Sir Lord, may graciously help
me, I return your prayerful attention to Psalm 31 and the first clause
in verse 15. Psalm 31 and the first clause
in verse 15. My times are in thy hand. Psalm 31 verse 15, my times are
in thy hand. The psalm that we read was written
by David. David, that man of God who did
know many trials and difficulties in his pathway. We know that
in this psalm we speak of, he speaks of the difficulties that
he was in In verse 9 he says, Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for
I am in trouble, mine eye is consumed with grief, and my soul
and my belly. David knew times of difficulty. We don't know whether this was
written perhaps when he was being chased by Saul, mercilessly and
unjustly hounded by Saul. He had honorably behaved himself,
but Saul just wanted him to be got rid of. My times are in thy
hand. It could have been when Absalom
was chasing David, seeking to usurp the throne from David. And you see he speaks here in
verse 13. For I have heard the slander
of many, fear was on every side, while they took counsel together
against me, they devised to take away my life. Well, if you think
of a council of people having a conference of how to be rid
of you, surely you might think on an earthly sense that your
times lay in the hands of this committee or this group of people
that are scheming and planning against you. In David's case,
perhaps he might think, well, my hands are in the hands of
Saul. He's hunting me as a bird upon
the mountains. Or I'm in the hand of Absalom,
who's got Ahithophel as his counsellor to overthrow me and to remove
me. But David, you see, he looks
beyond Saul. He looks beyond Ahithophel. He
looks along beyond Absalom. And he says in this verse 15,
my times are in thy hands. Not Ahithophel's, not Saul's,
not Absalom's. They were all people that were
planning and scheming against David. And you see, this is a
place of security to a child of God. My times are in thy hands. Naturally speaking, David could
have said, well, my times are in the hand of this person and
that person. They're scheming against me. I'm in their hands. No. David looks beyond the second
causes and realises that his He is in the hands of God. And that's a great blessing in
our pathways with the difficulties, the trials, the sadnesses, the
opposition at times that comes against us that we can look beyond
the second causes and realize that God ultimately is in control. This is a place of safety for
the child of God. But you see, Jonathan Edwards preached a very
well-known sermon called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And he preached that about the
danger of being in the hands of God. That seems rather different
than our text. You see, in Hebrews it says,
it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God. So why is David saying, my times are in thy hands? And clearly the way it's written,
it's a comfort to David. It's a comfort to David that
his times are in God's hands. Well, you see, the secret is
really in verse 5 of Psalm 31. In verse 5 it says, Into thine
hand I commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord
God of truth. Redemption is the difference
between the hand of God being a fearful, solemn place to be
in, or to be a place of safety, security and love. So I ask you this morning, is
this a comfort? Or if you understood this rightly,
is this a really frightening thing? You see, if you are a
criminal and you're in the hands of the police, in one sense,
you'd say, well, it's not good to be in the hands of the police
if you're a criminal. bring you to justice for the
things that you've done wrong. And that's why to be in the hands
of God and to not have a place of refuge, to not have redemption,
to not have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, it's a fearful
thing to be in God's hand because God is righteous and God is holy
and we by nature are unrighteous and unholy. We are breakers of
the law and therefore the only thing a just God can do is crush
us. The hand of God. to those outside
of Christ will ultimately be fearful, a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of an angry God. But you see, David knew something
different. David knew something of redemption. He knew that those hands were
hands of love and mercy. That God had redeemed him. He'd
paid him. He'd brought him back. He'd forgiven
him. He'd come with that repentance,
you see. In verse 5 it says, into thy
hand I commit my spirit. He committed his life into the
hands of God. He'd come with repentance and
he'd put his trust for time and eternity in the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, then, verse 15
has a sense of security. My times are in thy hands. a place of safety, that God is
upholding him and God is able to keep him and able to preserve
him from everything that was going against him. You see we
spoke this morning in the Sunday school of time and eternity. Time, time passing away, time
is brief. But our times here below are
in God's hand. And you see, for the child of
God, this is a place of comfort, security and blessing, to be
in God's hand, to be carried by him, to be upheld by him through
all the changing scenes of times. My times are in thy hand. Well, we read together, didn't
we, also in the Book of Job. The Book of Job outlines the sufferings of one
man and his wife, I guess, too. But it's particularly focusing
on Job as this man who feared God and eschewed evil. And all
these things that came against Job, in one day he lost so much. He lost his goods and he was
a wealthy man. He lost his business, he lost
his family, all his ten children, all in one day were gone and
