Our Times Are in His Hands
The Gospels show us that in the crucifixion of Jesus, he would have spent several hours hanging on the cross. We don’t know the exact amount of time, but it was somewhere between mid-morning to mid-afternoon on Good Friday, and in the Gospel of Luke, although we don’t know the exact time-stamp of when Jesus died, we do know the last thing he said. The last words of Jesus are recorded in Luke 23, verse 46.
Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.
Jesus the Messiah, the second person of the Holy Trinity, the radiance of the glory of God, the Word of God made flesh and sent into this world, the very last thing he said before he died (and later was resurrected) was a quotation from Psalm 31 — which is the psalm we’re looking at today.
We’ve seen some amazing psalms up to this point. They’ve all been good! But this was the last thing on the mind of Jesus before he breathed his last breath — so I think we can all agree that Psalm 31 is pretty special. The message of this psalm is something we want to understand and apply to our own lives, and so that’s what I want us to do as we look closer here this morning.
As an outline, we’re gonna start by looking at the psalm overall, but then we’ll spend most of the time looking at some lessons we find here.
But first let’s take a minute and pray:
Wherever you are as you watch this video … ask God to send his Spirit to open your eyes to behold wondrous things in his word. We ask that in Jesus’s name, amen.
Psalm 31 Overall
Now we’re going to see the psalm overall.
One unusual thing about Psalm 31 is that it doesn’t fit into a neat psalm category. There at least three things happening here:
first, there are statements of petition. David is asking God to do something.
second, there are statements of lament. David is complaining to God about his situation.
third, there are statements of trust in God. David is acknowledging the faithfulness of God over everything.
All three of these things are happening in Psalm 31, and they’re all mixed together.
So as I was studying through the psalm, to help see all this at once, I printed the entire psalm on a page, and then I took three different colors and circled the different parts, and as I’m tracking, this is what is going on: basically, the movement in the psalm goes from trust to petition to trust to petition to lament to trust to petition to trust.
And if you’re wishing that David was a little less scattered here, let’s just be honest that most of us are way more disorganized than this when we pray! Maybe you have an outline and hit some of the same bullet points, but most times when we pray, we can get all over the place! And that’s okay.
The main thing that we want to do (and need to do) in prayer is exactly what we see in Psalm 31 — and it’s that although the petitions and laments and trust get all blended together, the anchor for the whole thing is God himself. David’s trust in God is what determines everything else.
So in all of David’s petitions, the basis of every petition is God. Then also, it is God and his faithfulness that David knows transcends his circumstance.
David looks in the past and see’s God’s faithfulness. He asks about the future relying upon God’s faithfulness. And he knows that right here in middle of it all, in the present, even in the worst of situations, God is still God, and he’s faithful. That is the message of Psalm 31 overall.
Now, there are at least four lessons I think we can learn here. And I going to try to put each of these into a sentence about as practically as I can make it. (So if you like to listen by taking notes, these are the sorts of things you might write down.)
#1. If you’re going to humbly trust God, you must humbly know God (verses 2–3).
This goes back to verse 2. David asks God to be his rock and fortress, and then he grounds that petition in verse 3 with, “For you are my rock and my fortress.” In other words, David is asking God to be God to him. God, be who you are!
Now we talked about this back in Psalm 16 where David does this same thing, and we called this sort of praying “the quintessential picture of humble faith.”
David isn’t bringing to God his own agenda, trying to convince God to get onboard.
He’s not asking God to merely sign off on what he wants.
He’s not treating God like a divine butler to fetch him his comforts.
Instead, David is asking God to be who God has shown himself to be. That’s what I want, David says. God, I want you!
But see, in order for David to pray this way, he needs to know something about who God is! David’s humble prayer to God flows from his humble knowledge of God.
And this make sense to us: If we don’t know God then how can we know what to ask and expect from God in prayer?
We have to pray to God according to our knowledge of God, and our knowledge of God comes from what he has revealed to us. That’s why we call it humble knowledge.
