SERMON MANUSCRIPT
This feels like Luke 23:46 is holy ground. The Son speaking to the Father as he dies for humanity. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” It’s precious, intimate, and awe-inspiring.
TWO REASONS TO WORSHIP
So awe-inspiring, in fact, that it provides us with at least two reasons to worship. There are things about Jesus seen here that are true only of Jesus and, because of that, provoke praise.
Awe should lead to worship. Jeremiah said, “There is none like you, O Lord” (Jer. 10:6). “You’re incomparable, God!” “Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? Indeed it is your due!” (10:7). God’s owed absolute reverence because he’s absolutely unique.”
Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecy
And Jesus, being God, is likewise unique and worthy of worship. The first reason from Luke 23:46 is his fulfillment of prophecy. No one else has, can, or will do that.
What Jesus shouts here, David shouted before. In Psalm 31, he calls to God for help. His idolatrous enemies had lied about him, conspired against him, laid a trap for him, persecuted and overwhelmed him, shamed and grieved him, slandered and broken him. He’s deeply troubled and greatly afflicted.
And yet, in spite of being wrongly ensnared by enemies of righteousness, David declares that he’s trusting God. “My times are in your hands, God.” “You’ll hear me and vindicate me, Lord.” “You’ll right these wrongs and deliver me.” “I know you, Lord, and it’s into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Centuries later, Jesus grabs David’s words and says they pointed to him. David endured hell on earth, but the Son of David did even more so and, like the psalmist, he would ultimately entrust his life to the God of grace and truth.
This saying from the cross is another example of Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecy, an awesome reason to worship him. Think about it: no human being was ever more anticipated by more people in more parts of the world and with more precision than Jesus Christ.
Over the course of hundreds of years, across multiple cultures and languages, and by the mouths of dozens of different people who never met one another, this man was predicted hundreds of times. Details of his birth, life, lineage, teaching, character, reception, mission, power, death, and resurrection were all foretold.
Now, some of the prophecies are so specific, one might wonder why they’re there at all—the cost of his betrayal, his clothing being divided up, the vinegar he’d be given to drink, or that his bones would remain unbroken. Why do we need these details? Because they help us believe the less measurable, more grandiose promises.
If I told you that ten years from this morning, you were going to win the lottery without buying a ticket, you’d likely doubt me and certainly wouldn’t live like you believe me. But what if I also said some other things? Smaller things. Today you’ll go to the parking lot and find you have two flat tires—front driver’s and rear passengers. If, when you find it’s true, you’d likely wonder if I did it. Fair enough. But I also tell you that next week, you’ll have three days of crippling pain in your right knee. The week after, Oakville will experience a mysterious cheese shortage. Four months after that you will find a woman named Doris will tell you “You look like my brother, Dilbert.” Oh, and by the way, if you check your front pocket now you will find a bank note for 100 krona, that’s Icelandic currency. So seemingly odd and specific, right? But, let’s say each of those happens exactly as I said. Would you now start to wonder—maybe even believe—my prediction about the lottery?
God has made a big promise: if anyone believes in my Son, I will give them eternal life and raise them from the dead. They will live with me forever in paradise in a sinless world on a curse-less planet. That may be hard to believe and, if we don’t believe it, we’re not going to live in light of its hope.
But then God comes along and gives hundreds of other, smaller, seemingly less significant predictions, most of which have already come to pass exactly as prophesied and many of them in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
And “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” is another example. As we’re reminded in this scene, Jesus is not only the fulfillment of God’s promises, he’s the proof that God’s promises can be trusted. That we can change our lives today in light of the promises for which we await their realization. Jesus’s fulfilment of prophecy is a reason to worship him.
Jesus’s submissiveness to death
But there’s another reason here to worship Christ, and it’s his submissiveness to death. Who has that power but Christ? “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Hear the beautiful words of John 10. This is our Lord speaking about us! [John 10:9–18]
Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh, the eternal Son, the pre-existent “I am,” the ruler, creator, sustainer, and owner of all that is. If a legion of demons tremble at his presence, you think a legion of Roman soldiers can control him? He hung the stars; you think he’s worried about Judas? You think the Pharisees outsmarted the one you shushed storms and rose the dead?
No. If Jesus doesn’t decide to die, he doesn’t die. But he did die, which means he wanted to. “Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). His humanity protested what his divinity knew lay ahead. He told his disciples, “Now my soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour” (John 12:27). Jesus laid down his life for a purpose and on purpose.
But why? What was the motivation for this submission? Love. Jesus died horribly because he loved greatly. He loved the Father (understandable) and he loved humanity (less understandable). “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15), and to do that he had to die for sinners and that he did because he loves sinners, sinners like you and me.
No one took Jesus’s life. He gave it willingly, lovingly, submitting himself to death so that we who deserve death may have life. If that’s not something that deserves adoration, I don’t know what is.
