I've been working hard to get rid of this allergy or cold that I have, which makes me have a runny nose. But I think I'm conquering it by God's grace and help. Let me say, if you have your Bibles, you may turn with me to the book of the Psalms and Psalm 31. Psalm 31. And while you're turning there, let me just express to you that you as a congregation are very much in our prayers at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Coconut Creek. We have you on our prayer list every Wednesday. We go through our missionaries and this is one of the areas where we have been pleased to be able to pray. We have been following you as much as we can in the context of God's blessings, the building that God's given to you, the congregation, the faithfulness, and of course the commitment to God's word and God's truth. So just to encourage you that apart from your own prayers and others that I'm sure you know are, we at Emmanuel Baptist are praying for you. It's a privilege that you've given to me. It's a privilege for me to be here with you and to fellowship with some of those who are very dear to us and who've known over the years. But it's an honor for me to be able to participate in the worship service in this context of preaching the word. And I appreciate it for you. Appreciate it. And thank you for the opportunity. And as I hope I expressed in the prayer that it is God's truth and God's word that has to come to our hearts. It's not the human being. And that's my prayer that God would take his truth, whatever he has for us today, and bring it home to us so that we would find ourselves being more obedient, more faithful, more in love to our great Savior, the Lord Jesus. Praise his name. I'd like to read the psalm, and then I would like to focus on the text that I've chosen to preach on. Psalm 31. Follow if you will as I read it. In you, O Lord, I put my trust. Let me never be ashamed. Deliver me in your righteousness. Bow down to me. Deliver me speedily. Be my rock of refuge and 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, 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 into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a wide space. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble. My eyes waste 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. I 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. Fears 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 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, and let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak insolent and proudly contemptuous against the righteous. Oh, how great is your goodness, which you have laid up 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 men. 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 serves 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 add His blessing to the reading of this word. I want to take my text from the fifteenth verse of this chapter, where the psalmist says these words, My times are in your hand. My times are in your hand. Now, most of us know that the Psalms, some of the Psalms are very prophetic. As Psalm 22 speaks of our Lord's crucifixion in detail, sometimes even more than what we have in the New Testament records. But even this psalm has the same words quoted by Lord Jesus in Luke chapter 23, verse 46, where we have the words of our Savior, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Now, concerning the writing of this psalm, as to the time of its writing, there are some scholars who think it was during Saul's persecution of David. I think that is somewhere of a 15-year period. Others scholars think it was during Absalom's persecution and rebellion against David. We actually do not know for sure, but we don't need to focus upon that as much as to not miss the suitability of the psalm that he has for us. It seems quite clear that the psalm represents the continual conflict which believers have to endure in this world and the deliverances and the victories of those conflicts which are sure to follow for the believer. In it we see the falling into the valley of grief and the rising into the hills of confidence. Our times, my times, are in your hand." Spurgeon has a comment on this particular text, and he says this, the sovereign arbiter, meaning by that the one who has the only absolute power of determining, the sovereign arbiter of destiny, holds in his own power all the issues of our life. We are not strays upon the ocean of fate, but steered by infinite wisdom toward our desired haven." And he adds to that, Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads, an anodyne, meaning anything to remove pain, an anodyne for care, and a grave for despair. My times are in your hands. Calvin has comments, and amongst his comments he says this, 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. My times are in your hand. As Christians, God is teaching us to put our reasonings into his hand. My times are in your hand. And as Christians, God is teaching us to keep from our own wisdom and our own direction in life. 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. Now the goodness of God to us, combined with His infinite wisdom for His own glory, keeps Him from revealing the path along which He directs us. We would like to know that, wouldn't we? But He does not do that. But He does promise us this, and it's contained in Isaiah 52, which says this, His promise, 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, crooked places straight. These things I will do for them and not forsake them. Our text says my times, my times are in your hand. As children of God, our happiness, our successes, our afflictions, our trials, our crosses that we bear, our losses, our sorrows, All are in our Heavenly Father's hands. They cannot come to us unless they are sent by Him. And what we must do is to bend our affected hearts. We must yield our emotional tossed souls to His sovereign order, to His calm and righteous way, in the same submissive spirit that our Savior used when He says, but yours be done. My times are in your hand. Let's look at this text with looking at the terms that are used. First of all, I'd like to consider the word times. My times. My times of sadness, times of grief are in your hand. Our times of soul distress, our times of spiritual darkness, times of our souls and spiritual struggles They're in his hands. Now, many experiences such as these are in the lives of the true saint of God. Many hard-fought spiritual struggles and battles, enduring the fiery darts of the evil one, experiencing the desperate distresses and the momentary defeats that are experienced in the Christian life. But they're in the Lord's hands. no spiritual clouds, no shades, no mental distresses, no fiery darts that are launched are given to us except by