March 25, Good Friday Service, 1:00 pm

Lesson: Luke 23.44-49

Sermon Title: Father, Into Your Hands I Commend My Spirit

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Whew! The Last Word!

    1. Have you been waiting for it?

    2. It isn't often that I get the last word.

      1. Pastor's work with people.

      2. People most often get the last word.

  2. The desire to get the last word is a common trait of human beings.

    1. We are independent.

    2. We are self-sufficient.

    3. Here are some ways in which humanity seeks to have the last word.

      1. Evolution is the last word on creation.

      2. Psychology is the last word on sin.

      3. Philosophy is the last word on biblical inspiration.

      4. Technology provides the last word on human development.

  3. It would appear that we finally have the last word.

    1. It only appears that way.

    2. We call this hubris

    3. Hubris can be defined as "Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance."

    4. As McGeorge Bundy once commentated: "There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris."

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MAIN BODY:

  1. The last word, in the words of Jesus is one that we need to carefully consider.

    1. To whom or what would you commend yourself.

    2. It is the answer to his question that allows us to consider our human and divine options and to choose the one that is best for us.

  2. We do not have the last word, God does.

    1. The belief that God has the last word challenges our commitment to all other sources that we would use as a substitute.

    2. This is graphically illustrated by this final word of Jesus from the cross.

      1. Jesus does not commit himself to the conclusions of evolution.

      2. Jesus does not commit himself to the conclusions of the mental health professionals.

      3. Jesus does not commit himself to philosophy.

      4. He does not commit himself to technology.

      5. Jesus commends into the hands of the Father-God.

        1. Creative Hands

        2. Powerful Hands

        3. Gracious Hands

        4. Loving Hands

        5. Saving Hands

  3. God has the last word.

    1. Luke records that

      1. [48] And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts.

      2. [49] But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

    2. God, in Jesus Christ, is the Alpha and the Omega.

    3. God, in Jesus Christ, is the beginning and the end.

  4. I do not know any other source which offers the life that God offers.

    1. It is no wonder that Jesus commended himself to God.

    2. The ones who stood by the cross left beating their breasts

    3. He is our example, is he not?

  5. If he is our example, then to whom would you commend your spirit, your life?

    1. I hesitate to use the very sad and complicated saga of Terri Schiavo, but her story has so dominated the news this past few days.

    2. Given the details that you know:

      1. Would you commend your self to Senator Tom DeLay; Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastart; or Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist?

      2. Would you commend yourself to President Bush?

      3. Would you commend yourself to Governor Jeb Bush?

      4. What about the Sate or Federal Judiciary?

      5. Probably none of the above.

      6. It would be prudent and wise to have a Living Will and an Health Care Power of Attorney.

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CONCLUSION

  1. There is only one safe and sure source to whom you can unreservedly and unconditionally commit yourself and that is God.

  2. Ethicist Lewis Smedes tells this story about his difficulty in dealing with something he did to his mother. (1)

The Smedes were very poor. His father died at 31, leaving a wife with no skills, no knowledge of English and six children to feed.

She took in washing and ironing and scrubbed floors. But in her pride, she tried to prevent her children from knowing how she earned money.

In their pride in her, Smedes says he wanted most of all to get my mother to approve of me.

Close behind her was God. I could never keep the difference between them clear.

One day on the way to school, fourth-grader Smedes saw her on her hands and knees scrubbing someone's porch.

She saw him. Hello, Lewis is all she said and then resumed scrubbing.

I was ashamed [of her] and she knew I was ashamed.

All his adult life he has been shadowed by shame for having been ashamed of her (108).

He remembered that moment and the fact that he once wronged a great woman.

It took a lot of counseling and reflection to discover that the depressions he suffered all his life were related to the guilt he still felt - for being ashamed of his mother.

...alone, dangling over the edge, falling where nobody could rescue me with the good news that I was good enough for them to approve of me...I fell into my own abyss.

And I fell into the hands of God.

  1. Have you fallen into the hands of God?

    1. Have you heard the good news that to get in control of one's life is accept and live within God's unconditional love?

    2. Have you fallen into the love that accepts you with no reference to your deserving?

    3. Have you fallen into the hands of God the forgiver?

    4. Salvation in Christ is the living end of the Living Will and no Health Care Power of Attorney can rip you from his care!

1. Smedes, A Pretty Good Person (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), 107-109.

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