Transcript
In your Bibles, will you turn with me to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, Luke chapter 23? Luke chapter 23, and we want to begin reading at verse 39 of Luke 23, Luke 23, beginning to read at verse 39:
Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, ‘If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.’
But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.’
Then he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’
And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.’
Way back in 1960, a very unusual incident took place. Roger Daub, of Center, North Dakota, was working on top of a 130-foot-high surge tower at the Garrison Dam in Riverdale, North Dakota. Now, the Garrison Dam is the largest earth-filled dam in the world. As he was working on top of the surge tower, a loose cable struck him in the back, and it knocked him off the tower, and he was headed toward certain death on the concrete 130 feet below.
Then, suddenly, and almost unbelievably, a man whom he thought he knew as Floyd Hartman grabbed him by his legs, and Floyd put his legs around the falling figure of Roger Daub. Now, Roger was not wearing his safety belt, but Floyd was, and because of that he was able to save his life. However, Roger Daub was never able to appropriately thank this man named Floyd, because that just happened to be Floyd’s first and only day on the job. For the next three decades Roger Daub remembered this man, and he wished that he could thank him.
And finally, in 1993, Roger Daub wrote a letter to Ann Landers, and she published the letter. And the letter contained the story, and it ended with this appeal: “If any of you know where Floyd is, please let me know.” Well, no sooner had the column by Ann Landers been published in the Birmingham, Alabama, Post-Herald, than Floyd was located. By this time he was 74 years old. He was a member of the Warrior, Alabama, Senior Citizen Center, and he was thrilled and delighted to be able to talk by telephone with the man whose life he had saved 33 years before, and who had never forgotten him.
And, needless to say, Roger Daub was pretty thrilled as well. He said, “He saved my life. I just can’t believe I found him. There’s nobody like him who would have done what he did.” I think you will agree with me that that is a touching story, but it is also a story that brings to the surface one of the deepest-felt needs of the human heart, the need to be remembered, the need to be remembered.
Now, I know that some of you in my audience this morning are young married couples, and you probably have not sat down very frequently to ask yourself the question, “Who will remember me after I’m gone?” because you’re so busy trying to remember all the things that will keep your family going that you really haven’t had time to do this. But I strongly suspect that as the years go by, as you get more and more in the direction of the age of your speaker this morning, then more than once you will probably ask yourself the question, “If I were to die, besides my immediate family, besides my immediate family, who would really and truly remember me?”
And since that is a very important question, I’d like to talk to you about it for a few minutes this morning under the following topic. The topic is, “Be Impossible to Forget.” And, of course, that topic is also the title of my message to you today: Be Impossible to Forget.
Now, I think most of you know that I spent 27 years teaching at Dallas Theological Seminary, and it is no exaggeration to say that literally hundreds of students came in and out of my classes. And when I had students in classes, I went out of my way to try to remember their names, so that when I called on them I didn’t have to say, “Mr. X over there,” or, “that guy sitting back there.” I could always call them by name.
And, you know, I remember a few times, at least, that I went over to the Rodriguez’s house, and I think one or the other of the Rodriguez boys helped me by cutting pictures out of the student directory, pasting them on sheets of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper, with the pictures above the names, and then I would study these pages and try to memorize the names with the faces. And eventually I got everybody in each of my classes, and the students would sometimes say, “How do you do it?” And I would always say, “I work at it. I work at it.”
Now, I’ve been gone from the seminary for nine years, and I’m embarrassed to say this, but I’m afraid this is true: if you asked me to drop a list of 35 students, mind you, only 35 students, whose names and faces I can remember together, I would have a very hard time doing that. And isn’t it true, folks, that one of our failings as human beings is that we forget other human beings? All of us have the capacity to forget other people.
And yet, here’s a surprising thing. There is a man who lived 1,900 years ago, whose name we do not even know, who was executed like a common criminal, and he is one of the most widely remembered people anywhere in the world. And, of course, that man appears in the passage of Scripture that we read together just a few moments ago. And, of course, he is one of the criminals who was crucified with Jesus Christ. And Matthew and Mark call these criminals robbers. We might call them thieves.
And, you know what? If I were to go to India and walk into a Christian meeting, and I were to say to the people in this meeting, “How many of you remember the thief on the cross?” a lot of them would remember him. Here is a common criminal, who died a criminal’s death, who is remembered from one corner of the globe to another. Is that remarkable, or what? That’s remarkable.
But, of course, there was another criminal who was also crucified on the other side of Jesus Christ, and we remember him too, only we remember him in an entirely different way, because this criminal reflects to us the attitude of the unsaved world, which was at that very moment crucifying the Son of God. And as Jesus hung on the cross, dying for the sins of men, and even dying for the sins of this man who was hanging next to Him, this criminal said to Jesus, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.”
