The Thief on the Cross - 5

Well, good evening. It's good to see you tonight. We've made it to the last evening, and it seems like we just got started, and here it is already over, just about. But let Paul and I convey to you our thanks for your kindness and grace to us. We have just had a wonderful time, and like I said a day or two ago, wow, it's like coming back home here.

We've had a long-standing relationship. With your church, with your pastor and the staff, and we love you dearly. This is a wonderful group to speak to. I've told some of you that preaching is a two-way street. Not only it takes good preaching, it takes good listening. And good listening eggs on good preaching.

So I'm depending on you tonight to be a good listener, okay? We come to this last text, and it is somewhat apropos that here we are. In the few days before Easter Sunday that we are taking a look at this section dealing with the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and the events that take place surrounding his death. And we have noted in our study of these glimpses of grace from the Gospel of Luke that how surprising grace is. It's always throwing up the unexpected.

We saw it, didn't we? The parables that elder brother excluded, the one who had served his dad and winds up being excluded from the feast while the prodigal is admitted. That rich young ruler who seemed to be a shoe-in is turned away, goes away very sorrowfully.

He won't part with his possessions. And Zacchaeus, of all people, that rascal is called down from a tree and Christ saves him. It's just so unexpected. And here we go again. Who could have seen this one coming?

Let's take a good look at it. Each of the Gospels tell us that Jesus was not crucified by himself. He was not alone out there. He was crucified between two thieves, two robbers, two rebels.

Some would translate this word. Remember that Pilate had offered to release one of two men. Barabbas or Jesus. And it's interesting that usually the Romans crucified men in groups. If they had been a group of robbers or criminals or rebels and so forth, they would be crucified together. And it would seem that these two men might very well likely be part of Barabbas's group. Barabbas, remember, was guilty of insurrection and committing murder in that insurrection.

Wordplay. Have you ever thought about the name Barabbas? You all know what Abba means, right? Abba, Father. It's the intimate way in Aramaic of saying Father. Bar is son of. So Barabbas's name literally means the son of the father.

Well, guess what? We've got another son of the father over here, Jesus. And it's like Pilate holds up two son of the fathers. Which one do you want? Do you want this one that takes life? Or this one that gives life? One that puts men in the grave or calls men out of the grave.

Which one do you want? And the sinfulness of men responds, we want Barabbas. What shall I do with Jesus crucified? So it's an ironic situation that Jesus literally dies in the place of Barabbas. You see how these little coincidences, if you will, are sprinkled and scattered all through this.

Oh, the irony of the thing. He's delivered to be crucified. We've become very accustomed to that language. We see depictions and so forth. But nothing, I don't think, in our day and time could compare us with the horror of what crucifixion really entailed.

We don't really know where it came from. We know the Persians seem to have had it at some point. Let's get on to the Greeks. When Alexander the Great conquered the island city of Tyre, they held out for a long time and he was very aggravated with them when it was all over. He crucified 2,000 men there on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. You know a little bit about the Spartacus revolt, the slave revolt, roughly 70 B.C.

when that took place. When that revolt was finally put down, the Romans crucified 6,000 men. They crucified 4,000 of those escaped slaves who had joined Spartacus's army. The Appian Way, the road leading into Rome from the south, for 120 miles they crucified these men. That works out to roughly one crucifixion for every 100 feet.

That's what Spartacus and his men tried to do. Josephus called it the worst of all deaths. It was so horrible that you didn't speak of it in polite company. You tried to, as it were, put it out of your mouth because this death didn't just kill you. It just absolutely humiliated you. It was an in-your-face type of death. Death with an attitude. Because this death was designed to display to everybody that no matter what you thought you might be, you are nothing.

You are absolutely a nobody. And to the Jew it was even worse because remember that text over in Deuteronomy 21 that he that is hung on a tree is accursed of God. You go under that curse and so he's not only a nobody and a nothing in the sight of man, he's a nobody in the sight of God.

That's what they're displaying. You were typically beaten, scourged. Some died just from the scourging. You would be stripped naked. I know we have depictions with a loincloth or modesty but that was not the reality. Stripped absolutely naked. And impaled on a cross.

