Oh, it’s wonderful to be with you this morning. Good morning and welcome to Victory Lutheran Church. I am Pastor Denton Bennett, the associate pastor here. And um, as Pastor Todd was explaining, we’ve come to the end of our series, final Words, the Eternal Impact, the series we’ve been looking at as series of, of words that Jesus has said once he was up on the cross. I know today is Palm Sunday and we typically talk about that, but. Today we’re gonna finish our series and we’re gonna look at the very last phrase that Jesus spoke from the cross. And really it’s a capstone statement. It’s a statement that brings an end to death and defeat and sets forth an entire new world for us. Now, often in a typical storyline or in a journey, there’s a single statement that encapsulates everything, right. Movies are famous for this. There’s one probably phrase I could say right now that you all would instantly get right. May the fourth be with you. Yes. Yeah. That from that Star Trek series, right? No. No. All right. About half of you have heard this joke already this morning then, but for Jesus, this moment, this statement that he speaks, comes at a time when he’s suspended between heaven and earth. With his final breath, he says, father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. Now, this is not an utterance of defeat. This is not Jesus giving up because he’s lost. No. This is a declaration of triumph, guys. This is the culmination of divine rescue, a plan that was formulated before the beginnings of earth. When these words, Jesus speaks are not made up on the spot, but they echo back to an ancient psalm, a psalm written by David. Yet when Jesus speaks these words of we read ’em today, the meaning have been forever transformed because when Jesus speaks these words, we find redemption, liberation, and new life. I invite you to join me in the 23rd chapter of Luke. You can follow along on the screens or if you have your Bible with you. Today we’re gonna read just three short verses from Luke 23 verses 44 through 46. It was about, it was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, father, and to your hands, I commit my spirit. When he had said this, he breathed his last. This is the gospel of our Lord. Let us pray. Father, as we. Come together this day to celebrate and remember Palm Sunday and the wonderful activity, the, the victory dance that was going on among so many people that day. Uh, Lord, we’re often like them and we get confused and we think the victory means only small things, but in Jesus, we find victory over death. In Jesus, we find a victory that is more than we can imagine. Father, I pray that you’re with us this morning, that the Holy Spirit opens our hearts and our minds and our ears to hear this message, to find redemption in the words of Jesus on the cross. For it is in His holy name, we pray. Amen. I wanna begin this morning with a understanding of what into your hands means.

This language of trust that we have here for Jesus’s words. Come directly from Psalm 31 5. We go back to that psalm, we can find where David wrote into your hands. I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me. Oh Lord, faithful God. Now this psalm, as Pastor Susan explained to us this past Wednesday in our Len in service is something that every Jewish child would’ve known. You see, the Jewish parents and the culture at that time would’ve taken this psalm and they would’ve taught their children to pray this before bed. Think of it kind of like we pray, teach our children to pray, um, before they go to bed. Now I lay me down to sleep my soul, the Lord, to keep of course, as with everything that Jesus did and said this wasn’t coincidental. This. Reference to Psalm 31 was intentional because even in his agony, even in his death, as he’s hung there between the end of something and the beginning of something entirely new, Jesus teaches us a prayer and teaches us the meaning of something far deeper, a path forward. So what does it mean to commit something into the hands of God? What does it mean when Jesus says, I want to commit my spirit into your hands? Let’s take a little closer look at the word commit for just a moment. This comes from a Hebrew worry word, which carries the meaning of entrusting something valuable to someone else. It’s like if you were to go on vacation for a week and you have a a loved animal that you need somebody to watch over for you, and you give this animal over, you commit this animal to their care even more. If you’re gonna give your kids over to daycare or even our children’s church, you commit them to their care. It means that you trust wholly into the people that you’re giving this valuable item over to. So it’s a complete language of surrender. But not surrender of defeat. Mind you, this is not a defeatist attitude. This is not a, a statement of defeat from Jesus. Jesus. Rather, this is a statement that encapsulates true trust. Literally, Jesus is placing his hand in into God his spirit. The statement fills us with safety and comfort. An image of eternal security. Consider for just a moment what placing your spirit into someone’s hands represents. Because when we think about hands, we get, get a picture of things that the hands can do. Like just this week we had this beautiful cross installed here in the sanctuary, and we got to come in here and we got to witness as the workers used their hands to build the cross and to put it up. I’ve been in doctor’s offices, in hospital, uh, ER rooms as I was working as a chaplain where doctors would use their hands to literally save a dying patient. Mothers use their hands to secure their children when they’re in danger.

