Transcription of 15ID1599
1 Peter 5:5-7
“The Tall Standing of a Bowed Down Life”
October 25, 2015
All right. Shall we open our Bibles this morning to 1 Peter 5:5?
We continue this morning in our studies of Peter’s first letter that was written to
a lot of churches, all of them under great duress, as Nero, having burned down the
poor sections of Rome, blamed the church after seeing the public outcry. And the
persecution against the church began in earnest in the mid-60 ADs. So this letter
arrives at the houses and to the lives of saints that were under the gun – walking
with the Lord in the face of tremendous suffering, holding up and reaching out and
standing fast at a time when, very much, their lives were in jeopardy. You could die
for your faith. Twenty-one different times Peter uses the word “suffering” or
difficulty. He said in verse 12 of chapter 4, “Don’t think it’s some strange thing
that’s coming your way.” But it was pretty heavy. So Peter is given the task of
trying to encourage these saints in their outlook and their commitment and the
need for body unity, for outreach; that this isn’t the end of the line – this is just
the beginning.
And after giving us a whole list (in chapter 1) of the things God has promised to us
down the road – our salvation, the glory that the angels and the prophets wanted to
look into, our faith that he said would be purified in the fires of affliction – Peter
then turned to what was really his biggest subject, and that is that the reaction of
the church to unjust circumstances can, in those situations, be the greatest
witness that we have. The world would react in a certain way. We should react in
another because we trust the Lord, we’ve given Him our lives, we serve Him, and
our response is, “The Lord will take care of us.”
So beginning in chapter 2:9-12, he said, “Walk in a way that the Gentiles, when they
watch you, will see God. You’re the light. You’re the one that God has sent to be a
witness to them. You’re a royal priesthood. You can show the praises of Him who
has brought you out of darkness and into a marvelous light.” And then beginning
there, all the way through to the end of chapter 3, there are all these examples –
submit to governmental authority (even though it was Nero – the worst guy that
you could pick), to unjust bosses, to difficulties there, to submission like Jesus’
example was (that we should commit to the Father’s will just like Jesus came and
died, and, in submitting Himself to the Father, He brought salvation to all men).
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Chapter 3, in your home – whether it’s an unbelieving spouse or just a husband who
needs to lead his wife and his family with understanding as co-heirs of God’s grace,
to one another (verses 8-12 in there), and that it costs something to be in
submission one to another.
And then last week, we looked at the first four verses of chapter 5 where Peter
talked about the elders and the pastors submitting to the calling of God in their
lives – to love the people, to feed the flock, to lead by example, to do so willingly,
without constraint, without some temporal kind of motivation; but just out of love.
Well this morning we get to verse 5, and we’re going to go all the way to verse 7 as
the Lord speaks to young people specifically and then to all of us in general. It’s
still about this issue of submission – teachable hearts, attitudes towards the Lord
that will bring grace to the humble, resisting the proud. And Peter will head
towards the close of this letter talking about the fact that we should live in such a
way, humbly, that the pressures from without don’t become destructive within.
So let’s read these three verses, “Likewise” (in the same manner, if you will) “you
younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to
one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives
grace to the humble.’ Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for
you.”
We’ve entitled the message this morning “The Tall Standing of a Bowed Down Life.”
Pride is the oldest sin in the Bible, and it really doesn’t show any signs of
weakening. It’s like the hurricane, you know? It seems to be growing stronger
with time. It put Lucifer out of heaven. It took Adam and Eve out of the Garden.
It ruins everything that it touches. Pride is your greatest enemy. And humility
before God is your greatest friend. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty
spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). We know that. You know that those who
built the Titanic declared in writing, “Even God Himself couldn’t sink this ship.”
Bad idea. The most luxurious ship of its time took two years to build - 12,000
people worked on it 24 hours a day for two years. They were so confident of its
bulletproof status that on the morning of April 12, 1912, the normal practice of
having a lifeboat drill was set aside as unnecessary. “We don’t need it, we can make
it.” By 11:40 that night, they thought otherwise. It was Moody who wrote, “Be
humble or stumble.” Pretty good bumper sticker.
