Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/church4u/sermons/86365/his-hand/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Let us know in aยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยยย And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain, a part to pray.

[0:35] And when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary. Here they were, the disciples had shot across the lake.

[0:50] The Lord had stayed behind to pray. It was getting choppy and stormy. The wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.

[1:01] And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It's a spirit! And they cried out for fear. The Lord Jesus was walking on the water towards them.

[1:12] But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid. And Peter answered and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

[1:24] And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and began to sink.

[1:36] He cried, saying, Lord, save me. Verse 31, And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

[1:48] And when they were coming to the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art, the Son of God. Amen. Peter stepped out of the boat.

[2:02] Jesus said, Come. Peter stepped out of the boat. The first average man to walk on the water. And he followed what Christ had done, the God man, and he walked on the water.

[2:15] The wind got worse, and he was afraid. And he began to sink, and he prayed, Lord, save me. Three words.

[2:26] Simple prayer, isn't it? You don't have to get jargonistic, or technical, or highfalutin to pray. You just have to pray that simple prayer. Lord, save me. It's that simple.

[2:38] And what did the Lord Jesus do? Verse 31. And immediately, Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him. He saved him. Then and there, in that moment of time.

[2:51] Note that the Lord Jesus stretched forth his hand. Everything changed at that point. Everything changed for Peter at that point. And this is just one reference to God's hand reaching out to man.

[3:06] Now, that's the difference between Christianity, real Christianity. We're not talking about churchianity and religiosity. We're talking about real Christianity. The God kind of Christianity is, the real kind of Christianity is different from every other kind of religion on planet Earth.

[3:23] Every other kind of religion says, it's man reaching up to God. Man climbing a ladder of good works or effort or doing. But in Christ, it's done. It's trusting, not trying.

[3:35] It's God's work. It's God reaching down to man. As the Lord Jesus represented it there. Here's Peter, about to go glug, glug, glug into that water, forever lost.

[3:47] He said, Lord save me. And in a twinkling of an eye, in that moment, in that instant, immediately Christ reached out his hand. And the Bible talks a lot about God's hand extended to man.

[4:02] For example, we read in Isaiah 59 from verse 1. It says, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. Neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.

[4:15] But your iniquities have separated between you and your God. And your sins have hid his face from you, that he cannot, that he will not hear.

[4:27] But the good news is, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save.

[4:44] God's not got some kind of impediment to his hand extending to the furthest, away from him. However far you might feel away from God.

[4:58] It says in the Bible that God's hand is not short, that it cannot save. The Bible talks about the hand, speaking of power, of might, of strength.

[5:11] We know that the Lord Jesus is on the right hand of the Father. He is in that place of power. It speaks of his salvation, of his saving work. The Bible says that, again, Christianity is completely different.

[5:24] From every other kind of religion, in Christianity, God intervened. In planet Earth, he came down and visited us in the human form.

[5:35] The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Heaven touches earth. That's Christianity. Our God has got a hand that reaches out.

[5:46] His hands on. The carpenter's hands. The Lord Jesus' hands are God's hands to us. And he takes the initiative. Whenever we see the hand of the Lord in the Bible, we see something happens.

[6:00] It's dramatic. Something happens when God's hand is evident. For example, in Acts 11, verse 21, it talks of the church of the day.

[6:12] And it says of them that the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. When God's hand is working, he reaches out to man.

[6:26] And souls are one. He stretches forth his hand. And he stretches forth that hand still. That nail-scarred hand. That hand wounded. That hand that was pierced is that hand that reaches out to you and to me.

[6:42] The hand of the wounded Saviour reaches out to wounded people. Look upon him today. Look upon him today. It says in the Word of God, Look unto me and be ye saved.

[6:55] All the ends of the earth. Look unto me, he says. In the Bible it says, Behold the Lamb of God. Look upon him. Behold the Lamb of God.

[7:07] Who takes away the sin of the world. Look upon him. Behold the man. Behold him. Look upon him today. The wounded Saviour for wounded people.

