Alright, Psalm 63. I want to
begin at verse 1 to summarize some things from this verse.
First of all, let me read the verse. It says, O God, thou art
my God, early will I seek thee, my soul thirsteth for thee, my
flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water
is. Now, There's much to be said about
this, but first of all, I want you to understand from our last
opening part one of this chapter, we understood that this is spoken
by David historically of Christ in prophecy, so that the Lord
Jesus Christ uttered these words in the days of his life on earth
in fulfillment of this prophecy. It's obviously a prayer. And
in the first words, he says, oh God, thou art my God. The Lord Jesus Christ took our
nature. He's the mediator between God
and men. And we know this, that in him,
he is fully God and fully man in one person. So as man, he
depended on God, he did his father's will, but in doing so, he did
it with the virtue and with all of the the power of God, because
the Spirit of God was given to him, and he is the Son of God.
So here, when he says, O God, thou art my God, in fulfillment
of this, the Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, called his Father his
God. Remember, we read last week in
John 20, verse 17, that he says, go to my brethren, he told Mary
Magdalene, go to my brethren and say to them, I go, I ascend
to my father, my God, and my father, and to your God, and
to your father. So he's telling them that his
relationship to God And his father was the same relationship that
they had with his God and his father. So clearly, as the Lord
Jesus Christ was man, his father was his God. And as he is the
son of God, then God was his father. And that's what's spoken
of here. But to his people, this relationship
is a relationship established by God in covenant. God promised
to be a God to his people and they would be his people. And
this was a promise that God said would be fulfilled because of
his covenant. And he says also that he gave
Christ to be the covenant. Therefore, our relationship to
God as our father is because of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
made it so. And He made it so when He shed
His blood. His blood washed us from our
sins. He made us holy. And this is precisely what Ephesians
1-4 says, that God chose us to, God the Father chose us to be
holy and without blame before Him in love. And this was done
according to His choice of us to make us His children by Jesus
Christ, to make us the children of God our Father. What blessings
these are? We should spend all of our time
and thinking about the magnitude of these blessings. And they're
summarized here in these words, O God, thou art my God. First of all, it applies to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, it applies to every
believer because of Christ. Then he says, early will I seek
thee, my soul thirsteth for thee. So there's no delay. Early means
without waiting. I'm going to seek the Lord as
soon as possible. And this is something obviously
Christ did when he was on earth. He rose up early. very early
in the morning before it was light to go and pray. So that's
one way, a very tangible way. But he sought him all the time.
He was in constant, his soul was constantly breathing out
prayer as a man by the Spirit of God in communication to his
Father as his God. And that's what a believer does.
We are early in this. The Lord causes it to happen.
We want to pray. He tells us to pray without ceasing,
and we have a desire to, but God works in us and causes us
to be in an attitude and even communication in our mind, in
our heart, and with our words to God in prayer. And even though
we are not always speaking with our mouth to God in prayer, there
is in the heart of a believing child of God, there is this constant
attitude of dependence on God, waiting for Him, trusting Him,
And learning from him and meditating on his word, all this is wrapped
up in the spirit of our mind, as scripture says, communicating
with the Lord. And this is also aided by the
spirit of God himself who makes intercession for us according
to the will of God. But here he says, I will seek
you early, my soul thirsteth for thee and my flesh longs for
thee in a dry and thirsty land. Clearly he's talking about what
could have been, historically, a physical land without water. and a dry land, a desert. David was constantly on the run
from King Saul, or at one point he was on the run from his own
son Absalom. Whether or not this is the case
historically, what is important is that scripture uses physical
things to describe spiritual things. And that's, I'm slowing
my speech down in order to emphasize that scripture uses physical
things to describe spiritual things. In 1 Corinthians 2, in
verse 14, it says, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Let me read that to you from
the scripture itself. In 1 Corinthians 2, he says, this, because the context is
important here. He says, I'll read a little bit
wider than that one verse, in verse 14, he says, we speak the
wisdom of God, in verse seven, we speak the wisdom of God in
a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the
world unto our glory. The wisdom of God he's talking
about here is the revelation God's revelation of himself in
Christ by the work God gave him to do and the work that he accomplished
and the salvation of his people that he accomplished by that
work. This is the mystery. It's the gospel. He says in verse
8, which none of the princes of this world knew, for had they
known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Christ is the Lord of glory. But as it is written, even though
the princes of this world didn't know, as it is written, I hath
not seen nor ear heard neither have entered into the heart of
man the things which God has prepared for them that love him.
