Into Your Hand I Commit My Spirit
Download MP3It was now about the 6th hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the night hour, while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in 2. Then Jesus calling out with a loud voice said, father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God saying, certainly this man was innocent.
Speaker 1:And all the crowds that had assembled for the spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things. Now there was a man named Joseph from the Jewish Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man who had not consented to their decision and action, and he was looking for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone where no one had ever yet been laid. It was the day of preparation and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and paired prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath, they rested according to the commandment.
Speaker 1:The word of the lord.
Jeffrey Heine:If you would pray with me. Lord God, we ask that you would honor the very reading of your word. We realize that through the proclamation of your word, and through your spirit, you can change hearts, you can change lives, you can bring healing where there needs to be healing, conviction where there needs to be conviction, deliverance where we need to be delivered. I pray that would happen in this place tonight. Lord, I pray that we would come with expectant hearts, eager to hear from you, eager to leave different people than we came.
Jeffrey Heine:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away, and not be remembered anymore. But lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Tonight we're gonna look at the last words of Jesus on the cross.
Jeffrey Heine:Father into your hands, I commit my spirit. And every one of those words has meaning. It is packed full of meaning. The first thing that I do whenever I study a text to preach on it is I ask questions. I ask lots of questions.
Jeffrey Heine:Usually I spend just a couple of hours reading the text, writing anywhere between 50 a100 questions that I want answered and looking at this. And the very first question that I wrote down concerning this one verse was why did Jesus cry this out? Why why did he want everyone to hear this? Because this was a prayer. This is between him and his father, yet he cried it out cried out with a loud voice for everyone to hear.
Jeffrey Heine:This had to be extremely painful for him to do even at this point. It's remarkable that he could cry out at all because when you were crucified, you died of from suffocation. You didn't have the the air. You didn't have the lungs to cry out like this. But when it came to the end, Jesus somehow he cried out and and one of the things that points out to me is Jesus's life wasn't taken from him.
Jeffrey Heine:He laid down his life. You see this in John 10 when he says, For this reason, the father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. And so we see here just just from his ability to do this, that no one took Jesus's life.
Jeffrey Heine:He laid it down in his own accord and his own authority. But why does he cry out? Father, into thy hands, I commit my spirit. I believe one of the reasons that Jesus cried this out is because He desires for us to die the same way, the same way. Paul actually says this in Philippians 3, which is in the front of your worship guide, when he says that I may know him and the power of his resurrections and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
Jeffrey Heine:Becoming like him in his death and so, we see that Paul's desire is to both live and to die by the power of Jesus, like Jesus. He wants to become like Jesus in his death. Now I I know that not many of us in this room are old. Not not many of us, you know, like to think about getting old and dying. Although about a month ago, I got my first gray hair.
Jeffrey Heine:First one looked in the mirror and I just thought something was in it. Maybe paint I was like, no. It's a gray hair. And and I had that dilemma of do I, from this point on, decide to age gracefully or do I pull it and just prolong that? And, I pulled it, and so I figure I've got another year left before all the gray comes out.
Jeffrey Heine:But but in thinking about aging, thinking about getting old, thinking about our mortality and the death that awaits all of us, is something we we really don't want to do. But death awaits all of us. There there will likely be a day when you will be in a hospital bed. There there'll be tubes coming out of you, machines attached to you, laboring for breath. Ernest Becker in his Pulitzer winning book, the, denial of death, which I encourage you to read.
Jeffrey Heine:It's it's a pretty profound book. He's an atheist. But one of the things he he says is that thinking about death is unbearable for mankind. And actually, he goes and he says, all of mankind has been shaped by denying death. We do anything we can to deny this inevitable blackness or emptiness as he called it.
Jeffrey Heine:But as Christians, we shouldn't. Nobody should. If there's anything to think about, you should think about your own death. How can we become like Jesus when he died? His last words were from Psalm 31, which we read responsibly earlier.
