Teaching Resources International

“My times are in thy hand.” — Psalm 31:15

David was sad: his life was spent with grief, and his years with sighing.  His sorrow had wasted his strength, and even his bones were consumed within him.  Cruel enemies pursued him with malicious craft, even seeking his life.  At such a time, he used the best resource of grief; for he says in verse 14, “But I trusted in thee, O Lord.”  He had no other refuge but that which he found in faith in the Lord his God.  If enemies slandered him, he did not render railing for railing; if they devised to take away his life, he did not meet violence with violence; but he calmly trusted in the Lord.  They ran hither and thither, using all kinds of nets and traps to make the man of God their victim; but he met all their inventions with the one simple defense of trust in God.  Many are the fiery darts of the wicked one; but our shield is one.  The shield of faith not only quenches fiery darts, but it breaks arrows of steel.  Though the javelins of the foe were dipped in the venom of hell, yet our one shield of faith would hold us harmless, casting them off from us.  Thus David had the grand resource of faith in the hour of danger.

Note well that he uttered a glorious claim, the greatest claim that man has ever made: “I said, Thou art my God.”  He that can say, “This kingdom is mine,” makes a royal claim; he that can say, “This mountain of silver is mine,” makes a wealthy claim; but he that can say to the Lord, “Thou art my God,” hath said more than all monarchs and millionaires can reach.  If this God is your God by his gift of himself to you, what can you have more?  If Jehovah has been made your own by an act of appropriating faith, what more can be conceived of?  You have not the world, but you have the Maker of the world; and that is far more.  There is no measuring the greatness of his treasure who hath God to be his all in all.

Having thus taken to the best resource by trusting in Jehovah, and having made the grandest claim possible by saying, “Thou art my God,” the Psalmist now stays himself upon a grand old doctrine, one of the most wonderful that was ever revealed to men.  He sings, “My times are in thy hand.”  This to him was a most cheering fact: he had no fear as to his circumstances, since all things were in the divine hand.  He was not shut up unto the hand of the enemy; but his feet stood in a large room, for he was in a space large enough for the ocean, seeing the Lord had placed him in the hollow of his hand.  To be entirely at the disposal of God is life and liberty for us.

The great truth is this — all that concerns the believer is in the hands of the Almighty God.  “My times,” these change and shift; but they change only in accordance with unchanging love, and they shift only according to the purpose of One with whom is no variableness nor shadow of a turning.  “My times,” that is to say, my ups and my downs, my health and my sickness, my poverty and my wealth — all those are in the hand of the Lord, who arranges and appoints, according to his holy will, the length of my days and the darkness of my nights.  Storms and calms vary the seasons at the divine appointment.  Whether times are reviving or depressing remains with him who is Lord both of time and of eternity; and we are glad it is so.

We assent to the statement, “My times are in thy hand,” as to their result.  Whatever is to come out of our life is in our heavenly Father’s hand.  He guards the vine of life, and he also protects the clusters which shall be produced thereby.  If life be as a field, the field is under the hand of the great Husbandman, and the harvest of that field is with him also.  The ultimate results of his work of grace upon us and of his education of us in this life are in the highest hand.  We are not in our own hands, nor in the hands of earthly teachers; but we are under the skillful operation of hands which make nothing in vain.  The close of life is not decided by the sharp knife of the fates; but by the hand of love.  We shall not die before our time; neither shall we be forgotten and left upon the stage too long.

Not only are we ourselves in the hand of the Lord, but all that surrounds us.  Our times make up a kind of atmosphere of existence; and all this is under divine arrangement.  We dwell within the palm of God’s hand.  We are absolutely at his disposal, and all our circumstances are arranged by him in all their details.  We are comforted to have it so

How came the Psalmist’s times to be thus in God’s hand?  I should answer, first, that they were there in the order of nature, according to the eternal purpose and decree of God.  All things are ordained of God and are settled by him according to his wise and holy predestination.  Whatsoever happens here happens not by chance, but according to the counsel of the Most High.  The acts and deeds of men below, though left wholly to their own wills, are the counterpart of that which is written in the purpose of heaven.  The open acts of Providence below tally exactly with that which is written in the secret book, which no eye of man or angel as yet has scanned.  This eternal purpose superintended our birth.  “In thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”  In thy book, every footstep of every creature is recorded before the creature is made.  God has mapped out the pathway of every man who traverses the plains of life.  Some may doubt this; but all agree that God foresees all things; and how can they be certainly foreseen unless they are certain to be?  It is no mean comfort to a man of God that he feels that, by divine arrangement and sacred predestination, his times are in the hand of God.