So God has prepared things for those who love him that are beyond
the conception of the natural man. But God has revealed them,
those things, to us by his spirit. God reveals his truth to us by
his Holy Spirit. That's the way we know it. That's
the only way we can know it. And then he goes on in verse
10, for the spirit, the spirit of God, searches all things,
yea, the deep things of God. For what, and then he's gonna
make a comparison between our own spirit and the things about
ourselves. He says in verse 11, for what
man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which
is in him? In another place, in the New Testament, he says,
the spirit of your mind. And this is an important connection
between what our spirit is and what we think. Our spirit is
our thinking capacity, our thinking faculties. And scripture also
calls that our heart. As a man thinks in his heart,
so is he. Anyway, he says here in verse
11, what man knows the things of a man save the spirit of man
which is in him? I don't know what Cass or Denise
or anyone is thinking unless they tell me. That's because
it's within their own mind and they have to verbalize it. They
have to tell it somehow. Even so, the things of God knoweth
no man but the spirit of God. The spirit of God is like, in
comparison, is like our mind. He knows all about God. Now we
have received, we have received, not the spirit of the world,
the mind of this world, but the spirit which is of God, that
we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
How do we know the things of God? By the spirit of God. And
he's given to us freely. We don't earn the spirit of God,
he's given freely by grace. The things that God reveals to
us by his spirit, he says in verse 13, which things we also
speak Not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but that
which the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual things with
spiritual. So what we're doing in teaching,
what God has revealed to us, is we're comparing spiritual
things, which no one can know, naturally, unless God reveals
them, with spiritual things. And the spiritual things that
we compare with the spiritual things, we use the word of God,
which is spiritual, It is the embodiment of spiritual truth,
and it reveals to us, the mind of the Spirit, spiritual things.
And even though it's there in written form, yet the Spirit
of God still has to make it known to us from his written word.
But that's the process he uses. We're always searching the scriptures
that we might find the spiritual truths of it. spiritual things,
the natural man, he says in verse 14, the natural man receiveth
not the things of the spirit of God, so we can't, until God
gives us something more than what we are by our natural birth,
we cannot understand spiritual things. That's what he's saying.
And that happens, of course, when God births us by his spirit,
when he creates us in Christ Jesus, when he raises us from
spiritual death to spiritual life. So the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness
to him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually
discerned. He doesn't have a spiritual mind.
But he that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is
judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord? that he may instruct him, but
we have the mind of Christ. You see how wonderfully God tells
us in his word things that we just wouldn't know otherwise.
Now, when we look at this in Psalm 63, I read that on purpose
here, he says, my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for
thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Even in the
gospel, even in the gospel, physical elements, physical things that
are alive are used to signify spiritual things. And that's
what this, that's what I'm trying to get the point here to because
it builds up later in this Psalm. And Jesus did this all the time.
