1 Peter pt. 10

We finished last time looking at the call to humility. One definition of humility is to simply be God reliant rather than man reliant. It is to assess yourself honestly in light of the greatness of God from Whom we have received everything we have.

Peter finishes his word on humility with humility’s rewards:

5:6 “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”

This verse tells us that the way UP in God’s kingdom is DOWN. The world says, “Promote yourself, scratch and claw your way to the top.” But the way of God’s kingdom says, “Humble yourself LOW, and God will promote you up HIGH!

Humble yourself under His mighty hand!

The world would say that humility is a position of weakness, but God says it is a position of strength. The humble Christian is the strong, victorious Christian!

James wrote, “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Humbling ourselves before God positions us to resist the devil and win spiritual battles!

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Then finally, from our position of humility, Peter says:

5:7 “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

The word for “care” is “anxiety.” All of our worries are to be cast upon Him. Peter promises, “for He cares for you!”

The word “care” is used twice in this verse. The first time it is plural in the Greek, meaning we are to cast our many and varied anxieties onto the Lord.

The second time it is singular in the Greek. “For He cares for you.” This kind of care refers to someone having an interest in you.

Bottom line: We may have many cares, but God has only one—US!

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Peter now turns to a closing word about our enemy—the devil.

5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Notice, he’s not just “an” adversary, he’s “your” adversary. Because we are engaged in a spiritual conflict until the day we go home to heaven, we are to be “sober minded” meaning “not intoxicated, to have presence of mind, to have your wits about you.”

And “vigilant,” means “to stay awake, to be spiritually alert, aware of what’s around you, watching for the devil’s strategies against you.”

Why? Because the devil is on the prowl.

The word Peter uses for adversary literally means accuser, like a prosecuting attorney. Satan acts like an adversary in a lawsuit against you. He condemns, accuses, slanders, and undermines believers.

He calls Satan a “roaring lion,” which means “to howl.” Peter wants us to see the predatory nature of the devil. He howls just like a lion on the hunt.

And he “walks about,” which paints a graphic picture of Satan’s restless energy. He’s not passively sitting in the shadows watching the world pass by, he is pacing back and forth, always searching for a hapless victim.

And his goal is “to devour.” Satan is not playing games. Spiritual warfare is for keeps. The devil’s desire is to “swallow alive” his victims.

The very same Greek word is used to describe the Egyptian soldiers who followed Moses and the Children of Israel into the Red Sea. It says they were “drowned,” swallowed alive by the sea.

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Peter next tells us how to deal with Satan’s attacks:

5:9 “Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.”

We are to resist the Evil One, not in our own strength but by yielding to the indwelling Holy Spirit. James expands even further on this:

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (4:7).

The Devil is not afraid of Christians, but he is terrified of the Holy Spirit and God’s mighty Word. As we submit to God, Satan finds himself up against the One who is in us, One who is greater than he (1 John 4:4).

The word “resist” is interesting. It means, “take a stand against, oppose, to hold your ground and refuse to back down.”

The Greek word we translate into “resist” is anth-is'-tay-mee, from which we get our word, antihistamine.

Taking the “anti” part away, histamine is a substance in our bodies that plays a major role in allergic reactions, causing the runny nose, sneezing, coughing, etc.

Hence, an antihistamine is a drug that resists and inhibits the effects of histamine so we can breathe, stop coughing, etc.

So science borrowed from this Greek word to describe the effect of sending something into our bodies to resist an enemy—in this case allergies.

When we resist the devil in the name of Jesus it is like a spiritual antihistamine that blocks the devil’s progress and sends him running!

According to James, when we’re under spiritual attack the first thing to check out is, “am I submitted to God?” Is my life in line with the Bible? Do I have any unconfessed sin?

Once we know we’re submitted to the Lordship of Jesus and are “steadfast in the faith,” we are ready to resist, push back against, rebuke the devil and refuse to yield ground to him!

Remember, the Christians to whom Peter was writing were staring Satan in the face in the person of the wicked Emperor Nero. So Peter tells the Christians to refuse to allow his attacks to destroy the church by means of terror. Resist!

The promise is, “He will flee from you.” Literally, he will flee to escape from you as if you were something to be abhorred!

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Peter next draws our attention to three important things. First:

5:10a “But the God of all grace, who has called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus...”