But David’s times were in God’s hand in another sense; namely, that he had by faith committed them all to God.  Observe carefully the fifth verse: “Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.”  In life, we use the words which our Lord so patiently used in death: we hand over our spirits to the hand of God.  If our lives were not appointed of heaven, we should wish they were.  If there were no overruling Providence, we would crave for one.  We would merge our own wills in the will of the great God, and cry, “Not as we will, but as thou wilt.”  It would be a hideous thought to us if any one point of our life-story were left to chance or to the frivolities of our own fancy; but with joyful hope we fall back upon the eternal foresight and the infallible wisdom of God, and cry, “Thou shalt choose our inheritance for us.”  We would beg him to take our times into his hand, even if they were not there.

Moreover, beloved brethren, our times are in the Lord’s hands, because we are one with Christ Jesus.  “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.”  Everything that concerns Christ touches the great Father’s heart.  He thinks more of Jesus than of all the world.  Hence it follows that when we become one with Jesus, we become conspicuous objects of the Father’s care.  He takes us in hand for the sake of his dear Son.  He that loves the Head loves all the members of the mystical body.  We cannot conceive of the dear Redeemer as ever being out of the Father’s mind; neither can any of us who are in Christ be away from the Father’s active, loving care: our tines are ever in his hand.  All his eternal purposes work towards the glorifying of the Son, and quite as surely they work together for the good of those who are in his Son. The purposes which concern our Lord and us are so inter-twisted as never to be separated.

To have our times in God’s hand must mean not only that they are at God’s disposal, but that they are arranged by the highest wisdom.  God’s hand never errs; and if our times are in his hand, those times are ordered rightly.  We need not puzzle our brains to understand the dispensations of Providence: a much easier and wiser course is open to us; namely, to believe the hand of the Lord works all things for the best.  Sit thou still, O child, at thy great Father’s feet, and let him do as seems him good!  When thou canst not comprehend him, know that a babe cannot understand the wisdom of its sire.  Thy Father comprehends all things, though thou dost not: let his wisdom be enough for thee.  Everything in the hand of God is where it may be left without anxiety; and it is where it will be carried through to a prosperous issue.  Things prosper which are in his hand.  “My times are in thy hand,” is an assurance that none can disturb, or pervert, or poison them.  In that hand, we rest as securely as rests a babe upon its mother’s breast.  Where could our interests be so well secured as in the eternal hand?  What a blessing it is to see by the eye of faith all things that concern you grasped in the hand of God!  What peace as to every matter which could cause anxiety flows into the soul when we see all our hopes built upon so stable a foundation, and preserved by such supreme power!  “My times are in thy hand!”

Come, let each man take to himself this doctrine of the supreme appointment of God and believe that it stands true as to his own case, “My times are in thy hand.”  The wings of the cherubim cover me.  The Lord Jesus loved me and gave himself for me, and my times are in those hands which were nailed to the cross for my redemption.

Our Duty and His Strength
Charles Spurgeon

“And they say unto him, ‘We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.’ He said, ‘Bring them hither to me.’” — Matthew 14:17-18

Our line of duty begins, first of all, in immediate obedience to Christ’s first command: “Bring ye them to me.”  “Five loaves, Master, it is all we have; two fishes.”  “Bring ye them to me.”  “Master, they are barley loaves; only five.” “Bring them to me.”  “There are two fishes; they are only two; they are not worth thinking of; let us keep them for ourselves.”  “No, bring them to me.”  “But they are such little fishes.”  “Bring them to me,” saith he, “bring them to me.”  The Church’s first duty is, when she looks to her resources and feels them to be utterly insufficient for her work, still to bring all that she has to Christ.  But how shall you bring them?  Why, in many ways. 

