Now let us turn again this evening
to 1 Peter chapter 5. And as we continue the ministry from
this morning, I will simply read in your hearing the verses that
were the focus of our attention, verses 6 and 7. Humble yourselves therefore under
the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time,
casting all your anxiety upon him, because he cares for you. Now let us again pray and ask
that the God who has given us this book to reveal his heart
and mind to us will be present to instruct us as we look to
him in faith. Let us pray. Our Father, we know that as surely
as a blind man cannot see the glory of the sun, the more soft
but revealing glory of the moon and the stars, so we are blind
when we come to your word unless your Spirit gives us light, and
we pray with the Apostle that you would open the eyes of our
understanding. that we would be given illumination
by the same Spirit who gave this book to us through the various
penments of Scripture. Our Father, we plead again your
promise that if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to
our children, how much more will you, our Heavenly Father, give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask? And we come asking out of
a measure of felt sense of need and native darkness and blindness. Lord, come to us and help us,
we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, if you were with us this
morning, you know that I intended to open up verses 6 and 7 in
1 Peter 5 in our ongoing consecutive expositions of this entire letter. But I got only as far as verse
six. And since these two verses are
an inseparable directive, I thought it a part of wisdom to come back
to the passage this evening and really, in a sense, complete
the message from this morning. Now, for the few of you who are
with us tonight who are not with us this morning, let me take
just a few moments to do two things. Number one, to sketch
in the larger context of verses 5b through verse 9. In this section
of the Epistle, the Apostle Peter turns from specific directives
to elders and to church members to give these general directives
to all of the people of God. You will notice the language
of 5b. Yes, all of you gird yourselves
And from that part onward to verse 9, he is speaking to all
of the people of God, regardless of their present state of spiritual
growth and development, regardless of their place in the functioning
assembly of God's people. These directives, the final expression
of Peter's pastoral concerns for these saints in Asia Minor,
focus upon two major areas of concern. 5b through 7, it is
the concern of the necessity for humility. Humility, first
of all, on the horizontal plane, they are to apron themselves
with humility and relationship one to another For God resists
the proud, but gives grace to the humble, and then, as we saw
this morning, humility in the vertical dimension. They are
to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may
exalt them in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he
cares for you. Then the second major area of
concern in this broader context is Peter's concern that as he's
about to close this epistle, he leave ringing in the ears
of these people of God there in Asia Minor the necessity for
continued wakefulness and watchfulness. And so in verses 8 and 9, that's
the emphasis before he concludes with this marvelous benediction
and this brief but again wonderful doxology to this great God who
has been set before us in this epistle. So that's the first
thing I want to do is simply to remind those who were here
and apprise those who were not of this larger context of the
verse we will look at tonight and then secondly to give a distillation
of what we considered together this morning. I call verse six
a command with a purpose. The command being, humble yourselves
therefore under the mighty hand of God and the purpose, this
Hena clause of purpose, in order that he may exalt you in due
time. The command is that these believers
humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. And we noted that
this phrase, the hand of God, is language that focuses our
attention upon the activity of God in his irresistible power
amongst men, whether restraining and subduing his enemies or in
the defense and chastisement of his children leading to their
ultimate deliverance. And these afflicted saints are
under the mighty hand of God. All of the things that Peter
has described throughout the entire epistle that underscore
the various ways in which suffering and trial and difficulty come
upon the people of God. Peter wants them to view all
of these things as being disposed and directed and governed by
God's almighty hand, and they are under that hand. Not a hand
that is against them in anger, but a hand that is upon them
in fatherly love and concern, and they are to humble themselves
or to be humbled under the mighty hand of God. They are not simply
to grin and bear it. They are not to cut it out and
say God is bigger than I and it's a losing business fighting
such a God. that from the very depths of
their inner being they are to bow before this God, acknowledging
that his ways are right and just and holy and good, and they are
to do this remembering that this command issues in a distinct
purpose. Do this in order that This very
God, under whose mighty hand you submit yourselves, may exalt
you in due time. The due time most likely pointing
to the consummation, when those who have suffered with Christ
will be exalted together with Christ. but also pointing to
a principle seen throughout the scriptures that when God's mighty
hand is upon a man, a woman to humble him, to humble her. When
there is an acquiescence from the heart in that fatherly chastisement,
often then God brings the humble child of God out into a place
of exaltation and of greater usefulness. Archbishop Leighton,
whose commentary on 1 Peter is considered by almost every other
commentator whom I have consulted in the course of these expositions
as sort of the benchmark of the older commentators, he focuses
upon this second aspect of the purpose for which God calls us
to humble ourselves under his mighty hand. Listen to the good
old bishop. Again, he writes, mark the necessity
his mighty hand. There is no striving. It is a
vain thing to flinch and struggle, for he does what he wills, and
his hand is so mighty that the greatest power of the creature
is nothing to it. Yea, it is all derived from him,
and therefore cannot do any wit against him. If you will not
yield, you must yield. If you will not be led, then
you shall be pulled down and drawn. Therefore, submission
is your only course. This is the end why he humbles
you. He lays weights upon you that you may be, and he uses
the word in a way we would not use it, that you may be depressed.
