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Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
Good morning. My name is Krystal and our scripture today is first Peter chapter five verses six through nine. It's also printed for you there in your worship guide. Please listen carefully for this is God's word. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that so that the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.
Krystal Brummitt:Be sober minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. This is the word of the Lord.
Krystal Brummitt:Thanks be to God.
Matt Francisco:Pray with me. Father, this morning we are here to hear from you because your name and your renown are the desires of our hearts. The best thing that I could offer the people that are gathered here is advice, but what we need is good news. So I pray that you would speak it to us. We come before you like Simon Peter did before Jesus saying, where else would we go Lord because you have the words of eternal life.
Matt Francisco:So we pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would speak to us according to your word. Words of life and truth of comfort or affliction, that you would meet your people wherever they are this morning and you would speak to them because you are Lord. And we surrender and submit ourselves to you. In the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen.
Matt Francisco:I'm not too proud to admit it, but there are certain phrases that if they come out of your mouth, I'm going to judge you. If I ask how you're doing and you tell me you're living the dream, the only thing that you've told me is that I don't wanna talk to you. If you come up to me and ask if I'm working hard or hardly working, I feel like I know which one describes you. I don't know how these cliches came about or how we have all become so armed with this set of meaningless phrases to say when we don't know what else to say. Phrases like, it is what it is.
Matt Francisco:What does that mean? Better late than never. Is it? Or, Auburn looks really good this year. One of my least favorites is whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Matt Francisco:And whether you learned it from Nietzsche or Kanye West is irrelevant, it is obviously untrue. When the j shut down at the beginning of COVID, one of the first purchases that Aaron and I made was a subscription to Les Mills, an online set of workout videos. Yes, you are allowed to make fun of me. I started working out in front of the TV and as an athlete, I am known as a never was. Right?
Matt Francisco:So in eighth grade, my basketball coach, it's a true story, he cried as he told our entire team that I had received one vote for the all star team. With tears in his eyes, he said, you guys, you see how hard Matt is trying out there. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. So I start working out in front of the TV, doing these hit trainings and I don't know if you've ever tried them, they are awful. Within a few days, it was clear that one, I was very out of shape and two, I was done, like literally done.
Matt Francisco:I had torn the labrum in my hip and I needed surgery. It did not kill me but it certainly did not make me stronger. For five chapters, Peter has been encouraging believers about how to live as elect exiles as they suffer in a world that is not their home. Why would Peter feel the need to do this? Because suffering does not inevitably make us stronger.
Matt Francisco:Suffering, temptation, failure, all of these provide a crossroads. They will either draw us closer to God, make us more like Jesus, and serve as a witness to the world, or they will do the opposite. But they will never leave us the same. And what makes the difference? Where our hope is found and how we respond.
Matt Francisco:In first Peter five, suffering and temptation and failure, they seem to be at the forefront of Peter's mind. Back in March when we were studying the life of Peter, we looked at Luke 22 and this moment in particular seems fresh on Peter's mind as he is penning these words. It was the Thursday night of Holy Week and Jesus warned Peter that Satan demanded to have him that he might sift him like wheat. And he urged Peter and the rest of the disciples to watch and pray so that they would not fall into temptation. But while Jesus agonized in prayer, Peter slept.
Matt Francisco:So that when the moment of his great trial came, Peter was overconfident and underprepared and he fell into the trap of the evil one. Three times Peter denied even knowing his savior. The rooster crowed, Jesus looked at Peter in the eye and Peter wept bitterly. It was the rock bottom of Peter's life. But praise God, Peter's failure was not the end of his story.
Matt Francisco:Right? Because Jesus had prayed for him and then Jesus would restore him and then Jesus would fulfill his promise to Peter that when he had turned, he would then go and strengthen his brothers. And that is exactly what Peter is doing here. Decades have passed since that dark night. And that same young brash disciple is now an old battle tested pastor, writing words of life and wisdom to believers throughout the world facing intense trial and persecution.
Matt Francisco:So when Peter writes these words, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, casting all your anxieties on him. Be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He isn't writing abstract theology. He is writing from his own failures and scars. Peter knows what it's like to be blinded by pride.
