Here is the audio of the message I preached on the Sunday following my return from Nepal.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Monday, February 07, 2011
The True Grace of God - 1 Peter 5:12-14
There was a piece on the evening news recently about the dangers of walking and texting. We’ve all heard and seen the danger of driving and texting, which is now illegal in many cities and states, but now the attention has shifted to careless pedestrians who pay no attention to their surroundings while blistering their thumbs in communication with others. My son offered his commentary on this news story by saying, “Texting is for people who don’t know how to spell.” While that may be an overstatement, purists of our day have lamented at how electronic communication, beginning with email, then chatting, then texting, now tweeting, is killing the art of written communication. When there is a limit on words and characters, one cannot be superfluous with words. This may have some advantages for efficiency, but one consequence is the loss of saying a proper goodbye.
Life is short, and none of us knows that when we conclude our correspondence or conversation with someone, we may have just uttered our last words. In our day, we don’t like to think about the imminence of death, but in olden times, one could not avoid the subject. I think that may have something to do with why our ancestors were better at goodbyes than we are. People who knew of the nearness and inevitability of death were careful with their closing words, knowing that they may be remembered as their last. The careless texter probably gives no thought to the possibility that their dying words may be something as uninspiring as “LOL” or a “colon-dash-close parenthesis” smiley-face. If we considered the possibility that every word we communicate could be our last, we would want to speak of the things that mattered most to us. We would want to be like that passionate French grammarian who died just after uttering, “I am about to -- or I am going to -- die; either expression is correct.”
As Peter brings this letter to a close, he speaks words of great importance. Peter is not under a death sentence as Paul was when he wrote 2 Timothy, though he would be in the future. But, with persecution intensifying, he knew that this may be his last opportunity to correspond with Christian brothers and sisters whose fellowship he had cherished. One very compelling reconstruction of the historical background of this letter suggests that Peter had been the pastor of these Christians in Rome before they had been exiled to Asia Minor. And it is with pastoral tenderness that he closes this letter, issuing a reminder of the one thing that means the most to his heart: the true grace of God! It is this subject that Peter says has occupied his mind as he has written briefly to these friends. Now, the word “briefly” in verse 12 may seem out of place, especially having been studying this letter for some 32 weeks or so. But, the letter contains just short of 2,500 words in its 105 verses. The President recently gave a 17-minute speech of the same number of words; you could fit them on four typed pages, single-spaced. But as we have seen in these months of studying this great book, the divinely inspired nature of this brief letter is such that every word is loaded with meaning. It was a brief letter to write, but not to study. I have written some 130,000 words on over 200 single-spaced pages to expound this letter, and I can say that we have barely scratched the surface of its truth.
The reason Peter wrote this letter, he says, is to exhort and testify to the true grace of God. Every word in every verse in every chapter served this purpose. And now he closes with some reminders of grace.
I. The Testimony of Grace
On Wednesday evening I introduced some of you to a little book I have found so useful to me over the years as I have studied the Bible: Halley’s Bible Handbook. And I shared with those there how on page 814, Halley’s words are printed in bold capital letters at the top of the page: “THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS BOOK IS THIS.” And that most important thing is for pastors to preach systematically through the Bible and for the congregation to follow along in their own Bible reading during the week. Now there is something humorous and tragic about that. The humorous thing is that one has to read 813 other pages of Halley’s book to get to the MOST IMPORTANT THING. The tragic thing is that the newest edition of the book omits this information entirely. It added glossy pages and color pictures, but it left out what Halley himself considered THE MOST IMPORTANT THING in the book.
Now, Peter says that he has written “testifying that this is the true grace of God.” But unlike Halley’s Handbook, he didn’t wait until the end to reveal the most important thing. He reminds us in the end that he has already written the most important thing. But, what is it? This is the true grace of God, but what is THIS? Having nothing in the immediate context to limit the definition of this, we must understand it to mean the entire letter. The entire letter is a testimony to the true grace of God. Everything Peter has written has been a testimony to grace. Those who received this letter, like many who have read it and cherished it over the last two millennia, were Christians who were struggling to live out their faith, far from their homeland, in a hostile environment. And Peter has set forth to them a testimony of the true grace of God.
He has spoken to them of the living hope into which we, as believers in Jesus, have been born again through His resurrection from the dead. It is grace that birthed us anew into this hope. He has spoken of how Christ has conquered all evil through His own suffering for our sins. It is grace that gives us this victory. He has written of how Christ calls His people to follow His footsteps through this life. It is grace that beckons us to follow Jesus. Peter speaks of Christ’s blessing and presence with those who endure hardship, how He brings them through death and into glory just as He has also first gone. This is grace to the undeserving that Christ may guide us in this way. He has spoken promises of how Christ will vindicate and glorify those who are faithful to Him through the hardships of this life. That is grace! He has promised a judgment to come that will right every wrong and restore every loss. This is grace!
When we sing that favorite old hymn of John Newton’s, “Amazing Grace,” we sing about how grace “saved a wretch like me.” That’s saving grace. We sing about how grace teaches our hearts to fear and at the same time relieves us of fear. That is sanctifying grace. We sing in the third stanza that the Lord has promised us good things and fixed our hope upon His word by His grace. That is satisfying grace. We go on to sing about how grace brings us through many dangers, toils, and snares. That is strengthening grace. We don’t sing Newton’s original words after that. We omit two stanzas that he penned, and sing one that he didn’t write. But if we were to sing the original, we would sing a fifth stanza that speaks of grace providing joy and peace even though the flesh and heart begin to fail and mortal life comes to an end. That is sustaining grace. And in Newton’s original final stanza, we would sing about how grace binds us to the Lord for eternity, though the earth dissolve like snow and the sun cease to shine. That is a secure grace. Instead, we sing a different final stanza that speak of grace leading us to our eternal heavenly home where we will worship the Lord forever. That is all-surpassing grace.
Grace truly is amazing! And Peter says that he wrote this letter to testify to the true grace of God: how it saves us; how it sanctifies us, satisfies and strengthens us; how it sustains us, secures us, and how it surpasses all else in existence, binding us to Christ forever more. To read the precious words of this letter is to be presented with a rich testimony of the true grace of God.
II. The Exhortation of Grace
Now Peter says he has also written, not just to testify, but to give an exhortation concerning this true grace of God. What is the difference? To testify is to tell someone about something, but to exhort is to tell someone to do something. The New Testament epistles are often divided cleanly at some point near the middle by a shift from testimony to exhortation. Peter, like the other writers, wants to inform us all of some truths that we must know and believe; but that knowledge and those beliefs must then shape what we do. Belief determines behavior. Is that true? What you believe determines how you act. Agreed? Well, if that is true, then a corrolary truth is that behavior demonstrates belief. If what I believe determines how I act, then how I act demonstrates what I believe. We find these principles stated in various ways on nearly every page of the New Testament. So is Christianity about what I believe or is it about what I do? The answer is yes, for what I believe determines what I do; and what I do demonstrates what I believe. I am not saved by my doing, but by my believing; however my doing demonstrates the genuineness of my believing.
Now Peter says he has testified of the true grace of God. He has taught us about this grace and how it saves us, sanctifies us, sustains us, and so on. But he has also given us an exhortation. There is something or some things we must do because we believe in this true grace of God. Throughout each chapter, he has spoken about how this grace should affect our attitude and our actions. Here at the conclusion of the letter, he summarizes all of those exhortations with this one: “This is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!” It is one thing to say that I believe in the true grace of God, how He saves us through the blood of the cross and sanctifies us to make us more like Jesus, and strengthens us to endure the trials of life, and then brings us to Himself forever in heaven. It is easy to say that I believe all of those things. But I will have countless opportunities every day to demonstrate how firm my belief in this grace of God and this God of grace really is. The proof will be found in whether or not I stand firm in grace.
When our mind is assailed with doubts and questions that leave us second guessing our faith, will we stand firm in the grace that has saved us? Will we preach the gospel of grace to ourselves afresh? When we are faced with someone who we consider to be a vile sinner, will we remember that we are as desperately wicked as they are, and that we would be with them in the folly of their sin if not for the grace of God? And will we testify to them of the grace that saved us in Jesus Christ, just as someone else did for us? When someone has wronged us, will we reply to them in grace, or will we harbor resentment and hatred in our hearts? I am glad that God does not harbor grudges in His heart toward me when I wrong Him; and I don’t want His grace to be wasted in me, I want it to flow through me. And when the going of life gets tough, and the pressure is applied to me, what do others see in me? Do they see grace? When this very grace that saved me and is sanctifying me becomes the cause of my suffering, when I am hated and mistreated for my faith in Christ, and when it appears that all will improve if only I back down, what will I do? Peter is saying to his readers and to us that in all of life’s circumstances, including and maybe particularly in the difficult ones, we must stand firm in the true grace of God.
Christ has satisfied the righteous demands of God’s law for us; He has borne our sins on the cross; He has conquered death; He has birthed us anew into His family and His kingdom; He has shown us the path through suffering into glory, and promised that in the end all wrongs will be made right by a righteous judge. Therefore, on the basis of this true grace of God, we can fix ourselves immovably and not waver when hardships, crises, trials, or other types of suffering come our way. This is grace’s exhortation: once you know of this grace, you must stand firm in it.
III. Examples of Grace
In ancient days, when a person wrote a letter, they put their own name first, as Peter does in 1:1. It makes sense, really, because you don’t want to have to read through the whole letter to find out who it is from. So, when they close the letter, they typically don’t sign their own name again, but rather pass along greetings to certain individuals or from certain individuals who are with the person at the time the letter is written. So, it is no surprise to find several names and personal greetings here at the close of 1 Peter. That was customary. Yet, we Evangelicals make strong claims about the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture. We claim that every single word of Scripture was inspired by the Spirit of God and is therefore inerrant, infallible, authoritative, and profitable for teaching and guiding us in the Christian life. So what profit is there in us having these names and greetings preserved for us through the centuries? I believe that they provide us with examples of the true grace of God of which Peter has testified and upon which he has exhorted those of us who read this letter.
Peter himself is an example of grace. When he first met Jesus, he recognized his unworthiness to be in the Lord’s presence. He said in Luke 5:8, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” But the Lord didn’t go away. He called Peter to follow Him, and Peter even became part of the inner circle of disciples who were with Jesus constantly. There was grace working in Peter’s life. And this grace proved to be effective on that day in Caesarea when Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus told Peter that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but that God the Father had revealed it to him. That is grace, revealing truth to Peter and drawing him to confess Christ as Lord. By grace alone, over time, Peter became the leader of the apostles. And then in famously tragic episode when Jesus was on trial, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. He failed to stand firm in grace, but he never fell from grace. Jesus came to Peter and restored him to right fellowship and commissioned him to shepherd the flock of God. And here, a couple of decades or so later, Peter writes this very pastoral letter to the flock he has tended well for Jesus, and he testifies and exhorts them to stand firm in grace. Peter is an example of this grace.
And so is Silvanus. In the book of Acts, Luke calls him Silas, but in their letters both Peter and Paul call him Silvanus. Like many in his day, he had a Roman name and a Semitic name. We first meet him at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the church leaders had gathered to determine what should be required of Gentiles who desire to believe in the Lord Jesus. Silas was there. At some point grace had brought him under the Lordship of Christ, and he is described as a prophet, indicating that grace had also made him a preacher of God’s Word. But now he found himself at the most monumental gathering of the first century, surrounded by the men whose names we all know: Paul, Peter, Barnabas, James, and others. And when that council broke, they needed a messenger to deliver the verdict to Antioch. Silas was one of two chosen because he had gained a reputation as one of the “leading men among the brethren.” He was now, by God’s grace, the courier of the most important church gathering since Pentecost. Arriving in Antioch, he even had opportunity to preach to the brethren there, and before long, he began traveling with Paul as a partner with the greatest missionary who ever lived. He suffered alongside of Paul in the Philippian jail where they sang hymns together through the night. Grace had provided unbelievable opportunities for this preacher to be involved in some incredible things. And now, he finds himself along side of Peter in Rome. Some have said that he may have even been the amanuensis, or scribe, who wrote this letter as Peter dictated. That could be what is meant by the phrase, “Through Silvanus … I have written.” While this is uncertain, it is surely the case that Silas would be entrusted to deliver this letter to the Christians across Asia Minor. He was trustworthy because Peter regarded him as a faithful brother. He had proven himself so over the years. But it was all of grace. Every opportunity that came his way was by grace, and the ability to rise to those occasions was of grace as well. Silvanus, the faithful brother, is an example of grace alongside of Peter.
