Defining Moments, Defining Choices | Rev Elisha Satvinder

So this morning, I want to talk about defining moments, defining choices. The premise is this: it’s the profound grace of Christ. I use the word very intentionally, profound, and I want us to look at the different scriptures that I will bring today and the different thoughts that I have. Just three key thoughts on why the grace of God is so amazing, so profound. We can sing songs, you know, “Amazing Grace,” but sometimes we don’t see it as amazing. Sometimes we don’t embrace it as amazing. Sometimes we miss the amazingness of God’s grace.

So we’re going to look at an interesting scripture here. A reflection actually is on Luke 23:42-43. Now, yesterday, I did this a bit with the young people. I took moments to actually describe to them what happened a day before this when Jesus was given a trial. Of course, an unjust trial. Some of you have seen The Passion of Christ. Some people find it too gory, but we can watch

Sylvester Stallone blow people’s heads off, and we can watch all those things, and then we see all the blood in all these other movies. I think it’s a good reminder to watch this as Easter approaches.

But you must remember, Jesus was unrecognizable when they hung him on the cross. They had beaten his body into a pulp. He was bleeding all the way through. Crown of thorns, I mean, that’s all his bleeding. He probably can’t even see out of his eyes already. The lashes that he took, the beating that he took, and then on top of that, you’re put on very rough wood. How will

hat feel on the back? And it’s not just there where they have tied his hands neatly; they’ve put nails through. So every time you want to breathe, you got to pull, and the excruciating pain. Your lungs are also getting filled with fluid and blood and whatever not. Then when you can’t take it anymore, you go back down, and the pain is unimaginable. Sometimes we have a paper cut, and we want emergency to come. We want the ambulance to come and take us to the hospital. Just a bit of, but I want you to think of what Jesus went through.

At that moment, the pain, all that’s going through, and two thieves are beside him, one on the right, one on the left, and one is mocking him. If you read from verse 33, one is mocking him. The next thief says, “We deserve what we are getting. He has done nothing wrong.” At that juncture, he turns around and says this to Jesus: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Now, that’s a loaded scripture. At that point of death, he recognizes something about Jesus. In pain, when we are in pain, somebody asks us for something, how do we respond normally? “You blind, you cannot see what’s happening to me?” “Please get lost, talk to me later.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

I want you to think of the depth of how Jesus answers. I’ve got three thoughts here to kind of bring you to a different dimension of what I think was happening. As we look at these final moments of Jesus’s life on Earth, these are the final moments. In the agony of this crucifixion, the beatings before that, the agony, this amazing conversation takes place. They’re all hanging. They all know they’ve got just a few moments left, and this conversation is taking place. Jesus is having this conversation with two criminals, but this conversation captures the heart of his salvation, his redemptive sacrifice, his redemptive gift, his amazing grace, not just for you and me but for all humanity, for all humanity. 

In these three thoughts, of course, there’s so much more we can talk about, but it is this transformative forgiveness and love of God. Now, before I delve into this further, I want to ask you a question. Do not give the right answer; it must be the honest answer from your heart. Do you think God forgives you? It cannot be an intellectual answer because sometimes we feel condemned. Sometimes we struggle. Sometimes psychologically we don’t realize what we’re doing in our own mind, in our own hearts, because simply we struggle in understanding something. Do you believe God forgives you? It’s not so that I can have salvation. No, because some of us get stuck either in habits, wrong choices, and we cannot seem to get out of it. We can’t seem to get out of it. Or we perpetually lie, and we will not call it a lie. We’ll say, “I cannot tell what’s really the truth.” We don’t want to face what is absolutely right. Or in a situation, in a relationship, at work, at school, whatever it is, because we don’t want to be told we were wrong or we are wrong.

The question is this: do you believe that God forgives you, has forgiven you, loves you, wants to restore you, has restored you, wants to transform you with his love? Think about it. Think about it. Because the first thing I see here is that no sin or condition is too great for Christ to forgive. Sometimes we feel, “No, you don’t know how bad I am.” Sometimes we magnify or we amplify our naughtiness. We amplify how bad we were, how bad we amplify. I think we amplify the wrong thing. We magnify the wrong thing, so it’s a wrong amplification. No sin, no condition. Think about it again because in our minds, we are finite thinkers. God’s response is infinite.