There’s not a single thing we would know about God apart from what God has chosen to tell us. That means our knowledge of God is not what we think up ourselves; it’s not what we wish he’d be like; but it has to be according to what he has revealed, and what he has revealed is what we find in the pages of Holy Scripture. So pray with your Bibles!
This is where it gets very practical — and this is especially helpful if you’re in a dry season of prayer — but open the Bible and use the words of Scripture about God to help you in how you speak to God. If you’re going to humbly trust God, you must humbly know him.
#2. Rejoice in God at every angle (verses 7–8).
In verse 7 David says that he will “rejoice and be glad in the steadfast love of God,” and then in the next four lines he explains what the steadfast love of God has meant for him.
God Sees Your Seeable Afflictions
First, he says, in verse 7, “because you have seen my affliction.”
This means: Because of God’s steadfast love, he sees your seeable afflictions.
Everything you have going on that can be seen by a human, God sees it. Everything you have going on that can be seen by a human but is not, God sees that too.
I want you to get this: Sometimes we can have things going on — concrete, external, visible circumstances — that normal people could see, but they don’t see. Sometimes normal people are not always paying attention, or there are a thousand other things happening, and it can feel like your seeable affliction isn’t seen, and that’s a painful place to be, but know that God sees it.
God Knows You Unseeable Distress
Second, David says to God, “you have known the distress of my soul.”
Because of God’s steadfast love, he doesn’t just see your seeable afflictions, but he also knows your unseeable distress.
Everything you have going on inside, deep in the recesses of your heart and your thoughts, the invisible things that nobody knows, God knows it.
God Doesn’t Quit on You.
And in verse 8, David says “you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy”
This means that whatever God sees in your seeable afflictions, and whatever he knows about your unseeable distress, he doesn’t quit on you. God’s steadfast love means he doesn’t give up on you and hand you over. That’s why it’s steadfast love. He is keeping you constantly, through it all.
God Places You on Solid Ground
Then David says, verse 8, “you have set my feet in a broad place.”
This “broad place” in the Psalms has the meaning of safety. The idea is that you’ve come from scaling the edge in your affliction, and from traversing through the dark valleys of your distress, and now you can breathe. You’re on solid ground, because God has placed your feet there.
Which is meant to sound particular.
Altogether, we learn: the steadfast love of God means that God sees everything about us that can be seen; he knows everything about us that is hidden; he refuses to quit on us no matter what; and he has placed our feet on a giant rock. Which means, the detail of God’s care is incredible. God is involved in your life at every angle.
Which is why we should rejoice in God at every angle. We’re not alone. God is near and he’s at work, and so we should be glad. Be glad that wherever you are, God’s steadfast love is there.
#3. Submit your felt reality to the truth of God (verses 9–13, 22)
The main section of lament in Psalm 31 comes in verses 9–13. David is describing more of what his distress has been like, including physical and emotional weariness; social conflict; calculated sabotage. It’s been rough for him. But in verse 14 and following David gets back to petition and trust. David trusts in the Lord. Yahweh is his God. But then later in verse 22, there’s one more line of lament.
David has been recounting God’s past faithfulness, and in verse 22 he says:
I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.”
And this reminds us about something David said back in Psalm 30. Remember Psalm 30, verse 6, David said:
As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”
So over here [left hand], it’s: in my alarm I said I’m cut off.
Over here [right hand], it’s: in my prosperity I said I’ll never be moved.
These two things are exact opposites in content, but they’re the exact same at heart. Do you see what’s going on?
Both circumstances of alarm and prosperity led David to wrongfully exalt his felt reality.
Remember what a felt reality is? This is something we first talked about way back in Psalm 3. Your felt reality is basically your vantage on reality. It’s how you feel about something based upon your experience. It’s a real thing, but it’s not the whole thing. Look at David’s situation.
In Psalm 31, when he was alarmed, when all the walls were closing in, his felt reality (what he said) was that it’s over. He’s done. God has abandoned him.
In Psalm 30, when was living the high life, when he prospered and everything he touched turned to gold, his felt reality (what he said) was that he had made it. He’s unmovable. God will never test him.