In other words, that God may squeeze us to humble us. Now
when this end is gained, that you are willingly so, then the
weights are taken off and you are lifted up by his gracious
hand. Otherwise it is not enough that
he has humbled you by his hand unless you humble yourselves
under his hand. Many have had great and many
pressures, one affliction after another, and been humbled, and
yet not made humble as they commonly express the difference. Humbled
by force in regard of their outward condition, but not humbled in
their inward temper. And therefore, as soon as the
weight is off, like heaps of wool, we would say, as Dr. Tripp did, like a Nerf ball.
Once the pressure is off, the ball fills up with air again
and goes back to its original size. He's thinking of someone
with a handful of wool. And he says, the moment the pressure's
off, it goes back to its original size as it's fluffed up with
air. They rise up again. and grow
again as big as they were before their humbling. If we would consider
this in our particular trials, and aim at this deportment, it
were our wisdom. Are they not mad who under any
stroke quarrel or struggle against God? What gain your children
thus at your hands, but more blows? See what he's saying?
The child that fights the spanking gets more spanking. Nor is it
an unseemly and unhappy way, openly to resist, and not only
is it unseemly and unhappy to resist and strive, but even secretly
to fret and grumble, for God hears the least whispering of
the heart, and looks most how the heart behaves itself under
his hand. O humble acceptance of his chastisement
is our duty and our peace, that which gains most on the heart
of our Father and makes the robbed fall soonest out of his hand. When he sees that his hand is
doing its work of humbling us from the heart, then God will
also often take the humbled saint and bring him to a place of exaltation. Well that's what we considered
this morning. Verse 6 under that simple heading of this instruction
from the living God concerning humbling ourselves, this command
with a purpose that he may exalt you. Now we come tonight to verse
7. casting all your anxiety upon
him because he cares for you and we'll try to unpack this
verse again in terms of a very simple title the attending duty
with a reason casting all your anxiety upon him that's the attending
duty and here is the reason because he cares for you now I've called
it an attendant duty Because as I explained this morning,
in the grammatical structure, the imperative is found in verse
6a. Humble yourselves. Now we have
a participial construction, casting all your anxiety. So to get the
sense of what Peter had in mind as under the guidance of the
Spirit, he wrote these words, bring together 6a and 7a. Humble yourselves casting, not
humble yourselves by casting, but humble yourselves while casting,
so that the humbling has as its attendant duty the casting of
all of our anxieties upon Him. While God's mighty hand is upon
you, and you are seeking by His grace to be humbled by that hand
or to humble yourself under that hand internally to embrace in
the deepest recesses of your being the wisdom, the righteousness,
the love, the sovereign designs and purpose of God for bringing
us under His mighty hand As a concomitant spiritual exercise, while submitting,
while humbling, we are constantly to be casting all of our anxieties
upon Him. Now what is it that we are to
cast upon Him? It is our anxieties. We are not to act as though being
under the mighty hand of God does not bring with it anxieties,
and go around with a plastic grin, a 32-tooth grin, all the
time to prove to people we're rejoicing in the Lord always.
