Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Tonight obviously looks a little different than a normal Sunday evening worship time but I didn’t want to not have some type of lesson tonight.

Suffering is something that humans have faced for thousands of years and it is something that we are undoubtedly familiar with in our lives today.

It seems as though we’ve witnessed an uptick in suffering in some respects in recent years and days, though.

Thinking specifically about my immediate family, friends and you all, my church family, it just seems like so many are suffering with something.

Some are struggling with a health diagnosis.

Others are struggling with the loss of a loved one.

Many are struggling with just being sick.

Some have lost a job.

Many have lost a relationship.

Suffering seems to be abounding and in talking with many of you in small groups or one-on-one, it seems like this is taking a toll on us because I know it is on me as well.

Because of this, I prayed and prayed about what God wanted tonight to look like.

Yes, our youth are having an amazing outreach time, but I prayed about what God wanted us to study and the theme of perseverance kept coming up.

So, here’s what we’re going to do, and I realize that some of you aren’t going to be following along with this lesson until later in the week and that’s completely fine!

But for those of you who are with us tonight, we’re going to do what we always do at FBC Salem and we’re going to look to Scripture to guide us, encourage us, convict us, and challenge us to walk through difficult seasons of life, like the season of suffering, and do so with our eyes fixed on Jesus.

We’ll be in 1 Peter 5:6-11 to unpack this truth if you begin to make your way there in your copy of God’s Word - if not, you can follow along the screen here in the back.

We Stand Firm with Humility (6-9)

We’ve been studying the book of James during our Sunday night worship services as James has taught us a bunch about what it looks like to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ.

James has reminded us in passages like James 1:5 that we don’t always know what is right and there are times where we need Godly wisdom.

James 1:19 reminds us that we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

James 1:22 reminded us that we must do something with God’s Word and not simply listen to it.

Last Sunday evening I was convicted, I’m not sure about you, but I know that I was convicted by James 2:1-13 and the failure of favoritism and showing preference to the people that look and act like us and not those who don’t.

James has taught us in these opening 40 verses that we don’t quite have it all figured out, even though we think we should.

We think that we know more than we really do as human beings, and our lives as Christians are no different.

We look around our world and we see evil going on and we see people celebrating evil and condemning what is Godly.

We see sin being platformed and Scripture being persecuted.

We see Christians suffering while other people who are enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ seem to not experience that suffering and we simply wonder: WHY?

Have you been there before?

Maybe you’re there now!

Maybe tonight you’re one of those people who are suffering mightily and you’re at the end of your rope because you can’t see what God is doing and maybe you even feel abandoned by Him in your suffering.

Friend, if this is you, I believe that our text this evening is the text that you need to meditate on in your pit. 1 Peter 5:6-7

Some people don’t fully know what to do with this passage of Scripture because they view suffering in a negative lens each and every time.

No one would jump up and say that they enjoy suffering, that’s insane, but the more that we grow in our understanding of Scripture, the more that we have to walk away understanding that God has a purpose for us with suffering.

We don’t need to be surprised whenever hard times come.

We don’t need to be surprised whenever the world promotes sin and condemns Scripture.

We don’t need to be surprised whenever we find ourselves under attack.

Look at what 1 Peter 4:12 tells us

Suffering will happen to Christians!

What should we do whenever we do suffer?

What do we do whenever life knocks us down or whenever anxiety strikes or whenever someone mocks us for our faith or whenever we don’t know where to turn for help?

We humble ourselves and we cast our cares on our caring Savior.

There are things in this life that we will face and not be able to handle ourselves.

In places like China and the Middle East, there are millions of believers who live each day under the threat of persecution and life and death suffering for their lives.

It is estimated that over 200 million Christians live under this constant threat every single day.

Persecution by form of prison time, murder, torture, economic exclusion, and many other forms of persecution.

A few years ago there was a pastor visiting an underground church in China and the preacher of the congregation was preaching a relatively straightforward message as far as the American could tell since he didn’t understand Mandarin very well… but there wasn’t anything that really stood out.

After the sermon the American asked his friend if the pastor was a good preacher.

The Chinese man immediately said that the preacher was phenomenal, not because he was a great speaker or anything like that… but because he had spent many years in prison for Jesus Christ.

This man humbled himself and followed Jesus even though it meant going to prison for his faith and for this congregation in China, that meant that he was a great pastor who lived faithfully in the fire of suffering.

The suffering and persecution being talked about in 1 Peter isn’t like the suffering in China.

There likely weren’t Christians being killed for their faith at this point in time in this region.

There weren’t Christians losing their lives so much as there were Christians losing out in their society.

See, that’s like the persecution that we face often times.

We can’t do certain things as Christians because they go against God’s Word.

We can’t say certain things because they definitely go against God’s Word.

We get picked on on social media platforms because we stand on God’s Word.

We experience suffering for our faith and that causes problems in our lives and to this point, Peter shares to humble ourselves and lay our concerns and anxieties and cares at the foot of the cross because Jesus cares for us.

As we humble ourselves and trust in the Lord to provide for us, Peter tells us that we must be alert because we have an enemy who wants to get us to give into sinful temptation.

If you are saved, Satan cannot unsave you.

He has limited power in the first place as we see in Job 1, but if you’re a Christian, that power is even less!

A demon cannot indwell you as you are saved and sealed with the Holy Spirit!

So, if Satan can’t capture your soul, what will he attempt to do?

He will attempt to isolate you and ruin your witness so that you don’t tell others about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

He will try to get you and I to give into sin.

He will lie to us about our standing before God.

He will oppose God’s will and God’s people.

We look around our world and we see a godless society growing more and more hostile to Scripture and the things of God and we wonder why!

The answer is because of sin, sure, and we know that the enemy loves to get more and more people swept away by the things that sin promises but never delivers on.

We look on social media and we see sin being celebrated.

We see kids struggling with sexual identity in grade school and we are being told to celebrate that because its normal.

We look on television and we are bombarded by things that are worldly and these things are truly devouring people to our left and right.

What is our hope to stand firm in a world that is being swept away?

Look at 1 Peter 5:9

Do you want to know how to resist the devil?

It’s counterintuitive, I know, but if you really want to walk the walk and succeed in the battle of the mind, we have to realize something.

We can’t do this by ourselves.

If we’re fighting a one versus one fight, ourselves versus the things of this world, we will lose every single time because of our fallen sinful nature that does the things that we shouldn’t do as Paul shares in Romans 7:14-25.

How do we stand firm?

By humbling ourselves and remembering how small we really are and how desperately we need God’s presence, power, and protection!

God is stronger than our enemy.

God’s grace sustains us in our times of weakness and suffering.

To borrow from Spurgeon, When the waves of suffering are crashing upon us at their peak, all they do is throw us upon the rock of Ages.

Our suffering as a Christian pushes us to Jesus.

He strengthens us as we trust in Him and as we hold fast to our faith in Him.

This requires us to stay humble and trust that God will fight the battle as we trust in Him and that He has already won the war.

We Stand Firm with Stability (10-11)

The entire book of 1 Peter is about the idea that we are exiles in this world.

God’s people have historically been a wandering people.

Abraham wandered.

Moses and the Israelites wandered.

Even after the Israelites got into the promised land, they were sent into exile because they failed to worship and trust in God alone.

We look around our world today and we know that this sinful, fallen world isn’t our home… we’re just wandering through.

What do we crave?

Stability.

Roots.

Protection.

Hope.

Shelter.

Where can we find those things?

In God alone according to 1 Peter 5:10.