“Dost Thou not care?” — the cry of the human heart.
“He careth for you” — the divine answer.
Care: a little word of only four letters, yet how weighty! Its pressure at times is almost intolerable. Everybody is more or less affected by it, for probably there is nothing on the face of the earth more common than care. It is seen in the merchant’s face; it furrows the cheek of the widow; it sits upon the forehead of the great; it dogs the steps and hovers around the bed of kings, for we are assured, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Men of all classes and conditions are victims of care. It calls upon all alike and has a habit of making itself at home, though never welcomed. Indeed, try as we will to get rid of this unwelcome visitor, it clings to us as if it were the best of friends.
Go where you will you find it. There is not a continent or country or town that is free from its presence; every village and house knows something of its dark shadows. Is there an individual you could meet, who has come to any years at all, who could truthfully say, “Care and I are unknown to each other”? It has a habit of creeping in everywhere. Sometimes it will present itself on the most festive occasions, and it has been known to cast its shadow even over a marriage scene. Almost every day is marked by it, the day of death not always being exempt, as though care were the first thing we carry and the last thing we lay down. How can we escape from it? No barriers can keep it out. Bolts and bars are useless here, for if you lock the door it will creep through the keyhole, and if you succeed in turning it out of the front door it will find its way around to the back. It seems as all-pervading and penetrating as the atmosphere. As well attempt to exclude the air as to exclude care.
Yet although everybody is thus more or less familiar with this painful malady, how few seem to know the real cure. Many and various are the methods adopted to escape from its clutches, but they are not often very successful. Some think wealth can buy it off, but an increase of money often means that the sources of care are only multiplied. Others try pleasure, but how often the weight comes back, with something added, when the pleasure is over! “Do you not know I am dying of melancholy?” wrote Madame de Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV, a woman who had the opportunity, if anybody ever had, of seeing and enjoying life. Some try work as a remedy; this is good as far as it goes, but it is not enough. Not a few try to banish it with the wine cup or some other form of indulgence.
The reason none of these is successful is because they all lose sight of the cause. Care has a cause, and unless we find out what that is and deal with it, we are never likely to be successful in our struggle with what it has produced.
Care is the result of the present condition of the world, and the present condition of the world is the result of a wrong attitude towards its Maker. The evil thing called care flows from want of harmony with the Author of our being. Sin introduced the element of distrust; man became alienated from his Maker and, as a consequence, has lost the sense of His goodness and protection, and the baneful effect is care, with all its gloom, unhappiness and unrest.
What seems, then, to account for all the care in the world is that the human heart has lost the sense of God’s care. When Martha uttered that pitiful complaint in the ears of Christ as He sat in her house at Bethany, “Dost Thou not care?” she was not only voicing her own sentiment, but that of the entire human race. Is not this more or less the cry of every heart at some time or other, though not uttered perhaps with all the distinctness with which Martha uttered it? Oh, how often the uplifted eyes and heart have spoken thus to God, even if the words never escaped the lips! How much there seems in the course events are allowed to take, whether in general or in regard to each of us in particular, to confirm the suspicion that God does not, after all, care what becomes of us or how things turn out! As if, after all, there was no one to look after the world! Nurses there may be to look after babies and parents to provide for children and policemen for general protection, but as to the deepest concerns of life, grown men and women seem left to themselves. And so the majority of suffering, toiling humanity, perhaps, is quite ready to adopt the language of the elder sister of Bethany, “Dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” This is the cry that seems to burst from the heart of one sensible of being wronged. Have not our own hearts sometimes told us that Martha is not alone here?
“Dost Thou not care?” This striking utterance reveals two things — man has lost the sense of God’s care, yet from his inmost soul he calls out for somebody to care for him.
Is there any response to this appeal, sometimes expressed, sometimes only mute? Is there anyone to respond to those who are:
“Infants crying in the night,
Infants crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry?”
And will the response be satisfactory? These are the questions that we have to answer, and, in doing so, to intimate what is the true and all-sufficient cure for care, for care has a cure, and we must now proceed to show wherein it lies.
