Sermon Tone Analysis

THE NAIL SCARRED HANDS     John 20:24

The only manmade things in heaven are the scars in the hands of Jesus, the wounds in his feet, the wound in his side.

When you go somewhere on a vacation so many times you bring back a souvenir.

Jesus visited this planet and he brought back as a souvenir, not something cheap and not something temporary, but something if I understand the bible that will endure for all eternity and bought at a fearful price.

The prophet Zachariah in 13:6 pictures the Lord Jesus as he's coming again and people behold him and they say what are those wounds in your hand?

And he said those are the wounds that I received when I was  in the house of my friends.

I want us to think today about the nail scarred Hands.

I want us to think today of the nail scarred hand as I begin to read in verse twenty four, "But Thomas, one of the twelve called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

And the other disciples therefore said unto him, we have seen the Lord, but he said unto them, except thy see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger in the print of the nails and thrust my hand into his side I will not believe.

And after eight days again his disciples were within and Thomas with them, then came Jesus, the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said, peace be unto you.

Then saith he to Thomas, reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side and be not faithless but believing.

And Thomas answered and said unto him, my Lord and my God."

Three things the nail scarred hands speak to me about.

*First of all they tell me beyond the shadow of any doubt that Jesus suffered.

*

Crucifixion was unanimously considered the most horrible form of death.

Among the Romans the degradation was also a part of the infliction, and the punishment if applied to freemen was only used in the case of the vilest criminals.

The one to be crucified was stripped naked of all his clothes, and then followed the most awful moment of all.

He was laid down upon the implement of torture.

His arms were stretched along the cross-beams, and at the centre of the open palms the point of a huge iron nail was placed, which, by the blow of a mallet, was driven home into the wood.

Then through either foot separately, or possibly through both together, as they were placed one over the other, another huge nail tore its way through the quivering flesh.

Whether the sufferer was also bound to the cross we do not know; but, to prevent the hands and feet being torn away by the weight of the body, which could not “rest upon nothing but four great wounds,” there was, about the centre of the cross, a wooden projection strong enough to support, at least in part, a human body, which soon became a weight of agony.

Then the “accursed tree” with its living human burden was slowly heaved up and the end fixed firmly in a hole in the ground.

The feet were but a little raised above the earth.

The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to strike.

A death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of the horrible and ghastly—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds, all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness.

The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries, especially of the head and stomach, became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and, while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst.

Such was the death to which Christ was doomed.—/Farrar’s

“Life of Christ.”/

The prints in his hands tell us that God suffered and God continues to suffer.

Isaiah 42:14, God speaks of himself and he says '" cry like a woman in travail."

Now, we know that God sings but have you ever thought of God crying?

I cry like a woman in travail, like a woman giving birth to a baby with labor pains.

God says in Isaiah chapter sixty three and verse nine speaking of his people, in all of their affliction he was afflicted.

When God's people were afflicted God himself was afflicted.

God speaks in Jeremiah 31:20 of that tribe of Ephraim he says is Ephraim, my dear son, is he a pleasant child?

For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still.

Therefore my bowels are troubled for him.

What does that mean?

That's old English.

It speaks at the pit of the stomach.

Any one of you who has a child that has done wrong and gone wrong - and everybody who has raised a child of maturity - has one time or another has been sick in the pit of his stomach, he's hurt, he's hurt, and God says "I hurt".

Now, when we have pain we normally don't chose it and sometimes we can do absolutely nothing about it, but God chose pain and if God wanted to he could do something about his because he is God and he can do anything he well pleases.

And yet, God has chosen to suffer.

It's obvious if you think about it that God would suffer because of the very thing that God has made of himself or God agrees to be within his own eternal wisdom.

God is a father.

You can't be a father or a mother without suffering.

The story of the prodigal son tells us that.

The bible tells us that we can grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

Grieve is a love word.

Parents grieve over their children and the Holy Spirit grieves over us.

Your automobile can vex you, but your children grieve you because grieve is a love word.

And so, we know of God as a father he suffers because of his children when they do wrong.

We know that Jesus is the head and we are members of his body.

Can the members of the body suffer and the head not know it?

As a matter of fact, when any member of your body suffers it sends a message to the head immediately.

That pain is picked up in the brain and were the old brain to register the pain your body would feel no pain.

Jesus is the head.

When his church suffers he suffers.

When the apostle Paul was on the road to Damascus his name was then Saul.

He was persecuting the church and Jesus Christ met him and said to him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

The point is obvious.

Saul was persecuting the church, but Jesus said you're persecuting me.

I want to ask you another question.

Can a bridegroom have a bride that is unfaithful to him, flirtatious and indifferent, can he not suffer?

Jesus is the bridegroom and the church is the bride.

Is it not obvious that if we're unfaithful and untrue to him, indifferent to him, flirtatious with this world that his heart is broken?

I think I can say that those wounds in the hands of Jesus tell us one thing, that God...God has suffered, and God does suffer.

*Second thing,, not only do those wounds tell us that God has suffered and that God does suffer, but those wounds also tell us that because he has suffered he knows, he cares, he understands.*

When you hurt, he hurts.

The bible tells us we don't have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

He was in all points tempted like as we are, Jesus in a human body suffered and he knows exactly what you feel.

Those souvenirs that he's taken back to glory tell us "I have been there."

Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee.

Jesus wept at the graveside of Lazarus.

The bible says when he saw the crowds he was moved with compassion.

The word compassion is a composite word of two Latin words, "com" meaning "with" and "patti" meaning "to suffer", "to feel".

He knows, he understands.

Those scars tell us that when we suffer, when we hurt, he hears, he understands our pain.

His scars are a lasting image of his humanity and they tell us that the pain of man has become the pain of God.

They speak to us of the greatness of his love.

Whether you understand all about pain or not those scars tell us, in your affliction he loves you.

Now, why does God allows humanity to suffer?

Why does God allow anybody to have wounds that turn to scars?

Well, if you go way back to the book of Genesis right in the beginning in the dawn of civilization after Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, God came to the garden and God forgave the sin and God made it right but then God said to Adam and Eve concerning the ground, "cursed is the ground *for thy sake*, thorns and thistles would it bring forth to thee."

Now notice, God did not says that the ground was cursed for their judgement.

God said that the ground was cursed for their sake because he loved then.

The cruelest thing that God could do for falling humanity would be to allow them to continue to live in a painless world.

They'd never know anything was wrong.

You see, you need to be grateful for the pain.

Pain is a gift to tell you that something is wrong.

Let me give you a statement - "if I have the right and the power to eliminate pain, I would not use that right nor exercise that power."

Who said that?

Well, God didn't say that but he could have said that, and he would have said that and I'll tell you why.

Because God does have the power and God does have the right and God has not done it and God is infinite love.

God has the power to remove pain and God has the right to do it but he's not done it.

Why? I'll tell Dr. Paul Brand, an imminent hand surgeon and man who worked for over twenty years with lepers and a lepertorium, said "I would not eliminate pain because he said pain is too valuable."

This is what he said about pain.

He said "pain's value is too great.

Rather than eliminating pain I would lend all my energies to doing all I can to help when that pain turns to suffering."

When that pain turns to suffering.