Please join me in the Gospel of Luke chapter 23. Luke 23 will read verses 44 through 49. You hold in your hands the very words of God. It was now about the sixth hour and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. For the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out and allowed voice, father into your hands, I commit my spirit. When he had said this, he breathed his last. The Centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, surely this was a righteous man. When all the people who had gathered to witness this site saw what took place. They beat their breasts and went away. But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching these things. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. The red was drawn just a few months ago from Luke chapter 23. If you're visiting this morning with us, we're glad you're here. We pray that God will bless you through this time with him. We're in study in the gospel according to Luke, the only Gentile to write a gospel. He was a physician, a historian. He wrote in great detail we have seen. We've come to the crucifixion, we have slowed down, and we're going episode by episode. And now we're going line by line as really since we met with Jesus in the upper room there with the disciples where they celebrated the last Passover in the first Lord's Supper, we have in the movies when scenes are so full of action, the director will slow it down so you don't miss all that is happening. Well, we've slowed it down and we're looking at all the different responses and the different words in great depth. I was speaking to someone before they 30 worship and I said I'm just seeing things that I haven't seen before. It's not like I haven't preached through the book of Luke. We've been through the book of Matthew, but I really am just seeing things I haven't seen before. And I was referred back up to just when they got to Calvary when the two other men, both criminals, were also the SK and I saw something there. And I said wow, I haven't seen that before. I said I would love to go back and preach that. I said you know I'm already going to slow if I start backing up you guys are going to stone me. So that's going to be for the next time I preach to the gospel. Before we look with this morning we're at verse 46, in to your hands I commit my spirit. Before we look at that verse let's pray and ask the Lord Jesus who prayed that verse and who's here this morning. Let's ask him to talk to us about it. Our Father we very often pray at this time that you that the Lord Jesus would speak because John Sartel cannot preach in a way that will change your hearts and change our minds. And we know that Father and these folks I believe know it and you know my heart Father and you know that's actually in my heart. It's not just spiritual rhetoric, but Father Jesus taught sometimes and it made no difference in people's lives. They didn't hear. So if the Father we not only pray that Jesus Christ would speak this morning we pray that you would open our ears to hear. Give us hearts to receive. Our Father may be some of us for the first time in Jesus name. Amen. The faith of a dying man. Nave's topical Bible is a resource I use most every week in my studies in preparation. Nave's topical Bible, a topical Bible, arranges scriptures not by chronology, not by the books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Arrange a scripture by topic. Choose a biblical topic, God, Christ, the Trinity, Grace, Hope, Faith, Friendship. Nave's topical Bible has every verse in the Bible related to this friendship it has every verse listed that refers to friendship and so on. This week I looked in Nave's topical Bible for the heading faith of Christ. And you know I didn't find it. I looked under Christ and faith of and it wasn't there. There was faith in Christ with which we're all familiar but not faith of Christ. Nave's topical Bible you need to know is a good instrument but it missed it on that one. Of course if you're going to write about the faith of Christ you'd almost have to include every verse of the gospels. But I understand we typically don't think and I don't think the editors of Nave's topical Bible they did not think and we typically don't think of Jesus as being a man of faith. We think of him as being the son of God. He's the Savior, he's the deity, he's the Lord of Lords, he's the King of Kings. We kind of think well you know Jesus was God, he didn't need faith. How did he heal? He didn't pray to heal people. He healed by the art. He commanded and they were healed. He did not pray for the storms to be stopped. He commanded and the storms stopped. What did the disciples say in the boat that evening? Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? We don't think of Jesus as a man of faith. I've wanted to preach this message for several months. I could have preached it from several different passages and there was one passage especially in the Garden of Guest 70 and I really struggled. In fact I prepared some of this message that week. I said I'd already looked ahead to this prayer. The last words of Jesus before he died. I said I'll wait till then. Father into your hands I commit my spirit. That is a prayer of a man of faith. To understand the profound depth of this prayer we must first get the idea in our minds that Jesus indeed was a man of faith. How do you get that notion? How do you get the notion that Jesus was a man of faith? We learn from the New Testament that Jesus was not only fully God but we learned that he was fully man. He was born of a woman. He felt pain. He knew temptation. He was subject to tooth decay pimples and puberty. I said a sentence like that a few years ago from this pulpit and a woman came up to me afterwards and said I can't believe you said that about Jesus. You know it was wrong with her. She didn't understand. He was fully man. He went to the temple as a man not to be worshiped but to worship. He prayed as a man. What a script you say no man can please God without faith and that included Jesus. Listen to the words of Jesus. Listen to John 434 my food said Jesus is to do the will of him who sent me. He said I'm man under authority. I was in here to do the will of my father. Listen to John 519. Jesus gave them this answer. I tell you the truth. The son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees as Father doing. John 536 for every work that the Father has given me to finish and which I'm doing testifies that the Father has sent me. Jesus saw himself as a man under authority, under the authority of the Father. John 716. Jesus answered my teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. It doesn't give much pointer than that. The Apostles understood it. I could go to any letter that the Apostles wrote that I'll only go to one. The Apostle Paul. In the book of the Lithians chapter 2 most of us know this passage by heart. Listen to it. Lithians 2.5. Paul says your attitude should be the same as that as Christ Jesus. Who being in the very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself of nothing taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself and what became obedient to death even death on a cross. Paul was saying that the entire life of Christ from the incarnation equality with God a thing not to be grasped. He was God but he became God in the flesh. He became fully man. No whole life from the incarnation all the way through his death. He became obedient. You can't have faith without obedience. You can't have obedience without faith. Set that in our minds. We need to pray. Paul was setting out in our minds that he was a man, fully man, a man of faith. This is the first time I must tell you that I have preached on, spent a whole message on this one statement by Jesus. Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit. You know why? I would come to that point and I would say I'm not going to give a whole message to it. And really what I was thinking was, well you know this is a prayer that some mice pray or kind of mice quote-unquote. And a person might pray it under deathbed at the conclusion of a long and good life father into your hands I commend my spirit. It was prayed it's from Psalm 30, 31, 5 and a Jewish family would pray this Psalm at night before they went to bed in your hands I commend my spirit. You know it just didn't reach out and snatch me. It didn't reach out and grab me. This is not a weak prayer. This prayer is a powerful, powerful, profound, deep prayer. This message is not for light weight. If you're going to understand this you're going to have to stay with and grab, hold and hold on. This is a profound, powerful, great, great prayer. Let's look at it. First I want you to see in this prayer a faith in God not a resignation to lesser powers. A faith in God not a resignation to lesser powers. Look at just the first part of it. Jesus cried out with a loud voice father into your hands to whom was Jesus committing his body and so to the father. He was not surrendering to the will of the Sanhedrin. He was not surrendering to the will of Pilate. He was not surrendering to the will of the Romans. He was not surrendering to torture and to death. He was not resigning himself to the inevitable. What was it that Pilate said when Jesus was silent? He was exasperated and he said, man, don't you know I have the power to take your life? Don't you know I have the power to kill you? And how did Jesus answer? Jesus said, Pilate, you have no power unless my father in heaven gives it to you. Jesus was saying, Pilate, my life is not in your hands. It's in the hands of the father. Jesus was saying, I'm not sitting here under your judgment because I'm subject to your room. I'm sitting here in your court in obedience to my father. I'm under his room. Folks, we need to understand this if we are the women and men and young people of faith. We sometimes live as if we are surrendering our lives to the inevitable, to an