“Stand
Firm” 1 Peter 5:8-14 August 28, 2011
SCRIPTURE INTRO: We’ve come to the end of 1 Peter.
The
theme of the letter is Christian suffering.
How as a Christian you can live in such a
way that the trials of life
don’t burn you to ashes, but refine you like
gold.
Peter’s
wrapping up, and he has one more thing to say.
INTRO: A number of years ago, when I lived in Ft.
Lauderdale,
there was a policeman in our church whose
children were teenagers.
He
once told me that he didn’t have a lot of rules. His kids were trustworthy.
But he said he did have one rule that could
not be broken.
My
kids know that if they break this rule,
I’ll come down on them so hard that they’ll
never forget it.
He said:
The rule is that they have to be home by midnight.
I
was intrigued by that, because when I was a teenager, I didn’t have a curfew.
He
said: Here’s why I make my kids get home
by midnight.
I’ve been a police officer for many
years.
There
is an underbelly of this city that normal people never see.
There is a population that sleeps during the
day
and comes out from under their rocks at
night to do their evil deeds.
Naive
teenagers, running around at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning
have no idea how dangerous and depraved many
of these characters are.
An
invisible world, populated with dangerous beings
who are prowling about looking for people to
devour. That sounds scary.
But
here’s the thing, as long as his kids understood their dad’s concern,
and believed that he knew what he was
talking about,
and as long as they obeyed him and got in by
midnight—
Then
they could live their lives without fear of that invisible world.
There is always a chance they might be
robbed or assaulted in broad daylight.
But
the danger of falling into the clutches of evil people was checked
by their father’s warning and their careful
obedience.
As
Peter ends his letter, he makes two practical applications about suffering.
He
says, as we saw last week, remember that you have an enemy within.
Your pride.
Pride that manifests itself in anxiety.
Pride that says: God is not doing things right, if he was,
wouldn’t be in mess.
Peter
says: You fight that internal enemy with
humility.
Humble yourself therefore under God’s mighty
hand that he may lift you up in due time.
But
then he says that there is another enemy, an enemy without.
Your enemy the Devil, prowling about like a
roaring lion,
looking for someone to devour. You must be watchful and ready to resist him.
Peter
ends his letter on suffering by warning us about the Devil
It’s
interesting, Paul does the very same thing in Ephesians.
After six chapters of calling the Ephesians
to live the Christian life he says:
Finally,
brothers, be strong in the Lord. Take
your stand against Devil’s schemes.
Goes into the armor of God passage. Weapons of spiritual warfare.
And
John does the same thing in his first letter.
After a whole letter devoted to showing what
the true Christian life looks like.
A life of faith, obedience, and love he says
at the very end—
One more thing, remember the whole world is
under the control of the evil one.
All
of these Apostles thought it was important to communicate this to Christians.
But they don’t make a huge deal out of it.
I
think the place where the Apostles address this in their letters is
significant.
At the end.
It’s not a major theme throughout the letter.
Peter
doesn’t start his letter saying that your suffering comes from the Devil.
There
are those strange verses in chapter 3 about Jesus preaching to the spirits
in prison.
You might remember that that could be a reference to demonic forces.
But the emphasis is the victory of Christ,
not the power of the forces of evil.
It’s
almost as if Peter is saying: Kids, I
love you, I trust you.
Just
one more thing—this isn’t the biggest thing.
But it’s important.
Don’t forget—There is an enemy prowling in
the dark.
There are demonic forces that are opposed to
God and his people.
There is a real being called the Devil who
wants to devour you.
Be
aware. Don’t be naive, don’t be
foolish. Keep it in mind.
But as long as you do what I say, he won’t
able to devour you.
As
long as you approach suffering as I’ve taught you, the enemy might
threaten and rage and lie—but he can’t do
you any lasting harm.
And
to help us, Peter puts it very simply—stand firm.
Stand firm in the faith. Stand fast in the true grace of God.
This is his “be home by midnight” rule. Stand firm.
Stand fast.
And
yes, the Devil is still there, he still rages, but he won’t be able devour you.