I was just before the Bible study, I was talking with Denise and
we were thinking about this, how Jesus said, I am the bread
of life. So he used a physical thing,
bread, to signify a spiritual thing. He said we must eat, that's
physical, his flesh and drink his blood. But he didn't mean
literally biting down on his physical body or drinking his
blood. And even the things that God
has given us to do in the church in the New Testament, physical
things, He doesn't mean for us to understand them in a physical
way, but in a spiritual way. And this is very important. Baptism,
for example, we're put in water, we're immersed, we go under the
water, and then we're raised back up out of the water. But
the water of baptism doesn't have any efficacy. It doesn't
impart any grace. It's just water, but it signifies
something, and what it signifies is the thing, and so we compare
spiritual things with spiritual. We understand the water from
the word of God to refer to what it signifies in baptism, which
was the Christ coming under the floods of God's wrath for his
people, and they were in him by their union with him, and
therefore they were put to death with him, they were
buried with him, and they rose again. And baptism signifies
that. So in our own baptism, we're
confessing that our union with Christ by virtue of his death,
burial, and resurrection is all of our salvation. And we're confessing
this before men. and we're owning it before God
in our heart by faith. So it's a physical thing, and
yet it has a spiritual meaning. And just in the same way, the
Lord's Supper, we take physical bread, and we take physical fruit
of the vine, and we eat the bread, and we drink the fruit of the
vine, and yet it's not that physical act that's imparting grace, is
it? It's the meaning, it's the spiritual truth behind it and
our faith in what God is revealing by that truth, which is Christ's
broken body and shed blood for the remission of our sins and
the fulfillment of God's everlasting covenant. And so our union with
one another is signified because we all do that together. And
by doing that, we profess, we show forth the Lord's death till
he comes, we preach the gospel. So you see now, I've probably
gone much longer on this than I needed to, but I'm just trying
to underscore the fact that physical things, even things in scripture
that are physical, have a spiritual meaning behind them. Isaiah 55
is a classic case. He says, Ho everyone that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters. Well, that makes sense. If I'm
thirsty, I'm going to go to water. But he's not talking about physical
water, and he's not talking about physical thirst. He's talking
about a spiritual thirst of soul and the water of the gospel that
tells us of Christ, who is the fountain of living waters, who
is the river of the water of life. and who imparts to us his
Holy Spirit, who is in us, as Jesus said, another physical
thing, like a well of water springing up, a river of water out of his
belly, the believer's belly, out of their belly flows a river
of water. But it's the Spirit of God. And
so all these things are given to us in often reference to a
physical thing, but they impart a spiritual truth. So when the
psalmist here says, my soul thirst for thee and my flesh long for
thee, his literal soul literally had a longing for God. And his
literal flesh literally had a longing for God. But he speaks of it
as a tangible thirst in his soul, as if it had a physical characteristic
of thirst, and his body, because of the dry desert land he was
in, was famished and parched. But he's not talking about his
body being famished and parched because of a physical lack of
water and food. But he's talking about his desire
to be with the Lord, so that when he was with the Lord, his
body then would the consummation of all that Christ has done for
us would be fulfilled and he would be satisfied. He would
awake in his likeness, then he would be satisfied. But now,
in this life, that satisfaction doesn't come by the consummation
of it, but the anticipation of it in hope and by faith. So this
is what he's done. And the Lord Jesus Christ clearly
did go into the wilderness and suffer temptation. And on the
cross, he was obviously thirsty. But those things, even that suffering
in the wilderness and his thirst on the cross, even though they
were bodily experiences, they had a much deeper meaning because
in his soul, his soul was made an offering for sin. And that's
why he says in Matthew 26, my soul is very heavy. I'm sore
amazed. because the things that God was
actually bringing to pass in his sufferings were things that
he only knew when he suffered them. And that's when the obedience
to God in those things became an experiential reality. So he
went through it actually, and he knew then in experience what
God was referring to in scripture when he talked about thirst of
soul. And so in Hebrews chapter 5, he says, though he were a
son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.
He actually went through the actual suffering of it. OK? All
right. So I wanted to mention that. The other thing here is that,
as I mentioned, God is our God because of the covenant he made
with us in Christ. And then I also want to point
out here that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the one this
is prophesying of and fulfilled it, he sought God perfectly. He sought God early. And we don't,
we don't seek God perfectly. We don't seek him early like
we should. But the Lord grows us in the experience of our life
through the process of the development of faith as he increases and
strengthens faith through our life, through the word, the application
of the word through all the troubles of our life. He strengthens that
faith. So that even though we don't
perfectly seek him, we grow in that, don't we? We start seeking
Him more early when we understand that we have such a deep need
from His Word and by our own, the application of His Word by
the Spirit of God to us. Our need becomes more acute and
apparent in trouble. And like in Romans chapter 5,
he says, tribulation works patience, standing under God's revealed
truth from his word, and patience experience, that means the proving
that God is the one who is teaching us, and we are depending on his
word, and we're proving the validity of what he said from his word.