The cure really lies in the discovery that there is a Being, all powerful and beneficent, who makes those who trust Him the object of His care.
Over against the human cry, “Dost Thou not care?” that goes up from generation to generation and always has gone up, we may place the divine answer, “He careth for you.” Let us put these two statements side by side, the one the human utterance, the other the divine, and take a good look at them:
The one seems to come as direct from the heart of God to man as the other goes from the heart of man to God.
This divine answer contains within itself the unfailing cure for care. Rightly understood and believed, it becomes at once the universal remedy for a universal disease. Perhaps some reading these lines may be tempted to think that only when the grave closes over them will any relief be obtained from the particular form of care that oppresses them. This is, after all, a mistake, for He who tells us that He cares invites us at the same time to cast all our care upon Him.
What a profound truth this is that God cares! It shows that He is not unmindful nor indifferent, and where shall we find it better enforced or more fully exemplified than in the parable that immediately precedes, and is intended to accompany, the story of Martha?
Have you ever read and pondered that wonderful parable recorded in Luke 10 about the man who fell among thieves? After wounding him and taking away all he possessed, they left him half dead by the roadside. The priest and Levite passed by, but the most they did was to look upon him and leave him as he was. At length came a Samaritan, and he went to him and bound up his wounds. And more than that, we read, he “set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” But even this was not the limit of his goodness. The words (addressed to the host) that fell upon the astonished ears of the heretofore benighted traveller were these: “Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.”
It will be seen at once that the story illustrates far more than how forgiveness of sins is to be obtained. The guilt of the sinner is implied, no doubt, for the man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho: from the place of blessing — Jerusalem means the vision of peace — to the place of the curse. With one stroke the moral tendency of the race is exposed! But one comes along who can reverse all this. He brings the oil and the wine, the balm of Gilead. Man is a prey to enemies, but here is a friend. But there is more. A threefold need on the part of the man is met by a threefold action on the part of the Good Samaritan. The man is wounded, he is weak and he is in want. His wounds are bound up, oil and wine being poured in. This meets the first need. The second is met by his friend placing him upon his own beast. The third, by bringing him to the inn and taking care of him. This last is the climax of the parable.
If, however, we are refusing to recognize our true condition and our need of Christ and His work, if we think that by our own efforts and goodness we are going to merit heaven and have no need of One to “come where we were” and take our place, then freedom from care can never be ours in the truest sense, for the simple reason that the parable we are considering loses all its meaning, if we are not wounded and strengthless and in need of a Friend to care for us from first to last. Outside of Christ we can never know what God can be to us. And it is just this, what God is to the one who obeys Him and therefore trusts wholly in Christ, that enables the believer to rise above all care.
The man by the roadside might have borne his fate with stolid indifference and succumbed at last without a murmur, but he never would have known how much another could care for him. And so, today, are there not those who assume an attitude of indifference in regard both to their present need and the future? They try to shut their eyes, and in a measure they may succeed, but they miss one thing — they never can know, while in that attitude, what God is waiting to be to them, how much and how well He can care for them, or what the ministry of Christ means.
It is just at this point the striking connection with Martha’s history comes into view. She said to the Lord, “Dost Thou not care?” Could the man in the inn have addressed such words to the Samaritan? Had he not heard the injunction, “Take care of him”? Had Martha known the teaching of that parable, could she have ever used the words she did? Can we, who profess to believe that Christ was really drawing a picture of Himself, ever question His care? Is not the whole parable of the Good Samaritan just an answer to this touching appeal of Martha’s? And in the light of this fact, the story Christ tells assumes a meaning wonderful and grand in the extreme. For does it not assure us that there is One who cares and that the deepest cry of the human heart has been anticipated? There is One who thinks of us and is capable of providing for our every need.
Another point in connection with Martha’s utterance is anticipated by the parable. She felt her loneliness. “Dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” Alone and uncared for! This is what she felt at that moment, and hers is not an isolated case.
