Safe under His Mighty Hand

Safe under His Mighty Hand I Peter 5:5-14 Rock of Ages Cleft for Me, Let me hide myself in Thee….That's a good way to get people to sit down, back to your seats. Good morning everyone. Welcome to divine providence. I know there's a lot of visitors for those of you who don't know me, my name is Adrian Rincones. I serve as an elder here and I'm privileged to bring the word today and share with you. If you turn in your bibles to I Peter will be in I Peter Chapter Five. We've worked through this great epistle it's been a real blessing and today we will finish it off. It's been a blessing in my life and I hope in yours too. We're going to be in verses 5 through 11 and we'll start by reading that I Peter Chapter Five, verses 5 through 11. Let's read God's word. 5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Church, let's pray. Father, it's been a great morning to sing praises to you, to pray together, to be with the body. It's a blessing to be around your word and we just pray that it would come forth today, that you would use me for your glory. That it would come do the work that you purpose for it in our lives. Lord, that you we pray that you would teach us about humility, that you would teach us to trust You that you would teach us about your sovereignty over all things, including the suffering. Lord, I pray that you would teach us to, as we read earlier, that we would know that we don't live by bread alone, but that we live by every word that comes through your mouth. Lord, teach us these things. Humble us, open our hearts. We have so little time on this earth our life is super short we want to glorify you. We want to use our life for that Lord. Stir in our hearts. This desire. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Church. We're going to start in verse 5. Peter here is continuing a theme that he'd been teaching throughout the epistle. And he starts by talking about humility. So in, in verse 5, he describes humility as something as to clothe yourselves with humility. I thought that was interesting, that comparison. I think two things that we can take from that comparison of clothing yourselves is. One, we all know, we're all familiar with what clothes are, clothes are something that we see, we feel we see someone’s clothes, we can see it vividly. This idea of humility working its way from the interior to the exterior of our lives as Christians I believe what God's teaching us here about humility is that it should work its way out. When you look at Christians, you should be able to see their humility the same way you see people's clothes. You should be able to see the Christians humility. It should work its way out to the exterior. The other thing about clothing yourselves with humility it's also a way of putting action to humility. It's definitely not meant to be like an article of clothing that you take off and you put on, take off, put on and take off. It's not meant to be like that. I think God intends to write this and say, it's something that there's an action behind it our humility should be active, not passive. It's something when we say put on, it's to say that this humility is in work. It's in motion, it's working its way out in our lives. It’s similar to when Paul talks in Ephesians, when he says, walk in a manner worthy of your calling to which you've been called in all humility, this idea of walking in humility, it's an action. Our humility, is to, is to be working, not this passive thing that just lives inside us, right that's important. So I think, those are two things we can take from that text of clothing yourselves with humility. The definition I looked up for, the root word, humble says to lower in condition of lower in dignity or to destroy the power of or destroy the will of kind of the definition of humility or humbleness. I think we can interpret that by saying it's a surrender of your will, right? It's a surrender of the will. Godly humility would be exactly that. It's a surrender of our wills to the Lord. So how do we obtain this humility? We know it's an important attribute that God calls us to, to live out all over scripture. He calls us to live out humility. How do we obtain it? That becomes the question. It's not like Safe under His Mighty Hand I Peter 5:5-14 day one of salvation we have all the humility we need, right? I mean, I think all of us are aware of that, day one, we are not the humble, that humility that God's looking for, right? It's something that has to be built in us and taught to us and I can think of two ways primarily that scripture teaches us this and both of them have to do with coming from God. Two ways that we learned humility one would be that God teaches us humility through trials he teaches us humility, the trials and the second would be we learn humility by looking to Christ as an example, right? Because he's the perfect example. To talk about the first point of learning humility through trials turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 8. We are going back to Deuteronomy. This was the