Jeffrey Heine:It's interesting. I'm not sure if you knew this, but Jewish children, prayed that Psalm 31 was the last thing they would pray before they went to bed. When Jesus uttered these last words from the cross, everybody would have recognized them. It's the equivalent to our, you know, now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Jeffrey Heine:It's it's the equivalent of that prayer. So everybody would have instantly recognized what Jesus prayed. So although we see here Jesus, he was mocked, he was abused, his best friends left him, he's hanging from a cross, nails piercing his hands and his feet, Jesus died just like a child falling asleep in his daddy's arms. That's how he died. Into your hands, I commit my spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:He didn't pray this silently. He didn't whisper it. He, with agonizing breaths, cried this out because he wanted us to hear this. He wants us to become like him in the way we die. And in order to become like him in the way we die, we have to Jesus during the crucifixion, none of them understand his death.
Jeffrey Heine:And it's hard for for us 2000 years removed to understand exactly what's going on. I I do not assume that you know what is happening, that you understand the meaning behind his death. Pilate did not understand the cross. He thought it proved Jesus was a pretend king, that he was failing in his insurrection. The powerful religious leaders did not understand the cross.
Jeffrey Heine:They they thought, well, good moral people, god saves, does not let this happen to them. So they thought it proved that Jesus was a false prophet. The immoral people, the criminals, well, we at least know that for a time, both of the criminals next to him did not understand the cross because they were hurling abuse at him. And you you see, Luke does a great job of person after person after person showing how none of them have any understanding of the cross. Those that were there, the the wealthy don't understand.
Jeffrey Heine:The poor, the religious, the irreligious, the educated, the uneducated. You have the liberals, the conservatives. Nobody, when looking at this, understands what's going on. This is why Paul would later say to the Corinthians that the cross of Jesus is a stumbling block to the Jews. It is pure madness to the Greeks.
Jeffrey Heine:Even the women who who were lined up on the road and who were mourning and were weeping for Jesus as he walked by carrying his cross, even they did not understand what was going on. Look at verse 26. Says, and as they led him away, they seized 1 Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. But turning to them, Jesus said, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
Jeffrey Heine:For behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren and the wounds that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. They will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry? Now this is surprising that Jesus would have this reaction towards these women. I mean, he calls them a very affectionate title.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, you daughters of Jerusalem. I mean, he called his own mother woman, but here these people said, you daughters of Jerusalem. A very tender name, and yet he pronounces judgment on them. And you're tempted to think that he's just he's just talking about the destruction of Jerusalem that's gonna happen 40 years later, and you would be partially right. But then he really escalates his language, and he goes back to Hosea when he's talking about mountains falling on him on them and hills falling on them.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's language from Hosea that's talking about the judgment day, the day of the Lord. So Jesus tells these sympathetic women, don't weep for me. Weep for your own judgment that's coming. Yeah. When I look at these women, I see probably most of the people that I interact with today, I think, resemble these women.
Jeffrey Heine:Who are sympathetic towards Jesus, pity him, Can even be moved to tears? Maybe even mourn, but they're moved in the way that you would be moved if, you know, you heard about a death of a soldier, or a child dying in a car accident, or or someone with cancer dying, and that's very moving because it's this pointless tragedy. And you can cry and you can weep over that. Jesus looks at him and he's like, your tears mean nothing. Unless you see in me taking on your judgment, unless you see that, then actually all you're looking at me is a picture of the judgment to come to you.
Jeffrey Heine:You need to understand what is happening here. If you don't understand me as taking on the wrath of God for you, then you will someday endure the wrath of God. Weep for yourselves. Luke, in a lot of ways that we don't have time to go into, he he really paints a picture that Jesus is enduring a personal judgment day. Now one of the clearest ways we see this is just when the sky darkens.
Jeffrey Heine:At noon the sky becomes black as night, and this is a fulfillment of Joel chapter 2, Zephaniah 1, Amos 8. Amos 8 says this, and on that day, that's judgment day, declares the lord, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. And so here we see judgment day happening to 1 person, And unless you understand that, I'm not asking if you're just moved to tears by this, unless you understand that, then all you see in Jesus is a picture of your coming judgment. And you cannot die with the same rest and the same trust that Jesus had. Now let's look at every word.
