Every Christian's Battle: Anxiety 1 Peter 5:6-7

The Sermon on the Mount and the Christian Problem of Anxiety

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow nor reap nor gather in the barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to the span of his life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. And if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, of how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things. And your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. What I just quoted to you was the words of the Lord Jesus Christ as He was giving the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, verses 25 -34.

And what He does in the Sermon on the Mount, He covers many different topics, but what He does is He addresses the common human problem. And it's a problem even for Christians. And that problem is the problem of anxiety.

We live far too often with fear. And Jesus has a solution to that fear that resides deep in our hearts. So this morning as we continue our sermon series through 1 Peter, we are going to be looking at what the Apostle Peter says concerning this topic.

And as we do this, we're going to take a deeper dive into what we already looked at as I quoted Matthew 6, verses 25 -34. So I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to 1 Peter 5. We're looking at verses 6 and 7 this morning.

And this sermon is titled, Anxiety, Every Human's Battle. And we will begin by reading these verses. 1 Peter 5, verses 6 and 7. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time He may exalt you.

Casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. Here's our big idea. Humble yourselves under the one who is sovereign. Humble yourselves under the one who is sovereign. And we're going to see one practice how as we dig into this text.

But before we do, let me give you a little recap of where we've been in 1 Peter. The last three sermons in 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter has addressed the shepherds of the local churches. In this text, we learn that the Lord has appointed certain men to look after the souls of the people in the church.

A faithful biblical shepherd is one who knows the sheep, serves joyfully, refuses to abuse his authority, sets an example worth emulating, one who works for the reward, and teaches the people to humbly follow their biblical leadership.

Humbling Ourselves Under the Mighty Hand of God

So now that we've done that recap, we are going to look at our text this morning that we've already read, but now we're going to zero in on. And I'm going to begin by zeroing in on verse 6 where once again Peter says, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time He may exalt you.

What Peter does is he transitions from talking about shepherds humbling themselves before God and church people humbling themselves by submitting to their biblical shepherds to generally saying that believers are to humble themselves before the Lord.

What he says specifically is that believers are to humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. What I shared one week ago and what I will share again is that humility is not thinking less of yourself, but rather it is thinking of yourself less.

It is understanding your place. It is understanding you are not meant to be like God, one who is worshipped. What goes with this is that you are not to trust yourself too much. What Peter is specifically addressing in verse 6 is that believers face difficult circumstances in their lives, and they need to remember the one who is over those circumstances.

Ephesians 1 .11 says that all things happen according to the counsel of His will. Psalm 139 tells us that God writes the story of every person, and more importantly, the story of every believer. As He writes in Psalm 139, verse 16, in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

He is able to do this because He is all-powerful. This is what Peter means when he writes that you are to humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. God's mighty hand is a phrase that is a symbol used in several places in the Old Testament.

For example, Ezekiel 20 .33 says, As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out, I will be king over you. The Scriptures use the symbol God's mighty hand to communicate His great power.

God is infinite in power and controls the course of human history. So the world is not full of random events. It is governed by a loving and wise God. This is not only at the macro level, the big level of the story He is writing.

It is also at the personal level. Our lives. He governs the life of the believer. Believers need to understand this. Ultimately, you're not in control of your life. The Lord is.

Think about this.

Did anybody choose to be born? We're here.

We're alive.

Do we choose the day we die?

Think about this.

He governs our lives. He chose when we were going to live and He has a plan for each of us. With this in mind, Peter writes that we need to give our troubles over to the Lord. In verse 7, he once again writes, Casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.

The One who is sovereign over your life, who writes the story of your life. If you are a sincere follower of the Lord, you must understand that He cares for you.

If you're here today.

And you've never put your trust in Christ, understand that Jesus went to the cross 2 ,000 years ago. He rose glorious from the dead. And He did this. He died for your sins so that anybody who believes in Him may have eternal life.

The Lord who is sovereign over the believer's life takes care over His followers. And with this important truth in mind, you are told to cast your cares on Him. What Peter is doing is alluding to an Old Testament verse, Psalm 55 .22.

Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. The Lord will never permit the righteous to be moved in their difficulties because He cares for you.

As Christians, we must understand how committed the Lord is to you. He gave up His Son for you. Romans 8 .32 says, He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not graciously give us all things?

He has given up His Son for you and you are His adopted children. Ephesians 1 .5 says that He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will. The Lord is fully committed to you.

He cares about the details of your life. Even the smallest details of your life, He cares about. What the Lord is calling you to do through the writing of His Apostle Peter in verses 6 and 7 of this chapter is to understand that as a follower of Christ, you don't rule your life.

And what a horrible experience it is when we worry to have that uneasy feeling that carries with us wherever we go. That causes us to lose sleep. That causes us to be ineffective at what the Lord has for us.

Do you know what worry reveals concerning our hearts? It reveals pride.

Think about that.

Anxiety and pride. When you should be casting your difficulties on the Lord shown through trusting Him to take care of everything, instead, we often take the burden on ourselves. We take the burden on ourselves obsessing over whatever difficulty we have instead of giving it over to Him and having His wonderful peace over us.

We are to give whatever worries that we have over to Him in prayer. This is what we sang this morning. What a friend we have in Jesus. The peace we often forfeit. If we would just take it to Him in prayer, and this is what I read earlier, Philippians 4, verses 6 and 7, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything.

By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. As we pray and trust, the Lord calms us by giving us His peace.

Just as Jesus calmed the waters on the Sea of Galilee when He said, let peace be still, so the Lord calms our hearts when our mind is going a thousand miles per hour. We all know what that's like. And as we think about what Peter is writing in our text this morning, there's a parallel text that I've already quoted to you, Matthew 6, verses 25 -34, that helps us better understand how to process worry and the solution for it.

In Matthew 6, 25 -34, Jesus addressed how we are to view our life in this world with the inevitable worries that come from it.

Food, Drink, and Clothing in Matthew 6

And if you'd like,.

You can turn there with me in Matthew 6. At the beginning of verse 25, Jesus says, do not be anxious for your life, about your life. This is a prohibition that Jesus is giving. What's a prohibition? Do not.

We see this in the Ten Commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false testimony. Do not covet. And we see it here. Do not be anxious. In this passage, Jesus gives three common examples where people frequently find themselves anxious.

These are food, drink, and clothing. Now as we are reading this, we need to remember the original audience. Jesus is talking to Galileans, many of whom did not have the wealth that we enjoy as Americans.

And if you look at world history, we live like kings. We have homes, land, a stockpile of food and drink. We have cars. And the truth is most of us have plenty, and even the poor have more than the poor in so many places in the world.

And we need to understand this as we read this. Now it is true that if we compare ourselves with Bill Gates, right, we're actually quite poor. But if we compare ourselves with most of the world, we're actually quite well off.

And in this text, what Jesus is doing is He's talking about the basic needs that we so often take for granted. In verse 25, He says, don't worry about food, drink, and clothing. And at the end of verse 25, He says, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

What Jesus is saying is all of our focus should not be on our life in this world. The people in Jesus' day may have wondered where their food was going to come from. And some thought obsessively about it.

Jesus is addressing the problem that there is too much focus on the necessities of life in this world. And it is also true that there's too much focus on the wants as well. After addressing the need for food and drink, He addresses the need for the body to be clothed.

Where there's a need or a want, there's too much focus on the things of life. Our secular world worships the body. They do this because they are trying to hold on to that which will eventually pass away.

This is why you see 70-year-olds who are trying to look like they're 40. Diets and fitness programs are incredibly popular. People are trying to hold on to this life. And this is because they're not thinking about the next.

They have no hope for a glorified body that you're going to have in the future. To secular people, this life is the main event. It's everything. This is all there is. And some think there might be heaven and hell, but they're not so sure.

So the thinking is, let's live for this life. Let's preserve the body. But to live for self-preservation is sinful. Now you might be saying, Pastor Seth, don't I see you running? Not as much these days, by the way.

I want to do more of that.

You seem to care about taking care of your body. And yes, taking care of the body is something we should do. 1 Timothy 4, 7, and 8 says, Train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

1 Corinthians 6, 19 says that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. So we should take care of our bodies. We should be good stewards of what God has given us. However, we should not make an idol out of our body like the world does.

I have news for you. If Christ delays His return past our lifetime, you will be dust again. Again, this body you have is temporary. Don't hold on to it like the world does. Jesus also talks about clothing.

Is not your life more than clothing? Many of the people that Jesus was talking to didn't have much clothing. They wondered if they would be without it. In our day, the problem is not that we don't have clothes.

