Well, greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ this evening, Christ, who is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. It's good to be back with all of you again tonight. I hope you've all had a restful afternoon on this day of rest that God has given to us, a day to rest from our physical labors and also to tap further into the joys of our spiritual and eternal rest that is ours as children and heirs of God and joint heirs. with Christ through the gospel. to us his words of eternal life, words of divine truth, which are able to save and to sanctify our souls. So as we prepare our hearts to give special attention to his living word tonight, yet again, let us first, as always, seek for God's blessing upon it. For we cannot profit, friends, unless the spirit of God grants us understanding and makes it effectual upon our hearts. Let's look to God for him to give us the riches of his word. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for bringing us together in this hour to consider your holy word. Lord, we pray that we would attend to it as babies attend to their mother's milk, that we would grow thereby, that we would truly taste that you are gracious to our souls, that Christ would be ever present, precious to our hearts. And so, Lord God, give me strength as I preach. May I preach in the power of your Holy Spirit, a demonstration of power, that you would speak through me, that you would get me out of the way, that you would teach your people your truth, that you would give us exactly what we need to hear as we look and attend upon your word. And so, Lord God, we pray that you would teach us wonderful things in your law, open up our ears to hear it for your servants are listening. And we entrust our souls to you and pray that you would fill our souls with good things from your word this evening. I pray this in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. Well friends, I ask you at this time to take up your copy of God's Word and turn with me, not to Luke, but first turn to the book of Psalms. Rather than picking up immediately where we left off this morning, I figured that it would be good for us to begin by reading the entirety of Psalm 31, which will help us to understand why Christ made use of this psalm right before he died, how the supernatural truths of the entire Psalm ministered to his soul, and how really and truly these words were Christ's words before they ever were David's. Now you might say, how is that possible? That doesn't seem to work. Didn't David live and speak these words before Christ ever did? Well, technically speaking, yes, that is true. David penned the words of Psalm 31, but as a prophet, David wrote in the Spirit of Christ according to 1 Peter 1 10-11 which read, Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. So that means Christ, when he says into your hands, I commit my spirit, he's not borrowing them from David, but it's in fact the other way around. The spirit of Christ impressed those words into David's heart for him to write them into a psalm for his covenant people to sing. That's why you always gotta be careful when someone asks you, how many of the Psalms are messianic? This is often a question that's asked in presbytery exams. Though there are many Psalms that have been designated messianic, Psalm 2, Psalm 16, Psalm 45, Psalm 69, 72, et cetera, actually, my friends, all of them are messianic. Because in all of them you can hear the voice of Christ coming through, though they were written down with the pen of the inspired prophets. You say that's a crazy view. That's the view of the early church, actually. For instance, Augustine, in the first two sentences of his exposition of the Psalms, beginning with Psalm 1, he writes this on verse 1. Blessed is the man that hath not gone away in the counsel of the ungodly. This is to be understood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord, man. So before we jump into Luke 23, 46, where Christ prays the exact words of Psalm 31, verse five, let's now read the entirety of the Psalm, Psalm 31, and see how these experience and emotions are really and truly Christ, where Augustine says, our mediator speaks to us. And if you're not already there, you can find Psalm 31 on page 494, page 494. So here now, these words, brothers and sisters, the words of Christ, your Redeemer. To the chief musician, a Psalm of David. In you, O Lord, I put my trust. Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in your righteousness. Bow down your ear to me. Deliver me speedily. Be my rock of refuge, a fortress of defense to save me. For you are my rock. and my fortress. Therefore, for your name's sake, lead me and guide me. Pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, for you are my strength. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. I have hated those who regard useless idols, but I trust In the Lord I will be glad and rejoice in your mercy for you have considered my trouble. You have known my soul in adversities and have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a wide place. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble. My eye wastes away with grief. Yes, my soul and my body. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. I am a reproach among all my enemies, but especially among my neighbors and I'm repulsive to my acquaintances. Those who see me outside flee from me. I am forgotten like a dead man out of mind. I am like a broken vessel for I hear the slander of many fears on every side while they take counsel together against me. They scheme to take away my life, but as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say you are my God. My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me. Make your face shine upon your servant. Save me for your mercy's sake. Do not let me be ashamed, O Lord, for I have called upon you. Let the wicked be ashamed. Let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence which speak insolent things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. Oh, how great is your goodness which you have laid up for those who fear you, which you have prepared for those who trust in you in the presence of the sons of men. You shall hide them in the secret place of your presence. From the plots of man, you shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord. For he has shown me his marvelous kindness in a strong city. For I said in my haste, I'm cut off from before your eyes. Nevertheless, you heard the voice of my supplications when I cried out to you. Oh, love the Lord, all you his saints. For the Lord preserves the faithful and fully repays the proud person. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart. All you who hope in the Lord. Now you can turn over to Luke chapter 23 verse 46 where Christ draws comfort from themselves from those ancient words of his and directs them to his father as he is laying down his life for his own dear people as mediator. And again, you can find that on page 936 page 936. Let's read verse 46 as has been given to us by Luke. And we'll continue to mind them, seeking to be fully furnished and instructed by these words, all the while being amazed at the righteous deliverer that the Father has sent into the world to save our souls, our most desperate and our greatest need. So congregation, hear once again Christ's last spoken words on the cross. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Amen. And thus reads the life giving, the quickening and divine word of God. And may he write these words on each of our hearts and upon our minds. In the morning we looked at the, looked first at these words as a whole and saw that Christ recalled and utilized the words of Psalm 31, which we just read. to give Him the necessary strength to persevere in His final moments on the earth and to die in perfect faith, submitting Himself fully into the precious care and guardianship of His heavenly Father. Along with this, secondly, we noted that these words were also the dying prayer of the suffering Son, which He offered up to His Father. That as he meditated upon his God as his father, despite all that he had endured at the hands of wicked men, his absorbing of the wrath of God as an offering for sin, this caused him to delight in his goodness and to entreat his favor in sweet communion. He could say like Israel under their distresses and afflictions, Isaiah 63 verse 16, doubtless, you are our father. Though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not, You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer. Your name is from everlasting. Christ's only comfort in life and death, if I can borrow those words from the Heidelberg Catechism, was drawing near to his heavenly Father. He could cry out to him saying, Abba, Father, as I come to the end of my road, the life you have given me to live and to die for the people you have given me to redeem, so I, Father, commit them back to you. Commit them into your hands as you have always been and always will be my place of refuge, my safe asylum for me to rest upon as you are my Father. And learn that we must draw encouragement and confidence likewise. We are to draw near to our Heavenly Father as He is so to us. through Christ, especially friends when there is nowhere else to turn to in this life. God, our Heavenly Father, will warmly embrace us and take us into His arms. All of His sons and His daughters that have the spirit of adoption imprinted upon them. And He can bestow you then, if you are His child, with grace needed to bear afflictions that He has tailor-made for you, for your good. for my good. Friends, that's why Christ has taught us to pray in this way, saying our father, because therein lies all the confidence we need to draw near to his throne of grace in time. of need. Thomas Vincent commented on this crucial part of our praying. He said this, praying our father teaches us to draw near to God with confidence, both of his all sufficiency and his readiness to help as also with a filial affection of desire, love and delight as children to a father. This is what the Lord Jesus did when death was very near to him. And it caused him wholly to yield himself to his father's will and to his care. Because he knew that he would guide and preserve him even in and unto death itself. There was thus no safer place for Christ to be. And so he died in perfect peace. and faith with scripture on his tongue, communing with his father. What a way to die. And as one of the centurions witnessed this, verse 48 of our text, he rightly concluded that this man had to be, was indeed the righteous son of God. Because never had he seen an