The Mighty Hand of God That Lifts, Not Crushes

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Awesome. Well, welcome today. If you are visiting, or you are just here and getting used to some of our new stuff, could we get that first slide up there that shows where you can kind of follow along with the sermon? The scriptures are up there? Yes, thank you.

You can click this QR code. Regis has made it very fancy and very easy to follow along with the scriptures—at least the ones that I gave him, not the ones that I come up with in the moment. But they will be there, and I think in context, give a little bit of a few verses before and after. So that is available to you.

If you want to use your phone, I would encourage you, if you use your phone, disable everything else—or at least put it on Do Not Disturb or something—so you don’t get texts that distract you or alerts from Facebook telling you to be outraged at something or afraid, deeply afraid of something else. So you can do that there.

Let’s pray, and then we will jump in here.

Lord, I thank you, God, again, that to humble ourselves under your mighty hand is the great work and great privilege of the Christian, of the Church. Lord, would you—God, would you bear the fruit of peace in our lives as we learn what it means to cast, to throw everything that concerns us onto you who carries it all?

I pray again for the miracle of presence: presence to your Word, presence to one another, and your presence to us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

All right. We are in First Peter. We’re in this series, Praying with Sinners and Saints, which—we have been looking at different prayers throughout scripture, throughout church history, learning what it looks like, what it means to give all of life’s experiences, bringing them to speech in the presence of God who loves us.

And today is not so much a prayer, but it orients us towards a posture and a content—content for prayer.

“Humble yourselves,” Peter says, “therefore under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

I want you to imagine a woman. Let’s call her Elena. I don’t think you’ll have to use too much imagination here, though.

She wakes up before dawn, packs lunch for her kids, answers emails, scrolls through messages from work. She’s a mom, she’s a manager, she’s a daughter, she’s a friend—and somehow she’s expected to excel at every role.

She’s told to be nurturing but not needy, to be ambitious but not aggressive, to be put together but not high-maintenance. Look good, but don’t make a big deal out of it, okay? Available, but not overwhelmed.

Her calendar’s full, right? Her mind is cluttered. Her heart is tired. She holds the weight of everyone’s needs—her children’s emotions, her aging parents’ care, her coworkers’ expectations, her partner’s support—and underneath it all, there’s a silent fear: “What if I drop something? What if I forget? What if I’m not enough?”

So she presses on. She smiles, right? Smiles through it. Wears a mask of strength. But underneath the surface, it’s like static electricity. It’s buzzing. There’s tension. There’s tightening. There’s exhaustion.

And often the church culture doesn’t help, right? “Be a Proverbs 31 woman, all right? Lay down your life. Serve joyfully.” But where, she wonders, is her safe place to lay it all down?

I wonder if you can relate to any of this. And if you’re a man, just insert your own silent struggle—the underlying stress and buzz of pressure to fulfill every role: to man up, to not cry, to look tough, whatever it may be.

Do you feel the pressure and the cares of the world and your responsibilities—to your children, to your grandchildren, to your parents, to your coworkers, to the church, to your city, to the nations, to the world, right? Do you feel all this pressure?

I wonder if there’s a lighter way to live. I think we know in our heads there’s a lighter way to live. Is there a less burdensome and more peaceful way to move through the world? Less anxious way, while still fully embracing our responsibilities?

This is, I believe, what Peter is trying to communicate in these short verses. He’s inviting us out of this anxious toil, out of this silent suffering where we feel the weight of all of our relationships, all of our responsibilities—even of the world and the state in which it is.

And so right now, here’s the good news that Peter is going to proclaim to us. I’m just gonna give it to you at the end. Spoiler alert, here:

The God who sees Elena sees you, and sees every man and woman bowed down with silent expectations. And this God is stretching out his mighty hand to you—not to demand more. He’s not extending his hand to give you another list of responsibilities and rules to follow and ways you’re not measuring up.

He’s stretching out his mighty hand to lift you up, to draw you close, and to receive all that concerns you—all that burdens you—all the responsibilities and the pressures that you feel are the full weight of.

He is there extending his hand to lift. He’s not piling on. He’s pulling close. And he’s reminding us, you don’t have to carry it all.

You don’t. Your job is not to be everything to everyone.