permission from him, and in which he has arranged a provision for. Secondly, my times are in his hands. My times are in his hand. They are in his keeping. There is nothing that the Lord has taken more entirely and more exclusively to his keeping than the redeemed, the sanctified souls of his people. All our interests from now into eternity are exclusively in his hand. They are in the infinite power of the Lord Jesus. They are under the inexhaustible supply of his wealth to supply the need that we have. They are in the exceeding great and precious promises that He has given to us in this Word. He knows every spiritual crisis that we as believers experience. And as believers, we must know how precious we are to Him. Listen to this. It is He, the Lord Jesus, who bore our sins. It is He who has endured our curse. It is He who has labored for us in disgrace and sufferings in our place. It is He who has ransomed us by His own precious blood." Now, this does not speak to us of the value that we have in Him. Nothing else can. And not only that, but by His indwelling Spirit, He guards us as believers in His kingdom. in his hands. My times are in his keeping. But thirdly, and to this point, I want to emphasize the times in every area of our life. Sometimes we are focused upon how God deals with us spiritually, or God deals with us in this area. Every, every, every area of our life God is dealing with us. We must then strive to realize that whatever we may be experiencing, In the confusion of our minds, our mental concerns, our spiritual struggles, our doubts and our fears, our times of soul despondency, all of them, all of them are in our Lord's hands. As true believers, we must rest then, because our temporal and spiritual interests are safe, because they're in God's hands. Moses said this in Deuteronomy 33, he says, all the saints are in our Lord's hands. Now, he whom we have committed our souls, our redeemed souls, has pledged himself for our eternal security. Listen to what he says in John chapter 10 concerning the believer, those of us who are believers. Concerning his own people, he says this, 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." What a promise. What a place for believers to be in under such as care as this. And what a precious faith and humble assurance we can say now with the Apostle Paul. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day. As soon as Christ himself will perish, only then will those who have been bought by his blood perish. It will never happen. My times are in your hand. Secondly, I want to notice, my times are in His hands. My times, my time in life, in eternal life, in spiritual life, in contemporary life. There is no member of the body of Christ, no Christian, no matter how insignificant he may be, will be separated from God's care. No temple of the Holy Spirit, no Christian, no matter how frail, how imperfect he may be, will be out of the Father's care. Not a soul to whom the divine nature has been given, on whose heart the person of the Lord Jesus Christ has been formed, will be kept from His continual care and be involved in the final and eternal destruction of the wicked. In us, as believers, nothing will perish except the earthly and essential. Now think of this. We who have come with all of our sins, with all of our fears, We have come to Jesus. We will cling to him. We will never lose that hold of faith that we have on Christ. And never, more importantly, will Christ ever lose that love that he has for us. We as individuals, we and the Lord Jesus are one, indivisibly, never to be separated. We are eternally one. Nothing can separate us from his love. Nothing can sever us from his care. Nothing will exclude us from his sympathy. Nothing will keep us from his heavenly eternal blessing that's prepared for us. We are in Christ. We are the subject of his grace. The scripture says in Colossians 1, Christ is in you, the hope, the assurance of glory. not only in that eternal state, but in the life of the flesh that we live in now. Listen to what Galatians 2 says, The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. All our care is Christ's care. All our earthly sorrows are Christ's sorrows. All our need is Christ's supplies. All our crosses that we bear are Christ's burden. This is telling us that your life Christian, temporal, spiritual, eternal, is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3.3. Now think of this. These are inexpressible blessings that come from that vital union that we have in the Lord Jesus. The believer can rejoice and say, Christ and I are one. Unique statement that the scripture gives to us. Christ and I are one. We are one in His nature. We are one in His love. We are one in His sympathy. We are one in His fellowship. And one through the countless ages of eternity. Our life is in one relationship to Christ. The life that I now live in the faith, in flesh, is I live by the faith of the Son of God. What does that mean to us? It means that we go to Him in confidence as a loving friend. We go to Him in the context of the simplicity of a little child. We reveal to Him our secret sorrows. We confess to Him our hidden sin. We acknowledge our heart's backsliding. And it is there that we make known to Him our needs, our sufferings, and our fears. And we tell Him in an honest way how cold our heart is, how reserved and modest and restrained our obedience is, how imperfect our service is. And there we tell Him how we long to love Him more. We long to follow Him more closely. We long to serve Him more devotedly. We long to be more wholly, totally, wholly His. Then how does He meet us? He meets us with a listening ear, eager to hear what we can say, what we need to confess, what we need to pray for. We come to Him and see that He is looking for us to come to Him. He comes with a gracious word in response to our needs. He comes with an outstretched hand and arm. He comes to us in that kindness and gentleness. This is like who He is. We must then commit our temporal and our spiritual immortal interest into the Lord's hand. My times, my times in life. But secondly, under my times, my times, we are also, our times are in our death. There are those who are distressed with the troublesome concern about their final death. There are those who fearfully anticipate their death. all their lifetime are subject to the fear of death. How comforting it is to realize that the time of a believer's death is particularly in the Lord's hand. It's seriously true. Ecclesiastes tells us there's a time to die unless the Lord returns. Now what a thought this is for us alive today. There's a time to die. A time when this mortal life will be over. A time when this heart will no longer have sensitive feelings of joy and sorrow. A time when this body will no longer ache. A time when to weep no more for losses. It will be the best and holiest time of all. Because it will be a time when this corruptible will put on incorruption, this mortal will put on immortality. 