Rick Warren - The Word of Trust - Part One

Hi, this is Rick Warren, Bible teacher of the Daily

Hope Broadcast. Did you know that because of Easter, your

past can be forgiven, you get a purpose for living,

and you can have a home in heaven. That's good news.

Where else can you get that kind of news? Nowhere else?

And did you know that at Easter, studies have shown

people are more open to an invitation to go to

church than at any other time of the year. Don't

go to church by yourself, but bring somebody who doesn't

know Jesus Christ, a family member, a friend, a coworker,

a neighbor, a relative. And if you bring them to

that church service and they come to know Christ, You're

going to be making a friend for eternity. It'll be

the most important investment you can ever make in their lives.

And by the way, if they come to Christ, would

you let me know about it. I'd love to hear

that story that you brought somebody to Easter and they

found Jesus. You can write to me Rick at Pastorrick

dot com. That's rickat Pastorrick dot com. I would love

to hear from you. God bless you and Happy Easter.

Thanks for joining us here today. On Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,

the Audio Broadcast Ministry of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we

continue in a series called the Seven Greatest Words of Love.

There are seven.

Words in particular that Jesus spoke during his final hours

on the Cross that hold the keys for finding fulfillment

in your life, relationships, and even your career. Right now,

here's Pastor Rick with part one of a message called

the Word of Trust.

Some of you know that growing up, my mother was

both a librarian and a Christian bookstore manager. So I

learned from an early age to really love books. I

began to read them voraciously, began to collect them. Today,

my library, my personal library, has over twenty five thousand

volumes in hardback paperback, and I have another thirty thousand

volumes in ebooks, so I've got about a fifty five

thousand volume library. In some periods of my life, I

was reading the book a day. He said, how do

you do that? You read big print in big pictures, Okay,

really tiny, tiny books. And in my library of about

fifty five thousand books, as I said, I have several

volumes that are interesting that are collections of the last

words of people of famous people. They're dying words, and

I read them in that Well. The books are supposed

to be serious, some of them are actually kind of funny.

I thought i'd share a couple with you. The last

words of a guy named James Rogers. He was a

criminal and he is about to be executed by a

firing squad. And they asked, right before they shot him,

do you have any final requests? He said, yes, a

bulletproof vest. Famous last words. General John Sedgwick was a

Union commander in the Civil War. He was killed on

the battlefield looking at the enemy while saying, quote, those

freedericks couldn't hit an elephant at this day. Another famous quote,

Pancho Villa. Everybody knows who he is, you know, famous

Mexican leader Pancho Villa's last words were, don't let it

end like this. Tell people I said something, all right.

Today we look at the most famous last words ever,

the last words of Jesus Christ on the cross. Now

we have been for seven weeks looking at the seven

statements that Jesus made on the cross while he was

being crucified. And as I've told you that as a pastor,

I have stood at the bedside of many many people.

As they said their final words. Last words are important.

And when it comes to Jesus Christ, the last words

of Jesus Christ are extremely important. And today we come

to the last word of the last words, the very

last thing before Jesus died on the cross. The Bible

says it like this in Luke chapter twenty three. If

you are new here today, you can take the message

notes outside of your in your program and take them out.

All the verses in the Bible are there on this text.

It says this, Luke twenty three. By this time it

was noon. Now Jesus has been on the cross for

six hours. It says, by this time it was noon.

But darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock.

Now circle the word darkness. We'll come back to that

in a minute, because this is the word of trust,

and you really need to learn to trust in the

darkest hours of your life. When darkness fell across the

whole land until three o'clock. Now, we don't know why

it got dark. Maybe just God brought cloud cover over,

maybe a storm. It just got dark. It's not normally

dark in the middle of the day. That's usually the

brightest time but the light from the sun was gone,

and suddenly the thick veil hanging in the temple was

torn a part. There's a symbolism behind that we're not

going to get into about making God accessible to us.

But it says then Jesus shouted. So the final words

that Jesus says, he shouts out, Father, I entrust my

spirit into your hands. This is what he shouted. I

entrust my spirit, Father, into your hands. And with those

words he breathed this last breath. Now, when the captain

of the Roman soldiers that would have been a centurion,

a captain of a captain, was overseeing a hundred soldiers.

