For the last six weeks we’ve been on a journey into the heart of Jesus as we have examined His last words from the cross.
Jesus began by focusing on others:
• His cry for pardon – “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” – focused on the people who were putting him to death. And it also served as a reminder for all of us that we need forgiveness, too, and that Jesus provided that forgiveness on the cross.
• His cry of assurance – “I tell you the truth. Today you will be with me in paradise” – focused on the thief hanging next to Him on the cross. But it also reminds each of us who have placed our faith in Jesus Christ of the certainty of our salvation.
• His cry of compassion – “Dear woman, here is your son…Here is your mother” – was a demonstration of His compassion for his mother. But it was also a reminder to us of the benefits and responsibilities that go along with His compassion for each of us.
Then we saw a transition with His cry of anguish – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At that moment, all the sins of mankind were placed upon Jesus and He suffered in deep agony. It is at that moment that the focus turns to the humanity of Jesus as He offers Himself up to God in perfect obedience:
• “I thirst” – body
• “It is finished” – soul
• “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” – spirit
This morning we’ll focus on that last cry of Jesus from the cross. Let’s begin by reading from Luke’s account of the crucifixion:
Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Luke 23:46
By next Monday, April 17th, most of us here this morning will have had the pleasure of filing our income tax returns for 2005, which reminds us of the old cliché that there are only two things that are certain in life – death and taxes. Will Rogers had kind of an interesting take on that cliché when he said:
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
And Mark Twain had this to say about taxes:
What’s the difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist? A taxidermist only takes the skin.
In fact, there seems to be some kind of relationship between death and taxes.
I had a vision last night, and in this vision Denny died one day. When he was sent to be judged, he was told that he had committed a sin and so, could not go to Heaven right away. His sin was cheating on his income taxes and the only way he could get into heaven was to be with an ugly woman for the next five years and enjoy it. Denny decided this was a small price to pay for an eternity in Heaven. So, off he went with the ugly woman, pretending to be happy.
As he was walking along, he saw Harold up ahead. Harold was with an even uglier woman than Denny. When he approached Harold, he asked him what was going on. Harold answered, "I cheated on my income taxes and scammed the government out of a lot of money ... even more than you did."
They both shook their heads in understanding and figured that as long as they had to be with these women, they might as well hang out together to help pass the time.
Now Denny, Harold and their two beastly women were walking along, minding their own business, when they could have sworn that they saw their friend Charlie up ahead. Only this man was with an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous supermodel/centerfold. Stunned, Denny and Harold approached the man and in fact it was their friend Charlie. They asked him, why was he with this unbelievable goddess, while they were stuck with these awful women.
Charlie replied, "I have no idea, but I’m definitely not complaining. This has been absolutely the best time of my life. I am looking forward to spending the next five years with this gorgeous woman. There is only one thing that I can’t seem to understand. Every time we’re together, she keeps mumbling something about those darn income taxes.
The fact is that everyone one of us will die one day. And one of the best things about the last cry of Jesus from the cross, this cry of submission, is that it teaches us an important principle about dying: Most of us will die the very same way that we lived. I think that is the essence of this cry from the cross. Let’s see if we can’t look at it in a little more detail and see how that is true.
JESUS DIED THE WAY HE LIVED...
1. Accompanied by His Father’s presence
Three of the seven cries from the cross are prayers, and when we examine those prayers we find that they reveal something important about Jesus’ relationship with His Father:
• Jesus’ first cry from the cross, his cry of forgiveness, is directed to His Father: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
• Then, when all the sins of the world are laid upon Him and Jesus cries out in anguish, He no longer refers to God as His Father. Instead, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Because He bears the sin of the world, His fellowship with the Father has been broken and He ceases to enjoy the presence of His Father for a period of time.
• But in His last cry, Jesus once again addresses God as “Father”. As Denny pointed out last week, the very moment that Jesus cried out, “It is finished,” victory was achieved and therefore Jesus once again could experience the presence of His Father
Jesus died accompanied by the presence of His Father because He also lived in that presence. One of the things that characterized the life of Jesus while He was here on this earth is the importance of His relationship with His Father.
• When He was twelve years old, He told His parents that he must be about His Father’s business.
• Before he began His ministry, he spent 40 days in the wilderness in the presence of His Father.
• In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the word “Father” 15 times.