In our experience, God is causing us to rest on him by faith, and
experience hope. we have this confident expectation
because of this process of tribulation, working patience, patience working
at this experience of this proving of His Word as true as we rely
on it and that experience producing the hope that we have this confident
expectation that because of this working of God in our lives according
to His revealed Word, that this is all summed up when he follows
it up in Romans 5, saying, for the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost,
is, I'm trying to remember exactly what he says, I'm gonna have
to turn there to refresh my memory right now, because as I'm trying
to explain it, sometimes my thoughts get tangled. So it says here
in Romans 5, 5, he says, hope maketh not a shame, because the
love of God His shed are brought in our hearts by the Holy Ghost
which is given to us. And then he expounds on what
that love is when we were yet without strength in due time
Christ died for the ungodly and he just elaborates. He goes through
it over and over how that it's the love of God is shown to us
in the substitutionary work of Christ that he would bear our
sins. that he would endure the punishment for our sins and thereby
take away our sins and open the way for full and free forgiveness
from God and not only forgiveness of our sins but a perfect righteousness
so that we're justified by his blood. Now, all of that is a
compact way of referring to what he's saying here, that God is
working this in him, in us, too. In Christ, it was perfect, but
in us, it's a developing process where the Lord is teaching us
to depend on Christ through the troubles of our life, and He
grows that faith in our dependence on Christ because of His Word.
We learn again and again and again that Christ is all. and
troubles challenge that belief with like waves against the rocks,
and the muscle clinging to the rock, and the harder the wave
goes, the tighter that muscle sticks to the rock, and that
rock is Christ, and that sticking to the rock is faith God gives
us in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is everything. And even
though troubles come, His word is true. And even though the
world dissolves, and the mountains are carried into the midst of
the sea, and every weapon is formed against us that's imaginable
by Satan and his kingdom, nothing is going to prosper because our
righteousness is of the Lord. And I'm referring to words from
Isaiah 54, verses 10 through 17. All right, so that's that thing
is that Christ was perfect in his going to the Lord. His soul
did thirst because he thirsted to do the will of God. Remember,
he went to that well in Samaria and sat on the well and he asked
the woman at the well, give me to drink. He thirsted. He physically
thirsted. But as he was resting on that
well and this woman came to him, he had gone there with the purpose
of saving her. And in saving this woman at the
well, who came to the well herself for a drink of physical water,
he gave himself to her and satisfied his own thirst in saving that
woman. And so when he asked her for
a drink, he fulfilled The will he gave her to do by saving her
and her faith that he gave to her coming back to him to draw
from him the water of life was a fulfillment of the Father's
will. And he told his disciples, my meat is to do the will of
him that sent me and to finish his work. And so this was the
meat that God gave him to do. This was his drink. And he says
he came to do his will throughout in John 5, 36 and 6, 38 and so
on. In every case, it was always
to do the will of saving his people by his own sacrifice of
himself for their sins, a sacrifice given to God. And so this is
a thirst that Christ had. And our thirst is a reciprocation
of that thirst. Christ thirsted to save, we thirst
to be saved by Him. And this is fulfilled, the fact
that we as a sinner in all the nakedness of our need are brought
into direct embrace with Christ in all the plentitude of His
grace. And so we're fulfilled in Him, and He's fulfilled in
His work that the Father gave Him to do. A work that burned
in His heart as love for a spouse. Okay, He gave Himself for His
people. All right, now, that's verse one, and I want to move
on now to verse two. Let me get to verse two. He says in verse two that this
is the reason He thirsted. See, connect that verse one and
two together. He says, this is the reason why
he thirsted and his soul was dry and thirsty in this land.
