The following message was given at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. If you have your Bibles, you may turn with me to the book of the Psalms. And I want us to look at Psalm 31. I think that's a bad place to stand because every time everybody is looking right at you. I didn't realize that. I'm taking my jacket off, not because I'm going to rant and rave. but because sometimes it gets warm up here. I've experienced that. Psalm chapter, Psalm number 831 is the psalm that I've chosen to choose our text from this evening. So if you can follow, I'm going to read the whole psalm so we can have the context of the text that I've chosen. Psalm 31. In you, O Lord, I put my trust. Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in your righteousness. Bow down your ear to me. Deliver me speedily. Be my rock of refuge, a fortress of defense to save me. For you are my rock and my fortress. Therefore, for your name's sake, lead me and guide me. Pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, for you are my strength. Into your hand I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. I have hated those who regard useless idols, but I trust in the Lord. I will be glad and rejoice in your mercy, for you have considered my trouble. You have known my soul in adversities. and have not shut me up in the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a wide place. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble. My eye wastes away with grief. Yes, my soul and my body. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. I am a reproach among all my enemies, but especially among my neighbors, and am repulsive to my acquaintances. Those who see me outside flee from me. I am forgotten like a dead man out of mind. I am like a broken vessel, for I fear the slander of many. Fear is on every side. While they take counsel together against me, they scheme to take away my life. But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. My time is in your hand. My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me. Make your face shine upon your servants. Save me for your mercy's sake. Do not let me be ashamed, O Lord, for I have called upon you. Let the wicked be ashamed. Let them be silent in the grave. Let the dying lips be put to silence, which speak insolent things proudly and contentiously against the righteous. Oh, how great is your goodness, which you have laid out for those who fear you, which you have prepared for those who trust in you in the presence of the sons of men. You shall hide them in the secret place of your presence from the plots of man. You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for he has shown me his marvelous kindness in a strong city. For I said, in my haste I am cut off from before your eyes. Nevertheless, you heard the voice of my supplications when I cried out to you. Oh, love the Lord, all you His saints. For the Lord preserves the faithful and fully repays the proud person. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all you who hope in the Lord. May God bless his reading of his word. And the context of the book of Acts, under the inspiration of God, Luke wrote that David, the psalmist, was a prophet. And of course, we know that many of the Psalms have prophecies in them that he had written, of course. And one of the most notable ones is Psalm 22, having to do with the message of the crucifixion of our Lord himself. But even in the psalms that we just read now, we have some of the words that are quoted by our Lord Jesus in Luke 23, verse 46, when he says, Father, into your hand I commit my spirit. How faithful God is in the proclamation of the blessed truth of the gospel. Now, concerning this psalm, Considering the writing and the occasion of the writing of the psalm, we don't really know. There are some who think, and it's very easy to understand this, that it was during the time when Saul's persecution was against him. And it's understandable about the grief and the sorrow and the troubles of what he went through. I think it was over 15 years that he suffered under Saul's persecution. It may have been then that he wrote the psalm. There are others who think that it was during Absalom's rebellion. And you can imagine the sorrow and the grief, the heart that David had as he read, we read this concerning his own son rebelling against him and the number of people that followed him. So there's good reason that that could have been. We really don't know. But it really doesn't matter for us if we're gonna try to understand what the context of the Psalm is and its benefit for us as believers. We mustn't focus upon that to miss out the truth that God has given to us. It seems quite clear that the psalm presents the continual conflict which believers have to endure in the world. And the deliverance and the victory of those conflicts which follow, which is we read the latter part of the psalm. In it we are still, in it we are falling into the Greece, the valley of Greece, and then getting to the high mountains of joy and peace and confidence. And we see that in the psalm. The text that I want to focus on is in the middle of the psalm, verse 15, where the psalmist comes out with a very clear statement when he has faced the realities of his griefs and his sorrows and his conflicts and his tribulations. And he says this, but as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. And then our text, my times are in your hand. My times are in your hand. I think that's a definition of a doctrine that is very important to us and that we know very well. Spurgeon makes a comment on this text and he says this, the sovereign arbiter, meaning by that, that one who has the absolute power of determining, the only one, the sovereign arbiter of destiny holds in his own power all the issues of our life. We are not homeless ones or strays upon an ocean of fate, but are steered by infinite wisdom toward our desired haven. And then he adds the sentence and he puts that doctrine right in the words. Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads. An anodyne, meaning anything to remove pain or distress, an anodyne for care. grave for despair. Providence, God's care, my times are in your hands. Kelvin also makes a comment, and very interesting, I think he says this and included in some of his comments. He, referring to the psalmist, he does not use the plural number in my opinion without reason, but rather to mark the variety of casualties by which the life of man is usually harassed. Interesting. how often he uses those phrases. My times are in your hand. As Christians, This text is teaching us to put our reasonings into his hand. My times are in your hand. And God is teaching us to keep us from our own wisdom, our own direction in life, when the text says, my times are in your hand. And thirdly, God is teaching us to depend upon and trust in Him as a child depends upon a parent. My times are in your hand. The goodness of God to us, combined with His infinite wisdom for His own glory, keeps Him from revealing the path in which He directs us in a providence. But he gives us a promise, and it's interesting. Isaiah 42, 16 says this in his promise to us. I will bring the blind by a way they did not know. I will lead them in paths which they have not known. I will make darkness light before them and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them and not forsake them. My times are in your hand. As children of God, Our happiness, our successes, our afflictions, our trials, our crosses, our losses, all our sorrows, all are in our Heavenly Father's hand. They cannot come unless they are sent by Him. And then we must bend our hearts, our affected hearts. We must yield our emotional tossed soul to His sovereign order, to His calm, righteous sway, in the same way, in the same spirit, submissive spirit, in the language of our Lord Jesus, our Savior, when He said, not my will. but yours be done." Luke 22, 42. My times are in your hand. Let's look at this text by looking at the different terms that are there. And number one, first place, I'd like us to notice my times. Times, with the emphasis on times. And specifically, the times of sadness and times of grief. specifically spelled out by the psalmist in the writing of the Psalms. Our times of soul distress, our times of spiritual darkness, our times of soul spiritual struggles are in his hand. Many experiences such as these that the psalmist has expressed in the psalm are in the lives of true saints. It's not as if everything goes well as soon as you become a Christian. There are many struggles, and David is an example of that. Of course, many of his psalms refer to the struggles of the Christian life. True saints have these experiences. There are many hard-fought spiritual struggles and battles that we go through. There are the enduring of the fiery darts of the evil one, the experiences of distresses, even momentary defeats. It seems like, how can we be defeated? But they are in the Christian's life. but they are in the Lord's hand. There's no spiritual cloud or shades or mental distress, no fiery darts that is launched that is not permitted by him and which he has an arrangement for our provision in the light because our times are in his hand. So our times of sadness, our times of grief. But secondly, under this point, I want us to note that our times are in His hand, are under His keeping. Our times are under His keeping. There is nothing that our Lord is more entirely and exclusively into His keeping than the redeemed, the sanctified souls of His people. We have a special place. He has demonstrated this again in the scriptures, how valuable we are to Him. All of our interests from now until eternity are exclusively in His hand. They are under the infinite power of our Lord Jesus. They are under the inexhaustible supply of His wealth to supply every need. They are in the exceedingly great and precious promises of His word that He has for us because all our times are in His hand. He knows our spiritual crisis as a believer. And as a believer, we must know, we must know from the text how precious our soul is to Him. It is He who bore our sins. It is He who endured our curse. It is He who labored for us in disgrace and sufferings. It is He who has redeemed us by His own most precious blood. Can we see and sense something of how precious we are? And we are in His hands. And He also has His indwelling Spirit that guards us as believers in His kingdom. We are in his hands, we are in his keeping. Thirdly, let me come back to the term terms again. And in here, refer to whatever we are experiencing, all our times. We may be striving, we must then strive to realize that whatever we are experiencing in life, whether it's the confusion of our minds, the mental concerns that are there, the spiritual struggles and conflicts, the doubts and fears that arise, our times of soul despondency, All of them are