Transcript (Auto-generated)

This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Wonderful. Do have your bibles open with you. It'd be great to look at this together this evening. Shall we pray as we begin, Father? We do thank you for your precious word, your truth to us.

We pray that you would open our hearts this evening, that we might see the wonderful things you've got for us. We might hear your voice and we would have hearts ready to receive it. Jesus name. Amen. So what do you receive from God's hands?

What things do you receive from God's hands? Or if I put it another way, what things do we get from God that are in his control? If I put it that way, the answer is kind of obvious, isn't it? Everything. And yet there's kind of two ways to receive things, aren't there?

You can receive things in that someone's given it to you, and you can receive things in the sense of acknowledging someone's given it to you. And it's really that second question I think that we're having tonight. What things do we acknowledge? We receive from God's hands.

Everything is from him. What do we acknowledge from his hands? That's really the question, I think, from Peter. Here in our chapter. You see, at this end of the letter, we've sort of had three sections.

In Peter's letter, if you've not joined us, this is kind of how the letter goes. At the beginning bit, Peter had talked all about the privilege of being a Christian. In the first chapter or so, he talks about the wonderful privilege of being a Christian. We are chosen by God to be living stones, to be a kingdom of priests. He says this in chapter two, what a wonderful calling we've got as Christians, an amazing thing.

But then in the second section, he says, okay, that's true, but we also undergo lots of trials and we suffer. And that kind of looks different to our calling. Sometimes we seem different to the world around us. And how does that all work? We heard from that as well.

And in the last section, Peter draws these two threads together and says, okay, so we've got to live in this world as those who are chosen and called them by God to this great high calling. But we're going to experience suffering on the way. How do we do that? How do we navigate that? And really those two threads, Peter had already said, really, in chapter one, verse one, he calls people elect exiles.

Elect exiles. He said, you're elect. That's wonderful. You're chosen by God, called to this mighty calling. But you're Exiles, you're not really at Home.

And so really the whole letter is kind of Encompassed in those two words. Elect Exiles. How does that work? How does it work to be an elect Exile, chosen to a high calling, but experienced suffering, experienced life as a scattered people? Because there's this sense, isn't there, in Peter, that actually the christian life is the journey.

And it's as if you've sort of stopped off on a Motorway station, motorway service station, and it's not really where we're going. And it'd be a bit strange if you started to make yourself at Home, bedding yourself down in the motorway service station. I mean, there are some pretty nice services. Cobham's pretty good, isn't it? But even at Cobham, you might not want to bed down for your life.

It's not your forever home is mean. It has got all sorts of great things. It's got a. I can't think. My mind's gone.

I was thinking what the fast food place is anyway. But it's not your final home, is it'd be strange to bed down there. So there's this sense that you're on a journey. Yes, you want to get on there. You're not going to sort of behave strangely, but it's not your final home.

How do these things work, being an elect exile? And so Peter really says, well, what we need to know, the thing we really need to know, is that as elect exiles, as those who are chosen by God to a high calling, who are living through suffering in a place that's not really their home, we need to know that everything comes from God's hands. Everything comes from God's hands. In the first section, chapter four, verses twelve to 19, he tells us that we receive even trials from the father's hands. Even trials are from the father's hands.

And then in chapter five, verses one to five, he tells us that we receive oversight, we receive elders from the father's hands. And then finally, he tells us that we should cast our anxieties into the father's hands. That doesn't quite fit the pattern of the three before, but there we are. We cast our Alex. Exiles cast their anxieties into the father's hands.

That's where we're going. The first one's a little bit longer, just so that you know when you're watching your watch. The first section is a little bit longer. So the first section, chapter four, verses twelve to 19, we receive trials from the father's hand. In Peter, there's this idea he'd picked up already in chapter one, verse seven, if you have a bible you can flick back.

Well, six and seven, really. He says in this, rejoice, though now for a little while if necessary. You've been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Christ. This language of actually trials, testing and refining. You're getting rid of the dross, aren't you, when you heat up a metal and all the bad stuff comes to the top and you get the pure gold underneath.

Well, is this that Peter's picking up and explaining further in verse twelve of chapter four? Do not be surprised at the fiery trial. That fiery trial is a purifying trial. It's painful, it's painful, but it's there to purify. It's a trial that refines, refines.

