Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – 1 Timothy 2:1-10

Sermon scripture is 1 Timothy 2:1-10.

I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. Whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an apostle, I speak the truth of Christ and lie not, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. And I like also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly array. But which becometh women professing godliness with good works.

The last song of today’s service we probably don’t know quite as well as the ones we’ve sung so far, which will make it even more different. So that’s an admonition, I guess, to y’all who know the tune of the last song to go ahead and sound right out.

Okay, we’re going to go ahead and start. This is the last sermon I’ll be doing in this series on worship. And primarily our service sermons rather cover the first half of worship and then the agape, or the love feast together, and then the second half, the Eucharist. So you had synaxis, agape, Eucharist—or the preaching service, the table, the common meal we have together, the rejoicing feast before God, and then as part of that meal at the end of it, the communion service or Eucharist or thanksgiving.

Next week we’re going to start a short series of three Advent and Christmas sermons, and for some reason I’ve decided to go through the book of Joel in the next three weeks. There are three chapters to the book of Joel. And if you remember correctly, we’ve done a minor prophet before—we did Micah. It took about thirty plus weeks to do the seven chapters of Micah. And I’m going to do the three chapters of Joel in three weeks. So it’ll be sort of a survey sort of approach in terms of the Advent season and implications from the book of Joel about the coming of Christ and the coming of God in different times in history.

So you might be praying for me specifically in being able to keep those sermons short.

While this service today and the sermon today on the lifting of hands in worship is sort of tacked on at the end—it’s the last thing I really wanted to have to deal with in terms of worship. It really has a proper place here in the province of God as it’s worked out. We’ve been talking the last couple of weeks about thanksgiving in worship, and then thanks in corporate worship, and then thanksgiving in terms of our home worship around the meal.

And that may not seem to you to be an obvious implication—talking about the lifting of hands in worship—but the Hebrew word for thanks, the giving of thanks, primarily means to stretch forth the hand as it turns out in a literal meaning. And so you stretch forth your hand in thanks to God. And so it already has implications for the lifting up of hands in worship in terms of thanksgiving, just in the very term that’s translated or meant to mean thanksgiving in the old covenant.

And so there is a relationship there.

That’s what we’re going to be talking about today: the lifting of hands in worship. And we’re going to consider first its practice in history. Then we’ll look at some of the biblical meaning for lifting of hands, doing a survey as it were of the phrase lifting of hands throughout the scriptures. And then we’ll talk about implications from the text specifically in 1 Timothy 2, which is the only New Testament admonition or exhortation to do something when you lift holy hands in prayer. And then we’ll consider by looking at some applications.

Okay. First of all, the practice of the raising of hands in worship in history. And first we’ve got to divide it up into three sections: first we have Old Testament church history, and then we’ve got New Testament church history, and then we’ve got postscriptural—in other words, from the ending of the canon, the new covenant, the history of the church for the last two thousand years. This also has some implications for the raising of hands in worship.

**First, the Old Testament.**

Leviticus 9:22 is where Aaron is instructed to lift his hand toward the people and to bless the people with the lifting of his hand. We’re familiar with that. We talked about the benediction at the conclusion of the first half of our worship service, the sermon on the benediction. We talked about the lifting of hands and a reference here in Leviticus 9:22. It says Aaron lifted his hand.

And that’s proper in other places of scripture. For instance, when Jesus lifts his hands, he lifts both of his hands in blessing. And we talked about the fact that in the synagogues, the hands are put together like this when the blessing is pronounced. The Aaronic blessing is announced and there’s kind of a fan formed. But I came across in this study an indication that one of the reasons why they do that thing with each of the hands—and you know you’ve seen this thing with Spock, right? But he got that from the synagogue. The reason they do that is because it puts the hand into three sections, and the Aaronic blessing has three elements to it. As you’ll notice at the end of our first half of our service when we say it, there are three specific blessings called for there. And so there’s a double witness—the two hands—to the three blessings, and the hands are put together. And that’s something to keep in mind. I’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes and the significance for the hands being together as opposed to the hands being apart.

But in any event, we have specific instruction in Leviticus 9:22 in Old Testament worship in the placing of the blessing of God upon the people to raise your hands or hand.

In Nehemiah 8:6, we read that passage before too. We touched on it briefly. We were going through, I think, the series on the particular sermon on the sermon itself. In Nehemiah 8:6 we read that Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, and that’s important. All the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” with lifting up of their hands, and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces on the ground.