He thirsted to see thy power and thy glory so as I've seen
thee in the sanctuary. So the Lord Jesus Christ himself,
his thirst was to see his father's power and glory In the work God
gave him to do, by fulfilling that work, he would raise him
from the dead. And Christ's suffering and death
would actually put away the sins of his people, and he would bring
them to God, and God would be glorified. And this is what he
prayed over and over again. He said in John 12, remember,
he says, Father, glorify thy name. He says, I have, and I
will yet glorify it again. And then Jesus went on to say,
now is the judgment of this world. Now is the prince of this world
cast out. And I, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me. And he spoke that signifying
what death he would die. So he speaks of the cross. He
speaks of the cross as what God would lift up in the gospel and
through the preaching of the gospel draw all of his people
to Christ. And it was the cross that was
the end of Satan's pride. He put him in the dust
of death by the cross. And so this is the power of God.
This is his glory. He prayed in John 17, Father
glorify thy name. He says, as you have given him
power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as
many as thou hast given him. And he goes on in that prayer
in John 17. His desire was that God the Father
would glorify himself in his Son. And that's what he said
also in John 14, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. So Christ thirsted to glorify
his father, to see his power over the sins and the enemies
of his people, the power that God had given him to conquer
them and to put away their sins. He completely, Christ completely
undid all that we did by sinning, all the devil meant to do. And
he did it to the highest possible magnification of God's glory.
This is incredible that sin didn't even make a mark in all of God's
purpose and grace. It was actually God's overruling
it in order to bring glory to himself through the work of his
son. And this is what he thirsts for.
And we as believers thirst for the same thing, to see God's
power and glory in the gospel. Isn't that true? He says that
in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 24, to us who are saved, the cross,
the preaching of the cross, Christ is the wisdom and power of God,
and the cross is the preaching of God's power and wisdom. This
is the gospel, right? And in 2 Corinthians 4, he says
that the gospel is the light shined by the Spirit of God,
just as God commanded the light to shine out of darkness in creation.
The gospel is the light shined in the new creation, where God's
people are created in Christ and that light shines and it
shines with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. As
God commanded the light to shine in the darkness, so God has shined the light of the
glorious gospel of Christ. Let me read that. I'm mangling
my memory of that verse here. It's funny how you can say things
when you're not thinking about it too hard. Okay, 2 Corinthians
4, he says this. For we, he says, verse six, for
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. The light
of the knowledge of the glory of God is the gospel, and it's
in Jesus Christ. And the Spirit of God, God commanded
that light to shine, and the Spirit of God shines that light
through the gospel. He glorifies the Father in the
Son. That's what the Spirit of God
is doing through the gospel. All right, so that's what believers
desire and that's what we long for. And we could talk a lot
about that. He says, as I have seen thee
in the sanctuary. Now sanctuary here just means
the holy place. And it's first used in Exodus
chapter 3 in verse 15 where God told, I think it's verse, maybe
it's verse 5. He said, God told Moses, take
your shoes off. This is holy ground. That's the
same word, holy. It was God's place. He was there.
Christ was there. He was in that bush that burned.
And so this is the place where Christ is. This is, in other
words, the holy place is Christ. He is the word made flesh. He
tabernacled amongst us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of
the only begotten Son, full of grace and truth. God's glory,
full of grace, full of truth in Christ. Christ is the manifestation
of God. the glory of God is seen in Christ
incarnate. God incarnate in Christ. OK. And so he's a sanctuary and we
desire God to make his power and glory known in Christ, don't
we? And so that we see that verse. And then he goes on, he says
in verse three, because thy loving kindness is better than life. Now, This verse has always been dear
to me, mostly because I didn't understand it. But it just sounds
good. Thy lovingkindness is better
than life. I like to hear that word, lovingkindness. And that is better than life.