You see, even as Jesus is committing his hands, he committing into his father’s hands, his spirit. We find confidence in God’s care and protection and purpose. And for us today, this speaks profoundly to our own journey. For every day, we face uncertainty and we’re attacked by it. What might happen today is we leave our house. What might happen later today as we leave these doors and we go about whatever’s next on our agenda for today, what happens when we go back to the doctor’s office after we receive that unfortunate phone call that we need to come back for a second visit? Where’s the, the certainty when we leave our homes in the morning to go off to work or even in retirement as we’re looking into the next obstacle that we face? And I don’t know about you all, but there’s been times in my own life when I wondered where my next meal would come from. Uncertainty is very real in this life and absolutely real for every one of us. Wonders what happens when I die. Uncertainty attacks us. Yet in this statement from Jesus, we find a solid foundation. A solid foundation of security where we never have to doubt what happens when we die For when Jesus submitted his spirit into God’s hands, he paid the ransom for us so we too can submit our spirit over to the hands of God. This is a wonderful place to run to in those moments, in those times of everyday issues, those uncertain moments when we wonder where is God? For our God is faithful and loving. Even as we live in these uncertain times and face circumstances beyond our control, the truth remains that in Christ you have been redeemed to a new life. It’s interesting, if we look at Psalm 31, 5, the words that David had written, some a thousand years before Christ, and we look at ’em as prophecy, which is probably not something you normally do. But we remember that David wrote these words long before Christ existed because redemption in the Hebrew world was not an abstract concept. When David wrote words about being redeemed, he was being very literal. This was a, a concrete ideal for the Hebrew family knew what redemption meant in their culture. It wasn’t uncommon to have real life Slavery exists. And yet there were kinsman. Redeemers, meaning that you could go on behalf of a family member or a loved one and buy back that slave from that slave owner setting that slave free. Or let’s say your family lost valuable land, you could go back and purchase that land back from whoever prob had had seized it, returning that land back to a loved one. The idea of redemption in David’s mind was not something abstract like we talk about. It’s a very real thing. So when David wrote, you have Redeemed Me, he was acknowledging God’s rescue in his own life. But for us, we get the, the benefit of the Holy Spirits clarity because we understand there’s a greater redemption to come.

There’s a redemption here and now, but there’s also a greater redemption in eternity through Christ. Now, I wanna share with you a, a, a reading from one Peter chapter one. And right here, Peter’s gonna talk just a little bit about prophecy and the vision they had compared to the vision We now have one Peter chapter one, beginning in verse 10 says this, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them. Was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you. And the things that you have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, which the angels long to look. There’s an unbelievable and astonishing truth to these verses. The prophets of old yes. Even David’s words in, in Psalm 31 that Jesus chose to repeat in his final moment, in his final breath on the cross were realities that those who wrote ’em at the time could only partially see. Yet we get the full benefit of clear vision. You see those prophets and David and all those who wrote before us, they were not writing for their generation, they were writing for yours. The spirit of Christ was at work within them, pointing them towards a cross and a tomb that they could barely see. But we have the benefit of seeing clearly why even the angels. Peter says, long to see and experience what you have received. What David experienced, partially what he pleaded for. We know fully what he glimpsed at dimly. We see clearly the redemption that David sing about in his Psalms has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and now we have been redeemed to this new life. So this liberation that we have experienced, we need to understand, and I wanna take some time this morning unpacking this. What does it mean to be redeemed? What does it mean to say I have been redeemed? Well, that’s a declaration that reverberates through every dimension of our existence. First redemption means that we’ve been liberated from bondage. Just as God had liberated Israel from Egypt way back in the Exodus, you know, the old part of the Old Testament we hardly ever read because we can’t pronounce the names. Christ has delivered us from a life of slavery and sin. This is what Paul writes about in Galatians, uh, chapter five verse one, when he says, for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. The chains that once bound you are no more. They have been broken. The power of sin to dominate your life has been shattered. The things that Satan tries to use to control you and influence you and pull you away from the guarantee that you have in Jesus Christ, have no power over you, and certainly does not affect who God sees you as when he looks upon you.

