"A Precious Drop of Honey"
by Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
delivered on Sunday Morning, May 31st, 1863,
at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my Hands!"
- (Isaiah 49:16)
God’s promises are never exhausted.
You may unfurl them like rose petals.
God’s promises have a face for every trial,
and like wheels, they are full of eyes.
They are multi-faceted promises:
they yield their fruit faithfully for every need.
Are we to marvel at the faithfulness of God
or wonder at the unbelief of his people?
God always keeps his promises,
and yet the very next trial we face
tempts us to doubt Him.
God never fails;
he is not a dry well or a setting sun,
a passing meteor, or a melting vapor.
Yet we are perplexed with anxieties,
tormented with suspicions,
and crippled with fears.
God’s Word is a Treasure Trove,
a veritable gold mine!
There are priceless jewels
to be found above,
but there are rare gems below
when you delve deeper.
Let us explore the rich veins of gold
waiting to be discovered.
The Divine Artist is at work,
painstakingly engraving us
on the palms of His hands.
“You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.”
Only God can write on His own hands.
The living hands of a living Father,
the spontaneous and omnipotent love
of his own heart,
wrote the names of his people
upon his own hands.
Let us adore the sovereignty of God
who wrote our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
If God engraved us on the palms of His hands,
it is a finished work.
Perfect wisdom united with perfect love.
Fixed is the inscription of divine authorship,
and the powers of darkness cannot erase it.
It is the wonders of his grace.
"He rests in his love;
He rejoices over you with singing."
The Eternal Trinity bursts into sacred song!
Eternal love delights us to the core.
God has permanently engraved us into His palms.
"Engraved" sets forth the perpetuity of the inscription.
Not on the hand of man
but on the hand of God is it engraved.
Oh! mysterious thought!
On that hand immortal and eternal is it dug, engraved in!
God has thus engraved;
with the whole strength of Omnipotence
He has leaned upon the tool
to Cut Our Names into His Flesh.
Was there not such an engraving at Calvary?
"It pleased the Father to bruise him; He has put him to grief?"
See the fullness of this!
I have engraved your person, your image, your case, your circumstances, your sins, your temptations,
your weaknesses, your needs, your works;
I have engraved you, everything about you, all that concerns you; I have put you altogether there.
It is not an outline sketch, you see; it is a full picture
God has engraved you, not your name, I say,
but everything that concerns you upon his own palms?
"I have engraved you."
The Omniscient God knows you better than you know yourself,
mity, he has put it all there — "I have engraved you."
I say, again, this is a thing too great to be talked of,
but more fit to be read, marked, learned,
and digested in the silence of your closet.
You have never engraved yourselves so well upon the tablets of your own knowledge
as God has engraven you upon those blessed tablets — the palms of his hands.
Yes, I dare to say it, our indulgent God as much thinks of one saint
as if there were no other saint in all the world.
Our covenant God so recollects and cares for his child,
that if.... our Lord had but one man to fix all his grace upon,
he would not watch him more, nor more carefully and lovingly see after his best interests,
than he now cares for each one of his people.
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
Remember we are engraven where?
Upon his hands,
his hands shall endure for ever and ever.
the hand itself can never be separated from the living God.
Our record is on his hand,
where it must last, world without end.
there upon the palms of his hands
where it shall be well protected.
The tenderest part shall be made the place of the inscription,
that to which he is most likely to look,
that which his fingers of wisdom enclose,
that by which he works his mighty wonders,
shall be the unceasing remembrance,
pledging him never to forget his chosen.
I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
There are two memorials.
His saints shall never be forgotten,
for the inscription is put there upon the palm of this hand,
the right-hand of blessing.
And upon the palm of that hand,
the left-hand of justice.
I see him with his right hand beckon me —
"Come you blessed," and he sees me in his hand;
Oh! my soul, how charming this is,
to know that his left hand is under your head,
while his right hand embraces you.
Both hands are marked with the memorial.
This left hand is under my head; it cannot smite, for it has become my strength and my stay, my pillow and my rest,
while his right hand embraces me,
to keep me safe to preserve me,
and bring me to his eternal kingdom in glory.
"He has engraved me, me, me upon the palms of his hands,"
if your soul can know that God has you daily in remembrance,
and neither can, nor will forget you,
then you will dance before the ark of the Lord,
like David did.
"The God that chose me, made me to dance."
II. CONSIDER THE TEXT AS A WHOLE.
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
God’s remembrance of his people is constant.
The hands are constantly in union with the body.
In Solomon’s Song we read,
"Set me as a seal upon your hand."
