My Times Are in Your Hands (Part 3 of 4)

Music playing Can I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to the thirty-first psalm, Psalm 31, where our text this morning is, in the opening phrase of the fifteenth verse, My times are in your hands. Now, before we turn to the Scriptures, let's turn to God. Father, it is in no sense of routine that we pause before your powerful Word to seek your help. We come in our weakness, in our frailty, and in our need. We come to hear your voice. Speak, Lord, in the stillness, while we wait on thee. Hushed our hearts to listen in expectancy.

Amen. We pick up where we left off having dealt with three statements which came under the heading, My times are in your hands. We said that in light of that essential biblical truth, there were three things that were initially true. Number one, we are able to declare, I am not trapped in the grip of some blind force. Number two, I am not tossed about on an ocean of chance. And number three, I am being trained in the school of God's providence. And in addressing the matter of providence, we pointed out that it was by definition the continued exercise of God's divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all of his creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end. And as a result of having said that, we then were going to go on and consider other important elements which emerge from that essential truth. And to these we now come.

My times are in your hands. Therefore, prosperity should not be the occasion of pride. The proud man or woman, the arrogant individual, has never come to grips with providence. The person who delights to say, And so, in all that, I did it my way, I didn't do it in a shy way, and so on—the person who likes to turn that up, full blast on their stereo, and reflect on the last little period of their lives, and puff out their chest and look in the mirror and congratulate themselves—is on the absolute wrong end of a discovery of the doctrine of providence. And Calvin, addressing that very issue, says, It is an absurd folly that miserable men take it upon themselves to act without God when they cannot even speak, except he wills. The miserable men take it upon themselves to live their lives as if they can go ahead without God when, in actual fact, whether they are prepared to accept it or not, they are unable to even put sentences together without the providential rule of God. So, if I know as a farmer success in my sowing and I look out on the fields of plenty, if I understand the doctrine of providence, then I will not be quick to congratulate myself on how well I did. I will be thankful for the fact that I was diligent and my workers were also, but I will recognize, as 1 Corinthians 3 says, that while one can plant and another can water, only God can make things grow—Paul referring it to spiritual things in 1 Corinthians 3, but using the principle which is clearly from the physical realm. In the same way, if, as a businessman, my enterprises have proved successful and I am able to reflect upon a twelve-month period where I have known great encouragement, then I will praise God if I understand providence. The degree to which I congratulate myself and make much of myself and tell others of my prowess and boast of what I have achieved is an indication of the fact that I have not come to terms with the fact that my times are in his hands. And what if we have non-success in interpersonal relationships? What if everything is going particularly well at the moment, and whereas at an earlier period we were in conflict with one and with another, and now it seems that even our enemies are getting on with us, and we're even taking telephone calls from people that were, prior to this, very antagonistic?

What are we going to say? Well, if we don't understand the doctrine of providence, we will say, you know, I'm really quite a likable fellow after all. I'm glad that these people have suddenly understood it.

Or, I'm so glad that I did what I did, I've certainly won them over. If we understand that our times are in God's hands, then we will recognize, as Solomon says in Proverbs 16.7, that when a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to live at peace with him—that he is the one who gives us favor with people and even with those who are our enemies. Moses understood it when he was called to go before Pharaoh.

You can read about it in Exodus chapter 3. He thought it was a daunting prospect, and God tells him, he says, You should understand this. I have my promise given to you, that I will bring you up out of the land of Egypt. And unless you're in any doubt, although you will be the one that is stretching out your hand over the sea, you need a mighty, powerful hand to lead you out, and it will be my hand that leads you out. You have not only my promise in my word, but you have the power of my presence.

And also, you will discover the provision that I am prepared to make for you. And when you go back to Exodus 3 and read on, you will discover that those things are absolutely fulfilled as a result of God's goodness. And the people from Egypt go scurrying out, not simply able to lay down the bricks that had previously caused them so much heartache. It would have been one thing if they had just been liberated and left in Egypt.

It would have been another thing if they had been liberated and managed to sneak out, as it were. But no, no, they went out with great chunks of the produce of Egypt with them, and they must have been going out saying to one another, What a radical change in our circumstances! Only a few days ago we were making these horrible bricks, and here we are. Look at this blanket. Look at this robe.

Look at this wonderful pottery. Isn't this fantastic? Aren't we brilliant? This is God's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. We can't even put a step in front of the other one but for his providence. So when we walk out with all this produce, are we gonna congratulate ourselves?

Oh, I hope not! Because God doesn't share his glory with anyone else. Doesn't share it with arrogant businesspeople, snobby farmers, stuck on themselves pastors, egotistical churches. The doctrine of providence takes root within our hearts. We begin to say, My times are in your hand.

Then we recognize that prosperity is no occasion for pride. Also, we recognize that uncertainty should not be the occasion of panic. When I travel now, my wife looks after me so well that she tells me to take my pillow. And so I do.

I feel a little strange. I try and hide it under a coat or something. But I have my pillow. Because it's a great pillow!