No, when God's mighty hand is upon us, and one reads through
the Psalms and sees this again and again, there can be a host
of anxieties. God does not call upon us to
ignore them. God does not call upon us to
grin and bear them, to just tuck it out and ride it through, but
he says, while humbling ourselves under his mighty hand, here is
the attendant duty to cast all of our anxieties upon him. Now remember the context. This
is not a generic statement just picked out of the air. The context
is the whole thrust of this letter. That the people of God are in
the midst of concentrated affliction and opposition. And as John Brown
so often hits the nail on the head when he's describing these
anxieties, listen to his wisdom. While every situation in human
life may afford occasion for anxiety, there can be no doubt
that the seasons of affliction are particularly calculated to
excite painful anxieties. The mind gets into an anxious
state. Everything assumes a dark, discouraging,
alarming aspect. How am I to sustain present evils
or how am I to escape from them? How am I to avert, apparently,
coming evils, the fiery trial that is among us? If they cannot
be averted, how am I to endure them? These are questions which
force themselves on the suffering mind, and most sufferers will
readily acknowledge that the fruitless attempt to get satisfactory
answers to them has often greatly aggravated the pressures of the
external calamity, and that the anxieties occasioned by affliction
have been felt to be a more insupportable burden than the affliction itself. Do you answer to that? Is there
anything in your heart that says, He knows what the Christian experiences. The case of affliction which
this text naturally brings before the mind is that of a Christian
exposed to persecution on account of his religion, and it is one
that is calculated to be particularly fertile in harassing cares and
perplexing anxieties. Spoiled as I am already or likely
soon to be of my goods, how am I to meet my commitments and
provide things honorable in the sight of men? What's to become
of my family, to provide for whom is one of the most clearly
enjoined, strongly enforced of Christian duties? How am I to
be enabled to sustain the sufferings to which I am likely to be exposed? How am I to be enabled distinctly
to see my duty in the midst of these pressures? I'm afraid I'll
not be able to stand in the evil day. I'm afraid my faith will
fail. I shall make shipwrecked of a
good conscience, and what then will be the fearful result as
I deny the cause of truth? How will its enemies exult? How
will its friends be ashamed? What will be the more fearful
result of this to my own weak and guilty soul? The anguish
of an outraged conscience, the frown of an insulted Savior,
and all this forever? John Brown goes on to say, and
anxieties of this kind could not be confined to the individual's
own case. They naturally extended to the
whole brotherhood and to the great cause of the gospel. This
directive of this attendant duty has a context and Peter with
his pastoral sensitivity and with his desire to fulfill his
Lord's commission to feed his lambs and tend his sheep and
feed his sheep He says to these believers, as you humble yourselves
under the mighty hand of God, understand and enjoy and avail
yourself of this privileged attendant duty, casting all your anxieties
upon Him. All of those concerns that rise
out of a realistic assessment of the consequences of the hand
of God being upon you. It is these things that are the
object of this duty, our anxieties, and what are we to do with them?
The text says, casting all your anxieties upon him. And what
is the sense of this verb, in its participial form, casting? Well, it's used only one other
time in the New Testament, and I want you to turn to the only
other use in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, in the
Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 19. A lot of people next week will
be reading this passage on what is called in the church calendar
Palm Sunday. That Sunday before the Passion
Week leading to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
And you remember that as they draw near to Bethany, that our
Lord says to his disciples, go into that village, and there
you're going to find a donkey, you're going to find a colt tied,
whereon no man ever sat, loose him, bring him to me. And then
the Lord tells them, if anyone asks you, you just say the Lord
has need of him. And as a little aside, I always
take great comfort in that. Here's a dumb beast, and yet
the Lord has need of him. The Lord has need of him. Creator
of heaven and earth needs a donkey to fulfill his mission. And now
we read in verse 33. And as they were loosing the
colt, the owners thereof said to them, why are you loosing
the colt? And they said, the Lord has need of him. And they
brought him to Jesus. Now notice. And they threw their
garments upon the colt and set Jesus thereon. Here's our verb. They threw their garments upon
the colt. Now they had an outer garment,
it would be like perhaps the closest semblance to us would
be a heavy outerwear sweater or jacket. And as long as those
