Discovering the Handprint of God, Part 1:  Grasped

(Psalm 18:16-19; Ps. 51; 2 Samuel 12-13; John 4:1-30; Romans 5:8)

Pastor Bill Wolfe, 7/27/03

For the past few months we have been putting a certain phrase at the top of the Sunday bulletins that perhaps you’ve seen. It reads “Helping People Discover the Handprint of God On Their Lives”. Some of you may have wondered about what that means. How does it connect with making disciples? How does it relate to going outside the walls of the church? How does it fit with our recent emphasizing of small groups? What does it have to do with growing people spiritually?

What God has been shaping inside my mind is a picture of a handprint that communicates how He impacts us, how He directs us, how He shapes us, how He loves us, and how He prepares us. You see, what hit me is that we usually shape our ministry on the basis of what WE think is important, but what does God think is important? It’s evident what that is, because the Bible tells of His impressions, His touches, on our lives. So in terms of the previous questions about how that phrase on the bulletin relates to making disciples, and going outside the walls, and the other things, the answer is that it has everything to do with them…and they have everything to do with that phrase.

Growing up along the river in Southern Ohio, we would quite often have fog in the morning or late evening. In the summertime during my college years I got off work at the factory I worked at around 3 am. Driving home I’d hit a patch of fog, go a little ways in it and then get to total visibility again, and then enter another fog patch. That’s kind of how God has shaped this picture of a handprint in my mind. You think you understand everything, and then it becomes foggy, then it becomes clear again and you adjust your direction a little bit, and then it’s foggy again, and then clear.

I’m back in a clear spot. What I want to know, and what I believe He wants each one of us to know, is how does He touch me, how does He lead us. The five impressions of His handprint that we’ll be talking about in the next five weeks are really the core values of our church. You’ll be seeing pictures of handprints all over this place to remind us. The five impressions are all one word values that seek to communicate what God has done and is doing. Today we’ll talk about “grasped”. Next week we’ll look at “greeted”, and then the next three weeks in order we’ll look at “grouped”, “graced”, and “guided”. If you can’t be here on a Sunday in these five weeks, I encourage you to get the sermon tape, or go to our website (HighlandParkTheSprings.org) and find my message in printed form. These five impressions, or fingerprints, will be a picture of what I’ll be stressing. My desire is that each of us thoroughly understands where God is leading us, and what we will be focusing on becoming.

What we often forget is that the Christian faith was so much unlike the other first century religions. For instance, Greek Gnosticism believed that there was this vast distance between God and man, and there was no way for that distance to be bridged. God did not, and could not, have contact with us and we did not, and could not, have contact with God. The Christian faith totally went against that belief. God did have contact with us, wanted to connect with us, and, in fact, became a person who lived amongst us.

As we look at these five impressions we do it with the understanding that God enters our lives, wants to be a part of our lives, and desires to be the shaper of our lives. Like someone taking the lead in a dance, the more we let God lead the dance the more clearly we see where He’s leading us and how He’s changing us.

So this morning we look at His grasp. To grasp means “to take hold of or seize firmly with the hand.” Listen to some verses in Psalm 18 that describe this grasp of God.

“He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

Now did you notice how many times the Lord is referred to in those four verses, and after every reference there is an action. “He reached down…he drew me out…he rescued me…he brought me out…he rescued me.”

God initiates His grasping of each one of us. It is proactive, but also reactive. Sometimes He reaches and we respond without hesitation. Sometimes He reaches down in reaction to the deep waters we’re drowning in. I remember my dad grasping my swim trunks when I was about to fall into the deep end of the pool before I knew how to swim. I remember the grasp of my elementary school principal around my neck when he walked into the boy’s restroom and saw me throwing wet paper towels at another boy. I remember the grasp of my mom of my wrist, taking my pulse when I was a little kid who was helplessly sick. There are different reasons for grasping someone.

Let me give you three different examples of people from the Bible who experienced God’s grasp in various ways. The first way He grasps is reaching down and grasping the sinner. None of us are sinless, and none of us have it all together. We all need to be grasped by God. There’s a prime example of someone in the Bible who knew the Lord, but fell into sin. Listen to some of his story.

DAVID

That first part of Psalm 18:16 makes me tremble. “He reached down from on high and took hold of me…”

God is grasping after us. When Jesus went to the Cross and died for our sins, it was God grasping for us. And now every time we sin, every time we, who know the Lord, deliberately do something that is against His will and in direct opposition to His holiness, He grasps for us. The reach of the cross is long and continuous. The cross is God’s hand of pleading for you to come back, and the Cross is the indication that God’s hand is always reaching down to you. The Church is usually pretty good about telling lost people that they’re sinners, but we haven’t been very good at telling our brothers and sisters in Christ that they are living in sin. If Nathan hadn’t confronted David about his sin relationship, where would David have been. Lord knows, Psalm 51 wouldn’t have been written.

The grasp of God is upon you. It’s the thumb of the handprint that over-rides the other four.

But the grasp of God isn’t just for Christians who fall asleep or fall away. It’s also for the unlovable. It’s for those who you and I might write off as unsaveable. Let’s listen to a different person.

SAMARITAN WOMAN

It’s intriguing to me that the strategy of Jesus was intimately linked to people who had been ostracized from the spiritual circles of the day. The lepers, the adulterous woman, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan woman with a reputation. Other than his disciples, Jesus spent more time with the people that no one else would spend time with than anyone else. The grasp of God reaches those who have been written off.

Here’s the thing. We do this in the church to people who aren’t like us. Kecia was telling me about a young lady who was at the junior high work camp they attended in Wyoming. She was part of a group from Texas, and she had a gothic look to her. If you don’t know what that is just talk to one of our young people or college students and they’ll bring you up to date. Because she had the Gothic thing going, the other girls in her group ignored her, or made fun of her. Kecia and Katie Riecke could see this going on, and so they tried to establish a relationship with this young lady. They found out that she really didn’t want to be at the work camp, but her mom made her come. Here’s the thing. Her group was communicating to her that she wasn’t worth the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. Unless someone else becomes a part of this young lady’s spiritual life, she’ll be out of the church in 3 years tops.

The Psalm said, “He rescued me because he delighted in me.”

Some of you here may think that you are beyond saving, and I want you to know is that Jesus would have had as many nails as it took pounded into his hands for you to realize the love of God. When the blood was streaming from his body he was thinking of you. When his capacity to breathe was coming to the end, he was thinking of you.

“He rescued me because he delighted in me.”

Finally, God grasps those who are helplessly lost. This is different from David who fell into sin, and the Samaritan woman who was written off as unsaveable. God grasps those who can do nothing about who they are. Let’s meet someone else.

THIRD PERSON

The grasp of God reaches down and takes hold of those who can’t do anything about who they are. In a way that describes everyone of us. There is nothing that we can do about our sin nature. When Adam and Eve sinned, their mark was upon each one of us. We’re all sinners. It doesn’t matter how many good deeds you do. It doesn’t matter how much you give to the church. There is nothing you can do to change your sin nature.

When Jesus went to the cross, and died, it was like God reaching down to us and saying “Take my hand. I’ll lift you up.”

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

What an incredible truth! “He rescued me because he delights in me!”

God has grasped, or is trying to grasp each and every one of us.