1 Peter 5:6-11 - Stand firm against the devil

[Intro]

Last week we went over 1 Peter 5:1-5, which focused on elders of a church and how they are to lead. They are to watch over the congregation that God has entrusted to them and they lead by serving the congregation. Everyone worships and gives all praise to the one who deserves it all, the Great Shepherd Jesus Christ.

[prayer]

Now today we will finish 1 Peter by focusing on 1 Peter 5:6-11. As we discuss this passage the main theme is going to be about standing firm against the devil.

[Body]

1 Peter 5:6–11 NLT

6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. 7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9 Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. 10 In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. 11 All power to him forever! Amen.

Now although this passage is slightly different than the scriptures we read last week, it is very much connected to it, and we know that by the verbiage here at the beginning “So humble yourselves ...”, others translations might read “Therefore humble yourselves ...”. This implies a continued thought.

Let’s break down these first two verses, they go together hand-in-hand. Peter is going aggressive with humility. Back in verse 5 he writes “dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another” and then he quotes another scripture about God opposing the proud and now in verse 6 he starts with “So humble yourselves”. What does humbling yourself look like? People might look at humbling yourself in different ways.

Here’s a quote from C.S. Lewis:

True Humility Is Not Thinking Less of Yourself, It's Thinking of Yourself Less.

Now although there is some truth to that, what Peter is trying to get across to his readers here when he says “humble yourself”, is that God is the almighty one in control and you should be relying completely on him. And how do we do that? As verse 7 reads, “give all your worries and cares to God.” We tend to enjoy holding on to all our worries and continue to think about them and build up even more anxiety. It’s something we all struggle with it. We can act responsibly and take action in situations while relying on God, giving him our worries, and letting him handle the results. We think we need to be in control of the results, things must work out this way because I did x, y, and z. I did that and I deserve this. That’s pride speaking, we’re not in control. Put yourselves under the might power of God, recognizing he is sovereign and whatever happens that doesn’t seem right to us is something he allowed. Nothing gets by God. He is timeless. He sees everything. So placing ourselves under Him we can say God allowed this to happen, He’ll provide you a way through it, and the results are up to Him. And to live that out is to give him all our worries. Some translations have cast your anxieties on Him. That is not like fishing where you cast your line out and then real it back in. This means give it away and don’t take any of it back. Living out these scriptures is much easier said than done. Worry and anxiety is a constant battle. And the people Peter was writing to were undergoing immense persecution. Imagine thinking you may be killed for your belief in God. That could cause a lot of anxiety! This was what the people were facing that Peter was writing to.

We won’t read it today, but in Matthew 6:25-34 is where you can read about Jesus speaking on the topic of worrying. He talks about how God cares for the animals and the flowers of the field, if He shows so much care for them why do we worry so much about life and not believe he will care for us? We can’t add a single moment to life through worrying. That passage ends with Jesus saying “Why do you have so little faith?” Pride and little faith go hand-in-hand.

The Bible says you are an image bearer of God. You are created to bring Him glory. God will provide for you. There are different meanings for “the mighty hand of God” or in the New Living Translation, which I’m using, reads “the might power of God.” That expression as you see it here in verse 6 means delivering. It’s the same expression used with God’s delivering of Israel out of Egypt. God will deliver you. God cares about you more than you’ll ever know, he wants to take all your worries.

Romans 8:28 NLT

28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

I believe you have chosen to be here today because you love God. He has a purpose for you and he’s working things together for your good as we speak.

And when the right time comes, He will be the one to lift you up in honor. Lifting you up in honor is talking about in the end when you leave this earth, God will raise you up to heaven as you receive the gift of eternal life. The almighty God is in control and everything happens in his timing.

Let’s look at verses 8-9 now, and we’ll re-read them:

1 Peter 5:8–9 NLT

8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9 Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.

As a shepherd their duties were to care for the flock. One of the responsibilities of caring was to protect them from predators, one of those being lions. Before being King, David was a shepherd and he actually killed a lion while protecting his flock. Can you imagine a sheep versus a lion? A sheep would have absolutely no chance at taking on a lion. A sheep would be devoured. We are the sheep, satan is the lion, and Christ is the Great Shepherd. You cannot take on satan without Christ. And satan is always on the hunt. Peter describes him here as a “roaring lion.” He wants to intimidate you, confuse you, frustrate you, deceive you, and kill you. Devouring in this context means getting you to deny Christ. Satan is angry because he has already been defeated, and his goal is to take as many down with him as he can.

When you are intimidated, confused or frustrated with life while undergoing Satan’s attacks, that doesn’t mean you have denied Christ, but it can give satan a foothold as he tries to get you to deny Christ. This is why we must stay alert. We must resist the devil and we do that by staying strong in the faith, remaining in Christ. Your Shepherd is there for you, as we just discussed verses 6-7, give him all your worries. You must remain in communion with Christ. When we step away from Christ thinking we can handle everything on our own, we’re a sheep versus a lion. We’re hopeless in that situation. All our hope is in Christ.

Whenever we go through a hard time, we often ask “am I the only going through this? Why me?” and that can often leads us to confusion and frustration. Peter let’s his readers know the suffering they are going through is something the entire family of God is going through. We operate and move forward as the body of Christ, and we also feel the attacks of satan as one body. He wants to destroy us all. As we stand our ground against the devil, we must encourage our fellow believers. Pointing everyone back to Christ. That’s what Peter is trying to do here, encourage and uplift them in their tough times, point them back to Christ and let them know God is there for them, and trying to give them a future mindset setting their eyes on what glory is to come in the end when they persevere.

Let’s go through verses 10-11 now. Let’s re-read those.

1 Peter 5:10–11 NLT

10 In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. 11 All power to him forever! Amen.

This is a brief summary over the main message of this letter. God provided a way for salvation through Jesus Christ, he is the giver of all grace, he chose us, and we will experience suffering but in the end God will lift us up into eternal glory. God’s grace is all we need in life.

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 NLT

16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Our lives here are temporary, we’re decaying away. But because of God’s grace we can be renewed spiritually every day, and that will keep us going strong in our faith. Without Christ we’d have different struggles for a while on earth and then we’d experience sufferings infinitely greater for eternity. Instead God called us into a relationship with Him through His Son, he allows the suffering to take place in life, but He also restores, supports, strengthens, and places us on a firm foundation so we can persevere through the temporary struggles and receive eternal glory.

Stand firm against the devil by clinging to Christ and humbling yourself by giving Him your worries. As Peter writes in verse 11, “All power to Him forever! Amen”