reading earlier, through the liturgy. Here, just as you turn there, Deuteronomy Chapter Eight, Moses is recalling into the Israelites the things that have happened throughout their time in the wilderness, right. He's reminded them, because he's preparing them as they enter the Promised Land, he is reminding them of all the work that God has done. So in Deuteronomy Chapter Eight, we'll start with verses 1 through 3. It says, THE WHOLE COMMANDMENT THAT I COMMAND YOU TODAY YOU SHALL BE CAREFUL TO DO, THAT YOU MAY LIVE 2 AND MULTIPLY, AND GO IN AND POSSESS THE LAND THAT THE LORD SWORE TO GIVE TO YOUR FATHERS. AND YOU SHALL REMEMBER THE WHOLE WAY THAT THE LORD YOUR GOD HAS LED YOU THESE FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS, THAT HE MIGHT HUMBLE YOU, TESTING YOU TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN YOUR HEART, WHETHER YOU WOULD KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS 3 OR NOT. AND HE HUMBLED YOU AND LET YOU HUNGER AND FED YOU WITH MANNA, WHICH YOU DID NOT KNOW, NOR DID YOUR FATHERS KNOW, THAT HE MIGHT MAKE YOU KNOW THAT MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT MAN LIVES BY EVERY WORD THAT COMES FROM THE MOUTH OF THE LORD It's clear in the text that God was humbling his people, right? He was teaching them humility and for them It was clearly a trial. Many of us in this room have not had the need to pray to the Lord earnestly for food. Many of us have not had that, but the Israelites did go through that trial. They knew very well what it was like to hunger and rely completely on the Lord, but the Lord was using that to humble them and teach them that we are sustained by every word, from His mouth. By his goodness and His grace. God teaches us this. He didn't starve them. Obviously he fed them manna, but they did suffer. They had anxieties and troubles, but the Lord was using that to teach them humility and he was using it for their good. As we read in verses 4 through 6, in that same chapter, we see that God also just sustained even the most simple things. 4 YOUR CLOTHING DID NOT WEAR OUT ON YOU AND YOUR FOOT DID NOT SWELL THESE FORTY YEARS. 5 KNOW THEN IN YOUR 6 HEART THAT, AS A MAN DISCIPLINES HIS SON, THE LORD YOUR GOD DISCIPLINES YOU. SO YOU SHALL KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE LORD YOUR GOD BY WALKING IN HIS WAYS AND BY FEARING HIM Because God loves his children He provided for them. You know, their clothes didn't wear out when I was reading that I was thinking of just how God clothes his people in the beginning, after the fall, and he's constantly clothing us and His grace and mercy in his Justice, righteousness, but God provided for them and even the soles of their shoes, you know, something so simple. So it wasn't that God didn't care about them it is because he loved them, that he was testing them and teaching them this humility for their good. So We go back to I Peter. Peter mentioned something similar to what we read in Deuteronomy, in chapter one, you remember that he opens the letter by talking about fiery trials and he says this, he says, “you've been grieved by various trials, so the tested genuineness of your faith would be found to result in praise and glory of Christ. Though it'd be tested by fire” Church, God is not shy or holding back in telling us why we go through these things. We go through them so that he teaches us this humility. He's molding us into this tool to be used for His glory. He needs to do that. He needs to mold us into what He wants us to become. and He uses these trials, and He does it because he loves you. So that would be one way we learn Humility is by God teaching us through trials. The second way we mentioned is by looking at Christ our perfect example. Many of you are a seasoned Christians. I mean to do this, you just look at all you know about Christ. Everything we know about God from the beginning, this faithful creator that was there from the beginning, You know, who made a beautiful creation, molding man in building them and creating them from dirt, breathing life into them, loving them, caring for them even after the fall. Clothing Safe under His Mighty Hand I Peter 5:5-14 them, caring for them, making a way to redeem them all throughout scripture. I mean we're all familiar with this. God is this wonderful creator, king of kings. You know, He is above all these things and what does he do? He condescends right? He comes down to dwell in the flesh with His people and what does He say when He comes? The Lord of Glory says I came to serve and not be served. God came down all the way. He humbled himself, made himself low like we heard that definition, and what does he do? He surrenders his will to His father and he willingly goes to the cross for His glory, right? Willingly surrenders his will to his father. When we think of what humility God wants to see in our lives, and we just look to Christ. He's our example in first Peter Chapter 2. Let's read this and verses 21 through 24, first Peter Chapter Two verses 21 through 24 says “21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” That's