So here we have formal worship, corporate worship in the book of Nehemiah, the time of reconstruction, rebuilding, time of going back into a proper perspective and covenantal relationship to God. And part of corporate worship is all the people say amen and all the people lift up their hands to God.

Now this is the only text—and we’ll talk about this later—but this is the only text that I know of where all the congregation is said to lift their hands in worship.

It is also interesting that this is the only text where this specific use of the Hebrew word for lifting of the hands—or the specific Hebrew word that’s translated lifting up your hands—is used. The root of this particular word, which is only used in this one text in all of the Bible, this Hebrew word—the root of it is alah, which means to rise or to ascend. The burnt offering would rise up before God. Okay? And so it had sacrificial overtones. That word wasn’t limited to sacrificial terminology, but it was certainly in place in sacrificial and worship terminology. The raising up of the burnt offering, the smoke would go up. It would ascend to God. And the incense that was burned would ascend up into God’s nostrils as it were. And so in Nehemiah 8:6, the people’s hands are lifted up or caused to ascend to God. And so there’s a correlation there in terms of lifting up our hands to God in formal worship.

In any event, right now I want you to see that there is recorded in the Old Testament specific instances of the raising of hands in worship.

Again, in 2 Chronicles 6:12, Solomon stands in the temple before the altar to begin the consecration of the temple. Remember, David didn’t get to build the temple. Solomon did build the temple. Solomon then consecrates the temple and he goes in to do his prayer of consecration. He stands before the altar and it says that he spread out his hands before God. And then at the conclusion of his prayer, as recorded in 1 Kings 8:54, he rises up. So he’s gone down to his knees during this prayer. And he rises up from his hands being spread out to God. Okay? So Solomon’s posture is one of being on his knees before God with his hands spread out to God. Specifically, they are spread out to God. And we’ll talk about the significance of that in a couple of minutes. But in any event, here again, in formal worship, we have the lifting of hands in some way before God.

Again in Psalm 134:2: Psalm 134 is a psalm that’s written for those that minister in the temple in the evening. And it says specifically in the context of that psalm that one should lift his hands in the sanctuary to bless God. So, lift up your hands and bless God in the sanctuary, specifically in the evening sacrificial services. And so Psalm 134, and all those verses on your outline then, show indications—well, more than indications—clear teaching that old covenant church worship included, at some points, the lifting of hands in worship.

John Calvin, commenting on the old covenant practice, says this: “The ancients”—and by that he’s talking about the old covenant saints—”the ancient custom of spreading forth the hands in prayer did not arise from superstition. Nor did that practice, like many others, obtain currency through foolish and idle ambition. But because nature herself—note that, nature herself—prompts men to declare even by outward signs that they betake themselves to God accordingly. Since they could not fly to him, they raised themselves by this sign. No injunction certainly respecting this sign was given to the fathers, but they used it as men divinely inspired.”

So Calvin says in the Old Testament you read about all these hands being raised up. These are men who were divinely inspired by God to raise their hands and then recorded in holy writ. And he also says nature itself teaches this. He goes on in that particular commentary to talk about how even the pagans raise their hands up to their own idols. And he says how stupid that is, because the point of raising your hands is that you’re directing your prayers upward to the God who created everything. And how silly it is to raise your hands to something that’s created. You know, it’s kind of like the whole reverse of the whole thing that’s being shown.

Well, in any event, Calvin recognized the Old Testament church as divinely inspired in raising their hands before God.

**Additionally, in the New Testament,** we have two verses, specifically, that I know of.

In Luke 24:50, that’s where Jesus ascends. Jesus leads them out to Bethany. And as he ascends, we talked about this in terms of the benediction. Jesus lifts up his hands plural and blesses his disciples. And we don’t know if he put his hands together or not, but he might have. He lifts up his hands and he blesses the disciples as he’s ascending. An act of worship and an act of blessing.

Additionally, the passage just here before us, 1 Timothy 2:1 through 8—I’m sorry, 2:1-8—verse 8 of 1 Timothy 2, Paul says. And the specific context of this is instructions for public worship, and the first instruction he gives for public worship is that prayer should be made. Remember Solomon when he dedicated the temple—the temple should be a house of prayer for God’s people. And so Paul, in like fashion, in 1 Timothy 2 begins to give instructions about church and about worship. First thing he says is pray for all men. That’s the prayer of intercession we talked about a few weeks ago. The reformers reinstituted the prayer of intercession for all the church all over the world, for governors, etc. And we did one of those long prayers, and we’re going to try to build that into some of our liturgies in the future. The prayer of intercession is what Paul’s talking about here. That’s important as the first element of worship.

