"I Commit My Spirit"; Luke 23:46, Psalm 31

 

“I commit my Spirit into Your hands.”  These are dying words.  They are literally the dying words of Jesus—His last statement from the cross.  These are the dying words of Stephen, the first martyr, who in his own death, mirrored Jesus in all of his words and actions including interceding for forgiveness for his murderers.  These are words of total surrender to and trust in God the Father.  But one doesn’t have to wait until one is dying to utter these words.  These words were first spoken by David in a psalm he gave to his choir director so that it could be performed for corporate worship.  They came from a personal place in his own experience but can be used by anyone.  These are words that we can use as an expression of our own trust in God.

            The psalms are the prayerbook of the Hebrew people.  Both Jesus and Stephen would have grown up singing and reciting Psalm 31.  Think of how many hymns you know by heart.  Jesus and Stephen would have been able to recall these words and apply then to their situation. 

As David wrote these words for the choir director, it’s clear he was thinking back on his own life when he had been in a dire situation, one in which he didn’t know if he would live or die.  He did live, and so the psalm ends in praise to God for preserving him and being his refuge.  But the promise of preservation is for all of God’s people.  We might be saved like David was, able to live many years, or we might lose our lives like Stephen, but that doesn’t mean God does not preserve us, for we have been given eternal life.

The Brief Statement of Faith of the PC(USA) begins, “In life and in death, we belong to only comfort in life and in death?  The answer is, “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.  He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.  He also watches over me in such a way that not a hear can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.  In fact, all things must work together for my salvation.  Because I belong to him, Christ, by His holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.  “I commit my Spirit” ought to be our response to the fact that in life and in death, we belong to God and in response for all that Jesus has accomplished for us.  Biblical scholar J. Clinton McCann Jr says, “Into Your hands I commit my spirit” can be said as, “I turn my life over to you.”  Our lives already belong to God, but committing our spirit to God shows that we acknowledge this fact, and both willingly and with hope surrender ourselves to God. 

Unlike us, Jesus was fully in charge of His own death.  He had told Pilate that Pilate couldn’t take His life unless He, Jesus, permitted it.  Jesus had preached as recorded in John 10 how He lay down His own life only to take it up again, and “No one takes it from Me, but I law it down on my own initiative.  I lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.  This commandment I received from My Father.”  When Jesus said, Father, into your hands I commit My Spirit,” He was reiterating that He was surrendering His life to the Father.  The Romans and the Jewish leaders were only the means by which Jesus died. But they were not in control of Jesus’s death any more or any less than you and I were.  Jesus’s last breath was His to surrender.  Jesus died on purpose with purpose.  He died to accomplish all those things stated in that first answer to the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism.   

The last words that Jesus spoke before His death were not the first time that He had committed His spirit into the Father’s hands.  From the time He entered humanity, Jesus submitted Himself to the Father.  He constantly sought the Father’s will and obeyed it.  He lived in the Father’s hands and He died in the Father’s hands.  His life is a model for us that we can make the same commitment any and each day of our lives. 

The sentence “Into your hands I commit my spirit” is not the only forshadowing of Jesus’s life we see in the psalm.  David speaks of being falsely accused.  Jesus had been falsely accused of blasphemy.  The psalm says, “My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and body.”  Jesus was the “Man of Sorrows.”  But unlike the psalmist, it was not His iniquity that caused His pain, but ours.  The psalmist speaks of being rejected by and repulsive to his friends and neighbors.  With the exception of John and some of the women, the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested.  But the psalmist also confesses, “My times are in your hands.”  And at the beginning of each stanza confesses that he trusts in God.  God orders everything from our births to our deaths to everything in between—times of abundance and times of scarcity, times of doubt and times of surety, times of hardship and times of ease.  The writer of Ecclesiastes words it, “To everything there is season:  a time and a purpose under heaven.”  In life and in death, we belong to God. 