garments were on their back, they weren't on the donkey's
back. And the text says they threw their garments upon the
colt. When they got them off their
back, they were totally on the colt. They couldn't be on the
colt's back and their back at one and the same time. It's either
on their backs or on the colt's back. And the text says they
cast them upon the coat. They threw them over the flanks
of the coat. They got rid of them, and when
the garments were off them, they were totally on the coat. The
weight of them, the warmth of them, whatever else they exuded
to this dumb animal, it was all on the coat's back. Now look
at our text in 1 Peter. Humble yourselves unto the mighty
hand of God that He may exalt you in due time. Here's your
attendant duty and privilege. Casting all your anxieties upon
Him. Not merely whining about them
to Him, but casting them upon Him. Let's look at one or two
Old Testament uses of this in the Greek translation of the
Old Testament, the Septuagint, Peter's working Bible. In 1 Kings
19, we'll look at this one because again it's so vivid, illustrating
the sense, the vigor of this word. 1 Kings 19, again familiar
I trust to many of you, the calling of Elisha. under the direction
of God Elijah comes and we read in verse 19 of first Kings 19
so he departed thence and found Elisha the son of Shaphat who
was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him and he with
the twelfth and Elijah passed over unto him and here's our
verb and cast his mantle upon him here was a mantle transferred
As long as that shawl was over the back of the prophet Elijah,
it was not resting on the back of Elisha. But when it got on
Elisha, it was no longer on Elijah. He cast it upon him. There was
a total, real, visible, physical transfer of the mantle. Now Peter
says, in the midst of the mighty hand of God upon you, here you
are, clothed with this multi-colored, multi-materialed mantle of your
anxieties. And this is your attendant duty
while humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God, make
a transfer of the mantle of your anxieties, casting all your anxieties
upon Him. And it is most likely that in
using that language, which again from Peter's working Bible is
very familiar language, not the same tenses of the words and
same case of the words, but the same language is used. Psalm
55 and verse 22. Psalm 55 and verse 22. It's hard to believe that this
passage was not in Peter's mind when he writes these words. Here
is one of those Psalms of David in which he is feeling anxiety
from the mighty hand of God that is upon him. Verse 6, O that
I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I'd wander far off and lodge
in the wilderness. Here's a man that wants to get
away from it all. The pressures are on him. The
mighty hand of God is pressing him with enemies, betrayers. He says in verse 12, it was not
an enemy that reproached me, I could have borne it, neither
was he that hated me that magnified himself against me, but it was
you a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We took sweet
counsel together. This man knows the hand of God
upon him in afflicted dispensations, as the old Puritans would call
it, a combination of these things. But now in the midst of this,
notice what he has learned and what he is exhorting others to
learn. Verse 22, cast thy burden upon
the Lord, and he will sustain thee. He will never suffer the
righteous to be moved. And now, having received the
counsel of God from his own word, Peter, under the guidance of
the Spirit, says to these saints, casting all your anxiety upon
him. That is the attendant's duty,
casting it all upon him. But you say, with what hands
do I take my mantle of complex and intertwined anxieties and
cast them? What are the hands that enable
me to take it and cast it upon him? They are the hands of faith
and of prayer. Can you think of a verse? Philippians
4, 6 and 7. Be anxious for no thing. No thing. It doesn't say don't
be anxious about the big things. Or don't be anxious about the
little things. God doesn't make be anxious for no thing. But in every thing by what? Prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving. with the acknowledgement that
God is hearing your cry, that God welcomes your coming to him
with those things that would cause carking and eroding anxiety,
be anxious for no thing, but in everything, by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known
unto God and the peace of God that passes all understanding.
Now a military imagery shall garrison your heart like a troop
of soldiers, and your mind, in virtue of your union with Christ
Jesus, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This is the attendant duty, no
good if detached. It is fruitless to seek to humble
yourself under the mighty hand of God and ignore the things
that are causing anxiety or just try to tough them out and ride
them through. You will not know the release
of spirit that God intends you to know unless with that gospel
duty of humbling there is the attendant duty of casting all
your anxieties upon him. There's the attendant duty now.