And he says in context of that: “I would therefore that men pray everywhere lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting to God in prayer.”

Now the word there “everywhere” does not, I don’t believe, mean every place you go. It means he’s writing to Timothy, who was overseeing several branches of churches in different areas and appointing elders in various areas, etc. I think what he’s saying is in each of these churches out there, in each of these congregations in their formal worship, I want men lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting to God in prayer.

And so we have an indication from the New Testament also that the lifting of hands is part of New Testament church worship.

Indeed, then it’s not surprising that we would find the apostolic fathers in line with this as well. I’ve mentioned—I’ve listed on your outline—one specific reference. It’s the reference that most people list: St. Clement of Rome, in his epistle to the Corinthians, says specifically. To cite that epistle to the Corinthians, written very early on, chapter 29 of that epistle says: “Let us come near to him in holiness of soul, raising pure and undefiled hands toward him,” indicating apostolic practice in worship of the raising up of hands.

Indeed, this isn’t the only reference. There’s lots of references to the lifting up of hands of the church fathers. Tertullian, for instance, wrote around AD 200. He said: “In our case, not only do we raise our hands, we even spread them out and making our model from the Lord’s passion. Even in prayer, we confess to Christ.” Tertullian says: “Not only do we just raise our hands. He says we go further. We spread them out and we make a cross as we go before God in prayer. The cross of Christ, see? And so he makes this—and you’ll find that what you see in church history, from both the catacomb drawings that have been uncovered as well as other statements such as this one—is that for about the first hundred years or so of the church there was the raising of hands in worship, and then it got into kind of almost a pantomime or a play type thing where people would actually make a big deal out of standing up in prayer and making the sign of the cross by spreading their hands out like this with their hands up, see?

It sounds awful strange to us, and it sounds kind of, I guess, overdone in a sense, and it may well have been.

We’ll talk a little bit more about that spreading out of the hands, as I said, in a couple of minutes.

One thing I wanted to point out here, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the specific thing I’m talking about this morning, but just in terms of the Christmas season: I read a statement by R.J. Rushdoony, who is a fine Christian man, an older man, a pastor up in Tacoma, and who is one of the very few people—I don’t know how to describe R.J. Rushdoony—but he’s a tremendous Christian. He understands the significance of the scriptures for all of life and the need to build a Christian culture, and he’s been very influential in a lot of our lives I think in this church, maybe even if we don’t know it. But in any event, R.J. Rushdoony, in one of his recent writings, talked about how the crucifix—speaking of this cross form and the crucifix—the original crucifix was Christ wearing a crown, not of thorns, but a king’s crown. And the point of the crucifix was it showed him clearly ruling from the tree of life. Okay. And so what we see now in terms of crucifixes is him dying perpetually. But originally the cross represented the tree of life. And in Tertullian’s mind that may well have been behind it as well. It wasn’t just a return back to the sacrifice. It was that Jesus rules from the tree of life, as depicted in the book of Revelation, that the cross has become the tree of life.

I make mention of that because it’s a good teaching device for your kids at this time if you have a Christmas tree. We do. To talk about that correlation between the cross and the tree of life and that Christ reigns on the basis of his work on the cross. I mean, that simple thing—if people just understood that, the churches wouldn’t be in such terrible shape as they are in America today.

Well, in any event, the early church fathers definitely, through their writings, show that the raising of hands in worship was part of it and even got stylized into this cross thing.

Minucius Felix, earliest of the Latin Christian apologists, wrote in 197 AD talking again about the sign of the cross. He says: “We see the sign of the cross when a man adores God with a pure mind with hands outstretched.” And so he said that he was talking about how we see the cross in lots of places. He was talking about how we see the cross—and when we see a ship, for instance, and you got a sail up with a cross member on it, you think about the crucifix and you think about Christ’s work. He says when we go to worship and we see people praying with hands outstretched, we should be put in mind the cross of Christ.

Origen also talked about this practice. He said: “Although there are a great many different positions for the body, there can be no doubt that the position with the hands outstretched and the eyes lifted up is to be preferred above all others.”

Clement of Alexandria also said that “we raise the head and lift the hands towards heaven when we worship God.”