The problem is that we care too much about how we look. There can be too much focus on this and not where it should be. Now, it's not bad to have nice clothes, but if that is where our focus is, then it's sinful.

We make an idol out of that which we obsess over. What Jesus is saying is whether you are worried about having enough clothing for your body or want more to measure up with society, don't occupy your mind with this.

Making yourself anxious. That's how anxiety works. We think about something. We obsess over something. Then we get this uneasy feeling. It affects our life. Sometimes people get so anxious that they even have medical issues.

I remember going to the hospital one time and the patient right next to me was there because of anxiety. She felt really this heaviness over her chest. What caused it? It was anxiety. It was worry. Now, Jesus gets, after this concern, these concerns with food, drink, and clothing, what he does here is he gives two illustrations as to how the Lord cares for his creation.

In the middle of these two illustrations, he also teaches us on what we should think about the span of our lives. Let's look at these two illustrations here. The first one is in verse 26 where he talks about the birds of the air.

They neither gather in the barns. They neither sow nor reap. And yet your heavenly Father cares for them. In this illustration and the second one we will see as well, Jesus uses a lesser to greater argument.

In other words, if God takes care of things less important than you, then of course he's going to take care of you. Jesus first addresses food and by implication drink. This is fascinating to think about.

As people who live where we do in a rural area, northwestern Wisconsin, we can understand this verse better than suburban folks like me, which I'm becoming less and less of every year I'm here. And we have farmers in this church.

You have food because you sow and then as God sends sun and rain, you reap a harvest. And that's all I know. That's the extent of my knowledge. We also have many people in this room who garden. This is what humans do to eat.

But this is not what birds do. Birds don't plant food and Jesus says there's not food waiting for them that was stockpiled in a barn. Birds don't work for food like humans do. Most food for humans must be grown or in more modern day, food is manufactured.

He didn't make birds that way. He made them to have instincts to find the plentiful resources that God has for them. Birds eat seeds, fruit, insects, fish, acorns, and even roadkill. Drive on Highway 87.

God provides for them. They also have plentiful water in oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. The Lord makes it so that birds and all wildlife can live on this planet. And some of you are being used by God to take care of animals, even bears who visit your bird feeder.

In the house I grew up in, my parents had a picture of two birds talking to each other. And what the birds said to one another is, why do these humans worry so much? Don't they understand that God takes care of them as He takes care of us?

The point Jesus is making here, He states at the end of verse 26, are you not of more value than they? This rhetorical question has an obvious answer. Of course you are. You are created in God's image.

Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27 says that. You are the pinnacle of creation. You are valuable. And how much more valuable once you become a follower of Christ? You're not only His image bearer, you're His child.

He cares for you. Birds are a part of God's creation and He takes care of them. But His care for animals pales in comparison to His care for us. So He will provide your food and drink and whatever it is that you need.

Now in our text, let's look at the second illustration where, just to kind of summarize, He talks about the lilies of the field. They neither toil nor spin. And yet He says, they're more glorious than Solomon.

King Solomon, who at the height of his kingdom was the greatest the kingdom of Israel had ever been. And yet, this grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, is more spectacular than Solomon in all of his glory.

I mean, think about the dandelions that you see outside.

It's amazing.

Every year we see them. There's other flowers. There's other wildflowers that grow in the field. One time I saw Isaiah go out into the weeds and I was yelling at him. I'm like, Isaiah, what are you doing?

And he grabbed a flower out and he was getting it for his mommy. And I thought that was so sweet. But the Lord does this. There's all these wildflowers. There's dandelions. And when Jesus says they're today alive and tomorrow thrown into the oven, what he's saying is that once these flowers reached a point where they were no longer beautiful, they would be ripped out and then put in an oven to get the fire going in ancient times.

But what's so amazing about this is that God takes special care to grow all of these beautiful flowers in the field. And they're gone just like that.

Winter comes.

They're gone. And then the growing season comes again and they're back. He takes a lot of care over something that is here one day and gone the next. So what he's telling us here is if he gives this much attention to something that is so small and is so temporal, you are so much more important than that.

He cares for you far more than that. Now Sean is a carpenter. Imagine him building a beautiful building and then tearing it down a year later. Sean had to put tremendous effort into making it so he's not going to tear it down and use that space for something else not too long after.