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This morning I’d like to give you four principles that Peter gives us here in these
three verses so that we can stand tall for Jesus in these last days as we bow
ourselves down, humbly, so that He might use us mightily.
Beginning with verse 5 – Humility will allow you to be taught. Notice what it says,
“Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders.” Now the word
“likewise” attaches itself to the four verses that preceded it. I’m sure if you go all
the way back to chapter 2, every area of our life requires submission. You can’t be
saved unless you humble yourself before the Lord, confess your sins and come to
Jesus. It all requires submission, doesn’t it? Life begins with humility. So Peter
says to the younger people, as opposed to the elders (remember last week we
talked about elders were either age or it was position – well, it certainly is age
here), and he picks on the young people. Why single them out? I suspect, if they
are like most of us were when we were younger, younger people think they know
everything. The older you get, the more you realize that’s not true. When I was
18, I didn’t really but wonder how the world had gotten along without me. I was
young. I knew stuff, and they didn’t. Especially from older folks. You didn’t even
want to hear it. Especially parents. It’s a common plague of being young, I think.
David prayed, “Do not remember the sins of my youth” (Psalm 25:7). There’s a
problem with growing up. You’ve got to go from dependence to interdependence to
independence, and somehow we kind of jump off the cliff. But it’s a common, like I
said, issue for the young people. It comes from a lack of humility though and lack
of submission. And notice he makes one comment, but then the very next verse
says “all of you submit to one another.” This doesn’t sometimes go away when you
grow up. I know that the older I have gotten, the more I realize how little I know,
and that’s unsettling. In fact, I’d say that’s disappointing. I thought I knew it, but
now I realize I don’t. It does keep you more dependent upon the Lord. But on the
other hand, being young is a wonderful gift, isn’t it? I wish I knew what I know now
when I was 18 – I could have done some good stuff. But I didn’t. But times of
being young – you’re creative and hopeful and energetic and visionary, and there’s
nothing that inhibits you - you think you can just do everything. You’re invincible.
Yet if in all of those good things you’re not teachable, you’re in big trouble.
When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, came to the throne in 1 Kings 12, he had a decision
to make because his father was a pretty rough guy. He had taxed the people
almost to poverty. He was a builder. He loved building everything. He was always
raising money to build something new. And the people had suffered, languished
under Solomon’s political oversight. So when Rehoboam came to the throne, he had
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a great opportunity to make it better for the people. In fact, the elders – the old
folks (you can read about it there in 1 Kings 12) – came to him and said, “You would
really serve the people well if you would just kind of back off on the taxation. Give
the people some breathing room. They’re barely making it by.” And then some of
his young friends (and the Scriptures are clear to distinguish that here come some
of his young contemporaries, the “edgier” group, the guys “in the know”) come, and
they said, “You know what we should do? We should make it much harder on the
people than it’s ever been. Tell them that if your father’s pressure on them was
like a finger, your pressure on them is going to be like a thigh. And lean on them.
Take them for all they’re worth. You’re the boss now!” And hearing that, he had a
decision to make. And Rehoboam, after thinking about it for a little while, came
back, and he took the opinion of his young buddies, and he said exactly what they
said to the people. And the people went, “Fine. Then you can serve yourself.” And
it led to the split of the kingdom, as ten and a half tribes literally went north, and
it was a horrible time in Israel’s history – the split-kingdom time. But it all was
precipitated by a young man who took some other young men’s advice, and, rather
than seeking the Lord, sought his buddies’ idea of what life should be like, and they
got it all wrong. And it led to disaster.