When the centurion, the captain of the Roman soldiers handling

the execution, saw what had happened, he praised God. This

guy is in no way a believer, but he praised

God and said, surely, surely this man was innocent. And

in the Book of Matthew and in the Book of

Luke it adds, surely this man will innocent and the

son of God. Now, as a Roman centurion, this is

pretty amazing that a hardened soldier would look up and say,

the guy we just crucified, surely he was innocent. Something's

different here. As a centurion, he would have already have

seen literally hundreds and hundreds of crucifixions. This is not

a new thing. One of the tasks of Roman soldiers

was to crucify people, and literally, in those days of

the Roman Empire, they were crucifying hundreds a day. This

is not a novel thing. They crucified criminals, they crucified

political you know, figures and things like that. So he

had certainly seen hundreds of crucifixions, but this one evidently

is unlike any crucifixion he's ever seen. And this hard bitten,

hardened Roman centurion, when he hears Jesus say the last

of the seven phrases, he says, he must have been innocent,

he must have been the son of God. Something's different here,

something's unique. Well, what made this crucifixion so different from

all the other ones? He had seen the seven things

that Jesus had said on the cross that we've been

looking at now for seven weeks. Nobody ever spoke like

Jesus spoke when they were being murdered, when they were

being crucified. This Roman centurion had heard Jesus say, Father,

forgive them they don't know what they're doing. He's never

heard anybody being hung on a cross forgiving the executioners

who are crucifying him. And yet he heard that he

had never seen anybody refuse the painkiller that Jesus was offered,

which Jesus refused. He heard Jesus say the word of

assurance to the repentant thief on the cross, dying by him,

say today, you'll be with me in paradise. Nobody had

ever said that on a cross. Nobody has ever said, Father,

forgive them. Nobody has ever said the word of assurance,

the word of love, the word of substitution, the word

of victory, all the things we've been looking at now

for seven weeks. And certainly nobody had ever shouted in

his last breath on the cross, Father, I entrust my

spirit into your hands. Nobody had ever said that before.

This is very different, folks. People don't die like this.

Normal people don't die this way. And Jesus actually gave

us a model of how to die. I wrote it

there on your outline. I don't want to cover it

in detail. He was at peace that it was his

time to die. He was at peace. He wasn't afraid

to die. He died with no unreconciled relationships, which a

lot of people do. He wasn't angry, he wasn't bitter.

He knew where he was going. He's confident of heaven,

and he trusted God with his future. I entrust my

spirit into your hands. So, actually, there are three characteristics

of jesus death. Why don't you write these down? First,

Jesus Christ gave up his life voluntarily. Voluntarily. You know,

when the movie The Passion came out, there was a

big debate who killed Jesus. Was it the Roman soldiers

who killed Jesus? Was it the temple religious leaders who

killed Jesus? Was it the crowd who killed Jesus? The

fact is who took Jesus' life? The answer is Jesus

gave his life. He gave it up. He came for

the purpose of dying. He had said that from the

very beginning. In fact, he said, nobody can take my

life from me. He gave it willingly for you believe me.

If Jesus had not wanted to die on the cross,

because he was God in human form, he would not

have happened. In fact, there's what he said. Look, up

here on the screen. John chapter ten, verse eighteen. Jesus said,

no one can take my life from me. He'd done

all kinds miracles. He could certainly do a miracle to

come down off the cross. I lay down my life voluntarily,

for I have the authority to lay it down when

I want to, and also the power to take it

back again. So the death on the cross is not

a tragedy. It was Jesus' choice. He did it voluntarily.

If he hadn't wanted to die on the cross, he

would not have died on the cross. And we talked

the last few weeks why he had to do that.

But it was a voluntary decision. Jesus was in no

way a victim, and he was not being victimized. He

was in complete control of the situation. And nobody could

do anything to Jesus without his permission. Literally, he had

the last word, with his last word and the things

that he said on the cross. So Jesus gave up

his life voluntarily. The second thing write this down. He

gave up his life confidently, confidently. In other words, he

shot outed the word Father, I entrust my life. I

entrust my spirit into your hands. Now he shouts. Now,

let me say this to you. I have been around,

as I said, a lot of people as a pastor

in for forty years. I have been at the bedside

of many people as they took their last breath. And

I will tell you this, dying people don't shout. I've

never ever heard one dying person shout. They whisper. Not

one in my entire life have I ever heard shout.

Because in their dying moments, they don't have the strength,

and usually they whisper out a few words at the

very end, and normally, certainly, and it's crucifixion where you're

having extreme torture and extreme punishment, and in the last

as of crucifixion, a normal person wouldn't have had the

strength to even shout out beyond a weak groan. Now,

when Jesus shouts out the final on the cross, he's

not shouting out in anger. He's not shouting out in bitterness.

