Let me share with you a story:
Jessica's mom had "ugly hands". Everyone used to laugh at Jessica's mom. They used to say, "oh her hands are all scarred, they're all disgusting, they're all red, they're all patchy". And Jessica, herself, was rather scared of her mom's hands.
At times she wouldn't even want to hold her own mother's hands, and other times the boys and girls at school, they would laugh at Jessica. In fact, one day it was so bad that Jessica just spent the whole evening crying her eyes out in bed, saying, "I hate mommy! I hate mommy because she has ugly hands!"
So her father went into the room and said, "Jessica, do you know why your mom's hands look the way they do? When you were but a little baby there was a fire in our house and the staircase was on fire and you were up in the very top bedroom, but your mother was on the ground floor. So do you know what your mom did? She grabbed a blanket. She wrapped it around her waste. And then she climbed up to the top of the meta gutter pipe that led up to the bedroom."
"Every time she puts her hands on that hot gutter pipe it burns, Tsss! Tsss! Tsss!. But she got you, she saved you, and she brought you to safety in the garden. When it was all over, the firemen looked at mom's hands and saw they were a mess. You couldn't even recognize that they were hands: they were so blotchy, they were so red. That's why your mom has ugly hands."
In that moment Jessica ran out of her bed and she ran into her mother's bedroom, and she started kissing her mom's hands, and saying mom you have the most beautiful hands in the world.
God's message was the same.
The people of the world look at Jesus's pierced hands and see them as ugly, but to those who know the truth, we think they are the most beautiful hands in the world. Those hands were pierced, they had nails driven through them for all the times that your hands have hurt people or done cruel and nasty things.
He also had his feet pierced. His feet has nails pierced through them for all the time that your feet have walked to places you know you should not be, but you stayed there, even though your conscience was telling you to get out.
And Jesus Christ, he had his brow pierced. He wore a crown of thorns for all the times your mind has thought evil things, your mind has thought rude things, shameful things.
There the son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, suffered on that cross to rescue us. Because just like that little baby up in that top bedroom we will die in our sins.
Jesus paid our debt of sin, so long as you believe this, here is his promise:
Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? —John 11:25-26