We need submission when we’re young. We’ll need it when we’re older as well. I
read somewhere once that the error of being young is to believe that intelligence
is a substitute for experience. Well, it’s not. And all of our society operates on
submission. We’ve got laws to follow and regulations to abide by and company rules
and workplace demands; and home and parents and schools and teachers and so it
goes. Even in terms of spiritual leadership, Paul wrote to the Hebrews, “Obey
those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as
those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that
would be unprofitable for you” (Hebrews 13:17). So, hey, make their lives easier –
these elders that we read about – so that one day they can give a report of their
serving the Lord and serving the flock with joy. Make it easier on them. And I’d
say “Amen.” Do that. I know submission requires faith because to submit to
others who are sinful, you always run the risk of being let down. Yet God says we
should do it, and so by faith in the Lord, I’ll trust Him.
I have a little Corgi. In fact we’ve had Corgis in our house for the last 25 years.
They’re real good dogs. They have no legs to speak of. But when we take our dog
for a walk, he’s the hit of the neighborhood. Everybody wants to pet him. And
when we run into other dogs, sometimes he wants to be the aggressive dog, the
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dominant dog, which is ridiculous because he’s like this big. But other times, he’ll
just roll over on his back like he submits, and a dog that submits exposes his neck
to the other dog. That’s life. You get bit in the neck, you’re dead! But he does it.
I don’t know if they had a dog talk, and I just couldn’t follow. But he has a way of
doing that.
And I think that’s kind of what we have to do. We have to sometimes obey those
over us, though we may not trust them or think much of them. And you kind of
expose yourself to them, but you trust the Lord. So, humility will allow us to be
taught. Young people, trust those that are older than you. Oh, they’re not always
better than you, but they’re smarter, and they’re more experienced, and you’ll do
well because humility will serve you well.
Second of all, verse 5, “All of you be submissive to one another.” Humility is the
key for good fellowship. The word “humility” or “humble” is a state of mind. It is
the reference to the opinion that you have about yourself and the place that you
take as a result of that opinion. It’s the position you take when you have an opinion
about yourself. When Paul wrote to the Philippians, he’d been a Christian a long
time, but he said in chapter 2, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or
conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.”
That’s a tough verse. Very rarely do you find that being people’s memory verse for
the week. “Esteem others better than yourself.” “Yeah, I don’t like that one. I
want to pick a different verse.” But Paul calls upon the Philippian church to take a
humble place in fellowship - where pride is set aside - so that we can judge others
better than ourselves. Now that’s a pretty powerful thought - if God indeed
blesses the humble. That’s certainly one you want to take to heart, especially in
the situation that Paul wrote because the Greco-Roman culture despised humility.
They taught it to everyone - humility is weakness. You’re a wimp when you’re
humble. They only called defeated enemies humble. But God would beg to differ.
The Lord sees humility as a virtue, not as a vice. It sees that the humble can be
strong and blessed by God. It sets Jesus before us as the ultimate example of
humility. “Let this mind be in you” (that’s what Paul said to the Philippians 2:5-8)
“which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it
robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation.” Here comes the
Lord Himself, “taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient
to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” And because He did, you and I
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live. Humility brought eternal life. Humility also brings the ability for us to have
fellowship together.
So, clothe yourself in humility. I think the J.B. Phillips New Testament translation,
which I’ve always really liked (unfortunately never did an Old Testament) wrote in
this verse in Philippians – he called humility the “overalls” that we were to wear. In
other words, clothe yourself in this. Right? I think in the commentary that he
wrote he said, “If all of us could only be clothed in humility, many people would be
extremely embarrassed.” And I thought that was pretty interesting. Humility is
tricky because the minute you think you have it, you’ve lost it. In fact, Moody used
to pray, “God, make me humble, but don’t let me know it.” So humility, by
definition, is not thinking badly about yourself. It is not thinking about yourself at
all. Just thinking about others. How often does your thinking revolve around you?
“Do they like me? How did I do? What did I say? I wonder if they like the way I
look. Maybe I said too much. Maybe I said too little. Yayayayaya. I’d like another
chance to make a better impression.” None of that is very humble.
So humility will put us in a position where we can be taught – which is very
important, and it will help our fellowship with one another as we esteem others
better than ourselves – place others’ needs before our own.