So, we have here two reasons to worship, two more facets of our Lord’s character that provide fuel for praise: Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecy and his submissiveness in death.
He’s awesomely fascinating and unparalleled in his beauty. The more we stare at him, the more we know him, the more we’re in awe of him, enthralled by him. And, brothers and sisters, this is how we serve him, follow him, love him, stand for him, share him, and become more like him. This is how we kill sin and embrace grace. It’s not by militantly keeping rules or striving to be pretty good people. It’s by seeing Christ for who he is and letting his beauty wash over us, motivate us, convict us, and send us.
God—Father, Son, and Spirit—are amazingly unique and that reality leads to worship and that worship leads to life change.
TWO WAYS TO FOLLOW
To that end, with the time I have left, I want to point out two ways we can follow Jesus. Two things that, motivated by our worship, we can do to become more like he who we adore.
Jesus’s use of Scripture
The first is in Jesus’s use of Scripture. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Isn’t it amazing how often we find the Incarnate Word of God leaning on the written word of God? While hanging on the cross, Jesus unsheathes the sword of Psalm 31, but not for the first time, that’s for sure.
When tempted by the devil, Christ said, “It is written.” When facing cultural pressure to accommodate sin, he ask, “What did Moses command you?” When confronted with unbelief, he said, “Have you never read … ?” When his authority was challenged, he asked, “Did you never read [this] in the Scriptures?” When being talked down to by the cultural elites, he told them to “Go and learn what this means,” pointing them to the OT prophets.
Jesus was full of God’s word, yielded to God’s word, ready with God’s word, and skilled with God’s word. And if that was our Lord’s posture toward the Scriptures, if he found them that useful for the war that is life in a fallen world, then shouldn’t we?
I’m concerned that God’s people think more like the world than like the word. I’m concerned that God’s people run more quickly and excitedly to solutions and comforts that the world prescribes than they do to those which God prescribes.
In sadness we turn to entertainment, in temptation to willpower, in loneliness to idolatry, in purposelessness to narcissism. To the detriment of our souls, our families, our churches, and our neighbours, Christians are often being conformed to the image of this world and not transformed by the renewing of our minds.
God’s word is the soap we need to clean our thoughts, the weapon we need to defend our hearts, the tutor we need to train our ways, the standard we need to correct our conclusions, the rock we need to steady our feet, the light we need to illumine our paths, the balm we need to relieve our pains, the blanket we need to comfort our chills, the prescription we fill to heal our wounds, and the food we need to energize our journeys. As Jesus himself said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God’” (Matt. 4:4).
We would do well to notice our Saviour’s use of Scripture, and ask for his help to follow his example. We need to be people of the book, studying, understanding, submitting, equipping, loving, speaking, and wielding it in all its authority and sufficiency.
Jesus’s faith in the Father
The second way we can follow Jesus is by striving to emulate his faith in the Father.
For the entirety of Jesus’s earthly ministry, it was evil hands that opposed him. In John 10:39, Jewish opponents were “seeking again to seize [Jesus], [but] he eluded their [hand].” Jesus told his disciples, “the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men” (Luke 9:44). Not long after, “The scribes and the chief priests tried to lay hands on him” (Luke 20:19). At the last supper, Jesus said, “the hand of the one betraying me is with mine on the table” (Luke 22:21) and in the garden, “[The armed mob] came and laid hands on Jesus and seized him” (Matt. 26:50).
Wicked hands were always hovering, threatening, and oppressing our Lord. And, how did he respond? Into whose hands did he run for help? Not angelic hands. [Luke 4:9–11] Jesus wouldn’t even depend on his own hands, hands which had been used to heal, comfort, bless, and lead countless people.
But no! On the cross we see Christ run to only One in his time of need: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” He goes to the Father and to the Father alone. He trusts his Father with his life, his pain, his circumstances, and his future. He trusts his Father in the darkness and for protection. His trusts his Father’s will, providence, purposes, and goodness.
And this is something you and I are invited to mimic. In fact, Jesus tells those who would follow him that, in future times of distress, his enemies will be theirs: “they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you” (Luke 21:12).
And we know this. They come for us. We have pains and confrontations, dismissals and disappointments, heartbreak and heartache. Some of you feel those hand gripping your throat even this morning, treating to choke the faith and hope and love right out of you. Discouragement hangs like a thick fog. Pain lingers. The hands of the evil one are everywhere, his fingers always threatening to close.
Into whose hands will you run? I hope and pray it’s not our own hands but into the hands of the Father. Can you trust the Father with your future? With your pain? With your heartbreak? Can you submit yourself to a God that is good, even when you can’t understand or see or feel his goodness? Have you modelled your faith in the Father after the Son’s faith in the Father, calling out to him in submissive, childlike trust?
Two reasons to worship: Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecy and his submissiveness to death. Two ways to follow: our Lord’s use of Scripture and his faith in the Father. Jesus’s uniqueness leads to worship which leads to trust.
“Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]’
Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.