we're told how they went. The Sabians took some of them
and there was various things happened so that they all, it
was the wind that came and knocked down the house where all his
sons and daughters were. All these different things. But
you see he was able to say the Lord hath given and the Lord
hath taken away. You see he was able to realise
in his afflictions my times are in thy hands." And for Job, you
see, that was a great comfort to Job. It enabled him to realize
that all his times, all his sorrows, all his difficulties were in
God's hands. And as we see this book of Job, as we read through it, we see
that Job was one who had lost his family, he'd lost his business,
he'd lost his wealth. And then the three friends came,
so-called friends. Some people have said if you
have friends like Job, who needs enemies? Job had these friends,
so-called, and they came and in a sense they meant well. But
really, they were tremendously cruel to Job. tremendously cruel. Because they attacked the most
precious thing that Job had. The most precious thing that
Job had was his relationship with his God. And Job's friends
spent so long trying to dismantle and to attack and to ridicule
his hope. But you see, David was able to
say, my times are in thy hands. My times, what's going on in
my life? What's coming into it? How I'm passing through these
trials are in God's hands. And what a comfort that is in
our lives. And as I want to trace out something
of these words of Bildad the Shuhite and others to Job, seeking
to totally undermine the faith of Job. And you see, really,
if you analyze this book of Job, he doesn't spend all his time
concerned about his loss of his children, how much he misses
them. It is mentioned once or twice, but most of it, the majority
of the book of Job is about Job's relationship with his God, and
why God would do this. And you see his so-called friends,
they had their solutions as to why God was doing this. And they
told Job, and they didn't mince their words. When you put yourself
in Job's situation, you've lost your family. Your children have
been killed in one day. There's nothing left of them.
All your prosperity is gone overnight, and now you have boils from the
crown of your head to the sole of your feet, and you're in a
lot of pain. And then some people come up
to you, and Bill Dadd, the Shuhite, says this, verse three, does
God pervert judgment? Or doth the Almighty pervert
justice? If thy children have sinned against
him, and he hath cast them away for their transgressions, if
thou wouldst seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to
the Almighty, well, Job had just lost all his children. So these
miserable comforters come and say, well, obviously it's their
sin that has led to all these children being taken away. That's
what was aimed at here. And you see in verse 6, there
is this great statement, thou were pure and upright, surely
now he would awake for thee and make the habitation of thy righteousness
prosperous. This is what God would do, Job,
if you were really one of his people. If you, Job, were really
a child of God, then God would appear now, now, and do this. He wouldn't delay, he wouldn't
appear. Now, my times are in his hands. You see, it's God's hands our
times are in. And Satan, you see, as I believe,
these three friends were used by Satan to try and dismantle
Job's faith, to try and bring him to despair. to try and bring
him to give up hope on God, that because of what happened, that
he was clearly not a child of God. And you see, we're not ignorant
of his devices. And I don't know what you're
going through in your pathways, but sure I know is that Satan
would love to dismantle your faith. Satan would love to bring
you to the place where you give up on God, would love you, to come to that place where you
deny God. And you see, this is what Bildad
the Shuhite, I believe with Satan's influence, was trying to do to
Job. If thou were pure and upright, surely now he would awake for
thee. You see, God does things on his own time
scales. My times are in his hands. And
you see, we always want to rush things along and we make a decision
now. You've got to make a decision
now, Job, whether you are or aren't a child of God. And if
God doesn't lift you out of this poverty, if he doesn't sort out
the boils, if he doesn't sort out the loss of children and
the loss of health and the loss of all these things, then the
evidence is The verdict is clear. You're not a child of God. You see, this is satanic. This is Satan's way of seeking
to bring down the people of God. And I want to really bring this
to you. I don't know where some of you perhaps are, but you see,
the intention was to give up on God. And you see, I do believe
Job in his sufferings and all that he endured. It was said
right at the beginning of the uprightness of Job. God says this to Satan in verse
8 of chapter 1. And God said unto Satan, Hast
thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in
the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and
astureth evil? What a commendation! What a tremendous
commendation coming from God. And then after he loses everything,
then Satan then tries to say, well, it's because he still has
health and strength that that's why he's still loving you. You see, Satan can't understand
this. He cannot understand that anybody
serves anybody for love to that thing. He can only understand
that we would serve God for the loaves and the fishes, that we
would not serve God because we love him. He cannot understand
that concept. And you see, he said that Job
had all this prosperity and that's why he served God. And all the