And there’s other church father quotes as well. But the point I want you to see here is that the raising of hands in worship is not something that’s new with the charismatic movement. It goes back to the early church fathers, and they understood it—being based upon this passage—as being an essential part of worship.

Okay, to sum up then: the raising of hands in worship has Old Testament precedent, New Testament precedent, and then it also has the witness of the church, particularly the first five hundred years of the church. And in many places the hands are still raised—either in the benediction, which we do in this church, and most Reformed churches do have the officiant raise his hand during the benediction. Also, I think in the Eastern Orthodox Church—remember we talked about the “Sursum Corda,” “Lift up your hearts to God.” In the Eastern Orthodox Church, at that point in the liturgy, the rubric to the priest is to have him lift up his hands. And so it continues even to this day to be part of holy worship.

Now, to sum up some of these things: Spurgeon, commenting upon the uplifting of hands described in Psalm 28:2, said it was a form of devout posture and intended to signify a reaching upward toward God, a readiness, an eagerness to receive the blessings sought after. “We stretch out empty hands, for we’re beggars. We lift them up, for we see heavenly supplies, and we lift them toward the mercy seat of Christ, for there our expectation dwells.”

In Psalm 28:2, it says, “You reach up your holy hands to the oracle.” The word actually means the holy of holies, which is indicative of what the work of Jesus Christ would accomplish—our entrance into it. So Spurgeon said it’s a good thing to do because we have empty hands. We recognize our need. We lift them to heaven. Heaven’s going to supply that need, and we think of Christ in the holy of holies in heaven because that’s where our expectation dwells—that he will indeed, on the basis of his work, give us blessings.

Parkhurst commented on these lifting of hands several hundred and fifty years ago. He said that the hand in the scriptures stands for power. The hand stands for agency, dominion, assistance, and the whole life. And therefore, it was, again, a natural thing, as it were, for people to lift their hands to God’s power, acknowledging God’s power and that we need that—we need power from God—and also imploring the assistance of God for our tasks of dominion here on earth.

Okay. In other words, to sum it up, I guess commentators have said that the lifting of hands—the uplifted hands—is the outward symbol of an uplifted heart that recognizes it needs sustenance from God in heaven and worships the God who is above and then to take our hands, full to come down and do the work on earth. Okay? And as we said, most commentators dealing with those passages said it’s the natural thing to do.

Well, we want to get beyond just what’s the natural thing. We want to understand what the scriptures teach about a particular practice. So now we’re going to move into the lifting of hands, its biblical significance. What does it mean in the scriptures when hands are uplifted?

We can think of nice thoughts on our own—what it means to us today based upon our own minds and our own needs. But let’s look at the biblical content that God has given us in holy writ. And there’s lots of it. And we’ll just do a little survey here. I’ve listed most of the passages in your outline. You can do more study on your own if you’d like, but we’ll just do a survey here of the meaning of the lifting of hands, the biblical significance of that act in the scriptures.

**First of all, the lifting of hands involves covenant affirmation.**

The lifting of hands—the first place in the scriptures, and for those of you who are students (and you all should be students), you should realize that one of the first things you want to do in studying a particular word or phrase is look at the first use by the individual author or the first use in scripture of a particular passage or particular practice as well.

Well, the first use of a lifted up hand that I can find is Genesis 14:22. And this is where Abraham has rescued Lot. He meets with Melchizedek, gives him a tithe, and right there at the same place as the king of Sodom, the king of Sodom offers to let Abram be enriched through all his goods. All he wants is his men back. And Abram says, “Oh no, no way. I’m not going to be enriched by, you know, a guy as despicable as you.” Essentially, Abram tells the king of Sodom. He says specifically, “I have lifted up my hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not be enriched by you.” And so Abram says, I swear to God. I have sworn and I swear here in the context of Melchizedek that I’m not going to be enriched by you. He’s taken a covenant. See, so the lifting of the hand, like we are familiar with—for instance, when a person takes an oath of office—you see that’s a covenant that he’s entering into. And so the lifting of hands has a covenantal affirmation involved to it. And this is found throughout the scriptures.

In Genesis 41:44, Pharaoh tells Joseph after he calls him to his right hand. He says, “Without you, no man shall lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” Now, that could actually mean nobody can do anything apart from your provision. Or it could refer to legal affirmations of covenants. And I don’t want to take a position one or the other, but I wanted to explain why that’s on the outline there. It could very well be that what he’s talking about here is that nobody can make a covenant in Egypt without the authorization of you as my right-hand man in terms of governmental affairs.