Deep down in the innermost recesses of every human spirit the same thing is felt, until the truth is known that God cares. Man has lost God, and he is bound to feel alone until God is met with again. He is to be met with in the person of the One who portrayed Himself as the Good Samaritan. “A certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.” The underlying truth here is that God is ever seeking man, and seeking him in order to help. For it is as true that God has lost man as it is that man has lost God. Man without God! It is an anomaly, since God made man and gave him all his powers, moral as well as physical. Try as he will, man cannot get on without his Maker, any more than he can get on without his fellow-man. Martha’s utterance therefore expresses the truth, however much we may try to disguise it. A feeling of loneliness and neglect will steal over us some time or other, and it is just this feeling of loneliness and neglect that is the fruitful source of all care. Life is too great for us alone, its strain too severe, its demands more than we can meet, and the final issue too wonderful and far reaching for any of us unaided.
It is just this which helps us to see how marvelously the teaching of Christ fits into the existing state of things, for does not the parable present to us a picture of absolute loneliness and neglect, and introduce to our notice one who relieved both? Who could be more lonely and uncared for than the man who fell among thieves? They stripped him; they wounded him; they left him. Especially must he have felt his loneliness when others came near and, having looked on him, passed by on the other side. Yet, who could be less alone or better cared for afterwards? Taken to the inn and left in the charge of the host, nothing was to be lacking. “Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.” If only we would believe that this represents God and that He is perfectly willing to pay as much attention to everyone who will allow Him, could we have any care?
No doubt we are ready to say: It seems too good to be true. Is there One so great, so mighty, willing to take care of me? There is only one answer: He is willing and He is able. Then perhaps the question will become intensely personal: Will He do it for me? I have no claim upon such kindness. Neither had the man by the roadside any claim upon the Samaritan, except that necessity always has a claim upon love. And this is the whole point. God is now acting from Himself, according to the dictates of His own love. It is not law now, but grace, and the parable is intended to show us the difference. Under law, God demanded that which He had a right to ask for — our love. Under grace, He is showing us what we could not demand and did not deserve — His love. We did not love God with all His perfection. He is demonstrating now the fact that He can love us in spite of our imperfection. The action of the Good Samaritan was all of grace. This is how God would deal with us. How slow we are to understand it! Martha did not understand it, and consequently she was careful and troubled about many things. Within her own little sphere she thought she had to look after everything, as though there was no one at the head of affairs and no one to look after men and women. She was doing her best, but she was not at rest. She represents not a few, who, while desiring to please God and to serve Him, have not learned how great a pleasure it is for Him to serve them and that His service must precede theirs. The difference between Martha and Mary — the one cumbered, the other at rest at the feet of Jesus — was mainly the difference between the man by the roadside and the man in the inn. The man by the roadside might well have said to the priest and the Levite, “Do you not care that I am left alone?” The man in the inn could not have said so to the Samaritan. We could not imagine such a thing. We can imagine him sitting at the feet of his benefactor, looking up into his face, and perhaps wondering in his mind, Is there anything I can do for him when I become strong enough? Christ does not ask us for one bit of service until we know from personal experience how He has served us. It is a striking fact that although the wounded man had received so much kindness and was to receive more, he is not asked by his benefactor to do one single thing in return.
Have we learned the threefold lesson of this parable? Have we made the acquaintance of One who can remove our guilt, give us strength and relieve our care? In the words of the parable, “He bound up his wounds”; “he set him on his own beast”; “he brought him to an inn.” If so, shall we not have less care? God would not have us bear our cares any more than He would have us bear our sins. “Casting all your care upon Him,” He says, “for He careth for you.” Does not this one verse of Scripture meet the twofold need, that of being lonely and uncared for, expressed in Martha’s appeal, “Dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” “Casting all your care upon Him” — this meets the loneliness — “for He careth for you” — this meets the care. We have Him, whoever else may go, and He cares.
“Never alone and always cared for” describes the happy condition of the man in the inn while he waited to see the face of his friend. It may be and ought to be the experience of those who wait to see His face.
