THREE CHANGED MEN

W. Lamont

Luke 23: 39–43; Acts 2: 36–39; 26: 12–19

We have read of three men who came into personal contact with the Lord Jesus, and whose lives as a result were completely changed. I wonder if every one here has had a personal transaction with Jesus. What I mean by that is, Have you had to do with Jesus for yourself?

Many have had the advantage of being brought up in a Christian household and have often heard the name of Jesus spoken about. It is not enough to hear about Him, you must have to do with Him for yourself or there is no blessing for you. No matter how favoured you may have been in being brought up in a Christian household, you must have to do with Jesus for yourself, it is a necessity, or you will be consigned to hell for ever; I make no apology for saying that. You must put your trust in the precious blood of Jesus, it is your only hope, because God has set Him forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. The only hope any one of us has is to trust in the precious blood of Jesus.

These three men we have read of had different backgrounds, different personalities, different circumstances. One was a wicked man; one, you might say, had been a believer already, and one was a very religious man, a self-righteous man. As coming into contact with Jesus their lives were completely changed. I wonder what changed this thief. Matthew tells us that they both heaped insults on Jesus (see Matthew 27: 44), and Matthew leaves it there. What changed this man? They

were both wicked men, crucified one on either side of Jesus. What a sight! Never was there such a sight in the history of the universe, as the Saviour of the world hanging on the middle cross; put there by men He had come to save, and His companions, common thieves, one on either side. That is what men thought of Jesus, in spite of the fact that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, as Paul says, of whom I am the first (1 Timothy 1: 15). Yet there He hung on that cross. He allowed Himself to be taken and put on the cross, despite the fact that He could have called on twelve legions of angels. One angel, in the Old Testament, slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in one day. Yet the Lord Jesus allows Himself to be taken, as it says, “he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and he opened not his mouth”, Isaiah 53: 7. Oh, what grace!

There He was, hanging on that middle cross, and these two men one on either side. One became changed! What changed him? He was born anew, but more than that. I think what changed this man was when he heard the Lord Jesus saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23: 34). Think of a man hanging there in agony, and asking for forgiveness for His tormentors. I am sure that deeply affected this thief, and he recognised there in the Lord Jesus the kind of man that he had never seen before. He saw there in Jesus, perfection in manhood, and he says, “this man has done nothing amiss”. What a testimony on the cross to the perfection of Jesus. Then he says, “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”. Some of us were speaking about the Despot, the One with absolute rights. The souls under the altar in Revelation cried, “How long, O sovereign Ruler” (Revelation 6: 10); the One with the absolute rights in the universe was there as Man, dying on the cross, and men missed it. No wonder that Paul says, “which none of the princes of this age knew, (for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;)”, 1 Corinthians 2: 8. So this one says,

“Remember me, Lord”. Has every one here been on their knees before the Lord Jesus and said, Lord? Have you come to recognise His supreme rights over you? That is what the thief came to. And what an answer! “Verily I say to thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. The Lord Jesus knew He was about to die, and He accepted it; men were the means of doing it, but He died as subject to the will of God.

Dear friend, He died for you and He died for me, in order that we should be free of God’s judgment. He bore God’s judgment in all its fulness; He bore the wrath of God against sin; in the shedding of His blood He accomplished the work of atonement. He was buried for three days and three nights. Think of the Creator of the universe, but as Man, lying in a tomb.

Ponder it, my friend, He was the One who brought about all things, as John says, “All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being” (John 1: 3), and yet He lay in a tomb for three days and three nights. This man says, “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”; he knew that such a Man, as he witnessed there, must have a whole sphere of influence. This is the kind of Man that God’s kingdom is based on; not the kind of man that this world knows; not the kind of dictators this world has known. This blessed Despot led only to blessing, and it will soon shortly be seen for one thousand years that He is capable of ruling, and He will shepherd the nations with a rod of iron. That cannot be understood humanly: the tenderness of a Shepherd and the firmness of iron, when righteousness will reign, and He will be known from the river to the end of the earth. The Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in His wings. By God’s work this thief saw it, he had light as to it. So the Lord says, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. So this man came into contact with the Lord Jesus and he was completely changed; he had no life left to live, but he was as fit for heaven as the apostle Paul, as one has said, He was redemption’s earliest

trophy. What it must have meant to the Lord Jesus to hear from this man’s lips, “Remember me, Lord”.

