Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

Welcome to the second week of our series called Death By Love. This series is epic. It is seven weeks long. In this series, we are exploring the seven statements that Jesus made while He was on the cross. The common thread through all these statements is love. When Jesus died, it really was a death by love.

Today we’re going to dig into the second thing that Jesus said from the cross. And it is a powerhouse. The implications of this one statement are so far-reaching that it’s tough to wrap your head around it. It is one of the most audacious, ridiculous, outlandish, and illogical statements of love that has ever been heard. And it has HUGE implications for us. If you understand the power of this one statement, you’ll never be the same. And that’s what I’m praying for us today. That we’ll never be the same. We’ll be in Luke 23 today. Let’s pray for God to rock our world this morning.

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

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

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

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43, NIV)

The first response of repentance because of the cross came from a criminal. As the entire crucifixion drama unfolded, the first one to see it correctly was a thief. A murderer. No one else…not even Jesus’ own disciples…understood what was happening.

But somehow, this condemned criminal was able to see that Jesus’ death would usher in His Kingdom…and he desperately wanted to be part of it.

And Jesus simply responded, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”

Jesus didn’t preach to Him. He didn’t rail against the sins that led this criminal to be executed. He didn’t remind this man how much he had failed. He didn’t tell him how much he had angered God or how disappointed God was in him.

Jesus didn’t do any of that. That’s usually what modern-day Christians do, but that is not what Christ did. Because of this man’s simple faith, Jesus said, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”

But to get the full scope of this encounter, we need to pull back a little and look at the entire scene around the cross.

Go back to verse 32. “Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the 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 people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” (Luke 23:32-37, NIV)

There were a lot of people present at the crucifixion, and Luke tells us about some of their reactions.

The soldiers and the religious mocked Jesus. But we need to know why they mocked Him.

The soldiers mocked Jesus from a position of power.

Roman soldiers were well-trained, well-equipped, and well-armed. The Roman army was the envy of every other fighting force in the known world. Their power was unrivaled. You simply did not mess with a Roman soldier. They could give you the mother of all beat downs. Did you see the YouTube video this week about the kid who took care of a bully? He powerslammed him. That’s what a Roman solider would do to you.

The toughness and the strength of these soldiers led them to believe that they were completely self-sufficient. They didn’t need anybody or anything. Which is why they mocked Jesus. They didn’t need anybody to die for them.

I see that view is everywhere I look today. “I don’t need anybody. I’m self-sufficient. I can take care of myself.” If that’s true, guess what you don’t need? You don’t need a Savior.

I heard this all the time growing up. I grew up in the country, and one of the things that is highly valued by a lot of the rural people is being tough. Strong. Self-sufficient. They would walk around singing Hank Williams Jr. “Country boy can survive.” They don’t need anybody. They can do it on their own.

Now, I love the work ethic I learned as a kid. I still carry it with me today. I love it when people are determined to work hard to provide for themselves and their families. But if you think you don’t need anybody at all, you are thinking like a three-year-old.

My three-year-old son is all about independence right now. He doesn’t want help doing anything. I can’t tell you how many times a day we hear the same phrase. “I can do it all by myself.”

You want to know the truth? He may think he can do it all by himself, but a lot of times he can’t. He likes to think that he is independent, but he’s not. He likes to think he’s the biggest duck in the puddle, but he needs us bigger ducks more than he thinks he does.

Some of us never outgrow a three-year-old way of thinking. “I can do it all by myself. I don’t need anybody.”

If that’s true, then you don’t need Jesus. You don’t need a Savior. That’s why the soldiers rejected Jesus. And it’s the same reason a lot of people today reject Jesus. They reject Him because they don’t think they need a Savior.

Luke also tells us that the religious leaders were at the crucifixion. And when they saw Jesus on the cross, they sneered.

The religious leaders mocked Jesus from a position of arrogance. The soldiers thought, “I don’t need to be saved.” The religious people thought, “I can save myself. My religion will save me.”

Jesus had spent years proclaiming the gospel, and these religious people had wholeheartedly rejected it. Who was He to tell them what’s what?

The soldiers rejected Jesus the Savior. The religious leaders rejected Jesus the Lord. And everywhere you look today, you see highly religious people who completely reject Jesus as their Lord.