Jeffrey Heine:I said every word of his last prayer has meaning, and so I want us to look at each one of these words. And so we begin with father. He begins his prayer with, father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. Is it the first thing I wanna point out here is you see, his communion with god, his communion with his father has been restored. Earlier, he had cried out, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?
Jeffrey Heine:And there was this brokenness and this communion, but here it's restored. It's no longer my god, it is father. Father. And if you read through the gospels, you will be amazed at how many times Jesus calls God, Father. I was going through, and I just counted the the upper room discourse, which is in begins in John 14.
Jeffrey Heine:If you go just chapters 14, 15, and 16, he refers to god as father 45 times the day before he dies. 45 times. You can see that that's on his heart, this longing to be united with his father. The very first words we have of Jesus, he mentions father. Didn't you know, mom, dad, that I would be in my father's house?
Jeffrey Heine:When the disciples asked them, teach us to pray, he said, okay, this is how you begin your prayer. Our Father, our father, and and that's the basis for your relationship with God. But more than anything else, you need to see your prayer life as this, it's like a child going to their father. That communicates a lot to me as, you know, a dad of 3 little girls. If one of my girls comes and they climb in my lap, burrow their little body in me, and bring a book, and I'm reading to them, there's no place that they would rather be, and there's no place I would rather be.
Jeffrey Heine:It is such an intimate fellowship. And Jesus says, when you pray, you need to keep that in mind. We call God, Father. There's that intimacy there. We have this available to us through the atoning work of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:First John 31 says, see what kind of love the father has given us that we should be called the children of God. Galatians 4 says that we might receive adoption as sons, and because we are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son, the spirit of Jesus, into our hearts crying, Abba, father. And I'm not sure if you noticed this, but the word father is not in Psalm 31. It's not there. Jesus inserts it.
Jeffrey Heine:Psalm 31 just says, you know, into your hands, I commit my spirit. But Jesus adds he's like, if you really want to understand this, if you want to be able to pray this, you've got to add the name father into your hands. I commit my spirit. You cannot commit your spirit to some unknowable, impersonal force. Next, Jesus prays into your hands, into your hands.
Jeffrey Heine:He doesn't pray into the void, into the abyss, into the sweet by and by. He doesn't pray that. He says, into your hands. And we realize that he's praying this because he's always been in Jesus' hands I mean, in his father's hands. Hands that will never let us go.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus says in John chapter 10, he says, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given to me them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. So he realized once he's placed in his father's hand, even death cannot snatch him away. The father's hand conquers death. Now I find it very interesting up to this point, and you hopefully have seen this over the last few weeks, that Jesus up to this point has been in the hands of many other people.
Jeffrey Heine:It mentions their hands a lot, and you actually see this in every gospel. In Luke, Jesus, and and it says in Luke 9, it says, let these words sink into your ears. The son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of men. Mark 14 says the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. And Matthew says, they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him.
Jeffrey Heine:In John 19, it says, they came up to him saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And they struck him with their hands. And so in all the gospels, you see up to this point people doing things to Jesus with their hands. And he's constantly in the hands of the wealthy. He's in the hands of Pilate, In the hands of Herod.
Jeffrey Heine:In the hands of the religious leaders. In the hands of the soldiers. In the hands of the executioners. But here at the very end, Jesus says, no in your hands, not all of their hands, but in your hands do I commit my spirit. And in all of this, he acknowledges that he was always in his father's hands.
Jeffrey Heine:Every blow to him, every spit on his face was ordained by his father and in his father's complete control. That's incredible peace and comfort. This past week, coming home from Montana, and I flew from Montana to Minnesota, and then I'm flying back from Minnesota to Birmingham. And I don't know if you remember, Minnesota had horrible storms. I don't know if it was in the news.
Jeffrey Heine:They had lots of tornadoes and stuff. Just picture my plane up there with that. And, worst turbulence I've ever had on a flight by far. And, I I promise you, at times we were diving down so fast, if I were to let go of my coke, it would have just started floating. And, and I began to get just a little worried, and I've been thinking about this passage for the last week because I knew I would be preaching on that.