Now this is a very close form of remembrance,
for the seal is very seldom laid aside by the Eastern,
who not being possessed with skill in the art of writing his name,
requires his seal in order to affix his signature to a document;
hence the seal is almost always worn,
and in some cases is never laid aside.
A seal, however, might be laid aside,
but the hands never could be.
God Is Always Thinking of You.
the Lord’s eye is upon you,
according to his precious word —
"I, the Lord do keep it,
I will water it every moment,
lest any hurt it I will keep it night and day."
Your remembrance of God is intermittent;
God never ceases to recollect you.
The finite mind of man cannot constantly be occupied,
if it is to engage in other pursuits, with any one thought;
but the gigantic mind of God can allow of a million trains of thought at once.
He is not confined to thinking of one thing, or working out one problem at a time.
He is the great many-handed, many-eyed God;
he does all things, and meditates upon all things,
and works all things at the same time;
he never is called away by any urgent business so that he can forget you.
No second person ever comes in to become a rival in his affection towards you.
You are fast united to your great Husband, Christ, and no other lover can steal his heart.
And Jesus, having chosen you, does never allow a rival to come.
You are his beloved, his spouse, the darling of his heart,
and he has himself said, "My eye and my heart are toward you continually."
Every moment of every day, every day of every month, and every month of every year,
is the Lord continually thinking upon you, if you be one of his.
this recollection on God’s part is practical.
We are engraven upon his heart — this is to show his love;
we are put upon his shoulders —
this is to show that his strength is engaged for us;
and also upon his hands, to show that the activity of our Lord will not be spared from us;
he will work and show himself strong for his people;
he brings his omnipotent hands to effect our redemption.
The faithfulness we need is that of one who will act in our defense.
We need one who so cares for us,
that against every arrow of the adversary he will lift up the shield;
and for every need will find a supply.
We need an active sympathy from God.
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands;"
as if everything that God touched left a memorial of his people on it.
Every work he did, he did it with the same hands
that carved the remembrance of his people.
Do you see the drift of it?
If he moulds a world between his palms,
and sends it wheeling in its orbit,
it is between those palms which are stamped with the likeness of his sons and daughters,
and so that new work shall minister to their good.
If he divides a nation, it is always with the hand that bears the remembrance of Zion.
"When he divided the nations, he set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of Israel."
the Great Wheel of Providence, when God makes it revolve,
works for the good of the people whom he has called according to his purpose.
There are many strings, but they are all in one hand,
and they all pull one way, to draw a weight of glory to the chosen.
There are many wheels, and innumerable cogs,
and as you and I look about us, we cannot understand the machinery.
We cry, "O wheels, what do you work?" but the end,
the end, if you stood there and saw the end of everything,
you would see that God has stamped all the wheels with the memory of his children,
so that the result is always good,
and only good to those whom he has engraven on the palms of his hands.
It is, then, a practical as well as a constant sympathy.
this will be a delightful thought, this is an eternal remembrance.
No person can erase what is written on God’s hand.
The Scriptures tell us that we are in the hand of Christ, and that none shall pluck us out.
how can we slip out if we are engraved there?
We may well defy all the devils in hell, with all their craft,
even to forge a plan by which they can get at the palms of God’s hands.
I cannot think of a thing that should seem more impossible,
more tremendously impossible, than that any creature,
whether it be life or death, things present or things to come,
should ever be able to reach the palms of God’s hands,
so as to erase our names.
"Once in Christ, in Christ for ever,
Nothing from his love can sever."
And Toplady said —
"My name from the palms of his hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on his heart it remains
In marks of indelible grace:
Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given;
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heaven."
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
Still I have not drained my text dry.
Let the treader of the winepress tread the grapes once more,
and more holy wine shall flow there from.
This memorial — how tender!
How tender, I say, because it is engraved on the hand.
But what shall I say of this divine, celestial, unobjectionable,
sympathetic mode of showing remembrance,
by cutting it into the palms.
Words fail to express our intense content
with this most admirable sign of tenderness and fond affection.
the King had said, "Shall I carve my people upon precious stones?
Shall I choose the ruby, the emerald, the topaz?
No; for these all must melt in the last general conflagration.
What then? Shall I write on tablets of gold or silver?
No, for all these may canker and corrupt,
and thieves may break through and steal.
Shall I cut the memorial deep on brass?
No, for time would fret it, and the letters would not long be legible.
I will write on myself, on my own hand,
and then my people will know how tender I am,
that I would sooner cut into my own flesh than forget them;
I will have my Son branded in the hand with the names of his people,
that they may be sure he cannot forsake them;
hard by the memorial of his wounds
shall be the memorial of his love to them,
for indeed his wounds are an everlasting remembrance."