This is why you can listen to a ton of preachers and never once hear about Jesus. You will hear a boatload of religion, but nothing about Jesus.

It’s why so many churches have unwritten codes of conduct. “This is how you will dress. This is how you will talk. This is the music you will like. These are the books you will read. And these are the people that you will never associate with ever again.”

Jesus never did that. In fact, Jesus did the exact opposite of that. Jesus didn’t honor many religious traditions. He went to the wrong places. He said the wrong things. He spent time with the wrong people.

There are a lot of churches today where the pastor would be fired if he acted like Jesus. In fact, I know pastors that have been fired because they acted like Jesus.

They were fired because they started bringing in “the wrong people.” Jesus told a thief and a murderer, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” You know what that means? It means that the wrong people are the exact right people.

A friend told me about a young pastor that he knew. This guy was working in an inner-city area. He was specifically reaching out to the young people in that area, trying to get to them before the gangs and the drugs and the violence did. And he was doing it. It was happening. Kids were coming. They were learning. They were repenting.

One night he was teaching a group of these kids about what it means to follow Jesus. He was teaching them about the cost of being a disciple. And one of the kids blurted out an expletive. He said, “#%$*, it’s hard to be a disciple.”

That young pastor was fired. The leaders of that church were so upset that this kid would use that kind of language in their church that they fired the pastor who was reaching him.

Never mind that this kid was learning about Jesus. Never mind that he was finally beginning to understand the gospel. Never mind that this could make an eternal difference for this kid. He said the wrong word in their church. We can’t have that.

That’s religion. That’s what religion produces. Self-righteous, arrogant jerks.

And that’s why the religious leaders sneered at Jesus. If they were to follow Him, it would mean that they would have to love the wrong kind of people. They would have to give up many of their sacred traditions. They would lose their influence because Jesus would become more important than they were. Well, they couldn’t have that now, could they? It was a lot easier to kill Him. And kill Him they did.

The soldiers mocked Jesus from a position of power. The religious leaders mocked Jesus from a position of arrogance. But the criminal repented to Jesus from a posture of brokenness.

There was no position of power. There was no position of arrogance. There was simply the posture of brokenness.

The criminal simply looked at Jesus and said, “I’m broken.”

And Jesus replied, “That’s right where I need you to be.”

Until you are broken, Jesus can’t do anything with you and He can’t do anything for you.

This guy was a criminal. He was obviously guilty. He even admitted it himself. And he was receiving the punishment that he deserved when he was crucified.

He would never go to church. He would never study the Bible. He would never do all of the things that a lot of Christians believe a person should do to get in good with God.

He didn’t come to Jesus with any kind of impressive spiritual résumé. He simply came to Jesus and cried, “Help me! Jesus, I’m broken. Please help me!”

And that’s when Jesus said, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”

The only thing the criminal had to offer was his complete brokenness. But our complete brokenness is all that Jesus wants.

When are we going to get off our high horse and stop believing that we actually have something to offer Jesus? You don’t have anything He needs. But you do have something He wants. He wants your brokenness.

So the question is…are you broken?

In 2 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul talks about some kind of physical illness or problem that he had. We don’t know what it was. He simply called it “a thorn in the flesh.” Here’s what he said about this illness.

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10, NIV)

Paul pleaded with God three separate times to heal him, and God refused every time. And then God said this. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

And Paul tells us what that means. “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

So I go back to my original question: are you broken? Brokenness is exactly what God desires for us because it’s the only way He can empower us. It’s the only way He can work in us and it’s the only way He can work through us. But the tragedy is that the church has almost completely lost its sense of brokenness.

For example, pastors aren’t allowed to be broken. We’ve got to live these spit-shined lives that border on perfection. We’re told that, “People don’t want to hear about your flaws and your failures. They need an example to live up to. You’ve got to be their example, so you’ve got to get it right. All the time. No exceptions.”

In the church, leaders always have to have it all together. They always have to have the answers, and they’d better be the right answers. And if that leader shows a flaw, vote them out. Get rid of them.

In a lot of churches, members are not allowed to be broken. They’re not allowed to have real problems. And if they do, you’d better not bring them here. That would really mess up the nice, shiny image of our church. Deal with your problems at home. But when you get to church, paste on a smile. And when someone says, “How are you doing?”…lie.

