"Into Your hands I commit My spirit." (Luke 23:46)
Dave Brown preaches on "Into Your hands I commit My spirit." (Luke 23:46)
MESSAGE NOTES
Final Words
"Into Your hands I commit My spirit." • March 17, 2024
Teacher: Dave Brown
--
- Here is your son. Here is your mother.
- My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
- I thirst.
- It is finished
- Into your hands I commit my spirit.
Of all the Evangelists, Luke is the most intentional, and the most skillful, in narrating the story of Jesus in a way that joins it seamlessly to Israel’s story…Luke is seeking to write the continuation of biblical history. —Richard Hays
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” When all the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. —Luke 23:44-49
In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Keep me free from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God. I hate those who cling to worthless idols; as for me, I trust in the Lord. I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. You have not given me into the hands of the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege. In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. Love the Lord, all his faithful people! The Lord preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he pays back in full. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord. —Psalm 31:1-8, 21-24
In Jesus’ mind, his horrible and humiliating condition in no way jeopardizes his relationship with God, whom he thus continues to address with the characteristic appellation, “Father.” — Joel B. Green
This prayer from the cross is particularly difficult to keep in its crucifixion context and still pray it. A childlike relaxation into the arms of Jesus when everything is going well and we are surrounded by those we love and trust, yes. But a deliberate, trusting committal into the hands of the Father when we have been blindsided on a Golgotha intersection and out life has been totaled? Lovely as Jesus’ prayer is, it is not likely to come spontaneously from our lips in such circumstances. —Eugene Peterson
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 8:31-39