Thirdly, verse 5 towards the end, “be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the
proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ ” Humility will bring God’s blessing. Pride
will have God fighting with you. That’s not a good thought, is it, that the Lord will
fight against wherever it is you’re going. Now Peter’s direction is rooted in God’s
Word. He goes back to chapter 3:34 of Proverbs, and he pulls this little nugget
out, and he said, “For.” Notice the word “for.” He gives us some direction, and
then he says, “Here’s why I believe this. Here’s what the Bible says.” The best
way to make God angry and have Him turning against you – rather than helping you –
is to be prideful. Walk around in pride, and then wonder why you haven’t gotten
through. You know, I think that so often we are convinced that we get ahead when
we push ahead. “I get ahead because I push ahead. I make my own breaks. I make
phone calls. I put the screws to folks. I demand. I tell them that they owe me
stuff. I push. I push. Man, look, I’m very successful.” And again, the Bible would
say just the opposite. That’s Worldly Thinking 101. Get this through your head –
God extends grace to the humble, and He fights against those who try to take the
way of the proud. Pride is a barrier to anything God wants to do in your life. You
only discover His best when you humble yourself – when you’re aware of your
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inabilities, when you rely on His capabilities, when you trust Him. Don’t trust you,
trust Him. And Peter is saying that to a church that really had no place to stand
anyway. They were absolutely a target and not much of an influence; at least so
they thought.
Humility not only helps our fellowship. Humility brings God’s grace into your life.
Humble yourself. Die to yourself. Then see what God will do with you. You’ll be
amazed.
And then in verses 6-7 we read this, “Therefore humble yourselves under the
mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon
Him, for He cares for you.” So here’s the fourth point – Humility before God will
promote you and keep worry from consuming you. Those are some good things,
aren’t they? Obvious application is made on two fronts. Number one – in humility
you submit yourself to God, and God will use you and raise you up. Remember, pride
pushes you forward, but God’ll raise you up. If you humble yourself, God will put
you forward. “When?” “In due time.” “Well, what if I don’t like His due time?”
“Well, then, just wait. What are you going to do?!” And secondly – while you’re
waiting, you can give Him all of your concerns and all of your worries, convinced
that He cares for you. “Therefore humble yourselves.” If we truly believe verse
5, then the response in verse 6 has to be, “I give. I give.” See yourself as you
truly are, and then see God as He truly is, and find yourself on your face. Let God
be God. “Under His mighty hand.” That’s pretty cool, right? It’s not like you’re
humbling yourself to someone who can’t help you or doesn’t know what to do. It’s
Almighty God. He’s pretty able, isn’t He? He’s more than capable. So you humble
yourself under His mighty hand, and then you wait patiently until He moves to use
you and lift you up, for “He’ll exalt you in due time.” I know it’s scary, but it works.
Let Him make the breaks for you. Let Him open the doors for you. Just submit to
Him. Deny yourself. The way with God – up with God is always down with you. Up
with God, down with you. That’s easy to remember, isn’t it? Up with God, down
with you. And I love the term “mighty hand of God.” In fact, every time you read
that little phrase in the Old Testament, it is always used to speak of the delivering
power of God’s hand upon people that were outnumbered or out skilled or
outmanned or whatever it might have been. They were in a negative position. They
were in a lose position, and yet God showed Himself strong on their behalf.
So, submit to the elder, submit to one another, submit to the Lord humbly. God
will graciously favor you while He will aggressively resist the proud. So it’s best to
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just pray, “Lord, Your will be done.” It’s not a cop-out. It would be a cop-out if
God didn’t tell you to do so. But, “God, Your will be done” is a great prayer. “God,
do what You want in my life.” It was the prophet Micah who said, “He has shown
you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justly,
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) In other words,
trust God enough with your life that you don’t need people’s affirmation or
approval. You’re waiting for God to raise you up. Now it doesn’t mean we don’t like
approval. We like pats on the back. We like people to say, “Hey, good job,” or, “I
really appreciated what you did.” But you’re not living for that. You’re living to
hear the Lord say, “Well done” because His blessing will move us forward.
