Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2311
“And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit: and having said this, He gave up the ghost.” Luke 23:46.
THESE were the dying words of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit.” It may be instructive if I remind you that the Words of Christ upon the Cross were seven. Calling each of His cries, or utterances, by the title of a Word, we speak of the seven last Words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me rehearse them in your hearing. The first, when they nailed Him to the Cross, was, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Luke has preserved that Word. Later, when one of the two thieves said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom,” Jesus said to him, “Verily I say unto you, Today shall you be with Me in Paradise.” This, also, Luke has carefully preserved. Farther on, our Lord, in His great agony, saw His mother, with breaking heart, standing by the Cross and looking up to Him with unutterable love and grief, and He said to her, “Woman, behold. your son!” and to the beloved Apostle, “Behold your mother!” and thus He provided a home for her when He, Himself, should be gone away. This utterance has only been preserved by John.
The fourth and central Word of the seven was, “Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” This was the culmination of His grief, the central point of all His agony. That most awful word that ever fell from the lips of man, expressing the quintessence of exceeding agony, is well put fourth, as though it had need of three words before it, and three words after it, as its bodyguard. It tells of a good Man, a son of God, the Son of God, forsaken of His God! That central Word of the seven is found in Matthew and in Mark, but not in Luke or John.
But the fifth Word has been preserved by John, that is, “I thirst,” the shortest, but not quite the sharpest of all the Master’s Words, though under a bodily aspect, perhaps the sharpest of them all. John has also treasured up another very precious saying of Jesus Christ on the Cross, that is the wondrous Word, “It is finished.” This was the last word but one, “It is finished,” the gathering up of all His lifework, for He had loft nothing undone, no thread was left raveling, the whole fabric of Redemption had been woven, like His garment, from the top throughout, and it was finished to perfection! After He had said, “It is finished,” He uttered the last Word of all, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit,” which I have taken for a text, tonight, but to which I will not come immediately.
There has been a great deal said about these seven cries from the Cross by many writers and though I have read what many of them have written, I cannot add anything to what they have said, since they have delighted to dwell upon these seven last cries, and here the most ancient writers, of what would be called the Romish school, are not to be excelled, even by Protestants, in their intense devotion to every letter of our Savior’s dying Words. And they sometimes strike out new meanings, richer and more rare than any that have occurred to the far cooler minds of modern critics, who are, as a rule, greatly blessed with moles’ eyes, able to see where there is nothing to be seen, but never able to see when there is anything worth seeing! Modern criticism, like modern theology, if it were put in the Garden of Eden, would not see a flower. It is like the sirocco that blasts and burns. It is without either dew or unction, in fact, it is the very opposite of these precious things, and proves itself to be unblessed of God and unblessed to men.
Now concerning these seven cries from the Cross, many authors have drawn from them, lessons concerning seven duties. Listen. When our Lord said, “Father, forgive them,” in effect, He said to us, “Forgive your enemies.” Even when
they despitefully use you and put you to terrible pain, be ready to pardon them! Be like the sandalwood tree which perfumes the axe that fells it. Be all gentleness, kindness and love—and be this your prayer, “Father, forgive them.”
The next duty is taken from the second cry, namely, that of penitence and faith in Christ, for He said to the dying thief, “Today shall you be with Me in Paradise.” Have you, like he, confessed your sin? Have you his faith and his prayer-fulness? Then you shall be accepted even as he was! Learn, then, from the second cry, the duty of penitence and faith.
When our Lord, in the third cry, said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” He taught us the duty of filial love. No Christian must ever be short of love to his mother, his father, or to any of those who are endeared to him by relationships which God has appointed for us to observe. Oh, by the dying love of Christ to His mother, let no man here unman himself by forgetting his mother! She bore you—bear her in her old age and lovingly cherish her even to the last.