You’re no longer motivated by guilt or force to perform and act for God that you don’t know or you can’t trust. Furthermore, you don’t have to navigate your life under the weight of trying to please God in order to receive your salvation. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this. For freedom Christ has set you free. Means you can leave here today without the weight of the law anywhere in your life and it has not affected your salvation. If there’s anything that we can understand from Luther, this is by far my favorite. Statement from Martin Luther, the reformer. The Christian is Lord of all subject to no one yet because of his freedom. We are a slave to all as. We live out the grace and mercy that has redeemed us in Christ. Second, this redemption means a restoration to relationship. You see, the wall that separated God in humanity now has a Christ size hole directly through the middle of it. Believe it or not, there was a time when the world history that you could not visibly, physically pronounce or speak God’s name. You could not go to him in prayer. You couldn’t be driving down the road one day and remember that thing that was bothering you and start praying in your car. There was no one to go between you and God. Now there is, you have been restored to a right relationship with God, you who once for far off has been restored through the blood of Christ. Now the problem with this is that sometimes we don’t always believe this. Like I know for instance, in my own life, I have struggled at times to see God, and this typically happens in difficult life seasons, right? So, for instance, the death of a loved one. I can remember vividly the morning my dad died and after we spent some time with him, I walked out of the hospice, uh, room thinking, God, where are you? I was in seminary at the time. You don’t think that I would be questioning God? Right? I was religious. How about a significant life change of the realization that a life plan hasn’t worked out the way? That we had intended. Maybe God had a new direction for us. But in these moments, it is very tempting to feel as if God has abandoned us, that he’s no longer a part of our life. But because Jesus Christ committed his spirit over to God because he placed his life in God’s hand, we no longer have to worry about that separation. Even in the times when we feel that we’re far off from God, it’s not God has moved away and that door is wide open. Third, our redemption means transformation of identity. This one’s big for me personally because we’re no longer identified by our failures, our wounds, our even our achievements. I love this. Paul writes this in Second Corinthians. Therefore, as anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new life has come You who are in Christ, bear a new name, a new purpose, and a new destiny, right? You’re no longer defined by the sins of your past or even those sins that you still struggle with today or tomorrow. God does not look down upon you and call you by that sinful name that you think about and you call yourself. He called you a beloved child of Christ. He says, you are my son in Jesus Christ, in who I am and pleased you are my daughter in Jesus Christ, with whom I am very well pleased.