time he has prosperity, he has health and strength, he'll serve
God because he wants all the things that go with serving God
that Job had been blessed with. Then, when those things are taken
away, you see, then there's no purpose in serving God. And indeed, Satan said, encouraged,
I guess, his wife to say, curse God and die. There's no purpose
in living. There's no purpose in serving
a God that has taken everything away. You see, either way round,
Satan tries to undermine our faith. But you see, Job was genuine. Job genuinely loved God, and
the people of God love God because of who he is, not because of
what he gives, although they do love what he gives. But ultimately,
you see, our pastor was speaking of Ruth last Sunday evening when
I was here. And Ruth, you see, she was very
busy in those fields gleaning the grain. But you see, as she
went on, as she went on with that gleaning, there was a shift
in emphasis. It became Boaz that became the
object. There's a shift in the book of
Ruth between gathering the grain and focusing on Boaz the Redeemer. And you see, for the people of
God, they may enjoy the blessings here below and handfuls of purpose,
but ultimately they want God. You see, that's the place where
true Christians will be, is with Christ, which is far better.
That's how Paul describes heaven. Not a place of just plenty to
eat, a place where Christ is. to be with Christ, which is far
better. And that's what the book of Ruth
brings you up to, to this person of Boaz, a type of Christ, in
the sense that he was a redeemer, one that would purchase back
all that lost inheritance and all that had come short. But
you see here, Job had the matter of true godliness in him, he
truly did love God, and yet you see He came into tremendous difficulties. And you see, Satan would say,
well, it's a no-brainer. You've come into these difficulties
because God is against you, because God has forsaken you. because
you have no partner lot in it. You see, it's the health and
wealth gospel, isn't it? If you love God and God was your
God, then you'd have all that this world could wish. But you
see, true Christianity is not like that. It might be that truly
we read of many people in the word of God that had great riches,
but it isn't necessarily linked to that. was much more concerned with
his problem of the relationship with God than he was with his
loss of riches. That was the key. That was the
nub. That was the true sorrow of Job, is that he had lost sense
of why was God doing this. And his three friends kept on
telling him why it was, that it was some secret sin that he
must have done. It must have been something,
and that's, you see, In verse 20 of chapter 8 we read of Job,
Behold God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he
help the evildoers. And that perfect, that word perfect
there is exactly the same word in the Hebrew to what it says
in verse 8 of chapter, sorry, verse 8 chapter 1 of Job, that
God describes Job as a perfect man. Same word. And his friend
says, God won't do that. You see, and Satan is a liar. Satan is a liar. He lied in the
Garden of Eden. He says half the truth, but the
other half isn't true. You see, I believe the Book of
Job is something of a picture of what God would do in his beloved
son. He would take one that was perfect,
one that was holy, beautiful, the son of God, and his visage would be so marred,
more than any man. Out of his greatness, he would
be so disfigured. And you see, if you see this,
what we have in Chapter 8 verse 6, If thou wert pure and upright,
surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation
of thy righteousness prosper. What did they say to Christ when
he was on the cross? In Matthew 27 verse 43 it says,
this is what they were saying to Jesus on the cross. He trusted
in God, let him deliver him now, if he will have him. You see
there's an urgency. Satan says it's got to be done
now. We're going to judge the matter now whether you're a Christian
or not. We're going to judge the matter now whether God's
for you or for against you. God doesn't work on that time
scale. My times are in God's hands, and we're not to judge
now, necessarily, what the issue is. You see, there
was a time to work out in Job's life, and there was a time when
it was clear that God talks about his servant Job again, that Job
was his servant, that he was the child of God, that he did
know Christ, he did know the Saviour, He trusted in God. Let him deliver him now, if he
will have him, for he said, I am the Son of God." So these that
were jeering at Christ on the cross were saying, if this genuinely
was the Son of God, then God the Father would come down and
vindicate him, take him from the cross, and then we would
know that truly this was the Son of God. You see, it's all
lies. This is Satan's work. And you
see, we, you might think, but this is to do with Christ, and
what's this got to do with our pathways? Well, there's a link
between our pathways and Christ's. Paul says this, that I may know
him and the fellowship of his suffering. Paul was also told when he came
to Ananias, when he was to see Paul after the Damascus road,
thou shalt show him how great things he must suffer for my
name's sake. There was to be a suffering,
you see, to be conformed to the image of his son. This is the purpose of the pathway
that the Lord's people are led to make them Christ-like. And yet in that very pathway
that makes them Christ-like, Satan comes along and says, because
you're in this pathway, you're not a child of God. Because God's
bringing you into darkness, therefore you are not a child of God. Because
if you were a child of God, he would make everything light.