[7:19] Behold the man. Revelation 1.7 it says, Behold. Behold means take a look. Get a look at this. Behold. He cometh with the clouds. And every eye shall see him.

[7:31] And they also which pierced him. And all kindreds of the earth. All the families of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so. Amen. It says, Every eye shall see him.

[7:43] Your eye is going to see the Lord coming in the clouds. Every eye shall see him. Even those who pierced him. The very one who held the nail and smashed that hammer into that flesh.

[7:57] Into that quivering holy flesh. That man will see him. He will see him one day. Coming in the clouds. And he still bears the emblems of his suffering today.

[8:10] It's like someone has said that the only man-made thing in heaven will be the nail scars in his hand. So true, isn't it? The scars he bore for you. Those wounded hands.

[8:22] They're still wounded. They're still scarred. Because of our sin. His hand is a saving hand. The Lord's hand is not shortened.

[8:33] That it cannot save. And when the Lord's hand was at work, people were saved. When Peter was sinking, the Lord's hand was extended.

[8:45] When he said, Lord, save me. It's a saving hand. It's a touching hand. His hand touches. It extends in compassion. As we read in Matthew 8, for example, the account of the leper.

[8:59] He extends his hand to touch man and woman. Matthew 8, 1 to 3, it says, When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.

[9:11] There's masses of crowds here. And verse 2, And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

[9:23] If you're willing, Lord, you can heal me. You can cleanse me. And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will. Be thou clean.

[9:34] And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Now, leprosy was a ghastly affliction. A skin, flesh, nerve-eating disease.

[9:45] It was like a living death. If you had the affliction called leprosy, it spread on every surface of your skin. Your body became an open sore.

[9:56] Pussy, bleeding, weeping, vile sores covered the whole body. And as it spreads, leprosy eats its way into the very bone, the very core.

[10:09] Entire limbs are lost as it spreads, eventually causing death. And what is leprosy? It's a picture of sin. It's a picture of the spreading curse of sin.

[10:19] That terminal disease that every man has, every woman has, when we're born onto this planet, we're lost. There is none that doeth good.

[10:30] No! Not one! Not one! I was interested, the preacher yesterday talked in Psalm 14, when he said, the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand and seek God.

[10:51] They were all filthy, none that doeth good, no, not one. Interesting, it says the children of men. There's one exception, wasn't there? There's one exception. When the Lord looked down from heaven, there was one, sinless one, because he wasn't a child of men.

[11:07] The Son of God! He was the one that God could look down upon, the Lord, the Father, could look down upon and see, yes, there's one. There's one perfect one.

[11:19] There's one spotless one. There's one holy one. And here's the one, the only one worthy, the worthy lamb, the only one who can be the sacrifice for man's sin.

[11:30] And this is the man who reached out to the leper, so the one that people are treated with horror. It's a helpless condition. Jesus reaches out and he touches the leper.

[11:41] Can you imagine that? You know, if it was present day, it might be something like anthrax or something, something ghastly and vile. There's no help. There's no cure.

[11:52] You just want to keep a large distance from such a thing. And in leprosy, there was no cure. You wouldn't want to get near a leper, but what did Jesus do?

[12:03] He touches the leper. He touches the vilest, the most fragile, the most wounded. The wounded can find in Dr. Jesus a prescription for that soul affliction, for that dread soul disease called sin.

[12:22] And he can heal it. He can heal it. Those scarred hands show that Jesus cares, that he knows pain. He knows pain. It says in the Word of God, he's not lacking compassion and understanding and empathy because he has suffered for us.

[12:46] He is not a high priest who cannot be touched or have that sensitivity to the feelings of our infirmity because he has suffered for us.

[12:59] And this suffering saviour is only touched as you. Maybe you're in a place of suffering. As I was saying earlier, we've experienced some fraction of suffering, but nothing compared to Calvary.

[13:13] And maybe really in the scheme of things, nothing compares, does it, to what our saviour went through. And here's the one who extends his hand to you today.

[13:24] He extends his hand to the wounded, those male-scarred hands. The Lord Jesus knows your pain. If you're in pain tonight, he knows your pain. He knows what it is like.