But God can do this because of his power and care. These flowers fade and die and others replace them the following year. And if he's willing to give that much care and attention to something so short-lived, then of course he will care for you.

This is what Jesus says at the end of verse 35. Will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? If he's going to clothe that, he's going to clothe you. Now Jesus mentions specifically that God will provide food and clothing, but the application is much broader.

He will provide all your needs. He gives you food, drink, shelter, work, money, possessions, health, and more. He even gives you the right friends at the right time to help you in your journey through life.

Don was sharing a story this morning that the furnace stopped at his house and everything froze up and he comes home after a couple days and finds it like this.

And so what does he need?

He needs a plumber. The guy who gave him a ride home. Guess what his occupation was?

Plumber.

And so he was able to help him.

And I was telling Don,.

I said if I was there, you would have been out of luck. But he had the right guy to help him. His provision is always there.

It's amazing.

Think about your life. Think about how he cares for you. We see this in our lives. I think of seasons in my life when I went through a season of loneliness and the most positive person I've ever met comes into my life.

I'm like, I need this guy. It's amazing.

My brother and I had a roommate and we were going through a difficult season. We meet this guy in a sauna and he was like the most positive person I've ever met. And he actually moved in with us and lived with us for a whole year.

You just see all the ways the Lord provides for you in your life. So these are the illustrations that he uses to show his care for us. But now let's go back to verse 27 where Jesus says, Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to the span of his life?

Earlier I mentioned that people try to hold on to life by taking care of their life in this world obsessively through strict diets, excessive exercise, anti-aging measures, excessive visits to the doctor.

A hypochondriac fears death and so they constantly visit the doctor when there is no imminent problem. When famous baseball player Ted Williams died, some members of his family wanted to freeze his body so that as technology advanced, maybe they could bring him back to life in the future.

True story.

But the Bible is very clear. Hebrews 9 .27 says it's appointed for man to die once and then comes judgment. Ted Williams isn't coming back. Once you die, there's no coming back. But people want to live forever and death is the greatest fear that people have.

Hebrews 2 .15 says that death is a lifelong slavery that hangs over unbelievers. But when you come to faith in Christ, the slavery is gone. You have no reason to fear. Everyone who believes that Jesus died for your sins and rose again from the dead has eternal life.

He conquered the grave and you conquer with him. When you know Christ, you are united to him. It's just passing through. As Philippians 3 .21 says, he will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.

But this is not so for the unbeliever, the one who has never found refuge in Christ. This person truly should fear death. And this is what people do. They fear everything. They go through this life without a God, an all-powerful God who cares for them.

And what Jesus tells us is don't be like unbelievers. Don't have this anxiety. When Jesus says, which of you, by being anxious, can have a single hour to the span of his life, what he's saying is, anxiety does you no good.

It just makes things worse. And that's our experience.

And yet we do it.

Because it's deep within our sinful hearts. We have this worry that is always there. But he wants us to give these things over to him. So Jesus says,.

Don't be like the unbeliever.

In Matthew 6, verses 31 and 32, he says, for the Gentiles seek after these things. When he says Gentiles, what he means is unbelievers in this text. But your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

He knows what you need. He has care over your life far more than we could ever imagine. It's interesting too because we went through COVID -19 not too long ago. And what we saw is that people's minds were preoccupied with COVID -19 with little attention paid to the most important things, like the destiny of their eternal soul.

We should expect the world to have their focus in the wrong places. The world is focused on self-preservation. And the world fears death. And the world trusts in itself for preservation. How many times did we hear, science is going to get us out of this?

In other words, interpretation,.

It's up to us.

We're not going to trust God to get us out of this. We should expect the world to be preoccupied with fear because they depend on themselves. It's all up to them. And if it's all up to you, be afraid.

But if it's up to God, there's no reason to fear. Safety and security is not found in health professionals or governors. We live in a world where people trust the medical establishment and governing authorities far too much.

Yes, there should be a level of submission as scripture commands, but no one should put their hope and trust in them or anyone else. But this is what happens in an unstable world. This type of environment grabs unbelievers because fear already has a deep hold on their hearts.

And this is just a new fear added to the ones that were already there. When people say that millions of Americans were going to die, this will get the worrier's attention. And we saw that. Unbelievers live in a worry chamber with no way of escape.