He's a liar. He will ultimately make everything
light. He did ultimately make everything
light for Job. He ultimately made everything
light for his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He utterly and totally
vindicated Christ. He raised him from the dead,
gave him a name which is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that
Jesus is Christ, to the glory of God. He vindicated Christ. but not on the cross. He did
not vindicate him and show, what I'm saying is he didn't appear
and take him down from the cross because he had a work to do. And it's our salvation this morning
that Christ was not delivered from the cross. He endured the
cross, despising the shame. But you see, you are commanded It is appointed unto you not
only to believe in His name, but to suffer for His sake. If
we're going to be followers of Christ, we are going to know
something of suffering. Suffering for His sake. Suffering
because of the fiery darts of the wicked one. That's suffering,
isn't it? If you're passing through difficulties,
if you're sitting there on the floor scraping yourself with
a pot shirt because of the boils that you have from the crown
of your head to the sole of your feet, you've lost all your children,
you've lost all your wealth, and your so-called friend comes
along and says, if thou were pure and upright, surely now
he would awake for thee. That's cruel, that's cruel, that's
cruel. That's what Satan is, the accuser
of the brethren. He's an accuser of the brethren.
And you see, this is God's great work, to bring his people through. And David knew a lot of this,
didn't he? He knew a lot of trials. He knew
a lot of troubles, all the troubles of Saul. Really, David was very
innocent on those. He had behaved himself, we're
told, very wisely. And yet he was chased as a partridge
upon the mountain. Why? Joseph acted honorably in
Potiphar's house, and with his honorable behavior, he was put
in the prison. And we're told that in the prison
the word of the Lord tried him. Why did it try him? Because Satan,
the accuser of the brethren, was saying, no doubt, that Joseph,
if God was really for you, you wouldn't be in this prison. You
wouldn't be falsely accused. You wouldn't have come this way.
But you see, my times are not in Satan's hand and they're not
on Satan's timetable either. They're in God's hands and we
leave the issue with God. You see, God is able to bless
and God is able to bring his people out of trouble. In the epistle of Peter, we have
that word. Peter talks about, in 1 Peter
4, Beloved, think it not strange
concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some
strange thing happened unto you. Oh, how strange Satan would like
to make it sound that you're passing through. It's very strange.
If everything was right, you wouldn't be walking through this
difficulty. You wouldn't have these people
speaking against you. You wouldn't be misrepresented
by that group of people. Beloved, think it not strange
concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some
strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice in as much as ye
are partakers of Christ's sufferings. You see, there's something beautiful
here, and there's something that Satan would love you to despair,
but actually, in reality, is a mark of true sonship and true
daughtership. It's a mark of the people of
God. And yet Satan would take that
mark and make that a reason why you are not a child of God. He
is cruel. He is cruel. Satan is cruel.