And then we find Mark, whom Peter calls his son. This is certainly the same Mark, or John Mark, who wrote the Gospel According to Mark. But long before this, the grace of God had been at work in Mark’s life as he grew up with a godly Christian mother. Nothing is known of his father, perhaps he had died when Mark was a child or a young man. But there was a godly cousin in his life by the name of Barnabas who encouraged young Mark to join him and Paul on the first missionary journey. The first missionaries on the first mission trip, and here Mark is right in the thick of it. There is grace involved in this opportunity. But at some point in that missionary journey, for a reason that the Bible does not tell us, Mark turned back and went home. Whatever the reason, it was enough for Paul to refuse to take him on the second journey. Mark was the cause of one of the first divisions in church history as the missionary team of Paul and Barnabas divided over him. Paul took Silas and Barnabas took Mark, but the grace of God was still working for now there were two mission teams instead of one. Mark could have gone through life sulking about being a fatherless failure, but by God’s grace, he had a cousin who encouraged him, and along the way he crossed paths with Peter. History ties him closely to Peter, and even suggests that the Gospel of Mark is a transcript of Peter’s preaching and teaching about the life and ministry of Jesus. If many scholars are correct, his gospel was the first one to be written, and the first of its kind in the world. No longer a fatherless failure, the grace of God had transformed Mark into a mighty servant of God, and united him with a brother in the Lord who became for him a father-figure. Peter calls him here “my son.” Peter understood that the true grace of God means that there is always a second chance. He had one, and he made sure Mark got one too. Even Paul would come around later, telling Timothy in 2 Tim 4:11, “Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service.”
Then there is one final person mentioned here: she who is in Babylon. Who is she? When we compare this wording to that of the opening and closing of 2 John, we notice a similarity. There he addresses the “chosen lady and her children,” and sends greetings from “the children of your chosen sister.” It seems that when hostilities in the Roman Empire began to rise against Christianity, this became a cryptic way of identifying a church. So the she of whom Peter speaks is a church. He says that she is in Babylon. Of course we know Babylon was that great city of the Middle East, capital of the domineering Babylonian Empire, and site of present day Baghdad, Iraq. But at the time Peter wrote this, that city was a wasteland. A first century historian said that Babylon was so desolate that it was no longer a great city but a great desert. And there is no evidence of a Christian church there until far beyond the Apostolic period. But there was another Babylon, in Egypt near present-day Cairo. But there has never been a shred of evidence to suggest that Peter was ever there, and no serious biblical scholars have made a case for that. So where is Babylon if it isn’t in Babylon? I agree with the majority of interpreters who conclude that Babylon is a cryptic reference to Rome.
Most of our knowledge of the history of the early church comes from the book of Acts and a few pieces of evidence we find the Epistles. Since Paul wrote most of the epistles, and since Luke traveled with Paul on his missionary journeys, most of what we know concerns the ministry of Paul. But Peter was at work during those years of Christianity’s expanse as well. We know that he was in Jerusalem for a while, and then he traveled throughout the entire region of Judea, Galilee and Samaria, visiting Lydda, Joppa, and Caesaria. And then he came back to Jerusalem, got himself arrested, and escaped by way of an angelic jailbreak. Now, keep in mind that at this point, he is a fugitive. So, it is no surprise that Luke does not tell us anymore of his travel plans. He is a wanted man. Luke simply says in Acts 12:17 that he left and went to “another place.” We know from some statements made by Paul that Peter and his wife passed through and visited some other churches over time, including Antioch and Corinth, but we don’t know much else except that Peter died in Rome. It is therefore entirely plausible that the fugitive Peter and his wife journeyed secretly from church to church across the Mediterranean region until he got to the metropolis of Rome where he could easily blend into the crowd of 1.2 million people who lived there. Tradition says that he pastored a flock of Christians here, and we have expounded this letter on the assumption that the Christians in Asia Minor who received it were originally members of that church who had been kicked out of Rome and exiled to Asia Minor as unwilling colonists there. Somehow Peter managed to lay low, as he had been doing for a while, under the radar. And he stayed in Rome to continue to shepherd the remnant of believers there, some of them perhaps family members, certainly many of whom were close Christian friends with those who received this letter. And to protect their identity and location should Silas encounter trouble and have the letter confiscated, he uses veiled language when giving these greetings.
Now, why the history lesson at this point? Because we are talking about examples of grace. And this church in Rome at this time in history is a great example of grace. In a hostile environment, where the powers that be were already threatening to erase every trace of Christianity, the church of Christ and the testimony of the gospel remained. And though external pressures had forcibly removed many of that church’s members from the region, they could not sever the bond of fellowship. The grace of God had made this band of strangers into a family of brothers and sisters. Think about it … in a country that desires to eliminate all Christian presence, the “just” thing for God to do may be to smite them, or else to withdraw His people and the testimony of His grace from that area altogether. But God doesn’t do that. Instead, he strengthens His church to remain and abide there, enduring those external pressures and persecutions, and continuing to show and tell the gracious offer of salvation through the gospel of Jesus Christ. A church in area, especially in the hard places of the world, is an example of the grace of God.
So, whether you have rebelled against the Lord as Peter did; you have wavered in your commitment like Mark did; you feel like an insignificant person like perhaps Silas had felt at some point in his life; you find yourself surrounded by hostility because of your faith in Jesus; the grace of God is sufficient for you. By grace, you can be restored like Peter was, and go on to do great things for the Lord. By grace, you don’t have to be a fatherless failure like Mark perhaps had considered himself; you can have a family of fellow believers and go on to be useful for God’s purposes. By grace, you may find God placing ordinary little you in extraordinary circumstances where He demonstrates His glory through you -- like He did with Silas. Or, like the chosen lady of Babylon, the oppressed Roman Church, God may use you to demonstrate His grace and His glory, even to those who are most hostile toward Him and His truth. And in all of these circumstances, you are the examples of the true grace of God for the world to see.
But the greatest example of His grace is this: that God would become one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, and live the sinless life of perfect righteousness that God requires, but that we cannot deliver, and yet die as a sacrificial substitute to bear the wrath of God for our sins, and then conquer death on our behalf through His glorious resurrection. And because of this, God calls out to sinners and beckons them to come to Jesus to be saved. And He promises to fill them with His Spirit and transform them into the likeness of Christ until He takes them into His presence forever in heaven. Who among us can say that we are entitled to that from the Holy God of the Universe? Who can say it is deserved, or that we are good enough to earn it? No, not one. This offer comes to us by grace. This is the true grace of God. You are surrounded today by examples of grace. You have heard today a testimony of grace. You have also been presented with an exhortation of grace. Come to Christ and be saved. Experience this true grace of God and then stand firm in it until He calls you home.
These were the last words Peter wrote in this letter, not knowing that it may be the last words he ever said to these friends. They were important enough to say in the event that they were his final words. Friends, we have no guarantees. And if these are the last words I ever say to you, I could say nothing better. I have testified to you of the true grace of God. I exhort you to stand firm in it.
Life is short, and none of us knows that when we conclude our correspondence or conversation with someone, we may have just uttered our last words. In our day, we don’t like to think about the imminence of death, but in olden times, one could not avoid the subject. I think that may have something to do with why our ancestors were better at goodbyes than we are. People who knew of the nearness and inevitability of death were careful with their closing words, knowing that they may be remembered as their last. The careless texter probably gives no thought to the possibility that their dying words may be something as uninspiring as “LOL” or a “colon-dash-close parenthesis” smiley-face. If we considered the possibility that every word we communicate could be our last, we would want to speak of the things that mattered most to us. We would want to be like that passionate French grammarian who died just after uttering, “I am about to -- or I am going to -- die; either expression is correct.”
As Peter brings this letter to a close, he speaks words of great importance. Peter is not under a death sentence as Paul was when he wrote 2 Timothy, though he would be in the future. But, with persecution intensifying, he knew that this may be his last opportunity to correspond with Christian brothers and sisters whose fellowship he had cherished. One very compelling reconstruction of the historical background of this letter suggests that Peter had been the pastor of these Christians in Rome before they had been exiled to Asia Minor. And it is with pastoral tenderness that he closes this letter, issuing a reminder of the one thing that means the most to his heart: the true grace of God! It is this subject that Peter says has occupied his mind as he has written briefly to these friends. Now, the word “briefly” in verse 12 may seem out of place, especially having been studying this letter for some 32 weeks or so. But, the letter contains just short of 2,500 words in its 105 verses. The President recently gave a 17-minute speech of the same number of words; you could fit them on four typed pages, single-spaced. But as we have seen in these months of studying this great book, the divinely inspired nature of this brief letter is such that every word is loaded with meaning. It was a brief letter to write, but not to study. I have written some 130,000 words on over 200 single-spaced pages to expound this letter, and I can say that we have barely scratched the surface of its truth.
The reason Peter wrote this letter, he says, is to exhort and testify to the true grace of God. Every word in every verse in every chapter served this purpose. And now he closes with some reminders of grace.
I. The Testimony of Grace
On Wednesday evening I introduced some of you to a little book I have found so useful to me over the years as I have studied the Bible: Halley’s Bible Handbook. And I shared with those there how on page 814, Halley’s words are printed in bold capital letters at the top of the page: “THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS BOOK IS THIS.” And that most important thing is for pastors to preach systematically through the Bible and for the congregation to follow along in their own Bible reading during the week. Now there is something humorous and tragic about that. The humorous thing is that one has to read 813 other pages of Halley’s book to get to the MOST IMPORTANT THING. The tragic thing is that the newest edition of the book omits this information entirely. It added glossy pages and color pictures, but it left out what Halley himself considered THE MOST IMPORTANT THING in the book.
Now, Peter says that he has written “testifying that this is the true grace of God.” But unlike Halley’s Handbook, he didn’t wait until the end to reveal the most important thing. He reminds us in the end that he has already written the most important thing. But, what is it? This is the true grace of God, but what is THIS? Having nothing in the immediate context to limit the definition of this, we must understand it to mean the entire letter. The entire letter is a testimony to the true grace of God. Everything Peter has written has been a testimony to grace. Those who received this letter, like many who have read it and cherished it over the last two millennia, were Christians who were struggling to live out their faith, far from their homeland, in a hostile environment. And Peter has set forth to them a testimony of the true grace of God.
He has spoken to them of the living hope into which we, as believers in Jesus, have been born again through His resurrection from the dead. It is grace that birthed us anew into this hope. He has spoken of how Christ has conquered all evil through His own suffering for our sins. It is grace that gives us this victory. He has written of how Christ calls His people to follow His footsteps through this life. It is grace that beckons us to follow Jesus. Peter speaks of Christ’s blessing and presence with those who endure hardship, how He brings them through death and into glory just as He has also first gone. This is grace to the undeserving that Christ may guide us in this way. He has spoken promises of how Christ will vindicate and glorify those who are faithful to Him through the hardships of this life. That is grace! He has promised a judgment to come that will right every wrong and restore every loss. This is grace!
When we sing that favorite old hymn of John Newton’s, “Amazing Grace,” we sing about how grace “saved a wretch like me.” That’s saving grace. We sing about how grace teaches our hearts to fear and at the same time relieves us of fear. That is sanctifying grace. We sing in the third stanza that the Lord has promised us good things and fixed our hope upon His word by His grace. That is satisfying grace. We go on to sing about how grace brings us through many dangers, toils, and snares. That is strengthening grace. We don’t sing Newton’s original words after that. We omit two stanzas that he penned, and sing one that he didn’t write. But if we were to sing the original, we would sing a fifth stanza that speaks of grace providing joy and peace even though the flesh and heart begin to fail and mortal life comes to an end. That is sustaining grace. And in Newton’s original final stanza, we would sing about how grace binds us to the Lord for eternity, though the earth dissolve like snow and the sun cease to shine. That is a secure grace. Instead, we sing a different final stanza that speak of grace leading us to our eternal heavenly home where we will worship the Lord forever. That is all-surpassing grace.