Most lingered sometimes for days before they expired. The Romans sometimes played around with crucifying men in various positions. They got bored of executing criminals so they played around with it. They would not open his lungs to get air and expired. Now sometimes they would put a peg between a man's leg and you say well that was a merciful accommodation.

Oh no. That just prolonged the agony. By the time they died the victim usually was begging, begging for death. There are accounts of birds eating the eyes out of a crucified man before he's even dead. Already feeding upon the body. Now what is strange is that for all the thousands of people who have been crucified in the ancient world, nobody had ever found the bones or the remains of a crucified man. And of course the liberal scholars always say well you see they really didn't nail them to a cross. This is all made up, all fiction.

Until that is. 1967 there was a road crew building a road in Israel and they happened to break into a sepulcher. Burial chamber. And there in an ossuary, a bone box was the bones of a very apparently crucified man.

You say well how do you know? Just the bones. Well the heel bones still had a nail, a spike sticking through it. And we begin to understand why normally you wouldn't find the bones of a crucified man. You wouldn't, most of the time they just threw them in the ditch.

They didn't bury them. But in this case the nail had apparently hit a knot. There was a little piece of olive wood still sticking to the end of the nail.

It had curved around the knot and so they couldn't pull it out. So they just cut the whole man's foot off. But it was clearly an evidence of crucifixion. They smashed the leg to smithereens. I think, by the way, last year they found another evidence of a crucified man in Britain. You can look that up on the internet.

I haven't really studied it as much as the other one that was in 1967, 68. But anyway, very interesting that yes, again, archaeology confirms the biblical story as it always does. They would do you, nail you to the cross and leave you up there as a spectacle. They would do it in a very public place.

We do know not exactly where this took place but it was on a way into Jerusalem. Remember Simon Serene was coming in from the country and they compelled him to carry Christ's cross when he could carry it no more. So it's as public a spectacle as they could make it. It's to be a warning to everybody.

So you've been stripped naked, beaten to a pulp, nailed to a post and everybody's out there gawking at you and mocking you. As your pastor read just before our text this evening, they are basically saying these rulers who clamored for his death, well, he saved others but he can't save himself. Isn't it interesting, again, the irony that they're speaking better than they know?

That's true. If he saves others, he can't save himself, right? And then the others are saying, I put the first one, verse 37, if thou be the king of the Jews, save yourself.

Same thing. So there is all this mockery going on. They have a titillum, it's called, hanging over his head. That is the plaque that would tell everybody what his crime is. He's the king of the Jews. It seems maybe as you compare the accounts that the whole title was, this is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. And of course, you recall that the Jews, the rulers were so enraged at Pilate for putting that up there.

Notice again, the irony. That's exactly who he is. And the Jews say to Pilate, hey, change that. And Pilate has been pushed around as far as he's going to go.

Pilate with these guys. No, what I've written, I've written, he says. And so the title over the head of Christ, his crime, is that he is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Now what is fascinating is over in Matthew, chapter 27 and verse 44, where this same scene is being described and the mocking of the rulers and everybody, the crowd out there. The thieves, plural, cast the same into his teeth. That both thieves had earlier been repeating the same mockery. Notice we have the one malefactor in verse 39.

You hear it from his mouth. If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us. It is strange that even in their dying breath, men will curse and mock the name of Jesus. But at some point, something happened. Something changed for this one thing.

And I'll tell you what it was. It was grace happened. But grace, you see, is not just unmerited favor. Grace, in some cases, is unmerited ability. The ability to perceive, the ability to see and to understand.

And I want you to realize what's going on here. That the eyes of the soul of this man are being opened. We call that regeneration, don't we?

The work of the Holy Spirit that smartens us up. You remember, we saw it in that prodigal son the other evening. Remember his turning point? He came to himself.

You know, we use that language. He came to. Where he been?

And la, la, la. That's where he'd been. Out of his head. You know, again, we think that we see clearly as a lost man and it's the lost man who's drunk on the spirit of this age. Intoxicated by the spirit of Satan. High on his own pride and his own importance. And all of a sudden, what happened in that young man? He sobers up.

And once he sobers up, it's all so clear. Jonathan Edwards pointed out a text that I think is important. You know, during the Great, the Reformation, the main text that was preached to great effect was the just shall live by faith.

Right? That was the big issue with Roman Catholicism. But in the Great Awakening, you'll find that the theme is that ye must be born again. Because they had so many people in their churches who were there.