• We constantly read of Jesus going off to a solitary place to be in the presence of His Father and pray.
• On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus goes into the Garden with His disciples, where he prays in the presence of His Father, first on behalf of His disciples and then for His own strength.
It was because He lived His life in the presence of God that Jesus was able to say things like:
"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
Luke 10:22 (NIV)
Because it was His habit to live in the presence of His Father, when it came to die, Jesus could die confidently because He knew He was about to be ushered back into the presence of His Heavenly Father.
I know that when I die, whenever and however that may occur, the one thing I want to make sure if is that I die in the Father’s presence. But in order to do that, I must learn to live in the Father’s presence right here and now.
One of the great things about the death and resurrection of Jesus is that He made it possible for me to live my life accompanied by the presence of the Father. Right before this last cry of Jesus, Luke tells us that the curtain in the temple was torn in two. Matthew and Mark give us even more detail. They record that the curtain was torn from top to bottom. Prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus, the only person who could enter the Holy of Holies, which was symbolic of the presence of God, was the High Priest, and even he could only enter once a year on the Day of Atonement. But when Jesus died on the cross, God tore the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from top to bottom to symbolize that everyone could now have direct access to the Father all the time.
But even though God’s presence is available to me all the time, He won’t ever force Himself into my life. So if I want to live my life accompanied by the presence of the Father and then also die one day in His presence, it takes some effort on my part. That was even true of Jesus, so it certainly must be true for me.
Even though there is a sense in which Jesus was always in the presence of the Father, He had to make time for those frequent occasions when He would get away and fellowship with His Father. And even though God is always with me, I also need to take those times to experience the presence of the Father in a more intimate way.
• How do I experience the presence of the Father?
o Through His creation
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature e- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 (NIV)
o Through His Word
God is present on every page of the Bible. As we take time to read His Word, God reveals Himself to us.
o Through prayer
While He was here on this earth, that is how Jesus most commonly experienced the presence of His Father. Real prayer is not just asking God for a bunch of things; it is entering into the presence of God, so that God can reveal Himself, His purposes and His ways to me.
o Through corporate worship
But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Psalm 22:3 KJV)
Many times, experiencing the presence of God involves three or four of these methods at once. I can sit at my desk, look out the window at God’s creation, read my Bible and pray to God. Or while I’m worshipping with other believers, we spend time in the Word of God together and pray together.
You’ll notice that this morning we didn’t have our usual fellowship time. That’s because I wanted to save that 5 minutes for us to just enjoy the presence of God this morning. I’m convinced that most of us aren’t really very good at this, so we’re going to practice right now. Here’s what I want you to do for the next five minutes. Pick one or two of these ways to experience God’s presence. Maybe you want to go outside and marvel at his creation. Or you can spend some time in God’s Word, just meditating on who He is. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there are some red ones in the seat backs. I might suggest you go to Job chapters 38-41 where God reveals Himself to Job. Or spend some time in prayer, not asking God for anything, but just telling Him how much you love Him and asking Him to speak to your heart.
(At the end of the five minutes)
Father,
Thank you that you are here with us right now. Thank you for allowing us a few moments to experience your presence. Lord, help us to take time each day just to spend time with you enjoying Your presence in our lives.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
2. According to His Father’s plans
Everything about the death of Jesus was exactly according to His Father’s plans. His death by crucifixion on the cross fulfilled numerous Old Testament prophecies. As we’ve seen in our Bible study on the Jewish Feasts, Jesus died on the cross the at the very time that the Passover lambs were being slain in the Temple, He was in the ground during the Feast of Unleavened Bread and was resurrected on the Feast of the Firstfuits. None of this was by accident.
So when Jesus utters His last cry from the cross, we shouldn’t be surprised that His words quote another Scripture passage:
Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O LORD, the God of truth.
Psalm 31:5 (NIV)
Now obviously Jesus didn’t need to speak the last phrase of that passage. He didn’t need redemption. He was actually providing redemption for others. But once again Jesus demonstrates that His death on the cross aligns exactly with the plans His Father had made before the beginning of the world.
Jesus’ last cry also reminds us that His death on the cross was a choice he made. His spirit was entirely under His control until the moment He gave it up or yielded it to His Father. Matthew’s record of the crucifixion makes this even clearer:
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
Matthew 27:50 (NIV)
Jesus’ death was not an accident; it wan an appointment. He delivered up his spirit to the Father because his mission had been completed. Jesus died, not according to the plans of cowardly men, but according to the divine plans of His Father.