Make sense, everyone? All right, so there’s no sin, no condition.

At the heart of this passage, it’s just these two verses, is this amazing, astonishing truth that no sin or condition is beyond the reach of Christ’s forgiveness. Oh, you don’t, I want us to think again. Sometimes we are praying for somebody, or we are in a place where we look at somebody and say, “Hopeless, this person.” As we unpack this, no sin or condition is beyond the reach of Christ’s forgiveness. None. See, the criminal said this to Jesus, the thief, whatever. And we don’t know what he, I’m sure he didn’t steal, you know, a bar of chocolates or Coca-Cola, you know, pang goreng from the lady. He’s perfect. These guys have been thieves all their lives. They probably beat people up. They have stolen. They have damaged people. They have done a lot of things. They’ve done a lot of things, okay? For them to go up there and die that death, it wasn’t just something simple that they had done. It wasn’t some petty theft.

So he says, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Now, I hear one thing in the tone of this guy. He’s crying out for mercy. He’s crying out for mercy, and he knows judgment is just minutes away. Soon when the sun is coming, they’re going to break his legs, and he will not be able to even push up anymore to breathe, even those last few breaths. So in the face of this impending judgment, he acknowledges, he cries out for mercy, and he acknowledges. That means now he’s saying, “I know I am wrong,” because, “Jesus, when you go into your kingdom today, please remember me.” He’s saying, “I know where I am at, and I need mercy. I need that forgiveness.” He recognizes who Jesus is, and look at the position where they are at. I’m sure

he has heard Jesus speak before, and he has heard of Jesus because the entire country had heard of him. He’s aware of his own guilt. Now, despite a life of wrongdoing and the condemnation that he’s facing, Jesus responds to this, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Can we actually see what’s happening here? Because many times, it’s so hard for us to forgive, isn’t it? We won’t forget things, and this demonstration of Christ, his mercy, his grace, his love, because later down in John, he’s going to say, “As I have done, you do.” In our minds, because we’ve not comprehended this amazing grace of God, it’s very hard for us to live in the freedom of this grace, freedom of this love. We are prisoners of conflict. We are prisoners of negativity. We are prisoners of criticism. The significance of this conversation cannot be overstated. It cannot. Why? It offers profound hope to all who have felt unworthy or condemned by their past actions. Now, that includes all of us because there are things in our past we cannot get, we don’t seem to have come on terms with it or have peace with it. We have not made peace with it because we’ve never understood the peace Christ gives. This simple two-liner, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus says, “I tell you truly, today you will be with me in paradise.” This hope that comes to us, no matter how unworthy or condemned we are of our

past actions.

Understand the sacrifice of Jesus. Easter is coming. This is Lent season, and we’re looking at scriptures in the morning, whether we’re having our devotions, whatever, we’re just looking at different things. Why? Because we need to get rid of a lot of evil emotional baggage, a lot of emotional baggage. So the criminal has a very simple request, but very sincere, isn’t it? He said, “Today, when you see me.” So here we witness what the essence of true repentance is. We really see it here. Actually, he is turning away. People say, “Ah, last minute dying.” Please, look at the truth of it. He is turning away from sin, and he’s turning towards Christ. He acknowledges those moments are so critical, isn’t it? And that’s why salvation isn’t having this cheap prayer of “Jesus.” No, I think we must grapple with it in our heart, in our mind, in our emotions, our intellect, and understand what God has done on the cross for me. Why is salvation so necessary? What is the power of God’s forgiveness in my life? How it sets me free, how it causes me to embrace this new life in his limitless, infinite, oh, I use that word again, in his infinite mercy. He welcomes this repentant sinner into his kingdom. What does he do? He demonstrates one thing: that no sin is too great for him to forgive.

If you read John chapter 8, and I will allude to it soon, it’s powerful when we look at it. Psalms 103:12, it’s amazing. I never fail to get amazed every time I look at this. Can we all read it out loud together? Together, read out loud: “As far as the East is from the West, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Whether you want to use the word transgressions or compromise, our sin, whatever, as far as the East is from the West. What does this mean? What does this mean? As far as the East is from the West. Now, in God’s love and his mercy, the thought is this: he removed, he has removed at the cross our sin, everybody, far away. He doesn’t bundle it and then leave it hanging outside your gate so every time you walk by, you say, “Oh yeah, I sinned.” He doesn’t do that. It’s not on your fridge. Your sin could be in the fridge, that means sneaking too much. All right. He doesn’t leave it hanging there. God moves it far away, as far as the East is from the West. But what does this mean? Now, again, this is an amazing analogy.