inevitable fate, not to God. We sometimes live our lives as if we are resigning our lives to cancer. Maybe we have cancer. I'm resigning my life to death. Listen to me. When we resign ourselves, listen to this. When we resign ourselves to cancer, to heart disease, to death, to sickness, to the violence of a dictator, we are committing the sin of idolatry. We are exhausting a lesser power to take the place of God. Pilate said, don't you know I have the power of death over you? And Jesus would not give him that power. Jesus refused. He said, I'm stopping you right now, Pilate. You don't have that power. Jesus would not become the idolator. It's not you, Pilate. It's my father. Jesus was not surrendered to the conditions of the moment. He was surrendered to God. And folks there is a vast, vast difference. We're not spitting hairs here. This is an important difference at the end of World War II in Europe. Germany surrendered to the Allies. Germany was saying we surrender unconditionally to the will of the Allies. Russia, Britain, the United States, France and others had defeated Germany. And she had to do what these nations said to do. Now in that way, the Christian never ever surrenders to sickness. Never surrenders to death. Never surrenders to those kind of circumstances. We do not say I unconditionally surrender to cancer or to death. The Christian has been conquered by God, not by death. The Christian surrenders unconditionally to Christ, surrenders unconditionally to the will of Christ and not to any lesser power. King Canut ruled Denmark and England from 1016 to 1035. Much has been written pro and con about his allegiance to Christ in the Christian faith. There's some controversy there. He was generous to the church, generous to a fault. There's one story about King Canut that I really, really like. I wish presidents and world leaders today would do this. The story goes that King Canut had grown weary of the constant praise and flattery of his courtiers. They were just yes people and he knew it and he knew that their praise was empty. And one day he had his throne taken down to the seashore and there he sat on the seashore on his throne with all his court around him. And he yelled out to the tide. Tied I am King Canut and I forbid you to advance. Do not come onto the shores. Tied, of course, the tide as you advanced and it swirled at his feet and then around his throne and then advanced past his throne. It was said that King Canut then looked at his courtiers and in their presence. He hung his crown on a crucifix, what a powerful statement. Who wears the crown? We even need to remember that cancer and heart disease and old age and plane crashes and dictators and market declines do not sit on the throne and they don't wear the crown. Today when Jesus committed, he said I commit my soul to you. He was putting his soul in the hands of his God in the hands of his Lord and not to any lesser power. I want you to look at this prayer and see a faith in God, not a resignation to lesser powers. Secondly, I want you to see a faith declared in the midst of dark desolation. Look at verse 33, when they came to the place called the skull. I love it when they don't use Gorgotha or Calvary the skull. That's what those words mean. There they crucified him. Verse 44, it was now about the sixth hour and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour for the sun stopped shining. Let me tell you that darkness was not just God throwing it in for some aesthetic reason. Jesus had been unjustly flawed and crucified. He was nailed to a Roman cross when he said these words. He was being mocked and teased by hell itself. Common soldiers were gambling for his clothes and most importantly, most importantly, he was forsaken by God. He had just cried, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God's righteous judgment and wrath had fallen on him. Well, not, he was dark physically. He was dark spiritually. He just said this prayer. Then Jesus was not looking peacefully into the face of his father and saying, Father, into your hand, I commit my spirit. His prayer was coming from the pit of hell itself. He was coming from a man locked in struggle with death, beaten, spit upon, mocked. God forsaken. This was not a pastoral scene. John Calvin understood. He wrote about this prayer of these words. He said, Jesus was saying, I see, Father, that I am by every voice appointed to destruction and my soul is somehow carried this way in that. And although according to the flesh, I feel no help from you, Father, yet that does not prevent my resting, my spirit in your hand and taking support from the hidden protection of your goodness. Did you get it? The hidden protection, even though I can't feel your help, Father. Jesus was in the darkness of hell. We read that he cried this prayer. Did you notice with a loud voice, I commit my spirit to you, loud voice. I was reading some commentaries this week and they said, that's myth that Jesus still