I need not say a word about the other application of this verse, which, as I have said, is consecrated to us by our Lord's own use of it at the last. But is it not beautiful to think that the very same act of mind and heart by which a man commits his spirit to God in life may be his when he comes to die, and that death may become a voluntary act, and the spirit may not be dragged out of us, reluctant, and as far as we can, resisting, but that we may offer it up as a libation, to use one metaphor of St. Paul's, or may surrender it willingly as an act of faith? It is wonderful to think that life and death, so unlike each other, may be made absolutely identical in the spirit in which they are met. You remember how the first martyr caught up the words from the Cross, and kneeling down outside the wall of Jerusalem, with the blood running from the wounds that the stones had made, said, 'Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.' That is the way to die, and that is the way to live.
One word is all that time permits about the ground upon which this great venture of faith may be made. 'Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of Truth.' The Psalmist, I think, uses that word 'redeemed' here, not in its wider spiritual New Testament sense, but in its frequent Old Testament sense, of deliverance from temporal difficulties and calamities. And what he says is, in effect, this: 'I have had experience in the past which makes me believe that Thou wilt extricate me from this trouble too, because Thou art the God of Truth.' He thinks of what God has done, and of what God is. And Peter, whom we have already found echoing this text, echoes that part of it too, for he says, 'Let them commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as _unto a faithful Creator_,' which is all but parallel to 'Lord God of Truth.' So God will continue as He has begun, and finish what He has begun.
'A faithful Creator--' He made us to need what we do need, and He is not going to forget the wants that He Himself has incorporated with our human nature. He is bound to help us because He made us. He is the God of Truth, and He will help us. But if we take 'redeemed' in its highest sense, the Psalmist, arguing from God's past mercy and eternal faithfulness, is saying substantially what the Apostle said in the triumphant words, 'Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son ... and whom He did predestinate them He also ... justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified.' 'Thou hast redeemed me.' 'Thou art the God of Truth; Thou wilt not lift Thy hand away from Thy work until Thou hast made me all that Thou didst bind Thyself to make me in that initial act of redeeming me.'
So we can say, 'He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' You have experiences, I have no doubt, in your past, on which you may well build confidence for the future. Let each of us consult our own hearts, and our own memories. Cannot _we_ say, 'Thou hast been my Help,' and ought we not therefore to be sure that He will not 'leave us nor forsake us' until He manifests Himself as the God of our salvation?
It is a blessed thing to lay ourselves in the hands of God, but the New Testament tells us, 'It is a fearful thing to _fall into_ the hands of the living God.' The alternative is one that we all have to face,--either 'into Thy hands I commit my spirit,' or into those hands to fall. Settle which of the two is to be your fate.