In Isaiah 62:8, we read that the Lord hath sworn by his right hand and by the arm of his strength. And we’ll get into what he swears a little bit later, but the point is he swears with the lifting up of his hand.

In Daniel 12:7, Daniel says, “I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven and swear by him that liveth forever, that it shall be for a time, times, and a half.” So we got both hands going up. And there’s a covenant affirmation that’s going on here with the lifting up of hands, a swearing that is that the lifting of hands accompanies. And so it’s supposed to picture that swearing before God. And I guess maybe two hands means the double witness that’s spoken of throughout the scriptures in terms of witnessing.

In any event, that’s obviously in scripture then: the lifting of hands is a covenant affirmation to it.

Again, in Revelation 10:5, we see an angel who lifts up his hand to heaven and swears by him that liveth forever and ever. And so again, the covenant connotation.

Now, I’ve listed four specific references on your outline there preceded by the word “swear.” And the reason I did that is to let you know that most of the words for lifting up of hands in the Old Testament uses one of two different words for lift. And the word that’s used most often is a Hebrew word nassa or nasa. And remember when we talked about the princes in the old covenant a couple years ago, when we talked about biblical offices in the Old Testament, there was the nassia, the princes of God. We said that people think that word comes from the fact they lifted up their hand in covenant affirmation. They took an oath of office to become a prince, as it were—the nassia. They were mighty men because they were covenant keepers. The very name attributed to them had the implication of this affirmation of covenant.

Well, the word nasai or nassa, the lifting up word that’s used in lifting up of hands, is used without the hand reference to it in several places in scripture. And these four references I’ve listed are indications of it where interpreters understand that what’s being said is actually the lifting of the hands. It’s actually translated in the King James version as “swear.” Okay? So for instance in Exodus 6:8, I’ll give you one example. God says, “I’ll bring you into the land concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” The word for swear is not the usual word for swear in terms of uttering a covenant affirmation. It’s the word for lift, and so the connotation is “I lifted and by implication the hand promising that they would get this land.” And so you got a whole series here for you where it’s so obvious the connection between the lifting of hands and swearing that when the word lift is used in a context like this people know that it means the lifting of hands and covenant affirmation. That’s how obvious it is. Okay, so first of all the lifting of hands means covenant affirmation, swearing obligations, taking an oath.

**And then secondly, it means covenant obligations. It means obedience in terms of that oath.**

Psalm 119:48 is a beautiful verse. “My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments which I have loved, and I will meditate in thy statutes.” David is saying here that he lifts up his hands to God’s statutes. Now, there’s a couple of things being expressed. I think he wants to—he has a love for the commandments. It’s like a person you love when they come to you, you reach out to them. You love them. David loves the commandments. But he also means that I’m going to lift up, and the word year for hand here is like the open palm. I’m going to receive those commandments. In other words, I’m going to do those things. Okay? If I love it, I’m going to do it. And so when David says, “I lift up my hands to the commandments,” he is pledging to walk in obedience to those.

Indeed, he says he’s going to meditate on the statutes. He’s going to try to figure out. If he can’t figure out how to obey it, he’s going to meditate upon the law of God till he figures out how he’s supposed to obey it. Okay? So the lifting of hands is an affirmation of obedience to God in terms of the covenant that he has given to us and obedience to the covenantal law that he has given to us.

Matthew Henry links this verse with Hebrews 12:12. In Hebrews 12:12, the writer of the book of Hebrews says, “Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees.” Hebrews 12:12 says you should be encouraged by this cloud of witnesses to press on, to put aside sin. And at the end of that he gives an exhortation: “Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down.” And what he’s talking about is obedience. He’s telling them to be obedient, to understand the nature of why tribulations and chastisements come on us from God, and then to act in obedience to God’s law.

Hebrews 12 says to lift up your hands and by implication to those commandments. And so Matthew Henry linked those two verses together as explaining each other. So there should be a readiness to obey the commandments that is indicated by the lifting up of hands.

Additionally, and I’ve listed one verse there that may be a little obscure: Habakkuk 3:10. Habakkuk 3:10 says, “The mountains saw thee and they trembled. The overflowing of the water passed by. The deep uttered his voice and lifted up his hands on high.” Now it’s saying that when God comes to judge, the mountains see God and tremble and the waters, the overflowing of the water, pass by. Talking about mountains, talking about water. And I think that on the basis of the parallelism here, the deep uttered its voice—the deep always refers to the waters. So the water utters its voice to God and lifted up his hands on high. I think that really is referring instead to the mountains. The word “on high” there, I think, has reference not to where the hands are lifted up to, but has reference to the mountains that lift up their hands.