What about you?  Do you commit your life into the Father’s hands in times of affliction?  What about all the time?  Everyday?  With every moment of your life?  Is Jesus truly Lord of your life?  I see people who claim to love Jesus, but they really haven’t fully committed themselves into the Father’s hands.  The Bible study group is working on Lesson 4 in our study, which looks at the expectation of suffering in the life of a disciple.  It is far more normal and to be expected that one who is really committed to following Jesus will suffer.  Even in our world today, far more believers are persecuted for their faith than not.  One of the passages we are looking at is I Peter 4.  The chapter ends with verse 19 which says, “Therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.”

A test of whether or not we have committed our souls to God is will we do the right thing even when it costs us dearly. 

            Committing our spirits into God’s hands doesn’t mean all of our problems will go away. As Craig Broyles writes, “God does not automatically or instantaneously solve problems.”  However, not submitting to Christ’s Lordship doesn’t mean that we will have less problems. In fact, I guarantee it will mean more because you will be working against the Holy Spirit instead of in cooperation with the Spirit.  Have you ever thought of your problems as God’s problems to fix?  David did.  He didn’t blame God for his problems in this psalm, but he does expect God to do something about them.  He knows his problems are way too big for him to solve on his own.  He ask God more than once to “deliver me,” “rescue me quickly,” “save me,” “don’t let me be put to shame,” “make your face shine upon your servant,” (that’s a prayer for God’s blessing and favor), “let the wicked be put to shame,” “let the lying lips be silent.”  All of these are requests for God to solve his problems.  Committing our lives into the Father’s hands is “letting go and letting God be God.”

               Despite all the hardships and suffering, God is good and has great goodness stored up for those who fear Him, those who commit their spirits into His hands.  The apostle Paul considered all of his many sufferings as “light and momentary afflictions” compared to the eternal weight of glory he would experience.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “If a son asks his father for bread, will the dad give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a scorpion?  If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”  God has good things to give us.  When you worry about what God might take away and use it as an excuse to not surrender to God, you miss out on all the wonderful things God would have for you.  It is God who wants the best for us.  It is the world that harms and takes away, and it is the devil who comes to “steal, kill and destroy.”  God is worthy of our trust.  Jesus is worthy of our total devotion.  Will you like Jesus, David, Stephen, Peter, and Paul and so many others “commit your spirit into His hands?”

Behind the Curtain; Luke 23:45b, Hebrews 9-10

 

We use curtains to hide things.  Shower curtains maintain our privacy as well as keep the water from getting all over the floor.  Window curtains keep people from looking into our houses.  I used to watch the Price is Right when I was younger.  Would pulling back the curtain reveal a great prize, like a new car or trip or an okay prize like a small kitchen appliance?  The climax of the Wizard of Oz occurs when Dorothy and her companions finally get to Oz to meet the wizard, and Toto, the dog, being intuitive as pets are, pulls back the curtain to expose a man using special effects.  While clever, the man has no magical powers or real knowledge of how to get Dorothy back home.  For years, the curtain protected the wizard, but now all was exposed.  He was just a power-hungry individual engaged in manipulation.  Curtains can conceal something wonderful or something shameful, and sometimes the difference is in perspective.  In our Scripture readings today, we hear about the curtain in the temple, the one that separate the Holy of Holies from the inner court.  Upon Jesus’s death, that curtain was not simply pulled back, it was torn in two from top to bottom.  Everything behind the curtain was exposed.  For some it was shameful, for others, it reveals wonderful things. 

            The shame hidden behind the temple curtain was fake worship.  In the video clip, you saw the high priest’s reaction to the tearing of the veil.  The Jewish leaders are devastated.  They cannot pretend to offer sacrifices anymore.  The sham worship they had been doing for hundreds of years was exposed.  There was no Ark of the Covenant.  What you saw cracked inside the Holy of Holies was a stone altar.  I don’t know if they put a stone altar in there or if it was a somewhat empty space, but what was not there was the Ark of the Covenant.  It had been taken in the 6^th Century BC.  The Coptic Orthodox Church of Ethiopia claims to have it at the Church in Axum, and maybe they really do.  But since they claim to have had it for 3000 years, I seriously doubt it. 

