Word of Salvation – Vol.33 No.13 – April 1988

 

Jesus Dies But His Work Goes On

 

Sermon by Rev. W. J. Bosker on Luke 23:46 (Good Friday)

Readings: Ps. 31:1-8; Luke 23:26-49

Singing: BoW.H.304; 355; 380:1,2,3; 381

 

Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Good Friday brings us face to face with the cross of Jesus.  The very scene in which we find our text.  For some hours Jesus was hanging there.  Was He hanging there for you?  Come with me and stand here at the foot of the cross.  Have you listened to the words He spoke from that tree?  Six times he has spoken and one more time He will yet speak.  Listen to what He has already said:

1. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Here Jesus practised what He preached in the Sermon the Mount.  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Jesus prays for the forgiveness of those who were nailing Him to the tree.
2. With His second saying from the cross He opens the Kingdom of Heaven to a guilty criminal who truly repents and believes in Jesus. “I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise.”
3. Speaking to His mother He said: “Dear woman, here is your son” and to John, the disciple whom He loved, he said: “Here is your mother.” With these words He tenderly provided for the ones whom He would leave behind.
4. In His fourth saying He reveals the depths of the punishment He bore on our behalf. He endured the deepest spiritual darkness and experienced the agony of hell when He cried out: “My God!, My God!  Why have You forsaken Me?”
5. So that the Scriptures would be fulfilled, and indicating that He suffered unto death, Jesus nearing the end of His endurance said “I am thirsty.” This was His fifth saying from the cross.
6. His sixth saying was a cry of accomplishment. A proclamation of good news.
   “It is finished” He cried.
   God the Father responded and declared His Son’s mission accomplished.  The temple curtain was torn in two.  Man could now approach God.  THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE HAS BEEN PAID!

But listen!  Jesus has something more to say.

7. He calls out with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.”

When He said this, He breathed His last.

What can this mean?  Is this a farewell statement?  A deathbed address?  Is this the last we will hear from Him?

The theme for our text is:
“Jesus dies, but His work goes on.”  We are going to see that this last saying of Jesus from the cross is…

1. Not a farewell statement or deathbed address.
2. But it is a prayer uttered in full consciousness, in which our Lord confidently entrusts His life to the Father.
3. From these two points we will draw some implications as to how we may live after Calvary.

Point 1:

Firstly then, How can we be sure that this is not a farewell statement, a deathbed address?  Jesus died didn’t He?  To admit that Jesus died is a different thing from saying that Jesus’ seventh saying from the cross is a farewell statement.

Let me explain.  It will be important to distinguish whether we view this incident through the eyes of those who had just crucified Jesus, or through the eyes of the Lord Jesus whose Spirit moved eye-witnesses to record these events.  To one who had been keeping up with the events of the day, and seen Jesus brutally flogged, carrying His own cross and now hanging on it, it might seem that Jesus had finally reached the end.  Few, if any, saw the significance of Christ’s words: “I lay down My life for the sheep… only to take it up again” (Jn.10:14, 17).  “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert so the Son of Man must be lifted up…!” (Jn.3:14).

All that the Jews, who had cried out, “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!”, now saw was a dead man.  So much for Him being the Son of God.  He didn’t come down from the cross when challenged.  “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!”  “He saved others, but He can’t save Himself.”

Viewed through the eyes of many bystanders, Jesus had just made His farewell statement.  His deathbed address.  Many people may entertain that idea today.  When Jesus breathed His last, that was the end.  Dead is dead, so this must have been Jesus’ last word.

But I do not hesitate to add that we should look at this incident through the eyes of the Lord Jesus and those who were eye-witnesses whom the Holy Spirit moved to record these events.

The Gospel writers themselves were at first confused by the events of the day.  However we have their reliable testimony that Jesus did rise again from the dead.

There is more historical evidence that Jesus rose again from the dead than there is that Julius Caesar lived and ruled the Roman Empire.

What we are saying is that the Gospel writers wrote their accounts after the event.  They wrote (moved by the Holy Spirit) so that we might know this Jesus as the Christ of whom everything that was predicted came true.  They wrote so that we may believe in Him and have life in His name.

Point 2:

Let us then look at this last saying spoken from the cross and see that it is A PRAYER, in which our Lord confidently entrusts His life into His Father’s hands.

Now if Jesus had been resigned to the fact that His life had come to a dead end, He would have quietly slipped away, dying the death of a common man.

Our text however, says that He “called out with a loud voice.” The centurion noticed this was unusual.  Usually a crucifixion victim died because of the tremendous difficulty in breathing.  In addition they would usually lapse into a coma before death.

So the first thing we see is that right up until the very last moment Jesus was fully conscious, fully aware of what He was doing, and fully aware of the wrath of God which he was bearing.