It tells us that whatever lovingkindness is, is better than life. And
he says, therefore my lips shall praise thee. Now, the loving
kindness of God is just His love, and God's love is in Christ. So the love of God in Christ
to every believer is better than our life itself, isn't it? Nothing
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is
in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And that nothing includes life,
death, things present, things to come. Tribulation, persecution,
famine, nakedness, peril, sword, all these things. Our own sin
can't separate us from the love of God because when we were yet
sinners, when we were the enemies of God, God reconciled us to
himself by the death of his son. So he says, God has justified
us. Who can condemn us? Who can charge
anyone of God's elect with one thing? No, it's all because of
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So the loving
kindness of God has got to be better than life because it's
the wellspring of life. The river of life that flows
out of the throne of God in Revelation 22 is just a way of saying, God
has given His Son, and in giving His Son, out of His sovereign
will, giving His Son, He has given us the river of the water
of life. There's no cessation of it. It's
abundant, it's free, and it gives life, and that is Christ and
Him crucified, flowing out of the will of God, and it's out
of the eternal love of God for His people. So we can see very
quickly how the love of God to us in Christ, His loving kindness,
is better than life. Without this, we have no eternal
life. We have no life. And our life
in this world would be miserable if we didn't know the love of
God to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We would carry the guilt of our
sins. We would always be thinking that we had to fulfill something
in order to make God love us. A conditional love is a tormenting
love, isn't it? It has torment. But God's love
is not conditioned on anything in us. It's conditioned only
on what the Lord Jesus Christ would do in order that God's
love to us could be fulfilled in all of his desire. What a
great thing that is. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians
chapter 3 prays that the church would know the love that passes
knowledge, the love of Christ that passes knowledge. And so
we can see here that this is life itself. This is the knowledge
of eternal life, the love of God in Christ. All right, so I want to also
go on without spending a whole lot of time on that. If you want
more detail, you can read the notes that I sent out, but I
want to go to verse four. And this verse circles back on
what we were talking about earlier. And I wanted to get to this at
least before we close tonight. Because this was a very good
study for me also. Look at verse four. He says,
thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands
in thy name. What in the world does that mean?
Well, we know what bless thee means. It means to give God the
praise. And, of course, the Lord Jesus
Christ gave all glory to His Father. But believers give all
glory to God in Christ. God the Father sent His Son. Christ, our Savior, has accomplished
all. He is what Scripture calls, the
Lord Jesus is our great God and Savior. That's in Titus chapter
2, verse 13, I think. So we know what bless thee while
I live means. While I live by faith, I'm going
to be constantly, because of his loving kindness, constantly
praising God. Constantly, really? No, not constantly,
but in a continual attitude. of thanksgiving to God for what
He's done for us in Christ, for what Christ has done. It's this
attitude, this seeing this from God is what causes us to love
Him. We love Him because He first loved us. We praise Him because
He revealed our salvation that He accomplished for us. But then
the next part says, I will lift up my hands in thy name. Now
we all know, maybe we've all experienced this, some churches
where people lift their hands during the service. I've always
been uncomfortable with that. And I say that maybe because
you'll think that has biased me in the interpretation that
I want to give for this verse from Scripture. But I don't think
so. I don't think so. Because as
I was trying to point out earlier, God in Scripture, in the New
Testament, He will refer to physical acts in worship, and he doesn't
mean the physical act. That's not the spiritual meaning. It's the spiritual truth conveyed
by that physical act that God has in mind. The physical act
is not important. But what the truth behind it
is, that is very important. And that is the case with lifting
of hands. Now, it's just human nature,
and I don't know that anyone can deny this. Human nature is
that when we're together, what we do, we have a conscious awareness
that there are people around us. And whether we are thinking
about this or maybe we've just done it out of habit and it just
happens, we are thinking about what other people think of us
in the way we do things, what we say, our facial expressions,
the noises we make and the words that we use and our body language,
everything, right? We just can't help this. This
is the way that we are. If we weren't this way, then
we wouldn't seek the attention of others, and we do that naturally.
Little children. I've got a one-year-old granddaughter,
and she seems to thrive on attention given to her. That's the way
we're made. So lifting hands can become, it can become an
act that people do in public worship services And inadvertently,
whether they realize it or not, they're doing it to draw attention
to themselves. And we do not want to do that.