Grace truly is amazing! And Peter says that he wrote this letter to testify to the true grace of God: how it saves us; how it sanctifies us, satisfies and strengthens us; how it sustains us, secures us, and how it surpasses all else in existence, binding us to Christ forever more. To read the precious words of this letter is to be presented with a rich testimony of the true grace of God.
II. The Exhortation of Grace
Now Peter says he has also written, not just to testify, but to give an exhortation concerning this true grace of God. What is the difference? To testify is to tell someone about something, but to exhort is to tell someone to do something. The New Testament epistles are often divided cleanly at some point near the middle by a shift from testimony to exhortation. Peter, like the other writers, wants to inform us all of some truths that we must know and believe; but that knowledge and those beliefs must then shape what we do. Belief determines behavior. Is that true? What you believe determines how you act. Agreed? Well, if that is true, then a corrolary truth is that behavior demonstrates belief. If what I believe determines how I act, then how I act demonstrates what I believe. We find these principles stated in various ways on nearly every page of the New Testament. So is Christianity about what I believe or is it about what I do? The answer is yes, for what I believe determines what I do; and what I do demonstrates what I believe. I am not saved by my doing, but by my believing; however my doing demonstrates the genuineness of my believing.
Now Peter says he has testified of the true grace of God. He has taught us about this grace and how it saves us, sanctifies us, sustains us, and so on. But he has also given us an exhortation. There is something or some things we must do because we believe in this true grace of God. Throughout each chapter, he has spoken about how this grace should affect our attitude and our actions. Here at the conclusion of the letter, he summarizes all of those exhortations with this one: “This is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!” It is one thing to say that I believe in the true grace of God, how He saves us through the blood of the cross and sanctifies us to make us more like Jesus, and strengthens us to endure the trials of life, and then brings us to Himself forever in heaven. It is easy to say that I believe all of those things. But I will have countless opportunities every day to demonstrate how firm my belief in this grace of God and this God of grace really is. The proof will be found in whether or not I stand firm in grace.
When our mind is assailed with doubts and questions that leave us second guessing our faith, will we stand firm in the grace that has saved us? Will we preach the gospel of grace to ourselves afresh? When we are faced with someone who we consider to be a vile sinner, will we remember that we are as desperately wicked as they are, and that we would be with them in the folly of their sin if not for the grace of God? And will we testify to them of the grace that saved us in Jesus Christ, just as someone else did for us? When someone has wronged us, will we reply to them in grace, or will we harbor resentment and hatred in our hearts? I am glad that God does not harbor grudges in His heart toward me when I wrong Him; and I don’t want His grace to be wasted in me, I want it to flow through me. And when the going of life gets tough, and the pressure is applied to me, what do others see in me? Do they see grace? When this very grace that saved me and is sanctifying me becomes the cause of my suffering, when I am hated and mistreated for my faith in Christ, and when it appears that all will improve if only I back down, what will I do? Peter is saying to his readers and to us that in all of life’s circumstances, including and maybe particularly in the difficult ones, we must stand firm in the true grace of God.
Christ has satisfied the righteous demands of God’s law for us; He has borne our sins on the cross; He has conquered death; He has birthed us anew into His family and His kingdom; He has shown us the path through suffering into glory, and promised that in the end all wrongs will be made right by a righteous judge. Therefore, on the basis of this true grace of God, we can fix ourselves immovably and not waver when hardships, crises, trials, or other types of suffering come our way. This is grace’s exhortation: once you know of this grace, you must stand firm in it.
III. Examples of Grace
In ancient days, when a person wrote a letter, they put their own name first, as Peter does in 1:1. It makes sense, really, because you don’t want to have to read through the whole letter to find out who it is from. So, when they close the letter, they typically don’t sign their own name again, but rather pass along greetings to certain individuals or from certain individuals who are with the person at the time the letter is written. So, it is no surprise to find several names and personal greetings here at the close of 1 Peter. That was customary. Yet, we Evangelicals make strong claims about the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture. We claim that every single word of Scripture was inspired by the Spirit of God and is therefore inerrant, infallible, authoritative, and profitable for teaching and guiding us in the Christian life. So what profit is there in us having these names and greetings preserved for us through the centuries? I believe that they provide us with examples of the true grace of God of which Peter has testified and upon which he has exhorted those of us who read this letter.
Peter himself is an example of grace. When he first met Jesus, he recognized his unworthiness to be in the Lord’s presence. He said in Luke 5:8, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” But the Lord didn’t go away. He called Peter to follow Him, and Peter even became part of the inner circle of disciples who were with Jesus constantly. There was grace working in Peter’s life. And this grace proved to be effective on that day in Caesarea when Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus told Peter that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but that God the Father had revealed it to him. That is grace, revealing truth to Peter and drawing him to confess Christ as Lord. By grace alone, over time, Peter became the leader of the apostles. And then in famously tragic episode when Jesus was on trial, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. He failed to stand firm in grace, but he never fell from grace. Jesus came to Peter and restored him to right fellowship and commissioned him to shepherd the flock of God. And here, a couple of decades or so later, Peter writes this very pastoral letter to the flock he has tended well for Jesus, and he testifies and exhorts them to stand firm in grace. Peter is an example of this grace.
And so is Silvanus. In the book of Acts, Luke calls him Silas, but in their letters both Peter and Paul call him Silvanus. Like many in his day, he had a Roman name and a Semitic name. We first meet him at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the church leaders had gathered to determine what should be required of Gentiles who desire to believe in the Lord Jesus. Silas was there. At some point grace had brought him under the Lordship of Christ, and he is described as a prophet, indicating that grace had also made him a preacher of God’s Word. But now he found himself at the most monumental gathering of the first century, surrounded by the men whose names we all know: Paul, Peter, Barnabas, James, and others. And when that council broke, they needed a messenger to deliver the verdict to Antioch. Silas was one of two chosen because he had gained a reputation as one of the “leading men among the brethren.” He was now, by God’s grace, the courier of the most important church gathering since Pentecost. Arriving in Antioch, he even had opportunity to preach to the brethren there, and before long, he began traveling with Paul as a partner with the greatest missionary who ever lived. He suffered alongside of Paul in the Philippian jail where they sang hymns together through the night. Grace had provided unbelievable opportunities for this preacher to be involved in some incredible things. And now, he finds himself along side of Peter in Rome. Some have said that he may have even been the amanuensis, or scribe, who wrote this letter as Peter dictated. That could be what is meant by the phrase, “Through Silvanus … I have written.” While this is uncertain, it is surely the case that Silas would be entrusted to deliver this letter to the Christians across Asia Minor. He was trustworthy because Peter regarded him as a faithful brother. He had proven himself so over the years. But it was all of grace. Every opportunity that came his way was by grace, and the ability to rise to those occasions was of grace as well. Silvanus, the faithful brother, is an example of grace alongside of Peter.
And then we find Mark, whom Peter calls his son. This is certainly the same Mark, or John Mark, who wrote the Gospel According to Mark. But long before this, the grace of God had been at work in Mark’s life as he grew up with a godly Christian mother. Nothing is known of his father, perhaps he had died when Mark was a child or a young man. But there was a godly cousin in his life by the name of Barnabas who encouraged young Mark to join him and Paul on the first missionary journey. The first missionaries on the first mission trip, and here Mark is right in the thick of it. There is grace involved in this opportunity. But at some point in that missionary journey, for a reason that the Bible does not tell us, Mark turned back and went home. Whatever the reason, it was enough for Paul to refuse to take him on the second journey. Mark was the cause of one of the first divisions in church history as the missionary team of Paul and Barnabas divided over him. Paul took Silas and Barnabas took Mark, but the grace of God was still working for now there were two mission teams instead of one. Mark could have gone through life sulking about being a fatherless failure, but by God’s grace, he had a cousin who encouraged him, and along the way he crossed paths with Peter. History ties him closely to Peter, and even suggests that the Gospel of Mark is a transcript of Peter’s preaching and teaching about the life and ministry of Jesus. If many scholars are correct, his gospel was the first one to be written, and the first of its kind in the world. No longer a fatherless failure, the grace of God had transformed Mark into a mighty servant of God, and united him with a brother in the Lord who became for him a father-figure. Peter calls him here “my son.” Peter understood that the true grace of God means that there is always a second chance. He had one, and he made sure Mark got one too. Even Paul would come around later, telling Timothy in 2 Tim 4:11, “Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service.”
Then there is one final person mentioned here: she who is in Babylon. Who is she? When we compare this wording to that of the opening and closing of 2 John, we notice a similarity. There he addresses the “chosen lady and her children,” and sends greetings from “the children of your chosen sister.” It seems that when hostilities in the Roman Empire began to rise against Christianity, this became a cryptic way of identifying a church. So the she of whom Peter speaks is a church. He says that she is in Babylon. Of course we know Babylon was that great city of the Middle East, capital of the domineering Babylonian Empire, and site of present day Baghdad, Iraq. But at the time Peter wrote this, that city was a wasteland. A first century historian said that Babylon was so desolate that it was no longer a great city but a great desert. And there is no evidence of a Christian church there until far beyond the Apostolic period. But there was another Babylon, in Egypt near present-day Cairo. But there has never been a shred of evidence to suggest that Peter was ever there, and no serious biblical scholars have made a case for that. So where is Babylon if it isn’t in Babylon? I agree with the majority of interpreters who conclude that Babylon is a cryptic reference to Rome.
Most of our knowledge of the history of the early church comes from the book of Acts and a few pieces of evidence we find the Epistles. Since Paul wrote most of the epistles, and since Luke traveled with Paul on his missionary journeys, most of what we know concerns the ministry of Paul. But Peter was at work during those years of Christianity’s expanse as well. We know that he was in Jerusalem for a while, and then he traveled throughout the entire region of Judea, Galilee and Samaria, visiting Lydda, Joppa, and Caesaria. And then he came back to Jerusalem, got himself arrested, and escaped by way of an angelic jailbreak. Now, keep in mind that at this point, he is a fugitive. So, it is no surprise that Luke does not tell us anymore of his travel plans. He is a wanted man. Luke simply says in Acts 12:17 that he left and went to “another place.” We know from some statements made by Paul that Peter and his wife passed through and visited some other churches over time, including Antioch and Corinth, but we don’t know much else except that Peter died in Rome. It is therefore entirely plausible that the fugitive Peter and his wife journeyed secretly from church to church across the Mediterranean region until he got to the metropolis of Rome where he could easily blend into the crowd of 1.2 million people who lived there. Tradition says that he pastored a flock of Christians here, and we have expounded this letter on the assumption that the Christians in Asia Minor who received it were originally members of that church who had been kicked out of Rome and exiled to Asia Minor as unwilling colonists there. Somehow Peter managed to lay low, as he had been doing for a while, under the radar. And he stayed in Rome to continue to shepherd the remnant of believers there, some of them perhaps family members, certainly many of whom were close Christian friends with those who received this letter. And to protect their identity and location should Silas encounter trouble and have the letter confiscated, he uses veiled language when giving these greetings.
Now, why the history lesson at this point? Because we are talking about examples of grace. And this church in Rome at this time in history is a great example of grace. In a hostile environment, where the powers that be were already threatening to erase every trace of Christianity, the church of Christ and the testimony of the gospel remained. And though external pressures had forcibly removed many of that church’s members from the region, they could not sever the bond of fellowship. The grace of God had made this band of strangers into a family of brothers and sisters. Think about it … in a country that desires to eliminate all Christian presence, the “just” thing for God to do may be to smite them, or else to withdraw His people and the testimony of His grace from that area altogether. But God doesn’t do that. Instead, he strengthens His church to remain and abide there, enduring those external pressures and persecutions, and continuing to show and tell the gracious offer of salvation through the gospel of Jesus Christ. A church in area, especially in the hard places of the world, is an example of the grace of God.