[13:38] As much as man might say, I know what you're going through, but we know really man can't empathise, man can't stand in your shoes. But the Lord Jesus has been through the utmost for you, for me.

[13:54] And here's the one who reaches out in Luke 4. It says that the sun was setting and all that were sick were brought unto him and he laid hands on every one of them and healed them.

[14:06] He laid his hand on every one of them. In Psalm 84, verse 5, it talks about the valley of Bacca, which could be understood to mean the valley of tears.

[14:20] And it's interesting, the ones who are in the valley of tears, of that one, in Psalm 84, verse 5, the context is that it's the blessed one. The blessed one is in the valley of tears.

[14:32] Maybe you're in the valley of tears. It says, The Lord, our shepherd, goes through the valley of the shadow of death and he is with you.

[14:43] He is with you. This one who can be touched, this one who touches you, he knows your grief, he knows your situation. In Luke 24, 50, it says, When he was leaving planet Earth, he lifted up his hands and he blessed them.

[15:00] I don't know what a blessing looks like with your hands, but whatever he did with his hands, he blessed them with his hands. His hands bring blessing. His hands work wonders.

[15:11] Think of the account of the feeding of the 5,000. In John 6, verse 11, The hands of Jesus work wonders. Whatever your situation, maybe you need a miracle.

[15:23] It feels like that. The hand of Jesus works wonders. In John 6, 11, it says, That he took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed it to the disciples and the disciples to them that were set down and likewise of the fishers as much as they would.

[15:39] 5,000 people, 5,000 men were there. Some have said it could be there was 20,000 there by the time you counted children and women folk.

[15:51] There could have been 20,000. Someone has estimated how much bread would you need? You know, when you've got to cater for something, we were trying to cater for something yesterday and someone brought way too much food.

[16:06] But, someone calculated what you'd need to feed 20,000 people. You'd need at least 5 tonnes of bread. 5 tonnes of bread. And what happened here?

[16:18] A little boy came up with his lunch and he put it in the hands of Jesus. A little boy. It's hard to conceive of it, isn't it? And what do we know about this lad?

[16:33] There's not a lot to describe him. We know he was small. He was just a boy. He was a small boy. He was a poor boy. Barley was poor people's food.

[16:44] So it was barley loaves. He didn't... It would have... You know, you could surmise from that intimation that he came from a poor family. It was just barley loaves.

[16:55] Just the poor man's food. He had not eaten his lunch. Some have read into that that perhaps he was just so caught up in what the Lord Jesus was saying.

[17:09] You know, the story of the sermon, of the... of the... listening to the Lord Jesus was just... He was just so taken with that that his lunch was just put aside.

[17:20] He just wanted to feast on the Word of God. He just wanted to hear what the Lord Jesus had to say. He was hanging on to Jesus' words. He was not selfish. This little boy, he could have just selfishly said, no, that's my lunch.

[17:34] You lot can go find your own. You know? Look out for number one. But no, this little poor boy, he heard the name and he was not selfish.

[17:44] He was generous. He gave it to the Lord Jesus and he placed it in the Lord Jesus' hands. And that's when something happened. When he placed what he had in the Lord Jesus' hands.

[17:56] Maybe you're feeling like you're a poor little boy with nothing much to give to God, nothing much to claim of yourself, of merit, of any value.

[18:07] But give what you have to him. Give who you are to him. Put it into his hands. Into his hands. And John 6, 12, it says, the people were filled.

[18:17] The people were filled with those few loaves and fish that he had. So his hands are saving hands. His hands are hands that touch lives.

[18:28] They're touching hands. They're blessing hands. They're keeping hands. As we read in John 10, 27. John 27. The Lord Jesus is speaking.

[18:39] He says, My sheep, hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

[18:53] My Father which gave them me is greater than all and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

[19:03] I and my Father are one. Notice there's a couple of hands talked about here. The Father's hand and the hand of the Lord Jesus. He says, I and my Father are one.

