As I woke up this morning, in a kind of compulsory early rising due to the jet lag, I found that the Lord impressed me with a word that speaks about the significance of being in the hands of God. I think it would be great if we could all leave this conference with that impression in our hearts: we are His people, and we are in His hands.
So would you please look up Deuteronomy 33:3?
Indeed, He loves His people;
All Thy holy ones are in Thy hand.
And they followed in Thy steps;
Everyone receives of Thy words.
All Thy holy ones are in Thy hand. I am sure that, in the time we are running into—as I said last night, the time of great regulation and crisis—it is going to be the time when the glory of God will be revealed in a people who are quite different from the people of this world.
It is in a time of crisis that God’s glory is always revealed in His people. It is in a time of crisis that the world can see the difference between the church and themselves. So that will be a time when the glory of the Lord will be manifested on earth as never before.
I think it is important that God’s people become a people who are learning to handle crises in another way than the people of this world. We are called not to react to crisis with bitterness, but to respond with worship and thanksgiving.
I remember one brother in Sweden. A few years ago, when the prices of fuel went up high, he came to his hometown, and all the people in that town were buying up every drop of oil they could get, to make sure that they got it before the price rises.
He was sort of thinking about the same thing and was just about to phone the oil company. But then he said, “I had better ask the Lord about this.” So he went to seek the Lord, and the Lord said to him, “Well, brother, you can do it if you like. There is nothing wrong in it. It is no sin. But mind you, if you start on this kind of thing, you could very well be caught up in a spirit of panic and speculation.”
So he said, “Thank You, Lord,” and he refrained from doing anything.
What happened was that the neighbors came to him and said, “What is the matter with you? Haven’t you heard? We are going to have an immense increase in oil prices.”
“Oh yes,” he said, “I know. But I trust in God, and I trust that He will be able to provide the more money I need to buy the oil I need.”
That is the kind of people that God is looking after: not a people wrapped in fear and panic, but a people who are convinced that we are in the hand of God and that He is taking care of us.
A well-known Bible teacher in Denmark experienced something fantastic during the Second World War. When the German bombers came over Copenhagen and dropped their bombs, he was employed in one of the ministries in the government.
As soon as he heard the alarm, all the people in the department ran down to the security room in the basement. But he remained in his chair at his desk, and he went on with his ordinary work.
His chief went through the room, stopped, looked quite astonished, and said, “Are you crazy? Haven’t you heard the alarm? Aren’t you coming with us?”
“No,” he said, “I am not coming with you, because as long as God wants me to work and has put me in this place, I believe He will take care of me in such a way that I am able to do my duty.”
Well, I do not think there is anything wrong with going to a security room, but I do feel that there is a point here. God wants to reveal another people in the end time of crisis: a people who are not panicked or full of fear, but a people who know that we are in the hand of God, whatever happens in the future.
I think we should look into this matter of what it is to be in the hand of God, because it will be a time of tribulation, distress, and anxiety. The first wonderful thing about being in God’s hand is that sense of security, and we need it.
In Deuteronomy 33, the chapter we read this morning, we have some other verses: Deuteronomy 33:27-29.
The eternal God is a dwelling place,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.
And He drove out the enemy from before thee,
And said, Destroy.
So Israel dwelleth in security.
Isn’t that wonderful? Underneath are the everlasting arms. Here on earth are God’s hands, well able to take care of us. Israel dwells in security. That is a great benefit of being a people who are in the hand of God.
Surely Israel, the literal people of God, are dwelling in security. It does not look like that, but they are in God’s hand. There is no place like being in God’s hand. That is the place of security for all His people.
But we read here about some conditions for experiencing the security in God’s hand. In Deuteronomy 33:3, we look at that verse again:
All Thy holy ones are in Thy hand.
And they followed in Thy steps;
Everyone receives of Thy words.
We have a beautiful translation in the Danish Bible where it says, “They sit down at Your feet and receive Your word.” All Thy people are in Your hand; they sit down at Your feet and receive Your word.
That is the secret of experiencing being in God’s hand—a sense of security that we are in the right place. We sit down at His feet and receive His word.
