Last week I began by giving you an eye test and an ear test. I wanted to help you discover that sometimes we don’t see what there is to see and we don’t hear what there is to hear. But God provides us vision and offers His word to help us with the “too much” in our world.
Today I want to examine your hands, and then I want to exercise those hands. First, let’s just look at our hands. What do you see? Dirt under the fingernails? What were you working on this week? Maybe you see the ravages of time -- arthritic joints? Liver spots? Parchment skin? How long have these hands in service? Maybe you see evidence of work – dishpan red, calluses from holding tools; or maybe you see adornments – a wedding ring, an engagement ring, a wristwatch – reminders of commitments. Maybe you see the marks of injury – part of a finger missing, cuts and scratches still healing. Your hands.
I’m looking for George Winfield’s and Pedro Hart’s hands. What an incredible number of small, complex, precise movements those hands make to give us music! I think of artists who can paint portraits or craftsmen who can build beautiful objects. What our hands can do!
Hands are a large part of our humanness. I have on my shelves a book simply called, The Hand. It’s a book about human development. The author shows how the human hand is the interpreter of the way we have evolved. We have what is called an “opposable thumb.” That means that each of our fingers can open and close on the thumb, so that we can hold on to things. Without thumbs, without fingers, without the hand as we have it, we couldn’t do much. We couldn’t use tools, we couldn’t lift weights; we couldn’t wave good-bye, or, the ultimate sacrifice, we couldn’t use a computer! Wouldn’t that be painful for some of us cyber-nuts!?
Hands. How do we present our hands to God? What can we do with this most beautiful, most versatile of all our body parts? And what does God want from our hands?
I invite you today to look with me at the diagram of the hand that is in the bulletin. It’s taken from the discipleship course called MasterLife. Some of you have studied this before. It’s a little device called “God’s Word in Your Heart and in Your Hand”. It helps you understand how you may grasp God’s word.
Now while you still have your hands free, would everybody get a book – a Bible or a hymnal, it won’t matter – and let’s try something.
Hold the book with two fingers – one of them your thumb, then any other finger. Just the two, no more. Turn to your neighbor and see if she or he can pull the book loose, and you see if you can pull his or her book loose. Aha! By now everybody should have somebody else’s book. You cannot hold on very well with just two fingers, even though one of them is that opposable thumb.
If I were to take the time, we could keep on adding fingers to see if it gets any easier to hold on – three fingers, four fingers. We won’t take that kind of time, but I will ask you to do this: hold on tight with all five fingers. Get a good grip with everything you’ve got; and now turn to your neighbor and try the same thing as before. Pull at his book! Let her tug at yours! Can you get his book? Did she get your book? Maybe so, but it wasn’t so easy, was it? There’s a much better grasp if every finger is at work.
So, with that in mind, may I just show you what we know about grasping God’s word? The diagram, “God’s Word in Your Heart and in Your Hand”. First, we hear God’s word; that’s the simplest, first step – somebody tells us what God’s word says. You come to church and you listen to a sermon; you go to class and hear a teacher. That’s a start. But you cannot possibly grasp God’s word just from hearing it.
Next, then, over here on the opposable thumb, you think about God’s word. The sermon does not just wash over you like a quick thunderstorm; you actually think about what you are hearing. As Pogo Possum put it, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” Well, you begin to grasp the word of God if as you sits, you also thinks. But what did we learn a moment ago? Two fingers won’t hold much.
So, back over here to your ring finger, something strikes your imagination, and you begin to examine God’s word. You delve into it for yourself, and you read it. You knock the dust off the family Bible, and you get its words for yourself. Adding examining to hearing and thinking, you can almost grasp God’s truth.
But not quite. Keep going. You have to do more than that. The middle finger reminds us to analyze God’s word – not just to read it, but to work on it. To get into those dictionaries, those commentaries, those tapes and videos and websites and other things that will to help us understand God’s word. It’s not much good until you analyze it, understand it.
But wait, there is more! Once you have heard, thought, examined, and analyzed, you will truly have a grasp only if you remember God’s word – remember it, memorize it. If you commit it to memory, it will be there when you need it, and no one can take it away from you. You will have a grasp on the word of God. It is in your heart – h, e, a, r, t – heard, examined, analyzed, remembered, thought about. And then you can apply it; you can use it. It is yours to have, to hold and to use.