had the strength that he was choosing to die at that moment. I'll tell you why he cried. What happens when you're in pain? Such pain that it rips your soul out. You hope whisper. You cry. What does a child do when a child's leg is ripped open and that requires forty or fifty? What happens to child cries out? He was crying out in his anguish. These were words of faith cried out from the pit of pain and sorrow and trouble. Think on this. That's when this prayer was prayed. One night a house caught fire and a young boy could not get out of his ring. He started out in just a fire which is there and he couldn't. He ran to the window. His parents had come out the first floor and his father ran down below the window. He knew the boy would be there. And he cried up to the boy, jump. But all the boy could see was flame and smoke and darkness and he couldn't see his father. And he said, I can't jump. His father said jump is the only way to live. It's the only way he could be saved. And the father cried again, jump. And finally the son made the father understand. He said, I can't see you. And the father replied, jump son, I can see you. And that's all that matters. It may be that we will not be able to see or feel the presence of God we trust. We see people praying and we think, man, they are super spiritual. They can see God in the midst of all this suffering. They can actually see and feel this presence. No, that's not always true. It may be some few times. But here at Calvary it was certainly not true. It may be that God has said no to our prayers, our prayers that would extract us from the pain of suffering. Jesus praying, guess, seminary, as he saw that the cross was drawn near and he would take the sin and he would take the punishment on himself. He would take out himself. He said, father, the figure will remove this God from me. And the father said, no, I will not extract you from Calvary. I will not extract you from this death. The basis of Jesus prayer was not that he saw the father. He couldn't see the father. It was too dark. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's not that we always see him, but he sees us. You jump. I see you. Many Christians have this view of faith. They think faith is a way you obtain things. Faith deals cancer. Faith stops storms. You know those storms encircle me and kill me. Faith stops those storms. Faith delivers me from financial ruin. Faith is the way to obtain what we want. Thanks. That's not biblical faith. If that's our view of faith, let me tell you this. If that's your view of faith this morning, if you walked in here and said, well, faith is the way that I get things. You will never, ever, ever pray this prayer. Not within the depth and not within the understanding. You'll never say, father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. You're too busy praying and saying, God, give me out of this awful mess. You're too busy shaking your fists and saying, God, why didn't you deliver me or deliver my children from this hell? How did Jesus pray this prayer? Faith is far more than a way to get things. Faith is a way of life. What did we pray this morning in our bulletin? What did we pray? We prayed in this prayer. Breathe in our prayers and have it our praises, speak in our words, move in our actions, live in our lives. That's faith. That's real faith. It's not how we get things. It's a way we live. I have faith that Jesus is the son of God. I have faith that he died for my sins. I believe that. And that's a confession of faith. However, that's not living by faith. Living by faith is that confession. It's that confession in getting out of bed every day. And saying, Father, you may this day. It's yours. You're king and Lord in this day, where the world knows it or not. Today, this day is yours. My life is yours. My children are yours. I will trust you, Father, to provide the lead to keep me faithful. I will seek your will for my life, whether I'm meeting with a client or team off on the night tea, or whether I'm in bed with cancer. Faith in God is a way of life, a way of living. Who prays? Who prays, Father, into your hands. I commit my prayer. Someone who is in some pastoral scene and everything is copicetic and he sort of tiptoed through the tulips all of his life? No. Who prays this prayer? The person who realizes faith is not a way to obtain stuff. Faith is a way of life. The right way to live, the only way to live. And folks, it is the only way to die. Faith in God is not a resignation to lesser powers. Look at this and see if faith declared in the midst of a dark desolation. Thirdly, aren't we going to see a perfect faith? Look at the end of verse 46. When he has said this, he prays is last. I love this. A prayer of faith was Jesus' last breath. Jesus was faithful to the end. Was there anywhere along the way where Jesus became a man of unfaith? Was there some place where he failed to be a man of faith? Remember the Father broke in at one point and he said, this