And obviously we have here a man who knew something about the person who was on the center cross. He at least knew that there were people who claimed and believed that this man who was being crucified next to him was God’s Christ, God’s Savior, God’s King. But he didn’t believe it, and that was his first tragedy. He didn’t believe in the person who was hanging next to him. But there was another tragedy as well. Here was this thief, mind you, who was right at death’s doorway. I mean, he was dying. And is he thinking about the next world? Is he thinking about the life to come? No, he’s not.
And just on the outside chance that Jesus might perform one of His famous miracles, what he really wants is for Jesus to save Himself and us from death. Two great tragedies: unbelief and preoccupation with the present life. Do I need to tell you that that is also what is wrong with a lot of the people that you know who are not saved, relatives of yours, good friends of yours, fellow workers of yours? They haven’t believed in Jesus as the Christ, not in the way that the Bible speaks of that.
Or maybe they believe that Jesus lived and died on the cross. Maybe they even believe that Jesus died for their sins. But they have never believed in Him as the One who gives them the absolutely free gift of everlasting life. And furthermore, and tragically, even though every single day brings them closer and closer to the grave, they are preoccupied with the life that they are now living, and they would like to live as long as possible. This first thief reflects the world in which we live.
Many years ago, in the city of Bodø, Norway, which is above the Arctic Circle, one day a young man, dressed in a sweater and overalls and rubber boots, walked on the lot of a car dealer, and he said to the salesman, “Do you have any cars on hand?” And the salesman said, “Why, sure we do.” And then the young man in the rubber boots said, “Well, I’ll take 16 of them, if I like the model.”
And the salesman said, “I don’t have time for jokes. Buzz off.” So the young man buzzed off, right across the street to another car dealer, a competitor, and he walked on the lot, and he made the same statement. But this time he was greeted seriously and treated with courtesy, and guess what? He bought 16 cars for cash, 500,000 Norwegian kroner, which at that particular time was about equivalent to $77,000 in American money.
You see, he was a member of a 16-man crew on a Norwegian fishing trawler, and that particular fishing season they had brought in an enormous number of herring, and each of the members of the crew had received 70,000 Norwegian kroner, and they had all decided to buy cars. And they had decided to buy the cars together in order to take advantage of the best possible discount. And that car salesman missed the best sale of his life because he didn’t believe the young man who came onto his lot.
And I suppose it would be bad enough if your friends and relatives who are not saved were only missing the biggest sale that they could ever make in their life. But that’s not what they’re missing by not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ for the free gift of everlasting life. They are missing eternal salvation. They are missing the opportunity to live forever with God in His eternal kingdom. They are missing it, not because they’re bad people. Understand that. We’re all sinners. They are missing it because they have never believed in Jesus Christ and trusted Him to save them.
And I’m going to tell you something. As the next seven days unfold, as we run through the rest of the Christmas season, you’re going to have friends and relatives who are opening gifts, gifts that are going to be very temporary, very transient, very impermanent. And the question is, have they ever heard you tell them anything at all about the most wonderful gift of all? Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he that believes in Me has everlasting life.” That’s the best gift of all. And this Christmas season, will people hear about it from you, or will you keep silent?
And, you know what? When the first thief mocked Jesus Christ, the second thief couldn’t keep silent. I mean, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Remember, this man is nailed to a cross too. His body is wracked with pain as well. And when he hears the other thief mock Jesus, he has to speak up. And he turns to that thief and he says to him, “Don’t you even fear God, seeing that you are in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, because we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this Man has done nothing wrong.”
I want to suggest to you that that came as a great big shock to the first thief. You know why? According to the Gospel of Matthew, originally both of the thieves were mocking Jesus, the one on His left hand as well as the one on His right hand. And suddenly this one thief’s attitude toward Jesus Christ has changed dramatically. His opinion of the One hanging on the center cross has made a 180-degree turn, and he is no longer a mocker of Jesus Christ. He has become a defender of the Savior who was dying for him.
And that leads me to ask the question, when was the last time you were in a group where people were saying bad things about Jesus, maybe taking His name in vain, maybe making jokes about Jesus Christ? When was the last time you were in a group like that, and you spoke up? You spoke up to defend the honor and dignity of the Son of God?
Frederick the Great was king of Prussia, and was well known as a patron of the arts and of philosophers, but he had a very successful general by the name of von Zieten, who was a Christian. And on one occasion, in a social gathering, Frederick the Great of Prussia was making crude jokes about Jesus Christ, and every time he cracked a joke about Jesus, the people in his presence laughed and guffawed as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
And finally General von Zieten stood up, and General von Zieten said, “Sire,” that was the way they addressed kings in those days, “Sire, you know that I’ve never been afraid of death. I have fought and won 38 battles for you, and now I’m an old man, and I’m about to go into the presence of One who is even greater than you, the mighty God who saved me from my sins, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you are blaspheming. Sire, I salute you as an old man who loves his Savior on the edge of eternity.”
