I recently read a letter from the South Carolina Department of Social Services that gives great insight into how the government can sometimes look upon death.
Dear Sir:
Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992, because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may re-apply if there is a change in your circumstances.1
Circumstances do not change death, but death does change circumstances. We saw that this past week when John McSherry, a 51 year old umpire, collapsed and died on opening day of the baseball season in Cincinnati, Ohio. In life he was booed, cursed, maligned, vilified, and hated; but when he was lying on that baseball field quivering in death, 50,000 people came to a silent hush; players, coaches, and managers prayed and wept, and the game was even called off.
Death changes circumstances for a lot of people every day. One person a second dies in this world every day. That is 60 people a minute, 3,600 people an hour, 86,000 people a day, and 30 million people a year. One day we are all going to face that time "after the casket is closed."
As the Lord Jesus faced that time, these were his last words, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." (Lk. 23:46) These were the last words the man Jesus ever uttered in a natural physical body. They were spoken by the only person who ever chose to die. You can choose (within limits) to die; you can choose (within limits) how you die, and when you die; but you cannot choose to die. "It is appointed unto man once to die." (Heb. 9:27)
We are going to talk about death and what happens after death. Job 14:10 asks the question of all questions: "But man dies and is laid away; indeed he breathes his last and where is he?" On the cross Jesus gives the answer for all of the ages: "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit."
On the cross not only was Jesus victorious over sin, but He was also victorious over death. This statement tells us that death has no more sting and the grave has no more victory.
The Lord Jesus tells us in advance what can happen, what should happen, and what will happen to you "after the casket is closed" if what was true of Jesus when He died, is true of you when you die. This statement reveals the kind of relationship that God the Son had with God the Father; a relationship that you and I can have if we have a relationship with God the Son. That relationship ensures that after the casket is closed you will be in heaven for all eternity.
I. Communion with the Father
Jesus begins by addressing God once more as "Father." The first words the gospel writers ever record Jesus saying was as a twelve year old boy, when he said to his father and mother, "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" (Lk. 2:49)
The last words ever spoken by Jesus in a natural physical body were "Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit." He began his six hours on the cross by addressing His Father, and He ended his six hours by addressing His Father.
By far and away his favorite term for God was "Father." In John 14-16 Jesus teaches the disciples the longest lesson He ever taught them, and He referred to His Father 45 times. Then in John 17 He prays the longest prayer. In that prayer He calls God Father 6 times.
There are four major relationships God has, or wants to have, with mankind: (1) Creator, (2) King, (3) Judge, (4) Father. One of these relationships is fundamental to the other three.
Take the first relationship: God is Creator. But God did not create us merely to sustain our existence. God is King. But God did not create us only to rule over us. God is Judge. But God did not create us just to dispense rewards or penalties. God is Father. He primarily created us to love us and to be loved by us as a part of His family.2
Henry Wallace, a former Secretary of Commerce, once said, "The Bible teaches one thing: All men are brothers, and God is our Father." The problem with that, it's just not true. The primary thing the Bible teaches is that all men are sinners, and that God the Father sent God the Son that sinners might be saved and come to know God as their Father. The great problem of the world is not so much that the world doesn't believe in God, but that they do not know God for who He really is.
There was a math teacher trying to teach her first grade class how to add. She picked out a boy at random and said, "Brad, if you have $2, and you ask your father for $10, how much will you have?"
Brad said, "$2."
The teacher said, "You don't know your math."
Brad said, "You don't know my father."
The key question to put to your heart right now is this: Is God my Father? Let me explain several things carefully about this question.
God becomes your Father when you become His child. "But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His
Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!'" (Gal. 4:4-6)
You become His child when you receive His Son. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God." (Jn. 1:12)
If you reject God the Son, you reject God the Father. "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also." (I Jn. 2:23)
You are not ready to live until you are ready to die; you are not ready to die until you are ready to meet God. You are not ready to meet God until you know Him as your Father, and you do not know Him as your Father until you become His child.
You do not become His child until you're born again into His family; and you're not born again into His family until you receive the Lord Jesus Christ. For Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father unless he goes through Me." (Jn. 14:6) So if you want to be ready for the casket, you must have communion with the Father.
II. Confidence in the Father
Jesus says, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." Up to now Jesus had been in the hands of sinners. In those sinful hands he had been bound, beaten, bloodied, bruised, and battered. But now he was transferring Himself into the strong sovereign supernatural hands of His Heavenly Father.
This saying is actually a quotation of a promise in Ps. 31:5. Jesus slightly modifies it. It says, "Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth." Now the Lord Jesus adds Father to the beginning, but he leaves off the last phrase because He did not come to be redeemed, He came to redeem.
But notice that right up to his last breath He lived by the Word of God, and He died by the Word of God. That is a word of encouragement for all of us because if you live by the Word of God you can die by the Word of God.
Jewish mothers taught this promise as a prayer to their small children. When they would go to sleep at night they were taught to say, "Into your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me O Lord God of truth." Much as today we teach our kids to say:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
I'm sure Jesus had been taught this by his mother, Mary. Now, as God's dear Son, He is looking up, not from a bed but from a cross, and He is praying this prayer one last time, and placing Himself into His Father's hands.