in the Lord's hands. As true believers, we must rest then, because all our temporal and spiritual interests are safe, because we're in the Lord's hands. Moses said in Deuteronomy 33, 3, all his saints are in his hand. And he whose care we have committed our souls to has pledged himself for our eternal security. Listen how he says it in John 10. Concerning his own people, he says, I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. That's the kind of promise, that's the kind of place we have when we are in the Father's hands. Now with this precious faith and humble assurance, we can say with the Apostle Paul, I know whom I have believed and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep which I have committed to him until that day. You see, just as soon as Christ himself will perish, only then will one who has been bought by his blood perish. What a state to be in. Blessed place. We are in his hand. Our times are in his hand. Secondly, let's focus on that word, my times, my times, my life, my times in life. There's no member of the body of Christ, no Christian, no matter how insignificant he may be, will be separated from his care. No temple of the Holy Spirit, no Christian, no matter how frail, how imperfect, will be out of his care. There's no soul to whom the divine nature has been given, on whose heart the person of the Lord Jesus Christ has been formed, who will be kept in His continual care and be involved in the final or involved in the final eternal destruction of the wicked. It cannot happen because we're in His hands. In us as believers, nothing will perish but the earthly and sensual. Now think of this, we who have come with all of our sin and our fear to Jesus, we who cling to him, we will never lose our hold of faith that we have on Christ. More importantly, never will Christ lose his hold of love that he has for us. What a place to be in. We as individuals, we and the Lord Jesus are one. indivisibly, never to be separated. We are eternally one. Nothing will separate us from his love. Nothing will sever us from his care. Nothing will exclude us from his sympathy. Nothing will keep us from his heavenly eternal blessedness that he's promised. We are in Christ. We are the subject of his grace and as Paul wrote in Colossians, Christ is in you the hope and assurance of glory. All our care is Christ's care. All our earthly sorrows are Christ's sorrow. All our need is the supply of Christ. And all our crosses are Christ's burden. All my times are in his hand. Our life, then, as Christians—temporal, spiritual, eternal—is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3.3. The believer, then, can rejoice and say, are one. That union that we have is something else. We are one in His nature, one in His love, one in His sympathy, one in His fellowship. And through the countless ages of eternity, we are one with Him. My times are in His hand, our times in this life. The apostle wrote in Galatians 2.20, The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God. What does this mean? It means we go to Him in the confidence of a loving friend. We go to Him in the simplicity of a little child. We reveal to Him our secret sorrow. We confess to Him our hidden sin. We acknowledge our heart backsliding, and there we make known to Him our needs, our sufferings, our fears, and then we tell Him how cold our love is towards Him, and how reserved our obedience is, and how imperfect our service is. And it's there we tell Him how we long to love Him more, to follow Him more closely, to serve Him more devotedly. to be more wholly, totally, wholly His. And how does He meet with us? With a listening ear, with a gracious word, with an outstretched hand, with a kindness and gentleness just like who He is. we must then commit our temporal and our spiritual and our immortal interests into the Lord's hands. Because my times, at times in life, are in his hand. And secondly, on this point of my times, let's notice that my times in death There are those who are depressed with a troublesome concern about their final death. There are those who are fearfully anticipating their death and who all their lifetime are subject to the fear of death. How comforting it is to know, to realize that the time of the believer's death is peculiarly in the Lord's hand. It is seriously true. There is a time to die. Ecclesiastes 3.2. What a thought. I don't know how much you've ever experienced this or thought of this. A time to die. A time when this mortal life will be over. A time when this heart will no longer feel and be sensible to the joys and sorrows and experiences that we have in this life. A time when our bodies will ache no more. And our eyes will weep no more. But it's going to be the best and holiest time of all, because it will be a time when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. 