And we'll talk a little about casting our
care upon God, since God careth for us.
Now this is addressed, as you will read
in the first verse of the first chapter,
to the elect, and it's to the elect
only.
Those who have been renewed by the work
of God in the new birth, and have
been brought out of darkness into light, they
are the elect, through sanctification of the spirit
and to obedience and sprinkling of the blood
of Jesus Christ.
Those who are begotten again unto a living
hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, they are the ones addressed.
Now I emphasize this a little in passing,
because I have noticed the common error of
applying promises to persons not included in the
promises, that God did not have in mind
when he made the promises.
For instance, it would be totally impossible to
think of God saying this, "...cast all your
care upon him, you who are dead in
trespasses and sins, who walk according to the
course of this world, according to the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience,
you who walk in the lusts of the
flesh, fulfilling the deflation of the mind, and
are by nature the children of wrath."
God couldn't possibly say in the same breath,
"...cast all your cares upon me."
He couldn't do it, and he doesn't do
it.
It's always a mistake to take a verse
that doesn't belong to you and apply it
to you, or a verse that applies to
anybody who meets a certain condition, and you
apply it to yourself if you haven't met
the condition there of the error.
For instance, if a letter came to your
house, and you opened it up rather carelessly,
and then you noticed that you had become
heir of a hundred thousand dollars, there would,
I suppose, be a lot of human delight
with the knowledge that you were now relatively
well off, as men count such things.
But then you looked a little more closely,
and you noticed that the letter had been
opened by mistake.
After having been delivered by mistake, it belonged
to a man with the same number but
another street.
Well, you couldn't possibly apply for that money.
It wasn't you.
It was a mistake.
You got the wrong mail.
And so when God says to certain ones,
"...cast all your cares upon me," you've got
no remains.
To whom is he addressing this?
He's addressing it to the humble, and the
repentant, and the believing, and the obedient, and
the renewed, and the elect.
Now, the Father's promises are for the Father's
children, and we ought to keep that in
mind.
When the Jews in Jesus' day claimed certain
promises for themselves because they were children of
Abraham, Jesus said, that's where you're mistaken.
If you were children of Abraham, you'd act
like your father Abraham.
But you're not children of Abraham, and all
the promises made to Abraham were invalid and
did not apply to these who were the
descendants of Abraham, but not the seed of
Abraham according to the Spirit.
I only mention that because I notice how
politicians and newspapers and all the rest are
always coming through with tender quotations from the
Bible when they're putting themselves by their living
in a place where the Bible quotations cannot
apply to them.
Now, this text is for God's children.
Not for their prominent children of God only,
nor are they gifted, nor are they successful.
Lots of good Christians aren't successful, and lots
of good Saints aren't prominent Saints, and lots
of wonderful people aren't gifted people at all.
God has given his gifts as he sees
fit, sovereignly through nature and grace.
We tend to laud the gifted and the
prominent and the successful.
I don't know that God does.
It's only faithfulness and love that is mentioned
in the scriptures, and the willingness to give
all to him.
Apart from that, there's not much mention made
of success or prominence.
So don't imagine this doesn't apply to you,
just because you humbly say, Well, I'm not
prominent, nor gifted, nor successful.
I'm just one of the plain Christians.
Well, so am I.
And after all, so are we all, really,
before our Heavenly Father.
And the weak and the struggling and the
obscure are just as dear to God as
are the prominent and successful.
Now, look a little at the presence of
care in the world.
He uses that word care, c-a-r
-e, and of course that means anxieties, carried
to the point of hidden fears, anxieties and
fears, their care.
Now, fears and anxieties have a reason for
existing.
Let us remember that.
They have a reason for existing.
All optimism is irresponsible and unrealistic.
Nobody can possibly be a sound judge of
human affairs and be optimistic.
All schemes to conquer fear by ignoring their
cause, they're deceptive, and those who would follow
them would be living in a paradise of
fools.
They would be ignoring the causes of our
fears.
The causes of our fears are here, and
we've got to admit their presence.
There is illness, for instance.
Illness.