God’s saying, that’s my job. I’m supposed to be God. You’re not. Cast it—all of it—on me. Because he cares not just about what you do, but who you are. He cares about not just your strength, but your struggle.

And so here’s the context of First Peter in which he writes. It’s a pastoral letter. It’s a letter of care and concern to a community of people that are suffering greatly. They are in a season of really intense persecution under the Roman Empire. They’re being marginalized and persecuted.

And this doesn’t just look like being tortured, okay, or being thrown to the lions. It also looks like being kind of ostracized, being demoted as second-class citizens. Maybe you own a shop and no one shops there, and so you’re having economic struggles because you’re a Christian and there’s pressure not to patronize those kinds of places.

So people in this church have relationships that are broken due to maybe a conflict in faith, right? Some of their relatives may have denied Christ and pledged allegiance to Caesar. Others may have been killed or tortured or imprisoned. Others are experiencing financial hardship. There’s a lot going on here.

And Peter writes to comfort the church and to remind them of who they are. And so it’s a radical word, right? It’s a radical word.

And so as we go through this text, I want you to carry with you all that concerns you, right? The burdens. What’s most prominent? What most prominently comes to your mind in terms of cares, concerns, burdens?

Is it your family? Is it your marriage? Is it your parents? Is it your finances? Is it the world events that seem to be just spiraling out of control? Is it your health or someone that you love’s health or your children’s health? Is it your future? Your kids’ futures? Is it your marriage? What is it?

I think all of these cares and responsibilities can look differently. And H.B. Charles Jr. frames it this way—I thought this was helpful—because these kind of name some of the feelings that we feel and what kind of cares and burdens we are carrying when we feel them.

If you feel regret, it’s because you’re carrying yesterday’s burdens. Stress is carrying today’s burdens. And worry is carrying tomorrow’s burdens.

So—regret, stress, worry. Which of these is robbing your joy? Is robbing your peace? Which of these do you carry the most? I carry all three, so I win now.

We carry these things. So how does Peter, how does God invite us out of these burdens?

And he says this: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.” This seems—as I thought of it—how does this relate? I actually even tried to like, maybe this verse doesn’t relate to the next one. But it’s connected. It’s connected.

This part of the chapter, he’s just giving like one-off kind of statements of advice or exhortations as he ends the letter. And so this connects: “Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.” How does this relate to our anxiety—how humility, humbling ourselves?

I was thinking about it. And I think worry, stress, regret—all these burdens that we cling to and carry and take on ourselves—I think it can betray, not always, but can betray too low a view of God and too low a view of self.

Often, right, regret, stress, worry is an indication that we’ve forgotten that God is both able and willing, right? We’ve forgotten the character of God, that God is able and willing to address all that concerns us. That he has us and has it all. He cares about us.

There’s something in our community—kind of an axiom that we say a lot: God cares about all of it more than you do.

Imagine that. Think about how much you care about your kids, or your spouse, or the things that concern you—your finances—how much stress that brings. God cares about that more than you. He feels. He feels it more than you. He loves them more than you.

So this is something important to remember. When we have stress and anxiety, sometimes it is the result of forgetting who God is and how deeply he cares and how present he is in not only our lives but in the lives of those we are concerned about.

Right? I’m scared to death of my children being—I don’t want my kids to ever feel—I don’t want their feelings to get hurt. Now I hurt their feelings, that’s okay. But I just, I have this fear of them being, yeah, embarrassed, ridiculed, stuff that happens to you as a human being. I don’t want that.

And so some of that is played out like—we’re gonna homeschool. That’s not the only reason we homeschool, but I just want to protect them from that happening, you know?

But I need to remember that God has them, even when I’m not there. I’m not with my kids right now. That could freak me out from it. I’m not with my wife right now. But I entrust them to the God who cares about them, loves them even more than I do.

And that’s comforting. That’s comforting, right? He cares about your marriage. He cares about your health. He cares about your spiritual formation. He cares about Palestine and Ukraine and Israel and children going hungry and alone all around the world and in your neighborhood. He cares about it all more than you.

And so we need to rest in God’s care for you and for those you love.

So this is where it starts. It starts with releasing control. So anxiety and stress is a form of kind of control, right? And an inflated view of your ability to carry it. And we begin to break under that pressure.

So, the mighty hand of God—what is that all about?