Jeffrey Heine:And so I started praying this. Father, into thy hands, I commit my spirit. And I started saying, you know, thinking about my children. You know, god, into your hands, I commit Georgia. Into your hands, I commit Natalie.
Jeffrey Heine:Into your hands, I commit Caroline. Into your hands, I commit my wife. And going through those things and at times when we really did that, I almost said it out loud, you know, cried out. I was anxious, but underneath that, as I kept thinking about this and kept praying, there was this rest. It's like, I'm in his hands.
Jeffrey Heine:My family is in his hands. Yeah. My heart's still pounding, but underneath this, I'm like, I'm in his hands. And I was able to rest. I hope you come to that point.
Jeffrey Heine:I hope we all do. That when we lose a job, if we if we have a a spouse that says they no longer love us, that if we have a child that becomes terminally sick, if you someday are laying in a bed, in a hospital with tubes coming out of you, laboring for breath, when that happens, you can feel these safe, secure hands, knowing that god is in complete control of all of that. And if you can, there is such a rest and a comfort. Finally, Jesus prayed, I commit my spirit. He he didn't pray, I commit my body, because he knew, hey, he's gonna be given a new body, a glorified body, a better body.
Jeffrey Heine:He doesn't pray, I commit my body. He says, I I commit my spirit, which is the one priceless treasure that we have been given. The spirit inside of us that cannot die. Let me just say here that Jesus could pray this at the end of his life, because he had been praying this his entire life. When he's tempted in the desert, he's saying, I commit my spirit to you, father.
Jeffrey Heine:When when he's in the garden, he's wondering what what does he do. He's like, I commit my my spirit to you. He he he spent a life committing his spirit to his father, Which makes me ask the question, have I? Have you? Is this something you do?
Jeffrey Heine:Have have you have you stopped and just say, father, now I know I'm not on my deathbed, I I but I commit my spirit to you. It is yours. It is in your hands. Luke tells us an additional detail to this. He says that right before Jesus' last prayer, right before he says, father, into your hands I commit my spirit, says that the curtain veil or the the temple veil or curtain was was ripped in 2, which you need to see that in light of his last words.
Jeffrey Heine:The gospel of Matthew lets us know that it was from top to bottom that this curtain was ripped. And as most of you probably know that this was a a curtain that separated unholy man from a holy god. This was the holy of holies, the most sacred room in the world was surrounded by a curtain. A curtain so thick. It was thicker than your hand.
Jeffrey Heine:It was about an inch and a half to 2 inches thick was this curtain. So no light could go through it. Almost no sound could go through it. It was a barrier separating the holy god from from unholy man. And only once a year could the high priest go in, and he had to kill so many different animals, and finally could get in there in the total darkness, feel his way around, and sprinkle blood on the mercy seat.
Jeffrey Heine:And there he would meet the presence of god. And here we have at the end of Jesus' life, the curtain ripped. Not from the bottom to the top, but from top to bottom, from heaven ripped down to earth. And it and it wasn't it was because it's no longer necessary. No longer any sacrifice is necessary.
Jeffrey Heine:The blood of Jesus means now there is no separation between us and a righteous god. None. Just as Jesus' flesh is torn, this curtain is torn in. The author of Hebrews, he tells us this in chapter 10 when he says, Therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through His flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.
Jeffrey Heine:I hope when you hear Jesus' last words, you're filled with an assurance of faith. I hope so. That that this produces in you this desire to draw near to him. Don't make the mistake of those daughters of Jerusalem and pity Him. Don't just be moved by a death.
Jeffrey Heine:Understand what was happening, that his death was the necessary sacrifice to rip open that curtain so you could have access to God. And my prayer for you is the same prayer that Paul prayed, that you would become like Jesus in His death. Pray with me. Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. I pray that would be true for all of us.
Jeffrey Heine:Into your hands, into your sweet, and loving, and sovereign hands. There is such a rock there under which we can rest. I pray that would be true for us. Holy Spirit, come now. Make the presence of Jesus known to us.
Jeffrey Heine:Glorify Jesus. Make the truths we have heard burn in our hearts. May they not just be words, but may they change us. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