1 Corinthians 15. 1 John 3 says, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Now if this is true, and it is, then Christian, why do we have this anxious fear, trembling fear of death? Our time of death is, with all of its relating 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, considering the highest happiness is in the circumstances of our departure. Our final sickness cannot come. The last enemy cannot strike until he ordains it. All is in his hand. That means, Christian, we should commonly, trustingly, leave life's chosen setting with him, content with that. We cannot die apart from Jesus. Whether our spirits leave our bodies at home or in a hospital, whether we are with strangers or with family and friends, whether we are in a lingering process or a sudden stroke or a heart attack, whether it is the brightness of life or the gloom of pain, Jesus will be with you. He will uphold by his grace and encourage us with his presence. And that's why we can say with the psalmist, yea, 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. One commentator has said this, Christian, meditate much upon heaven. It will help you press on and forget the difficulties of the journey. We must remember to be patient with God's perfect work. God ordains with accurate wisdom the most fitting time for the redeemed to leave this earth. We can seal in our dying testimony the faithfulness of God and the preciousness of his promises because he says, in my hands, in your hands, I'm sorry, my times are in your hands. There's a time to die. And we should leave it there with God, in whose hands we have committed ourselves. Then thirdly, in whose hands, in whose hands are our times? Well, our times of trial, our times of temptation, our times of suffering, our times of uncertainty, our times of sunshine and joy, and times of gloom, life and death, they're in the parents' hands. My times are in a father's, my father's hands. Now, has the Lord seen fit to somehow take away some special blessings from you? Or to deny you some requests that you've earnestly pleaded for? Or some painful discipline in your heart that God's given you? All this comes from the Father's love, as truly as though He were to take it from the bounties of His riches and give it to you at your feet, the costliest gift that He could give. It's His love. For you, our times are in our Father's hands. And fourthly, our times are in our Redeemer's hands. That same Redeemer who carried our sorrows in His own heart and placed our curse and our transgressions on His own soul, who bore our cross on His shoulders, who died and rose again and lives and intercedes for us, and will one day gather all His ransomed ones around Him in glory, He is our guardian and our guide. My times are in His hands. How can we not gladly confide, rest our earthly concerns, our spiritual interests to His keeping and under His control? Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Faith says that that hand that still bears in its palm the print of the nails are in his hands. My times. I will trust and not be afraid, Isaiah said. And notice that he says, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hand. Isaiah 49, 16 says, Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb? And then it says this, Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. You know, earth and heaven and everybody in it should be amazed that rebels such as we are by nature have obtained such a nearness to infinite love as to have our names imprinted upon the hands of our Savior. Never to forget us. Notice it says, I have inscribed you on my hands. And one commentary has said this, and I'm going to say it. Note that the text does not say your name. The name is there. But that is not, I have inscribed you. Notice the fullness that is contained in the text. And this is what he says, I have inscribed your person, your image, your case, your circumstances, your sins, your temptations, your weaknesses, your needs. All works I have inscribed you. Everything about you. All that concerns you, I have put you all together there. It takes away these things that are in our minds. Well, he doesn't care about this in my life. Yes, he does. He has inscribed you in the palms of his hands. We are inscribed on the hands of our Redeemer. Amazing fact. Well, let me conclude. Let's look at the practical influence that this truth should have upon us. My times are in your hands. should have on our minds and our thinking. Let's concentrate on the preciousness of the truth. My times are in your hand to keep our minds and our thinking away from the needless anxious cares for the present time and for our future. My times are in his hand. We are constantly opposed, yet we are perpetually preserved because we're in his hands. Again, don't find the commentators say the sovereign arbiter of destiny holds in his own power all the issues of our life. Let that keep our minds from endless concerns and anxieties. We are steered by infinite wisdom toward our desired haven, and Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads, an anodyne for care, and a grave for despair. My times are in your hands. Let's exercise simple faith. Be content with such things as you have, for he himself said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. My times are in your hand. Exercise simple faith in God, recognizing that providence prospers one desire and frustrates the same desire in another, in the same business, at the same spot. Yet the great ruler, the sovereign arbiter, is as good and wise at one time as another." That's when we compare. My times are in your hand. Finally, may God give us grace today to remember our text, my times are in your hands. And let us not envy the more successful or grieve when we are considering losses as though we are specially tried because our times are in his hands. Let's pray. Our Father, how thankful we are for your word. Your word is truth. It is essential for us to find ourselves again and again reflecting upon the position you've given to us in Christ. Undeserved. Unwarranted. Confess to us that we do not deserve it and have any reason that you should have an interest in us. But your word is declared that our times are in your hand. What a precious promise. What a precious truth. May it be enabling us away from these anxious fears and distressful times. Doubts and fears, help us to come back to your word, which says, my times are in your hands. Bless that truth to us, we pray. And now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will. working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.