The Peace Which Passes All Understanding
There is the authoritative command of God to His people not to be careful. “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-76Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6‑7)). It is hardly necessary to explain that when God tells us to be careful for nothing, He does not mean we are to be careless. But He positively forbids us to be worried and anxious, and it becomes a sin, grieving to the Holy Spirit, when we are. This verse promises us that we may exchange all our care for His peace.
How, then, is the great blessing of this verse to become ours — the peace of God keeping our hearts and minds?
In the first place, we must accept it as a direct command from God not to be careful. And as soon as we find ourselves becoming anxious, we must say to ourselves, “This is dishonoring to God; I am disobeying Him; He has told me I am not to be anxious.” Sometimes this may seem easy, but the test lies in that word “nothing.” There are some matters about which we think it the correct and proper thing to worry. But God says there is nothing. Can we believe Him? Nothing, in heaven or earth, in the church or the world, in your private life or business life, nothing as to yourself or anybody else, even your nearest and dearest, nothing as to the past, present or future about which you are to worry. And yet we are so accustomed to do it that we live in a chronic state of worry, and we have become so accustomed to the burden that sometimes we awake with a start to find how really anxious we are getting.
Instead of worrying, we are told what we are to do: “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Tell God all about it. Have you never found relief when you could tell a friend what you were passing through? Well, God invites you to make a friend of Him. He can be better than any earthly friend, for many reasons. He is never weighted with care Himself, and our earthly friends often are; He is always at hand, and earthly friends cannot be; He is always ready to listen and can impart to us His own peace, which others cannot do. Moreover, we can tell to Him what we could not breathe into any human ear, for He says, “In everything by prayer.” The same God that made the mammoth and the mote will pay attention alike to our smallest as well as our greatest concerns.
The prayer is to be with “supplication” and “thanksgiving.” We can go again and again to God about the same thing and be as importunate as we like. At the same time, do not let us omit to mingle our thanksgivings with it all, for while there may be much to ask Him to give and take away, yet, if sufficiently observant, we shall find many blessings to count and very much demanding our praise. And this will bring us to the very verge of that marvelous blessing contained in the verse following. Here God does not promise to do what we ask, nor does He undertake to alter our circumstances, but something better is offered us, even His peace, that passes all understanding, to keep our hearts and minds. God’s own peace, this becomes ours — a thing that has never been disturbed by anything that has happened, nor can be by anything that may yet happen. What shocks and rude alarms there have been since the earliest dawn of creation — Satan’s fall, the first sin, the angels that left their own habitation, the fall of man — and yet through it all God’s peace remained unshaken. And He who could be undisturbed by all this offers to “garrison” your heart and mind, that you may be able to meet all that shall come across your own little life. Yes, He offers nothing less to the trusting and thankful heart than His own peace. It is wonderful to think of such a peace being anywhere, when around us on every hand are the traces of care, but up there in the heart of God is peace, and if it is wonderful that He has it, it is not less wonderful that He gives it. It can be imparted, and the blessed God is willing to do this, so that poor, troubled, burdened human hearts may be sharers of God’s own prerogative.
Have we tasted this peace yet? Why should we not? Why should we allow unbelief to bar the door of our hearts, with care inside and peace outside? Let us, in obedience to God, refuse to give care a place any longer — it is not the lawful tenant of our hearts — but, telling God everything, admit His peace. Then our hearts and minds will be garrisoned, because care is sure to assault us again, and this may disturb us if we become occupied with the battering ram, but it can never disturb God’s peace. Instead of being occupied with the enemy at the gate, rather let us be occupied with Christ Jesus, for it says this peace “shall keep [or garrison] your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” It is most important that we should be engaged with Him — for this reason that our care not infrequently is the consequence of some failure on our own part, and, consequently, sensitive, conscientious souls fix their eye upon their own delinquencies and become disqualified for enjoying this peace of which we are speaking. Of course, if the believer has sinned, that sin must be confessed and communion restored. We could not for a moment imagine the peace of God filling the heart of anyone who is pursuing a path of disobedience. But, on the other hand, it is to be noticed that in the verse before us it says nothing as to this peace becoming ours because of anything we have either done or not done. It is “through Christ Jesus.” Let us think of Him. He is altogether pleasing to God. He was the obedient One — obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and nothing was ever more glorifying to God. And that cross has, as it were, shut you out of God’s sight altogether as to what you have done and what you are, and left only Christ in all His perfection between you and God. And so the peace of God, which passes all understanding, reaches us through a perfect medium and does not have to find its way through our imperfections, or possibly it would be turned back long before it came to our hearts at all. Christ Himself is the living link between your heart and God’s.