individual die like this. He had experienced probably hundreds of crucifixions, but never had he seen a man go out like this. before, so triumphantly, and the Spirit used it to regenerate his heart that day and he glorified God. After he heard Christ spout out these heartfelt words, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Having looked at these words as a whole in the very first word, Father, let's now look at the next thing I want you to see, and it's this. Thirdly, let's note the contrast in the words into your hands. You see sinful humanity that day thought they had Christ right where they wanted caught in the clutches of wicked men. They thought themselves to be in full control of His destiny, yet they were gravely mistaken because it was Christ who had voluntarily submitted Himself into their hands. And therefore He is able to say, though I have given Myself over freely to My worst enemies, nevertheless this was My Father's will for Me. And so I am really and truly not in their hands, but I am in Yours. In this, brothers and sisters, we see Christ's full control over His own death. That though He willingly delivered Himself over to those who sought to destroy Him, they had zero power to take His life from Him. Christ would lay it down of His own accord and on His own authority and at His own timing. As He said in John 10, verse 17 through 18, Therefore does my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my Father. And so here is Christ fulfilling those exact words. The contrast is that the world thought they had slain Christ by their wisdom, defeated him by their own wisdom and their own strength, but they were greatly duped. As Christ announces to them all that he is giving up his own life into his father's hands, that really and truly He has always been in his father's hands this whole time. A.W. Pink thus writes, voluntarily had the Savior delivered himself into the hands of sinners. And now voluntarily, he delivers his spirit into the hands of his father. What a blessed contrast. And very soon, never again will he be in the hands of men. Never again will he be at the mercy of the wicked. Never again will he suffer shame. Into the hands of the Father he commits himself, and the Father will now look after his interests. The tables have now turned. Christ willingly subjected himself to be at the mercy of unbelieving sinners, but not any longer. Now they shall all forever be at his mercy. on the day of judgment where there will be no mercy for unrepentant Christ killers as all men have the blood of Christ on their hands in Adam. And so Christ the judge at the end of the world will unleash his eternal wrath on all those who are his enemies rendering to every man says the scripture according to his deeds unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, indignation, wrath, tribulation, and anguish upon every soul of man that does evil. Romans 2 verse 6 and 8. But oh how infinitely gracious of God. that He has provided His eternal and beloved Son who can rescue us and who can shield our souls from this eternal death sentence. And this is possible. And how is this possible? You may ask. It is through Christ's act of committing His soul to the Father. Because what the Holy Spirit wants us to see is that Christ did not only commit His soul to the Father, but also all the sinful souls who would ever believe upon Him and His sacrifice. This is the fourth point. Let us consider the act itself. I commit my spirit. Why are these words good news for you and I today on the lips of Christ and for all sinners to the end of the world who will take them for their own? Because Christ said these words, friends, as mediator. He said them as substitute for all that will have Him by grace. He did not need redemption for Himself as He was perfectly sinless. But as Robert Murray McShane said, He did need redemption as He had our sins, all of the sins of His people, laid upon Him. And on that account, He needed redemption. He needed to be redeemed. Ah, brethren, McShane says, this is the only hand that can receive our spirit. No other than Him who has redeemed us. In Isaiah 53 verse 10, Isaiah prophesied that Christ would make His soul an offering And here in Luke 23 verse 46, Christ does just that by saying, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And he did this to save the souls of sinners as he then was burying sinful souls in his body. As if to say, Father, I offer my spirit so that you would receive the souls of sinners that I am dying to redeem by my living sacrifice that I am now pouring out to you, lifting up to you, which is the only way that they can ever be justified and therefore be reconciled unto you through my sacrifice. Oh, sweet exchange. Christ's precious and spotless soul for our dirty and damned souls. The writer of Hebrews thus writes, how much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Chapter nine, verse 14. This is why He can rightly be called, as we just read in our New Testament scripture reading, what? The shepherd and the overseer of our souls. Because He took lifeless and dead souled sinners, which He carried on His shoulders and made atonement for them with His blood. Our souls cannot be safer, cannot be any safer in anyone else's hands, beloved. What a love for sinners Christ has shown in this selfless act of offering his soul for sinful souls. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15 verse 13. And that's what these words reveal to us. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Matthew Henry comments and said here in verse 46 we see that Christ was himself both the priest and the sacrifice all at one. He says this as priest and sacrifice. Our souls were forfeited and must go and so he must go to redeem the forfeiture. The price must be paid into the hands of God, the party who is offended by sin. To Him He had undertaken to make full satisfaction. Christ says, I deposit it. Father, accept my life and my soul instead of the lives and souls of sinners that I'm dying for. And oh, with what cheerfulness. Christ made His offering, knowing full well that His Father would accept His sacrifice. How did He know it? Because He was and is the image of the invisible God. Colossians 1 verse 15, Christ is the very brightness of His Father's glory and the express image of His person. Hebrews 1 verse 3, to reject Him, the Father would have to reject Himself. Because the Father and the Son are one, so inseparably united to each other in will, in nature, in power, and in their very essence. To entrust your soul to this Christ is the only way to keep your soul secure eternally. The only way to avert God's holy wrath from falling upon you. and to be received peacefully into His holy presence. If you seek to present your soul to the Father all alone without a mediator, having refused to submit it to the care of Christ, the Father's Son, then He, the Father, will require your soul to right all the evil you have committed against Him and against His law. Souls committed to the Father through Christ's offering of His very own soul is where you want yours to be, beloved. Because Christ says no man is able to pluck them out of his Father's hands, and so Christ submits them to the Father's hand. And to this, all you must do to be a part of this, to have this benefit on your soul, is to believe upon Him. to come to Him, to accept what He has done for you, not for somebody else, but for you, friend. And you can be at peace with God this very night forever. Oh, if you have not committed your souls to this or your soul to the Savior of souls, may today be the day that you do. Again, McShane, when he preached from this text, he asked the question that gets to the heart of the matter. If your spirit is not committed to Him, will it be saved? Answer, it cannot. In a little, your spirit will return to God who gave it. And if it is not committed into the hand of Him who bore our sins in His own body on the tree, how then will you appear before Him? What will it take for you to come to Him, to take your soul to Him, to cure it of its sickness that leads to condemnation? You must first see how vile your own soul is in comparison to Christ's perfect soul. And that on your own you will never be able to uphold your own soul against the wrath of God. The scriptures declare that none can keep his soul alive. We sing it in Psalm 22, verse 29. So therefore we need one who can, one who has done it. His soul poured out unto death, says Isaiah 53, verse 12, so that he would bear the sinful souls of many. And he is able to save, my friend, to the uttermost those that come to God by him. If Christ's soul was flawlessly perfect and it was, and He saw need to commit it into the hands of His Father, then how much more should we guilty sinners daily submit our soul to the Father through Jesus Christ? Yet there is not just a great need to commit our souls to God in conversion. That's the first, that's the most important thing. Taking his son as the shepherd of our souls for our salvation. But Peter says that sufferers even should especially commit their souls to God who alone can preserve them. 1 Peter 4.19, wherefore, let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing unto a faithful creator. This is how Christ followers can undergo the most severe forms of persecution. Sometimes when you look at it online or read of an article, it's hard to take it in, to understand all the suffering that they're going through. But how do they do this? Because like the Lord Jesus, they have found the sweetness, the joy, the courage that can be found in committing their souls to God. 1 Peter 2 verses 21 through 23, we read them again. Peter shows us how Christ bore the shame and sufferings of the cross to bring us new life in His righteousness, which is the basis for how you and I are to suffer. For even here unto were you called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in his steps who did no sin. Neither was guile found in his mouth, who when he was reviled, he reviled not. When he suffered, he threatened it, threatened not. And here it is, friends, but committed himself to him that judges righteously. This is what he did throughout his sufferings on Calvary. And even at the very last seconds before He breathed His last, Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit. Shall we not do the same? When it's dark, in those gloomy days, or where you feel like your sinful lusts or your temptations are about to get the better of you, then stop in your tracks and pray these words, even as Christ did here, Into your hands I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O God of truth." Calvin sought to apply these words in this way. He wrote, as various tempests of grief disturb us and even sometimes throw us headlong or drag us from the direct path of duty, the only remedy for setting these things at rest is to consider that God, who is the author of our life, is also the preserver of it. This leads us to our final point, which is to examine the entrustment, the thing that Christ entrusted to his father, namely his spirit. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Now when Christ says my spirit, he does not mean the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, but he is referring to his very own human spirit that God gave to him in the incarnation when he took on humanity's flesh and became one of us. Thus Christ is giving back to God what rightly belongs to Him as His Father, who in the Scriptures, the Father is called the Father of Spirits. Hebrews 12 verse 9 and many other Old Testament texts. As human beings created in His image, we all, friends, have received our spirits from this same God. And it's a most precious thing, the most precious thing that we have, our being. It is His glorious handiwork. Though they are invisible to the eye, we know that they are eternal and precious, a gift of God. We know that our spirits come directly from God. We know this from the scriptures. As the scriptures say unequivocally, Ecclesiastes 12 verse 7, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it. And so Christ being such a human, As we are, He committed what was most precious, the soul that His Father gave Him. Oh, how precious, above all the souls He has ever made, Christ's soul. He laid it down in death to save souls like ours that were infested, that were ridden with sin from top to bottom through Adam's fall. the immaculate soul of Christ who is altogether lovely and righteous without a taint of sin. He gives that up and surrenders willingly for such a dead sinner like me who could ever comprehend that, let alone Thank Him enough for such a sacrifice. Christian, have you forgotten how much your salvation cost Christ? He, for your salvation, allowed His soul to be separated from His body, which is what happens at death. That's what happens when humans die, and he had his body, which he lived a sinless life in, lie under the power of death for a time. And all of that was necessary for him to raise himself from the dead to bring justification to you and to me who had no hope in your lifeless heart of stone. Jesus died to save my soul. Can you say those words? Oh blessed thought How we should ever thank him for his sacrifice on our behalf Friends that in the committing of his spirit to his father's hands there was ours with it If you have taken him as your redeemer And so the application I would submit to you is this As we bring, as we wrap all of this up, if Christ can save your soul, He can keep your soul safe and deliver it into His Father's hands, believer, then all we have, all that we are, all of the things that we undergo, we should gladly submit into His hands. So that we can say like the Apostle Paul who's told Timothy, as he himself knew this and he was about to die and pass on to glory, he said, I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded, not just I think it's hopeful. No, I am persuaded, fully convinced that he is able to what? Keep that which I have committed until that day. And so then let us follow our head and our mediator and make these words our own in him more consistently throughout our life. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit and all into the praise of his glorious grace. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, how precious was the soul of Your dear Son, and that You were willing to send, that You were able, that You were willing to have Him not, to not be spared, to give Him to us in full, that we, our sin-stricken, heavy-laden souls filled with sin, would be free in this man's giving up of himself as a sacrifice for our sins. Father, we cannot contemplate how much this cost the Lord Jesus Christ, but we know that He did it cheerfully, and for the joy set before Him, He laid down His life for us, that He might have us forever, that He would unite us to You, O God, our Father. What an amazing thing this is. And so, Lord, it teaches us that we ought to do the same. When troubles fill our breasts, when we do not know what to do, when we are shaking and quivering and are all out of options and feel helpless and lost, we know that we can commit our spirits to you as you have given them to us. You are the preserver of them. You know how they work even better than we do. And so, Lord, we pray that each one of us would do so even daily, that we would cry out to you in times of need, but also always that we could say, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit because Christ set it as our mediator and as our redeemer. And so, Lord, these This is a wonderful grace that you have bestowed upon us. And so, Lord, let us live in thankfulness. Let the praises of Christ be on our lips to think that Christ died for my soul. Oh, how that is a great truth and encouragement in this life. And so, Lord, let us not forget what you have done for our souls in Christ. We thank you for this, and we pray this all in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.