Now let us examine what he says.  In some of your Bibles you will see that this is a quote from Ps.31:5.  There David prays to the Covenant God of Israel, Yahweh.  He has made the LORD his refuge, and now in his prayer for protection David prays: “Into Your hands I commit my spirit.”  This quotation from Ps.31 is important for several reasons.

1. It is not written by David on his deathbed. David is here speaking in the middle of life, rejoicing in the LORD’s deliverance.  See what he says in vs.8: “You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.”  For David this is a hymn of life.  For Jesus to quote it means that He will not abuse the context in which this part of Scripture is written.  In other words, this saying of Jesus. on the cross is not in the first place a reference to His approaching death!
2. We know from Jewish literature how these words were used. They became part of the bed-time prayer of Jewish children.  And in general, every Israelite was advised to use it as an evening prayer.  This further indicates that this Psalm conveys a sense of life.  Life extended through the night and into the morning.  Safely protected in the hands of the Almighty God of heaven.
3. This same sense holds true for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is highlighted by a change in tense when Jesus uses it.  David says: “Into your hands I will commit my spirit”, using a future tense.  Jesus says: “Father, into your hands I am committing My spirit”, using the present tense.  The future tense was appropriate for the Jew.  Each day they would lay the coming night before their God.  For Jesus, the present tense was appropriate.  Right now He was committing His whole life’s work into the Father’s hand.  He would do it once, in the sense that His life’s work had now finished.  Never to be repeated.
4. The word “spirit” is used here in the sense of “breath”, the principle of life. Jesus hands over His life to God the Father.  It is a prayer of trusting confidence that the One who gave Him life in the first place, now receives it back.  The same One from whom He will receive His life back again in the resurrection.
5. This is the meaning we find in the word “commit”. It means an active deed in depositing something with another.  Giving someone else charge over what you entrust to them.  All this done in the context of trust and confidence.  So at the point of death Jesus does not quietly resign to death as something inevitable and  unavoidable.  He had resolutely set Himself to go to Jerusalem, knowing that the cross would be the crowning work of His substitutionary sacrifice.  He did this in full awareness and consciousness.  Not because He was obliged to, but voluntarily, of His own free will.  He offered Himself.  His death in that sense was His own act.  It was not an untimely end.  He entrusted His life into the reliable and trustworthy hands of His Father.  He laid down His life.  Death did not swallow Him up.
6. It is for that reason that the Gospels do not speak of Christ dying. Ordinary words for death were available for these Gospel writers to use.  John and Matthew deliberately refer to Jesus yielding up or giving up His spirit.  Fully in control of His actions.  Mark and Luke use the same word.  They use it only here, and nowhere else in the Bible.  So they are making a point.  When all that Jesus had to do for our salvation was done, He could breathe His last.

When He had given everything He had, when He had suffered all there was to suffer, Jesus confidently entrusted His saving work and life into the Father’s hand.  When all had been said and done, Jesus laid himself down to sleep.  The curtain didn’t fall as the act closed!  Vs.45 tells us that the temple curtain was torn in two from top to bottom.  A new work lay ahead of our Lord.  Death would not hold Him.  He would rise to intercede for His people.  Christ did not take leave from His work of salvation.  His last saying was no farewell statement or deathbed address.  His death was laying His life into the Father’s just and gracious hand.  The Father’s work must go on!

Point 3:

His death then was a victory.  A victory over every force that tried to separate Jesus from God.

1. Let us not view the dying Christ with sympathy, but with admiration. We are not called to be sorry for Him.  We are not to mourn Christ’s death.  Sympathy is not faith!  Sympathy does not join us to Christ in a living relationship.
2. Jesus knew exactly what He was doing. He did it for us!  He saw the mess we were in; He knew we were spiritually bankrupt.  A debt had to be paid.  And He willingly went all the way to the cross for you and me.  The response He wants from us is not sympathy.  But true sorrow for sin.  And to look up to Him in faith.  Believing that what he did was for you.
3. Jesus’ death was the end of one assignment and the beginning of another. Instead of the curtain falling down, it parted.  He now lives to intercede for us who live twenty centuries later.  He has given us access into the grace of God.  The curtain is open!
4. For Jesus there was no fear in death. He saw it as the last enemy to be conquered.  In His death we have life, eternal life.  Death has lost its sting.  Faith joins us to Christ.  So death will no longer harm us.  Even though we will all have to go through it, our Lord has taken the fear out of it, so that now it is a curtain through which we pass to be with Him eternally.
5. Now the prayer of David takes on a fuller meaning! We can trust in the Lord Jesus for protection in the night.  We can also trust Him with our lives.  It’s a prayer we can pray with all confidence.  Jesus, the Firstborn among many brothers.  He stopped at nothing to give us life.

“Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit!”

AMEN.