They had sat under the sound of sound preaching but had never had a work of grace in their heart. And Edwards pointed to this text. It's back in Deuteronomy chapter 29. Turn back there.

It's worth the trip. Deuteronomy 29. It's one of these sermons of Moses that we find here at the very end of the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 29. Let's start in verse two and just read a couple of verses here. Deuteronomy 29, verse two. Listen to this very carefully. And Moses called unto all Israel and said unto them, Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, unto Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his lands, the great temptations, the trials that is, which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and the great miracles.

I mean think about it. There's probably never lived a generation on earth that saw more miraculous things than this generation that God brought out of Egypt. But look at the next verse. Verse four. Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear unto this day. You've seen, he says, but God has not given you eyes to really see, ears to really hear, a heart that truly perceives.

Do you see what's being said here? And this sort of shaped Edwards' understanding of what happens in conversion, that God, notice who's going to give the heart? God's got to give you a heart. This is regeneration. This is what salvation is.

And this is exactly what we see going on with this thief. All of a sudden he's given a heart to perceive. He gets it.

You know, that's the language we use. Do you get it? Can you see it? And we're not saying, do you literally see it? Notice God said to Israel, you saw all the miracles, but you haven't really ever seen it. And so what salvation involves is this work of God in the heart opening the sinner's eyes that he truly is able to perceive. We talk about in Scripture the hearing of faith. Paul uses that expression a couple of times over in Galatians, the hearing of faith, that God, first of all, there must be a message to hear. We're told that in Romans 10, how are they going to believe if they can't have it heard, right? But when we preach the gospel, does everybody hear it?

Well, everybody in this room is hearing, but there is another kind of hearing, a deeper hearing, a hearing of faith whereby we truly hear. And notice how hearing fits faith. Faith, you understand, faith doesn't do a doggone thing to further your salvation in itself. Faith itself is not the saving thing. It's the object of faith that is the saving thing. And what we're looking at here when we talk about a faith that sees, what saves the soul is a faith that truly sees the object of salvation, the person and work of Jesus Christ. That's who saves. Christ is the Savior, not your faith.

I'm afraid our Armenian friends get that mixed up sometimes. They're looking at the act of believing as if it were some meritorious thing in itself. I've said before, does hearing a symphony make the music prettier? You understand the ear is the receptive organ of the soul, and so it is with the ear of faith. It's how we receive Christ. We sometimes see it described in the New Testament, especially in all those miracles of Christ healing the blind, that is a seeing. You remember He opened the eyes of that man born blind. In one sense He got physical sight, and then through the rest of the chapter He's given spiritual sight. Isn't it amazing how smart that guy got? You know, I'm sure he'd never been to school, never educated, and suddenly he's holding his own toe to toe with the Pharisees. You know, I don't know much, but one thing I know, once I was blind, now I see. Do you want me to say this man's a sinner?

Give me a break. And by the end of the chapter, Jesus says, do you believe on the Son of God? Who is He that I might believe in?

He that speaks to you, I believe. You see that there was a physical opening of the eyes, and now there is a deeper seeing in the soul. And once again, you may look at a masterpiece, a wonderful painting. Does your looking at it improve the painting?

Of course not. It's the way you receive the beauty of the painting. And so you understand why this is sort of explained this way, that that's how faith works.

It's the means by which we receive the Savior. And so we're talking about seeing something, and I'm not talking about seeing spots or seeing visions or things in the sky. I'm talking about this inward seeing.

If you want to see a good example of it, just take a look at this fellow that we're looking at tonight. I want to show you first what he saw. And he saw his own sin. He rebukes the other thief in verse 40, saying, Does not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation, and we indeed justly? He sees his guilt.

You say, well, that should be rather obvious. He's being crucified by the Romans, surely. Have you ever had a prison ministry, y'all? I've been in prison places over my years in preaching. It's hard to find a guilty guy in prison. I mean, honestly. I mean, everybody in there, they've been framed. They've been ranted out by the rat partner. There's a sting.

It was a set up. Nobody's guilty. We ought to turn them loose because you all asked them.

None of them deserve to be there. And that's what's so peculiar about this man. All of a sudden he's confessing. Yes, I'm getting exactly what I got coming to me. This is not an injustice.