the Gospel, right? That's our example. So when we think of, okay, what humility does God want to see in our lives? One, we need to trust that he's going to work that in difficult ways and we need to be able to surrender our wills to that and be okay with it. Also we need to look to him as our example because God is that great, that he led us by example and we can rejoice in that. Let's go to verse 6 in the text, chapter 5 verse 6. It says, 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. So we learned about this humility and now in this verse, I think we could even read it in this way, where it says, humble yourselves therefore, we can say, surrender your wills, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Church, in order for us to surrender our wills, we have to learn that humility that we talked about, but also we need to be able to trust God fully. We need to be able to trust him. We need to be able to understand that all these things that we go through are under his sovereign will, we understand that his mighty hand is both a delivering hand, but also that mighty hand can be heavy. It can be heavy on your back at times like we read in that example in the Israelites, that mighty hand delivered them. They saw all those great, amazing works, but it was heavy on them through those 40 years for their good. We noticed in that text that it doesn't say humble yourselves and you will have no anxieties. It doesn't say that. It's clear that the Christian will have anxieties, but what does it say? Cast them on Christ because he cares for you. We have the place to put them if we trust r. That word cast is a Greek word that is only found one other place in the New Testament and it's found in Luke 19. It is where the disciples are casting their cloaks on the Colt, preparing it for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem. So it's a very active casting in putting these cloaks on the Colt. So when we read here in this text, cast your cares on Christ its something that's done with a lot of confidence. It's not something done through resignation or surrender. It's a casting knowing that he's going to take them. Part of being humble first and foremost is being humble before the Lord and trusting him that what he's doing is good and that we can run to him with our cares. It's the complete opposite of being proud. So a proud person when they have anxieties, what are they gonna do? They're gonna keep them in. They're going to try to fix it themselves, we're going to try to fix your own problems. You know, if you're struggling as a Christian and you're proud, you're going to be like, no, I don't want to confess this. I don't want to talk to anybody about this. I'll fix it. What does God call us to do? Be humble, trust, cast it on Christ, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Let's continue in chapter five. So we move onto verses eight and nine, and it says there, 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. Safe under His Mighty Hand I Peter 5:5-14 In these two verses, Peter uses similar warfare language that we see in other parts of scripture where we hear about putting on the armor of Christ, uh, this idea we're very familiar with and understand that we are in spiritual warfare. So he's saying be sober minded, be watchful, be alert. In Thessalonians, he says, be sober minded and place on the armor because the devil does attack, and we know that because scripture tells us. He's like a roaring lion Peter uses this picture here of a ferocious beast just waiting to devour. But he's writing this letter to believers and we know that the devil can't take away our salvation. We know that in confidence, right? We know where we stand firm in Christ, but what he (devil) can do is attack you to the point to rob you of all assurance of your salvation to make you doubt. The devil loves to attack the double minded Christian. When I say double minded, I'm referring to the text in James where he says, don't be double minded, and don’t let your faith go to and fro like the waves of the sea. Those kinds of folks. It's easy to prey on them and the devil will, because all of a sudden when things are going good they have faith, when things are going bad they start to doubt. So the devil will attack those and try to rob them of all assurance and make them unfruitful in their work for the Gospel. So the warning here is to stand firm to resist, be alert. We do this by relying on Christ and we know that. Verse 9 says, resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. Church, when we suffer and we go through trials and hardships, that's when your faith really starts to work. I think we know that that's where you start to waiver. If you're not standing on a firm foundation, you will waver in the hard times. I think Peter's making this clear, he makes it clear throughout the entire epistle, but it's important to have the proper understanding of sufferings in your Christian life and he's calling them to be alert and watchful. The other thing I think about when he says