There is no safer place in all of the world to be than in the hands of God. Those hands are never full, those hands never fail, from those hands you can never fall. It was into those hands that Jesus committed His spirit. Remember the Apostle Paul said, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that day."
Death is a fact. "Death spread to all men because all have sinned." (Rom. 6:12) Death is a foe. The last enemy is death. Death is also a fear. Heb. 2:15 says that Jesus died to "release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." With this statement Jesus tells us that we can face that fact, fight that foe, and front that fear with faith because we are in His hands.
There was a little boy who had become terribly ill and was dying of an incurable disease. His father, who loved him dearly, leaned over to him and said, "Son, I'm so sorry, I wish there was something I could do; I know you must be afraid." That boy looked up from his deathbed and put his little hand on his father's cheek, and said, "Daddy, if God is like you, then I am not afraid to die."
Well, we know what the Father is like because we know what Jesus is like, and Jesus said, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." So we need not fear death, burial, or the grave. You can trust your Heavenly Father who will take your spirit in His hands and safely get it to heaven.
III. Commitment to the Father
Jesus said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." The gospel writers used a different Greek word to describe what Jesus did when He gave up his spirit. Matthew says He dismissed his spirit. "And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and he yielded up His spirit." The Greek word for "yielded up" means literally means "to send away."
John said he delivered his spirit. "And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit." (Jn. 19:30) The word "give up" literally means "to hand over." Luke tells us He deposited his spirit. The word commit is a banking term that literally means "to make a deposit."
Understand that Jesus died voluntarily. His life was not taken from him, He gave it up. The Bible says He dismissed his spirit; He delivered his spirit; He deposited his spirit. Jesus said, "I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one 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 again. This command I have received from My Father. (Jn. 10:17-18) No Old Testament sacrifice ever died voluntarily; no lamb ever climbed up on the altar by himself to die; he was always placed there. But the Lamb of God willingly placed his neck on the altar to be sliced open by the knife of sin, that his saving blood might be shed.
He did all of this because he was committed to his Father. Commitment was his middle name. He spoke the Father's words. He said, "The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father..." He performed the Father's works. He said again, "The Father who dwells in Me does the works." (Jn. 14:10) He did the Father's will. He said, "I do not seek My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me." (Jn. 5:30)
Notice carefully: He committed His spirit to God. His body died, but His spirit went immediately to be with His Heavenly Father. Just as Eccl. 12:7 says, "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it." Now what happened to Jesus is what happens to us if we know Jesus. Jesus died with a prayer so that no Christian will ever have to die without one. Stephen is a great example. The Bible says in Acts 7:59, "And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.'"
William Shakespeare is a great example. This is an excerpt from his last will and testament:
I, William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon, in the County of Warrick, gentleman in perfect health and memory, God be praised, do make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner and form following, that is to say, first I commend my soul into the hands of God...through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting...
I know that some of you are wondering why I am talking about death when it's Easter Sunday. You are thinking to yourself Easter's about the empty tomb and the resurrection, and that is true. But if there had not been a cross there would not have been an empty tomb.
Had there not been a death there would not have been a resurrection. Quite frankly, Easter is not only to get you to think about being raised from the dead, it's also to get you to think about being dead before you're raised.
I heard about a preacher that went to visit a man in his community who was lost and without Christ. He knocked on his door, the man opened it and said, "Preacher, what can I do for you?" He said, "I have come to talk to you about your soul." The man said, "I'm sorry, but I'm too busy to talk to you." The preacher said, "What if I had been death that knocked on your door?"
And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only how did you die?
How you die will be determined by how you live. What happens after the casket is closed depends upon what happens before the casket is opened. There was a woman who had lived a very godly life. She was dying, getting ready to cross over to the other side. She had all of her six sons around her bedside.
She began to sing the song, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue." All of a sudden she stopped singing and looked at one of her sons and said, "Ted, I want you to thank Jesus that your mother is about to die." He said, "Mother, I can't do that." She said, "Ted, I said I want you to thank Jesus that I am about to go home to be with Him."
That young boy, with a breaking voice, began to pray: "God, I thank you for my mother, I thank you for my Christian home, I thank you for what she has taught me, I thank you that I learned the Bible at her knee, I thank you that she taught me how to pray, and I thank you for her example of godliness." He then paused, took a deep breath, and said, "Father, I thank you that mother is about to leave us to go home to be with you."
When they opened their eyes their mother was gone. The son that prayed that prayer stood up and looked at his brothers, and said, "Mother taught us how to live, and just now she taught us how to die."
There's only one way to die and that's the way Jesus died; in communion with the Father, confident in the Father, committed to the Father; and after the casket is closed you and your loved ones can know you will be with the risen Lord.
1. Reader's Digest, March, 1996.
2. J. Sidlow Baxter, Majesty, the God You Should Know, p. 184.