Matt Francisco:Peter knows what it feels like to be overwhelmed by anxiety. Peter knows what it is like to sleep when he should have been praying. He knows what it feels like to be attacked and sifted by the enemy and to fall in temptation and to fail. And praise God, he knows what it is like to not be defined by those failures but by the love of his savior. And he calls all of us in the face of suffering, anxiety and temptation to be humble, to be prayerful and to be watchful.
Matt Francisco:So first to be humble. In verse six, Peter says, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you. If you don't know Michael Cogan, our care minister, you are truly missing out. Michael is the kind of guy that you want at your side when it's going down. And it doesn't really matter what it is, it could be a crisis in your family, it could be an argument over SEC football, it could be the end of the world, but you want Michael there.
Matt Francisco:And Michael is a man of extraordinary talents. In addition to being a very gifted counselor, he's a fantastic painter. He's also got two stripes on his purple belt in jujitsu. This is not a man to be trifled with. A year or so ago, he offered Ford Galen and me a free lesson on the mat over at 4th And Spring.
Matt Francisco:This is true. We rolled and suffice it to say, within seconds, Michael had me pinned so that I could not move. I like to think that I could escape, so I started pushing and the more that I pushed, the more it felt like my shoulder was separating and I felt all of the breath leaving my body as my eyes started to glaze over. I was helpless. I was completely at Michael's mercy.
Matt Francisco:But it wasn't Michael's desire to crush me. Maybe a little bit. Right? It wasn't really Michael's desire to crush me. In that moment when adrenaline was pumping through my body and I was desperate to escape, Michael told me to slow down.
Matt Francisco:He told me to notice my breathing, to pay attention to my body, and then to start thinking and then respond. He was using jujitsu to help teach me how to respond in moments of high stress or anxiety. He put me in a position of helplessness to help me learn something that I would have had difficulty learning otherwise. And in that moment, he had all of the power and all of the wisdom, right? I had none.
Matt Francisco:The only way that I could be helped was by tapping out and admitting my own helplessness. And that is the heart of humility that Peter is describing. As Joel said last week, grace flows down to the lowest place. God favors the humble. Humility begins with helplessness by admitting that we don't have the power or the wisdom to rule our lives or to know what is best, but God does.
Matt Francisco:And admitting my helplessness is something that is so hard for me to do. Far too often in my life when I've been anxious or stressed and I've gone to God in prayer and he hasn't quickly responded in the way that I wanted him to, I've tried to grasp the steering wheel from his hands as if he didn't know where the car needed to go. And yes, in those moments, I am acting out of anxiety, but the heart of that kind of anxiety is actually pride. You see, it smuggles in the assumption actually know better than God what I need or what is truly best. And over and against this form of anxious pride, Peter calls us to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.
Matt Francisco:As we've learned throughout our study of first Peter, humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God, it doesn't mean denying our circumstances or forcing a fake smile on our worst days. Instead, humbling ourselves begins with a childlike trust. God is with us and that God is for us even when our circumstances scream the opposite. And this phrase, the mighty hand of God, it's really key in this passage. It's a callback to the book of Exodus, where with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, the Lord led his chosen people Israel out of slavery from Egypt.
Matt Francisco:And with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, the Lord swallowed up his people's enemies at the Red Sea when they had no hope. But make no mistake, even while Israel was suffering under the hand of Pharaoh, the mighty hand of God was at work for his glory and his people's good. Even while they wandered through the desert wondering where their next meal was going to come from, Even when they groaned and said it was better for us in Egypt, the mighty hand of God was at work for his glory and his people's good. Even while Peter's readers, those elect exiles were suffering and were grieved by various trials. The mighty hand of God was at work Peter is saying, for his glory and for their good and the same is true for you and me.
Matt Francisco:God doesn't use his mighty hand to crush his children. He doesn't use it to coerce us or to beat us down so that we remember our place. No. In our moments of suffering or temptation, it is his mighty hand that is holding us fast. And it is his hand that is collecting his people's tears in a bottle because they are so precious to him.
Matt Francisco:No. Like a Michelangelo standing before a block of marble. Our God sees the David in each and every one of us. And he is at now at work accomplishing his purposes not merely in spite of our suffering, but through our suffering in ways that we could not now begin to understand or imagine. And in those moments when we struggle to trust that God is with us or for us or working at all, what do we do?