The mighty hand of God—my brain immediately went to the mighty hand of God who will crush you if you don’t humble yourself. I don’t know. Is that kind of what you heard a little bit? I don’t know why, that’s where my brain goes.

But in this context—”Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God”—what’s the mighty hand of God?

It’s the hand that rescues you. This is a phrase from Exodus. The mighty hand of God who’s mighty to save, who’s mighty to redeem you from oppression of Pharaoh and empire and Egypt, right? Who parts the Red Sea—that’s the hand of God, right?

The mighty hand of God who sent Jesus, performed miracles, was crucified and what? Rose from the dead. Imparts the Spirit and empowers the Church to love and to serve the world, to heal the very human heart.

This is the mighty hand of God—the mighty hand of God to forgive, to save. That is the mighty hand of God.

We need to get rid of this idea: the mighty hand of God is like, “Don’t hit me.” It’s like, no. It’s to save you. It’s to lift you. It’s to hold you. It’s to carry you. It’s the mighty hand of a loving Father, right? Not an abusive one.

So our view of God has to change if we’re going to get rid of the stress and anxiety. Because again, the roots of stress and anxiety can often be a misunderstanding of who God is. The mighty hand of God is to save, to lift, to redeem.

And so, to humble ourselves is to consent to his strength, to carry what we cannot carry ourselves. It’s to acknowledge that there is a hand stronger than mine needed to lift what I cannot. There’s a hand stronger than mine to lift, and that’s freeing. That’s freeing.

It’s freeing when I think about my children’s future, when I think about my wife’s peace, when I think about my brother’s struggles or my neighbors’ lives. It’s freeing that there’s a stronger hand than mine to care for, to protect, to lift, to transform the lives of those I care about.

And so: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you in due time.” In due time.

This is where we get a little… this is where stress—and I’m gonna acknowledge it—this is where it gets stressful. “In due time.” Not right now. Very rarely.

I mean, I’ve gone into neighbors’ homes. They’ve come to my house and they’re like, “Jesse, I’m hearing voices.” I think I’ve shared this with you before. This happens often. “I’m hearing voices. I need them to stop. Would you come pray for my apartment?” We go over there, and there’s holes in walls because there are voices in the walls and they’re trying to get them out.

And we need—I need—God to act now, because this person is gonna be evicted. This person is in deep crisis. And man, it didn’t happen now. Didn’t happen now, and the due time is yet to come.

So this rescue is not immediate all the time. But it is certain. It is certain.

My neighbor Vern, who heard those voices and ended up homeless—and we still see him from time to time—his story is not over. His redemption is certain. His healing will come and is coming and is happening. We believe that. We trust it.

There is a future vindication. God will lift you up. The timeline is unknown to us. And I believe God is present at work undoing and untangling all the complex reasons why there’s so much suffering and pain and voices and chemical imbalances and all of these things.

He is—imperfect love—untangling, disentangling all of this. So it’s not always immediate, but it is certain. It is being unraveled. It is being unwound.

We live in this tension. Have you heard of this tension? The already/not yet of God’s kingdom.

God—Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” It’s now. Repent and believe. Get on board. Join the train of the kingdom of God.

And it happens. It’s coming. There’s healing. There’s love bursting forth. There’s beautiful—justice is on the move and it’s happening. And there’s many beautiful things happening. There’s many beautiful stories of redemption and restoration.

But it’s also not yet. There’s still the last grasp of power by Satan, by the enemy. All wrong things have not been made right. The curse of sin and death still clings to us.

And so we live in the time in between the times, between the arrival of the kingdom and between the fulfillment of the kingdom. And we live in this tension.

And to us, it feels like forever, forever, forever. But in the end, all things will be well and all manner of things shall be well, as St. Julian of Norwich taught us to pray.

So the way of Jesus is a kingdom posture, the trust that we’re in the time in between the times—that God is on the throne, he is moving, and there is a time in the future that is certain, that will be our healing. It’s coming.

And he says, “Cast all your anxiety on him.”

So here’s the result of humility, and here’s the result of understanding the character and nature of God and how God is at work in the world.

We don’t respond by clinging to all of our responsibilities and saying, “It’s all up to me,” and heaping on more burdens. But we cast them onto God.

It recognizes that his hand is mighty to save, right?

This is not a gentle placing. The Greek word for cast is to hurl or to throw with force. It’s like, “Get off me.” It’s like throwing it off—like when you can’t carry it anymore.