That's called vain glory. We do not preach ourselves. We
preach Christ Jesus, the Lord. We do not want to increase. We
want to decrease. We want Christ to increase. Now,
so what does this mean then, the lifting of hands? In Scripture, there's many things
said about hands, and I want to take you to some of these
real quickly here because we're running out of time, but just
real quickly, and if you don't have time to turn to them, just
listen as I read them. In Isaiah chapter 1 and verse
15, Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 15, listen to these words. He's
condemning these people. He says, when you spread forth
your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when you
make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of
blood. So clearly their hands were wicked. In other words,
their hands were wicked because they did wicked things. Okay,
so the hands of these people, and these are talking about the
people of Israel, God's people, you can read the whole chapter
and see that. God's people had wicked hands because they did
wicked things and he refers to blood. In other words, they were
shedding blood either literally or, what's the word, I can't think
of it, metaphorically. by hatred or some other way.
But then, look at Isaiah, or listen to Isaiah 64, verse six.
He says, you are all as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousnesses,
we are all as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. What we do, the best of what
we do, is as a menstrual cloth, it's repugnant, it's revolting,
it's nauseating to God. That's what we do. Okay, so our
hands are bad, right? Naturally. In Acts chapter 2,
in the sermon Peter preached there, and you know this verse
well too, so I will just read it to you. In Acts 2, he says
this, verse 23. He said, Speaking of Christ, Him, being
delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God, you have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. So what were these people's hands
doing? Killing Christ. Wickedness. So they were full
of blood, Isaiah 115. Our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags. What we do doesn't amount to
true righteousness. It's the worst kind of righteousness
because it seeks glory for ourselves. It's pride. It's covetous. That's
what our hands are naturally. And here these wicked hands crucified
the Lord of glory. All right? But in the gospel,
God converts us, doesn't he? With the gospel, God converts
us. And here's what he says about those who have been converted
by the grace of God. In Philippians chapter three,
he says this in Philippians 3.3, he says, we are the circumcision,
the true circumcision, not the physically circumcised, but the
spiritually circumcised. In other words, our hearts have
been regenerated. Christ now dwells in our hearts. We believe
the gospel. He says, we are the circumcision which worship God,
notice, in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence
in the flesh. We have no confidence in our
flesh, what we are in our hands. Here's my hand. That's flesh.
We don't put any confidence in that. We don't trust it. We don't expect good works to
come from it. Not naturally. And so the hands
are naturally defiled. Then also, when the gospel comes
to us in power, this is the result of it. And I'll read this from
Hosea chapter 14. Hosea uses this reference to
hands. And you get there. I always have
trouble with these minor prophets. He says, Hosea chapter 14, he
says, Asher shall not save us. We will not ride on horses. Clearly,
he's talking about trusting something that we shouldn't be trusting
here. And it means Assyrians and horses. And historically,
they did trust in the Assyrians and their horses. But it has
a much broader spiritual application. And he goes on, neither will
we say any more to the work of our hands You are our gods. So here, the conversion of our
souls to faith in Christ teaches us not to trust ourselves and
what we can do. In fact, the gospel could be
summarized by forsaking all confidence in our flesh and trusting Christ
alone. That's the work of conversion
in the gospel. That's true repentance. It's
forsaking our own work and trusting Christ's work. It's forsaking
our own thoughts of worthiness and trusting Christ's merit alone.
And that's the gospel. And so our hands symbolize this. It's not the matter of lifting
up these physical hands, but it's the attitude of the heart
that lays aside all confidence in our natural ability, what
we are by physical birth, and trust Christ alone. And that
trust in Christ is the result of a spiritual birth. And as
a result of that spiritual birth, We ascribe, we credit Christ
with all of the merit and the holiness and the clean hand giving
of what God has required from us. Christ did it with clean
hands. There was only one pair of hands
in all of history that were ever clean in this way, and it were
the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, rather than thinking that we have to do something
in order to give God this worship, lifting up our hands physically
in a service with other believers, We own, instead of that, we now
own the work of Christ's hands as all of our salvation, and
we own Him as our Lord and our God. Look at, and you might want
to look at this one in John chapter 20. This is a great explanation
of this, I think. In John chapter 20, notice this.