So, whether you have rebelled against the Lord as Peter did; you have wavered in your commitment like Mark did; you feel like an insignificant person like perhaps Silas had felt at some point in his life; you find yourself surrounded by hostility because of your faith in Jesus; the grace of God is sufficient for you. By grace, you can be restored like Peter was, and go on to do great things for the Lord. By grace, you don’t have to be a fatherless failure like Mark perhaps had considered himself; you can have a family of fellow believers and go on to be useful for God’s purposes. By grace, you may find God placing ordinary little you in extraordinary circumstances where He demonstrates His glory through you -- like He did with Silas. Or, like the chosen lady of Babylon, the oppressed Roman Church, God may use you to demonstrate His grace and His glory, even to those who are most hostile toward Him and His truth. And in all of these circumstances, you are the examples of the true grace of God for the world to see.
But the greatest example of His grace is this: that God would become one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, and live the sinless life of perfect righteousness that God requires, but that we cannot deliver, and yet die as a sacrificial substitute to bear the wrath of God for our sins, and then conquer death on our behalf through His glorious resurrection. And because of this, God calls out to sinners and beckons them to come to Jesus to be saved. And He promises to fill them with His Spirit and transform them into the likeness of Christ until He takes them into His presence forever in heaven. Who among us can say that we are entitled to that from the Holy God of the Universe? Who can say it is deserved, or that we are good enough to earn it? No, not one. This offer comes to us by grace. This is the true grace of God. You are surrounded today by examples of grace. You have heard today a testimony of grace. You have also been presented with an exhortation of grace. Come to Christ and be saved. Experience this true grace of God and then stand firm in it until He calls you home.
These were the last words Peter wrote in this letter, not knowing that it may be the last words he ever said to these friends. They were important enough to say in the event that they were his final words. Friends, we have no guarantees. And if these are the last words I ever say to you, I could say nothing better. I have testified to you of the true grace of God. I exhort you to stand firm in it.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Battling a Lion - 1 Peter 5:8-11
In 1898, the British East Africa Company sent Lt. Col. John Patterson to Kenya to oversee the building of a bridge over the Tsavo river. Soon after Patterson arrived, the work camp began to be plagued by the nighttime attacks of two man-eating lions. Over the course of nine months, twenty-eight railway workers and countless local villagers were viciously mauled by these stealthy predators. Patterson began to search for a way to deal with the lions and the crisis they were causing among his workers. After nine months of failed attempts to deter or trap the lions, Patterson shot and killed one of them on December 9, 1898. Three weeks later, in a confrontation that nearly cost his own life, Patterson shot and killed the second of the two lions. The work on the bridge resumed and was completed just a few weeks later.
I have been to Africa numerous times, and I am glad to say I have never encountered a lion there. I would imagine that most of our experiences with lions have been on television, in movies, or at zoos where a cage or glass keeps a safe distance between us and them. Some of you who are from Africa may have had or know of more dangerous encounters. But there is another sense in which every Christian finds himself or herself engaged in a daily battle against a lion-like predator. Here in this text, the Apostle Peter, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, likens our spiritual enemy, the devil, to a prowling and roaring lion. Just as John Patterson had to strategize in order to gain victory over the wild beasts of Tsavo, so we must have a spiritual strategy against this enemy. And we find just such a strategy in the words of this text.
I. We must know our enemy.
John Patterson was chosen by the British East Africa Company because he knew how to hunt predators. He had been successful in hunting tigers in India, but now Patterson would have to learn about the habits of lions, how to find them, where they were vulnerable, and how to effectively kill them. Similarly, in human warfare, military strategists have known for centuries that knowledge of the enemy is crucial for victory. Sun Tzu, who wrote the classic Art of War in the sixth century before Christ, said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” And the same is true in our spiritual warfare as well. We must know our enemy. And for that we turn to Scripture, where God has recorded for our information and instruction all that we need to know about him. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:11, “We are not ignorant of his schemes.” In texts such as this one before us today, we find the necessary data about our enemy to equip us for battle.
First, we are told his name. He is “the devil.” The Greek word diabolos is a word that typically means “slanderer,” or “false accuser.” Jesus said that the devil is a liar and the father of lies, and that there is no truth in him (John 8:44). In Revelation 12:10, he is described as the “accuser of the brethren.” So, by his very name, we know that he is a liar, a slanderer, an accuser, and an adversary.
Then we are also told something of his nature: he is our adversary. When the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, the word diabolos, or “devil”, was used 18 times to render the Hebrew word Satan, which means “adversary,” or “one who withstands.” As an adversary, he is an enemy or opponent. But whose enemy is he? We know from the rest of Scripture that from the beginning, since his fall from the position of being an exalted angel, he has been opposed to God. Throughout the life of Jesus, we find that he is an enemy also of Christ. But here Peter reminds us that by entering into the family of God by faith in Jesus, the devil has become our adversary as well. Notice the personal pronoun: “YOUR adversary, the devil.” He is not only radically opposed to God; he has you in his crosshairs as well. Peter understood this from experience. Jesus told Peter during the last supper, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail” (Lk 22:31). And Peter reminds his readers and all of us here that the devil is “your adversary.”
Notice that we find here a description of the devil’s tactics. He prowls around like a roaring lion. The description is one of a lion who is stalking his prey in silence, and then launching upon the prey with that ferocious roar at the opportune moment. Grudem writes, “The metaphor is apt, for a prowling lion attacks suddenly, viciously, and often when its unsuspecting victim is engaged in routine activities.” He doesn’t always roar and make his presence known in an obvious way. If he did, avoiding the battle would be easy. He stalks in silence until he has the prey right where he can attack and then comes the roar of the attack.
Three biblical examples illustrate this stalking, prowling behavior of our enemy. The first one comes from early in the book of Genesis when Cain was wrestling with his frustration against God and his brother Abel. God confronted Cain and said, “sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:7). The image there is of a ferocious predator positioned at the door prepared to pounce upon whoever walks through it. The other comes from the book of Job, where Satan comes before God and says that he has been “roaming about on the earth and walking around on it” (Job 1:7). As the context unfolds we discover that he has been looking for someone to attack as his prey. The third illustration comes from the life of Jesus. After He was tempted by Satan during 40 days in the wilderness, we read, “When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him alone until an opportune time.” He was never far away; he was lurking in the shadows waiting for that opportune moment when he might come out roaring to attack the Lord Jesus once more. From these examples, and the words of our text today, we see how Satan camouflages himself in the environment around us, like a lion in the tall grass of Tsavo, silently waiting to attack his prey at the opportune moment.
Then we are also informed here of his objective. This lion-like enemy is not a kitten looking for someone to snuggle or play with. He is out to devour us. The Greek word used here means, “to swallow.” In the Greek version of the Old Testament, this word was used to describe the fish swallowing Jonah. Only, in that instance, the fish swallowed Jonah to save him; here the lion devours the Christian to destroy him or her. Knowing that he can never prevail against the Lord, Satan attacks humanity, who bears the image of God, and Christian humanity, who bear the divine image and the divine name, in particular in an effort to destroy the work of God in the world.
The great reformer Martin Luther, who knew a thing or two about spiritual warfare, said this: “If Satan were far from you and would leave you alone in peace, he would do little harm. But … he encircles you … He does not lie upon a cushion and sleep and snore, but he walks about … day and night. He does not do so that he may joke and play with you, … he is angry and furious, and hungrier than a wolf or lion.... His only purpose is to swallow you whole. He walks about … until at last he causes you to fall; now he attacks you and stirs you to adultery and anger, then to avarice and pride. If he does not succeed in this way, he tries with terror and unbelief, to persuade you to let go of the Word of God and to doubt His grace. … So cunningly and wickedly does he plot for you Christians!”
Now we know about our enemy: his name, his nature, his tactics, his objective. He is not a cartoon character in red tights with a horn and a tail and a pitchfork. If you think of him that way, he’s already got you fooled into not taking him seriously. Better to think of him as a bloodthirsty lion that is crouching in the tall grass waiting to pounce on you and destroy you at any moment. Knowing this is essential for the battle, but it is not sufficient. There is more that we must take from this text if we are to effectively battle this lion.
II. We must take our position
I love reading adventure stories that take place in some of the far away places I have visited, and a few of those have had to do with hunting lions in Africa. In a number of those stories, the hunters talk about how they went to an area where they knew the lions would be coming, maybe because there was some bait or prey there, and they positioned themselves in an elevated spot so that they could see in all directions. They crouched down behind a blind so they could see without being seen, and the carried the right weapons with them in order to down the beast in one shot. If you aren’t positioned rightly for a battle with a lion, you lose the battle. It’s that simple.
Now Peter says that we have to be in the right position for this battle as well. There are three primary imperatives for the believer here in the text that describe for us what we must do in order to be well positioned for the battle that we will surely face. The first is to be of sober spirit. This idea has to do with clear thinking and sound judgment. It literally means the opposite of intoxication, but it is used figuratively in 1 Peter three times to indicate, as Grudem writes, not “letting the mind wander into any … kind of mental intoxication or addiction which inhibits spiritual alertness, or any laziness of mind which lulls Christians into sin through carelessness.” If you knew that lions were prowling around preparing to devour you, you wouldn’t want to be drunk or in any kind of stupor that may dull your senses, dim your reasoning, or lull you to sleep. No, when the lion is prowling you want to make sure that you can see straight, think clearly, and act quickly. And that is what Peter is saying that we must positioned to do in the spiritual realm against our prowling enemy as well.
Related to this is the command to be alert. Like spiritual sobriety, alertness has to do with being sharp in senses, reason, and reaction; but it also has to do with the focus of our attentiveness. It has the idea of being watchful; and for what are we watching? We are watching for the enemy to attack. It is one thing to know that Satan and his forces may attack. As long as we think like that, you know, “he may,” then we might get lazy and even begin to slumber spiritually. And before we know it we are under attack. Being alert means thinking not that “he may attack,” but knowing that “he will attack.” We don’t know when, or specifically how, and that is why we have to be like a watchman on guard duty: awake and alert, on watch at all times, knowing that the lion will strike. We have no excuse to not be ready when he does.
And when he does, what must we do? Do we cower in fear? Do we attack him back? Do we speak to him or rebuke him or attempt to bind him? Interestingly, in many popular Christian books and television programs, we are taught some of these very things. Attack the devil; bind the devil; rebuke the devil, etc. But we never find any of these notions in Scripture. Throughout the New Testament, we are told that our response to the attacks of Satan is to resist him. In Ephesians 6, we are told about a great panoply of spiritual armor that we have been given, but we are told that our orders are to “stand firm” and “resist” the devil. In James 4:7, we are told to “resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
The word that Peter uses for “resist” here is a common one in the New Testament. In various contexts it means to stand your ground, to not back down, to remain courageously unmoved. And how do we do that when Satan is attacking? Peter says it is by remaining “firm in your faith.” Just as he sought to tempt Adam and Eve by making them question God’s word, God’s goodness, and God’s faithfulness; just as he sought to tempt Jesus to question God’s promises and purposes; so also he desires to ruin us by luring us into abandoning the gospel, abandoning the truth of God’s word, and abandoning our convictions concerning God’s nature. But even in the thick of battle, we must hold fast to the faith that God’s Word is true; that the gospel is our only hope; that God is good and faithful, a loving Father to those who are His by faith, and that God’s purposes will ultimately prevail. Satan only gains ground in the battle when he persuades a Christian to weaken his or her confidence in one of these fundamental truths.
When the battle begins to rage, and the enemy begins to roar and attack, the most natural inclination in any of us is to give up. But God has called us to resist the enemy and stand firm in our faith. We have to be sober and alert, knowing that the attack is going to happen; and then to be unmovable once it happens, with our feet firmly anchored in the truth of God. This has to be our position in the battle, otherwise we will be devoured. So, we have to know our enemy and take our position, but it would be presumptuous folly to do this without also following the final admonition here.
III. We must trust our God
Lions have no natural predators. The greatest threat to lions are other lions. And this is good news for us, for though our enemy is here described as a ferocious lion, we find in Scripture another, greater, and more ferocious lion who is for us, not against us. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. And our greatest hope against our enemy is knowing that another, mightier lion has been unleashed to fight our enemy on our behalf. Our confidence for victory is not in our own strength; not even in our own ability to resist; but rather in the God whom we serve, and to whom we belong by faith in Christ.