Present your bodies a living sacrifice to God – that’s the theme for the month. Today it’s “present your hands”. Our hands grasp; that is our humanness. That’s who we are. But what do we grasp, why do we hold on to it, and when shall we let go? Those are the questions.
In the Bible, there is no more colorful character than Jacob. The grandson of Abraham and Sarah, those pioneers of faith; the son of Isaac and Rebekah, one of history’s more dysfunctional families; the twin brother of Esau and a scamp from the beginning – yet Jacob was used of God, Jacob was a part of God’s plan of salvation, he wrestled with God and won – or did he? Jacob - a fascinating personality.
As you read the stories of Jacob, you find that his hands were mighty busy. The hands of Jacob got into all sorts of things; those foolish fingers of his were everywhere! Regis Philbin only thinks he invested the “fastest finger”; I think Jacob invented it. The hands of Jacob. Watch them with me, and learn about grasping, holding on, and letting go.
I
Isaac, Jacob’s and Esau’s father, was old and sick. Isaac could not see or smell or do much of anything. Isaac reminds me of my grandmother and one of her friends. My grandmother had lost her sight, and her friend had lost her sense of smell. Obviously, however, neither had lost their sense of humor. My grandmother liked to say, “I don’t see good, and she doesn’t smell good!” Well, that was Isaac’s condition. He was in bad shape.
You know the story – how Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of their father’s blessing, as, with his mother’s collusion, he put on goatskins and coaxed poor old dad into thinking that Jacob was really Esau. Isaac gives voice to his suspicions in a line that I suspect you know – “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” He knew from Jacob’s disguised hands that something was wrong. Wrong hands, wrong place. Wrong.
Friends, our hands grab. Hands take. They sometimes take what is not ours. Or even if it is ours, they grasp with a deep insecurity that wants to hold on to something concrete, tangible, material. Our problem is insecurity. We want, we think we need, and so we take, we grab, we hold, we grasp. Our hands, like Jacob’s, are deeply committed to taking, because we are insecure.
I believe that the mark of a genuine Christian is that he lives in security. Insecure people always want more out of life than what life gives them. Insecure people are threatened by every change that comes along. Insecure people are in danger, more than they know. They think they are in danger because they may not have enough; but actually they are in danger because they do not know that the grace of God is enough.
Some of the deepest disappointments I’ve had with people are around this very thing – taking. We’ve found, from time to time, that we cannot leave things lying around the church building, like cameras or tape recorders, because they will disappear. On occasion some have attempted to charge personal purchases to church accounts. That’s disappointing. And the other day, when I commented to someone that one of the things that hurts about this missing intern case is that the congressman whose illicit affairs are being revealed is the son of a Baptist minister – when I made that comment, the response came back, “Sure, they are the worst kind!” Now I know that was spoken as a joke, but there is too much truth in for it to be funny! Even within the people of God, the temptation to take gets hold of us. Taking hands, deceptive hands; “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”
The issue, again, is insecurity. We want things because we are afraid; we are afraid because we have not learned to trust that God will supply all our needs out of the riches of His grace. Watch out for those hands! Their first instinct is to take.
II
Now Jacob’s hands did not fall idly into his lap after the Esau incident. Jacob’s hands went to work. Those hands worked and worked. Some of it honest labor, some of it dishonest. But Jacob’s hands worked. For Jacob wanted, Jacob needed, and Jacob had to have. And so Jacob went to work.
And look what his working hands got him! The story is complicated. Let me rehearse it as simply as I can.
Jacob, knowing that his brother Esau was out for blood, ran off to his Uncle Laban for protection. At Laban’s home, Jacob’s eye spied a lovely young thing named Rachel; he wanted her. So a bargain was struck – Laban would let Jacob marry Rachel if Jacob worked for seven long years to earn his bride. Jacob agreed; and woke up the morning after the wedding to discover that he had been tricked into marrying the wrong sister. Leah instead of Rachel. Wow! And you can’t take a bride back to the exchange counter at Sears, can you? Jacob confronted Laban, and Laban said something like, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? We have to marry the older sister before the younger sister can go. Sorry about that. You’ve got a wife. Now, however, if you do want Rachel, here’s the deal. Seven more years of work.”
