1 Peter chapter 5 and we'll read
the first 11 verses. The elders which are among you
I exhort who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings
of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is
among you taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but
willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither
as being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock,
and when the chief shepherd shall appear, he shall receive a crown
of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, submit
yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one
to another, and be clothed with humility, for God resisteth thee
proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore,
under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due
time. casting all your care upon him,
for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant, because
your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about
seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist steadfast in the
faith, knowing that these same afflictions are accomplished
in your brethren that are in the world. but the God of all
grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus. After that ye have suffered a
while. Make ye perfect, establish, strengthen,
settle you. To whom be glory and dominion
for ever and ever. Amen. So the two verses that I desire
to speak to you on, verses six and seven, I've put on the front
of the sheet, humble yourselves under and cast your care upon
God. And those two verses, it sets
before us that principle of having our God and we are humbling ourselves
under him but also casting our care upon Him. The previous verses
speak of the relationship one with another, submitting ourselves
unto yourselves, unto the Elder, yea, all of you be subject one
to another. So verse 5 is speaking of our
interaction one with another, and verses 6 and 7 is before
God. So there are two main points,
two verses here. The first is humbling under God,
and then the second casting upon God. And I want to just look
at these two points. Firstly, under the humbling,
it's humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. I want to just remind you of
the mighty hand of God first, that hand of God that we are
to humble ourselves under. When we think of the creation,
God spake and it was done, the sun, moon and stars. We think
of how the Lord brought the children of Israel out of Egypt by a mighty
hand, all the signs and wonders, how he brought them through the
Red Sea. We think of Sennacherib's army,
185,000 that were attacking Hezekiah, And God sent an angel and destroyed
all of that army. All of this, it sets forth how
mighty, how great our God is. But when we think of the small
things as well, we cannot see many things without a magnifying
glass or without a microscope. The smallest things, the mighty
works of God, don't need to be great big things, but small things
that are wonderfully performed and wonderfully done. And this
is a reminder that it is God that is the Sovereign, that works
all things in this world. It is His providence. You've
only got to read many of the prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and the Lord is speaking about other nations, prophesying what
shall happen to them, what they shall do. One nation rise, another
nation fall. And this mighty God is our God. He governs our lives. He orders
the smallest thing that is in our lives. So when we think of
the mighty hand of God, then humbling ourselves under it,
what does that mean actually then in Providence? Well, if we have things like
our sicknesses, men might rise against us, like Absalom rose
up against David, those things happen that very hard for flesh
and blood to actually accept, and yet to see God. We think
of when David was fleeing from Absalom, and Shimei was cursing
and casting dust, and David had his men say, let us go over and
kill him. But he said, let him curse, because
the Lord had bidden him, it may be the Lord will be quite good
for his cursing this day. and David was humbling himself
under the hand of God. He saw that though it was a man
that was against him, really, it was, as he says, God has said,
curse David, so he had a right attitude, he was submissive,
he was humble, he bowed before God's hand. Instead of attacking
the means of the providence against him of the sorrow, he looked
to God's hand. It's like Eli, when Samuel had
to bring a message that already he knew about his sons, that
they would be destroyed in one day, he says, it is the Lord,
let him do what seemeth him good. When Aaron had his two sons slain
before his eyes because they had offered strange fire, Then
Aaron held his peace. He wasn't angry against God. He didn't have inordinate grief.
