How Can I Cast My Cares on God?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Will I cast my cares on God?
00:00:07.560 | And those cares keep finding their way back to me.
00:00:10.640 | So how do I get rid of those cares for good?
00:00:14.400 | We get that question a lot.
00:00:16.200 | And today it comes in the form of an email
00:00:17.760 | from a listener to the podcast named Claire.
00:00:19.520 | Claire writes this, "Hello, Pastor John and Tony.
00:00:22.340 | "I'm a Christian college student
00:00:23.940 | "and I listen to APJ all the time."
00:00:26.400 | Wonderful.
00:00:27.360 | Pastor John, I was recently rereading your book,
00:00:30.240 | Battling Unbelief.
00:00:31.960 | In the first chapter, you mentioned 1 Peter 5, 7
00:00:34.200 | and that we should be casting our cares on God.
00:00:37.960 | I've often wondered about this command and how you do it.
00:00:41.120 | How do you cast your cares?
00:00:42.920 | Do you simply tell God you're giving up your worries?
00:00:45.940 | Additionally, once you do cast them,
00:00:47.720 | are we expected to forget those worries
00:00:49.720 | or can we expect them to come back to us?
00:00:53.080 | Pastor John, what would you say to Claire?
00:00:55.960 | Suppose you lived in a village with about 500 people
00:01:00.960 | and no army, no fortress.
00:01:04.560 | And suppose you heard that an enemy army
00:01:06.780 | of 5,000 armed soldiers was coming against you
00:01:11.320 | to take your village and destroy its inhabitants.
00:01:14.720 | Now that would be, in your heart, a burden.
00:01:18.720 | It would be an anxiety.
00:01:20.760 | And the kind of thing Peter says in 1 Peter 5, 7
00:01:24.080 | should be cast on the Lord, right?
00:01:25.720 | Cast your anxieties onto the Lord, or Psalm 55, 22.
00:01:30.720 | Roll your burden onto the Lord and he will sustain you.
00:01:36.120 | He will never let the righteous be moved.
00:01:40.520 | And suppose that there was a king
00:01:44.040 | with an army of 50,000 soldiers
00:01:46.640 | who had pledged himself to protect you and your village
00:01:52.520 | when you call him for help.
00:01:55.040 | So you send a messenger to the king
00:01:58.040 | and plead with him to come
00:01:59.920 | and protect you against the enemy.
00:02:02.480 | And he sends a royal messenger back with a message
00:02:06.880 | with the official king's seal on it that says,
00:02:11.880 | "I will protect you.
00:02:14.180 | "The enemy will not overwhelm you."
00:02:18.000 | Signed, the king.
00:02:20.640 | Now, what would it mean for you at that moment
00:02:25.040 | to cast your burden, to cast your anxiety onto the king?
00:02:30.040 | And surely the answer is,
00:02:34.360 | to the degree that you trust the king's promise
00:02:38.880 | to protect you, to that degree,
00:02:42.520 | your burden will be lifted.
00:02:46.360 | If your trust is small, you will still feel burdened.
00:02:51.360 | But if your trust is great, your burden will be light.
00:02:56.360 | So the key to casting your burdens,
00:02:59.880 | your anxieties onto the king
00:03:02.720 | is to trust the word of the king, the word of promise,
00:03:07.720 | which of course includes trusting that he has the power
00:03:12.400 | to do what he says he'll do.
00:03:13.680 | He has the wisdom to be as strategic as he needs to be.
00:03:18.160 | He has the will or the desire or the commitment
00:03:21.840 | to do what he says.
00:03:23.720 | Trust will involve all those things,
00:03:26.160 | but trust is the key to letting your burden go,
00:03:29.920 | putting your burden on the king.
00:03:32.420 | So when it comes to casting our anxieties onto God,
00:03:36.660 | the most fundamental thing is for God to tell us
00:03:41.800 | what kind of king he is.
00:03:44.520 | Is he the kind of God, the kind of king
00:03:48.040 | that wants to load his people down with burdens,
00:03:52.000 | like slave labor, like the Israelites in Egypt
00:03:56.240 | loaded down with making bricks without straw
00:03:59.680 | because that's the kind of king Pharaoh was,
00:04:02.960 | or is he the kind of God that loves to lift burdens
00:04:07.960 | off of his people?
00:04:10.040 | What kind of God is God?
00:04:12.760 | That has to be settled and God has to tell us
00:04:15.080 | and show us what kind of God he is.
00:04:17.280 | And oh, how liberating, how thrilling it was.
00:04:21.680 | I can remember it.
00:04:23.080 | How thrilling it was for me when I first saw the texts
00:04:28.080 | that I'm gonna read right now.
00:04:30.840 | I had never quite articulated for myself
00:04:35.540 | that God really is this way.