And remember that later on Peter will say, this isn't you suffering because you've done wrong. These are actually the things that the Lord has sent for your refining. Not directly, because things we've done wrong. So actually we receive trials to purify us, says Peter. And the thing he wants us to know is not actually that that's hard enough, isn't it, in some respects, to receive that?

But he says, don't be surprised. But we are. We're incredibly surprised, aren't we? I'm incredibly surprised. Why me?

Do you never think that? Must think that all the time. Why is this happening to me? And this isn't just trials, like bad stuff happening, like us being sick and things often, it's why am I in this position that I'm having to experience this hard thing? I'm having to stand out.

I'm going to speak the truth. Why don't I just live in a different time? Why isn't it just easier for me? Why at work do I have to be the one that says something about this thing that's wrong? And now I look like I'm sticking out, you know, why me?

But don't be surprised, says Peter, don't be surprised because, well, we'll get to the because. But actually, before we do that, we should do it, we should rejoice instead. Oh, happy days, Lord, thank you for this trial. I mean, that's quite a thing to say, isn't it? But you rejoice, he says, because you share Christ's suffering.

We share Christ's suffering. Verse 13.

Now, how does this work? There's one more step we need to take, because in verse 17. There's a kind of a hard saying, isn't it? The time for judgement? It is the time for judgement to begin at the household of God.

What is Peter getting at here? Because we tend to think judgement is sorted at the cross, isn't it? Now I'm kind of fine, I'm done. And in the most important way. That's absolutely true.

Don't hear me wrong. Of course that's absolutely true in the most important way.

But as we've been learning on Sunday mornings, we are clothed with Christ's righteousness. But our old sin and our old self, the old person, is being killed day by day. Our sinful patterns are being killed day by day as we learn to grow to be more like Christ. That's a painful process, to put to death the old man, to put to death our old ways. That doesn't happen instantly, that happens over time.

That's a difficult process. And so God sends trials sometimes to purify us, that the tested genuineness of our faith might be there on the day when Jesus returns.

And so because of all these things, because we're following the way of Christ. Christ went through the cross, didn't he? Death and resurrection. You can't just skip round death and go to resurrection. We follow him through the cross to resurrection when we entrust our hands to God.

Entrust our souls to God, verse 19. And this really is what Peter's calling us to do, entrust your souls to God. And we can do that because it's not blind fate. We're not just saying, okay, k Sarak, Sarah, whatever's happened is going to happen and it's just fate. Actually, God is a personal God.

Stuff doesn't just randomly happen to us, but it's all at his hands. Then if you followed the post office scandal, I'm sure everyone has, there seemed to be endless programmes and stuff about it, doesn't there? But if you don't know what it was, basically this computer system was miscalculating stuff monies somehow. And people followed what the computer said. This faceless computer just said that people owed lots and lots and lots of money.

And people said, well, that's okay, I'm going to take you to court because you owe all of this money and what can you do against a faceless computer programme that's against you? It just seems like against you. You must think, I just wish I could speak to a human being that can just be reasoned with and speak and it's frustrating, right? But you see, this isn't how our life is. We're not just sort of dealt random hands that come at us.

Actually, God is in control of all things, says Peter.

And it's not a faceless fate, it's a personal God who cares for us. So we entrust our souls to a faithful creator while doing good.

Throughout this letter, Peter is alluding to the time in the wilderness. You may remember how Israel was drawn out of Egypt. And after coming from Egypt, they went into the wilderness. This, I think, helps us understand because in Egypt there were lots of great things. There were like great architecture, nice food, all sorts of things, okay, they were slaves, but then they were taken into a wilderness where they had nothing.

And it was a time of trial. And there were times when they said, oh, man, it really was better in Egypt, wasn't it? I really love being in Egypt. But they called actually to move through that trial and say, actually, God has brought you here because he loves you and he's taken you to the promised land. And so we too can trust our souls to the God who.

Faithful creator. Well, that's the first thing we see. The second thing is that we receive oversight from the father's hands. He says, chapter five. We move into verse one.