In these days we are living in, and much more in the time to come, we need to hear from the Lord every day before we hear anything else. Otherwise, we will not be walking in that sense of security. His word must come to our hearts before we get the news.
So that we can walk in that wonderful sense of security when all the bad news is coming and being impressed upon us.
One of my good friends in Sweden used to say, “We will see in the times to come that all the news media—the television, radio, and newspapers—in increasing measure are being used by the enemy to try to impose fear, panic, and depression upon us.”
It is almost only bad news, all the news these days. He suggested something that I thought was really wonderful. In old days, when they ended the television programme or the radio programme, they used to play the national hymn—in Denmark, at least.
But he said, “Let us, when we have watched television, heard the radio, or been reading a paper, end up saying, ‘Yes, but everything is in the hand of the Lord.’” Because it is not only His people who are in His hand, but the whole world is in His hand.
So I think we should make it a habit, really, to end up saying, “Yes, but the Lord is in charge. He has got everything under control.”
And by the way, when you are passing on bad news, do not forget to end up in the same way, saying, “Yes, but remember, the Lord is upon the throne. There is all power in heaven and upon earth.”
Then we can really become a different people, not reacting in panic and fear, but responding in worship. It is going to be a great time when the Lord will glorify His name as never before in all history, by raising up another people and showing that people to be very much different from the people of this world.
Oh, this security in the hands of God—how wonderful it is! But if we are filled with anxiety, worries, and fear, it could be because we are not obeying this little word: “They are sitting down at Your feet and receiving Your word.”
We must not only know as an objective fact that we are in God’s hand; we need to have that sense within us, to experience that glorious security. In order to do that, we must be a people who listen to the voice of God before any other voice, a people sitting down and listening to His word.
If that has ever been necessary, it will be all the more necessary in the days we are running into in the future.
Mary and Martha, of course, illustrate that point overwhelmingly. Mary had come to the right position, the right place, where she could sense that security, that calmness, that peace, while she sat down and listened to His word.
Martha was filled with anxiety, worries, criticism, and bitterness. It ended up with bitterness because she did not know how to come into the right position, where she also could have had that wonderful sense of being in the hand of God—being secure under all circumstances and in all situations.
In a way, Martha had the whole thing in her own hand. That is always the reason why anxiety and worries fill our lives and we get depressed. We take the matters into our own hands, the situation, and we get tense. We think, “We had better keep on now and keep firm.”
But oh, that we would let go of everything from our own hands and realize that we and the whole situation are in God’s hand.
You know what Martin Luther said once? He said, “I have had many things in my hands, and I have lost them all. But I never lost one thing that I put into the hand of God.” Hallelujah!
We are bound to lose anything we try to keep in our hands. We must learn this precious lesson of handing it away into the hand of God.
Those who hear His voice, who are following Him, who are in close fellowship with Him—those are the ones who will really experience the security, the sense of security, in times of great distress and darkness.
In John 10:27, we have this marvelous word of the Lord Jesus Himself:
My sheep hear My voice,
And I know them, and they follow Me;
And I give unto them eternal life;
And they shall never perish,
And no one shall snatch them out of My hand.
No one shall snatch them out of My hand. But it is to those who hear His voice and are following in His steps that this conviction, this sense of security, is given. No one shall snatch them out of My hand. Praise the Lord! We are in His hand.
So the first benefit is security. But the other benefit of being in God’s hand is that we will experience discipline, or dealings. God’s hands are very active hands—working hands.
In Ephesians 2:10, this is a word you are very familiar with, I should think:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
There is another translation saying, “We are the handiwork, all the work of His hands.”
The other day I was reading Time magazine, and I saw an advertisement for a watch. It looked very ordinary—old-fashioned, this watch. But what surprised me was the price. It cost six thousand dollars, and it looked just like an old piece of work, nothing advanced in technology like this one here, which can do everything you want it to in the morning.
Alarm, stopwatch, timer—just an ordinary old watch, like the one I had when I was a schoolboy. Six thousand dollars.
So I got interested and began to read about this watch. I found out that the reason was that every tiny bit was made by hand.
Things made by hand are precious these days, when we get so many mass products. In one way, that is a great benefit because it keeps the price down. But to have something in your hand which has been made all by hand—that is very seldom these days.
