Part 2.
THE HANDS are the next thing we can see on the clock, and there are two of them, and we have two hands also. The clock has a long one and a short one. The long hand points to the minutes, while the short one points to the hour. The minutes make the hours, and the hours the days, and so on. These two faithful hands go round and round the face of the clock telling us the hour to rise in the morning, to have our breakfast, to go to school, and telling us the hour to go to bed. These hands never grow weary, though always busy.
Now, what about our two hands? God’s Word says, “Working with your hands the thing which is good.” (Eph. 4:28.) “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” (Eccles. 9:10.) “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord.” (Col. 3:23.) Some hands are very tiny and not strong, yet they can find so many little things to do for the Lord Jesus. A cup of cold water can be given in His name, which shall not lose its reward, or a tract can be handed to someone, telling of a Saviour who loves sinners and has died for them. The pillow of some sick or suffering one can be smoothed out, and a word of comfort given, the finger pointed to some verse in the Bible, or on a wall text.
It is for the idle hands that Satan finds mischief. Just as the hands of the clock point out the hours for duties, and tell us the time for everything, so we ought to point out the time for sinners to be saved: “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2.) And as we were saying before, the hands of the clock go round and round, the minutes making the hours, the hours days, the days weeks, the weeks months, and the months years. We are reminded that time is hastening on to eternity, so may we say with the Psalmist: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psa. 90:12.) There are different kinds of hands we want to look at. First, there are “pierced hands.” “They pierced My hands” was spoken by the Spirit long before the sad event happened. You will find those words in Psalm 22:16. Surely you must all know of whom they speak—the Lord Jesus. And again the Spirit of God, long before the Lord Jesus came into the world as a little babe, spoke these words through the prophet Zechariah, “And one shall say unto Him, What are these wounds in Thine hands? Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends”. (Zech. 13:6.) And we know from the Scriptures that these prophesies have been fulfilled. His hands were pierced when He was put upon that cruel cross, and I wonder how many of my readers can say, Those hands were pierced for me, because of my sins? O, how He must love poor sinners, in that He was willing to suffer thus, that they might believe and be saved. After He rose from the grave, He said to Thomas, one of the disciples, “Behold My hands,” and when Thomas (who had doubted when told that Jesus had risen from the grave) saw the pierced hands, he said, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20-28.)
We will next speak about the hands which put Jesus on the cross, and they are called “wicked hands”. The apostle Peter, while speaking to a great crowd of people at Jerusalem after Jesus had ascended to heaven, said, “Him (Jesus) being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” (Acts 2:23.) Perhaps those who read these words will say, How dreadful! I would not have had a hand in that wicked deed, had I been living in that day. But, my dear friend, if you do not accept that blessed Saviour and His finished work, God will surely hold you guilty of His death. If you prefer pleasure, or anything else instead of Jesus, you are saying, “Away with Him,” just as they did when He was crucified, and if you meet Him at His throne unsaved, you will meet Him as a Judge, and those pierced hands will be a witness against you.
Another kind of hands we read about in 1 Tim. 2:8. They are holy hands, “Lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting,” which is the attitude of prayer. If we know our sins are washed away by the blood of Jesus, then we know we are children of God, “Ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,” (Gal. 3:26,) and knowing God as our Father, we can come to Him and ask Him for everything we need. It was a custom in olden times to pray with uplifted hands. In Psalm 134:2 we read, “Lift up your hands in holiness, and bless the Lord”. (Marg.) But we read in Isaiah 1:15. “When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you: Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” If we expect God to hear our prayers we must live apart from sin. There must be no wrath nor unbelief. We ought to be simple, like the poor boy whose mother had no more food in the house; they had prayed for food, and when the mother had expressed a doubt about getting a quick answer, he replied, “He’ll hear ds scraping the barrel.” The boy had no doubts.
ML 11/17/1912