Matt Francisco:Peter tells us in verse seven, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Second, be prayerful. I want you to notice something really important here. Verse seven is not the beginning of a new sentence. The main verb of this verse is humble, which means that casting our anxieties is part of what it means to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.
Matt Francisco:Casting our anxieties is an expression of our humble, dependent, childlike trust that God is wise enough and powerful enough and loving enough to do what is actually best. And in Greek, this word that is translated cast, it means to hurl, and I love that. It's only used one other time in the New Testament when on Palm Sunday, the disciples, bring the colt to Jesus and Luke tells us casting their garments on the colt, they set Jesus on it. So the picture is really is really clear. Casting means that you take something, Something that you are carrying and you hand it over to someone else so that you don't carry it anymore.
Matt Francisco:It was yours, now it's someone else's. Jesus tells us in Matthew 11, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Jesus is literally asking you if you are heavy laden, if you are overwhelmed with a weight of care and anxiety, please give him your burdens so that you don't have to carry them anymore. He is pleading with you with love in his eyes. He isn't roll rolling his eyes at you, telling you it's time to get over it already.
Matt Francisco:He's not saying quit being a baby and just toughen it out. He's saying, I want to carry that for you. I know the burdens of your heart. I know your fears. I know your anxieties and I'm here and I would love nothing more than to carry that load for you.
Matt Francisco:And what is that load for you? I'm serious. When the lights go out at night, what is it that keeps you up? Maybe it's a relationship at work, maybe it's your finances, maybe it's your health or someone else's, maybe it's fears about how your kids are going to turn out, whether you're always gonna feel the way that you do. Jesus is begging you to take these things and lay them at his feet.
Matt Francisco:You can't carry that weight but he can and he wants to. And this is where we see those two commands converge. It is so humbling to admit our helplessness and to ask for help. But Jesus is inviting us to do so and he is offering us rest in return. And one of the most beautiful parts of this passage to me is that Peter calls us to cast our anxieties, to cast our cares on him, not merely because he is big enough or powerful enough or wise enough although he is, but because he cares for us.
Matt Francisco:We can cast all of our cares on God because he cares for us. Listen, no one has spent more time or energy or intentionality working for your good than God has. No one. No one cares for you as much as God cares for you. God's word tells us that he has set you as the apple of his eye.
Matt Francisco:That he has set you as a seal upon his heart. So one of the reasons that God hates this prideful anxious care so much is because it robs us of the sweet experience of tasting just how much God loves and cares for us. Because God is our father, if it matters to you, it matters to him. He wants to know what is on your mind and on your heart because he loves you. Or to put it another way, anxious prideful care is talking to yourself about something you can't do anything about.
Matt Francisco:While prayer is bringing something to God that he can do everything about. So cast your cares at the feet of the one who cares so much for you, laying your burdens at his feet in prayer. As we just sang, oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Friends, peace is not found in knowing what the future holds or knowing that your kids are going to be okay. Peace is found in casting and hurling your cares on the one who does.
Matt Francisco:There's this beautiful moment in Luke chapter 12 where Jesus is addressing his followers and he tells them not to be anxious about what they're gonna eat or what they're going to drink, what they have or what they are going to wear. And in verse 32, he says something absolutely wild. He says, fear not little flock for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. If we are a flock that means we have a shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd which means that we shall not want.
Matt Francisco:We shall not lack the things that we need. And because our shepherd is also our father, he knows what we need before we even ask. And because our shepherd is a father who is also a king, he has the kingdom, He has the means to give it to us. And what does Jesus tell us here? It is our father's great pleasure.
Matt Francisco:Nothing brings him more joy than giving you everything that he has. This is unbelievable good news. And if that is the heart of the Lord our God, then we can safely entrust to the Lord the things that we want to control. And we can trust the Lord to do what he promises to do. We cannot trust him to do the things that we want him to do because he never promised us that.