I exhort the elders among you as fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker of the glory that's going to be revealed. Shepherd, the flock of God, that's among you, exercising oversight. So God has. God has given us each other in this time and he's given us elders to oversee us because actually he hasn't just called us out of our old life one by one, individually, but he's put elders there to oversee us and to help us. Just like in the wilderness.

Again, think of the wilderness. They came out of the wilderness. They wouldn't do very well, would they, if they all scattered and went first one to the promised land wins. Run. They're there together where they had elders and they held organisation.

And what's remarkable to me here is that it's quite a strong language note. In verse four, Peter talks about the chief shepherd appearing and he just talked about elders shepherding. So he's saying, actually, this calling, I've called some people to be elders to oversee you and they are under shepherds. There's a chief shepherd and he sort of gives some of his work to the under shepherds. That's quite a high thing, isn't it?

You've been called in to do some of God's work of looking after the people.

This is how the New Testament churches were organised. They had elders that were called to oversee the people and they participated in God's overseeing of the people. Now, you might be thinking, I'm not an elder. I mean, not many people are called to this, are they? But we can all be called, certainly, to pray for our elders, can't we, to say, God, we thank you for putting people to oversee us.

We pray that they would do so willingly, like Peter says, that they exercise oversight, not under compulsion. And thank God, actually, that he gives us a church, an organisation to look after each other.

Something we did on the weekend was go ape. I don't know if you've done go ape. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, actually.

It was a funny experience, really. It's quite a leveller. If you've never done. It's quite a leveller for people, really, because I'm there thinking, I'm quite a brave man, I want to appear a brave man anyway. And young girls who I think I should be braver than.

I know, that's terrible, isn't it? But I do, deep down, think I should be braver than. There they are, throwing themselves off platforms, flying into the thing and I'm thinking, that's just the silliest thing ever to do, isn't it? Why would I be? So you're doing it anyway.

But this is go eight, we do it. And you have to sort of look after younger people so each person has to sign off. And there was a lovely moment, wasn't there, where an elder brother signs off, I'm going to look after my sister, I'm going to be responsible. Look on his face. You're responsible, mate, if she breaks her arm.

But it was. It was good. And as the elder brother takes his sister around, looking after her, making sure everything's clipped on properly, it was lovely to see. It's like oversight to make sure, actually you don't fall off and you're looked after. Of course, you don't then become the parent, do you?

It's not like you're looking after them, but you've kind of taken a piece of that responsibility on someone else's behalf. You kind of become an under parent is the right word, but you kind of know what you know. There's a bit of delegated responsibility there, isn't there? And this is actually what Peter's saying. Elders have been called as under shepherds, shepherd the flock.

Shepherd the flock by exercising oversight until the chief shepherd appears. Look after the people in the here and the now. Until Jesus returns. So we should definitely be praying for our elders and we should also be acting in humility to one another. It says in verse five, we're acting humility to one another.

And this is important because it's so tempting in this time to be Lone Ranger Christians. I don't know if you've ever thought, I like Jesus, but the church, it's a bit know. You might have thought that lots of people think know, do we really need the church? Do we really need it? Well, actually, what Peter's saying is elders have been called to oversee God's people.

So we receive that at God's hand and say, thank you, Lord, for the oversight you're exercising. And I do pray for those that you've called over us. So we receive elders at the Lord's hand as well. Finally, we cast our anxieties into the father's hands.

And this really is about looking to God for all our needs. It's God for all our needs. And this is the context of verse seven. Cast all your anxieties on him. Now, I don't know what version of the Bible you're reading, but some versions put make verse six and verse seven into separate sentences so that it says, humble yourselves and then cast your anxieties on him.

That's a little bit of a shame if it does that, because what it says really is that we should humble ourselves by casting our anxieties on him. How do you humble yourself? You do that by casting your anxieties on him. And what that means is that we don't cast our anxieties on ourselves as if we're the ones that can sort out all our problems. We cast them on God.

We admit that actually we have to come to him for all of our needs. This is what the casting all your anxieties is. Throw them on him. Put them on him so he can bear them. This is how we humble ourselves because we want to bear stuff ourselves, right?

Cast it on the Lord. Cast it on the Lord. And this too teaches us. Actually, we're not talking about being passive in front of a blind fate. If we know we've got a personal God that cares for us.