Peter was a different kind of man altogether, very favoured; for approximately three-and-a-half years he kept company with the Lord. At the end of that three-and-a-half years he denied Him, at the Lord’s terrible hour of trial, when Peter and others should have been a comfort to Him, they forsook Him and fled. How the Lord felt that! He felt the forsaking by His own, and not only was He forsaken by His own, but He was betrayed. Oh, the awfulness of betraying Jesus! Judas betrayed Him; he betrayed the Son of God. No wonder Scripture calls him the son of perdition, it says he went out and hanged himself; there was no hope for him.

Then Jesus was forsaken by God; what a time that was, those three hours of darkness. We are thankful for Luke; he records for us that at the end of these hours the Lord Jesus says,

“Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”, Luke 23: 46.

When we come to the Acts Peter is a changed man. He stands up in public and tells the whole house of Israel that “God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”. That is, God has put Jesus in a position of absolute authority, and He is using that authority in blessing. As Lord He is supreme; as Christ He is dispensing blessing. He is dispensing blessing today my friend. Will you receive it? Receive it and you will have blessing now and eternally; continue to refuse it and your future is without hope. So Peter is a changed man, he said to them “Repent, and be baptised, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. Your father and mother cannot repent for you; they may tell you about repentance; the preacher cannot repent for you; he can tell you about the necessity for repentance—“repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20: 21)—but no one can repent for you, you must repent for yourself. In

the gospel God enjoins, or commands, all men everywhere to repent, and do not let us be confused by modernism. When Scripture says, “God ... now enjoins men that they shall all everywhere repent” (Acts 17: 30); Scripture clearly means men and women, boys and girls; it means the human race. These are wonderful things, friend, the blessings of God in the gospel.

Christ has done everything for you, He has settled the matter of sin and sins, and God in His own Son has condemned sin in the flesh. There is nothing for you to do but repent. That is what Peter says here—“Repent, and be baptised, each one of you”. Of course, the children of the saints normally are baptised, but the word to repent remains, and you will receive the remission of sins. There is nothing like the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit; to know that you can stand in the presence of a holy God, not because of anything you have done, but because of what the glorious Saviour has done; because He has shed His precious blood that we should be for ever cleared of our sins.

When we come to Saul of Tarsus, as those who read the Scriptures will know, in Acts 9 there is a scriptural record of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. In Acts 22 he speaks of it himself, and in Acts 26 he speaks of it again; he speaks of the day when he came into contact with Jesus, when he came into contact with the Despot, saying, “Who art thou, Lord?” He had authority and letters from the high priest, and there was no greater religious authority in the world than the high priest. He could say, I have authority to do what I wish to persecute people, to put them into prison and to give my vote to put them to death. At the stoning of Stephen, he was standing by and consenting. It says that the witnesses laid aside their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul (see Acts 7: 58). It does not say he took part actually in the murder, but he was responsible for it, he kept the clothes of them who killed him.

Someone has said that the death pangs of Stephen were the birth pangs of Paul. That is why I read in Acts 26

because there Paul says something he does not say before, in verse 14, “it is hard for thee to kick against goads”, and I think one of the goads was his witness of the death of Stephen. I think God had begun to work in the soul of Saul of Tarsus, but the greatest moment came when he came into personal contact with the Saviour.

Dear friend, I would urge you to make sure you have personal contact with Jesus by faith, it is absolutely essential for your blessing eternally, for the salvation of your soul, and more than that, for your joy and happiness down here. At the best any pleasures of the world are the pleasures of sin. There is an old hymn that says—

‘I tried the broken cisterns, Lord

But, Ah, the waters failed

Even as I stooped to drink they fled,

And mocked me as I wailed’.

None but Christ can satisfy, it is a wonderful fact. God has made men that way, that nothing will satisfy the soul of man but the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are many things in the passage, but I want to finish with this, “that they may receive remission of sins and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me”. The forgiveness of sins is not an end in itself; the forgiveness of sins is a means to an end, a means to God’s end, that you should be for God. The meeting of man’s need is not the end, but the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God has in mind that we are to be secured for Him, and to be given an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Christ. May the Lord bless the word.

Preaching at Gothenburg, Sweden, 4 August 1991

Edited and Published by J. Strachan, 59 Frederick Street, Dundee, DD3 9DE, Scotland Printed by Crystal Stationery, 22 Western Road, Billericay, Essex CM12 9DZ, (T) (01277) 650661