Secondly, the reason. Because. Because. Why are we
to do this? Because of an unchanging reality. Whether you believe it, whether
at any given moment you are thinking about it, whether it's near to
your mind or far, this is reality because He cares for you. Now let me indulge just a little
bit of the Greek construction, not to try to impress you, but
to help you. We believe that the Spirit of
God guided the biblical writers to write what they wrote and
how they wrote it. And if we were to give a literal
rendering of what Peter gives as the reason for this attendant
duty, it is this, casting all your care upon him. Because to him is care concerning
you. And the two pronouns cast your
care upon him for to him are brought in the closest conjunction. And then he uses an impersonal
verb. It is care. concerning you. Why are we to cast all of our
anxieties upon him as an attendant duty to humbling ourselves under
the mighty hand of God? It's because everything that
causes legitimate anxiety for you is of deep concern to him. and direct proportion, in the
direct proportion to our confidence of that reason, we will perform
the duty. Who wants to go to a God with
anxieties concerning which he's indifferent? If you were reared
in a home where you were taught, boys don't cry like men don't
eat quiche, you wouldn't come and ask your dad, to wipe away
your tears when you were crying over having your heart broken
with some rejection among your peers on the playground. If you
didn't have a mother that was welcoming, as I did, you wouldn't
come home from the football field with your little cardboard helmet
and shoulder pads, the first set I got, and we were poor,
and that was the best they could do, and the bigger guys wouldn't
let me play, and my mother likes to tell the story of how Sonny
came home. I was Sonny until I was 21. I wasn't Al or Albert,
I was Sonny. And how Sonny came home, crying
his eyeballs out. And she just ruffled my hair
and dried my tears and said, well, you go back and try again
and they'll let you play. And then apparently I came home
happy as a clam. You see, if you had a mother
and you had a father whose heart was against any expressions of
the anxieties that disturbed you as a child, you're not going
to cast your care upon them. And if you have a God who is
a God with a mighty hand, sovereign, almighty, all-powerful, transcendent
above all men and all thoughts and wills of men, so he governs
all things. But if you don't have joined
to the mighty hand a large and caring heart, you are not going
to find yourself fulfilling this attendant duty. You will be trying
desperately to humble yourselves under the mighty hand But what
do you do with these anxieties that won't leave? And He's so
transcendent and so above me and beyond me. The thought that
I can spread before Him and cast upon Him everything that causes
anxiety to my soul in these circumstances. You see, you've got to believe
that He cares for you. Casting all your anxiety upon
Him for to Him is care. concerning you. Peter is saying,
as I alluded this morning, that the mighty hand of God, which
has ordered and directed all of the things that are producing
the anxiety, that mighty hand is joined to a large and caring
heart. And as you humble yourself under
the hand of God, we are to take a fresh gaze at the large and
loving heart of God. and say, this God mandates that
I shall cast upon him as the mantle of Elijah was cast upon
Elisha, as the garments were cast upon the colt, cast upon
him all of my anxieties. Now John Brown very perceptively
says there are some anxieties you can't cast upon him, you
need to cast them away. If your anxieties grow out of
carnal ambitions regarding your station in life, your possessions,
the circle of influence you think you should have, if your anxieties
grow out of carnal ambitions and carnal spanders, you don't
cast them upon God, you cast them away in repentance. Ask
God to nail them to the cross of his Son. There are some things
that cause anxieties. We're not to cast upon God, we're
to bear them nobly in the strength of Christ. Paul uses this very
word, anxiety, when he's describing his responsibilities and what
he bears as an apostle. In 2 Corinthians 11, 28, he says,
besides all of these things, that which comes upon me daily,
anxiety for all the churches. That was not sinful anxiety.
That was the burden of nobly shouldering that which God laid
upon him. Galatians chapter 6, each man
shall bear his own load. And when we are bearing the load
of the will of God and feeling something of the weight of that
responsibility, what I trust every father who was in the seminar
the last two days has felt with renewed pressure, what an awesome
overwhelming responsibility and privilege it is to be a father,
to shepherd my child's heart. Go cast that upon the Lord. You
go to the Lord for strength to bear it as God has laid it upon
you. So as John Brown very helpfully
points out in Pastoral Wisdom, there are some things, anxieties
that have their tap roots in that which is carnal. Those things
need to be cast from us in repentance. Some things need to be borne
nobly in the strength of Christ. But those things over which we
have no control, which grow out of God's inscrutable dealings
with us when he places us under his mighty hand, All of those
anxieties, without exception, are to be cast upon him in the
confidence that to him is care concerning you. Not in some abstract
way, but in terms of the very specific anxieties that grow
out of God's mighty hand upon you. But then you ask, how do
I know he cares for us? Well, it should be enough that
the Word of God says it, should it not? that God does not just
tell us that he cares for us, he's made it abundantly clear.