Now, all of you very clever people, right? North and South. The North meets the South where? At the South Pole, right? We all know planet Earth, right? North Pole, South Pole. Everybody, are we good so far? Can? Sorry, I didn’t have an image for that. So, North Pole, South Pole. Is there an East Pole and a West Pole? Some of you did not answer. No. Let me give you rest here. No. There’s no East Pole, West Pole. Okay. North Pole, South Pole. Interesting. East and West. So if you look, if you move towards the North Pole, you come down to the South Pole.

You move up, you come to the North Pole. But do you know East and West never meet? Let me explain. Again, no East Pole, East East Pole, West Pole. Okay. If you move towards the North Pole, when you finish it, you come down to the South Pole.

Offering bag. Either your teacher didn’t teach it, or you were absent for class. Does it make sense or not? Some of you still, you’re like, okay, okay. Listen, so to say that God separates our sin as far as the East is from the West, that means you can’t find it. As far as the East is from the West, how far is the East from the West? You move towards the East, you still move towards the East. You keep moving, you keep moving. It doesn’t stop. As far as the East is from the West. Hey, don’t go and Google now North Pole, South Pole. Go home and do homework, then post. All right. That means it’s an absolute, irrevocable measure of God’s forgiveness. Scripture never said as far as the North Pole is from the South Pole. It says as far as the East is from the West because no matter how much further you move into the East, you keep coming to the

East.

So the Old Testament, when Israel had the day of atonement, you take the animal, and what does the high priest do? He takes actually two bulls, okay, two animals, a bull and a goat. One is for his family, himself. They confess their sin, they transfer that, they sacrifice the bull. But there’s the other one. He will bring the whole nation’s sin in prayer, in mediation. He will say, “All the people’s sin now come upon this goat.” That’s why we get the word scapegoat. Scapegoat. And that goat is pushed out of the city into the horizon, never to return. That means our sins have left us not to come back. As far as the East is from the West, God says, “I have removed.” It’s not hanging anywhere. It only hangs in our memories, in our emotions, our anger, and our pride. Jesus is that scapegoat. Does that make sense, everyone? Okay, one more time. Does it make sense? Yes. As far.

Let’s look at another two scriptures. “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet.” Scarlet is, I see a few reds. It’s redder than that, okay? Scarlet. See a few reds. Yeah, scarlet is pitch red. Think of the comparison. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Can you see the comparison? No matter how strong it is, but white is white. “Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Look at the comparison he makes. Powerful comparison. The analogy is amazing when we see it here. Okay, one more. Romans 5:20. “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” Why? Why does God do this? Because of his grace. You see, I would call it the immeasurable depth of Christ’s forgiveness comes from his unmerited favor, never-ending grace. As far as the East is, it’s never-ending, God’s grace. We are trying to catch up with faults; God is catching up with forgiveness. God is chasing us that way, and we are chasing different things. Like I said, we are prisoners in our own heart, in our own minds. We are prisoners.

You remember in John chapter 8, they bring this woman, and they said she was caught in adultery. What does the law say? Now they’re asking Jesus this. Of course, when I read it, I always ask, “Jantan, where’s the guy?” She didn’t commit adultery by herself, and obviously, he’s married, so it’s worse, isn’t it? Okay, so what happened? In the law, she’s supposed to be stoned. Remember the story? Okay, in the law, she’s supposed to be stoned. So they’re all holding rocks, they’re all ready to stone her. What does Jesus do? You’re going to cry already,

I’m taking out tissue. Okay, what does Jesus do? An old man going to bend, he bends down, and he starts writing. Most people, “What did Jesus write?” Don’t worry what he wrote. To understand that picture, the Jew understands the picture. Why? The finger of God is the one that wrote the law. What Jesus was saying is this: “I am God. I am the one who wrote that law, and I know how to interpret it, not you.” It’s a powerful imagery. Go home and read John chapter 8. Powerful imagery. He says, “He who has no sin, cast the first stone.” Did he not say that? What does that mean? He who has no sin? “You got sin? You cannot tell your children, ‘Don’t sin.’ How?” And they will say, “Yes.” I saw hope in all of your eyes. The young ones are like, “Is that what the Bible says?” No, it doesn’t say that. Think of it. That means no laws, policemen, never mind about them. Can they tell us what is wrong and right? They can tell us. “You think you can charge me because I can find a lot of dirt on you?” Is that not true, everyone?