We are repeatedly reminded in Scripture that this world is filled with suffering, and that as Christians we will often be faced with suffering simply for the reason that we believe in Jesus. As Peter says here in verse 9, our brothers and sisters around the world face this reality daily. Peter’s readers in the first century understood this fully well. And Peter encourages those who read these words here by saying that though suffering is certain, it has an expiration date, and from the vantage point of eternity, the time spent suffering for Jesus will seem to have been very brief. He says, “After you have suffered for a little while.” Notice that! “After”: that means that suffering will come to an end one day. “A little while”: that means that we will one day look back on the hardships we endured for Christ and find that it did not last long compared to the joy of eternity in God’s presence. But the greatest encouragement here is not just knowing that suffering is temporary and brief, but in knowing that God is actively at work in and through our suffering accomplishing something good for His people through it all.
God, who has called us into His eternal glory in Christ by His infinite grace, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. The little while of our suffering may elapse within the boundaries of this life, or they may endure until our death; indeed, this suffering may even precipitate our death as it has done for countless believers throughout history. But now or then, here or there, it will end, and when it does, God will be proven to have been faithful to His people as we emerge from the fire refined like gold. God will perfect us. The word that Peter uses here is the same word used in the Gospels to describe the fishermen mending their nets. Peter is saying here is that God will set all things aright after we have suffered. If we have suffered loss, God will supply; if we have suffered harm, God will restore; if we have suffered death, God will give life. And all the while He is shaping us, perfecting us in our faith by making us more like Jesus through the fiery ordeals of our suffering.
God will also confirm us through our suffering. Those who truly belong to Jesus will be proven, confirmed, through the ordeal of suffering. They will not fall away because the going gets tough; they will emerge with their faith in tact, as one lexicon says, “more firm and unchanging in attitude or belief,” concerning the truth of Christ because of what they have endured. And God Himself will strengthen you through your suffering. One would think the opposite would be true, that we would emerge from the suffering of a spiritual battle in a weakened condition. But where God at work in the battle, He is strengthening His people through the midst of it, and bringing them through it spiritually stronger in the end than they were when it began.
And God Himself will establish you. Here Peter uses a word that he has used elsewhere to denote a house that has been built on a secure foundation. Jesus spoke of two men who built their houses on different foundations. One he said built his house on sand, and the other on a rock. We might imagine that to the naked eye, both houses looked equally solid. The one built on sand may have even been more impressive in size and grandeur. But Jesus said that a storm came and the house built on sand fell to the ground, while the one built on the rock withstood the storm. Jesus said that this story illustrated how the wise person builds his or her life on the rock foundation of God’s word. And it may take a storm to prove what kind of foundation your life is built upon. Only in the aftermath will those that are built on the rock be revealed. God brings His people through the spiritual battles we face with our enemy even more firmly established on that rock solid foundation.
How do we respond to these precious truths? It seems that all we can do is stand in awe and worship this great God who gives us victory. Here in the text, Peter erupts, as should we, into worship and praise, saying, “To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen!” Dominion means power and it speaks of God’s sovereign rule and reign over all things. Though for a while, Satan prowls about like the king of the jungle, there is a mightier lion, a greater king, seated upon a higher throne, and He shall reign forever and ever. We pass through the field of battle under the banner of His sovereign Lordship, and we emerge from it victorious, with Him defeating the enemy forever through the blood of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ.
John Patterson didn’t know what he was getting into when he went to Tsavo to build that railroad bridge. He didn’t know that he would stare death in the face as he fought the maneating lions who preyed upon his work camp there. But he defeated the ferocious beasts, and after his work there was done, he took the skins of those lions home and made rugs for his home out of them. Every day he tread underfoot the fur of those beasts that wreaked so much havoc. When I think about our enemy the devil, prowling around like a roaring lion seeking to devour us, I am reminded of the wondrous promise of Romans 16:20 -- “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” That ferocious adversary who threatens to destroy us now will one day be crushed by the sovereign dominion of our risen Lord Jesus, and we will take part in his destruction. He will be crushed beneath our feet, and all the suffering and hardship that we endured in this brief little while of life in this fallen world will be vindicated forever.
If you are not a follower of Jesus today, you might find it silly that we would spend so much time talking about fighting the devil. To you it may seem like a fairy tale or something to think that we actually believe in such a being. The fact is that Satan has no need to show himself to you, no need to attack you whatsoever. If you are not a follower of Jesus, he already has you imprisoned in his kingdom. Your agnosticism to his existence is itself one of his tactics to keep you in his grasp. But the good news is that a great liberator has come to your rescue. The Lord Jesus Christ died to redeem you from your bondage and has defeated the enemy through His death and resurrection. If you would acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior today, you would be set free from Satan’s grasp. Though the remainder of your days will find you often in battle against him, God will bind you securely to Himself and preserve you for His presence in eternity. So we would invite you today to know this Christ who would save you and follow Him with your life by faith.
Those of us who know Christ are encouraged by this Word today to know our enemy; to be sober and alert to his tactics and schemes and to resist him with firmness of faith; trusting in the power of our Sovereign God to rescue us from the battle through the power and victory of Christ who reigns forevermore.
I have been to Africa numerous times, and I am glad to say I have never encountered a lion there. I would imagine that most of our experiences with lions have been on television, in movies, or at zoos where a cage or glass keeps a safe distance between us and them. Some of you who are from Africa may have had or know of more dangerous encounters. But there is another sense in which every Christian finds himself or herself engaged in a daily battle against a lion-like predator. Here in this text, the Apostle Peter, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, likens our spiritual enemy, the devil, to a prowling and roaring lion. Just as John Patterson had to strategize in order to gain victory over the wild beasts of Tsavo, so we must have a spiritual strategy against this enemy. And we find just such a strategy in the words of this text.
I. We must know our enemy.
John Patterson was chosen by the British East Africa Company because he knew how to hunt predators. He had been successful in hunting tigers in India, but now Patterson would have to learn about the habits of lions, how to find them, where they were vulnerable, and how to effectively kill them. Similarly, in human warfare, military strategists have known for centuries that knowledge of the enemy is crucial for victory. Sun Tzu, who wrote the classic Art of War in the sixth century before Christ, said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” And the same is true in our spiritual warfare as well. We must know our enemy. And for that we turn to Scripture, where God has recorded for our information and instruction all that we need to know about him. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:11, “We are not ignorant of his schemes.” In texts such as this one before us today, we find the necessary data about our enemy to equip us for battle.
First, we are told his name. He is “the devil.” The Greek word diabolos is a word that typically means “slanderer,” or “false accuser.” Jesus said that the devil is a liar and the father of lies, and that there is no truth in him (John 8:44). In Revelation 12:10, he is described as the “accuser of the brethren.” So, by his very name, we know that he is a liar, a slanderer, an accuser, and an adversary.
Then we are also told something of his nature: he is our adversary. When the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek, the word diabolos, or “devil”, was used 18 times to render the Hebrew word Satan, which means “adversary,” or “one who withstands.” As an adversary, he is an enemy or opponent. But whose enemy is he? We know from the rest of Scripture that from the beginning, since his fall from the position of being an exalted angel, he has been opposed to God. Throughout the life of Jesus, we find that he is an enemy also of Christ. But here Peter reminds us that by entering into the family of God by faith in Jesus, the devil has become our adversary as well. Notice the personal pronoun: “YOUR adversary, the devil.” He is not only radically opposed to God; he has you in his crosshairs as well. Peter understood this from experience. Jesus told Peter during the last supper, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail” (Lk 22:31). And Peter reminds his readers and all of us here that the devil is “your adversary.”
Notice that we find here a description of the devil’s tactics. He prowls around like a roaring lion. The description is one of a lion who is stalking his prey in silence, and then launching upon the prey with that ferocious roar at the opportune moment. Grudem writes, “The metaphor is apt, for a prowling lion attacks suddenly, viciously, and often when its unsuspecting victim is engaged in routine activities.” He doesn’t always roar and make his presence known in an obvious way. If he did, avoiding the battle would be easy. He stalks in silence until he has the prey right where he can attack and then comes the roar of the attack.
Three biblical examples illustrate this stalking, prowling behavior of our enemy. The first one comes from early in the book of Genesis when Cain was wrestling with his frustration against God and his brother Abel. God confronted Cain and said, “sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:7). The image there is of a ferocious predator positioned at the door prepared to pounce upon whoever walks through it. The other comes from the book of Job, where Satan comes before God and says that he has been “roaming about on the earth and walking around on it” (Job 1:7). As the context unfolds we discover that he has been looking for someone to attack as his prey. The third illustration comes from the life of Jesus. After He was tempted by Satan during 40 days in the wilderness, we read, “When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him alone until an opportune time.” He was never far away; he was lurking in the shadows waiting for that opportune moment when he might come out roaring to attack the Lord Jesus once more. From these examples, and the words of our text today, we see how Satan camouflages himself in the environment around us, like a lion in the tall grass of Tsavo, silently waiting to attack his prey at the opportune moment.
Then we are also informed here of his objective. This lion-like enemy is not a kitten looking for someone to snuggle or play with. He is out to devour us. The Greek word used here means, “to swallow.” In the Greek version of the Old Testament, this word was used to describe the fish swallowing Jonah. Only, in that instance, the fish swallowed Jonah to save him; here the lion devours the Christian to destroy him or her. Knowing that he can never prevail against the Lord, Satan attacks humanity, who bears the image of God, and Christian humanity, who bear the divine image and the divine name, in particular in an effort to destroy the work of God in the world.
The great reformer Martin Luther, who knew a thing or two about spiritual warfare, said this: “If Satan were far from you and would leave you alone in peace, he would do little harm. But … he encircles you … He does not lie upon a cushion and sleep and snore, but he walks about … day and night. He does not do so that he may joke and play with you, … he is angry and furious, and hungrier than a wolf or lion.... His only purpose is to swallow you whole. He walks about … until at last he causes you to fall; now he attacks you and stirs you to adultery and anger, then to avarice and pride. If he does not succeed in this way, he tries with terror and unbelief, to persuade you to let go of the Word of God and to doubt His grace. … So cunningly and wickedly does he plot for you Christians!”
Now we know about our enemy: his name, his nature, his tactics, his objective. He is not a cartoon character in red tights with a horn and a tail and a pitchfork. If you think of him that way, he’s already got you fooled into not taking him seriously. Better to think of him as a bloodthirsty lion that is crouching in the tall grass waiting to pounce on you and destroy you at any moment. Knowing this is essential for the battle, but it is not sufficient. There is more that we must take from this text if we are to effectively battle this lion.
II. We must take our position
I love reading adventure stories that take place in some of the far away places I have visited, and a few of those have had to do with hunting lions in Africa. In a number of those stories, the hunters talk about how they went to an area where they knew the lions would be coming, maybe because there was some bait or prey there, and they positioned themselves in an elevated spot so that they could see in all directions. They crouched down behind a blind so they could see without being seen, and the carried the right weapons with them in order to down the beast in one shot. If you aren’t positioned rightly for a battle with a lion, you lose the battle. It’s that simple.
Now Peter says that we have to be in the right position for this battle as well. There are three primary imperatives for the believer here in the text that describe for us what we must do in order to be well positioned for the battle that we will surely face. The first is to be of sober spirit. This idea has to do with clear thinking and sound judgment. It literally means the opposite of intoxication, but it is used figuratively in 1 Peter three times to indicate, as Grudem writes, not “letting the mind wander into any … kind of mental intoxication or addiction which inhibits spiritual alertness, or any laziness of mind which lulls Christians into sin through carelessness.” If you knew that lions were prowling around preparing to devour you, you wouldn’t want to be drunk or in any kind of stupor that may dull your senses, dim your reasoning, or lull you to sleep. No, when the lion is prowling you want to make sure that you can see straight, think clearly, and act quickly. And that is what Peter is saying that we must positioned to do in the spiritual realm against our prowling enemy as well.