Can I point out something here? When Jesus was on the cross, the religious leaders weren’t welcomed into paradise. The soldiers weren’t welcomed into paradise. The thief was welcomed into paradise. The murderer was welcomed into paradise. The repentant, broken one was welcomed into paradise.

We want to follow Christ. We want to be welcomed into paradise. But we don’t want to be broken. It doesn’t work that way.

I’m not sure who said this first, but it’s true. “Before God can use a man greatly, He must first break him deeply.”

I am living, breathing proof of this truth. Over the past couple of years, I have been completely broken. Some of you aren’t going to like the fact that I’m sharing this openly. I don’t care. If you don’t want a broken pastor, fire me. Go hire someone who isn’t broken. Now, if he’s not broken, he won’t be able to do anything for the Kingdom of God. But go hire him anyway.

For the rest of us who accept this gospel truth of brokenness, I’m here today to tell you that I’ve been broken. I have been legitimately broken, probably for the first time in my life.

Ministry is hard. Leading a church is hard. It’s way harder than I could have ever imagined. When I came to ACC, I had held just about every ministry in the church that exists today. If you can name the ministry, I’ve either led it or been involved in it. So when I came to ACC, I felt like I was primed and ready to go. I honestly thought I knew what I was doing because I had done it all.

I was wrong.

I had never been a Senior Pastor before. And I had no idea how this position would wreck me.

I have had more dreams dashed in this ministry than at any other point in my life. I have had more disappointments and heartaches than ever before. I’ve had more stress than at any other point in my life. To the point where it’s even started to affect my health.

I’ve walked around for weeks on end with a knot in the pit of my stomach. I’ve been harsh with my wife and my kids because of the pressure of this ministry.

I struggle with enormous feelings of inadequacy. I get constant criticism from people who are supposed to be on the same team as me.

A lot of times, the results I expected in my ministry are not the results that I saw. I have felt stuck. I have felt hopeless. I have been sick. I have been exhausted. I have been depressed. I have sought the help of doctors. I’ve sought the help of a counselor.

I have been broken.

And here’s what I’ve found out…I’m not alone. Last week I heard one of the most well-known pastors in the country say that he went into a depression in 2007 and it lasted until January of this year.

Another very famous pastor was nearly hospitalized a few years ago because of stress and exhaustion.

It’s so common in this position. More common than I ever dreamed. But the problem is that most pastors feel like they can never share their brokenness. There are very few people in this room who know what I have gone through because I felt like I had to play that game. I’m not playing anymore.

I’m not playing a religious game anymore. Instead, I’m embracing my brokenness because when I am weak, then I am strong.

And once I got to that point of total, complete surrender, God started to blow my mind. Once I got to the point of, “God, I’m done,” He responded by saying, “Good. Now I can finally get to work.”

I’m here today to tell you that there is something happening. There is something happening in our church. There is something happening inside me. I can’t describe it. I can’t put it into words. But there is something going on here. There is a fresh wind blowing here. We are on the cusp of something.

And personally, I’m healing. God has broken me. But the only reason God breaks us is so He can remake us.

When God breaks us, it isn’t because He is sadistic. He doesn’t enjoy seeing us suffer. He breaks us because, if He doesn’t, we will experience far greater pain down the line. He breaks us so he can remake us…so He can heal us His way.

In his book called Soulprint, Mark Batterson wrote, “We try so hard to fix our own brokenness, but there are problems beyond our ability to solve, hurts beyond our ability to heal, and memories beyond our ability to forget. What do we do with those? How do we get out of the prison of past pain? How do we overcome the regrets that haunt us? The only way out is through allowing God to reconstruct our minds, our hearts, and our spirits. And that is God’s specialty….[But] God cannot or will not put our lives back together until they have fallen apart.”

David wrote Psalm 51 after he committed adultery, and then murder to cover it up. He was absolutely broken over his sin. But out of that brokenness, he wrote one of his most amazing Psalms.

In Psalm 51:17, David reminds us that, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17, ESV)

God doesn’t hate you because you are broken. In fact, just the opposite is true. He embraces your brokenness. When you have a broken heart and a broken spirit before God, you allow His power to be turned loose in your life. You allow Him to begin His redemptive work in your life.