I just read somewhere, I don't recall now,
than the last day, that there are four
million people a year that die of malaria
alone throughout the world.
I think it's a higher figure than that
yet.
Not many alone die of malaria.
So there is illness everywhere.
Throughout the whole wide world there is illness.
And accidents occur.
They do occur.
They occur among the good people.
Mrs. Sandrock's a good woman.
She's walked with God these many years.
She's a good woman, but she's had her
accident.
Accidents occur, occur.
Accidents and illness and loss of jobs and
betrayals and separations and bereavements and death and
war, these things are loose in the earth.
Isn't it rather a touching thing that the
newspapers came out with big headlines when the
truce in Indo-China went into effect, and
saying that for the first time in how
many years, I've forgotten, I guess twenty, there's
no war anywhere in the world.
No war anyplace, the first time in so
many years, more than a decade.
My friends, these things are present in the
world.
And the response of the human organism to
this is anxiety and apprehension, or plain downright
fears.
People are afraid.
Well, the world is full of all this,
I say, and people are anxious and apprehensive,
and we react variously when we are apprehensive.
When we get scared, some people get very
hard and turdy.
They develop a shell over them like a
turtle, hoping that they can keep away the
dangers they're afraid of, and they'll retire within
that shell.
Others drive themselves to what they call success,
and they become opulent, hoping they can buy
their way through.
It was said of John D.
Rockefeller before he died that he'd have given
millions of dollars for a good stomach.
He lived on milk and crackers and a
few little easy-to-digest things, because his
stomach wouldn't take good food.
And a colored sharecropper down in Tennessee can
eat anything he can chew and swallow.
And the great man with all his millions
couldn't get himself a stomach as good as
a half-grown colored boy in the boglands
of Alabama.
Now, some people would go on and on
and believe that they can stand off these
fears by succeeding, that you can succeed and
have plenty, and still these fears creep in.
And the reasons for them are here.
You can't buy off illness.
You can't buy off accident.
Nobody can be so successful that he won't
feel the war.
Nobody can possibly be so high up in
the world that he won't be a victim
of betrayal, of bereavement, and finally of illness
and death.
And of course, pleasure-seeking is nothing else
but a reacting to fear, eat, drink, and
be merry, for tomorrow we die.
And the idea that tomorrow we die was
what gave rise to the eat, drink, and
be merry.
If I'm going to die tomorrow, I might
better make good of it while I can,
and make what I can of life.
So eat, drink, and be merry today, for
tomorrow that deadly thing appears, that fearful thing,
death.
That's the way some people react.
They go wild.
They do not want to face the anxieties,
so they go out and scatter the anxieties
for a little time by worldly pleasures.
That's why you can always, if you can
think of a new thing to please the
people and make them play, you can be
sure of a lot of money.
And then some people become nervous, wrecks, and
have mental disorders of all kinds.
All because we're scared.
Friends, is there someone, is there someone that
can meet our enemies that I have mentioned
here, and a thousand I didn't mention?
Illness and accidents and loss of job or
possibility of it, betrayal, separation, bereavement, death, all
these things.
Is there somebody that can meet these enemies?
Somebody has to do it.
They won't go away.
Ignore him and he'll go away, is the
humorous remark made about a lot of things,
and a lot of people.
Ignore him and he'll go away.
But these things don't go away by ignoring
them.
Illness doesn't go away when you ignore it.
In Beulah Beach last week I heard my
wife and I of a woman we knew
years ago, a very fine woman, mother of
four children, active in the Alliance Church.
She died last week, or recently at any
rate, died of cancer.
Relatively young, she wasn't an elderly woman, though
she certainly wasn't a girl anymore, but she
died of cancer.
And if you can't ignore that and say
it'll go away, it won't go away.
Neither will death go away, neither will war
go away, neither will accident go away.
They cut it down a little by being
careful.
The law of averages says so many machines
will break, so many people will fall asleep,
so many reckless men will be on the
highway.
So these things won't go away.
Somebody has to face them and conquer them.
Who's going to do it?
You can't do it.
Is there somebody else that'll take them on?