this, be sober minded is in chapter 4 of I Peter in the first verse, it says, Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, Be Sober minded and arm yourselves with the same way of thinking and understanding that suffering is part of the Christian life and it's under God's sovereignty. It's under his control. We arm ourselves by remembering the call to follow in his footsteps. In chapter 2, Peter says “to this you have been called to follow in my (Christ) footsteps” if you follow the footsteps of Christ where does it take you? We arm ourselves by resting in his holy word and his promises, remembering his promises in scripture we can stand firm. Now, I do want to pause here and talk about suffering a bit. When I was preparing this message, this was probably the strongest conviction I had, was about Christian suffering and understanding the proper context of it. Throughout the letter, Peter's talks about suffering and hardship a lot, and he calls the believers to rejoice, in those hardships. I truly understand that these hardships are related to religious persecution. You will be persecuted for your beliefs. Scripture makes that clear for that, for the one who desires glory will be persecuted. Scripture says brother will turn against brother, father, will turn against Son. God makes it really clear we will be persecuted for our beliefs and those are hardships. It's also the other hardships in our Christian life that we're talking about here. You'll suffer numerous things, illness, loss of loved ones, loss of finances, hard relationships, difficulties in marriage, real things that we suffer with, but it's important to know that those things aren't outside of God's control. It's not like he's not aware of what you're going through. It's not like he can’t reach those things. It's not out of his reach. He's fully aware of them. Those are hardships and we need to believe that God is sovereign over them. We are very quick when things are going good to say, that must have been God's providence or God is in control. When things are going good, it's easy to say that. When we confront something hard and what we believe to be bad, it's hard to say it’s God's Providence or God is in control. It's hard, but that doesn't mean it's not true. God is sovereign and we have to stand firm to say he's good all the time. ECCLESIASTES 7:13 says, consider the work of God who can make straight what he has made crooked. Think about that. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? Lamentations 3:37-38 who is spoken and it came to pass. Unless the Lord has commanded it, is it not from the mouth of the most high that both good and bad come. We talked about the Israelites, everything that happened to them in the wilderness, they probably viewed it as bad, but we just read in scripture. God was using it for their good. Safe under His Mighty Hand I Peter 5:5-14 This past Friday, my wife and I met this lady and she was telling us that she lost her only son when he was 12 years old and she was telling us how, you know, those 12 years flew by. It was due to illness and when they finally diagnosed the illness, it was very fast point from there, three to four months before he passed away. So it was difficult, you know, and she was saying how those 12 years, she didn't ever think that would happen. She felt like she didn't appreciate him and take care of him. It was difficult to sympathize with her because my wife and I have not experienced that kind of loss. Ironically we met her at my son's birthday party, where we were celebrating his 8th birthday party. So it was difficult. But nonetheless, we have to be able to say that God is in control and we have to be able to say and believe, truly, truly believe that he was sovereign over everything that happened in that lady's life and if she's a believer, he's going to use it for her good. We Have to believe that, I don't say that lightly, it's a very difficult thing, but that's just one example of many things, many hardships in our life that we have to be prepared to say, yes, God, you were in control and I believe. Many of you are undergoing hardships, and I encourage you to take this truth of God's sovereignty and wrestle with it. Pray about it earnestly. Run to this scriptures, run to your brothers and sisters in the faith and really get to the point where you can confidently say. I believe this. I truly, truly believe this, that God is sovereign over all things in my life and he uses them for good and why? Why? Because like we read in First Peter, because then you can stand firm in your faith and you'll be able to resist those attacks. As a young Christian in this church, I remember believing that God was good and he was a faithful creator and all things were created good and I always had difficulties reconciling all the evil in the world, you know, natural disasters, mass deaths and all these things, tsunamis, all those things I had difficulty with and I couldn't reconcile that with the good God. So I remember falling into the trap of, okay, well God must have created