So I think what’s being pictured there is when God’s judgment comes, the waters obey God’s judgment. They lift up their voice in ascent and they do what God tells them to do. And the mountains tremble and they—the mountain raises up hands. And the implication is to obey God and his covenantal judgments and to be cleaved by God if need be or whatever. So the point here is that Habakkuk 3:10 also, I think, shows the obligations that are in the covenant—obligations that people promise to fulfill. And indeed nature itself is described in Habakkuk 3 as obeying the commands of God and pictured by the lifting up of hands.

Okay. So we’ve got covenant affirmation, we’ve got covenant obedience to the obligations of the covenants that we affirm.

**And we also then have covenant and treaties and supplication.**

Now, this is, you know, the most obvious one I suppose from our text. But covenant and treaties and supplication. Now, here we have for instance the reference from Psalm 28:2. Remember we talked about that. People are said to lift up their hands toward the holy oracle—really mistranslated. Should be the holy of holies. We lift up our hands to Jesus Christ and his work in the holy of holies. But the specific reference is to “the voice of my supplication,” the psalmist says. So the lifting of hands in Psalm 28:2 means supplications or prayers to God.

Indeed in Lamentations 2:19 we read—we don’t even read the word “pray” or “supplication.” We just read: “Lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children.” Now remember, Lamentations is a book of judgment, and he says in the context of judgment, in context of our sins being judged by God, “Lift up your hands to him for the life of thy children.” What I’m trying to get at here is it’s so much a synonym for a prayer of supplication that he doesn’t have to point that out of the text. He just says, “Lift up your hands,” and you’re supposed to know that means pray, make supplication to God for the life of your children.

In Lamentations 3:41, the context of that verse is again the time of judgment, and the people are supposed to consider what they’ve done wrong that has brought God’s judgment on them. And in the context of that, he says, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.” And then he goes on in the next verse to talk about how they’ve transgressed God. So the idea of lifting up our heart and our hands in Lamentations 3:41 has to do with praying to God and making supplication to show us what we’ve done wrong and then to repent for it. And so there’s a supplication that’s indicated there as well.

And as I mentioned, that verse is probably the key one why the Eastern Orthodox Church, when they do the “Lift up your hearts to God” and the people say “We lift them up to the Lord,” everybody raises their hands up as a way of focusing that we’re going to a heavenly perspective on this stuff and going to God’s throne of grace during our worship service.

And then of course in the New Testament, the very text we just read: “I will therefore that men pray everywhere lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting.” And so there obviously the lifting up of hands has to do with supplication—the prayer of intercession.

And also, the other, you know, what he’s saying in verse 8 summarizes what he said in verse one of 1 Timothy 2. And there are several types of prayers that are indicated in 1 Timothy 2: supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks. All of those are summed up in this praying of men in verse 8 with the raising of holy hands.

And so prayer, covenant and treaties, and covenant thanksgivings as well in terms of prayer are indicated by the lifting up of hands.

**Now I mentioned briefly the idea of spreading the hands,** and I’ve listed some verses separately preceded by the word “spreading.”

In 1 Kings 8:54, when Solomon gets up from the prayer of consecration for the temple and he’s had his hands spread to God.

In Ezra 9:5, in Ezra 9:5 we read that when Ezra arose up from his heaviness and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands under the Lord my God. And that word is used in several other places as well—the term spreading forth the hands.

Now, the reason I bring this up is that the word “spreading” means to sort of tear apart. And you see there a good picture in Ezra 9:5. He gets up and he tears his garment, a sign of mourning. And he spreads out his hands too. Okay? So the spreading of hands, when you read that in the Old Testament, almost always—I can’t think of a single instance where it doesn’t—the spreading of hands indicates a cry of supplication for one’s transgressions or confession of sin on behalf of the nation. There’s an element of grief and mourning over the sins of the people when the spreading of the hands is talked about. It’s supplication specifically then. Okay.