Is there somebody else that will dispose of
them?
Is there someone that'll say, Now listen, child
of God, you're in the midst of a
deadly world.
Death walks on every hand.
Error, accident, mistakes, diseases, mental breaks, all these
things walk up and down the land, but
I'll take care of them for you.
I don't promise you won't get into any
of them, but I promise you don't have
to be scared.
I'll get you out of them, and I'll
make them work for you, and I'll turn
your evil to good.
And I'll walk before thee, and I won't
let one thing happen to you that isn't
good for you.
When you need it, I'll let it happen.
But I'll watch over you as a physician,
over each patient.
I'll watch over you as a nurse, over
her.
Is there somebody that will say, You don't
have to be an optimist and ignore things.
You can be a realist and admit their
presence.
And you don't have to collapse and be
sent to an institution.
I'll handle them for you.
Yes, there is somebody.
Cast all your cares upon him, for he
careth for you.
Now, that is the sum of the Lord's
word to us on that subject.
It's not all he has said, but it's
sort of a summation of it.
That same theme runs through the Old Testament,
and it runs through the New Testament, and
it is taught by the Savior, and it
is taught by all the apostles.
It is simply God is personally concerned about
you, you, the individual, not the mass.
We think in masses now, blocks.
It is common to see these graphs or
these charts in the news magazines in which
it will show a little figure standing there
in silhouette, dark outline.
It will say, Each of these stands for
five million persons, thinking in a block.
The Lord never thinks in blocks, in masses.
He thinks in individuals.
He thinks of his one sheep, of his
one child.
So that's the teaching of the scriptures, God's
personally concerned about you.
Lecture 11 Justification and Sanctification 2 God is
not too high and lofty to remember that
his children are in a land where illness
is prevalent, where there are accidents happening every
day, where there are loss of jobs and
financial worries, where people get betrayed by their
closest loved ones, where there is separation, as,
for instance, when the boy who has been
close to us so many years shakes hands
with a grin that isn't quite real and
walks down the sidewalk and waves at the
corner on his way to report to the
military service.
Separations come, some never come back.
God knows it and says, Now I know
that's the kind of world you live in,
but I have laid hold on you forever,
and I know every detail of your trouble
and all your problems, and I'll anticipate every
act of the enemy, and every act of
every enemy.
I'll go before you, and not only so,
but he accepts our enemies as his enemies.
I will be an enemy to your enemies.
Have you read that in your Bible?
I will be an enemy to your enemies.
That can only mean the one thing, that
if an enemy turns on me, God turns
on him.
And if I'm partly in the wrong, God
will let that enemy through to me, enough
to chase me, but he'll never let him
destroy me.
He'll never let a blow fall that I
don't deserve.
The old grandmas out home where I was
born used to say, good-naturedly, and some
great big strapping fellow would say, Mother, you
spanked me an awful lot when I was
a boy.
And the old grandmother used to dismiss it
by saying, you never got to lick the
mess.
That was an old-fashioned expression, you never
got to lick the mess.
In other words, I never whipped you once
too often.
Here were five great big handsome sons, doctors
and what have you, all around sitting at
a homecoming, and here sat the mother presiding
like a queen in the middle of it.
They had all gone to college, they all
had modern ideas, but they all still loved
home and the old folks and Mother.
They were discussing how severe she was with
them when they were boys and how she
gave them the worst occasion.
And a great big friendly doctor said, Mother,
don't you think after all that you punished
us a little too often?
She straightened up and said, Young man, when
you've raised five such fine boys as I
have, come back and talk to me.
That was the answer.
And God never strikes a lick to mess,
and he never lets anything happen to you
if you're trusting that isn't good for you.
He says, Now I'm handling this, and you
take your hands off and stop your worrying.
This won't go away, but I'll handle it.
And I'll look after you because I am
personally concerned about you.
And every enemy you have is my enemy,
too.
You're on my side and I'm on your
side, and the enemy is on the other
side.
And God will always handle the enemy.
Cast all your cares upon him.
What are your cares?
I don't know what your cares may be.
I have given an outline of them here.