I remember I was in eighth grade. And we’ve already established, if you’ve been here a little bit, that I’m not a great camper. I’m not a great outdoorsman. I want to be, and I want to see—I see it in the magazines. I look at Paul Schlaben, and I’m like, “Hey, I want to be that guy.”

But when I’m out there, there’s mosquitoes. It’s hot. There’s rocks under the—it’s no fun.

But I was on this—my parents, they wanted to give me all the experiences, they were very good at that. So in eighth grade, I’m in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Pretty hard hike. Eighth grade. First time really doing anything like that.

And there was a bunch of older kids, like high school seniors, juniors. We’ve got this big backpack. And we’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s like snow and sheep and things. I’m going.

And my shoulders hurt so bad, and I was so thirsty, and I was so tired. I’m like, “God, why? When will this stop?”

And one of the older kids—I’ll never forget this—he’s a senior in high school. He saw that I was struggling. I think I had even a migraine or something. And he’s like, “Hey man, let me take your bag.”

I’m like, “Oh,” and I just threw it on him. I couldn’t move.

And he took it. And man, the lightness of that. You know, when you take a backpack off, it’s like, “Whoa.” You know, like, “Okay. I’m bouncing off the mountain now. I can do it.”

And so this is what this word “cast” means. It’s to see there’s someone stronger than you, offering out, reaching out their mighty hand, right? The mighty hand of a high school senior reaching out. And I thrust it upon him. I let him take it fully. Fully.

And so this is—Jesus is like this older brother on the trail. And he says, “I’ll carry that. I’ll carry that. Let me take it. Let me take it.”

And again, we cast our burdens upon him because he cares for you. He cares for you.

He doesn’t just care for all of humanity, which he does. He doesn’t just care for everyone—he cares for each one. Right? Each person, each dynamic, each concern, each relationship.

God and his power—this is how I like to conceive of his power—his power is to love each one of us and to be intimately acquainted with each concern, each person, each relationship, and all the complexities of that.

He’s able to be fully present to your concerns and to your needs and to all that you’re working through.

So this is the foundation. We can’t skip this.

The key to worry and anxiety and stress being lifted is to be anchored in—as we sang—the solid rock of God’s care and love.

That it is well with your soul for no other reason than that your God is good and that your God sees you and loves you and cares for you and is present to you. He cares for you.

One translation of this verse says, “Cast your cares on him, for he cares for you.” His care—your cares—are his concern. Right? He cares about the cares that you have.

He formed you in your mother’s womb. Let’s not forget this. He loves you. He loves you.

And he proves it, right?

Hebrews 4:15–16 speaks of Jesus—and even the reckless love that we spoke of. It’s reckless in the sense that he gave up everything: “Do not consider equality with God…”—this is Philippians—“…equality with God as something to be grasped onto, but gave himself up as a servant.”

“We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses. But we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

“Let us then”—based on this character and nature of God, based on his care proven to us through his incarnation, his suffering, his death, his resurrection—“let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Man, we could just meditate on that scripture for the rest of our lives, right? That Jesus has been through it all, and he is with us through it all. We can approach boldly the throne of grace.

So N.T. Wright says this about this:

“We are not called to pretend things are better than they are. We are invited to throw the full weight of our anxiety onto the one who already holds us.”

I wanted to kind of conclude with this because what we are not saying—and sometimes what we do in the church—is we are good at just stuffing it down.

What we’re not saying is we’re not ignoring all that truly stresses us out: the reality of the things that hurt us and that we are concerned about, that the world really is a hard place, that our children really are vulnerable, right? That there is a lot going on.

We’re not ignoring or gaslighting ourselves, right? Saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t be concerned about it.”

It’s not about putting a Pollyanna kind of smile to it and just dancing as the world disintegrates around us. It’s really a radical acceptance. It’s a radical acceptance about what really is happening in our lives and the seriousness of it—that these are real concerns, real burdens, real responsibilities.

So we don’t approve of the pain. We don’t ignore it. We don’t agree with the injustice. But we stop resisting reality in ways that deepen our suffering.

All right?

So this acceptance is to say: This is what’s happening. And it’s real. It’s scary. It’s painful. And I don’t have to carry it alone.

Right?