Matt Francisco:But he promised that he will do the very best thing. Romans eight thirty two says, he who did not spare his own son but graciously gave him up for us all, how will he not together with him give us all things? In other words, if the father did the hardest thing imaginable, if he took his only begotten, his beloved son, the holy innocent one, and he offered him up on the cross to be slaughtered for our sins, to meet our greatest need. It would be ludicrous to think that he wouldn't meet any of our lesser needs. God is impossibly for us and if he is that for us, who could be against us?
Matt Francisco:So every time we are anxious, we are provided an opportunity. We are invited once again to boldly approach the throne of grace. To come before the Lord our God with prayer and supplication. To make our request known to our father. Casting our cares on the one who cares.
Matt Francisco:Trusting that as we do so, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, it's going to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This is not a one time thing. This is a daily thing. Every time an anxiety comes upon us, it is another opportunity to remember and rejoice again in who our God is. And as we cast these things before the Lord, we are not therefore passive.
Matt Francisco:We prepare for action. And Peter calls us third to be watchful. He says in verse eight, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
Matt Francisco:All the way back in the garden, the serpent planted a seed of doubt in Eve's mind. Is God really good or is he just playing? Is God really for you Or is God keeping the best things for himself? Is God someone you can actually trust to look out for you? Or do you have to go get it yourself?
Matt Francisco:And by these whispered lies and half truths, the serpent sought to convince Adam and Eve that God was the withholder of the really good things. And Adam and Eve, they bit the fruit and the whole world fell apart. Now did the serpent force Eve's hand? No. Did he take the fruit and shove it down Eve's throat?
Matt Francisco:No. Eve and Adam, they listened. They believed the serpent and they chose to sin. But why did they choose to sin? Because they believed in that moment that just over there, just outside of God's word and God's ways was what they really wanted.
Matt Francisco:What would really make them happy or really make them secure. In other words, they believed a lie. They bit the fruit and it fractured their relationships with God, with themselves, with each other, and with the whole world. And make no mistake, sin will always lead you down a road that you don't want to go. Satan always presents the bait while hiding the hook.
Matt Francisco:And he has studied you and me carefully. He knows your weaknesses. He knows when you are most vulnerable and his goal Peter tells us is to devour you, to swallow you up in your sin. As Dustin learned in stranger things, if you don't put the baby Demogorgon dart to death immediately, if instead you try to hide it from your friends, if you treat it like a pet, It may seem enjoyable at first, but it's gonna grow. Soon it's gonna grow outside of your control and it may feel like you and the monster have an understanding, but then he'll grow and he'll eat your cat and eventually he'll try to eat you and all of your friends.
Matt Francisco:James one tells us that each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has been conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, it brings forth death. In other words, sin may start small but it grows and it will kill you, it will devour you. And I don't know what it is in your life. Maybe it's online gambling.
Matt Francisco:Maybe it's porn. Maybe it's the emphasis you place on the relationships in your life or your appearance. It could be literally anything. But the more you hide or you think that you have it under control, the more it is growing to devour you. The more those lies start to stack up, the more impossible it feels that you can admit the truth to God and someone else because it feels like if you confess, if you bring it out into the light, it will cost you everything.
Matt Francisco:Those who love you that they're going to leave or maybe it'll cost you your job or your reputation or your friends. But hear me, tolerating your sin is killing you. It is costing you everything. Sin slowly poisons your soul. It robs you of the joy and freedom that God desires you to experience in Christ.
Matt Francisco:It robs you of the sweetness of fellowship because you know that no one really knows you. Because you know what you're withholding. The more you hide, the more sin and Satan are swallowing you. They are devouring you. Not all at once, but bit by bit, bite by bite.
Matt Francisco:And as Peter makes clear in first Peter five, one of Satan's most effective tools is to come after us in moments of trial and suffering. Whispering, if God really loved you, it really wouldn't be this hard. If God really cared about you, he would have already answered that prayer. No one knows or understands what you're going through. No one, you are all alone.
Matt Francisco:What does Satan wanna do? He wants to isolate you and harden your heart against God and other people. He wants to use these lies to make you bitter, anxious and proud by convincing you that you are alone and that God is not with you and God is not for you. But you are not alone. Peter tells us here that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
Matt Francisco:Peter knows the lies that the enemy is going to bring to you and to me. And what is he saying here? He's saying, you have not been singled out. You are not the first believer to suffer under the weight of Satan's attack. You're not the first person to weep until it feels like you have no more tears to give.