You must bring them to Christ in consecration.  There is a brother yonder who says, “Well, I have but little money to spare!”  “Never mind,” says Christ, “let what you have be brought to me.”  “Ah,” says another, “I have very short time that I can spare in laboring to do good.”  “Bring it to me.”  “Ah,” says another, “but I have small ability; my stock of knowledge is very slender; my speech is contemptible.”  “Bring it to me.”  “Oh,” saith one, “I could only teach in the Sunday school.”  “Bring it to me.”  “Ah,” says another, “and I do not know that I could do that; I could but distribute a tract.”  “Bring it to me.”  Every talent that the Church has is to be brought to Christ, and consecrated.  And mark you this – I speak a strong thing which some will not be able to receive – anything which you have in this world, which you do not consecrate to Christ’s cause, you do rob the Lord of.  Every true Christian, when he gave himself to Christ, gave everything he had.  Neither calls he anything that he has his own, but it is all the Master’s.  We are not true to the Master’s cause unless it be so. 

Bring ye them to me – not only in consecration, but also in prayer.  I think our prayer-meetings should be the seasons when the Church brings up all her barley loaves and fishes to Christ.  To get them blessed, here we come together around the altar.  We are weak and feeble, we come to be made strong; we have no power of ourselves, we come that we may receive power from on high; and we wait in the prayer-meeting, as thy disciples did in the upper room at Jerusalem, till the Spirit be poured out.  It is marvelous how a man with one talent can sometimes do ten times more than a man with ten talents, for he has ten times the grace.  A soldier, after all, is not always useful according to his weapon.  Give a fool an Armstrong gun [an early machine gun], and perhaps he will destroy himself with it.  Give a wise man but the poorest piece of fire-arms, and you shall find, with good and steady aim, and bold advance, he shall do more service with his small weapons, than the other with far better arms.  So there are men, who seem as if they might be leaders in God’s house, that are laggards, doing nothing, while there are others who are but little in Israel, whom God through his grace makes to be mighty.  Bring ye hither, O ye servants of the Lord, all that ye have kept back, pour ye all the tithes into his storehouse, that his house may be full. 

“Prove me now,” saith the Lord of hosts, “if I do not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”  Let us bring all we have to Christ, likewise in faith, laying it all at his feet, believing that his great power can make little means suffice for mighty ends.  “Lord, there are only five loaves,” – they were five loaves only when we had them in our hands, but now they are in thy hands, they are food for five thousand men.  “Lord, there are two fishes,” – they were paltry to insignificance while they were ours, but thy touch has ennobled them, and those little fishes shall become food for that vast multitude.  Blessed is that man who, feeling that he has truly consecrated all to God, can say, “There is enough. I do not want more talent; I do not need more substance; I would not wish to have more, there is enough for my work; I know it is utterly insufficient in itself, but our sufficiency is of God.” 

Oh! do not tell me, sirs, that we, as a denomination, are too feeble to do much good.  Do not tell me that the Christianity of England is too weak for the evangelization of the whole world.  No such thing: there is enough, there is plenty if the Master pleases it.  If there were only six good men living, and these six were thoroughly consecrated to God, they would be enough for the world’s conversion.  It is not the multiplication of your means, it is not the complication of your machinery, it is not the organization of your societies, it is not the qualification of your secretaries that God cares for a whit; it is your consecrated men who are wholly his and only his.  Let them believe that he can make them mighty, and they shall be mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.  I hesitate not to say that there are some pulpits that would be better empty than occupied; that there are some congregations to whom it would be far better if they had no preacher at all; for, having a minister who is not ordained of God, and not speaking by faith, they content themselves with things as they are, and grow listless.  Were the sham taken away, they might cry out for a real ministry.  God would bestow on them one taught of the Holy Ghost, who would speak with a tongue of fire, with inward witness and with spiritual energy, resting his confidence in God’s promises and his Word.  Oh dear friends, we ought to believe that there is enough means if Christ do but bless them, enough to bring in God’s chosen ones. 

“Bring ye them to me,” once more, in active service.  That which is dedicated to Christ in solemn covenant, and in earnest prayer, and in humble faith, must be dedicated in active service.  Are youall at work for Christ?  Are you all doing something for Christ?  I think there should not be a single member of this Church who is not somehow occupied for the Master.  Shall I except any? – except the weak upon their beds; and they can speak a good word for him when they are visited: except the dying upon their couches, and they can bear a blessed testimony to his faithfulness when they are going through the river: except the dumb, and they can act religion, when they cannot speak it: except the blind, and they can sing his praises: except the utterly incapacitated, and these can magnify the Lord by their patience.  Still we ought, everyone of us, if we be Christ’s, to be serving him. 