But there is a way of escape, and it's only found in Jesus Christ. It is true that there are some unbelievers who might be kind of carefree, like a surfer in California. He's a carefree person. But when it comes down to it, the only cure for worry is if Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life.

That is the only cure. And a lot of counselors aren't going to tell you that. But here we will say that loud and clear. He is the cure to your worry. And think about our world. It's all about trying to find peace.

Think about the religion of Buddhism. People do that pose, right? It's everywhere in our culture.

Where they...

I'm not going to actually demonstrate it here.

I'm just going to go.

And put my fingers out like this. It's everywhere in our culture where we need to find this release. We need to find this inner peace. And so they do it by, let's just empty our mind to find this inner peace.

But you know what the Bible says? You know what the cure is for peace? It's actually the opposite of that. We don't empty our minds. We actually fill our minds. But what do we fill our minds with? We fill our minds with the Word of God.

And we read that in Philippians 4 .8. The peace of God will dwell in you richly as you fill your mind with the Word of God, as you trust Him, as you trust and obey. It's truly amazing. It's amazing how Satan works.

It's always the opposite. It's a backwards world we live in. The solution to true, lasting peace comes to one's heart through trust in the Lord. Peter says to cast our cares upon the Lord in verse 7. And as I said earlier, we cast our cares by trusting Him to take care of us in whatever circumstances we face.

We commit our worries to Him in prayer knowing that He is in control. The mighty hand of God, as verse 6 says. He is in control. The one who lives this way is showing one's strong faith in the Lord. One clear mark of spiritual maturity is one who's not a worrier.

But giving your cares over to Him. This is how the Lord wants us to live. The world might be falling apart around you. But you can be at peace because He's with you. That's such an amazing reality. And believers all through history have experienced this peace that surpasses all understanding, as Philippians 4 -7 says.

We are to seek the kingdom of God first and His righteousness, and then all these things will be added to you. In other words, He will take care of it. Our eyes are supposed to be focused on trusting Him and obeying Him.

And as we do that, everything kind of takes care of itself. We don't need to worry about them. And every challenge we face, we go in trusting Him. And we will be successful as we trust Him. We will have His peace.

We will see His hand in the affairs of our life as we trust Him. And as we do this, as we humble ourselves, and as we trust Him, Peter says in the second half of verse 6, in 1 Peter 5, that at the proper time, He may exalt you.

That's quite the statement. In the future, the Lord will praise His faithful servants who trust Him. Even as you face difficulties that weigh heavy on your heart and that you go through inevitably, but as you give it over to Him, as you cast your cares on Him, trusting Him, you will have His peace.

And you will be useful to Him. This is a very important point to stress. Anxiety puts us on the sidelines. If we're anxious, we're not the husband, the wife we're supposed to be, the parent we're supposed to be, the friend we're supposed to be, the neighbors we're supposed to be, the community member we're supposed to be.

Anxiety just sidelines us. Because we're so overwhelmed with our own issues. But when we give it to Him, trusting Him, the Lord's going to use that person in this world. And that's the kind of people we want to be.

As we carry His peace with us. So as we summarize this, humble yourselves under the one who is sovereign. And in this text we've seen one practice how? By trusting the Lord's care over your life. Prideful people take their life into their own hands.

But humble people understand the one who is truly in control. They understand who's writing their story. He knows the circumstances that you will face, that He has planned, that form you into the man and woman that He wants you to be.

May we trust Him through every difficulty, experiencing His peace, while growing in our walk with Him, as we journey through this life. Now next Sunday, we're going to look at another important instruction that every Christian battles with.

And it's an unseen battle. It's our battle with the devil. As Peter talks about the devil prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Next Sunday we're going to look at that and how we defeat the devil's work in our lives.

But this time, let's pray. Father in Heaven, as we come before You, Lord, we need to humble ourselves and just say what a wonderful God You are. Lord, everybody in this room, let me ask them, who is their best friend?

Lord, truly, You are our best friend. We have no friend quite like You, who cares for us 100 of the time, who's always out for our best interests, who's always doing us good. What a place to be as followers of Jesus Christ.

And You made it all possible by sending Your Son to die in our place and adopting us as Your children. And my prayer is that everyone in this room would have that relationship with Christ, to be able to trust, to go through life with this peace, and to have eternal life.

That's my prayer. And apply this sermon, Lord, to everyone right where they are at. And I ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.