I mean, otherwise, why would you take it? Unless it's, like, you know, like that blanket that kids suck on or something when they're small. What do you call that? Yeah, security pillow. Yeah, that's it. Security blanket.

No, it's not that. What do you put your head on at night? Well, a pillow. Yeah, but what do you really put your head on at night? When you have one of those thoughts that says, Maybe I'll die in my sleep. What do you put your head on?

Oh, I hope I won't. The only thing you put your head on is the providence of God. Then you go to sleep. The Puritans said, Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads. And some of us are here this morning, and if we were to look up anxious in the dictionary, there'd be a photograph of us right beside it. In fact, there isn't enough room to put the faces of all the people who, when you use the word anxious or worrisome or panic, don't stand up and go, Oh yes, I understand that.

Most of the occasions of my worrying, most of the occasions of my rising fears, can be traced ultimately to a loss of confidence in the doctrine of providence, can be traced to the fact that I am prepared to say my times are in your hands, but I'm not prepared to live in the light of that truth. So you lie awake at three o'clock in the morning, and your life is passing before you faster than a weaver's shuttle. You feel yourself on a locomotive, the one that they have in France that goes through the tunnel. It's going 148 miles an hour, and you've got no confidence that there's anybody up front. And if they're up front, you think they've fallen asleep at the wheel. And if they have fallen asleep at the wheel, there's no prospect of them waking up.

And even if they walk up, they couldn't find a break. Now, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me that reads the newspapers and goes, I think I'm gonna go crazy. Is this really the land of the brave and the home of the free? You see the section on This Is Our Nation?

It goes down the middle. It's not the international section. It's the national section. Now, this is not The Inquirer.

This is The New York Times. And the stories that are in there are just most unbelievably sad stories. Fifty-four-year-old grandfather, looking after his two-year-old grandson, decides to take him sledding. Where does he take him? Takes him to Suicide Hill. It goes down the hill, and his grandson is killed in between his knees in the first tree that they hit. This is not good news.

This crushes my spirit with that blueberry muffin and the large McDonald's coffee. And the kids that get the paintball guns, this is the same column. You start firing them out in the backyard, you start firing paintballs up against the fence of the sixty-four-year-old gentleman who lives next door, who decides that the only way he can settle the issue is to get a—is it a.357 Magnum?

Is that what you call the gun? And come out over his back fence and load two of the bullets into the chest of the nineteen-year-old boy? And when the forty-four-year-old father of the nineteen-year-old protests, he gives him two in the chest and two in the back just to go along with it? I say, you know, this train is… This thing's off the rails.

Do I go further? To the forty-two-year-old man living in a house with a twenty-nine-year-old woman that is a seven-year-old child? The seven-year-old daughter is doing the dishes, but not to the satisfaction of the forty-two-year-old man who slaps her so hard that she loses bladder control on the kitchen floor, and as a result of seeing that, he beats her into a convulsive pulp, and the twenty-nine-year-old mother takes the seven-year-old and places her in a garbage can in the backyard and sets fire to it. Now, people write me letters about this. They say, Why would you say such dreadful things? On a Sunday morning, I'm trying to cheer myself up.

Well, guess what? So am I. And I want to know how to cheer myself up, in light of that stuff. And the only place I can lay my head is that somehow, in the mysterious purposes of Almighty God, my times are in his hands. These evil times in which I live have not taken him by surprise. These dark and dreadful days have not overwhelmed me, because I know that he is still at the tiller, the pain of concern for loved ones and our agony over their lives and their hopes and their dreams and their futures and the ends of their days. How do we handle all of this?

What do you put your head down on at night? Samus says, There's only one place I can go. I can only say, My times are in your hands. Prosperity mustn't be the occasion of my pride. Uncertainty mustn't be the occasion of panic. And thirdly, adversity must not become the occasion of self-pity. If Joseph had operated beyond the pale of God's providence, if he had only looked on the tragedy of his life, if he only had looked at everything that he had missed out on in terms of his father's company, in terms of his journey to a place he didn't know, into slavery with people he didn't like, to learn a language that he had never even considered, if he had focused on all of that, if he had used the passage of time and the inroads of adversity to his soul and to his mind as an occasion for self-pity, then when he had the opportunity to greet his brothers, all that would have come out from him was just bile. It just would have been vitriol.

It just would have been spite. But do you remember that wonderful scene in Genesis 45? When the brothers show up, and they don't realize it, Joseph and Joseph finally says to them, "'Come close to me.'" And when they'd done so, he said, "'I'm your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt.'"

I always love that phrase. Like, you mean there was another one? That's the closest he gets to a little dig. "'I'm your brother Joseph, you know, the one you sold into Egypt.'" But he quickly follows it up.

You know, maybe even at that point he was—maybe he was gonna take the low road at that point. And he says, "'And now do not be distressed. But don't be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.'" In other words, God knows what he's doing.