            There’s nothing in Scripture to say that the temple itself was torn in two like the movie.  Presumably. they made another curtain and restarted their fake worship for a few more decades, but the tearing of the veil also foreshadowed that the sham worship would be ended once and for all when the temple would be destroyed in 70 AD. 

            Gibson got it wrong in showing the veil being torn from the bottom to the top, which is what you might expect if it was the earthquake that caused it, but top to bottom shows that this rending of the curtain is God’s intentional act.  In the negative sense, it symbolized the departure of the glory of God from the Temple.  I Samuel 4 tells the story of the Philistines attacking Israel and stealing the Ark of the Covenant.  In the process, the sons of Eli the priest, Hophni and Phineas, are killed, and Eli himself dies upon hearing the news that his sons are dead and the Ark has been taken.  Phineas’s wife, who is very pregnant, goes into labor at the news, and dies shortly after the traumatic birth, the midwives try to encourage her by saying she has delivered a boy, boy, but she names the child, “Ichabod,” which means “the glory has departed,” saying that the glory of God has been removed from Israel—no ark, no glory.  And the Jews had felt abandoned by God.  They hadn’t seen that glory in a long time, though the priest did stay alive from year to year, giving them hope, and yet, we know God was still working and answering prayers.  Just in the offering of incense, not even in the Holy of Holies, but just outside of it, Zechariah learned that his prayers for a child had indeed been heard, and not only that, all the cries for a Messiah were about to be answered with the birth of Jesus. 

            And so the tearing of the curtain also symbolizes good news.  We hear again in our Hebrews text how the Holy of Holies could only be entered once a year and only by the high priest.  This was where the presence of God presumably dwelt, and literally did many times as recorded in the Old Testament.  But the tearing of the veil showed that the presence of God was not limited to time or space or a particular person, but everyone could now have access to the God’s presence.  God is not hidden away, but accessible to anyone.  The accessibility comes through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. 

            There’s no more need for a Temple, no more need for sacrifices.  Jesus offered Himself once for all.  Christ is the high priest of a tabernacle not made by human hands, one that is far superior to Solomon’s or Herod’s temple.  And He didn’t offer the blood of animals, but He offered His own blood.  We don’t have to worry from year to year if our sins will be forgiven; we have been forgiven and are being forgiven.  The prize on the other side of the torn curtain is eternal life in Christ.  The last verse of Hebrew 9 contains the promise that Christ will appear a second tie for salvation for those who eagerly await Him.  He won’t have to pay for sin again because that’s already been done. 

            There were other sacrifices besides the once-a-year atonement sacrifice that involved putting blood on the Ark of the Covenant.  There were individual guilt offerings.  There were peace offerings, and there were thank offerings.  On the cross, Jesus not only paid for our sins, but for our guilt and shame.  Those are removed.  Through His blood, Jesus has made peace between us and God.  As a thank offering Jesus shows us that everything good comes from God.  In return, we offer our thanks and praises to God as offerings, and we offer ourselves as living sacrifices in thanks to God. Jesus truly is the once for all sacrifice.   

Notice there’s nothing about the need for an earthly temple to be established before Christ returns.  Rather, our text says that all those things from the beginning were mere shadows of what was to come.  Anyone saying that the Temple in Jerusalem must be rebuilt before Christ can return is at best grossly misinterpreting the book of Daniel.  Herod’s temple was the 3^rd physical temple.  The second temple was rebuilt by the exiles who returned to Jerusalem.  The temple that matters now is the one not built by human hands, which we are told is the Church—the people who follow Christ are the temple of God, and each one of us is a temple of God.  I want to read just a little more from Hebrews 10 beginning in 19:  