Mark Batterson wrote, “Instead of trying to fix your brokenness, maybe you need to embrace it. Your brokenness may be a blessing in disguise. Like a mother who is drawn to her crying baby, God is drawn to human brokenness. And if you allow Him to, He will put you back together in ways that will one day cause you to celebrate the brokenness as a gift from God.”

Are you broken? I am. And I’m thankful for it. Not that long ago, I couldn’t have said that. I was broken. But I wasn’t thankful.

But today, I’m seeing how God is using my brokenness. He’s using it today. Someone in this room is so hyper-offended…they are aghast that their pastor would admit this stuff. But you know what? Someone else is finally going to admit their own brokenness for the first time today. And they’re going to come and we’re going to pray for them. And the season of healing is going to begin in their lives, just like it has in mine.

The soldiers weren’t broken. The religious leaders weren’t broken. And it’s no coincidence that they weren’t welcomed into paradise.

The criminal was completely broken. And he was the one that Jesus saved.

In His life, Jesus loved broken people. In His death, He loved broken people. And through that death and His resurrection, He saves broken people. In fact, broken people are the only ones that can be saved.

If you’re not broken, you won’t see a need for a Savior. If you’re not broken, you won’t submit to the Lord.

In Genesis 32, we see an incredible scene where Jacob wrestles with a man. That man turned out to be the presence of God. In the course of that wrestling match, God wrenched Jacob’s hip.

Here’s what the Bible says after they wrestled all night long. “So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.” (Genesis 32:30-31, NIV)

Dane Gressett said, “God forced [Jacob] to face his character issues. He carried a limp after that, as a reminder of the Lord’s severe mercies. But he also carried more of the favor of God.

God was not only birthing a nation through the man, He was making the man a demonstration of the process He uses to make His servants fruitful. Fruitfulness usually must take place inwardly before God risks doing much with us outwardly. And fruitfulness, among other things, is a product of brokenness.

I don’t really trust a man who doesn’t have a limp somewhere. If you haven’t been through some storms, failures, and persecutions, I wonder if anyone really knows what you’re made of. If there’s not brokenness, there’s very little room for God’s pure power to be understood and demonstrated.”

Are you walking with a limp? Do you live with a constant reminder of how God has broken you?

I think Dane Gressett is right on point here. If someone doesn’t walk with a limp, I seriously question whether they have truly met God. When Jacob truly met God, he limped away.

When we truly encounter Jesus, it is a beautiful and a devastating experience. It is an experience that will break us. Some of you are finally owning up to that brokenness for the first time today.

You’re tired of acting like you have it all together when you don’t. You’re tired of the game. You can’t live this charade anymore.

You had a plan. And it’s been dashed to bits. You don’t know how you got where you are, but this is not where you planned to be.

You’ve got a dream, but it never gets any traction. It’s going nowhere. And even though it’s your dream, you’re becoming convinced that God doesn’t agree. He must be leading you somewhere else.

Can I tell you something? You have a pastor who understands. I get it.

We serve a God who will lovingly, but firmly, break us. He has to. There is no other way for Him to truly work in our lives. He has to break us.

The powerful didn’t get into paradise. The arrogant didn’t get into paradise. The one who was broken was welcomed by Jesus into paradise.

The paradox is that because Jesus was broken, our brokenness is healed.

Listen to what the prophet Isaiah said about the cross of Christ. “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5, NIV)

He took up our pain and our suffering. He bore our brokenness in His body. He was pierced, completely crushed, for our sin. He was punished so we would have peace. By his wounds we are healed.

That is the greatest paradox of Scripture. It is the most wonderful mystery of God. That somehow…in some way…Jesus became our sin. He took our punishment. He claimed our brokenness. And since He was broken for us, we can be healed.

I don’t know what your brokenness is. I don’t know what your hurt or pain is. I don’t know the disappointments and burdens that you are carrying with you. But this is what I do know.

The one who was broken is the one who was welcomed into paradise.

Are you broken?

Mike Edmisten

Tags: brokenness, cross, Death By Love, healing, Jesus, thief on the cross