His first point of focus is God’s grace. He’s called “the God of all grace.” Our God is a God of amazing, undeserved, and endless grace. This, says Peter, is what carries us through anything Satan can throw at us or a godless world can hurl at us.

God’s grace “is sufficient for us” in the face of all afflictions (2 Cor. 12:9), it is a limitless supply, it is enough for living and enough for dying, it is enough to deal with the penalty of sin, and enough to overcome the power of sin, it is enough to carry us through persecution, and enough to empower us to forgive the persecutor, it is enough to see us through, and enough to see us home!

By grace we are saved (Eph. 2:8), by grace we are kept (1 Pet. 1:5), and it is grace that will take us to the finish line. So let the lion roar! God’s grace is greater than him and all his vile attacks combined!

This is why Paul could write, “35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro. 8:35; 37-39).

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Then Peter’s second point of focus is God’s goal:

5:10b “after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.”

Peter’s point here is that God sometimes allows suffering in order to develop and discipline us. Before you say to yourself, “That’s mean! That’s not loving!” stop and consider that this is what a good coach does.

See those football players out on the hot field prior to football season? They sweat, they groan, they suffer under the demands of the man hired to make them as good as they can be. He knows this will never happen apart from grueling workouts and tough discipline.

Tom Landry once said, “My job is to get the players to do what they don’t want to do, that they can be what they really want to be.”

Peter says that there is a process with God: “After you have suffered a while.”

While He sometimes allows suffering, He puts limits on it. God drew lines in the sand where Job’s suffering was concerned (Job 1:11; 2:6). At the end of his suffering, we see a stronger, better Job than the one we find at the beginning.

But look at what the “after” suffering produces! First, God intends to make us “perfect.” Now, this word didn’t mean then what it does now in English. It comes from a Greek word meaning, “to arrange, to set in order, to adjust.” It is the same Greek word used to describe John “mending his net” (Matt. 4:21).

By God’s grace we are saved 100% the moment we believe on Jesus. Yet there is much “mending” still needed to be done in our torn and tattered lives. Commentator John Phillips says, “As a tailor uses a needle to make way for the thread, so God uses suffering in our lives to make way for the perfecting of our souls!”

Then Peter says God also uses suffering to “establish” us. This comes from the Greek word “stay-rid’-zo” which means to make something firmly secure. To buttress or support. It’s the idea of driving a stake into the ground to hold a tent firmly in place. Suffering has the effect of making us unmovable in our faith!

So suffering plays a part in mending our souls, and establishing us in our walk.

Next, Peter says that suffering serves to “strengthen” us. This word means that we are strengthened to be able to achieve something in the most effective way! Isaiah says, “You will run and not be weary, walk and not faint” (Is 40:31).

And finally, (this is one of my favorites) suffering will “settle” you. This word means “to ground us” or “to settle us on a firm foundation.” It may be that Peter had in mind here the parable of the 2 builders that built there houses, one on sand and the other on rock.

Nothing like suffering drives us into the Word of God to lay hold of the promises, or to the prayer closet to cast our cares upon Him. Suffering has the effect of making us so strong in Christ that the strongest tempest cannot prevail against us.

David himself testified of the advantages of suffering: “Before I suffered, I did many wrong things. But now I carefully obey everything you say” (Ps. 119:67).

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So we have God’s grace in our suffering, God’s goal in our suffering, and Peter now comes to his third and final point—God’s glory in our suffering.

5:11 “To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

Thus, out of the crucible of pain and persecution, out of heartache, grief, and woes, comes a doxology. A doxology is a short hymn of praise to God. Peter has shown that, as John Phillips again so beautifully puts it, “Suffering is the storm cloud that provides the canvas on which God paints the rainbow.”

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In closing, Peter lets us know that he sends his letter by a trusted colleague:

5: 12 “By Silvanus, our faithful brother as I consider him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand.

This verse also suggests that Peter dictated this letter to Silvanus who served as his transcriber.

In the next verse, Peter tells us which church he writes from:

5:13 “The church that is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son.”

And there can be little doubt that the “Mark” he mentions as his son in the faith is John Mark, who also wrote the book of Mark, one of the 4 gospels.

He closes his first letter with an encouragement to walk in love and peace:

5:14 “Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to you all who are in Christ Jesus. Amen.”