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy  Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Here we are told that the veil that was torn was Jesus’s own flesh.  And because of what Christ did, we can confidently enter in to the most holy place, the presence of God.  We can have assurance that our hearts are sprinkled and our bodies washed with pure water.  This latter is a reference to baptism, which signifies our entrance into the church.  We have assurance of our forgiveness, and we are called to encourage each other to love and good deeds.  No longer are our works dead, but profitable.  And we are called to continue to meet together as His Church.  If we want to hasten the day of Christ’s coming, we are to live as the writer of the Hebrews tells us and as Peter tells us to in 2 Peter 3:11 in “holy conduct and godliness.”  Peter also tells us that the reason Christ hasn’t returned yet is because the Lord is patiently waiting for people to come to repentance.  Jesus Himself said that He will not return until “this gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the earth.”  There are still people who need to hear the good news of the kingdom.  Believe it or not, some of them are right here in our town.  And there are a lot of people groups in the world who still have never heard.  We need to pray, as Jesus commanded, that “the Lord of the harvest would send more laborers.”  

Friends the curtain is gone!  We have full access to God in Jesus Christ and access to all of God’s blessings.  We have assurance that our sins are forgiven, that our prayers are heard and will be answered.  We have assurance of eternal life.  We offer worship pleasing to God.  We have the best prize package!  And the Man behind the curtain is no scam artist, but Jesus Christ—God in flesh, who is our High Priest forever. 

Finding Your Identity; Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Luke 4:1-13

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The Brightest and Darkest Moments; Luke 9:28-36, Luke 23:44-45a

 

Think of the brightest moment in your life—a time of happiness, wonder, and joy.  What was it?....Now think of the darkest moment in your life—a time of great pain, grief, maybe a tragedy you would rather forget.  Maybe you even asked or cried out, “Where are you, God?”  Was Jesus in both of those moments?  Did He share in your joy?  Did He share in your sufferings?  Today we look at the brightest and darkest moments in Jesus’s life—His transfiguration, and his crucifixion. 

            The Transfiguration was literally the brightest day for Jesus.  He appeared in light as light.  Luke describes his clothing as flashing like lightening.  Jesus appeared in all His heavenly glory, that which was His from before time, and that which He has now.  Jesus was being honored by God the Father.  And yet, even in this brightest moment, there was talk of darkness ahead.  Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are having a conversation about “Jesus’s departure” “He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.  That’s a nice way of saying Jesus’s death.  We aren’t giving any details about the conversation, but it was something Peter, James, and John were able to hear, although they do not participate in it.  We are only told that towards the end of the conversation, Peter interrupted to say that they could build tabernacles for Jesus and the two prophets.  Luke tells us that they had been sleepy before this, and it was the light that brought them to their senses.  The other two gospels emphasize how terrified they were.  While this was a bright day for Jesus, the disciples were overwhelmed and scared.  God has to speak in a cloud to tell them to PAY ATTENTION!  Something important and serious is happening and going to happen.  They had to be reminded that Jesus wasn’t an ordinary rabbi.  He is the Son of God, the Chosen One.”  If you remember from last week, these are the very titles that the religious leaders used to mock Jesus and challenge Him to come down off the cross. 

            For the 3 disciples, I’m sure this was a WOW experience that took some time to process.  They didn’t talk about it until years later.  That probably would’ve been a hard thing to do!  The Bible study group has been looking at the life of Paul this week.  In re-reading Paul’s conversion experience this week, it dawned on me that the light Paul and the soldiers experienced on that Damascus road was the glorified Jesus—the risen and ascended One shining with the same glory that Peter, James, and John saw on that mountaintop, light so bright that it left Paul blind until Ananias healed him, and may have even been the source of his ongoing eye problems, which Dr. Luke helped treat.  Like Peter, James, and John, everyone fell to the ground in fear.  I can imagine Paul talking to Peter after he returns from his 3 year period in the wilderness and sharing his experience.  I’m sure Peter and John both would have made comparisons with their experience of Jesus. 

For Jesus, this experience allowed Him to reveal His divine fullness to the disciples.  The voice from the Father, echoing what He spoke at Jesus’s baptism, must have been a comfort and reassurance to Jesus.  He would hear God speak one more time during Holy Week when Jesus was teaching and some Greeks wanted to see Jesus.  We don’t know if they ever got to, but the people around Jesus did.  He tells them, “This voice has not come for my sake but for your sakes.” This bright moment for Jesus gave Him something to look forward to, knowing that He was about to face His darkest moment. 