By comparing what has been now said with what went before, it will be seen how we are advancing. Our first real deliverance from care is when we hear the words, “Take care of him” (Luke 10:3535And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. (Luke 10:35)), and know that they are meant for us. Then we are to become possessed of a peace which passes all understanding. But there is one step more, one statement in God’s Word which completes the subject and seems to leave nothing unsaid. We refer to those words in 1 Peter 5:77Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (1 Peter 5:7), “Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.” In this last clause is found the unfailing cure for all care.
Oh, has anyone else ever stood before you and said, “Give me your care”? Many have come, it may be, and asked for your friendship or your society or your entertainment or for some benefit, but did any want your care? No; they would not like you to bring your care into their company. “Come with a bright face,” they say; “make us happy with your sparkling wit and lively conversation.” But here is One who asks for your company in order to relieve you of your care. He does not even say, “Cast your care away,” but He invites you to cast it upon Him. Could anything be more calculated to touch us? And He says “all” your care. It is not even that He promises to help us to bear it. This word carries us infinitely beyond that. Often we try to bear our cares and ask God, as it were, to carry us and our cares. We are like the man of Ganton, of whom we read, that he was riding to market with a sack of flour, when suddenly he was filled with remorse at the weight his horse had to carry, so, without getting off, he lifted the sack upon his own back. Foolish man, to add to his own burden without lightening that of his horse! And are we any wiser when we keep the burden that we might cast upon God, and instead of riding to heaven without a featherweight of care, we go heavily laden?
Rather, let us be like another man of whom we have heard. His wife had a little business, and she was at one time anxious and disturbed because it seemed likely that someone else in the same line was about to open a shop close by. “What would become of their trade?” “What a loss it would be to them!” were the thoughts that filled her mind and often found expression in conversation with her husband. He, however, remained calm. Why should he be otherwise? Had not God told him to be careful for nothing? But, seeing his wife’s trouble, he said to her one day, “My dear, leave all the worrying to me.” “There’ll be none of it done then” was the reply.
“Casting all your care upon Him.” Do you know the One who says this? In the same epistle there is a verse that precedes the one we are considering and must precede it, too, in our own experience. It is found in 1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18): “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” This deals with the sin question, which must be dealt with before the care question. But the latter is not overlooked, for what we are invited to do when we are brought to God is to cast all our care upon Him. If God has laid your sins upon Christ, you may lay all your care upon God. And the reason is given why we may: “He careth for you.” Christ once suffered for your sins and bore them, and He now wants you to let Him bear your care.
Here, then, is the answer to the unbelief that thinks God allows the world to drift on and has left it to take care of itself. This is as untrue as every other lie of which Satan is the source. Those words “He careth” and that invitation to “cast all our care upon Him” come to us with the very stamp of truth. It would be fiendish to mock us with such words. Ah, mockery cannot coin such words as those. They tell their own tale, that behind them there is a heart we may well trust.
They are words, too, that appeal to all, for who does not know care? The other day, having to wait outside a West End office, we had the opportunity of watching the faces of people in a crowded London thoroughfare. Hundreds passed us, among them different classes and creeds and nationalities, but in one respect they were all alike — there was more or less of care depicted in every countenance. Their cares were not alike, yet there was one remedy for all. How many knew that they might have the peace of God, which passes all understanding? How many could look up and say, “He cares for me”?