He's not shouting out in fear. He's not shouting out

in despair. He's not shouting out in defeat. He is

shouting out in victory. It is a shout of confident, convinced,

rock solid trust. Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands,

and he says it at the top of his voice.

It's a shout of victory, and it's a shout of trust.

He gave his life up voluntarily. He gave his life

up confidently. And the third thing, Jesus gave up his

life trusting God. Trusting God. Now, when Jesus says this phrase,

the very last of the seven things, he says on

the cross, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.

I entrust my spirit. This is actually a quote from

the Old Testament. In fact, it's a quote from Psalm

chapter thirty one, verse five. And not only is it

a quote from thirty one, verse five, it's a phrase

that every single Jew would know by heart, because this

is the bedtime prayer of every Jewish child. You know,

we teach our children. Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if

I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my

soul to take. That is taken from this phrase that's

taken from Psalm thirty one. Now I lay me down

to sleep is actually just a paraphrase of Psalm thirty one.

Without a doubt, Mary probably taught this to Jesus as

a little baby boy, every Jewish child, in fact, Jews

would regularly pray this as the evening prayer at the

end of the day. You say, Father, I am entrusting

my life. I'm entrusting my spirit. I'm committing myself into

your hands, and I'm going to bed. It's a common

Jewish prayer. And Jesus uses what he has been saying

every night since as a little boy as his last

words on the cross. Now, what's going on here? I

want you to write this down. He focused on the Father,

not his pain. And in a minute, when we get

into what to do in your dark days, that's one

of the things you need to learn how to do

that when you are in pain and when you're in

your darkest days. Jesus is in his darkest days. He's

in the on the cross. It is literally physically dark.

He focuses not on his pain, but he focuses on

the Father. And he has no fear, and he has

no regrets. He has just trust into thy hands. I

commit my spirit into your hands. I entrust my life. Now,

this phrase that we're looking at today has been said

by Christians ever since, for two thousand years. It's very

very common. A lot of Christians throughout history have phrased

used this phrase when they're facing danger, when they're facing persecution,

when they're facing discouragement and death. The Latinists in manus

to us, in manus tuus domine commendo spirit unum into

your hands. I commit my spirit Father, and that is

that's a phrase that has been used for literally thousands

of years. In fact, the very first Christian martyr, the

guy named Stephen, who was stoned to death in Jerusalem

for following Jesus, he says a version of what Jesus

just said here, and he says, as they were as

they were killing him. Uh, Stephen says, Lord Jesus received

my spirit, and that's the last thing he prayed. By

the way, while I'm talking about this, Uh, the idea

of last rites, that's not in the Bible. It's not

in the Bible. It so it's a tradition added many

many years later. Nobody in the Bible received last rites,

none of the apostles, none of the disciples, nobody received life.

You don't need last rights to get into heaven. It's

a tradition that was added hundreds and hundreds of years later.

It's not in the Bible, but Jesus says it's his

last words. I'm committing into your hands, God, my spirit.

Now what do we learn from this last statement of Jesus. Well,

every single word has an important truth. And that's what

I want us to look at right now when you

are going through your darkest day. There are four truths

you need to remember. Write these down. Number one first

thing to remember is I have a father in heaven

who loves me. I have a father in heaven who

loves me. This is the first thing you need to

remember when you're going through a dark day. And that's

why Jesus starts his last statement on the cross with

the word father. With the word father. Now, remember a

couple of weeks ago we talked about that. When Jesus

was taking the punishment for every sin of mankind on himself,

he cries out, my God, my God. Remember that, My God,

my God, why have you forsaken me. It's the only

time in the Bible when he doesn't call God father,

and that was because he was separated taking all of

our sins on himself. When Jesus taught us to pray,

he said, you're to pray like this, our Father who

art in heaven. That blew everybody's mind, because up to

this point, every faith, every religion, taught that God is distant.

God is big, he's powerful, he's cosmic, he's mighty. He

may be merciful, but you certainly don't call him father.

Jesus changed it all. He blew the stereotypes, and he said,

when you talk to God, you talk to him like

he's your daddy. In fact, the word he used in

Aramic abba literally means daddy, papa. It's the first word

every Middle East child learns, Abba, Dad, dad, papa. It's

easy to say. And so Jesus told us, when you pray,

start with praying Father. And when Jesus is dying on

the cross, his last words there he starts with the

word Father. Now the judgment period for sin is all over.