is my beloved son and whom my will please. The Father could have broken in at any point, along and broken at any point in the life of Jesus and said those words. Any second of any day, he could have broken in to say that. You know, so far we've been looking, this was a perfect faith, even to the end, even when God forsook him, even when he was suffering our hell, he remained faithful. So far we've been looking at the faith of Jesus as a model. Well, here it cannot be our model. We're not men and women and young people of perfect faith. You think your faith is perfect? You know better and I know better. We use faith instead of living our faith. We abandon the faith when faith is not convenient. We fail to live our faith out in the world. We've been intimidated out of our faith so many times. However, now listen, this is where the water gets deeper. However, that is the reason for calvary. That is the reason for the cross, our imperfect faith, our imperfect living. Jesus died to take the sin of our imperfection, to take away the sin of our imperfect, stained, marred, stumbling, feeble faith. We're not saved by our perfect faith. We're saved by His grace and His faithfulness. We're saved because Jesus was and His faithful. What do you feel like when God sees you? When you realize, God sees my everything. He sees what's inside of me, what's outside, what's in the deep and dark preferences of my soul. What do you feel that God sees in you? What do you think God sees in you? I know your answer. You've been sitting in this sanctuary long enough to know and I know the answer to God sees a sinner. If you're sitting here this morning and you say, well God sees just a wonderful Episcopal in a Presbyterian or a Baptist, you need to come back to church here and get the truth because that's not what God sees. And the people said they've been here just a few Sundays know that but you know what else God sees? Listen to me. God looks at you this morning and He looks at me and He sees a perfect faith. Did you get that? He sees a perfect faith. Let me tell you how by just an illustration, when we left our children, when our children were little and we left our children with my parents, our children every time would be spoiled when we got them back. One time we left one of our children with them for three weeks. That child was so rotten when we got her in. I called my mom and dad after two days and said, you ruined this child for life. I said, did you not discipline her at all? And you know what my mother said? My mother said, John she didn't do anything that needed discipline. She was just perfect. They saw no sin. They saw perfection. I want to ask you, is that the way it is with God? Is God some kind of doting grant here that doesn't know the truth about you? And He looks down and He says, oh you're just perfect. No. No. God does see a perfect faith. Here's how He sees it. Here's what happened at Calvary. Jesus took our filthy robes of sin and gave us His robe of perfect righteousness. He got our graves of X and we got His straight A's. Do you understand it? It's the way it actually is. He just didn't take our sins and leave us without. He took our sins but He gave us all of His works, all of His perfection. Am I sinner? Is my faith feeble? Am I sometimes a man of no faith? Yes, yes and yes. Am I hypocrite? Yes, but Jesus gave me perfect faith in this sense. Now listen, here it is. In this sense Jesus prayed, father, into your hands I commit my spirit. He prayed that for me. In a sense He was saying, father, into your hands I commit John spirit. Father, I'm taking John sins. I'm giving him my perfection. I'm dressing him in my clothes. Father, I trust you to accept what I'm doing here on this cross. Just as you had seen John sin in me, see my perfect faith when you look at him. Just as Jesus prayed, father, forgive them. They knew not what they're doing. Just as He prayed that for me. Just as He prayed, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He prayed that for me. I should have been the one saying that. He also prayed, father, into your hand I commit my spirit for me. For the 1,000 times I should have prayed that prayer and didn't. For the 1,000 times I should have expressed that faith and didn't. Jesus expressed it. Jesus said it all. Look at this, look at this prayer and see a faith in God, not a resignation to lesser powers. A faith declared in the midst of dark desolation. See a perfect faith. And finally, fourthly, see a dependent faith. Jesus cried out. We'll read it one more time. Jesus cried out with a loud voice. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit when He said this. He prayed His last. A moment later, the body of Jesus was a corpse, no brainwaves. The hearts stopped beating. Jesus, last words. He was not just saying, and you know this, I commit my spirit to you. There was much to be done. He was trusting His future to the Father. He was entrusting Himself body and soul, God. Jesus had told His disciples over and over again, I will be raised from the dead. I will be raised from the dead. I will be raised from the dead. I want to ask you a question. Who raised Jesus from the dead? Did Jesus suddenly take control of His body and raise Himself up? No, that's not what happened. I don't have time. Right to stand. Ephesians 1, 17-20. It's a great prayer. I often use this in my own prayer time and pray this prayer and I put my name in it. Paul prayed it for the Ephesians. It's a great prayer. And He's praying that, the end of the prayer is praying that they will know His power. And He says this, from the, this is at the end of verse 19 in Ephesians 1. That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realm. What's Paul saying? The Father raised Jesus. And this is repeated. You can look it up in a concordance and you'll find it repeated over and over and over and over again in the letters of the puzzle. God raised Him, God raised Him, God raised Him, God raised Him, God raised Him. And John 10, Jesus did say that He said, I have the power to take up my life again. And maybe some of you have run there. Well, you need to notice in that passing, it says as the Father has commanded. It's under the command of the Father that He said this, but He was able to do it. And when I'm telling you this, His body was a corpse. And He was trusting in His Father to resurrect that body. The most helpless I feel in life is when I stand beside a casket and look at a corpse. We can apply and make up. We can try to make the body look to corpse, look lifelike. But there's no life in that body. And what do you do when you see a body in a casket? When you see a corpse, what do you usually do? You do what I do. You come to grips with your own death. You say, one day I'm going to be in that casket. One day that corpse is going to be made. Some of helpless feeling in it. When you're a corpse, what will you do? Somehow we never feel that helpless anywhere in this life. Even though most of you would say, most of you would say right now, if I ask you, are you dependent on God, you would say, I can't take a breath of that guy. I can't take a step of that guy. But you know we say that. But if we pray for food, we pray for food, and then we go out and we aren't our food. We pray for a job, and then we go out and look for a job. We're active in the actual answers to our prayer. But a dead body prays no more. A dead body cannot move. A dead body can do nothing to bring about its own resurrection. When you come grips to grips with that, in a minute I'm getting ready to be a corpse. This is a dependent prayer. The most dependent prayer you'll ever cry. Father into your hands, I commit myself body and soul, and spirit, and future, and everything. The cry of a dying man, father into your hands, I commit my spirit. That's the cry of a man who knows he's helpless, and knows I can't do anything. This week my daughter and son-in-law Jill and Douglas have been out of town, and we've had Jen and I've been taking care of a three-week old baby, baby girl. I know some of you are saying John gets us right, Janet is taking care of them. I did my part, so I was there. She's a snacker. She drinks about that much, just about an ounce of milk, and she goes to sleep, and then she wakes up an hour and a half later, and she gets another ounce. And you're literally, you know, this girl wakes up to eat about 16 times a day, and I said, this is ridiculous. And she took five ounces at one time last night, folks, she slept a while too. But why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this, when Phoebe wakes up and she wants to eat, how do you know that? Every single time, 16 times a day she cries. Not one time, as she gotten out of that crib and walked with her refrigerator and gotten her a bother. She can't do it. Phoebe is helpless, in fact, you know what? If Janet and I don't pick her up and feed her, she dies. If mom and dad don't pick up babies and feed them, they die. Now this is a poor illustration, because corpses can't cry. But it's kind of close. It's kind of close. Her cry is a cry of a helpless person. Cry of Jesus that day was the cry of a helpless person. And when we pray that prayer, it's a prayer profound, deep helplessness prayer faith. And you know what? When Phoebe cries, we can't get there soon enough. We want to get there, when I get there and pick her up. Everything's right, Phoebe, we got you. You know, after Jesus prayed that prayer, the father could hardly wait to the third day to go pick up his master and the father ran to that grave. And he raised his son. And one night, he's going to do a whole lot more than that. When we pray, Father, and Jesus has prayed it for us, Father into your hands, I commit my spirit. There's a great day coming. And he's waiting for that day when he's come to resurrect all of us. Listen to me this morning. If you've never cried out and cried helpless faith this morning, Father into your hands, my spirit.