The issue is this. You go back into the Old Testament. When the law is coming, it was this: if you have not committed the same sin, then you can stand as a witness. Now, this is an amazing story. All of them actually came to the point of agreeing they were all adulterers. Isn’t that crazy? Jesus carries on writing, and he says, “Where are your accusers?” She says, “They’ve gone.” He says, “Neither.” Now he gives her freedom. He says, “Neither do I.” But can you imagine the message that is coming to this lady? What does he say to her? “Go and sin no more.” If you go down further, you read in chapter 8, Jesus talks about being the light. Light is not to blind us, but light is also to point us in the right direction. The powerful stories that come through, the principles that come out from John chapter 8, is that if we have God’s light shining in our hearts, what he’s saying is that if that lady had chosen to walk with that which was right, she would have never ended up in the position she was in. Most of the times, we won’t end up in trouble if we do what is right, isn’t it? What does the Lord require of you? Justice, mercy, walk humbly, not when it’s convenient. Am I making sense here, everyone?

It’s powerful. As far as the East is from the West, his grace, and of course, we don’t make it a sloppy grace, because Jesus is saying, “When you encounter my love, now encounter my light, and now don’t walk back in darkness.” He extends this forgiveness to that criminal. Jesus shows the heart of grace. It goes beyond human understanding. It does. Despite the greatness of the criminal’s offenses, despite he’s a criminal, he’s done horrible things, Jesus offers him the gift of eternal life. Not based on merit, not what he can do or anything that guy could do to earn it, but solely on his abundant grace. There is nothing you and I can do. There’s nothing our unsaved family and friends can do. That is why, when we have tasted the grace, should we not be people who dispense that grace and stand in the gap and intercede and say, “God, I need them to encounter your grace,” rather than say, “We want to invite people to church, we want to pray.” Friends, it is not about bringing them to church. It is about getting them into the kingdom. If we understand the price of his grace, we understand the greatness of his love, should we not give everybody the same panacea? Isn’t it? You discover healing, and we do that, isn’t it? Pandemic came, everybody says, “Take this, take that.” Some fools said, “Take Clorox.” You know, “Eat this, you’ll be strong. Eat that, you know, do this, do that.” If we know the cure of sin and forgiveness, and we know about the kingdom of God, should we not then our hearts be stirred within us and say, “God, let me not be a lazy Christian. Let me not be a selfish Christian. Let me not be fully opinionated when it’s convenient for me, Christian. God, let me walk in the

kingdom.” You said, “You are the light, and I’m the light and the salt.” He says that you are the salt and light.

That should motivate us. The cross should motivate us. The cross should stir us up to say, “Lord, give me one person, Lord, that I can pray for, I can stand in the gap, and I can befriend, and I can see them come and also encounter this amazing grace.” Now, when you sing the word, the song, “Amazing Grace,” see it differently. Grace is the foundation of salvation. So this truth, what does it do? It emphasizes, “I’m not worthy of this. God’s grace makes me worthy. We cannot earn salvation, nothing.” It’s his boundless love. We’re going to look at a few more scriptures here. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, but I must believe it. I must believe it. I must embrace it. And this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” Two more. “He saved us, not because of righteous things.” So even when we are believers, don’t walk with a nose in the air. “Not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” One more. Now, we use this scripture sometimes in different expressions, but let me just give you one thought here. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’ God’s what? God’s amplified, communicated, dispensed at the cross through a brutal death. ‘For my power is made perfect in weakness.'” Hey, we are weak. And yet, in that, when I embrace the cross and I embrace his amazing gift, his love, his forgiveness, something changes. “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

Finally, yeah, I’m on my last point. I’m very graceful today. The depth of God’s love demonstrated at the cross. They want to make sure all set up this love. Let’s stop. In the exchange between Jesus and I would call him the repentant criminal, we witness the profound demonstration of God’s love manifested at the cross. Christ’s sacrificial death symbolized by the cross embodies the greatness of God’s redemptive plan for all humanity. See, through his willingness to bear, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know. Father, forgive them.” For God so loved, we’re going to read that scripture soon, our sin. See, sometimes we don’t look at our compromise as sin. Some people say, “I did nothing wrong.” Sin is inherent in us at the fall at the garden. No matter how we philosophize it, we are sinners needing the grace of God to be forgiven. We need it. Jesus demonstrates and reveals how incomprehensible the depth of his love, of God’s love. A love that knows no bounds, as far as the East is from the West. No bounds. No bounds. He offers salvation for those who turn in repentance and say, “Lord, I need you.” So the cross is the ultimate expression of God’s love for mankind. Ultimate. Jesus hung on the cross, enduring unimaginable physical, spiritual, mental agony. Unimaginable. He bore the sins of the world on him. He bore it. And that moment, the full extent of God’s great love. Can you imagine Jesus bears the full extent of God’s wrath? Comes and, in the reverse, the full extent of God’s love dispensed. We call it the divine exchange. For God so loved the world that he gave. It wasn’t like, “Here.” No, it’s not the thirty. It’s not the thirty years. It’s not Jesus walking in Galilee, all these places, and healing the sick. You really want me to end, don’t you? Okay, is this on now? Okay. Yes? No? Okay, I’m on. Okay, let me turn this off. Oh, it is? Okay, sorry. I hate doing that, actually. It is this last moments that we focus on. It’s so easy to look at other promises, but this is the clincher, the game changer where everything rests. “For God so loved.” God knew exactly what’s going to happen to his son. He knew exactly what was needed so that man—God had no plan B. “Let me figure another way out.” No. That, no. Go back, please. That whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. “Shall not perish but have eternal life.” Next, please. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. One more scripture. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So what we read in Luke 23 is this: this whole story of this encounter of this criminal with Jesus, it’s the most transformative power of God’s forgiveness for you and me. We’re reminded again, no sin or condition is too great for Christ to forgive. His grace extended freely to all who seek it is the

foundation of our salvation. Foundation.

So I ask you the question at the beginning, do you believe God forgives? Sometimes it can be a mental truth without a heart conviction. You know, and I was doing it with the young people yesterday, but he says, I said, “Why do you think God doesn’t forgive?” “Because I keep doing wrong.” I thought that’s very good because I keep doing it. And we think of this woman caught in adultery when Jesus says, “I am the light,” meaning when we take salvation, when we respond to God’s truth, now I respond to his light and get out of anything that’s related to darkness. I am a big believer of the issues of revival and whatever not, but you know, the older I get, I’m convinced of one thing: the day I take God’s word seriously, my heart is revived. I don’t need some hot worship. I don’t need some crazy meeting because my heart is set ablaze by his truth. And I live in that revived condition. Why? Because now I enjoy every moment of his life. My language will get cleaned up, isn’t it? My conversations, my actions, my thinking, my behavior, my selfishness, my pride, my opinions, everything goes to the cross. And I said, “Lord, you paid a price there, and I want that life fully. And I come to the cross, I also die to myself so that I may live in you.” We all have a cross together. Jesus says, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” That means understand what it is to give up in order to gain. Does this make sense, church? I do this in all of us for us to prepare and think of Easter. So this Friday, please tune in because I want to elaborate on God’s amazing grace and love for us to pray. We have two weeks for Easter, and I hope we are using this. If you haven’t, come on. If it’s just sitting there, no names there, can I really challenge you? Take it seriously. That amazing grace of God is not for us alone. Freely you have received, freely give. As the Father has sent me, now I send you. Go, therefore, and make disciples. Let’s do it. Let’s, when we look at the cross, can I say, “God, I’m seventy years old, therefore now I don’t do it?” Cannot. We can’t. It’s the grace of God. It’s that amazing love of God. So hey, two weeks more. Pray, invite. Let’s do what is necessary. Can we stand? Together, I want to do a few things here this morning. Number one, are you struggling with condemnation and guilt in your own life? I want you to just come before the Lord and receive his love and forgiveness, saying, “God, this guilt and condemnation have no space in my heart and in my mind. No, no, it has no space in me. It’s your love.” Can we take a few moments just to do that? If my heart is cold, say, “God, today, fill my heart with your love that I may live for you.” Just take a few moments.