He's now reconciled to God. He's not talking some impersonal force,

some uninterested, distant deity. He's talking to Father. The Bible

says this John sixteen twenty eight. Jesus said, I came

from the Father, and I entered the world, and now

I'm leaving the world and I'm going back to the Father.

So what do we know about God since he wants

us to call him father. A lot of people have

a problem with this because they had bad dads and

their dad was distant, Their dad was demeaning, their dad

was destructive, their dad was, you know, detached. Is that

the way our father in heaven is No. The Bible

tells us that God is a caring father. He's a

consistent father. He's a close father, and he's a capable father,

and he loves you more than you can even possibly imagine.

The Bible says in Psalm one three, verse thirteen, as

a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord

that's God has compassion on those who honor him. I

don't know what you're going through today. You may be

having a financial crisis, a physical crisis, a conflict in

your marriage. I don't care. Well, I do care, but

I mean, I don't know what you're going through. But

I would say this, you have a heavenly father in

heaven who is close, caring, competent, capable, and consistent, and

he cares. And if you're going through the dark days,

you need to get your eyes off the pain and

onto the Father Father, that God who knows everything. That's

going in your life, sees everything that's going on in

your life, cares about everything that's going on in your life.

Has the power to change everything in your life and

will help you if you will trust him. I want

you to write this down in your line. God loves

me more than I do. That's probably a shock to

some of you. God loves me more than I do.

Did you know that you don't love yourself as much

as God loves you. God loves you more than you

love you because God is love. God is the essence

of all love. It all came from Him, and no

matter what you are facing right now, need to say

I have a father in heaven who loves me. That's

how he starts. But he doesn't just love you. And

here's the second thing you need to remember. It's in

this sentence. Not only do I have a father in

heaven who loves me. Number two, my father can be trusted.

My father talking about in heaven, the God of Heaven,

he can be trusted. Now, you may have had a

physical father who couldn't be trusted, and inconsistent fathers produce

insecure children. I talked to guy one time. He said,

I didn't know from week to week whether my dad

was gonna slug me or gonna hug me. I didn't know,

just whether he was drunk or not or whatever whatever

mood he was in. Inconsistent fathers produced insecure children. But

your heavenly father is not only one who loves you.

He's one you can trust. You can trust him. And

this is the word of the trust. Jesus says, Father,

I entrust my spirit, I entrust my life into your care.

That's why I call this the word trust.

That was such an encouraging message from Pastor Rick. And

now to encourage us more, here's Rick with a letter

from one of our listeners.

Hi, everybody, today, I'm going to share with you a

special testimony from Delia. Delia says that Daily Hope has

helped her with deep anxiety. But then she also shared

about what happened as she began to share Daily Hope

with her parents, and she writes this, Pastor Rick, a

couple of years ago, I found myself pretty lost. My

company had a merger and all the senior management were

changed overnight, and I was among them. At the same time,

my long term relationship ended. Then a couple months later,

my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. I was in

shock and I fell into a deep depression from all

these changes. In fact, every day I experienced a panic attack.

But then I found your teaching on Daily Hope, and

it just seemed that you understood every emotion that I

was going through, emotions that I didn't even know how

to verbalize to other people. But it was Daily Hope

that helped me get out of bed every morning and

gave me the strength to get through each day. Through

your teaching on Daily Hope pastorrect, I was able to

experience God's love and power like never before. You know.

I even translated the Daily Hope devotional for my parents

who don't speak English, and they accepted Jesus too. That's

an amazing Delia. I am so grateful for you and

the team at Daily Hope because it has become the

morning routine that I can't live without. Now, Delia, you

have been through more pain than I can possibly imagine,

some very very challenging times that I'm sorry, I really

I'm sorry. Sometimes we experience multiple traumas at the same time,

and when that happens, that's when we really need the

hope of Jesus Christ. And I'm so glad you experienced that,

that you found God's love and found God's power. And

what a blessing that you translated the Daily Hope devotionals

for your parents and then they accepted Christ. What that's amazing.

I am celebrating with you that they are now in

the family of God.

Did you know that you can start every day with

hope and encouragement from Pastor Rick, Well, you can when

you sign up to receive his life changing Bible study

teaching delivered directly to your inbox. Just go to Dailyhope

Radio dot com and sign up for this free Daily

Hope devotional. Be sure to join us next time as

we look into God's Word for our daily hope. This

program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your

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