“And…”—stuff is hard—“…and God is with me.” “My kids are vulnerable, and God cares about them more than I do.” “My marriage is a train wreck, and God is at work healing and restoring all relationships.”

Radical acceptance means giving up control so that we can regain freedom.

It means letting God take what is his and cooperating with his work in our life.

So I was thinking about this, to kind of summarize this verse: The key to overcoming worry and anxious thoughts is not to minimize the load we carry.

We don’t say, “Oh, it’s not that bad.” “Oh, other people have it worse.” “Oh, there are children starving in Africa, so just stop worrying about it.” No.

It’s not to minimize the load we carry, but rather to magnify the mighty hand of the one who carries it.

“Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, who will lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.”

Magnify the hand of the one who carries you and your burdens.

You know this—Gisela will like this, don’t correct me though, please, because I know I won’t get it fully right.

Sam and Frodo on Mount Doom—this impossible quest that they are given, right? To carry the ring of power and to destroy it.

And at this point in the story, Frodo is completely exhausted. Completely spent—physically, emotionally, spiritually—he is done. He can’t take another step forward.

He collapses under the burden of the ring and all that he’s experienced beforehand. He is unable to go on. And the mountain is steep, and the enemy is coming near, and their strength is gone.

And his good old buddy Sam, right, does something utterly humble and heroic. He doesn’t take the ring. He doesn’t try to seize the spotlight and make it his quest, right?

He stoops. He gets low. And he says this: “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”

“I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”

And Sam gets down and lifts Frodo onto his back and climbs each step up the mountain.

That’s what the mighty hand of God can look like. It lifts the broken one—not with force, but with love. A co-suffering love.

Jesus walks with us. Not with a power to dominate, but with a power to serve and to lift.

That’s the gospel. That’s the good news. That’s what Jesus has done.

God is not asking us to climb the mountain alone. He knows we can’t carry the burden. So he stoops down in the person of Jesus and says, “I can carry you.”

Now in that moment, Frodo still has the ring. He still bears the weight of his quest. But Jesus carries him as he carries the burden he has. He’s not alone.

So in your exhaustion, in your weakness, in your collapse, Jesus—the mighty hand of God—will lift you. He’s not crushing you. He’s carrying you toward glory.

One scholar, Karen Jobes, says this passage invites God’s people, amidst trials, to humble trust, intentional release of anxiety—cast that care on him—and assurance that God sees, cares, and will vindicate.

So I’m gonna invite TJ up here, and we’re gonna take communion together.

I want to invite you into this prayer practice this week, which you may have gotten one of these as you came in. There’s more at the back.

This is a simple prayer. I learned it from the Pause app—John Eldredge. It’s a great app if you look it up—guided prayers.

But this is a powerful, simple prayer based on this scripture: 1 Peter 5:6–7. It simply says this:

“Jesus, I give everyone and everything to you.”

And you repeat it. “I give everyone and everything to you, Lord God.”

I find myself praying this prayer—oh man—so much.

And as I invite you to pray this prayer several times a day throughout this week, anytime you notice the signs that you’re carrying burdens—regret, stress, worry—regret of the past, the burdens of the past; the burdens of the present—stress; and the burdens of the future—worry.

Would you pray this prayer?

“Jesus, I give everyone—my children, my spouse, my parents, my president, my pastor—I give everyone and everything—my mistakes, my children’s mistakes, my parents’ mistakes, my president’s mistakes—I give everyone and everything to you, God. I give everyone and everything to you.”

As TJ plays and is in preparation for communion, would you just practice that?

Just spend—I’ll give you a minute or two—to truly get in touch with all that you’re carrying: the regrets, the stress, the worry, and pray this simple prayer to truly give it to the mighty hand of God who cares for you.

Would we humble ourselves under your mighty hand—mighty hand of God that is reaching down not to hit us, but to lift us, to save us, to carry us as we carry all that we are burdened with.

Lord, I pray, Jesus, that we would give everyone and everything to you.

Lord, we give everyone and everything to you, God. We entrust that you care about all of it more than we do. We trust that you are present and at work, even when we can’t feel it or don’t see it.

We trust that your great love is restoring the world even now, that the kingdom is breaking in and we’re moving toward the fulfillment of all things.

“All things shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

And in the time in between the times, we humble ourselves before you and throw our burdens on you, who care for us.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.