We may not understand the ins and outs of everything, but we can certainly cast our anxieties on him to say, lord, I need you to carry this for me.

There's a wonderful bit in a book called the Hiding Place by Corey Temboom. I don't know if you've read it. Some of you will have read it. It's a wonderful book. But there's a bit where she tells of asking her dad some really, really difficult questions on the train.

One, and she asked him this really hard question that really wasn't really appropriate for him to answer at her age. And he takes the luggage off and puts it on the floor and he says, corey, can you lift up this bag? She tries to lift up and she says, oh, no, I can't lift up this bag. And he says, okay, well, you can't bear this now either. Like this bag.

Let me carry this for you at the moment. Let me carry this for you at the moment. And this is what we're doing when I cast our cares on the Lord, saying, you know what? We can't actually bear everything now, but we have a loving father who's just going to carry that for us. Carry that for us.

And as we do that, we're watchful. Verse eight. Peter says, be sober minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around.

Now, this connects with the previous bit, because when we're tempted to rely on ourselves and not receive everything from God's hands, then the devil sort of gets an entry and he can turn us away from God.

Think again in the wilderness, how Israel constantly had to rely on God for everything, but sometimes they were tempted not to and to moan and to try to take things in their own hands. And it didn't go well, did it? So overall, Peter's saying, receive everything from God's hands. And I just want, as we close, just to think how Peter really knows all of this. Now, we keep mentioning the letters written by Peter, but when you think about who Peter is, one of the disciples, it's quite an amazing thing, really, because Peter heard this stuff in verse eight about being watchful and being sober from Jesus himself.

He says it in Luke 21, verse 34, where he talks about being watchful. So as Peter writes this, you can imagine him saying, I remember Jesus saying that. Remember Jesus saying that? And then as he reflects further on, he knows exactly what it's like for Satan to prowl around like a roaring lion, doesn't he? Because he heard Jesus say, be watchful.

And he said, do you know what, Jesus? Yeah, I'm going to be watchful. I'm going to be so watchful, I'm never going to deny know. He's immediately relying it back on himself, isn't he? And so he says, I'm going to follow Jesus and I'm never going to do anything wrong.

Follows him. And of course you know what happens. He denies Jesus in front of a servant girl, doesn't he?

Peter knows firsthand you've got to be watchful. He knows firsthand that those anxieties, that seems like quite a minor anxiety, isn't it? Oh no, there's a servant girl. Okay, I'll deny Jesus, Peter knows. That seems like quite a small thing, really, doesn't it?

But these anxieties that he was led astray by. So when he says all of got, he knows all of this. He's had this experience, hasn't he? Directly with Jesus himself. He knows why it's so important.

But actually he's not. He wasn't strong enough. He knows that firsthand.

So let's receive everything at God's hands. And it might be that some of us here today, or at least there might be at least someone here today who is really just feeling the weight of trials, just really feeling the weight of, like, I just don't get why this is happening to me.

Should it really be this hard to get the right job? Should it really be this hard to be a Christian in school? Like, why is it this difficult?

And the temptation at these times is to start to blame God. As if to say, actually, Lord, I don't really get this. And you turn from him, you look for answers elsewhere.

Or Peter is saying, don't do that. Peter's not saying yet, you'll understand everything. But he's saying, actually, if you receive everything in his hand, knowing that there's a coming glory, that verse ten is a promise that you can hold on to after you've suffered a little while. The God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. Maybe you need to lay hold of that promise.

Maybe you need to write that promise on a piece of paper and stick it in your pocket so that you'll come tomorrow morning and you put it in your pocket tonight. And there might just come that time when you think, why me? Why is this so difficult? You put your hand in your pocket and you see this promise. After you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

Because in Christ, this promise is yours.

Let's pray.

Father, we do thank you that nothing is out of your control. And we do pray that we would not turn away from you when we don't understand the wise and the wherefores. We pray that we would be able to cast our anxieties on you, knowing that you are a loving creator, a personal God who cares for us. And I pray that we would lay hold of that promise this week that it might come back to our minds that you will restore, confirm and strengthen us after suffered a little while. We thank you for Christ's return.

And we long for that day when, as refined by fire, we will stand pure before you. Amen.