So, “therefore humble yourselves,” and God is mighty, and He’ll lift you up when He
sees fit. And in the meantime, verse 7, give Him your worries. By the way, the
word “casting” means to throw. It doesn’t just mean lay down. It means to toss
from a distance. “Here You go, Lord,” and fire all those concerns His way. He
cares for you. Know this. God is not unaware of what you’re facing while you wait.
He’s not unaware of the difficulty. He’s not unaware of the frustration. He’s not
unaware of your concerns. He knows what’s going on, so throw them His way, and
don’t retrieve them like a fishing line. People go to pray, and they throw them up
to the Lord. “Here’re all my cares.” And as they leave, they reel them back in, and
they leave with them.
Now, notice in verse 7, there are two different words, though they are the same in
English; but there are two distinct words for the word “care” here in verse 7. The
first one is the Greek word “merimna,” which means anxiety. It literally is the
word for divide, but it means those things that divide your attention or that
distract you – worry that takes your mind and your thoughts away from everything
else and thus the word anxiety. It is the kind of things that you are set aside, and,
“How are you doing?” and “Oh, I can only think about this.” And it has taken your
joy away and your peace away and your hope away and your faith away. It is just a
care of this world, a care of your life. That’s what this word is. And the Lord said,
“I want you to throw those at Me.” Don’t allow them to divide you from His rest
and His peace any longer. The second “care,” the one that refers to the Lord
(there in verse 7), because “He cares for you,” is the Greek word “melo.” And
“melo” just means tremendous concern. Tremendous concern. So here’s the
marvelous truth: God takes tremendous concern over your anxieties. It blew
David’s mind. He said in Psalm 8:4, “What is man that You are mindful of him?” and
that’s the same word. What is man that You would take such concern for Him “and
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the son of man that You visit him?” If I could have you leave with one truth this
morning in your heart, it would be this – God cares for you far more than you know.
He is absolutely concerned with your life and your needs and your situations, and
you can give Him your anxieties because He has a tremendous concern. Isn’t it
interesting that God wants your cares and most others would rather not have
them? “Don’t talk to me about that, man. That’s your problem, not mine.” And the
Lord says, “I’ll take those. Throw them this way.” Here’s the deal. You can just
resign as the CEO of your life. Let Him be the Lord. He’ll care for you far better
than you’ll ever care for yourself, and then He’ll bring grace to the humble.
Now, look, the people that were on the other end of this letter that Peter was
writing to had abundant opportunities to be anxious. I don’t think you and I can
even begin to recognize what it must have been like to live in that day with a guy
just gunning for you. One of our missionaries that we support is on his way to
Baghdad this morning. He’s going to go teach the underground church. I said, “Are
you sure you want to do that?” He goes, “Oh, yeah. God has called me.” So you can
keep Dan in your prayers. But he’s just sure. He’s going there. Well, you may get a
taste of it if you were running around the streets of Baghdad with a Bible in your
hand. But in any event, this was the life and the plight of the church. I mean,
tremendous pressure. And yet the counsel of the Holy Spirit, through Peter to the
church, was take all of your worries, and throw them up to the Lord, knowing He
will carry them for He is greatly concerned for you. I think it’s pretty cool when
somebody’s actually greatly concerned for you. I don’t think you have too many
people in your life that are greatly concerned for you. Oh, there’ll be people who’ll
say, “I’ll be praying,” but they’re not greatly concerned for you. They’re saying, as
you leave, “Wow, I’m glad that didn’t happen to me!” And then there are those who
are just greatly concerned. Family, friends. Folks who God’s heart has touched
theirs. So, what counsel is this? What counsel is this? Nothing makes a father
prouder than to hear a child say, “Daddy will take care of this.” Well, He does, but
you have to cast your cares upon Him, humbling yourself under His mighty hand.