He cares for us. Think of the glorious purposes
he has framed with respect to us, his people. Ephesians 1.3,
he has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and without blemish before him, in love,
having predestinated us unto adoption as sons through Jesus
Christ to himself, that we should be to the praise of his glory.
He cares for us. His care, if I may say it referently,
was stirred in the unfathomable, mysterious abyss and depths of
eternity. in Christ, chosen before the
foundation of the world. purpose that we should have the
status of sons, and not only the status of sons, but Romans
8 29, whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be actually
conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren. Before God spoke the world into
being out of the womb of nothing, he envisioned his son with his
family all around him, sharing perfectly the family life. And
He chose us in Christ, predestinating us that we should not only have
the status of sons, but then when God is done with us, we
shall be perfectly conformed to the image of His Son. Not
a stain of sin left in our spirits, not one milligram, one millionth
of a milligram of the effects of sin in our glorified bodies. He cares for you. When you doubt
it, look back and say, no, he does care. He cared before the
foundation of the world. Think of his care, not only in
terms of the glorious purposes he's framed with respect to us,
but secondly, the amazing things he has done for us and to us. Not only did he purpose, but
what he's done for us, God so loved the world. that He gave
His only begotten Son. He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also
freely give us all things? He has given His Son, that's
not a thing. Justification, glorification,
sanctification, those are things. But He spared not His own Son,
but gave Him up freely for us. This is what he's done for us,
given his son. He has given the Spirit to indwell
us, to attest to our status as sons, enabling us to cry, Abba,
Father. Think of the things he's done
for us. He's blotted out the record,
all of which pointed to us as guilty and hell-deserving. He
says, I have blooded out their sins as a thick cloud, I have
buried them in the depths of the sea, never to be remembered
against them. And I love to think of that promise
of the new covenant, their sins and iniquities I'll remember
no more. I like to think of it as God's self-imposed point of
amnesia. Self-imposed point of amnesia. You come to God with sins that
have been confessed and cleansed into blood. I say it reverently,
God says, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't remember
those. Their sins and iniquities will
I remember no more. Is that what it says? And then
we doubt that he cares for us. When He's done that for us, He
has done marvelous things to us. He's taken out the heart
of stone, given us the heart of flesh, written His law upon
our hearts, given us an internal disposition to love Him, to obey
Him, to commune with Him, to fellowship with Him. He cares
for you. Child of God, this is not just
pious fraud, this is biblical reality. He cares for you. Think of his glorious purposes
framed with respect to you. Think of the amazing things he's
done for you and to you, and then think of the peculiar relationship
in which he stands to you. Peter reminded them of this in
the early chapter. If you call on him as what? Father. When you pray, say, Our
Father. Sinclair Ferguson waxes bold
in his very helpful little commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and
says, in essence, the whole end of Jesus' instruction in the
Sermon on the Mount, particularly in chapter 6, is to persuade
his followers that the great glory and privilege of Christ
being manifested in the flesh is to establish in the minds
of his people that God is now their Father. He is now their
Father. He cares for you. If you are
evil, Know how to give good gifts to your children. If, in common
grace, we do that which is contrary to the baseline disposition and
nature of what we are, how much more shall your Heavenly Father
give good things to those who ask Him? He is all holiness,
all love, all purity, all wisdom. How much more? How much more?
Child of God, if the devil can get you to doubt, he cares for
you. To some degree you believe the ancient lie that he started
right in the garden. God has given you that no-no
because he doesn't care for you. He wants to keep you under his
thumb. He knows in the day you eat you shall be as God's. He
doesn't really care. Oh yes, all around you are the
apparent indications he cares. Within you, as you look out at
your wife and as the wife looks at the husband, there are all
these undeniable indications. But here's the inside track.
He really doesn't care. And with a few words, he undoes
our first parents. Child of God, don't believe him. He hates God. He's the slanderer
who'll slander God in the theater of your own mind and understanding
when his hand is heavy upon you and you're struggling to submit,
to embrace, to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.