Let us not be ignorant of his devices. You see, and then Peter
goes on and says this, wherefore let him that suffereth
according to the will of God commit the keeping of his soul,
of their souls to him in well-doing as a faithful creator. So There is this necessity in
our lives to realize that our times are in God's hands. It's
not in our hands. It's not in the hands of our
enemies. Oh, how the disciples, when they saw what was going
on at Calvary, was Christ's times in the Father's
hands? Or was it in the hands of the
Roman soldiers? Whose hands was it in? You see,
a true child of God, this is a tremendous comfort, but my
times are in thy hands. Those hands that have a desire
for my eternal good. You see, if God was just to give
you everything here below so that you make this your rest,
Is that true kindness? Is it true kindness for you to
make your nest here below and to make this your rest? Is that
true kindness? Or is true kindness teaching
you to be looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing
of the great God? That's true kindness. That's
true kindness is to make us look out of ourselves, look out of
our own sin, all of our uncleannesses and look to Christ. My times are in thy hand. God's hand, the hand that holds
our lives and all that we have. Well, may we be amongst those
who know something of these things. And the Lord's people, I want
to get this burdened on my heart, that you might have that sweet
consolation. that those very things that Satan
would tell you are marks of you not being a child of God, are
the very marks of a child of God. Satan is a twister, a deceiver. You think of it. On those two
on the road to Emmaus, as they talked about what happened at
Calvary, their greatest sorrow was this. They had a messiah
which they loved and respected and wanted, but very, very sadly
he had been killed. And the two were incompatible
in their minds. The fact that he'd been killed
seemed to indicate that he'd never been the messiah. But what
joy came into their hearts when they realised that the fact that
he had died was the reason why he was the Messiah. That is what
the Messiah was going to do. And that's what they needed.
They needed such a Messiah. You see, Satan's such a liar. He takes these two on the road
to Emmaus and their greatest sorrow is this, that he died.
Actually, was the greatest witness that he was the Lamb slain from
before the foundation of the world. What did John mean when
in John chapter 1 it says, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. What did the Lamb of God mean?
What did it mean to the disciples? I often wonder, before the crucifixion
what did the Lamb of God mean to the disciples? Clearly in
their minds didn't mean that he was going to be sacrificed,
I don't think. Peter didn't want that. But you
see, my times are in thy hands, not my hands, thy hands. And therefore, it's well. It's well with the people of
God in every changing scene below. It's well because God is in control. If truly God has redeemed us,
if we have entered into this verse, into thine hand I commit
my spirit, for thou hast redeemed me, thou hast brought me back
with that price, then my times are in thy hands, and the sorrows
that I go through, and the confusions that I walk through, and the
disappointments that I walk through, and I have the accused of the
brethren as Christ had the accused of the brethren. And what was
Christ's greatest apex of his sufferings? It wasn't the nails,
it wasn't the whipping, it wasn't the scourging. My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? That was the apex of the sufferings
of Christ. It was his felt separation from
the favourable presence of his Father. He had never known before
the frown of his Father. He'd never experienced it. And
now there was that break in that
communion, in that sentence. He'd lost the favourable presence
of his father. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? And if we are going to experience
something of the cost of our salvation, I believe the Lord
Jesus brings his people at times to feel a little of that separation. between our souls and God, to
really feel what that feels like. If he's your greatest joy and
then you feel separation, then it's your greatest sorrow. And
Satan would come along and say, the reason you're feeling the
separation is because you're not a child of God. But you see,
my times are in thy hand, and he is bringing us to the sunshine
of his grace. He's bringing us to a place where,
as I was preaching here before sometime earlier in the year,
we talked about the days of creation, the evening and the morning,
the evening and the morning, there's still the evenings as
you go through the week, there's the evening, there's still the
darkness, but it was bounded now, it was not complete. But
you see, on the seventh day there was no evening. It was, if you
like, looking at that Time to be with Christ, which is far
better. To be with never a darkness between
us and Him. You see, that's what the people
of God look for. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious
appearing of the great God. And that's why this world becomes
empty in their view. They see the vanity of all here
below because they've seen a glimpse of your lovely man. My times
are in thy hand. Father, I will that these also
be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. That's what God has in mind. We have our lower aims and our
lower ambitions, but this is God's ambition for his church
to be with him in glory. and he won't be put off. Well, may the Lord bless these
things.