Now dear friends, if you want any inducements to lead you to bring all that you have to Christ, let me urge this.  In bringing it to him, you put your talent into his hand, whose hand was pierced for you.  You give to him who is your dearest friend; you give to him who spared not the blood of his heart that he might redeem you.  Do you not love him?  Is it not an honor to be permitted to show your love to so notable and noble a personage?  We have heard of women that have worked and all but starved themselves to bring food for their children; and as they put the precious morsels into the little ones’ mouths, they felt their toil to be nothing, because they were giving it to those they loved.  And so with the believer – he should feel that he most blesses himself when he blesses Christ.  And, indeed, when the Christian doeth ought for Jesus, it more blesses him that gives than him that takes.

Besides, when you give to him, you have another inducement, that you are thus giving to the multitude.  I know people think, when they are doing something for the Church that they are pleasing the minister; or pleasing the deacons.  Oh! dear friends, it is not so.  What interest have I in all the world but the love of poor souls.  There is a man, I think, present now, who I remember, some two or three winters ago, came to me to join the Church.  And when I sat down in the room to talk to him, I saw by the look of the poor man’s face he wanted bread natural as well as bread spiritual.  So I said, “Before I talk to you, I should like to see you a little refreshed;” and we fetched him something to eat.  I looked at him for a minute, for I saw his eyes glisten, and I left the room, for fear he should not eat so much when I was there.  This though I can tell you, when I saw the great pleasure with which he ate, it would have been sufficient compensation to me if that little had cost ten thousand pounds.  And when you see the poor sinner lay hold of Christ so greedily, and yet so joyfully, when you see his gleaming eye, and the tear as it runs down his cheek, you will say, I am too well paid to have done good to such a poor heart as this.  Lord, it is enough; I have fed these hungry souls.

Then to close this point.  “Bring ye them to me, and ye shall have as much left as ye had when ye brought them.”  They took up of the fragments more than ever they gave.  Christ will never let any man die in his debt.  What ye have done unto him is abundantly repaid, if not in temporals, yet in spirituals.  The fragments shall fill the baskets that are so liberally emptied.  You shall find that while watering others you are yourself watered.  The joy you impart shall be mutual.  To do good is to get good, and to distribute to others for Christ is the surest way of enriching one’s self.

The rest of the believer’s duty I will briefly sum up.  When you have brought your talents to Christ and have a conscientiousness of your great mission, your next duty is to look up.  Thank God for what you have got: look up!  Say, “There is nothing in what I do; there is nothing in my prayers, my preachings, my goings, my doings, except thou bless the whole.  Lord, bless it!”  Then, when you have blessed, break.  Go abroad and actively serve the Master, and when you have thus broken and have thus distributed to others, mind that you only distribute from Christ’s own hand.  You are to put your talents and abilities into Christ’s hand.  He gives the blessing on it; then he gives back to you: afterwards, you give it to the people.  If I give you bread from this pulpit to eat that is my own, it will be of no use to you.  But if, having gotten it in my study, I put it in the hand of Christ and come up here, and Christ hands it back to me and I give it to you, you shall be fed to the full.  This is Christ’s way of blessing men; he does not give the blessing first to the world; it is to his disciples, and then the disciples to the multitude.  We get in private what we distribute in public.  We have access to God as his chosen favorites.  We come near to him.  He gives to us, we give to others. 

Now I want to end by making you say, “We can.”  Yes! Christ is with us, and we can.  God is for us, and we can.  The Holy Ghost is in us, and we can.  God the Holy Spirit calls us, Jesus Christ the Son of God cheers us, God the Father smiles upon us; we can, we must, we will.  The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.  But have we believed in Christ ourselves?  If not, we can do nothing.  Come to Jesus first, then work for Jesus.  Give him your own heart first, then give him all that you have.  So shall he accept your offering, and bless your soul for his name’s sake.

Excerpted and edited from Spurgeon’s sermon, “Compassion for the Multitude.”