Now, this has freed us to live a life full of gratefulness, confidently trusting in the word, an eternal hope, living with a renewed purpose. I often hear these stories that sound something like this. After a major life issue, I have discovered that God is not done with me. Personal, short story friend of mine who was a children’s pastor years ago at a church that I first began ministry at, had a heart attack at the young age of 42 years old. And thought, we all thought at the time that it was his time. Believe it or not, as a children’s pastor, he was dedicated to his craft. He was very passionate about sharing Jesus with children. Yet after he had the heart attack and after he had recovered and he came back to work, he had a renewed purpose. He says, you know, God’s not done with me yet, and it’s beautiful. Right? We all probably can share stories like that where we come to a realization that God’s not done with us yet. But we don’t have to wait on that thing to happen in life. We don’t have to wait on that heart attack because in Christ, God has already given you that new purpose in life. Which brings me to my fourth point. That is that we have been redeemed to participate in God’s kingdom. It’s important to remember that you haven’t merely been rescued from something. You’ve been rescued for something. Peter writes this in one Peter chapter two. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellence. These of him who called you out darkness into his marvelous light. The scope of this redemption that Jesus paid the price for his breathtaking. It addresses our guilt, our present struggles, and our future hope, the redemption that we’ve received. It speaks to our individual journey. Sure. But also the collective calling we all have together as brothers and sisters in Christ working and being part of God’s kingdom here on Earth. And it all flows from the moment in which Jesus said it is done. I now commit my spirit over to you, father. So then the question becomes, how shall we live as the people who have been redeemed for if these truths merely remain as intellectual concepts, we’ve missed the transformative power of Jesus Christ for the redeemed life as one that has lived. In response to what Jesus Christ has accomplished. I wanna return as we come to a close this morning, back to Peter’s first Peter, uh, back to Peter’s words. In First Peter chapter one, as he talked about the prophets as old, and we think about that. We discover something truly remarkable. You and I occupy an important place. And the redemption of mankind, not just for ourselves, not just for our loved ones, but also for those who would come after us. For the prophets searched diligently about what they were only getting shown bits and pieces of just partial vision they had. But we get to understand it fully. We get to experience it fully.

We get to live a life fully claimed by Jesus Christ, and yet we get a greater life to go to an eternity as we have our eternal salvation paid for love. Peter’s comment there at the end, he says, even the angels long to look into the realities in which we inhabit guys. That means that the angels are even jealous of us today. As they said among us, as we think about the angels in a spiritual battle that we don’t ever get to see, they’re jealous of what Jesus has done for you. We’re not just beneficiaries of Christ redemptive work, we’re participants in it. For through us, God continues to unfold his redemptive purposes for this world. Our lives have become the canvases in which God has painted his redemptive story on it. Not just for us, but for others to see the grace and mercy that is one. When Jesus gives over his spirit to the Father, being redeemed to a new life matters to you. Yes, but it also matters to those who will come to know the grace and mercy. Of Jesus Christ in your testimonies. For when we declare I am redeemed. We’re not just making a personal statement about our faith. We’re bearing witness about a faithful God across generations. We’re adding our voices to choir. That stretches from King David to Jesus and Mary to Paul. To the reformers who come before us, even all those Christians and all those church years that I don’t like to talk about, and probably even some Christians that you and I don’t like today, and yet all the many choirs of Christians that’ll come after us tomorrow, we’re part of a bigger story of redemption. You know, in a world that is hungry for authenticity, in a world that just struggles and is searching. For what is true and right there is nothing more powerful than the story of a life transformed by grace for when another person sees in you the peace that transcends all circumstances. A joy that persists through even the worst trials, and a love that reaches across the divides, that transcends even political correctness and church differences and family squabbles.

They glimpse a true reality of what it means to be redeemed by Jesus Christ. You are redeemed because Jesus committed his spirit over into the hands of God. And now in faith, we walk in a redeemed new life. Let us pray. Lord God, you are our faithful redeemer. And we stand amazed at what you have accomplished through Christ’s death and resurrection as we head into Holy Week this week. And we remember the path that you had to walk, Jesus, the, the things you had to endure, the rudeness, the ugliness, the hurt, the pains. Help us to be thankful that you didn’t stop partway, that you went all the way to the end, to the moment, to where you handed over your soul. To God in place for ours, and thank you for that freedom that it brings for the restoration and transformation that it makes in in our lives, and help us to live that out so that others can come to a full knowledge of faith in Jesus Christ and whose name we pray this day. Amen.