What, Me Worry?
11/28 Reading Portions: 1 Chronicles 24-25; 1 Peter 5; Micah 3; Luke 12
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11/28 Reading Portions: 1 Chronicles 24-25; 1 Peter 5; Micah 3; Luke 12
1 Peter 5:7
casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
ANXIETIES
Today’s verse carries with it a commandment, a warning, and a blessing. First, it is a commandment. Why? Fret, cares, worry, and anxiety carried by the redeemed saint means that we are not trusting in a sovereign God. Is Jesus not King while we go through our situations and circumstances? Of course He is. When we don’t cast our cares upon Him, it is implying that we don’t trust that He is leading us into situations and circumstances to strengthen us spiritually, to conform us to His image, etc (Rom 8:28-29). It is a command from God, because apart from that command, we won’t do it. We hold on to woe, fret, and worry because we don’t want to get off the throne of our lives. We are not our own because we have been bought with a price (1 Cor 6:19-20). Second, it is a warning. When we don’t cast our cares upon the Lord Jesus Messiah, we become prey for the enemy, who seeks whom he may devour (1 Pet 5:8). We can’t be sober-minded or watchful when we are worried, when our hearts and minds are encumbered with so many cares. Third, casting our cares upon a sovereign Christ is a blessing that helps us fulfill another command, the command in the verse preceding our verse today:
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, 1 Peter 5:6
Because of the corruption remaining in our mortal flesh, we have a tendency to turn humility into a work. We’ll attempt to do things, or avoid things, or abstain from things, to make ourselves humble; and worse, we may attempt these things because of the beastly motive and unbiblical misunderstanding of desiring our own exaltation. On earth before Christ comes, our exaltation would oppose the requisite for true discipleship:
“If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Luke 9:23
How can we deny self when we are seeking our own exaltation? The answer: we can’t. But when we have the eyes of our faith set upon Christ and His exaltation, knowing He is sovereign and casting our cares upon Him, it humbles us to the dust. He has already paid the debt we cannot pay by paying it with His own life and death with no profit to Himself (Luke 17:10; Phil 2:5-8). And then, even after He has redeemed us, Jesus says, “Let Me take your cares.” That again, humbles us. And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood? Because He’s that good, to love the unlovely and unloveable, such as you and me. And back to exaltation, God will exalt us when Christ returns, giving you and me a glorified body (1 Jn 3:2), and making us immortal and incorruptible (1 Cor 15:51-54). And here’s the sweet, ironic part: when we cast our cares upon Christ, we cast the care of our exaltation into His precious, nail-pierced hand as well. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
We sometimes spend so much time trying to do the work of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Lord Jesus, the work of the Father, that we take on all these cares and anxieties. We try to be holy. We try to be humble. We try to be good. If we just spend time with Jesus, He will make us holy. Time with Jesus will humble us. Being with Jesus and viewing His goodness with the eyes of faith will cause us to want to respond to His love with love and good works. Casting our cares upon Him means being with Christ, because He alone is in the life-changing business (2 Cor 5:17).