look at the ways we stray

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and look at the brokenness inside us and say, where am I sick? You know, where is my heart blocked?

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What is my problem? Now I just want to say, I know some people are visiting Trinity,

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most Sundays people are, some are someone visiting Trinity and you may say, oh, I hate going to

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church because whenever they go to church, they, you know, whenever I go to church, they just talk

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about sin and I don't want to talk about sin and I don't want another guilt trip. And I totally

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understand that that some people go to churches and they come back feeling worse than when you

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left to go to church. I just want to say, I don't think that actually describes Trinity.

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And I think it's actually really too bad that that happens at all because what Jesus is saying from

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the cross, what he is praying from the cross is not about making us feel bad or guilty. That's

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not the focus of what he's saying. Right? If you hear Jesus, please, he's not so much saying

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you're a sinner as he's saying, I'm a savior. He's not so much saying you're guilty. He's saying,

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I have grace for you. Now you can't obviously appreciate that grace until you know you've got

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a problem. I use this example earlier on at our early service, but imagine for example, one day

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you start to develop chest pains and you think, oh, it could just be anxiety or heartburn or

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something like that. But then what happens is you start to get shortness of breath and you start to

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feel pain shooting down your arm. And at that point you're like, Ooh, I think I better go to

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the doctor. So you go to the cardiologist, they do some tests on you. They say, sir, I have got some

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very bad news, some good news, but some very bad news for you. And that's that you have some serious

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heart blockage and we have to do emergency surgery right now, or you are going to die.

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So what do you say? Man, that doctor is such a downer. You know, I don't want to hear that.

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I'm going to, I'm going to go find a doctor. It makes me feel good. Someone is a doctor. It tells

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me some good things about my heart, right? I want good news, not bad news. You would never say that.

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You would never say it. You would say, thank you, doctor. Thank you. What can be done? Oh,

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you mean there's a cure. You mean there's, there's a way to be healed from this. Please let's do the

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surgery. And you'd actually be slightly relieved. I think. And that is the thing about what Jesus

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is saying. He's saying, yes, we have this thing in us, sin that causes us to stray, but there is

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a cure for our heart condition. And therefore Jesus's prayer from the cross should not make us

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feel guilty. Should actually make us feel glad, make us feel joyful. There's a cure for our

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condition. And that brings us to the third point I want to raise with you this morning.

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Not only are we the them and not only do we have a problem, but we have been forgiven.

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And intentionally I want to use that in the past tense. We have been not you can be,

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but we have been forgiven. Cause let me ask you this question. Do you think that God answered

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Jesus's prayer that day father forgive them? They do not know what they are doing. Did God answer

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that prayer? If your son was dying, wouldn't you do anything? Wouldn't you give anything?

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Wouldn't you give anything? Wouldn't you move heaven and earth to respond to whatever plea or

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whatever they asked you to do. Jesus, they're hanging on the cross father. I have a plea.

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I have a request. Forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Even as they're torturing me,

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even as they're making me suffer, even as they're laughing and mocking and sinning father, forgive

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them. I have to believe God answered that prayer at that moment. He forgave them. And why? Because

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his son asked, which means we are already forgiven. Remember we are the them before you were born,

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before you did any of the cruddy, nasty, or you know, despicable things we've all done in our lives,

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right? Before you asked for forgiveness or acknowledged your wrongdoing, God already answered

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his son's prayer and forgave you in advance. He did everything to redeem you. It's kind of confusing

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to figure out why Jesus dying on the cross forgives us of our sins. And there's lots of

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different theories out there. They call them theories of the atonement. But I thought maybe

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I could just share one story with you today from the Old Testament that I think might help us

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understand a bit of what's going on there. You see in the Old Testament, that's the older part

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of the Bible. In fact, from one of the oldest books of the Bible, the book of Leviticus, the third book

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in the 66 book Bible, we read that there was a strange ritual that the Israelites used to go

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through. And what would happen is that, you know, the priest would from time to time, I think annually,

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they would take a goat out to the edge of town, and the priest would lay his hands on the goat.

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This is where the phrase scapegoat comes from, by the way. And then he would confess over the head

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of that goat all the sins and all the wickedness and all the rebellion of the Israelites, all their

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sins on this live goat. And then he would send the goat out into the wilderness and off the goat would

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go and you would never see the goat again and presumably got eaten by some wild animal or maybe

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it just, hey, started to live in the wilderness somewhere. But the point is you never saw it again.

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It was gone. Now, my question is, did this goat really take everyone's sins into the desert?