Related to this is the command to be alert. Like spiritual sobriety, alertness has to do with being sharp in senses, reason, and reaction; but it also has to do with the focus of our attentiveness. It has the idea of being watchful; and for what are we watching? We are watching for the enemy to attack. It is one thing to know that Satan and his forces may attack. As long as we think like that, you know, “he may,” then we might get lazy and even begin to slumber spiritually. And before we know it we are under attack. Being alert means thinking not that “he may attack,” but knowing that “he will attack.” We don’t know when, or specifically how, and that is why we have to be like a watchman on guard duty: awake and alert, on watch at all times, knowing that the lion will strike. We have no excuse to not be ready when he does.
And when he does, what must we do? Do we cower in fear? Do we attack him back? Do we speak to him or rebuke him or attempt to bind him? Interestingly, in many popular Christian books and television programs, we are taught some of these very things. Attack the devil; bind the devil; rebuke the devil, etc. But we never find any of these notions in Scripture. Throughout the New Testament, we are told that our response to the attacks of Satan is to resist him. In Ephesians 6, we are told about a great panoply of spiritual armor that we have been given, but we are told that our orders are to “stand firm” and “resist” the devil. In James 4:7, we are told to “resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
The word that Peter uses for “resist” here is a common one in the New Testament. In various contexts it means to stand your ground, to not back down, to remain courageously unmoved. And how do we do that when Satan is attacking? Peter says it is by remaining “firm in your faith.” Just as he sought to tempt Adam and Eve by making them question God’s word, God’s goodness, and God’s faithfulness; just as he sought to tempt Jesus to question God’s promises and purposes; so also he desires to ruin us by luring us into abandoning the gospel, abandoning the truth of God’s word, and abandoning our convictions concerning God’s nature. But even in the thick of battle, we must hold fast to the faith that God’s Word is true; that the gospel is our only hope; that God is good and faithful, a loving Father to those who are His by faith, and that God’s purposes will ultimately prevail. Satan only gains ground in the battle when he persuades a Christian to weaken his or her confidence in one of these fundamental truths.
When the battle begins to rage, and the enemy begins to roar and attack, the most natural inclination in any of us is to give up. But God has called us to resist the enemy and stand firm in our faith. We have to be sober and alert, knowing that the attack is going to happen; and then to be unmovable once it happens, with our feet firmly anchored in the truth of God. This has to be our position in the battle, otherwise we will be devoured. So, we have to know our enemy and take our position, but it would be presumptuous folly to do this without also following the final admonition here.
III. We must trust our God
Lions have no natural predators. The greatest threat to lions are other lions. And this is good news for us, for though our enemy is here described as a ferocious lion, we find in Scripture another, greater, and more ferocious lion who is for us, not against us. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. And our greatest hope against our enemy is knowing that another, mightier lion has been unleashed to fight our enemy on our behalf. Our confidence for victory is not in our own strength; not even in our own ability to resist; but rather in the God whom we serve, and to whom we belong by faith in Christ.
We are repeatedly reminded in Scripture that this world is filled with suffering, and that as Christians we will often be faced with suffering simply for the reason that we believe in Jesus. As Peter says here in verse 9, our brothers and sisters around the world face this reality daily. Peter’s readers in the first century understood this fully well. And Peter encourages those who read these words here by saying that though suffering is certain, it has an expiration date, and from the vantage point of eternity, the time spent suffering for Jesus will seem to have been very brief. He says, “After you have suffered for a little while.” Notice that! “After”: that means that suffering will come to an end one day. “A little while”: that means that we will one day look back on the hardships we endured for Christ and find that it did not last long compared to the joy of eternity in God’s presence. But the greatest encouragement here is not just knowing that suffering is temporary and brief, but in knowing that God is actively at work in and through our suffering accomplishing something good for His people through it all.
God, who has called us into His eternal glory in Christ by His infinite grace, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. The little while of our suffering may elapse within the boundaries of this life, or they may endure until our death; indeed, this suffering may even precipitate our death as it has done for countless believers throughout history. But now or then, here or there, it will end, and when it does, God will be proven to have been faithful to His people as we emerge from the fire refined like gold. God will perfect us. The word that Peter uses here is the same word used in the Gospels to describe the fishermen mending their nets. Peter is saying here is that God will set all things aright after we have suffered. If we have suffered loss, God will supply; if we have suffered harm, God will restore; if we have suffered death, God will give life. And all the while He is shaping us, perfecting us in our faith by making us more like Jesus through the fiery ordeals of our suffering.
God will also confirm us through our suffering. Those who truly belong to Jesus will be proven, confirmed, through the ordeal of suffering. They will not fall away because the going gets tough; they will emerge with their faith in tact, as one lexicon says, “more firm and unchanging in attitude or belief,” concerning the truth of Christ because of what they have endured. And God Himself will strengthen you through your suffering. One would think the opposite would be true, that we would emerge from the suffering of a spiritual battle in a weakened condition. But where God at work in the battle, He is strengthening His people through the midst of it, and bringing them through it spiritually stronger in the end than they were when it began.
And God Himself will establish you. Here Peter uses a word that he has used elsewhere to denote a house that has been built on a secure foundation. Jesus spoke of two men who built their houses on different foundations. One he said built his house on sand, and the other on a rock. We might imagine that to the naked eye, both houses looked equally solid. The one built on sand may have even been more impressive in size and grandeur. But Jesus said that a storm came and the house built on sand fell to the ground, while the one built on the rock withstood the storm. Jesus said that this story illustrated how the wise person builds his or her life on the rock foundation of God’s word. And it may take a storm to prove what kind of foundation your life is built upon. Only in the aftermath will those that are built on the rock be revealed. God brings His people through the spiritual battles we face with our enemy even more firmly established on that rock solid foundation.
How do we respond to these precious truths? It seems that all we can do is stand in awe and worship this great God who gives us victory. Here in the text, Peter erupts, as should we, into worship and praise, saying, “To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen!” Dominion means power and it speaks of God’s sovereign rule and reign over all things. Though for a while, Satan prowls about like the king of the jungle, there is a mightier lion, a greater king, seated upon a higher throne, and He shall reign forever and ever. We pass through the field of battle under the banner of His sovereign Lordship, and we emerge from it victorious, with Him defeating the enemy forever through the blood of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ.
John Patterson didn’t know what he was getting into when he went to Tsavo to build that railroad bridge. He didn’t know that he would stare death in the face as he fought the maneating lions who preyed upon his work camp there. But he defeated the ferocious beasts, and after his work there was done, he took the skins of those lions home and made rugs for his home out of them. Every day he tread underfoot the fur of those beasts that wreaked so much havoc. When I think about our enemy the devil, prowling around like a roaring lion seeking to devour us, I am reminded of the wondrous promise of Romans 16:20 -- “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” That ferocious adversary who threatens to destroy us now will one day be crushed by the sovereign dominion of our risen Lord Jesus, and we will take part in his destruction. He will be crushed beneath our feet, and all the suffering and hardship that we endured in this brief little while of life in this fallen world will be vindicated forever.
If you are not a follower of Jesus today, you might find it silly that we would spend so much time talking about fighting the devil. To you it may seem like a fairy tale or something to think that we actually believe in such a being. The fact is that Satan has no need to show himself to you, no need to attack you whatsoever. If you are not a follower of Jesus, he already has you imprisoned in his kingdom. Your agnosticism to his existence is itself one of his tactics to keep you in his grasp. But the good news is that a great liberator has come to your rescue. The Lord Jesus Christ died to redeem you from your bondage and has defeated the enemy through His death and resurrection. If you would acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior today, you would be set free from Satan’s grasp. Though the remainder of your days will find you often in battle against him, God will bind you securely to Himself and preserve you for His presence in eternity. So we would invite you today to know this Christ who would save you and follow Him with your life by faith.
Those of us who know Christ are encouraged by this Word today to know our enemy; to be sober and alert to his tactics and schemes and to resist him with firmness of faith; trusting in the power of our Sovereign God to rescue us from the battle through the power and victory of Christ who reigns forevermore.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Call to Humility (1 Peter 5:5-7)
There is a quality often found in humanity that was once identified by Aristotle as the crown of virtues. The great philosopher said that this characteristic was inseparable from nobility and goodness of character. Centuries later, Nietzsche said that this quality was part of a past set of master morals which had been lost and replaced by a lower, slave-type of morality. In his estimation, unless humanity could recover this lost trait, mankind would remain forever in a state of servitude. Yet when we turn to the Bible, we find this same quality called a sin and spoken of with intense severity. This sin is called a thing that God hates, a quality found in evil men, a thing that precedes personal destruction, even the very sin that transformed an exalted angel into the very devil himself. And the devil has used this sin to bring about the downfall of countless men and women throughout human history. This quality so highly praised by history’s secular philosophers and so roundly condemned by Scripture is, of course, pride. In our text today, we read that God is opposed to the proud.
Of course, the opposite of pride is humility. Throughout the pages of the Bible, humility is championed as a crowning virtue of a holy life. While today, humility is a cherished quality even among some who have no regard for the Bible, it has not always been this way. In the writings of the ancient Graeco-Roman world, humility was rarely even mentioned, and when it was, it was almost always in a negative light. In some writings it is considered to be a mark of an evil and unworthy person. It was widely considered to be a characteristic of weakness and cowardice, appropriate only for slaves. It would have been shameful for a free citizen of the Roman Empire to be considered humble. Christians were among the first people in the history of the world to champion humility as a virtue, and the high esteem that many have for humility in our world today can be said to be a result of Christian influence. In a sense, true humility is a uniquely Christian virtue.
Yet, humility, though essential in the Christian life, does not come naturally to any of us. As sinful people, we are consistently prone to fall into the error of pride. Throughout life, we find our feet on a slippery slope that will spiral us into this deadly sin if we are not constantly on guard against it. The great Puritan pastor Richard Baxter once received a letter filled with words of praise. Baxter understood the great temptation that pride perpetually posed, and responded to this letter by saying, “I have the remainders of pride in me; how dare you blow up the sparks of it?” Pride is so native to us, and humility so foreign, that the Scriptures have to continually echo warnings against pride and commands to be humble. And God, who so opposes our pride, actually enables us for humility through the work of His grace in our lives as we allow the Holy Spirit to cultivate godly character within us. As Peter says here, quoting from Proverbs 3:34, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” He actively works against the proud and actively works to prevent His people from becoming proud. But once His people determine to embrace humility, He grants to them the grace to make it possible.
The Apostle Paul provides us with a great example of this from his own life in 2 Corinthians 12. There he said that a “thorn in the flesh” had come into his life in order to prevent him from “exalting himself.” We do not know what this “thorn” was, but we know that Paul calls it a messenger of Satan that tormented him. But he says he prayed three times for this thorn to be removed, and the Lord’s answer to him was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” We can draw from this that God was willing to allow His servant to suffer great hardship in order to keep him humble, but God would also supply His servant with the grace necessary to endure the hardship and demonstrate the humility.
Now, in our text today, we find a call for Christians to be a humble people. This humility is to be demonstrated in two different directions, if you will. First, there is a call to humility within the church, and second a call to humility before the Lord. Let’s take a closer look at this call to humility that God requires, and which God’s grace enables us to have in our lives.
I. Christians are called to be humble toward one another in the church (v5)
Our society is not too much different from that of the first century in some respects. Like that day, so in our own, it is common, and often expected that a person will assert himself or herself to rise above others and grasp for power and prestige, popularity and prosperity. The one who does not do that will not advance far in our society, and will at times be looked down upon or pitied by others. And certainly there are right ways to be ambitious, but most often our sinful nature prompts us to pursue ambition in a prideful way. Now, what happens when this kind of prideful ambition is found within the church? Members begin to look down their noses at their fellow members, they begin to lobby for power and prominence, they use others for their own ends and agendas. And God only knows how many churches have been destroyed by this kind of pride, but typically when a church is facing internal conflict, pride can be found at the root of it. This is why humility is so vital for the health of a church.