How loving, then, how full of superlative, super-excellent affection
is God toward you and toward me in so recording our names.
this memorial is most surprising.
Scripture, which is full of wonders,
yet allows a "Behold" to be put before this verse —
"Behold!" the deep sea of the text, without bottom and without shore,
would much more cause you to hold up your hands in astonishment.
Child of God, let your cheerful eyes and your joyful heart
testify How Great a Wonder it Is That You,
Once So Vile, So Hard of Heart, So Far Estranged from God,
Are this Day Written on the Palms of His Hands!
it is also most consolatory.
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
Where are you this morning, mourner — where are you? when trial came after trial,
Here is God’s answer to you this morning —
"It cannot be; I cannot forget you, for I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands!"
"Forget you, I will not, I cannot, your name
Engraved on my heart does for ever remain;
The palms of my hands while I look on,
I see The wounds I received when suffering for thee."
There is no sorrow to which our text is not an antidote.
If you are a child of God,
though your troubles have been as innumerable
as the waves of the sea,
this text, like the channels of the ocean,
can contain them all.
I care not this morning though you have lost everything,
though you came here a penniless bankrupt beggar;
so long as you have this text
You Are Rich Beyond a Miser’s Dream!
You may have forgotten your own mercy;
your own experience may seem a dream to you;
the devil may tell you that you never knew the Lord;
your own sins may bear evidence in the same way;
but if you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,
the covenant made with David’s Lord must not and cannot be broken.
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
Come, drooping saint, lift up your head!
You dreary, downcast brother, be of good cheer!
If Christ remembers you, what more can you want?
The dying thief’s extremity could not suggest a prayer larger than "Lord, remember me!"
and your greatest sorrow cannot ask for a more complete assuagement than this —
"Lord, show me that you have engraved me upon the palms of your hands."
III. is it not your duty to leave your cares behind you today?
We do not want any valuables left behind in the chapel,
but these cares can be swept out tomorrow morning
when the women clear away the rubbish,
and I am sure the dustbin never contained viler draff.
Leave them here today. What are you fretting about?
Is not a Christian inconsistent when he is full of carking care?
Should not the fact that God always graciously and tenderly recollects you,
compel you once for all to leave your burden with him who cares for you?
"The Lord our leader goes before,
Sufficient he, and none besides;
And were the dangers many more,
We need not fear with such a guide.
Through snares through dangers,
and through foes He leads,
whose arm almighty is;
What, then, if earth and hell oppose!
We need not fear if we are his."
Then, if you must not have cares,
I think you should not have those deep sorrows and despairs.
Lift up your head. Jehovah remembers you, man.
The billows cannot drown him whom the Lord of Hosts ordains to bring to shore.
Be glad in your God, and his perfect love.
Do you not think that joy becomes a man to whom such a text as this belongs?
Wipe your brow. It is true, the sweat stands on it,
but your greatest labor is done;
Christ has finished it for you.
There need, at least, be no sweat of trepidation and alarm upon your face.
He cannot forget you;
you have what angels envy you;
you have what poor mourning souls would give their eyes to win —
what troubled consciences would give their blood to buy.
Be glad. Why should the children of such a King go mourning any one of their days?
Now lift up your heads, and bathe them in the sunlight of God;
take the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
I am certain that the man who wears such a gold chain about his neck,
need not bear the rags of penury.
The man who wears such a diamond coronet as this upon his brow,
ought not to behave like a poor beggar in the streets.
Go not clothed in rags of mourning, but put on the scarlet and fine linen of thanksgiving,
since God gives you this consolation,
"I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands."
if this text is not yours,
how your mouths ought to water after it.
It is wrong to covet,
but not to covet such a thing as this.
"Covet earnestly the best gifts."
Is there a soul here who says,
"O that I had a part and lot in this matter!
Would God that I were saved,
that I were written in the palms of Jesus’s hands?"
Poor soul, if you desire Christ, he desires you.
If you have a spark of love to him,
his soul is like a fiery furnace of love toward you,
and you may have his pardoning love shed abroad this morning.
"How?" say you. "Whosoever believes on him shall never perish."
To believe is to trust,
and if you trust confidently, simply,
just as a child trusts to its mother’s arms,
you shall find that he will never fail your trust
nor prove untrue to your confidence.
May God bring you to know yourself,
and to know the sweetness of this blessed, blessed text,
which overwhelms and destroys all power of speech in me,
and makes me feel the poverty of my thoughts and language.
God bless you, for Jesus’ sake.
(Edited by Miriam Jacob)
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