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I don't think so. But there is a visual image there that people's sins had just been carried away

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and they saw it. They saw the goat leave. They saw it disappear. I don't necessarily think it was

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that all the sins were heaped on the head of this goat, but it was that God was going to forgive

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their sins. Yes, God was going to forgive their sins, but he wanted them to understand that it's

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going to cost a living creature. It's life. So when Jesus is dying on the cross, we see all the

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sins of the world, all the hatred, all the bigotry, all the prejudice, all the poverty, all the

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injustice. It's all placed upon him. The lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And the

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point is the same. We're meant to see the costliness of that forgiveness. Our sin is not a

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trifling thing. The son of God was crucified for it. And so when you ask God for forgiveness, you

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know that price has already been paid. You know, there was a fellow named John Wesley, kind of a

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theologian, pastor, songwriter who called this idea God's prevenient grace, which is God's grace

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and forgiveness that had been given even before you asked. You just have to unwrap it. Reminds me

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that my sister, two Christmases ago, gave our family a gift certificate to Blue Mountain. Her

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name's Elaine. She gave us this gift certificate and it was so that we could go spend a weekend at

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Blue Mountain. And you know what? We never got around to using it. And a whole year went by and

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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

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ways she paid for it long ago. She bought the gift certificate. She packaged it all up. She sent it

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off to us. We already have it. It's all paid for, but we just haven't cashed it in yet and we just

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haven't enjoyed it yet. That's how God's mercy is. God has already done everything. He's already paid

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everything necessary to save us and forgiveness. All we got to do is cash it in. All we got to do

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is open the gift and enjoy that mercy and that forgiveness. Paul kind of said it this way. He

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said, while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will

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anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, someone might actually dare to

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die, but God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Already

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done, just waiting to be opened up. If you're here today and you are struggling with some kind of

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guilt, something that happened in your past, I can't believe I did this or I can't shake this

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feeling and you can't imagine that God would ever forgive you. Do you know that when Jesus was on the

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cross, he prayed, Father, forgive, insert name here, insert your name here, right? Do you know the

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father has already prayed that prayer or Jesus already prayed that prayer and the father has

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already answered that prayer already? You've been forgiven. And a little later in our service, we

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are going to get a time of confession and you're going to get the chance to experience the joy of

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forgiveness, not the guilt. So first, we are the them. Second, we have a problem. Third, we have

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been forgiven. But fourthly, we now have this wonderful model. Jesus didn't come just to die

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for us, but to show us how to live. While we maybe have straying down this path, doing things that

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hurt ourselves and hurt others, Jesus comes along and says, I want to show you another path. I want

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to show you another way to be human, another way to experience the fullness of life. Come follow me.

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Let me show you how to live. And one of the things that Jesus showed us more than anything else was

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how to forgive one another over and over again. In Jesus's teaching, he's always showing, he's

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always modeling, especially even down to his dying breath, he's modeling how to forgive one another.

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In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

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His disciples heard him say things like, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.

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And then he taught his disciples in the Lord's Prayer, which we're going to pray a little

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later on in the service, he said, our Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those

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who trespass against us. You have to understand Jesus is there, he's hanging on this cross,

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he's praying this prayer, but in so doing, he's also saying, forgive one another. Do you see what

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I'm doing? This is how I want you to live. This is what it means to follow my way. This is the answer

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to so much of the pain in the world, the hatred and the war that we find ourselves in, the constant

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one-upmanship, always wanting to get back, the vengeance, the revenge with each other.

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Follow this way. Look at what I'm doing. I'm modeling something for you right now.

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You can't have a marriage that lasts longer than a year without learning to say, I'm sorry.

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You can't have a friendship that lasts over the long haul unless you're willing to forgive

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one another. Even if you have a business or you work in some industry, you're a leader,

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you're going to be the most miserable person in the world to work around if you're constantly

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carrying a grudge. In church, we'll never experience unity in a church like Trinity unless

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we're willing to forgive one another. I like to think that I'm kind of a forgiving person,

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and yet sometimes I feel it. I feel it welling up. I feel this resentment building up and my stomach

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begins to churn and then I'm like in the shower and I'm having this imaginary conversation with

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that person and I'm telling them how bad they are and I'm really giving them the gears and

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and when I'm doing that, I got to tell you the only person who's really getting hurt,

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the only person who hears what I'm saying is me. And it's like the old quote goes that, you know,

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unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

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The only way there's going to be joy for me is to learn to pray, Father, forgive them.

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And in the end, the only way to find the reconciliation is when we're willing to forgive

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even before the other person has thought to ask for it. Now, that doesn't mean we don't need to be

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smart and there aren't some consequences. It's okay to say I forgive you, but it doesn't necessarily

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mean we have to be around that person all the time. If it's not healthy, boundaries are important,

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but forgiveness still needs to flow. So let me just say this, if you're ever tempted to say, oh,

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yeah, yeah, yeah, but Jesus wouldn't understand my problem. Jesus wouldn't know what this person

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did to me. If Jesus had been through what I've been through, then he would never be saying,

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Father, forgive them. But really, come on. This is a guy hanging on a cross, tortured,

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and he prays this prayer. And he's inviting us to pray this prayer with him. We are the them.

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We are the people who need forgiving. We have a problem. It's called sin. But we have already

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been forgiven. God's grace is given to us. All we got to do is open it up and enjoy it.

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And we have a model. Jesus shows us how to be people of mercy as we follow his way of forgiveness.

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Father, forgive them. Yeah, that's those are the words Jesus spoke. But those are the words Jesus

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wants us to live as well. So thanks be to God. Amen. Thanks for joining us today. And we hope that

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you found this sermon important as we remember, we are the them Jesus spoke about on the cross.

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And make sure to come back next week as we unpack yet more words Jesus spoke while he hung on the

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cross in his final moments. Thanks again for joining. This is the

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sermon was taken from the February 18 2024 sermon at Trinity Church streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.