These two places are very different places, but it’s the exact same presumption that makes David say what he says. In both cases, David was so overwhelmed by his felt reality that he made what he felt act like the determination of what is. But that’s not how it works. You can bring your felt reality to God. Be honest with God about where you’re at. And know that God’s vantage, which sees everything, is what really is.
Look, there are things we might say in “alarm” and things we might say in “prosperity,” but everything said must be assessed by what we securely know. And what is that? What do we securely know about God and reality?
Well, it’s what God has gone to the greatest depths to reveal. It’s his love.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39)
That’s what we know. That’s what God has shown us. God loves you. So submit your felt reality to that. Submit your felt reality to the truth of God.
#4. Remember that God’s got your whole world in his hands (verse 15).
Look at David’s faith in verse 14. Coming out of his lament, he says,
But I trust you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand.
And that last phrase is significant because it’s basically the same thing David said in verse 5. There he says, “Into your hand I commit my spirit” …
… and that sentence is what was on the mind of Jesus just before he took his last breath. This was the last thing Jesus said on the cross.
So what does that mean? Why did Jesus quote Psalm 31, verse 5 and what does it tell us?
Often when people in the New Testament quote from the Old Testament, especially from the Psalms, the fuller context of the quotation is in mind, the surrounding passage is relevant — and I think that’s the case here. Jesus shows us that the faith of David exampled for us in Psalm 31 has actually been a foreshadowing of his own faith. The worst of David’s lament was only the beginning of what Jesus experienced on the cross — and knew he would experience! — and yet Jesus trusted God. Jesus trusted his Father. That’s what Jesus shows us by quoting Psalm 31.
“Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Even though I’ve been walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and now I’m staring death in the face, and I know I am about to die and enter into the grave, I’m yours, God. I entrust myself to you. I know you’ve got me in your hands, and your hands are merciful and mighty, and you’re going to bring me through.
See, these are the hands of a redeeming God, the hands of a faithful God, the hands of resurrection power. Jesus knew that. And so he committed himself, he yielded himself, to God’s hands, even when he was up against the worst of enemies.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, it means you also can entrust yourself into the hand of God when you face your enemies, even the worst enemy of death. But not only that. Look again at verse 15.
In verse 15, David says, “My times are in your hands.” So he doesn’t just trust God when he’s suffering. It’s not just when he’s facing the most intense attack of the enemy. But it’s also his times. His moments. All things big and small. And the same goes for you. This means your times. Your moments. Your steps. The changing tides of your life. All of that — “A to Z,” start to finish and every turn in between — all of that, too, is in the hands of God. God’s got your whole world in his hands.
Held by Nail-Scarred Hands
This reminds me of what Jesus teaches us in the Gospel of John, Chapter 10. He says there, in verse 27,
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
So Jesus gives us an image of how secure his salvation is. It’s that he holds us in his hand, and nobody can take us out of his hand (and then he goes on to even deepen the security by explaining that he and the Father are one and we’re also in the Father’s hands), but I want us to think more about what it means to be in Jesus’s hands.
Our times are in God’s hands, yes, and more specifically, according to John 10:27 we can say that our times are in Jesus’s hands, and that’s important, I think, for our imagination, because it reminds us that the hands that hold us are nail-scarred hands.
You and your times, your entire life, is held by nail-scarred hands. And nail-scarred hands mean that it’s not just hands that hold you, but it’s hands from a heart that died to hold you.
The scars on the hands that hold you show you how far those hands have gone to hold you. You can entrust yourself to those hands.
Right now, for where we are — with the fall semester a month away, and for where many of us are in our season of life, there are a lot of transitions coming. Maybe you’ve got a new job, or you’re moving, or you’re leaving home for college, whatever it is, your times are in his hands, and the scars on those hands were for you. Trust him. You are loved, and you are held by Jesus.
And maybe you’ve been watching this video, and you know that you don’t have faith. You’ve not given your life to Jesus. If that’s you, I want to invite you right now to trust in Jesus and be saved. Right now, turn from your sin, and put your faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Entrust your times into his hands. Amen.