You remember the story. Jesus appeared to all the disciples
except Thomas, because he wasn't there at the time. And so Thomas,
when they were telling him about that meeting of Christ with them,
he said, I won't believe. I'm not going to believe unless
I can put my finger into the print of the nail, the nail prints
of his hands and take my hand and thrust it into that place
in his side where I saw that spear went. Then I'll know that's
him. OK, that's the setting. And so,
in verse 26, John 20, after eight days again, his disciples were
within, and Thomas was with them. Then Jesus came, the doors being
shut, and stood in the midst, and he said, Peace be to you,
because of his blood. Verse 27, Then said he to Thomas,
Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither
thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless,
but believing. What did Christ tell him to do?
Take your hand and put it into my side and take your finger
and put it into the nail print of my hands. Why? Because it
was the hands of Christ. It was the hands of Christ that
accomplished his salvation and his hands physically illustrated
and signified him trusting what Christ had done alone. You see? And so you see this also in Abraham
in Genesis chapter 14, the first place that this is mentioned,
lifting up of hands, notice this in Genesis 14. You probably remember
the words of this text. It says, after Abraham returned
from the slaughter of the kings, God gave him and the 318 men
with him victory over these kings, and he delivered the king of
Sodom and Lot and all these things that were theirs. And the king
of Sodom, in verse 21, Genesis 14, verse 21, the king of Sodom
said to Abraham, give me the persons and you take the goods
to yourself. And Abraham said to the king of Sodom, I have
lift up my hand to the Lord, the most high God, the possessor
of heaven and earth, that I will not take from I will not take
from a thread even to a shoe latchet, that I will not take
anything that is yours, lest thou should say, I have made
Abraham rich. What's Abraham saying? I lift
up my hand. He's solemnly vowing I'm going
to give all credit to where credit is actually due. To the to the
God who he calls here, the Lord, the possessed, the most high
God, the possessor of heaven and earth, the Lord Jehovah Christ.
Aren't all things put into his hands? Isn't he the possessor
of heaven and earth? Isn't he the Lord Jehovah? And
Abraham is saying, no, no, no. I refuse to take anything from
you as a worldly king, because God has given me all things in
Christ. I have nothing but what has been
given me by grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what
my lifting up of my hand to God is signifying. I trust him alone. I give all glory to him alone
like a little child. And I heard this illustration
from Gabe Stoniker. He said, like a little child,
when they need something, they look to their mommy and they
just raise their hands. Mom, mom, pick me up. I have a need. That's the only thing we can
say. I have a tremendous need and I'm looking to Christ alone
to fulfill it. All God has given me is in him.
And we rest there. And so the verse in Psalm 63,
4, Thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands
in thy name. I'm going to extend all honor
and credit and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the name
given by God under heaven, the name we are to call upon, the
Lord, our Savior. What a wonderful thing. I love
the way scripture teaches us these things. It causes me to
rest so much. Once again, we're just brought
back to Christ, aren't we? It's Him, and that makes me happy. Now I bless the Lord while I
live, don't you? When I see it's all Him, then
I can be at rest. I'm at total peace and joy. But
if I think there's something I've gotta do, it doesn't matter
how little, even if it's lifting one hand, you know, like they
do, they hold the microphone in their left hand, they raise
their right hand, like they're in some kind of spiritual communication
with God. these performers who call themselves
worship leaders, this is not, this is not according to truth.
This is wrong. And the sooner people learn this,
the sooner they'll get off their high horse. God does not want
to exalt man. If someone is standing in front
of others and not preaching Christ, it is wrong. Okay, let's pray. Lord, thank you for giving us
the clarity from your word that the Lord Jesus Christ is all
from God to his people and all to God for his people. And this
is what we what we understand by these words. Oh, God, thou
art my God. Thomas said, my Lord and my God,
when he saw the hands of Christ having accomplished the will
of God and successfully in triumph over sin and death and the kingdom
of Satan, and everything, even in fulfillment and exaltation
of God's holy law, here he stood, and he didn't have to touch his
hands or his side, he just cried from his heart, my Lord, my God,
give us this grace, Lord, to see the Lord Jesus Christ as
our Lord and God, and in so doing, to lift up emblematically the
hands of our heart, trusting Him only. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen.