Encouragement

   It was fitting that Jesus was crucified between two thieves, because He too is a thief, though a different kind of one, a sanctified one.  (The sanctified thief is not Robyn Hood after all..... just kidding.) We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5 that He will return like a thief in the night, and again in Matthew 24 verse 43, also in the context of Christ’s Return, that if the master knew at what hour the thief was coming he would have stayed awake. Why do thieves come anyway? They come to take what is most valuable. Only in the cases of the thieves on His right and left that fateful day, they came to take what wasn’t theirs, and they were being punished for that crime. In Christ’s case, He came and will come to take back what was rightfully His in the first place, and which had strayed and been stolen away from Him by the enemy of our souls in the Garden of Eden. And He was being punished also, but not for any crime He had committed but for our sins in cooperation with the enemy of our own souls, and the world apart from God, and our own fallen nature.
And so why again does a thief come? To take what is most valuable. Christ will come again to gather in the treasure of the entire earth, that which is most valuable in it. What is most valuable in the earth? The people of God, the ones who love God and by His grace through faith receive His Son as their Savior. One of those thieves beside him did just that (Luke 24 v.42,43) even though only a little while before he too had been railing and jeering at Jesus. But this penitent thief changed his tune because he had a change of heart and mind while there was still a little bit of time. Let that be an encouragement to any of us that need it that it’s still not too late to make that change, to take that step God is requiring us to take. That repentant thief came oh so perilously close to going to hell, but ended up with Jesus instead in Paradise that very day!
The Jews have a beautifully significant custom during their Passover celebration, though until they acknowledge their Messiah they can’t see and appreciate the full meaning of it, the veil being over their eyes as Paul wrote. (2 Corinthians 3, v14-15)  They spread out three pieces of unleavened matzah bread and break in half the middle piece.   It is unleavened because it must be eaten in the haste of their escape from Egypt.  (Also, the bread is striped and pierced also representing for us the wounds of Messiah.) As believers in Messiah we can see the pieces as representing Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we can also see them as the three crosses on Golgotha that day. The body of Jesus was broken for our sin. One half of the broken piece of matzah is wrapped in a napkin, even as Christ was wrapped in a borrowed burial cloth after being taken down from that center cross. The piece in the napkin is then hidden "in a high place" somewhere in the house for the children to discover and retrieve. The body of Christ thus disappears so to speak into the tomb but is raised (retrieved) again by the glory of the Father. We can even think of the significance of this practice as the existing Body of Christ seeking out the remainder of the Body which must be found and joined proportionately to those already gathered, to give God’s full expression in the earth and receive the heavenly groom Christ at His Return as His purified bride.  The bride is the one who is in love with groom, and the groom is the One who is in love with bride!   As the rest of the Body of Christ is being sought out and gathered in it is like excavating, and dusting off, and polishing the true treasure and gold of the earth. And no one can come to Jesus Christ except that the Father draw him or her. They are the Father’s gift to the Son. (John 6, v.37, 44) In this sense we who are the true treasure of the earth are also its treasure hunters for the glory of God! But the Chief Treasure Hunter and Gold-Miner is also the Great Shepherd of all under-shepherds, the One who laid down His life for the sake of the sheep.