1 Corinthians 15.54. If this is true, and it is, Christian, why are we anxiously fearing and trembling about our death? Our time of death, with all of its related circumstances, is in the Lord's hand. All is appointed and arranged by Him, by Him who loves you and by Him who has redeemed you. In His infinite goodness and wisdom and faithfulness concerning our highest happiness is in each circumstances of our individual departure from this life. The final sickness cannot come. The last enemy cannot strike until he ordains it. All is in his hand. Then, Christian, let us calmly, trustingly leave life's closing setting with him. I cannot die away from Jesus. Whether our spirits leave our body at home, in a hospital, whether we are with strangers or with family and friends, whether it is by a lingering process or by a sudden stroke or heart attack, whether it is in the brightness of the day or in the gloom of pain, Jesus will be with you. He will uphold us by His grace and encourage us with His presence. And we can rightly say, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. My times, my time of death is in His hand. We can reveal in our dying testimony the faithfulness of God and the preciousness of His promise. It's an anticipation because our times are in His hand. Our time to die is in His hand. Now thirdly, in whose hands are these believers' times? My times are in a Father's hand. Our times of trial, times of temptation, times of suffering, times of uncertainty, times of sunshines, times of gloom, of life or death, they're in a parent's hands. My times are in my Father's hand. Has the Lord seen fit to take away some special blessing that you've been experiencing? Or have you been denied some earnest request that you have made before Him? Or perhaps are you painfully going through some discipline in your own heart? All this comes from a Father's love, just as truly as though He had taken from the bounty of His riches and put the costliest gift at your feet. It's the Father's care on our times are in. Remember also that our times are in our Father's hand. And fourthly and finally, my times are in a Redeemer's hand. That same Redeemer who carried our sorrows in His heart, who placed our curse and our transgressions on His soul, who bore our cross on his shoulder, who died and rose again and lives and intercedes for us, and who's going to gather all his rents in one to crown him in glory. He is our guardian and our guide. Our times are in his hand. How do we respond? Peter said it well, 1 Peter 5, 7, cast in all your care upon him, for he cares for you. Faith says in that hand that still bears in the palm the nail print of the nails in his hand. That's the one whose hand we are in. We have reason to trust and not be afraid. And again, the scripture says, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Isaiah 49, 16 says this, and listen to this. Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, but I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands." Listen, heaven and earth should be amazed that rebels such as you and I by nature have obtained such nearness to the heart of infinite love so as to have our very persons inscribed on his hand. If you note, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. And someone brought this out and I'm going to refer to what he had said. Note that the text does not say your name. Your name is there, but that's not what it says. I have inscribed you. Now notice the fullness of what it means, inscribed you. He says this, I have inscribed your person, your image, your case, your circumstances, your sins, your temptations, your weakness, your needs, your works. I have inscribed you, everything about you, all that concerns you, I have put all together there on my hand. What a place, what a position to be in. My times are in your hand. Now, I trust that as we've gone through this time of examining the verse that there are certain, this text, that there are certain applications that have come to us, hopefully that is the case. But let me just remind us of a couple of them as we conclude. I think we should be careful to look at the practical influence that this truth, my times are in your hands, should have on our minds and our thinking. We should let this precious truth, my times are in your hand, keep our mind, our thinking from all needless, anxious care for our present time as well as for our future. Remember, the sovereign arbiter of destiny holds in his own power all the issues of our life. Let it keep our mind from needless, anxious concern. We are steered by infinite wisdom toward our desired haven. And again, providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads, an anodyne for care, a grave for despair. My times are in your hand. Let us exercise simple faith. What the truth says. We ought to be content with such things as we have, because he himself said, I will never leave you. Hebrews 13.5, my times are in your hand, your hand. Exercise simple faith in God. Let me make this one more application, then we'll close. Providence prospers one desire and frustrates the same desire in another, in the same business, at the same spot. And yet the great ruler, the sovereign arbiter, is as good and wise at one time as another. Why can't I have this? Somebody else did this. God is sovereign and he knows what's best. And our times are in his hand. May God give us grace today to remember the text, my times are in your hand and let us not envy the more successful or concerned about our losses as though we were specially tried because our times are in his hands. May God bless His Word. Let's pray. Our Father, we come to You with thankfulness for the text that You have declared to us. Our times as individuals, my times are in your hand. May we find that as an encouragement, knowing that you as a providential director of all things in our life are in control and you care for us like no one can care for us. Minister to our souls as we draw near to you and the truth that you have revealed to us in your word. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.