00:04:38.240 | This is the kind of God who created the universe,
00:04:41.800 | who sent Christ into the world,
00:04:43.880 | who governs things by the providence of his wisdom.
00:04:48.560 | He really is this kind of God.
00:04:50.820 | So here they are.
00:04:52.440 | Acts 17, verse 25.
00:04:54.760 | God is not served by human hands as though
00:04:57.440 | he needed anything, since he himself gives
00:05:02.440 | to all mankind life and breath and everything.
00:05:07.340 | In other words, God has no needs at all.
00:05:11.240 | He doesn't need me.
00:05:13.200 | He doesn't need my slave labor.
00:05:16.040 | On the contrary, he shows his divine fullness,
00:05:21.040 | wisdom, power, love by giving, not getting.
00:05:26.200 | That's Acts chapter 17, verse 25.
00:05:29.520 | Here's Psalm 50, 12 and 15.
00:05:33.160 | God says, "If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
00:05:38.040 | for the world and its fullness are mine.
00:05:42.380 | Call upon me in the day of trouble.
00:05:44.620 | I'll deliver you and you will glorify me."
00:05:49.060 | What an amazing two verses.
00:05:51.580 | In other words, never think that you can glorify God
00:05:55.400 | by sacrificially providing for him,
00:05:57.660 | providing your labor for him,
00:05:59.800 | as though he depended on you for anything.
00:06:02.180 | God is not glorified by being your beneficiary.
00:06:07.180 | He's glorified by being your benefactor.
00:06:11.460 | "Call on me," he says, "Call on me in the day of trouble.
00:06:15.660 | I'll deliver you."
00:06:17.540 | Not the other way around.
00:06:18.380 | I'll deliver you and you will glorify me
00:06:22.100 | for my delivering you.
00:06:24.740 | He'll never surrender the glory of being
00:06:28.820 | the all-sufficient provider and deliverer.
00:06:32.940 | Isaiah 64, 4.
00:06:34.620 | Oh my goodness, this is glorious.
00:06:36.460 | Remember the first time I saw this
00:06:37.780 | and had it pointed out to me
00:06:39.400 | of what kind of uniqueness God claims for himself.
00:06:43.300 | Here's Isaiah 64, 4.
00:06:45.100 | "From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear.
00:06:50.100 | No, I have seen a God besides you."
00:06:57.340 | Okay, now what's the uniqueness here
00:06:59.420 | that nobody has seen?
00:07:01.100 | Who works for those who wait for him.
00:07:05.700 | In other words, what makes God unique
00:07:09.460 | among all the pagan gods of the nations
00:07:13.060 | is that he doesn't look for help.
00:07:17.620 | He provides help.
00:07:19.980 | He works for those who wait for him.
00:07:23.580 | Bel and Nebo, those Babylonian gods,
00:07:27.000 | they're like idols sitting on carts
00:07:28.820 | that you gotta drag around with yokes over your shoulder.
00:07:33.540 | Whereas our God carries us, we don't carry him.
00:07:36.860 | And maybe the text that amazed me the most
00:07:39.820 | of this cluster that I'm reading
00:07:42.380 | was 2 Chronicles 16, 9.
00:07:46.560 | "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro
00:07:52.540 | throughout the whole earth to show himself strong
00:07:57.540 | for those whose heart is blameless toward him."
00:08:03.320 | What that really says is God is prowling around.
00:08:09.320 | He's on the lookout for people who let him work for them,
00:08:14.360 | for people whose hearts will turn to him
00:08:19.000 | and trust him to be strong on their behalf.
00:08:23.220 | God is looking for ways, so to speak,
00:08:26.940 | ways to show off his power for us, not against us,
00:08:31.940 | for the sake of those who humble themselves
00:08:34.420 | under his mighty hand and trust him to work for them.
00:08:37.980 | Amazing.
00:08:39.620 | One more text to illustrate the point,
00:08:42.140 | and it goes right to the heart of the matter
00:08:43.860 | because it has to do with the incarnation
00:08:46.460 | and what God was up to when he sent Jesus.
00:08:49.500 | Here's Mark 10, 45.
00:08:51.180 | "The Son of Man came not to be served,
00:08:56.180 | but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many."
00:09:02.800 | In other words, at the very peak of the revelation
00:09:08.340 | of who God is, namely in the incarnation of his own Son,
00:09:13.140 | the point he makes again is,
00:09:16.580 | "I'm not coming to recruit help.
00:09:19.860 | I'm not coming to be served.
00:09:22.320 | I'm coming to serve.
00:09:24.400 | I'm the Savior here.
00:09:26.160 | I'm the helper here.
00:09:27.840 | I'm the rescuer here.
00:09:30.080 | I'm the provider here.
00:09:31.960 | I'm the all-wise guide here.
00:09:34.040 | I'm the treasure here.