Jesus was able to die according the plans of His Father because He had lived according to the plans of His Father. After He had spoken to the woman at the well in John 4, Jesus’ disciples returned and asked Him if He wanted something to eat. Jesus replied to them:
"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
John 4:34 (NIV)
From the time he was a twelve year old boy in Jerusalem for the Passover until the night before His death as He prayed with sweat drops of blood in the Garden, everything Jesus did was according to the plans of His Father.
When you and I die, we will also die according to the plans of the Father. As Erwin Lutzer writes in Cries from the Cross:
Just so, you and I will die, not according to the will of cancer, not according to the will of an erratic drunk cruising along the highway, not according to the will of a painful disease. We will die under the good hand of God’s providential care. We will pass through the curtain according to God’s clock, not the timetable of random fare.
That’s an encouraging thought, but it’s also a reminder that I must not only die according to God’s plans, I must also live according to those plans. And that leads us to the age old question: “How do I find God’s will for my life?” Obviously I can’t answer that question in detail in the time we have remaining this morning. But I can tell you this: God isn’t trying to hide His will from you. He’s not playing a game of hide-and-seek with His plans for your life. God wants you to understand His plans for your lives.
Even though we can’t cover the topic in any detail, let me just give you one verse that I’m convinced is the key to understanding God’s will for our lives:
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
Some people, mistakenly I believe, have used this verse to teach that if you delight in God, He’ll give you whatever you want – more money, a bigger house, a faster car – you just name it and claim it. But here’s what I think the Psalmist was saying: If you truly delight in God, then God will put the right desires – His desires – in your heart. And how do we delight in God? I’ve got good news for you – (No, I didn’t just save 15% on my car insurance). The good news is that we already learned how to do that this morning because we delight in God by experiencing His presence. So those very same things I do in order to be in God’s presence also allow me to delight in God. And when I do that, God will reveal His plans for my life; He’ll put His desires in my heart.
3. Abounding with His Father’s power
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus commits His spirit into the hands of His Father? Why the hands? Repeatedly throughout the Bible, hands are used as a symbol for power, especially when speaking of God. Obviously God is spirit and so he doesn’t have a physical body with physical hands, but when the writers of the Bible wanted to describe the power of God, they frequently wrote about the hands of God:
• Over 20 times in the Scriptures, God’s power is described in terms of His “mighty hand”
• Throughout the Psalms, God’s creation is referred to as the work of His hands.
• It’s also interesting to me how many times Jesus laid His hands upon people when He healed them.
Hands are also used as a metaphor to describe the power of man. For instance, when Jesus is in the garden and about to be arrested, he said these words:
Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Matthew 26:45 (NIV)
The hands represented the power of those who were coming to arrest Him. It was the powerful hands of wicked men that had beaten Him and nailed Him to the cross. But when Jesus died he committed His spirit to a much greater power – the hands of God. Because it was only in God’s hands that a resurrection could take place. Paul described that awesome power in His letter to the church at Ephesus:
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
Ephesians 1:18-21 (NIV)
Again, Jesus died abounding with His Father’s power because He had also lived that way. While He was here on this earth, everything that Jesus accomplished was done as a result of the power of the Father abounding in His life. That’s why Paul referred to Jesus as “Christ the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).
I know that when I die, I want to be abounding in the Father’s power. The same power that was working at the death of Jesus in order to bring a resurrection also guarantees that we, too, can experience resurrection:
By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.
1 Corinthians 6:14 (NIV)
But it’s not enough to die abounding in the power of the Father. I also want to live with that power at work in my life. Paul describes the importance of living under the power of God:
For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you.
2 Corinthians 13:4 (NIV)
Every day, I make a choice as I live my life. I can either live my life in my own power, which is pretty pitiful, or I can abound in the power of the Father, which He has made available to me through the cross.
Some day, all of us will die. I know that when that day comes, I want to experience death the same way Jesus did when He said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”:
• Accompanied by the Father’s presence
• According to the Father’s plans
• Abounding in the Father’s power
But since most of us will die the same way that we live, I also want to make sure that my life right now is centered on the presence, plans and power of God.