Matt Francisco:You do not walk through the valley of the shadow of death alone. Take a look around this room or think about the people in your home group. You sit amongst the family of elect exiles who know temptation, who know pain, who know loss, who know failure, who know heartbreak. And you are a part of a family of brothers and sisters throughout the world and throughout history who have experienced trial and suffering and persecution. Many of whom, praise God, have resisted the devil standing firm in their faith, conquering the schemes of the accuser by the blood of the lamb, Revelation tells us, and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
Matt Francisco:This does not mean that the darkness is going to lift. Does not mean that God is going to answer your prayers in the way that you want him to. But the blood of the lamb on the cross means that God is with you and he is for you. And it also means that sin has been defeated. So when Peter calls us here to resist the devil standing firm in our faith, that means that we can resist.
Matt Francisco:While we have not yet been freed from the presence of sin by the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we have been freed from the power of sin. Even though in those moments of great temptation, Satan would love to convince you of nothing more than the fact that you have to give in. You don't. Because first John four tells us that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. So as powerful as Satan may seem when he roars, he is at best a tethered, wounded and dying lion.
Matt Francisco:God's word assures us that he will not let us be tempted beyond our ability to resist. And every temptation to sin is just as equally an opportunity to trust that God's grace is enough. It is an opportunity to pray and admit God is with me and has not abandoned me. I don't know what is best, but God knows exactly what I need and he wants to give it to me. I don't have to get my way because God knows what I actually need so I can cast my cares on the one who cares for me.
Matt Francisco:I can humble myself under the mighty hand of God, trusting that at the proper time, he will exalt me. Because at the proper time, the lion of Judah will roar and that prowling lion will prowl no more. Because as relentless as Satan seems, he is absolutely no match for the relentless love of God in Christ. Adam and Eve, they bit the fruit and the whole world fell apart, but praise God that was not the end of the story. In love, Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, he came to this earth.
Matt Francisco:He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form, the mighty son of God, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. In other words, the mighty hand of God that should have fallen upon each and every one of us in judgment. Instead was the mighty hand that was pierced for our transgressions. So that by his death, the mighty hand of God, that same mighty hand that led his people out of bondage in Egypt and swallowed their enemies, that devoured their enemies at the Red Sea, has led us out of our bondage to sin and will swallow up sin, Satan and death forever. Satan will be crushed because Jesus was crushed in our place.
Matt Francisco:And Philippians tells us, therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. At the proper time, Jesus will be exalted and every tongue will confess that he is Lord. And when Jesus is exalted at the proper time, he will exalt us also. The mighty hand of God which is now working for your good in love and care for you, his flock, will safely lead us to the true promised land, our eternal home.
Matt Francisco:Valleys will be raised up and mountains will be laid low. The proper time means that God has not lost track of the clock no matter what it may seem like. Even if our bodies fail, even if things don't get better in our lifetimes, God has not forgotten you and he has not forgotten his promises. He has not lost track of time and he has not lost track of you. So we don't have to live our best lives now.
Matt Francisco:Things don't have to go our way in this world. Our names, our reputations, they belong to the Lord and he keeps them in his holy care. And we are headed home to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading being kept now in heaven for us. And there absolutely is no comparison. So as Peter has urged us before, I wanna urge us again.
Matt Francisco:Let us prepare our minds for action and being sober minded, set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Let's go to him now in prayer. Jesus, whose father's good pleasure it is to give us the kingdom, pray that you would humble us under your mighty hand as we cast all of our anxieties and cares on you. Pray that you would carry all of our burdens for us because we know that we can't do it for ourselves. We pray that you would forgive us when we try.
Matt Francisco:In those moments of stress or anxiety or temptation or trial, help us to remember that you're God and we're not and that's a good thing. You care for us more than we could imagine. And whenever we're tempted to doubt, I pray that you would fix our eyes on Jesus, king of kings, the lord of lords who bore the greatest burden of ours, who bore our greatest burden, our sin, and showed us once and for all the depths of your infinite love for us. We pray these things in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.