00:09:36.020 | Don't switch roles with me.
00:09:38.400 | Be needy, be satisfied, be trustful."
00:09:42.560 | So the answer to our most fundamental question,
00:09:46.360 | what kind of God are we dealing with
00:09:49.540 | when it comes to burden bearing,
00:09:52.420 | is that we are dealing with a God who is so full,
00:09:58.160 | he does not need our help to be fuller, to be better,
00:10:02.320 | to be more effective, to be more satisfied,
00:10:05.480 | to be more glorious.
00:10:06.780 | All of his fullness, all of his excellence,
00:10:11.580 | his effectiveness, his glory,
00:10:14.100 | all of it are shown for his people
00:10:18.480 | by his working for them, not them working for him.
00:10:23.480 | He lifts burdens.
00:10:25.780 | We don't lift his.
00:10:28.120 | So with this glorious, massive reality
00:10:34.420 | of the kind of God that we are dealing with,
00:10:38.420 | what it means to cast your burden or your anxiety
00:10:42.320 | on the Lord is that you listen to his promises
00:10:47.320 | concerning your situation,
00:10:50.620 | and you trust him, that he is the kind of God
00:10:55.220 | who is strong enough, wise enough, good enough
00:10:59.120 | to take onto his strong shoulders your concern
00:11:04.120 | and fulfill his promise to you.
00:11:08.400 | Now, notice that the command in 1 Peter
00:11:12.820 | to cast your anxieties on the Lord,
00:11:16.940 | in 1 Peter 5, 7, is preceded by the statement
00:11:21.940 | that God is mighty and followed by the statement
00:11:26.280 | that God cares.
00:11:28.580 | Goes like this, "Humble yourselves therefore
00:11:31.400 | "unto the mighty hand of God,
00:11:36.360 | "casting all your anxieties on him
00:11:40.540 | "because he cares for you."
00:11:44.100 | Therefore, the casting of our anxieties means
00:11:49.240 | trusting his might and trusting his care
00:11:54.240 | to fulfill specific promises that he makes
00:11:58.400 | to his children in their various situations of life.
00:12:02.000 | So, as I'm facing a situation of anxiety,
00:12:06.840 | I admit that I cannot provide God's needs.
00:12:11.260 | That's not my job.
00:12:12.640 | He doesn't want me to take that role.
00:12:14.520 | I'm helpless.
00:12:15.340 | God is all sufficient.
00:12:16.960 | So, I call to mind a promise like Isaiah 41, 10,
00:12:21.960 | my go-to precious promise, where God says to me personally,
00:12:27.000 | I can hear him say in my name almost,
00:12:29.400 | "John, I will help you.
00:12:32.080 | "I will strengthen you.
00:12:34.980 | "I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
00:12:39.980 | Wonderful promise.
00:12:42.240 | And I trust that promise at that moment
00:12:46.480 | and that trusting is the casting of my anxiety onto him.
00:12:51.480 | If by grace, I am able to rest in the promise,
00:12:58.200 | the burden is lifted and I can walk
00:13:01.280 | into the scary situation without fear.
00:13:04.920 | So, never cease to be amazed that God is not a man,
00:13:11.000 | that he should be served, but that he is God
00:13:17.680 | and that he delights to show his power and his care,
00:13:24.160 | not by burdening us, but by lifting our burdens.
00:13:28.960 | Trust him for this.
00:13:32.320 | - Amen, Pastor John.
00:13:33.160 | We trust him for this.
00:13:34.520 | We trust him.
00:13:35.340 | Thank you.
00:13:36.420 | And that was now the 30th mention on this podcast
00:13:40.400 | of Isaiah 41, 10.
00:13:43.040 | A go-to precious promise is exactly right.
00:13:45.560 | And if you want to find out how this text
00:13:48.660 | got so deeply rooted into Pastor John's life,
00:13:51.240 | see APJ 1232 in the archive.
00:13:54.320 | It's titled "John Piper's Most Used Promises."
00:13:57.880 | It's just a great episode all around.
00:13:59.240 | One of my favorites, APJ 1232.
00:14:02.120 | You can ask a question of your own.
00:14:03.520 | Find APJ 1232 or subscribe to the podcast
00:14:07.000 | all at askpastorjohn.com.
00:14:10.300 | Good people pleasing versus bad people pleasing.
00:14:16.120 | There's a difference.
00:14:17.000 | There's a difference between good people pleasing
00:14:19.360 | and bad people pleasing.
00:14:20.920 | So how do we know the difference?
00:14:22.720 | We need to figure it out, and we will next week.
00:14:25.520 | I'm your host Tony Reike.
00:14:26.640 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:14:28.600 | Have a great weekend.
00:14:29.640 | (upbeat music)
00:14:32.220 | (upbeat music)
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