You have to be willing to let Him have it. Worry and anxiety – we’re all experts at,
and they’re debilitating, aren’t they? They can steal your life month after month
after year. Jesus said, there in Luke 12, “Take no thought for your life, what you
should eat; neither for your body, what you should put on. Which of you by taking
any thought” (same word – anxious thought) “can add a cubit to your life?” A cubit
is 18”. So by worrying, you’re going to get taller? No. And that was the point. Of
course not. “If you then are not able to do even those things that are least, why
take you thought for the rest?” Look, if you can’t add a few inches to your height,
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how are you going to add these things to your life? In Matthew 6, Jesus said,
“Don’t be like them in the world. Your Father knows what you have need of before
you ask.” So you can throw your cares His way. He has a tremendous interest in
you.
Each time a new burden arises, whether it’s large or small, by faith you can remind
yourself how much God cares. Rather than starting with, “Gosh, if God cared for
me………” How am I worrying about this? No. He cares. It says so right there.
You can throw Him your cares. He cares tremendously for you.
Now, it seems good to me coming from Peter, who’s been around for quite a while.
He’s been around half of his life now. In fact, by the time we get to the next book,
he’ll be in his mid-60’s, late-60’s by the time he dies. So he’s been around quite a
while, remembering all that the Lord did – from healing his mother-in-law to a
great catch of fish to paying his temple taxes to walking on the water to Jesus
picking up an ear that Peter had cut off; breaking him out of jail in Acts 12. I
mean, at some point Peter’s got to go, “Worry? Me worry? I can’t worry. I’ve got
to trust the Lord. Everything I throw His way, He can more than handle.”
So here’s the two-step process: casting our cares and then resting in His care.
Then you’ll be good. Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed,
for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with
My righteous right hand.” It’s easy for you to say. Well, it is! “If any of you lacks
wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it
will be given to him” (James 1:5). He’ll give you wisdom. He’ll strengthen you. “I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). “Commit
your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass” (Psalm 37:5).
You ought to read it sometime. It’s a great psalm about letting God have your
concerns.
So, here’s the deal. There’s a cooperation that we’re to have with God, and it
grows out of the same topic that Peter’s been speaking about since he started –
submission. And now it’s down to this – my submission to God’s care. And you have
a cooperation that God demands of you. It’s interesting to me. Some Christians
think God should do everything. But He doesn’t. Your part of growing spiritually is
letting God have the things that you worry about. He works in us and through us,
not just for us. In us, through us, not just for us. Learning of His care, resting in
it enough to leave our worries with Him, is a huge step towards spiritual maturity
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and finding the blessings of truly being submitted to Him. The problem is that
most folks, when they are confronted with that, begin to balk because they worry
about, “What if God was to make a decision I don’t like? I give Him my life, and He
takes something from it that I can’t live without. And so, what if I trust Him, and
I don’t like it? What if He doesn’t answer right away?” And the enemy will seek to
capitalize on that and the questions and the doubts and try to convince you that
you’re the kind of loser God won’t help. But he’s wrong. He’s wrong in every way.
“Cast your burden on the LORD, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the
righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22). Cast your burdens upon the Lord. He will
sustain you.
And one of the reasons we have so many cares is that we have an enemy who seeks
to keep our cares rather than our Lord in focus. In fact, notice verses 8-9 – that’s
the subject of next week’s message. I hate that guy.
Humility will make us teachable, keep us in a place where we can learn. And we
should stay humble. Humility will help us in our fellowship with each other. If we
exalt one another and consider each other more important than ourselves, what
kind of church is that?! You’d always be blessed, wouldn’t you? You can’t help but
be blessed. Humility will bring God’s grace while pride will bring God’s rejection
and opposition, active opposition. He will fight against you. He will resist. And the
word “resist” means actively. It’s a present-tense, “I will stand in your way. You
be proud, I’ll stand in your way.” And humility will bring promotion and a worryfree life.
Submitted by Maureen Dickson
October 27, 2015
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