This message was adapted from the CPH Lenten Series The Hand of the Lord for delivery to the people of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Adell, WI.

The Hand of the Lord Who Freely Gives

Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18                                                                                                         

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Our hands are amazing instruments. When our hands are working properly, they showcase the amazing feat of the Lord’s engineering, capable of an intricate series of movements made possible by articulating joints between twenty-seven bones and the more than thirty muscles that move them. Even seemingly simple movements can be quite complex. Recent research has determined that the fastest accelerating part of the human body is not the blink of an eye. The snapping of your finger is actually twenty times faster, taking just seven milliseconds to travel from the thumb to the palm. Our hands are truly amazing.

Our hands can do so much. We use them for work, for sports, for crafts, and on and on. In fact, hands are almost universally recognized as the symbols of our work, action, power, and control. The hands’ controlling capabilities, powerful potential, and authoritative actions are not governed by our hands themselves. These gifts, which are ours by way of these instruments of the human body, ultimately flow from the heart. We know too often how these gifts of the Lord can be used to either give or take, build or break.

Jesus, in our Gospel this evening, mentions hands. He says, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” This text comes to us from the Sermon on the Mount. Before we can tackle this text, we have to go back to the beginning of this great sermon in chapter 5. Jesus is addressing His disciples while a great crowd is overhearing. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus’ disciples are the “poor in spirit” who have nothing to offer God. They have only empty hands. However, the Lord has filled those hands with His good gifts. The same is true for you! You had nothing to bring before God to merit blessing because of sin. And yet, Jesus has exchanged that sin, taking it to the cross, and filled your hands with His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. You have this promise. And it’s completely dependent on your gracious and merciful Lord. In Christ, your hands are full! Full of the blessings only God can give.

So, the real problem is not our hands, but our hearts. Jesus says, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.” This condition of the heart puts us in the throes of judgment and death. That’s what we’re reminded of this evening on Ash Wednesday. As you received the ashes on your forehead, you heard the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We die because we’re sinners, plain and simple. If our lives were left in our own hands—as amazing instruments as they may be—the only reward that we will have earned is God’s judgment and wrath.

However, this evening, we heard the words from Joel: “‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’” The recognition of sin isn’t merely something that we can take into our hands by an outward display of contrition. The Lord is calling sinners to true repentance of the heart.

David also knew this heart condition. He wrote about it in Psalm 51: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” David knew that he couldn’t heal himself by the work of his hands. He needed the hand of the Lord. He needed the expert physician who is able to create a clean heart to blot out David’s iniquities, to restore the joy of the Lord’s salvation.

In Matthew 9, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” If you are like David and know that your heart is not well, then hear the words of Jesus. He has come for you as the only one who can cure the sinful disease of the heart. He has come as the good physician who is able to give you a new heart and make it beat in His expert hands according to the steady rhythm of God’s mercy. And He continues to give and hold your heart captive in His hands.

How has He done it? How is it that He gives and gives? Christ is your Lord and the Great Physician who has come to bring you life in Him. He did so by the work of His hands, purely out of love for you. He has selflessly given His very life for us. His right and left hands were stretched far apart upon the cross for you; His death for your life. He has taken your sins upon Himself all the way to death on the cross. God has taken your sin and put it out of His memory. Your sin is now “as far from you as the east is from the west.” In return, He has filled your empty hands with His forgiveness. He has taken care of not only the sinful deeds of your hands but also the sinful condition that lies in your heart. He does so to create a new heart within you. He has given you a heart that does not need to remark on what your hands are doing. Christ has done it all.

With your new heart, you know that your empty hands have been filled with God’s good gifts and are not concerned with rewards of praises from others or ourselves. You have the reward from your Father who sees in secret. Now, as you live your life, as you give to the needy, as you share the Gospel of Jesus with others, keep your right hand and left hand ignorant of each other in daily repentance. Your giving is the Lord’s work through you. Remember that there is no need to gain the rewards in this life through the works of your hands because you already have the reward of your Father who sees in secret.

Indeed, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” With those words, you received the sign of the cross upon your forehead this evening as a reminder that your life has been marked and sealed by the redeeming hand of your crucified and risen Lord. In just a moment you’ll confess your inability to avoid and overcome sin on your own. And you’ll feel the hands of the Lord, not my hands, upon your head and hear the assurance that because of the work of Jesus’ hands your sins are forgiven. And then as you come to this altar with empty hands, the Lord will fill them with His very body and blood, given and shed for you. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus