Watch as Wyatt Graham unpacks 1 Peter 5:6-7.
When You Are Anxious
1 Peter 5:6-7 has a special place in my memory. About 11 or so years ago, I remember sitting in the hallway at my University being amazed at what the passage said.
Peter says,
“Humble yourselves then under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you at the right time by casting all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6–7).
Peter gives one command here: “humble yourselves” and he does so heal believers from worry and anxiety. How? In at least three ways.
- When you are anxious, rest in God’s mighty hand. If he can use that arm to create the world and to conquer nations, then he can help you in any situation.
- When you are anxious, share your worries with God. He will bear them for you.
- When you are anxious, go to God because he cares for you like a loving parent who will not turn you away.
So little did I know all those years ago that my experience of awe at 1 Peter 5 would matter after all these years. Because even though I have grown in my understanding of this passage, it has stayed with me and, I have the opportunity to share it with you today.
The Meaning of Humility
And here is what we can take away from 1 Peter 5:6-7 today: humility means fully resting in God. And humility is the antidote to non-clinical anxiety and worry. These sorts of anxieties are a kind of disorder where we restlessly worry about the next hour, day, or year.
But biblical humility brings our restless hearts to rest because it means resting in God, who makes our anxieties still.
To put it more simply, if you want to stop worrying, humble yourselves by resting in God’s love.
Rest Under God’s Mighty Hand
Peter says in verse 6, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”
Being humble has fallen out of vogue today. We either think humility means never voicing our opinions, never talking about our strengths. And sometimes we think being humble is a sort of weakness
But real humility means knowing yourself rightly. To be humble means that you know your limits and that you know that God is beyond limits. It means that you admit that you cannot handle everything and you confess that God can. It means you know that you cannot; but he can.
Our problem is that we live in a time of self-fulfillment. We don’t think we have limits. We join the corporation to make it to the top. We yearn to move up the wealth and prestige ladder by buying a nice car, home, or gadget. We strive to handle it all and gain it all on in our own strength.
We want to “exalt ourselves.” But God wants us to wait for the “proper time” before “he exalts you.”
Peter writes in verse 5, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So we need to wait on God’s timing, not ours to be exalted. Which isn’t always the time of your choosing.
Knowing Your Limits
And there is something to knowing our limits. When I was teenager, I was into fitness and strength training. I could lift heavy objects and had body that could move fast and do what I want.
Now, if a type a lot on my computer, my arms hurt.
And if I turn my neck oddly, I injure myself.
My body has rebelled. I am constrained by its limitations.
And I can keep trying to push through and rely on my physical strength, but I know that will always disappoint. Whatever I put my trust in that is not God will always disappoint me.
If I trust in my strength, it will fail me. If money, the same, If my mind, well, the same. If and when I lose these things or find that they are insufficient, then life begins to feel overwhelming and the worries of the world overcome us.
We think our job, health, or mind will always be there and can handle everything for us. But it won’t because we have limits. And we can either let worry take us or let God give us divine medicine.
Rely on God
And while modern medicine can treat forms of clinical anxiety, it doesn’t have the right medicine to heal all of our disordered worries. For these kinds of worries, Peter says that we need to stop relying your own power and rely on God.
The truth is that we all fail. We cannot do it all. And that’s okay because Peter tells us that God is here with a mighty arm under whose shadow we can find rest and comfort. He tells us that God may not exalt us in this life, but through his great power that conquered death, we will glorified together with the saints.
And this is true humility; when we see our weakness or limits, then we turn to our strength, which is God who is without limits. God is stronger than our worries. We turn to the protective arms of our heavenly Father and he will exalt us at the right time. So this is first stage of healing our restless worries.
Share Your Worries With God.
The second is that when we are anxious, we should “cast all our anxieties upon God” as Peter says in verse 7.
My daughter is two. When she is afraid or mad, she’ll often come running to me and sometimes grab my hand. Now, I may not have the mighty arm of God. But to her, it’s just about as good. I’ll sometimes ask her, “Are you sad”? She’ll tell me if she’s sad or mad or whatever it is. Yesterday, she was upset because she could not put a card in an envelope to play her “mail” game.”
But in her innocence, she teaches me one of the greatest lessons about faith that I could ever learn. God wants us to have childlike faith and trust in him. When she is in my arms, she is less worried about the circumstance because she is confident I can solve it for her.
Our heavenly Father loves us like I love my daughter. He wants us to run to him when we are worried about our stained shirt, our sickness, our job situation, or our child’s sports game. He wants us to run to him like a child into his arms because he cares for us.
Now when my daughter tells me how she feels, she’ll often get over her worry quickly. And there’s something there too, isn’t there? Have you ever noticed that when you talk about the thing that worries you, the weight lessons?
Now imagine that you could talk to the only person that fully understands your anxiety and will heal you of it at the right time? That’s God, and you can talk to him whenever you want.
Childlike Access
I’ve seen a meme online before that says something like: Only a young child would dare to ask a question of a great king during the night. Yet we have this childlike access to God always.
Everytime you worry. Tell God. Lay it out before him. Let him share the burden.
Lest this seem too theoretical, Peter might have in mind some very practical ways that we can do this.
In his letter, he’s talked about slaves with unkind masters. He’s talked about hard marriages. And even the government putting pressure on Christians.
Cast Your Struggles on God
This passage is for you if you struggle at work. Cast your struggles before God because he cares for you. Is your marriage in rough shape? Cast your roughshod marriage into God’s arms. Fearful of the future of our nation? Put it before God in prayer.