[19:15] Isn't that wonderful to think? That no one can take you out of the Saviour's hand. No one can take you out of the Father's hand. His hands hold us.

[19:25] We're held fast in His clasp. There's safety there. As a Christian, if you're truly born again, if you truly trusted Christ, there's an absolute security there that you can know that you know that you know that He is the Saviour of your soul and you're held fast in the hands of Jesus.

[19:49] Sometimes we think we've got to give Jesus a hand. Some do that. Give Jesus a hand. As if He needs something from us. I'll give Jesus a helping hand.

[20:00] You know, as much as, and I for one have been guilty of trying in my own effort and strength to try to evangelise and do as much as I humanly can do, some of that might be of Him, some of it not of Him.

[20:17] Sometimes we think we've got to give Jesus a helping hand. But really, it's His hand extended that saves. and we can't ever think that His hands are not enough.

[20:29] And even our poor, feeble attempt to say, Lord, save me. It's only prompted by His mercy, isn't it? It's only prompted by our great Lamb standing before Him.

[20:41] Friends, commit your life to His strong hands today. The carpenter's hands, the hands of the Saviour, those hands that bore the nails. He says, come unto me, come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, rest unto your souls.

[21:02] He's the only one who can promise that and deliver it. Commit your life to His strong sure keeping. The hands that save, pray that prayer like Peter did.

[21:13] Three words, Lord, save me. You can pray that prayer. It doesn't take much learning or much catechising or instructing or doctrinal learning or having to measure up to somebody's standard.

[21:35] Just pray that prayer tonight. Lord, save me. Realise you need of Him. There's no other saviour. There's no other hope. Can you trust Him?

[21:48] Can you trust Him? Trust Him alone. Grace alone. Faith alone. It's His saving work. Won't you trust Him tonight?

[22:01] He extends those hands tonight still. And not that He stands there pleading as if we've got to do Him a favour. But we should respond in absolute brokenness.

[22:17] That the Holy One should invite me to be a part of His family. That that One who bled precious blood could be the One who extends a welcome to me.

[22:31] How could we conceive of it? Me and all my sin and vileness. In all my unworthiness. That He would say come unto me.

[22:45] How can we not but say Lord save me? Maybe like the man that prayed Lord I believe help thou my unbelief. Realising your inadequacy.

[22:58] Realising like the repentant man at the place of prayer. Not benoting himself but just saying God as he struck his chest in agony and contrition in physical exertion of what was happening within the spiritual side of himself.

[23:17] God be merciful to me the sinner. Friend I urge you tonight there's no other hope for you than those saving hands. There's no other help for you than those blessing hands that will touch you and guide your hand as you walk through the valley of tears from time to time and that hand that will hold you fast when it feels like you're falling and failing and slipping and sliding he'll hold you steady and sure forever.

[23:47] Let us pray. Dear Saviour we thank you that you held out your hand to Peter and you caught him as he prayed Lord save me.

[24:01] You reached out to the leprous man and cleansed him in an instant and likewise you can for man's sin. You are the only Saviour that we can ever know or find.

[24:17] Search for we pray that souls would search for you tonight as you say seek me with all your heart and you will find me. Help the searching ones tonight.

[24:30] Help the ones who are struggling tonight to know that you're held fast in their hand in your hand.

[24:41] You hold them fast in your hand and there is no need for concern because your plan is best for our lives and we can submit to that.

[24:54] Lord we thank you for the grace of Calvary, of the mercy you give, of the peace you deliver to our lives. Lord help us to live, to walk in that.

[25:07] If there's any here tonight Lord they don't know what it means to know a living Saviour from their sin. They're still lost in darkness and blindness and there's a turmoil within.

[25:22] as you say the wicked are like a restless sea that casts up muck and mires full of vileness and sin.

[25:35] Lord help them to realise their great need of you. That you can lift them out of the muck and mire of sin and set their feet on the rock Christ Jesus tonight.

[25:46] That they can know for sure there is a Saviour for my sin and you are he for me. Lord we praise you for that. In Jesus' name.

[25:56] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. desde Thank you.