I'm getting it. That's an amazing thing. A sinner who sees his sin and confesses his sin. And then secondly, notice the second thing he sees is the innocence of Jesus. Notice he goes on, but this man hath done nothing amiss. You might ask yourself, don't you have to have some proclamation of the gospel in order to believe it?

Romans 10 seems to say that. But where did this guy get a proclamation of the gospel? I think it's going on all around him in the mockery.

You saved others, but you can't save yourself. The King of Israel come down. He's got a plaque over his head telling you who he is. That he may have had no encounter with Christ at all till this moment, but in the events that are happening, I'm just going to switch words, happening all around him, he is getting a glimpse of who Jesus is, who he claims to be. They are preaching the gospel to him in their mockery of the Savior.

Do you see the irony? They have become the preacher in displaying, announcing who Jesus is. And then another thing, remember that after they are crucified, Jesus has remained silent throughout this whole episode. And now he's going to say something. You see his lips begin to move.

You open your ears to hear what comes out. Is he going to curse his attackers? Is he going to say, just wait till I get to the throne and I'll get you guys?

What comes out of his mouth? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I can well imagine this thief has never heard such a response as that in a situation like this. If there was anything to convince him of Christ's innocence, it would be those words. This man is not an evil man. He's not a malefactor. This man has done nothing amiss.

And it just keeps getting more and more amazing. Not only does he see his own sin, he sees the innocence of Christ, but he sees Christ as a king with a kingdom. Let that sink in. He turns to this man on a cross next to him who has by this time been beaten to a bloody pulp. And says, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. He sees a king headed into a kingdom.

Now, pray tell who else saw Jesus as a king with a kingdom at this moment? I mean, go ask the disciples if you can find them about this kingdom. What would they tell you? What would Peter say? What would John say?

They'd say, don't you understand? There's not going to be a kingdom. The king is over there being crucified. We're going to be lucky if we can get out of town alive and we're going to head back north up to Galilee with our tails between our legs begging for our old jobs back that we walked away from.

It's over. Don't you get it? That's their attitude. You want to see a man whose eyes have been opened to see and to perceive. Here you see it. Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And then he sees the way, the way of grace, the way of mercy.

Natural man's religion as we have stated all week long is this quid pro quo thing. I give you something to get something. It's a bargain.

Let's make a deal. That's how a lost man thinks. And you say, well, Jesus, if you'll save me and bring me into your kingdom, I'll serve you all the days of my life. Big deal.

Your life is just a few hours from being over. You know, I'll work, I'll labor. It's hard to do good works when your hands are nailed to the cross, right?

That option is not open for this man. And so what does he do? He throws himself on the mercy of this king. Just remember me. It's like that Syrophoenician woman up there in near Lebanon, who when Jesus said, I didn't come except for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She was a gentile. It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to dogs, the affectionate way Jews referred to the gentiles. And she says, Yea, Lord, but even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table.

Very similar situation. Just remember me. Think on me. But then we might ask this question, OK, if Jesus is a king with a kingdom, why in the world would he want someone like you in it? The Romans don't want you in their kingdom. They're crucifying you to get you out of their kingdom.

If he is this righteous, just king, the king of Israel, why would he want someone like you? And oh, here we see that this savior, as Paul put it, this saying that is worthy of all acceptation, he says. Everybody ought to receive this and accept it. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We've seen that all along, haven't we?

All through our study this week. He came not for the righteous, but for sinners. He doesn't say to this man, well, OK, well, we'll see about that. Let me think about it or I tell you what, I think I'll let you sizzle in purgatory for a little while and see if we can clean you up. Rather, it's today.

Today. You will be with me. In paradise. Now, paradise, I mean, we can spend the rest of the day talking about where it is and what it is and all that. Well, it's the good place.

Let's just put it there. Sometimes called Abraham's bosom. It's where the righteous dead go.

OK, it's where Jesus was going to paradise. And the amazing thing is he says to this man, you're going to be there with me. You're coming with me.

And that what he told his disciples there in John 14, I'm going away. Prepare a place for you. My father's house or many mansions, many chambers, I go to prepare one for you. And if I go away, I come again to receive you unto myself that where I am there, you may be also.

I want you with me. We have this idea that, you know, just a mansion on the hilltop. Well, I don't want a mansion on the hilltop or a little cabin in the back 40 and not too close to Jesus.

You know, that would be a little uncomfortable. My friend, this is not describing you and your little cabin out there. Detached is talking about you living with Christ in his father's house. I'm going to prepare a chamber, a place for you in my father's house.

Why in the world would he want to be with me? That's the amazing thing about this grace that he saves us to be with us, to tabernacle with us and among us. That's the whole point of salvation. We see that promise all the way. The aim, the goal is that God is going to walk among his people, live in them, among them and tabernacle with them. It's an astounding thought that he saved me to be with him forever and ever.

Not for just three days till we, like most companies, start to stink. But forever and ever in his father's house. If ever there was a text that proves to us salvation by grace, this is it. By the way, that's why those who believe in salvation by works hate it so much. I've got a Church of Christ guy in my neighborhood and every now and then I run into him and oh my, he hates for me to bring this text up. Of course, he's got his ways of trying to worm around it, but all of a sudden if you think you've got to be baptized, you think you've got to do some good works, you've got to do all this stuff, this text nails you. Here's a guy who's done nothing all his life to earn any favor with God. And in his dying breath, he is turning to the Lord and the Lord has received him wholly on the basis of his grace and mercy.

He doesn't deserve it, but neither do you, neither do I. A real test of whether we truly believe in salvation by grace is whether we believe in what we call deathbed conversions. Now, I want to be very sober here. I remind you of that comment Matthew Henry makes in his commentary on this text. He talks about the two thieves and he says, one was saved that none might despair, but only one that none might presume.

Let that sink in. You see what he's saying? I know what some of you out there saying, oh, I'll just then just live a life of sin and on my deathbed, I'll turn to Christ and go to heaven. Oh, my friend, it doesn't work like that. My experience, Brother Greg, I think you would back me up here.

Most men die like they live. And the very notion that somehow salvation is at your disposal, that you can snap your fingers and it happened whenever you want, is denying the whole reality of what's going on here. Here is sovereign grace coming at God's appointed time. And so don't ever presume that somehow it's today. Today is today.

You know, Paul uses that language. Right now is the day of grace. There's a door open. Head for it. But on the other hand, don't despair. As long as one has breath, there's hope. And honestly, I don't presume to know what goes on on the deathbed. There could well be that God is doing a work in the heart of the man lying there that I'm completely ignorant of. So I never want to get so jaded to believe that this is impossible, because what I'm betraying then is that you've got to have a little bit of good in you to go to heaven. You know, you can be a sinner, but you can't be this big a sinner. And what this is teaching us now, here's a man who was a sinner right up to his dying breath that Christ saves and takes to glory. Praise him. Praise God. This riles the self-righteous man. But my friend, this is music to the sinner's ears. That majestic sweetness sits enthroned upon the Savior's brow. His head with radiant glory shine his lips with grace or flow.

He is a gracious savior who loves to bestow grace on the unworthy, on the undeserving sinner. That's why he came. Well, let me wrap this up by pointing you to an Old Testament incident in Numbers 21, where we see Israel camping in the midst of poisonous snakes. And I've had a little experience with poisonous snakes lately up in our cabin.

I think I'm on number 13 as far as rattlesnakes I've killed now. My oldest daughter emailed me and said, aren't they endangered? And I said, well, yeah, they are if I see them.

They sure are. If I see them, they're dead. And I don't like them. Let me tell you, I don't like to have to deal with them. Killed four of them last summer, two of them down in the cellar of our cabin. I don't like going to bed at night thinking about rattlesnakes down below. I don't like snakes.

And that's what we find here. Israel camping amidst a bunch of poisonous snakes and they're getting bitten. And apparently they didn't have any animal around.

People are dying, keeling over left and right. And they come to Moses. Moses, you've got to do something. Moses cries to the Lord and the Lord says, I tell you what, make a brass serpent and put it on a pole in the midst of the camp. And when anyone is bitten, have him go look at the serpent on the pole and he'll be healed.

And lo and behold, they make this brass snake, put it on a pole, and when people are bitten, they look and they live. Now, if we're just reading through the Bible and hit that, we say, well, you know, that's an interesting story to sort of scratch our head. I wonder what's going on here until we get to John chapter 3. Now, you know John 3 16, right? Most everybody knows that verse. But back up two verses. Jesus prefaces John 3 16 with John 3 14 and 15 where Jesus says, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.

Now, you know what he's talking about. As Moses lifted up that brass snake in the wilderness. Even so, just like that. The son of man must be lifted up. That whosoever believes on him. Shall have eternal life. Notice how seeing in the type is now replaced with believing, because you see, believing is just another kind of seeing.

It's the seeing of the soul, the seeing of the heart, the seeing of the understanding. You see what Christ is saying? Just like that snake was put on a pole. I'm going to have to be lifted up. That verb there, hoopsoo, it's an interesting verb used three times in the Gospel of John. And every time it's referencing the cross. I'm going to be lifted up.

Sounds like a good thing. I'm saying, you know, do you want to be lifted up or put down? I'd rather be lifted up. But this clearly has a double meaning to it. Because the people, when they hear Jesus say the son of man, the Messiah is going to have to be lifted up. They say, wait a minute, we thought the Messiah is going to live forever.

And John puts a little footnote later on in his Gospel to make sure you and I little slow, the slow ones in the glass that we catch up on what's going on. And this he was speaking of the manner of his death, the way he's going to die. And he's going to die a curse. The serpent. Cursed is everyone that hangs on a cross or on a tree.

That wasn't what the law said. And Paul quotes that in Galatians and said, you know what that means? Christ was made a curse for us. So that the blessing of Abraham could fall and flow unto us.

He took the curse so that we might receive the blessing. And how did they get it? They looked. You remember Spurgeon's conversion? Remember his story as a teenage boy out going to church one morning, snowstorm decided to duck into a primitive Methodist church. And he got there and the fellow that was scheduled to preach didn't make it because of the snowstorm and just one of the old men got up there and his Spurgeon said could hardly string two or three words together and took that text out of Isaiah, look unto me all the ends of the earth and be ye saved. And that just rather unlearned, common old man began to preach that text and said, here it says, look, you don't have to be educated to look. All you got to do is look.

Anybody can look. He got towards the end and Spurgeon said he shouted as only a primitive Methodist could shout and then turned and looked right at Spurgeon and said, young man, you look miserable and miserable you are and miserable you will remain until you look to Jesus Christ. And Spurgeon said it was just like the light turned on.

I got it. He said, I looked so hard that I thought I was going to look my eyes out. Look to Jesus. And that was his conversion. You see how simple, look and be ye saved. John Newton, the old slave ship captain that was converted, we know him from his ministry in England but also from his poems and hymns.

May I close with quoting you one. I saw one hanging on a tree in agony and blood. He fixed his languid eyes on me as near his cross I stood.

Sure never till my latest breath can I forget that look. He seemed to charge me with his death though not a word he spoke. My conscience felt and owned the guilt.

It plunged me into despair. I saw my sin his blood had shed and helped to nail him there. Alas I knew not what I did but all my tears were vain. Where could this guilty soul be hid for I the Lord have slain.

A second look he gave which said, I freely all forgive. This blood is for thy ransom paid. I die that thou might live. Thus while his death my sin displays in all its blackest hue. Such is the mystery of grace. It seals my pardon too. With pleasing grief and mournful joy my conscience now is filled.

That I should such a life destroy yet live by him I killed. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see. Oh if you're outside of Christ tonight look look unto Jesus.

You say well how do I look away from yourself get your eyes off of you get your eyes turned from within without. Where do I find him where do I see him he reigns in heaven at the right hand of God. There's where you must go there's where you must flee. How am I going to get there. Only one way I know is prayer. Crying out. Be merciful to a sinner like me cast yourself on the mercy of God. See it doesn't matter how well you look how long you look how hard you look.

It's to whom you look. Let's pray. Father thank you for Jesus for him coming to save sinners transforming them from rebels into servants. From those who defy you into those who love you. Doing that miracle of grace in the heart of man. Do it again father we're so dependent on it we think if we can just preach better and better illustrations but use better words that somehow that's going to do the trick and father we forget what we find back there in Deuteronomy the Lord. You've got to give him a heart.

A heart to see and hear and to perceive. Lord do it. Do it for Jesus sake. May you save his people. And may you do it. That we might see it and glorify your name. Do it again father in Jesus name I pray. Amen.