He bowed before the hand of God. And that is what it is then to
humble ourselves under the hand of God. You think of when the
children of Israel came back from Babylon, then they were
hindered in building the temple. and they left off building it,
they built their houses instead. So the Lord touched their crops,
their money, nothing prospered, and he sent the prophets to say
to them, these things haven't just happened, this is my hand. You humble yourselves under it,
and you build the house of God. And they obeyed and did it, and
the Lord blessed the work that they did. There's a beautiful
promise that is attached to this, that he may exalt you in due
time. And that's a wonderful prospect,
isn't it, where there's things that are not pleasant happening
to us, sickness or troubles or afflictions, and we know that
in God's time, he will lift us up again. If we do not rise up
in pride and reply against God, God will deal for us, and like
with David, he did bring him to the kingdom, he did bless
him, he did exalt him in the end. So that is the first part. The second, which is true to
it really, is casting our care upon him. Because often, when
there is something that we need to be humbled before God on,
that is very painful and difficult for us, That will cause a lot
of care. We aren't just to be stoics,
to just go through life and just take everything and think, well,
we shouldn't be fearing and full of care and full of worry. God's
people do have fears, they do have cares. But here in this
text, it tells us what to do with those cares. And maybe there
are those of you this afternoon that have cares, you have things
that are your burden, things you don't know what to do with,
you worry about, you fret about, maybe your families or in the
home here. The Lord knows what those are
already, but He calls us to take them to Him in prayer and to
cast them upon Him. If we cast something, we're letting
go of it, we're throwing it onto someone else. And yet really
in practice often we have to go and pray again and again,
bringing it before the Lord. But the Lord knows, and another
beautiful thought on this, what we cast on the Lord, He is already
born at Calvary. If it's our sin, if it's our
pride, our fretfulness, our anger, and we're casting that, Lord,
This thing has stirred up in me all manner of evil. Lord,
undertake for me, deliver me from my evil heart. Those things
our Lord has already borne for us at Calvary. And often the
people of God have cares that those in the world do not have. Years ago, over in Australia,
I had a dear brother in faith and he had terrible arthritis,
tremendous pain, and he used to have gold injections to help
it every three months. And I was talking to him one
day and I said, I thought, the thorn in the flesh that Paul
had couldn't really be an affliction or sickness because it said that
it was from Satan. But he looked at me and he said,
it is not the illness, it's not the affliction, It's what Satan
does with it, that it stirs up in me all that unbelief and rebellion
and hatred against God, and that's what grieves me. That's the message
of Satan, because I don't want to curse God, I don't want to
think evil of Him, I don't want to fret, but my illness is so
painful, it's so wearing, it keeps on and on, that it really
tries me. And it's things like this that
we are to cast upon the Lord, something to pray for. Some of
you might think, I don't know how to pray, I don't know what
to pray, I don't know what to ask the Lord. Well, if you've
got cares, the Lord is giving you something to pray for, giving
you something to bring before Himself. So, we are to cast that
in prayer, in dependence, in trust upon the Lord, casting
it on Him. And then again, at the end of
this verse, we have this beautiful word, for he careth for you. He careth for you. There's an
interesting account in Corinthians, where the Apostle Paul, in the
first epistle, he had written reproving them, because they
had got one in their midst that had committed evil, committed
adultery, or had a near relation to lie with, and he written sternly
to them. But then he found that they repented,
and the person repented, and that they were restored. And
he writes to them and he says, I did not write for the cause
of the one who committed the evil, nor for the one that was
affected by it, but that our care of you might appear. is a very interesting part because
you say well surely the apostle wanted the person to repent and
surely he wanted that church cleansed, of course he did but
it was more important that his care of them was seen and God's
care of us is seen, is seen when he chastens us, is seen when
he teaches us, when he feeds us, when he gives us his word
And sometimes in things we might think a strange thing, but we
realize God is actually watching over us, it's a care over us. In the end of Psalm 107, after
we read many things in that Psalm, where they fell down, there was
none to help, then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,
he delivered them out of their distresses, and at the end of
it it says, who so is wise and will observe these things, even
they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord." And it
was kindness of the Lord. We think of a child, they would
think, oh, our parent cares for us if they give us food and give
us nice things, but if then the parent smacks them, chastens
them, corrects them for something they've done wrong, they might
say, as I remember, I said after having a thrashing when I was
a child, nobody loves me. Well, it couldn't have been further
from the truth. The reason why we were given
the threshing is because our parents did love us and they
corrected us and they cared for us. But sometimes it's not so
easy to understand, especially if you've got pain. And so we
have the assurance here that He careth for you. Might that
be a help and comfort for you here to realize that in your
afflictions, in your pains, in your difficulties? He careth
you." What an incentive to cast our care upon the Lord, knowing
that He is the one that cares, He is the one that is looking
after us.