We are the works of His hand. That is why we are so precious—priceless. The price was so high. It cost Him His own dear Son’s life to buy us, to mould us, and to be able to work us into that divine design which He, before the foundation of the world was laid, decided that we should become.
God is working with His hands upon our lives, upon the life of His people. This is what we find here in Ephesians 2:10: His handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
These good works are circumstances that God has prearranged—crises also—that God has prepared to complete His work on us and with us.
The Amplified New Testament expands it a little, saying, “We are taking paths which He prepared ahead of time.” We are walking in paths that He prepared ahead of time. God has prearranged all the circumstances for His people who are in His hand.
So what we are going to meet in the future is not accidents. It is God’s hands working upon our lives.
Acts 4:27 points that out to us.
For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
To do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.
Have you seen that? Well, it was an awful crisis, we saw it last night, that occurred to God’s people. But how are they describing those circumstances and that crisis? “To do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.”
In other words, those circumstances, that crisis, were the hand of God working, shaping them into the divine purpose, the divine design.
There is a word in Proverbs 21 that I used to have difficulty understanding: Proverbs 21:1.
The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the watercourses:
He turneth it whithersoever He will.
The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord. In other words, the Lord is changing the heart of the king like He changes channels of water and turns them wherever He wishes.
How would you change a channel of water? How would you manage to get a water stream to change its direction and go in another direction? It is very easy. You just have to dig down a new set of circumstances in the ground, a new channel, and the water will go that way.
When God is changing the heart of a king, He puts up some circumstances that will lead the king in the direction He wants him to go. That is the work of His hand. By His hand, He is directing or changing the hearts of kings.
So we should be thankful, and we should not react in bitterness, but respond in joy and with thanksgiving, whatever circumstances the Lord will put up in the time ahead of us.
What a hand God has. It is not an ordinary hand. It is a hand that can be hard, but it is never too hard, because it is a hand that is marked in such a way that it cannot be too hard.
If you look in Isaiah 49:16, this is a beautiful Scripture—one of my favourites, I must say.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands;
Thy walls are continually before Me.
The Hebrew word for “graven” means engraved, using a sharp instrument. Of course, it speaks about the nails that pierced the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ when He was crucified.
That was the event when God inscribed our names in His hands.
I can illustrate this point. I once met a brother, a big brother, who had a very hard hand. When you shook hands with him—my word—for hours you could feel it. You tried to avoid greeting that brother, and we tried to wave to him from a distance.
But something happened. One day, he cut his hand with a knife while he was working. He came up with that hand wrapped in a bandage.
I went to him, and I shook hands with him. There was a quite new experience. He could not be hard, you know, because he felt the pain. If he was too hard, he felt the wound in his hand.
You know, if you hurt your hand, all you husbands, it would be difficult to discipline your children. It would be difficult to be too hard, because you would always be reminded of the pain.
When the Lord says, “I have inscribed you, engraved you, in My hand,” these are the hands that are around our lives and working upon us. He has a mild, affectionate hand—never too hard. It is a firm hand, but it is not too hard.
For eternity, He is reminded of the pain, of how much He suffered in His love to buy us, redeem us, and make us His people. Oh, these loving hands of the Lord!
It says here, “Thy walls are continually before Me.” The walls are the last part of the city. It speaks about the fact that the Lord always has the completion of that heavenly design before His heart.
That is why He has to work on our lives. We need, as I said last night, we need crises, because God wants to get His way completed and at last see the walls and the whole city—the whole body of Christ, the whole church—completed in Him. The work finished. “I have thy walls before Me.”
Thank God for being in His hands in the future time to come.
I have been told that when the potter is working on the clay, usually he uses the right hand to mould the clay into a certain shape. He has to use that right hand with a certain amount of strength. He has to be a bit hard to get that clay shaped into the right design.
But at the same time, he takes his left hand sometimes and puts it within the vessel, because he is afraid that perhaps that right hand would be too hard and break the vessel.
Isn’t that a beautiful picture of God’s hands working upon our lives? We can feel it is hard, but then there is the other hand from the inside.
When this hand comes from the outside—circumstances, hardships, crises—then there is this wonderful left hand from the inside, strengthening us, encouraging us, and making sure that we will not break. We will not go to pieces.
God will never allow His people to become a failure. It is impossible. He could not inscribe us in the palms of His hands through the suffering of His beloved Son, He could not pay that high price, and then have it end up in failure. That is impossible.
May we really thank the Lord and respond with joy, thanksgiving, even worship, when the Lord is dealing with us, like Jacob did. He bowed down on the top of his staff and worshiped God for that severe crisis.
Why did he worship? Because that crisis broke him in such a way that, from that hour, he became fruitful.
Until that hour, he had been going his own way. He was still a child of God, but he was of no use. The design of God could not be seen. There was no glory of God in the life of Jacob until that hour at Peniel, when he experienced the great crisis that left him ever since a handicapped, broken man.
Then the glory of God, from that hour, came out in the beautiful testimony.
Well, I believe in all my heart that God is preparing a people of glory in the last times—not a failure, not a people of defeat, not a people of fear, not a people who are the first to panic and try to secure their lives by running into the security room.
But He is preparing a people of glory, a people who are convinced that we are in His hands. This will be a great time when the glory of God will be seen through His people as never before.
So perhaps we should read 1 Peter 5:6, where we can find the true attitude that should be in our lives in the time that we are now running into.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time;
Casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He careth for you.
“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.”
I once met a brother who was going through a tremendously hard time. He lost one of his family members in a terrible accident. He lost his job also, and he fell sick at the same time. Everything seemed to collapse in his life and his family, and he became bitter. He stayed away from the church meetings.
I went to see him, and he was walking from one wall to another, trying to resist the devil and trying to get out of the terrible mess that he was in.
While I was there, the Lord quickened a word in my heart. I said to him, “What are you doing?”
“What, can’t you see? Don’t you know what I have been through? I am trying to get out of this mess.”
“Well, does it work?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Well then, sit down. Let us talk to one another. I have got a word from the Lord for you: ‘Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, and He will exalt you in His proper time. Cast upon Him your anxiety.’”
To make it very practical, I said to the brother, “Kneel down here with me and begin to thank God for the terrible things that you have been through.”
He said, “Well, I could not do that. How can I thank God for such an accident that took away a dear member of my family? How can I thank God for losing my job? How can I thank God in this situation, feeling sick?”
“Well,” I said, “aren’t you a child of His?”
“Yes,” he said, “I am His.”
“But don’t you know that He is in control? He is Lord of all. Whatever you have been through, He is the Lord, and He has control of everything. Somehow or another, we do not know, He must have allowed these things to come into your life with some purpose.”
He looked at me, and we sat down for twenty minutes without saying anything. But at the end, he said, “Yes. Yes, I will do it.”
He knelt down at the table. I shall never forget it. He opened his mouth, and he began to glorify the Lord and thank Him.
From that moment, he was free. The devil was gone—far gone. I had the feeling that he ran out of the room immediately.
So often we struggle with the enemy, against the enemy. We battle and struggle with our circumstances. True, the enemy can be in them, and we are to resist the devil, but that is the second point.
In this teaching about overcoming, the first point is: humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. Accept His discipline and whatever He is going to do in your life. Then resist the devil—not to get rid of your sufferings. That is not the message in 1 Peter 5, as far as I can see.
Resist him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the world.
And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.
There will be no completion and no eternal glory in Christ without that little time of suffering. The message in 1 Peter 5 concerning resisting the devil is not to get rid of our difficulties, but not to lose our faith while we are going through them.
It is not losing heart, but keeping the faith and being able to glorify the name of the Lord. Sufferings are part of our lot, as with all our brethren in the whole world.
Oh, the blessed surprises that will lead us into the eternal glory of Christ.
So may we really respond in love and in thanksgiving, and not react in bitterness or panic. All this day, we are His people. We are in His hand.
We are in the most secure dwelling place, and He is working to complete the building, the city of God, until the walls are finished.
The testimony of God that will come forth in these last days of great crisis, darkness, and enemy activity will, more than ever in history, bring glory to Him.
Praise His name. Amen.