The story is that when Frederick the Great responded to that, his voice was trembling. Frederick the Great replied, “General von Zieten, I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon.” Now, folks, I’m not going to guarantee this morning that if you stand up for Jesus Christ where His name is being muddied and pulled down, I’m not going to guarantee to you that people are going to say, “I beg your pardon.” I can’t guarantee that. Sometimes they will. But I’m going to tell you this: if that’s what you do, then you are behaving like the thief on the cross, and you are making yourself impossible, impossible to forget.
Did you notice that after he had spoken these words of rebuke to the thief who was next to him, that the thief then turns to Jesus Christ with one of the most beautiful prayers of the Bible, and he says, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom”? Now, you know, a lot of people have misunderstood these words, and they have thought that the thief on the cross was asking the Lord Jesus Christ to save him, or to take him into the kingdom. But that’s not what the thief was doing. That’s not what he said.
As a matter of fact, did you know this, that nobody in the New Testament had ever asked Jesus to save them? Did you know that? You know why? Because we’re not saved by asking Jesus to save us. We’re saved by believing that He keeps His promise, and that He does save us when we trust Him to do that. Now, I know that some of you probably prayed prayers when you got saved, and I admit I did too, and maybe some of you even put words like, “Lord, come into my heart,” into your prayer.
I want to tell you something. Either you nor I was saved by our prayer. Neither you nor I was saved by inviting Jesus into our heart. We were saved by faith. We were saved by believing in Him, by trusting Him for the free gift of everlasting life. And you don’t need to pray. You don’t need to ask. All you need to do is believe. The Bible says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
So this man wasn’t asking Jesus to save him. But what was he asking? Now, suppose that I have a real good friend that I think has tremendous athletic potential. He’s a great football player, and I’m convinced that someday he’ll be a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. Do they need one, or what? Or maybe he’s going to play for one of the other teams, and I know that he’s going to be interviewed by television reporters, that he’s going to appear on TV, that he’s going to be written up in the magazines.
And you know what I might say to him? “When you get big, remember me. Don’t forget about me. Give me a little bit of your time. Give me a little bit of your attention. Let me stand, if it’s only for a minute, in some of the glory that you have.” That’s what this thief was saying. You know, this thief knew what he had just done. He had defended Jesus Christ, and he turns right away to Jesus and says, “Please remember that. Please remember me when You come in Your glorious kingdom.”
And Jesus’ answer to him is beautiful beyond words. Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” You know, a lot of people misunderstand that too, and they think that Jesus said, “Today you and I will be in Paradise.” That’s not what He said. He didn’t say, “Today you and I will be in Paradise,” although that was true. He said, “Today you shall be with Me, with Me, in Paradise.”
Remember the story that Jesus told about the beggar named Lazarus, who sat all those years outside the gate of the rich man and wished he could eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, and he had sores all over his body, and the dogs came and licked those sores, and that was the only comfort that he had, and he died, and he woke up in the Paradise section of the place we call Hades. And the next thing we see, guess who he is right next to, guess who he is with? Lazarus was with Abraham, the greatest of all the patriarchs of the Old Testament.
But Jesus is saying, look, you want Me to remember you, you want Me to give you a little bit of My time and attention? Count on it. It starts today. When you wake up in Paradise, I’ll be right there by your side. You will be in My presence. You will be in My company. You will be in My fellowship, this very, very day.
Think of it, folks. The disciples had run away from Him. The women who followed Him from Galilee were standing afar off. And everybody who was close to the cross was mocking Jesus, the leaders, the soldiers, the other thief, except this man. And this man stood up for Jesus when Jesus was dying alone on the cross. You think he’s going to be forgotten? No way. No way. By his faithfulness to Jesus Christ, he became impossible to forget.
And the question is, will Jesus remember you that way, and will He remember me? Years ago there was a woman by the name of Jane Addams. She was a well-known social worker, and she had also founded a place that was known as Hull House. Jane Addams tells this story on herself. She said she was on a train one time, and she met an old friend, but she simply could not remember her friend’s name. And so she said to herself, “The conversation will give me a clue. Maybe I can figure out who this is.”
So they talked, and she was desperately searching for a clue to the identity of her old friend, and they talked for a half hour, not one single clue. And then her friend said to her, “You know, my poor brother is working himself to death.” And Jane Addams thought to herself, this is my chance. Here I can maybe get some information that will be helpful. And so Jane Addams replied, “Ah, yes, your dear brother. What is he doing now?”
And her friend glared at her, and very coldly she said, “He is still the President of the United States.” And, folks, you may be the brother or sister of a president, and somebody’s still going to forget you. But you may be a beggar. You may be a lifelong invalid. You may be a condemned criminal. And if you have believed in Jesus Christ and you have stood up for Him, you will be remembered, and you will be rewarded, by no one less than the King of kings and Lord of lords.
So take my advice. Take my advice. Be impossible to forget.
Shall we pray.
Father, there’s so much about this life, even about our own experience, that we would like to forget, and there are people who do forget us. We pray that, as believers in Jesus Christ, we may so live, and so stand for Him, that the one person who really matters will remember us and reward us in the world to come. We ask it in His name, amen.