Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 07 – Sep 1986

 

Father Into Your Hands

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Luke 23:46

Readings: Psalm 31, Luke 12:13-21, 23:32-46.

Singing: P.H. 348, 94, 53, 462, 442.

 

When in the terrible torture of being nailed to a cross the Son of God dies His terrible death it is – amazingly – with a child’s prayer on His lips.  We know from Jewish literature of that time, that this prayer from Psalm 31 was the customary children’s evening prayer.

As a little boy Jesus must have learned it from mother Mary: “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit…!”

“Watch Thou over me this night,
 Keep me safe till morning light,
 In the darkness Thou art near,
 I have nothing more to fear…!”

Into Your hands… into Your hands …!  Jesus prays this prayer too, with the words of the Old Testament.  But he changes something.  He adds something: the word “FATHER”.  He who had cried out only a short while beforehand that bitter cry: My God, My God!  Why have You forsaken Me?  Now says again – as a trusting child: “FATHER…!”

The battle has been fought.  The price for your and my mis-doing has been paid.

Death – for Him – already has lost its sting.  Yes, Jesus now truly can say what Psalm 31 says:

Into your Hands I commit My spirit.
You have redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth:
I entrust Myself to the LORD,
I will be glad and bask in Your love.
You saw my affliction,
and You knew the anguish of my soul.
But… You have set My feet
in the wide-open space…!’

Yes, He has made these words come true…!  Now God’s face shines for ever on His Son, His faithful, His obedient Servant.

The price has been paid in full, all the punishment has been borne to the end.

Jesus had said it, cried it in victory over that hill:
            “IT IS FINISHED”
            “IT’S ALL BEEN DONE.
Now the world will come to its full renewal.  Now God’s plan will fully be carried out.  The power of the evil One has been broken.  Truly the psalmist may sing:
            LOVE THE LORD ALL YOU SAINTS OF HIS.
For what saints could there ever have been without the suffering and victory of Jesus?  Jesus prays this prayer after the psalmist, that is after His forefather, David.  But David could not have prayed it like that.

Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit…
a spirit that has never sinned…
a spirit that has been obedient to the end
and bore the brunt of death … of hell itself.
Father – here it is.

And we, who can only offer to God spirits and minds and bodies tainted with selfishness and rebellion, we stand there and see how Jesus bore the burden for us.

We hear Him say this and are amazed.  ‘Hallelujah’ we say. ‘what a Saviour…!’ Because, since Jesus could pray that prayer at that moment – we may now pray this child’s prayer after Him.  We may express child-like trust in God who no longer is our Enemy and Judge, but, who for Jesus’ sake, has forever become our Father.

Now we too may say, FATHER!  That’s what we may call the holy God, the judge of all the earth who knows the deepest thought and passion in our turbulent hearts.  Because Jesus bore the curse for us He invites us:
            Go on, call Him Dad!
            Father, my spirit… I give it into Your hands.

Oh, to be able to say that when it is our time to die!  As this week I heard an old child of God, on what could easily be her death bed, say it herself:

I will glory in the cross
and no law shall condemn me any more
Christ bore the brunt for me…
God is my father and I am forever His child…!

Then you can say what that other verse of this Psalm 31 says:
            My times…are safe in your Hand.
What a security.  What a rest.  Then you can really get stuck into your work, into God’s work in the world, when that uncertainty and insecurity has for ever been taken off you.  Then the anguish of death has gone: Father here it is, my spirit… I give it to you, knowing Who you are.  You can fill it with Your peace and so I can be productive and loving and no longer be afraid to get hurt.

As you see, this is not only a great way to die, it is a great way – the only real way… to LIVE!

Not that things will always be smooth and easy…  Not that there will be no battle to fight, no tears to shed.  But to be able to lay it all into the hands of your Father, who for Jesus’ sake truly BECAME that.  That makes all the difference!

Our disquieted heart, our tormented spirit, our uncertain lot, our question-riddled existence… what do we do with it?  Just hang on to it all and try to work things out on our own?

You know, one day the Lord will come anyway and will say: Okay mate, this is IT, that soul of yours, that life of yours, I require it, I want it back.  That’s what that story of Jesus in Luke 12 tells us.  When your life has been chock-a-block with the idols of our day, with goods and money, with barns full of junk, bags full of pride and false trust in yourSELF, then, at that moment, you will stand as naked and exposed as that so-called rich man – poor devil that he really was.  That is the terrible alternative to the child’s prayer of this morning.

Either the Lord will say: I DEMAND your spirit, or you say, have said it in trust and love: Here father… I commend to You… that spirit of mine.  That cross of Jesus… it either will save you and crown you with glory… or it will crush you.  That is still the alternative today.  But, says Psalm 31, why shall you be so foolish?  Why be so stupid?

Lord, how great is YOUR GOODNESS which you GIVE for FREE, which YOU have STORED UP for those who fear You!  Jesus paid the price of our rebellion.  Whoever believes that and calls him his Saviour, will and can and must live day by day from His grace.  But though it is FREE grace it is not CHEAP grace.  It is by faith in Jesus that we learn to pray after Him this prayer of S U R R E N D E R:

Lord, Father, into YOUR hands.
I commit the whole kaboodle,
the whole of my life, lock, stock and barrel,
the weakness of it, the tears of it
and the glory and the laughter of it.
Lord it is all Yours to do with it what You want.
You are its very Creator and Redeemer.
What other sense does it have than to be in YOUR hands?

Yes, we pray: my times are in Your Hand.  What a different way, what a relaxed way of looking at life!  Not lazy… yet how relaxed!  That Hand of the Father guiding me in whatever way He wants me to go.  He will look after me.

When you surrender in trust to God a great burden falls away from your shoulders.  Instead of saying, defiantly:
            “I am the captain of my soul, I am the commander of my lot…!”
you may follow the King of kings in the childlike prayer of trust in the Maker of all the universe: Father… into your hands… I commit my spirit.

A burden falls away, I say.  A calling, a childlike obedience comes in its place.  And in those hands there is hope and peace.  For in the hands of the Father there is resurrection and life!

AMEN