everything good and he created man and all these things good, but then he left them to their natural laws and their natural devices. I remember believing that and then my good friend and pastor, Joseph, did the right thing and took me to scripture. Little did I know that I was falling into the belief of deism. Deism is a very dangerous belief, it's a totally incorrect about God's sovereignty. To When he took me to the scriptures and taught me, I remember vividly saying, if God isn’t in control of even the most minute thing in this world, we have no confidence of our salvation. He said that, and it's true. How can we trust someone who can’t make his will to pass? So if he's not in control of even the most minute thing, where do we have our confidence? Church, I believe in this letter, God is teaching us that we need to have this confidence in our faith that and trust the Lord fully, that even in the hard times he sovereign and he has a perfect will, is infinite in wisdom, and he loves you. As simple as those verses are in Matthew 29 that say are not two sparrows sold for a penny and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore you are of more value than many sparrows. There is nothing outside of God's reach in this world. He's sovereign over everything. Let's stand firm in our faith and I really encourage you, church, just the way Peter's encouraging the believers here. Let's wrestle with this until we stand firm and believe it because it's not a question that the hardships are coming, you are probably in them or you know someone who's in them, that they will come. They'll come. You want to stand firm in your faith. The other part of that verse says, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. Church, we take confidence in knowing that we're part of a body. We're saved into a body of believers. We're not alone. What you're experiencing and your hardships and your doubts and the things you're wrestling with, you're not alone. We're one body. Take Comfort in that and let's run to Christ together and ask him to help us get through it. Let’s cast our cares on him. This should also be an encouragement to serve each other because we're quick to judge sometimes and be like, man, that brother man, he's always in a bad mood. Well, he might be going through a hardship and he needs to be encouraged. We're all in this as a body of believers together, remember that they're suffering throughout the world. It's all of us and that's why Peter says, dont believe something strange is happening to you because it's going to happen. Stand firm in your faith because God is there and he loves you. Let's go down to verse 10 and it says, 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Safe under His Mighty Hand I Peter 5:5-14 Church It all comes back to Christ. It all comes back to Christ. What we heard about it this morning in the call to worship, you heard about it during the prayer of confession and we sang about it. When we make Christ glory, our chief end, well guess what? When Christ is glorified, we're glorified, were exalted. We're the body. He's the head if the head is exalted then we are exalted, but it's when we're searching for our glory is when it doesn't work out. When Christ is glorified, we are, glorified, and we take comfort in that and we know that we will find all our joy in that. When we can rest fully in that 100 percent, what then can really, really shake you. You find all your joy in that and let's just go down to verses 12 through 14. As we close, as we close here 12 By Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. 13 She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. 14 Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ Isn't it a blessing to be part of the church. There is always brothers and sisters to help and care for you and grow with you, and we rely on that and we take encouragement of that. Church we covered in this text humility and we learned why and how we get this humility and where we look to learn from it. We learned about casting cares and trusting Christ. Part of that humility is trusting Christ fully and casting our cares on him. We learned about God's sovereignty and being able to trust him through those things especially the hardships, and then we know that all of this in the end is all for God's glory. Always point it back to Christ and peace will be with you. You know, I pray that we will all get to that point like we sang and like we're about to sing that great chorus of be thou my vision that says heart of my own heart, whatever, befall still be my vision, o ruler of all. When we can sing that, believe it and live it out, it would be a good thing. Let's pray. Lord, we're so thankful for this time so thankful for your word. We thank you for encouraging us, Lord. I just pray that you would stir these things in our heart. Help us live them out for your glory that will truly believe in all things that you are sovereign Lord, we could take all our comfort and peace and rest in that we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.