The point is it’s a way to remind ourselves that we are in bad straits. Like you, instead of rending your garment, you can just rend your hands apart as it were. Instead of having them raised up together, you can take them apart, and that’s a sign of grief before God for your sins. That’s the way the term is always used in the Old Testament. And so that cross reference of Tertullian may well be a good way to think about this rending apart—that the rending apart actually occurred on the cross of Christ. Okay? And that may also be one of the reasons why the rabbis insisted on the hands being together normally for the blessing. Because when you give the benediction on the people, you don’t want to rend apart those hands. You got one hand as it were or both hands together forming one hand that gives the blessing to the people because you want to make sure they don’t think you’re repenting at the time you’re giving the blessing. You know, you don’t want them to think that. And so the lifting up of hands, either as jointly or being spread apart in terms of repentance, is part of supplication to God in the scriptures.

**So we’ve got covenant affirmation. We’ve got covenant obligations. And we also have covenant and treaties and supplication.**

**Fourth, we have covenant sanctions.** The word “sanction,” you know, the idea is that blessings and cursings for obedience or disobedience to the covenant—and those blessings or cursings also are indicated by actions of the hand and the lifting up of hands.

Again, in Leviticus 9:22, when the priesthood, the Levites, whose job it was to bless the people, bless the people, that’s a covenant sanction. It says the blessing resides upon the people because they’re in covenantal obedience to God. And so the lifting up of hands indicates in that case not supplication. It indicates an imposition of the blessing of the covenant upon the people that are in covenantal obedience.

And again, Luke 24:50, when Jesus blessed the disciples as he ascended, that also is covenant blessing being pictured upon them.

Now I said that in Isaiah 62:8, the Lord swore by his right hand. And I said we’ll talk about what he swears a little bit later. In Isaiah 62:8 it says the Lord swears by his right hand and by the arm of his strength. And this is what he swears: “Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies, and the sons of the strangers shall not drink thy wine for the which thou hast labored.” And so in Isaiah 62:8, he’s now taking away the judgment. The people have repented, and the raising up of his hand—the covenant affirmation that he’s specifically swearing to—is to give the people blessing. Okay? And to give them blessing through the really through the judgment upon the heathen, upon those outside of the covenant. And so there’s blessing being pictured by the raising up of God’s right hand.

God’s covenant deliverance is often spoken of as being accomplished by his hand. For instance, in Psalm 10:12, David prays, “Arise, O Lord, O God, lift up thine hand. Forget not the humble. Give blessings to the humble by the lifting up of your hand.” Psalm 98:1: “Sing to the Lord a new song. He’s done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory.” That’s delivering him from Egypt and then delivering from all other sources of oppression and sin as well.

The point is this: the right hand by which God swears to save his people is then called upon to be the agency to deliver blessings to those people as the covenant history is worked out. So the lifting up of hands is covenant affirmation, but it also should bring to mind covenant blessings in terms of the Aaronic benediction and also Jesus’s benediction on his disciples.

The other side of it is that the right hand is also lift up to affirm curses. In Deuteronomy 32:40, God says, “For I lift up my hand to heaven and say, ‘As I live forever.’” And then he goes on to talk about how he’s going to wipe out all people that persecute his people. He’s going to bring judgment upon them. And he brings that judgment. He swears to bring that judgment by the lifting up of his hand. “I lift my hand to heaven,” God says. And so the lifting of God’s hand—and by way of implication then his representatives’ hands, the Levites’ hands or the elders’ hands in the church—the raising of the hand includes the idea of covenant sanctions, covenant blessings or covenant cursings put upon a people as well.

**Okay. So we’ve got covenant affirmation, covenant obligations, covenant supplications, and covenant sanctions, covenant blessings and cursings. And all that rolls together into the fifth element of the outline there: the lifting of hands involves covenant worship.**

And again, we’ve listed Nehemiah 8:6 where the people worship God with the lifting up of hands.

Psalm 63:4 says, “Thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. I’ll bless God. I’ll worship God correctly, covenantally, by the lifting of my hands—that reminds me and reminds God, as it were, of the affirmation of covenant. I’m affirming covenant with him. He affirmed covenant to me. Covenant obligations—I’m lifting up my hands not just in some sort of emotional way, but to take a hold of the commandments that he’s going to send down from heaven so that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. Covenant supplication—if I’m going to make prayers to God, it’s on the basis of the covenant of grace that Christ has entered into, that’s on the basis of me wanting to take his commandments and to do what’s right with them in an affirmation of covenant blessings and cursings. And so all this concept of the covenant and all the elements of it are wrapped together in covenant worship. Okay, so the lifting up of hands has had good biblical warrant over the years. It has meaning from the scriptures—not from just what we might think is a nice idea to lift up our hands or be an enthusiastic thing to do. It has biblical content to what it means. God tells us what it means in the scriptures, and it has some more requirements as well.