Remember, all the anxieties attendant upon that heavy, mighty hand
of God. He says, cast them upon me. I
care for you. I care for you. You may not be
able to fit together how I care with what I'm doing, but I care
for you. Remember, something that's unaffected
by what you perceive of my dealings with you, I chose you in Christ
before the foundation of the world. With an immutable purpose,
I determined to make you like my son. I sent my son to die
for you. I sent the Holy Spirit to bear
witness to my son and to show you your need of him. I've taken
out your heart of stone. I've given you a heart of flesh.
I've given you the status of sonship. I care. I care. Don't read God's heart in the
mystery of His present hand upon you. Read it in His purposes
declared in the Scripture. Read it in His saving acts once
for all in Christ and His saving acts to you. Read it in the relationship
he sustains to you as your father. He cares for you. I want us to
look at an example in the Gospels of what happens when we don't
believe that, and the silly things we do and say. Mark chapter 8. Mark chapter 8. Now remember, this incident is
an incident in which Jesus is with his disciples, those who
have seen his mighty works. Mark plunges right into the ministry
of John the Baptist and then the ministry of our Lord Jesus.
We see him casting out demons and doing mighty works right
from chapter one of the Gospel of Mark and the calling of his
apostles, his disciples, that intimate circle. This is the
group that has seen the mighty works of their Savior. They've
seen his heart displayed in compassionate concern for the sick, for the
maimed, for the halt, for the ignorant. They know the heart
of God revealed in Jesus Christ. And yet we come to this incident
here in Mark chapter 8 and verse 23. And when he was entered into
a boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, There arose
a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the boat was covered with
the waves, and he was asleep. And they came to him and awoke
him, saying, Save, Lord, we are perishing. And he said unto them,
Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? And he arose and
rebuked the winds and the waves." It's the parallel passage I want
that has the word, do you not care? So the parallel passage
is found in Mark chapter 4. Now let's try Mark chapter 4. Ah, there it is. Okay. Mark chapter
4 and verse 38. We'll back up to 35. So it was
Mark chapter 4. And on that day when even was
come, he said to them, let us go over to the other side and
leaving the multitude, they take him with them, even as he was
in the boat and the other boats were within. And there arises
a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the boat, insomuch
that the boat was now filling. And he himself was in the stern,
asleep on the cushion. And they awake him and say unto
him, Teacher, don't you care that we perish? Don't you care? We're perishing, and you're here
sound asleep. Don't you care? Of all the things
they could have said, do you see how Foolish? If it weren't
so tragic, it would be humorous. If they said, Lord, we know you're
tired, and we know if only you were awake, surely you would
care and do something about this. And we wouldn't have faulted
them for that. That would have been a gracious thing to do. You assume
the best. The Lord asleep is the one whose
heart has been shown to them, shown in so many ways to men
in their need. They should have looked at him
astern in the ship and said, there's our caring Savior. There's
our caring Master. Now, if only we can awaken Him,
surely His care will be manifested in seeing our plight and danger
and coming to our rescue. But instead, what do they do?
They think the worst about it. Don't you even care? We're perishing. Nothing about Him. Son of God,
Savior of the world, down to Davy Jones' locker. It's laughable. Don't you care that we perish? Oh, but dear child of God, don't
we do that? No matter how many times the
Lord has displayed the care of his heart to us, the enemy seeks
to inject into our minds the thought that he doesn't And in
those circumstances, we need to take our stand on the word
of God and say, no, my Bible says he cares for me. It is a care to him. To Him it is a care concerning
me, yes, little me, with all of my peculiarities and idiosyncrasies
and all of my remaining sins and all the rest. He cares for
me. I refuse to think hard thoughts
of my God. I refuse to do it. And refusing
to think hard thoughts of my God, I'm going to cast all my
anxieties upon Him. And I'm not going to rest. until
the garment is all on his back. And then you get up from your
knees. Get up from wherever you're doing this. You don't need to
be on your knees. You don't need to be in formal prayer. You walk
away and not a thing has changed in the external circumstances,
but you're a different man, a different woman. Why? Because you've done
what God says. You've humbled yourself under
the mighty hand of God, casting all your anxiety upon because
you know that he cares for you. Now that's the privilege of the
child of God. That's the gracious gospel duty
of every one of us as believers. And I hope that does something
for those of you sitting here tonight who are not believers.