My times are in his hands. Job, in the experience of the loss of his loved ones, as all manner of chaos and disappointment and pain is about to descend upon him, he acknowledges that. He comes before the events that are there, and he finds himself shaving his head and putting on his robe, which is torn, and he falls to the ground in worship, and he says, you know, "'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.

May the name of the LORD be praised.'" And in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. And I don't misunderstand that verse. People have used this as a rod to beat themselves with, because in the experience of pain and of loss, they have found themselves saying, Why God?

Why is this the case? That is one thing. The reference here is to the fact that Job did not charge God with sin, because he knew that God is incapable of sin. And if we had seen him, we would have seen his torn robe, and we would have seen his shaved head, and we would have said, Job's in deep trouble. But if we had drawn close and heard him pray, we would have known that in his tears he was trusting in the providence of God. When David is subjected to abuse, first from his own son and then from people around him, it's his confidence in the providence of God that gets him through. One day he's walking down the street, and a guy called Shimei approaches, and he cursed as he came out. And he began just to curse and abuse David, and furthermore, he pelted David and all the king's officials with stones.

Anybody able to identify with this so far? There's a guy cussing you out and throwing stones at you. Now, let's be honest. How many of us are immediately going to Psalm 31.15? My times are in his hands. Whoa! Hey! Wait a minute! Hang on! Whoop! My times are in his hands. Whoop!

Missed it! No, we're right here with a big guy. What a great idea! He is a dead dog. I'd like to cut off his head myself. But the king said, What do you and I have in common, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing, because the LORD said to him, Curse David! Who can ask, Why do you do this? Then David said to Abishai and all his officials, My son, who is of my own flesh, is trying to take my life.

How much more than this Benjamite! Leave him alone! Let him curse! For the LORD has told him to. It may be that the LORD will see my distress.

Repay me with good for the cursing I am receiving today. But the fact is, it may not. And whether it is for good or for ill, my times are in his hands. And we've sought to get to grips with this thought even in the middle of the storm.

And the fact is that in the middle of the storm, it can sound trite to say these things—although it isn't. And often it will be time—the passage of time, the change of circumstances that allow us to look back over our shoulders and begin, even with a whisper of a child, to recognize that there is no trying or even tragic circumstance, but that God has sovereignly permitted it. You see, logically, there is no other choice. You either have to be a deist or a pantheist, or you believe in the providence of God. You either have to say, I am being buffeted by a blind impersonal force, or I am adrift on the sea of chance, or there is a providential God who orders the affairs of time. If the providential God orders all the affairs of time, then by his permissive will, he allows things to pass to us through his hands, but they do not take him by surprise.

He's sovereignly involved in the life cycle of the sparrow, and therefore he is profoundly involved in the circumstances of those whom he has made the special objects of his love. And therefore, with confidence, even in the face of difficulty, we can be assured that since the fatherly providence of God has permitted these things, he has done so for our good and his glory, and he will sustain us and he will watch over us in the midst of them. And even if it takes to heaven, he will then make clear to us what now we see through a glass dark. The fatherly providence of God is a comforting refuge in the middle of the storms of life. Today's message is titled, My Times Are in Your Hands, You're Listening to Truth for Life, with Alistair Begg. Our study about God's providence in the midst of prolonged periods of difficulty could not be more perfectly timed to close out 2020.

For all of us, this has been a year of challenges. So our team has prepared a study guide that corresponds with this current series, My Times Are in Your Hands. It's a great way to apply Alistair's teaching in this series to your personal situation. If it feels like the wheels are falling off, this study is a great comfort to help you find rest and peace in God's sovereignty.

You'll find the study online at truthforlife.org slash store. Let me also suggest an inspiring collection of daily readings that will provide you with great encouragement in the midst of difficult times. This is a collection titled, Checkbook of the Bank of Faith, 19th century pastor and author Charles Spurgeon wrote this. He based the title on a comparison between God's promises and checks we write and give to other people. A check is given to someone in the present, but it's fulfilled in the future when it's cashed. And this devotional is checkbook sized.

It comes with a rich leather cover. It contains 365 daily readings, which make it ideal for encouragement on the go, just in time for the new year. Today is the final day we're offering this book. So be sure to request your copy when you donate today. Simply tap the image you see on the mobile app or visit truthforlife.org. If you'd prefer, you can call us at 888-588-7884. And of course you can always mail your donation to us and request the book.

Write to Truth for Life at post office box 39 8000 Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Finally, if you're looking for a way to share God's word in the year to come, consider a Bible that we have just added to our store. We regularly receive requests from people for Bibles that can be purchased in multiple quantities to give to friends or to donate to organizations. This edition of the Bible is priced to give away. It's a complete ESV Bible, comes in a soft cover, and it's available for purchase from Truth for Life for just $2. You'll find it online at truthforlife.org slash store, or you can order multiple copies through the app or by calling us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapeen. Thanks for joining us. Hope you can listen again tomorrow for the conclusion of our message and series titled, My Times Are In Your Hands. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.