Peter says here that the younger men are to be subject to their elders. While it is a good general principle for younger generations to show respect for the older generations, that general truth is not what Peter is talking about here. A few verses before, he defined what an elder is in this context. An elder, as we discussed last week, is another word for a pastor. It speaks to a pastor’s spiritual maturity and qualifications for church leadership. Therefore, when he speaks of younger men, he may not have in view a person’s age at all, but rather he may be speaking to those who are younger in their standing in the church, or to those who lack spiritual maturity. We find throughout the New Testament a call for the church to submit to its leaders who are gifted by the Spirit to guide them according the the Word of God, and this could be one further echo of that call.
But there is some relevance here especially for younger generations of church members as well. Younger Christians are often more resistant to being led by someone else, more headstrong, more determined to do things their own way. Macarthur says that it is “obvious that they generally tend to be the most aggressive and headstrong members of any group.” I can remember when I began to grow in the Lord, I became very critical of my pastor and my church because I felt that they didn’t do things the right way, which could be translated as “the way I wanted them done.” I had no sensitivity to the need to make changes slowly, the need to minister to people with a variety of needs and interests, the need to preserve and honor some important traditions. And this is a common pitfall that young Christians who are beginning to grow in their faith fall into. Some of you students have a desire to go on to seminary, and when you do, sometime during your first semester or so, you will know enough Greek, enough Systematic Theology or Philosophy, or enough Church Administration principles to be dangerous! The knowledge that will be imparted to you in the classroom is valuable, but also volatile if it is not tempered with humility. So, while all believers must have a humble attitude toward those who lead them in the church, younger believers in particular must beware of a prideful zeal that would undermine the unity of the fellowship. Humility would place us at the feet of those we would otherwise criticize, that we might learn from them how to proceed in the right direction with the right attitude, rather than rupturing the fellowship over matters that in time will prove to be of lesser importance.
But then notice that Peter turns the focus from the humility that needs to be expressed toward church leaders to the humility that needs to pervade every relationship within the church fellowship. He says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” This command is issued to all believers, pastors, leaders, deacons, teachers, new believers -- all members alike. The idea of “clothing yourselves” has to do with tying something on, such as an apron worn by servants. Humility is to be our garment, our covering. Surely all of us give at least some thought to how we will dress when we gather with the church. Some would insist that they are not dressed for church until they have put on their tie, or their certain shoes or specific kind of dress. Those preferences vary from place to place and generation to generation, but one garment is always a necessity when believers gather together -- humility. Paul says in Romans 12 that no Christian should think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment. He says that rather, Christians should give preference to one another in honor. This means that the humble Christian will look upon his brother or sister in the faith as someone who to serve, someone to sacrifice for, someone who is more deserving of honor than oneself. How would church fellowship be transformed if we began to look at each other through these eyes? What kind of revival would erupt in our congregation and others if believers began to clothe themselves with humility?
The really ironic thing is that not only do we often fail to wear the covering of humility, we actually do the opposite. When we come together, we often put on airs that portray ourselves as something of significance and importance, as people who have no problems or needs, as people who are stronger, better, and more holy than we really are. And sometimes we can pull it off and fool some folks, but never as many as we think, and certainly we can never fool God. Why do we do this? Pride! Too insecure to admit weakness; too afraid to admit our needs; too ashamed to confess our sins, and so like Adam and Eve, we stitch together the fig-leaf garments of false pride to cover our true condition. But have we not heard? Do we not know? Peter says here that God is opposed to the proud. In all of our efforts to dress up and look godly, we are actually walking in defiance of God, and lining ourselves up under His active opposition. But if we would abandon pride, we would find that God gives us the grace we need to be humble, and this humility would cover us like a garment. No church would ever be the same where this kind of mentality began to take root.
II. Christians are called to be humble before the Lord (vv6-7)
In 1792, England sent George Macartney to China in hopes of having him installed as the first British ambassador there. It was explained to Macartney that when he entered the throne room of the emperor, he must “kowtow,” that is, kneel three times, and each time he knelt, he must bow three times with his head touching the floor. This manner of approach was the customary way that one would approach a deity, and the Chinese considered their Emperor to be a god. Macartney explained that he would only do this if a Chinese official would do the same before a picture of King George. This was refused, but Macartney was granted audience with the emperor anyway. When he entered, he bent his knee as he would have done before his own king, but Macartney was not allowed to become the ambassador. Some time later England tried again, this time sending William Amherst to the Chinese Emperor. When Amherst entered, he refused to kowtow or even to kneel, and for this he was called a rude man who did not know how to behave, and he was sent back to England. Thus, early efforts for the British to have an embassy in China were frustrated in part because of British pride and the refusal of the British to show the kind of humility that was required in the Imperial throne room. Now, whether or not the Chinese Emperor was worthy of such humiliation in his presence is beyond the scope of our discussion. Our question is rather, how should we come before the throne of the King of Kings? And the answer is quite obvious: we must be humble. There is no room for pride when we come before Him.
Peter says here that in light of the fact that God is opposed to the proud and gives grace to the humble, we must humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. To approach God with any measure of pride in ourselves is the epitome of arrogance. To be humble under His mighty hand recognizes God’s complete sovereignty. The very fact that I am alive is something attributable to His grace alone. That I might approach Him at all is something that I do not deserve. In our sinful condition, if God were to grant us what we deserve, we would be cut off from Him to perish forever in hell. And every day that a human being wakes up and finds himself or herself not in hell is a day to give God thanks for His mercy and His grace. But God, in His sovereign grace, has even given us the offer of redemption; the opportunity to be reconciled to Him by having our sins forgiven and being made righteous by faith in Jesus Christ who died bearing the penalty of our sins and rose from the dead in victory. No one will come before this sovereign God boasting of his or her own accomplishments and insisting on rights!
The Christians to whom Peter was writing were undergoing extreme hardship. They were the objects of hatred, slander, and persecution. Could they come before the Lord with any sort of claim that He had been unfair to them or had given them something worse than they deserved? By no means. They were not in hell, and hell is what they, and we, deserve. So the call to be humble under God’s mighty hand is a call to recognize God’s sovereign hand, and to accept the circumstances in which we find ourselves, no matter how difficult. God could have prevented them; God could change them, and in time He may yet. But we are not to assume that God needs our counsel or advice on how we think things ought to go. We must approach Him humbly knowing that if He has choreographed our circumstances, even if they be unpleasant, then He will supply the grace to endure them for His own sake.
But notice also that the call to be humble before the Lord also recognizes God’s faithfulness. Should we find ourselves in a state of suffering for Christ, as Peter’s readers did, or surrounded by difficulties that press down on us from all sides, we must return to the promises that God has made to His children. Those who are His by faith in Jesus Christ have been promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us; that He will provide for us; and that ultimately when this life is over, He will raise us up to eternal life. So, in this life, though it is often filled with the hardships of a world broken by sin, we can embrace our position and find contentment in our circumstances knowing that God has not forgotten or revoked any of His promises. We can humble ourselves under His mighty hand in full confidence that if we are to be exalted beyond these things, He will be the one to do it, and He won’t need our help. It will happen “at the proper time.” We do not know when that time will be, but God does. For some, it may be a season in life; things may be difficult today, but tomorrow things may change, and God will raise you up from the difficulties of life. Or it may be next week, or next month, or next year, or sometime in the distant future. But for others, it may not be in this life at all. The “proper time” may be when God calls you home to glory through the door of death, and even that death may be unpleasant. Peter’s audience included many who did not know but that the next day their lives may be required of them simply because they followed Jesus. Yet the promise is still true for them and for us: if we humble ourselves before God, He will exalt us at the proper time. We do not need to exalt ourselves, but rather to wait patiently, humbly, on the Lord to do what He intends to do both in us and through us. And when He has completed that work, in this life or in the life to come, He will exalt us to a height that we cannot imagine, and which we certainly do not deserve, if we have pledged ourselves to Him by faith in Jesus.
And Peter says that this humility before the Lord recognizes, in addition to God’s sovereignty and His faithfulness, also His goodness. As we humble ourselves under His mighty hand, we are invited to “cast all of our anxiety on Him.” The word that Peter uses here for “cast” is a word that means “to throw something on something or someone else.” It is used in Luke 19:35 to describe how the people threw their coats on the back of the colt that Jesus would ride into Jerusalem. Are you loaded down with anxiety? You are welcomed here to throw it upon the Lord, that He might bear it. Do not say, “God will not give me more than I can bear.” God will regularly give you more than you can bear, in order to teach you to give it to Him. God will not give you more than HE can bear, and He invites you to cast it upon Him. To go on trying to bear those burdens yourself is prideful and arrogant. You cannot handle it, no matter how strong you think you are. You must humble yourself and say to the Lord, “I need help!” If you don’t, you risk the opposition of God, who opposes the proud, and you forfeit the grace that He gives to those who are humble to admit their weakness. The Greek word here for “anxiety” is the same word used in the parable of the sower, where Jesus says that the “worry” of the world, among other things, can choke out the Word of God from our lives. So we are left stumbling under a load that we cannot bear, starving for lack of nourishment on the very bread of life that would strengthen us. Why be so proud to bear it alone? God is good! He cares for you! And because He cares for you, He says that you can cast all of that anxiety upon Him. How do you do that? You do it in prayer, as Paul says in Philippians 4, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” As the old hymn says, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because do not carry everything to God in prayer.”
Humility. It was not highly regarded in ancient societies. It is not highly regarded in our own. But we who have been purchased by the mercy of God through the blood of Jesus Christ are not citizens of this society. We have become citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, and a mark of that citizenship is humility. It is a humility that considers one another of more importance than ourselves, and leads us into serving each other. It is a humility that recognizes God’s sovereignty, God’s faithfulness, and God’s goodness. God calls us to this kind of humility; and it is contrary to every prideful fiber in our being; but His grace makes it possible within us if we abandon and embrace humility as our way of life. The challenge from this word strikes us all today. How do we view one another within the church? How do we approach the throne of God? Perhaps the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart today about your attitude toward another Christian, or your prideful estimation of yourself; or perhaps He is speaking to you about your prayer life, your worship habits, your beliefs and heart-attitude toward Him? Let humility be our clothing as we respond to God’s word prayerfully today.
Others perhaps would recognize that they have never truly come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. Understand that He died for your sins, including your pride and every sinful manifestation of it. And He has defeated your sin and all of its penalty through His resurrection from the dead, and offers to cover you in His perfect righteousness if you will turn to Him by faith. This means that you have to abandon the pride of thinking that you can be good enough or do good enough to make yourself right with God, and in humility recognize that you are hopeless apart from Jesus. May God’s grace empower you to make that decision today if you never have.
Of course, the opposite of pride is humility. Throughout the pages of the Bible, humility is championed as a crowning virtue of a holy life. While today, humility is a cherished quality even among some who have no regard for the Bible, it has not always been this way. In the writings of the ancient Graeco-Roman world, humility was rarely even mentioned, and when it was, it was almost always in a negative light. In some writings it is considered to be a mark of an evil and unworthy person. It was widely considered to be a characteristic of weakness and cowardice, appropriate only for slaves. It would have been shameful for a free citizen of the Roman Empire to be considered humble. Christians were among the first people in the history of the world to champion humility as a virtue, and the high esteem that many have for humility in our world today can be said to be a result of Christian influence. In a sense, true humility is a uniquely Christian virtue.
Yet, humility, though essential in the Christian life, does not come naturally to any of us. As sinful people, we are consistently prone to fall into the error of pride. Throughout life, we find our feet on a slippery slope that will spiral us into this deadly sin if we are not constantly on guard against it. The great Puritan pastor Richard Baxter once received a letter filled with words of praise. Baxter understood the great temptation that pride perpetually posed, and responded to this letter by saying, “I have the remainders of pride in me; how dare you blow up the sparks of it?” Pride is so native to us, and humility so foreign, that the Scriptures have to continually echo warnings against pride and commands to be humble. And God, who so opposes our pride, actually enables us for humility through the work of His grace in our lives as we allow the Holy Spirit to cultivate godly character within us. As Peter says here, quoting from Proverbs 3:34, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” He actively works against the proud and actively works to prevent His people from becoming proud. But once His people determine to embrace humility, He grants to them the grace to make it possible.