I hope it makes you jealous. Say, wouldn't it be wonderful
to have the kind of relationship to God that no matter what I
face in my life, I know there is a God who is my Father, a
God who has sent his Son to die for the likes of me, the God
who has assured me of the pardon of my sins, the acceptance of
my person in his Son Jesus Christ, places his Spirit with me. Doesn't
that make you jealous to want to be a Christian? Why in the
world would you remain an unconverted man or woman, boy or girl? Give
me one good reason. You see, it's irrational. It's
stupid. And it's also fatal. It's also fatal. To go on having
hard thoughts of God that keep you at a distance from Him is
to believe and embrace the lie of the enemy of your soul. He
comes not, Jesus said, but for to steal, that's the first step,
to destroy, second step, and to kill. Steal, destroy, kill. I am come that they, my sheep,
might have life and have it more abundantly. Not life exempt,
from seasons when the mighty hand of God is upon us, when
he allows various agents and agencies, people and influences
to become to us a fiery trial, manifold trials, wagging tongues,
raised eyebrows. In the midst of all of it, to
know he cares for me. My unconverted friend, we don't
envy you for a moment. If you sat here with a legal
title to a thousand exotic islands, and you owned ten Lear jets,
and you had ten pilots at your beck and call, we wouldn't envy
you for a moment. You sit here impoverished, but
you don't need to be impoverished. All that is ours in this reality
is ours in And that initial humbling that we looked at this morning,
Luke chapter 18, by God's grace, we stood with that public. We've
looked up into the face of the God who made us, whose law touches
the deepest springs of the heart and the motives and the desires
and the impulses of the spirit. And we said, oh God, we stand
condemned and guilty before your sight. Be propitious to us. Be merciful to us, the sinners. And in the naked, stripped, humbled
state of self-confessed guilt and hell-deservingness, we've
thrown ourselves upon the mercy of God, and we found the promise
true. In that comes to me, I will in
no wise cast out. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. My dear unconverted friend, as
you have heard the word of God through the Apostle Peter to
those believers in Asia Minor 2,000 years ago and what it says
to us in our circumstances today, this command, humble yourself
under the mighty hand of God. With this perspective that he
may exalt you in due season, the attendant duty casting all
your anxiety upon him, and the reason for he cares for you. May God grant that some of you
will say, why in the world should I remain on the outside of all
of those delights that God gives to his people? Oh God, I want
to be one of them. May God grant it will make you
jealous with a jealousy that will find no satisfaction till
you rest in Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for
your holy words. We thank you for this portion
in which you lay bare your heart of loving, tender concern for
us, your people. We are ashamed that so often,
like your disciples, we thought the worst of you, and we do repent
of it, our God and our Savior. We ask you to forgive us for
listening to the whisperings of that one who hates you and
hates us. and whom we will see in our subsequent
studies is like a roaring lion going about seeking whom he may
gulp down. O Lord, help us to resist him
steadfastly in the faith, in the faith that you do care for
us, that you are the God whose heart is large toward us as your
people. May we not, as it were, cringe
off at the fringes of all the lavishness of your grace. May
we know what it is to swim in that ocean of the plenitude of
your mercy and grace and kindness to us. We do pray for those boys
and girls, men and women who sit here tonight, whose hearts
know nothing of the soul-satisfying, ravishing sense of delight that
we, your people, know when we contemplate these things. We
ask, O God, that they too may taste and see that you are good. and that blessed is the man,
the boy, the girl, the woman who trusts in you. O Lord, would
you not seal your word by causing some this very night in this
place where they sit to say, O God, I'm tired of fighting. It's all over. Lord, I capitulate. I cast myself into your hands. O God, may that be true of some
in this place tonight. Give to your Son the reward of
His sufferings, and receive our praises for your goodness to
us this day. May your blessing rest upon us,
and may we by grace live out in the days to come the things
we have grasped from your hand this day. Hear us, receive our
praise, and answer our prayers for Jesus' sake. Amen.