Well, Jacob signed on. Seven more years of work and he got Rachel. Work, work, work. In fact, apparently Jacob worked a total of twenty years. And was not satisfied! Still unhappy! How many of us toil and labor, sweat and strain, at jobs we hate, and for what? A paycheck? If it’s only about a paycheck, that won’t be enough. What a hell it is to work, work, work, and not be satisfied. Gold watch, farewell lunch, and is that all there is? My friend, the late Stuart Grizzard, when he retired as pastor of the National Baptist Memorial Church, said the church gave him the title of “Pastor Emeritus.” He thought that sounded great, “Pastor Emeritus”, until one of the members told him what that word “emeritus” means. She said that it came from two Latin words – “e”, meaning “out of here”, and “meritus”, meaning “he deserves to be.”! Not very satisfying!
Jacob worked and worked and worked some more. It wasn’t fair; Laban cheated him. Jacob felt the injustice of it. But in the end, Jacob saw that it would be God who vindicated him, God who would even the balances, God who would bring justice. Listen to Jacob’s heart, after twenty years of working for Laban and enduring all kinds of slights and slams,
These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands …
If God had not been on my side, I would have been empty-handed. Friends, just working for material is never going to satisfy. You will be cheated or you may even cheat yourself. If we think that only by our own hands can we get what we need, we are doomed to frustration. Somebody else out there is smarter than we are, is quicker than we are, and is going to get more than we get. But when we can see that God is our own side, we will not go away empty-handed. When we let God take over our hands, our passions, our desires – when we want nothing more than to satisfy God’s will, then everything fits into place, and we will no longer be frustrated.
Isaiah asked us, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Jesus taught us, “Seek first the Kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these others will be added to you as well.” Jacob, from bitter experience, shows us that if we trust in God, we will not go away empty-handed when our work is done.
Present your hands, to God – not to take; not even to work, if the work is not God’s work. But present your hands to do what God calls you to do, and it will be enough. If the Lord had not been on our side, then where would we be?
III
Jacob was tired. Jacob was exhausted. Years of running, first from Esau, then from Laban. Most of all, running from God. Jacob was tired.
And here he is, running again. Esau is on the warpath, and Jacob is worried. Ever the schemer, Jacob dreams up ways he can appease his brother and get him off his case.
But something else happened to Jacob. Don’t miss it. There in that crisis time, with his hands soiled from treachery, his hands worn from fruitless work, his hands now did something else. They wrestled. They wrestled with a strange, strong figure until the break of day. And Jacob found that he had been wrestling with Almighty God Himself.
When Jacob wrestled with God, Jacob was changed. He was just not the same as before. And you see it right away; you see it in what Jacob did with his hands. He went out to meet his estranged brother; he went with an open and trusting heart. And he went with gifts. With gifts. Cattle and camels, goats and sheep. Gifts. Productive gifts for his brother.
For after Jacob had wrestled with God, those hands no longer wanted to take or to grasp; they no longer wanted to work out of frustration; those hands now wanted to give. It is the way of reconciliation – to give. It is the way of love – to give. It is the way a brother treats a brother – to give. And what a glorious, lyrical word from Jacob this time! As he and Esau touch each other for the first time in twenty years, Jacob the cheater, Jacob the taker, Jacob the schemer, Jacob whose whole life had been one of frustration – that same Jacob – but different because he has wrestled with God – that same Jacob now says to his brother:
“ …accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God …”
“Accept my present from my hand, for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God”. Jacob, you see, has finally learned that it is in giving that we receive, that it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, that it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. And when our hands learn to give, we have learned everything. Everything. “For truly to see your face – the face of a brother in need – is like seeing the face of God”.
I am not today making an appeal for more giving to the church. That’s fine if it comes, and many of us do need to remember that the tithe is the Lord’s. I am not today making an appeal for charity, though many of us could do more. I am not even making an appeal for generosity as such. I am making an appeal for us to wrestle with God, to struggle with God’s will, and then to present our hands to Him to do with as He will. For when God grasps our hands, those taking hands, those working hands, become giving hands.
I know that’s true, for I know something about some hands. I know hands that touched children and healed wounds. I know hands that were lifted in blessing. I know hands, torn through with nails, spread on the Cross, for me. I know those hands did not take or grasp; they gave. I know those hands worked, but not for empty things, but for the Father’s kingdom. I know those hands; I know the nail-scarred hands of Christ.
Will you today, then, put your hand not into taking, not even into working; but into giving? And, above all, will you put your hand in the hand of the one who stilled the waters? Will you put your hand in the hand of the Man from Galilee? Taking gone, working changed, giving – present your hand to Christ?