Jesus’s darkest moment was hanging on the cross, dying.  Everyone in Jerusalem and maybe even broader, participated in this darkest moment with the sun being obscured for 3 hours.  We have seen that yes, there was an eclipse during this time, but this couldn’t have been any ordinary eclipse.  3 hours of totality would be something for sure!  Totality during an eclipse is generally a few minutes.  The longest solar eclipse ever recorded is 743 BC at just over 7 ½ minutes.  That’s BC, so if one lasted 3 hours in 33 AD, it surely would have made the history books.  Furthermore, Jesus was crucified around the full moon, not the new moon, which is required for a solar eclipse.  In fact, Julius Africanus writing in 240 AD, reflecting on the writings of Thallus from 50 AD, says that Thallus’s explanation of this 3 hours of darkness being an eclipse are “without evidence.”  There was also an earthquake when Jesus died.  We will hear more about this in a couple of weeks.  Depending on when that earthquake actually hit, it could have thrown enough dust in the air to darken it.  We know that volcanos have done this, so much so, that the sky has been darkened for nearly a year!  3 hours is nothing for a volcano and even a large earthquake.  But all the gospel put the earthquake just before or right at Jesus’s death.  Back in Luke 22, when Jesus was arrested, He said “to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders who had come out against Him, ‘Have you come out with swords and clubs as against a robber?  While I was in the temple, you did not lay hands on Me, but this is your hour and power of darkness.”  Of course, Jesus’s arrest and trials and tortures by the Jewish leaders and Herod were all at night.  In the morning, He went before Pilate and was tried and tortured.  And as He was crucified around noon, the sky once again became as dark as night and stayed that way until Jesus died at 3pm.  This was also an hour of the power of darkness.  It looked like evil was winning.  Certainly, evil was very much at work.  The sky darkening could have been creation’s response to the crucifixion of Jesus.  When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the religious leaders tried to make Jesus get His disciples to shut up as they were praising God and singing about the Messiah, but Jesus told the leaders that if they were to be silent, the rocks would cry out.  Romans 8 tells us that all creation is groaning, even now.  Romans 8:20-22--"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

But just as there was a bit of darkness on Jesus’s brightest day for the disciples, that holy terror that overcame them and perhaps even lingered after they came down from the mountain, there is brightness for us on Jesus’s darkest day.  Craig Evans suggests in his commentary on Luke that the 3 hours of darkness might be a foreshadowing of Christ’s return.  Christ’s return is referred to by both Jesus and Paul as being “like a thief in the night,” not that it means Jesus will come at night (because it will always be light somewhere anyway), but that His coming will be unexpected.  Paul, Peter, and the book of Revelation all talk about the heavens and earth shaking violently when Christ returns.  Even Jesus, as brokenhearted as He is, knows that He will come again in glory.  The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus went to the cross keeping in mind the “joy that was set before Him.”  Joy would be coming. 

We know that there is even more light for us on this darkest of days, so much so that we now call this day, “Good Friday.”  The brightest as we have heard the past two weeks is that we have been forgiven at the cross and have had the way to eternal life opened for us.  We know that Jesus’s crucifixion is the greatest expression of God’s love for us, that God sent Jesus to be condemned and die in our place.  And though it looked like evil was winning, it was by Christ’s death that the devil was defeated.  Colossians 2:15 says, “When He, that is Jesus, disarmed the rulers and authorities (that is the spiritual powers and authorities), He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through the cross.”  Yes, we can stand with the women and John at the cross and weep.  It is a very dark day, but the darkness cannot overcome the light.

            We may not realize it, but Jesus is present with us not only in our brightest moments, but in our darkest moments as well.  He suffers with us, and we offer our sufferings up to Him.  In our brightest moments, He rejoices with us, and we are called to glorify and praise Him.  Jesus is with us in every moment.  No matter how dark it gets, Jesus is the Light which the darkness cannot overcome.  The Light will shine again.  Darkness cannot win.