**And we want to talk here about the specific text, 1 Timothy 2:8 or 1-10.**

Now first of all I want to point out that in terms of this verse—the emphasis of verse 8, where God says to lift up holy hands without wrath or doubting—the emphasis is not on the action of lifting of the hands. Now, what’s being talked about is corporate worship and how to lead prayers in corporate worship. But the emphasis is upon the attitude pictured in the action as opposed to the action itself. Okay, the attitude is absolutely required. The action is not necessarily required, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes a little bit more.

Now we’ve looked at the biblical teaching on the lifting of hands, and all of this is brought to bear on the believer who would raise his hands in worship under the instructions of God. The teaching we have just covered is a necessary requirement for the proper raising of our hands. In other words, if you’re going to raise your hands in worship, or if, under the instruction of the officiant in the worship service, if we’re going to as a congregation lift our hands in prayer or lift our hands at some point during the worship service, a requirement of that is we understand what we’re doing. And so it’s required to know what the Bible teaches about the lifting of hands to do it correctly. Okay? But additionally, 1 Timothy 2:8 says there are some other requirements to lifting those hands as well.

I just want to mention briefly here whether or not it’s a requirement to be a man to lift up holy hands in worship because it says here “I want the men to lift up holy hands in prayer.” Now there are different ways to interpret this verse. But I think that what’s being spoken of here—and we just been—I can’t spend a lot of time on this—but I think what’s being spoken of is to actually lead prayer in public worship. I don’t think it means every time you pray all the men are supposed to lift their hands. I think there are men appointed to lead in the prayers, and those men who would lead in the prayers are the ones who are lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting.

And I think that in the context of that, it is definitely emphasizing. There’s a definitive article before the word “man” here. And it is stressed that it is the men that Paul wants to do the praying. Now we know from other texts of scripture that women are certainly supposed to be praying in church as well. Corinthians gives instructions about the need or the requirement of women or the privilege of women to pray in public worship as long as they’re in obvious submission to male headship. And so we’re not saying that women can’t pray there while we’re praying or while the officiant is raising up his hands while we’re praying. You certainly should pray. We’re saying that this text is geared at who leads in prayer, and the person that leads in prayer must be a man. And so it is men who lift up their hands in this sense.

On the other hand, Nehemiah 8:6 says that there were times in their worship service when it was not just the officiant who lifted his hands. All the people raised their hands, and that would include men and women and children as well. They all would raise their hands to bless God and to worship him. But the specific context of 1 Timothy 2:8 is leading prayer in corporate worship, and that means men.

Additionally, it should be pointed out—this is not to say that women can’t pray in prayer meetings. For instance, I think that in the context of the prayer meetings we have once a month in our church, the women certainly should participate in prayer. It’s proper for them to pray. There’s nothing wrong with them praying at all publicly and openly as long as they’re in obvious submission to their husband.

Additionally, though, I think that those prayer meetings should be begun and ended with men. Men should lead in the prayer. And so the prayer at the end should be concluded, as it were, and summed up before God by a man who ends the prayer at your worship at your prayer meetings. But it is not restrict women from praying at that point in time. But what’s really being talked about here certainly is that men lead the prayer.

But it means men have certain obligations in terms of how they do that. There are three more requirements besides just understanding the biblical content of the lifting of hands in prayer and in other periods of worship. There are other biblical requirements here.

**First, there’s a requirement that you have covenant cleanliness.** He says that you’re supposed to lift up holy hands. Okay? He’s added the word “holy” there. It’s not just lifting up hands in worship. Those hands have to be holy. Now, the specific word for holy here is not the word that means positionally holy. Remember we talked last week about how the food is made holy, set apart from common to a holier use at our dinner tables with the word of God and prayer. And that’s a positional thing. The word was hagios. That’s not the word here. The word here implies a practical holiness, an experiential holiness.

And what’s being stressed then is that these hands better not have done bloodshed or better not have sinned and then be raised up to God without going through the proper repentance and demonstration of repentance, etc. Our hands are supposed to be clean and holy—not just positionally but experientially—when we raise them to God. And so the person that leads in prayer in the church and raises his hands to do that must have an absence from pollution from various actions that he might involve himself in.