None of them may touch you at all.
It may be something else I don't know
about, worries that I haven't even notion you
feel.
But the Bible says, Cast all your cares
upon him.
Now, this must be done at a given
time by a firm act of the will.
We don't just ooze into this or grow
into it.
If you were walking along and you had
a great burden, and I said, Let me
carry that a while, you wouldn't shift that
gradually over onto me.
You'd either give it to me or you
would keep it.
And the act of transfer from you to
me would be a crisis, an exact crisis.
It would happen at a given moment.
One minute you had the burden, the other
minute I had the burden.
My father, when he was a young man,
in later years he told this on himself.
He said he and his friend, some friend
of his, had somewhere to go and he
only had one horse.
He had long miles to go and only
had one horse.
So my father's name was Jacob, calling him
Jakey.
And he said, I'll tell you what we'll
do, Jakey.
I'll ride a while, you can walk.
Then when you get tired, you can walk
a while and I'll ride.
And my father, innocently, country boy that he
was, agreed to that, and that's the way
it worked.
The other fellow rode a while and Jakey
walked.
And after a while Jakey said, my father
said, Don't you think it's about time we
ought to change off?
Oh, sure.
Getting tired?
He said, Sure, we'll change.
Now you can walk a while while I
ride.
Now, I don't introduce anything humorous in here,
if that should be called humorous.
My father thought it was.
But I will say this, that there's an
awful lot of that same kind of arrangement
among us Christians.
We let God carry it a while, we
think, but he doesn't.
We walk a while and then we walk
some more.
And all our transfers are stymied, they don't
go through, we don't make a complete transfer
of our burden.
The old man that carried the 300-pound
bag of grain on his shoulder while he
was riding his mare, somebody said, Why don't
you put the wheat or the grain on
the front of the horse's neck ahead of
you?
And he said, She's got burden enough without
carrying that, too.
I'm a heavy man, he said.
We carry our burden and God carries us
and our burden.
Why not be sensible and roll the burden
off on God?
Now, we've got to do this at a
given time by a firm act of our
will.
Why don't we do that this morning?
We came in here trusting, but under a
heavy load.
Why don't we just now roll that burden
over onto the Lord?
Don't you want to do that?
If you're walking with the Lord, if you're
a humble person trusting in his grace and
you know you're his child, then this promise
is to you.
Why should we not do that, then?
Roll our cares upon him.
Let us for a moment, now while we
pray.
Lord, we are a company of Christian people,
and we have said yes to thee and
no to the world.
Thou hast given us eternal life, and we
are blessed, but we confess, Father, that we
are in a deadly, dangerous world.
We're like the tiny rabbits of the woods,
or like the deer of the forest.
We live by staying alert.
We exist only because we're watchful.
This works on us to make us nervous
and anxious.
It fills us with apprehensions and fears.
It isn't pleasing that it should be so.
Thou wilt look after us, thou art around
us and beneath us and before us and
behind us.
Help us, we pray thee, to cast all
our cares upon thee.
This morning we would cast on thee fear
of war.
The greater the world point to half a
dozen or more dangerous spots where war would
leap out like a fire in a moment.
Father, we can't anticipate and suffer through a
war that hasn't yet happened.
Help us to roll the next war on
thee.
And then, Lord, depressions and losses of jobs
men have deep apprehensions that they don't talk
about.
Father, we're all right now, so we pray
thee, help us to trust thee for tomorrow
and next year and all the years to
come.
We roll upon thee industrial fears and domestic
fears.
Some are worrying about their children, they're growing
up, and they're worrying about what they'll do
and where they'll go when they're no longer
under the parental care.
My God, thou hast these thousands of years
seen the generation grow up.
Parents have wept and grieved over their growing
children because they were soon to go out
from under their care.
My Lord, help us, we pray, that we
may roll the future of our children over
on thee.
Help us to roll over on thee fear
of disease, polio, and all of these devilish
things.
Save us, we pray, from all these fears.
We would roll our cares upon thee.
We would take the whole miserable, back-breaking
load of apprehensions and anxieties.