We’ve recently experienced two awful acts of violence in Toronto. And while we might be tempted to turn to fear and to despair, we instead can rush into our heavenly father’s arms. He wants to bear the burden of our fears, worries, and anxieties.
So put to rest your restless anxiety by casting your worries upon God. He has a mighty arm and knows when to exalt you. You can give him everything because he can handle it all; and you can give him every worry because he can bear it.
He Cares for you like a Loving Parent
And lastly now, when you are anxious, go to God “because God cares for you” as Peter says in verse 7.
God’s mighty hand, his exaltation of us, his bearing of your anxiety, and his care for you converge at one concrete point: Jesus.
The reason why you can know God cares for you as a Father when you worry is because he has done this for only begotten Son. And since we are in Christ, God treats us just the same.
Peter has already talked the Father’s care for Jesus In chapter 1 and verses 17–21, which says:
“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
He Does the Same For Us
Do you see God’s mighty hand over Christ? He is the judge of the earth and foreknew Christ before the world’s foundation. He did that for his Son, but he does the same for us. God foreknew youwhom his Son would save. He put death to death, sin to rest, and mended our sickness of mind, will, and emotions in Christ.
Do you see God exalting Christ at the right time? God gave Christ glory, exalting him to his right hand. He did that for Christ, but he does the same for us. We too await the coming glory due us in Christ Jesus. We are dead. And our lives our hid with him. And in him, he becomes to us our Wisdom, Redemption, and Glorification. He is our exaltation.
What about giving God his anxiety? The lamb’s precious blood bought our salvation yet before his death his sweat fell down his face like blood. Then he said, “not my will but yours.” He did this to heal our wills because we do not will as we ought.
When the anxieties of life weigh us down, know that Christ healed every weak thought, every wrong thing that we have ever desired and that has weighed us down.
He bore our anxiety in his body for us and for our salvation.
Do you see God’s care of Christ? God knew Christ from the world’s foundation and calls his blood precious. Since we are in Christ, we too are known and precious to him like little children.
How We Know He Cares
Everything that God will do for us he has already done for Christ. And that’s how you know he will protect you, exalt you, bear your worry, and care for you.
If you find yourself skeptical that, by casting yourself into God’s arms and sharing your worries with him, God will help you, then remember your union with Christ. Jesus is the archetype of the Christian life. He was the first Christian. And what God does for him, he does for us.
Jesus lived under God’s hand, was exalted at the right time, gave his anxiety to the Father, and knew the Father’s love. He did this so that we could know the same care from God.
And God cares about you profoundly:
- God who is immortal become mortal for you.
- He who is incorruptible become corruptible for you.
- He who is invisible became visible for you.
- He who is eternal become temporal for you.
- He who is without change changed for you.
- He who is without passion took on passion for you.
- He is without peer in wisdom grew in wisdom for you.
He did all of this because he loved you and wanted to heal your sin, your body, and your mental life. He wanted to renovate the whole of creation. And he has started to do so in the church.
Remaining divine, he added to himself humanity. And did so, so that we could know that God is for us. And if he is for us, what anxiety could be against us? What worry could stop God’s love for us?
If we accept our limits and God’s limitlessness, we know that he has the strength to bear all of our worries. But will he? Well, we know the answer is a resounding YES because of his great love for Christ which we have by union with him.
What Does Putting to Rest our Anxieties Look Like?
So what does putting to rest our anxieties look like? It looks like throwing yourself into the arms of God like a child, casting all of our childlike worry unto him, and knowing that he cares for us because of Christ.
Put simply, it’s thinking less of ourselves and more of God. It’s putting away our self and putting on Christ. It’s resting fully in God.
Tim Keller writes, “Anxiety (Not clincial, but rather the regular angst we have) is a daily statement to God saying, ‘I don’t think you have my best interest in mind.’” Yet he does have our best interest in mind.
Much of our discontentcomes down to one thing: we rest in something that is not God. We put effort into life apart from reliance on him. And this makes us anxious.This makes us self-exalting. This denies that God cares for us.
Divine Medicine
But we have divine medicine. It’s knowing our limits. It’s turning to God, giving him our worries in prayer, and accepting that God cares for you.
If you want one take away from this sermon, it’s this: the more we keep our burdens to ourselves the greater the burden becomes. But when we turn it over to God, he will carry it for you. He will do so because he loves us as he loves Christ. And this is the foundation of true humility, and this is what makes your restless worries find peace
Don’t do it all. Know your limits. And give everything that you cannot handle to the limitless God who loves you like a Father.
Above Every Worldly Grief
During the seventh century, a theologian by the name of Maximos thought carefully about the Christian life and experienced circumstances that could have made him exalt in his own wisdom or despair at his poorG lot.
Instead, he learned to humble himself, to wait on God’s exaltation, to give his burdens to God, and to rest in him.
Maximos gained the title confessor because the authorities tore out his tongue and sawed off his writing hand. They wanted to stop him talking about and writing of our Christ.
And here is something that Maximos wrote long before his fiery trial. He said, “He that flees all worldly desires places himself above every worldly grief” – Maximos (Century 1.22).
You see: our worldly desires for self-advancement, self-security, self-fulfillment end up imprisoning our griefs and worries in our bodies, in our selves.
But the Gospel teaches us to turn outward to God and hand everything over to him. This humility frees us from ourselves. And lets our restless hearts find rest in God. It raises us above every worldly grief and worry.
“Resting in God’s Almighty Hand” gives me the same problem as described in the other message I just sent.