The Apostle Paul provides us with a great example of this from his own life in 2 Corinthians 12. There he said that a “thorn in the flesh” had come into his life in order to prevent him from “exalting himself.” We do not know what this “thorn” was, but we know that Paul calls it a messenger of Satan that tormented him. But he says he prayed three times for this thorn to be removed, and the Lord’s answer to him was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” We can draw from this that God was willing to allow His servant to suffer great hardship in order to keep him humble, but God would also supply His servant with the grace necessary to endure the hardship and demonstrate the humility.
Now, in our text today, we find a call for Christians to be a humble people. This humility is to be demonstrated in two different directions, if you will. First, there is a call to humility within the church, and second a call to humility before the Lord. Let’s take a closer look at this call to humility that God requires, and which God’s grace enables us to have in our lives.
I. Christians are called to be humble toward one another in the church (v5)
Our society is not too much different from that of the first century in some respects. Like that day, so in our own, it is common, and often expected that a person will assert himself or herself to rise above others and grasp for power and prestige, popularity and prosperity. The one who does not do that will not advance far in our society, and will at times be looked down upon or pitied by others. And certainly there are right ways to be ambitious, but most often our sinful nature prompts us to pursue ambition in a prideful way. Now, what happens when this kind of prideful ambition is found within the church? Members begin to look down their noses at their fellow members, they begin to lobby for power and prominence, they use others for their own ends and agendas. And God only knows how many churches have been destroyed by this kind of pride, but typically when a church is facing internal conflict, pride can be found at the root of it. This is why humility is so vital for the health of a church.
Peter says here that the younger men are to be subject to their elders. While it is a good general principle for younger generations to show respect for the older generations, that general truth is not what Peter is talking about here. A few verses before, he defined what an elder is in this context. An elder, as we discussed last week, is another word for a pastor. It speaks to a pastor’s spiritual maturity and qualifications for church leadership. Therefore, when he speaks of younger men, he may not have in view a person’s age at all, but rather he may be speaking to those who are younger in their standing in the church, or to those who lack spiritual maturity. We find throughout the New Testament a call for the church to submit to its leaders who are gifted by the Spirit to guide them according the the Word of God, and this could be one further echo of that call.
But there is some relevance here especially for younger generations of church members as well. Younger Christians are often more resistant to being led by someone else, more headstrong, more determined to do things their own way. Macarthur says that it is “obvious that they generally tend to be the most aggressive and headstrong members of any group.” I can remember when I began to grow in the Lord, I became very critical of my pastor and my church because I felt that they didn’t do things the right way, which could be translated as “the way I wanted them done.” I had no sensitivity to the need to make changes slowly, the need to minister to people with a variety of needs and interests, the need to preserve and honor some important traditions. And this is a common pitfall that young Christians who are beginning to grow in their faith fall into. Some of you students have a desire to go on to seminary, and when you do, sometime during your first semester or so, you will know enough Greek, enough Systematic Theology or Philosophy, or enough Church Administration principles to be dangerous! The knowledge that will be imparted to you in the classroom is valuable, but also volatile if it is not tempered with humility. So, while all believers must have a humble attitude toward those who lead them in the church, younger believers in particular must beware of a prideful zeal that would undermine the unity of the fellowship. Humility would place us at the feet of those we would otherwise criticize, that we might learn from them how to proceed in the right direction with the right attitude, rather than rupturing the fellowship over matters that in time will prove to be of lesser importance.
But then notice that Peter turns the focus from the humility that needs to be expressed toward church leaders to the humility that needs to pervade every relationship within the church fellowship. He says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” This command is issued to all believers, pastors, leaders, deacons, teachers, new believers -- all members alike. The idea of “clothing yourselves” has to do with tying something on, such as an apron worn by servants. Humility is to be our garment, our covering. Surely all of us give at least some thought to how we will dress when we gather with the church. Some would insist that they are not dressed for church until they have put on their tie, or their certain shoes or specific kind of dress. Those preferences vary from place to place and generation to generation, but one garment is always a necessity when believers gather together -- humility. Paul says in Romans 12 that no Christian should think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment. He says that rather, Christians should give preference to one another in honor. This means that the humble Christian will look upon his brother or sister in the faith as someone who to serve, someone to sacrifice for, someone who is more deserving of honor than oneself. How would church fellowship be transformed if we began to look at each other through these eyes? What kind of revival would erupt in our congregation and others if believers began to clothe themselves with humility?
The really ironic thing is that not only do we often fail to wear the covering of humility, we actually do the opposite. When we come together, we often put on airs that portray ourselves as something of significance and importance, as people who have no problems or needs, as people who are stronger, better, and more holy than we really are. And sometimes we can pull it off and fool some folks, but never as many as we think, and certainly we can never fool God. Why do we do this? Pride! Too insecure to admit weakness; too afraid to admit our needs; too ashamed to confess our sins, and so like Adam and Eve, we stitch together the fig-leaf garments of false pride to cover our true condition. But have we not heard? Do we not know? Peter says here that God is opposed to the proud. In all of our efforts to dress up and look godly, we are actually walking in defiance of God, and lining ourselves up under His active opposition. But if we would abandon pride, we would find that God gives us the grace we need to be humble, and this humility would cover us like a garment. No church would ever be the same where this kind of mentality began to take root.
II. Christians are called to be humble before the Lord (vv6-7)
In 1792, England sent George Macartney to China in hopes of having him installed as the first British ambassador there. It was explained to Macartney that when he entered the throne room of the emperor, he must “kowtow,” that is, kneel three times, and each time he knelt, he must bow three times with his head touching the floor. This manner of approach was the customary way that one would approach a deity, and the Chinese considered their Emperor to be a god. Macartney explained that he would only do this if a Chinese official would do the same before a picture of King George. This was refused, but Macartney was granted audience with the emperor anyway. When he entered, he bent his knee as he would have done before his own king, but Macartney was not allowed to become the ambassador. Some time later England tried again, this time sending William Amherst to the Chinese Emperor. When Amherst entered, he refused to kowtow or even to kneel, and for this he was called a rude man who did not know how to behave, and he was sent back to England. Thus, early efforts for the British to have an embassy in China were frustrated in part because of British pride and the refusal of the British to show the kind of humility that was required in the Imperial throne room. Now, whether or not the Chinese Emperor was worthy of such humiliation in his presence is beyond the scope of our discussion. Our question is rather, how should we come before the throne of the King of Kings? And the answer is quite obvious: we must be humble. There is no room for pride when we come before Him.
Peter says here that in light of the fact that God is opposed to the proud and gives grace to the humble, we must humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. To approach God with any measure of pride in ourselves is the epitome of arrogance. To be humble under His mighty hand recognizes God’s complete sovereignty. The very fact that I am alive is something attributable to His grace alone. That I might approach Him at all is something that I do not deserve. In our sinful condition, if God were to grant us what we deserve, we would be cut off from Him to perish forever in hell. And every day that a human being wakes up and finds himself or herself not in hell is a day to give God thanks for His mercy and His grace. But God, in His sovereign grace, has even given us the offer of redemption; the opportunity to be reconciled to Him by having our sins forgiven and being made righteous by faith in Jesus Christ who died bearing the penalty of our sins and rose from the dead in victory. No one will come before this sovereign God boasting of his or her own accomplishments and insisting on rights!
The Christians to whom Peter was writing were undergoing extreme hardship. They were the objects of hatred, slander, and persecution. Could they come before the Lord with any sort of claim that He had been unfair to them or had given them something worse than they deserved? By no means. They were not in hell, and hell is what they, and we, deserve. So the call to be humble under God’s mighty hand is a call to recognize God’s sovereign hand, and to accept the circumstances in which we find ourselves, no matter how difficult. God could have prevented them; God could change them, and in time He may yet. But we are not to assume that God needs our counsel or advice on how we think things ought to go. We must approach Him humbly knowing that if He has choreographed our circumstances, even if they be unpleasant, then He will supply the grace to endure them for His own sake.
But notice also that the call to be humble before the Lord also recognizes God’s faithfulness. Should we find ourselves in a state of suffering for Christ, as Peter’s readers did, or surrounded by difficulties that press down on us from all sides, we must return to the promises that God has made to His children. Those who are His by faith in Jesus Christ have been promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us; that He will provide for us; and that ultimately when this life is over, He will raise us up to eternal life. So, in this life, though it is often filled with the hardships of a world broken by sin, we can embrace our position and find contentment in our circumstances knowing that God has not forgotten or revoked any of His promises. We can humble ourselves under His mighty hand in full confidence that if we are to be exalted beyond these things, He will be the one to do it, and He won’t need our help. It will happen “at the proper time.” We do not know when that time will be, but God does. For some, it may be a season in life; things may be difficult today, but tomorrow things may change, and God will raise you up from the difficulties of life. Or it may be next week, or next month, or next year, or sometime in the distant future. But for others, it may not be in this life at all. The “proper time” may be when God calls you home to glory through the door of death, and even that death may be unpleasant. Peter’s audience included many who did not know but that the next day their lives may be required of them simply because they followed Jesus. Yet the promise is still true for them and for us: if we humble ourselves before God, He will exalt us at the proper time. We do not need to exalt ourselves, but rather to wait patiently, humbly, on the Lord to do what He intends to do both in us and through us. And when He has completed that work, in this life or in the life to come, He will exalt us to a height that we cannot imagine, and which we certainly do not deserve, if we have pledged ourselves to Him by faith in Jesus.
And Peter says that this humility before the Lord recognizes, in addition to God’s sovereignty and His faithfulness, also His goodness. As we humble ourselves under His mighty hand, we are invited to “cast all of our anxiety on Him.” The word that Peter uses here for “cast” is a word that means “to throw something on something or someone else.” It is used in Luke 19:35 to describe how the people threw their coats on the back of the colt that Jesus would ride into Jerusalem. Are you loaded down with anxiety? You are welcomed here to throw it upon the Lord, that He might bear it. Do not say, “God will not give me more than I can bear.” God will regularly give you more than you can bear, in order to teach you to give it to Him. God will not give you more than HE can bear, and He invites you to cast it upon Him. To go on trying to bear those burdens yourself is prideful and arrogant. You cannot handle it, no matter how strong you think you are. You must humble yourself and say to the Lord, “I need help!” If you don’t, you risk the opposition of God, who opposes the proud, and you forfeit the grace that He gives to those who are humble to admit their weakness. The Greek word here for “anxiety” is the same word used in the parable of the sower, where Jesus says that the “worry” of the world, among other things, can choke out the Word of God from our lives. So we are left stumbling under a load that we cannot bear, starving for lack of nourishment on the very bread of life that would strengthen us. Why be so proud to bear it alone? God is good! He cares for you! And because He cares for you, He says that you can cast all of that anxiety upon Him. How do you do that? You do it in prayer, as Paul says in Philippians 4, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” As the old hymn says, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because do not carry everything to God in prayer.”
Humility. It was not highly regarded in ancient societies. It is not highly regarded in our own. But we who have been purchased by the mercy of God through the blood of Jesus Christ are not citizens of this society. We have become citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, and a mark of that citizenship is humility. It is a humility that considers one another of more importance than ourselves, and leads us into serving each other. It is a humility that recognizes God’s sovereignty, God’s faithfulness, and God’s goodness. God calls us to this kind of humility; and it is contrary to every prideful fiber in our being; but His grace makes it possible within us if we abandon and embrace humility as our way of life. The challenge from this word strikes us all today. How do we view one another within the church? How do we approach the throne of God? Perhaps the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart today about your attitude toward another Christian, or your prideful estimation of yourself; or perhaps He is speaking to you about your prayer life, your worship habits, your beliefs and heart-attitude toward Him? Let humility be our clothing as we respond to God’s word prayerfully today.
Others perhaps would recognize that they have never truly come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. Understand that He died for your sins, including your pride and every sinful manifestation of it. And He has defeated your sin and all of its penalty through His resurrection from the dead, and offers to cover you in His perfect righteousness if you will turn to Him by faith. This means that you have to abandon the pride of thinking that you can be good enough or do good enough to make yourself right with God, and in humility recognize that you are hopeless apart from Jesus. May God’s grace empower you to make that decision today if you never have.
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