Let’s
look at this in more detail. Just two
headings.
1. How the Devil tries to devour.
2. How you are to resist him.
MP#1 How the Devil tries to devour.
I
can imagine that policeman dad giving his kids the midnight rule and saying:
I’m going to tell you about some of the
criminals in our city.
I’m going to tell you what one did to an
innocent teenager who was out at
two in the morning. You understand the value of that sort of
thing, don’t you?
Our
heavenly Father does the same in the Bible.
He pulls back the curtain a little bit to
show us the enemy.
There are lots of things God doesn’t tell us
about the world of demons.
But
there are things he wants us to know.
First,
the Bible tells us the Devil and demons behind much of the evil in the
world.
It calls them the powers and principalities
of this dark world.
Spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly
realms.
Of
course, human beings have sinful natures and are inclined to sin.
But the Devil incites evil. He stirs up and manipulates sinful people.
And
specifically, the Devil has tremendous power over unbelievers.
If
a person is not born again, if he or she does not have the indwelling Holy
Spirit,
and a renewed mind, and a restored will and
conscience, then susceptible
not just to being manipulated by the Devil,
but being destroyed by him.
He
hates all people because they are made in the image of God.
He delights in destroying lives so that
souls are cast into hell.
Listen
some of the ways the Bible describes this.
It
says that Satan works in the sons of disobedience.
He blinds the minds of unbelievers so they
cannot see the light of the Gospel
of the glory of Christ. He turns men away from God to serve him.
He
makes men captive to do his will. He
deceives the nations.
He sows tares in the field of the
world. He obstructs the witness of the
Gospel.
He inspires false religions.
He’s
the father of lies and the murderer of men’s souls.
He holds the power of death.
But
what about us? What about
believers? How much can the Devil do to
us?
Well,
Bible says, that as God allows, Satan does all kinds of bad things.
He makes war against the saints, throws
Christians in prison.
And
here, as Peter says, he seeks to devour saints who are suffering.
In fact, he is even behind the opposition
and persecution they are suffering.
But
spiritually speaking, what can the Devil do to believers?
He
can’t get you thrown into hell. He can’t
rob you of your salvation.
If you are in Christ, you are eternally
secure.
Paul
specifically says that nether angels nor demons
can separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus.”
The
Devil knows that. He knows he can’t rob
you of God’s grace.
But he can rob your experience of it. That’s how he tries to devour you.
That’s his goal when he is involved in your
suffering.
There
was a Puritan pastor named Thomas Brooks who put it best”
“Though (Satan) can never rob a believer of
his crown, yet such is his malice and envy, that he will leave no stone
unturned, no means unattempted, to rob them of their comfort and peace, to make
their life a burden and a hell unto them, to cause them to spend their days in
sorrow and mourning, in sighing and complaining, in doubting and questioning.”
That’s
what he wants to do by making you suffer.
Rob you of your comfort and peace. If he can’t send you to hell, make life a
hell.
Hell in the sense that you doubt God, feel
estranged from God.
What
did he want Job to do in his suffering?
Curse God. Run from God.
God has one purpose in your suffering—to
refine you faith. Make you better.
The Devil wants to do the opposite—to damage
your faith, cast you down.
How
does he do it? By telling you lies when
you are suffering.
The
Bible says the chief way Satan works in the world is to lie.
He persuades people to believe what is not
true.
We are
told he often disguises himself as an angel of light.
The
Devil has two lies that he uses above all others—temptation and accusation.
Temptation and accusation
are both lies but opposite and complimentary lies.
In temptation the lie is, “This sin is not
so bad, what’s the harm?”
You’re hurting. You’re suffering. This will make you feel better.
He tries to get you to
take sin lightly. So you fall into
temptation.
It’s very easy when you are suffering. Sins are comforting escapes.
Then accusation
follows. Satan says—God will never
forgive you.
How can you call yourself a Christian. Your life is ruined!”
He tries to make you take
sin so seriously so that you forget the grace of God.
He tempts so that he can accuse. He gets you to believe one lie, “Sin is not
so
bad” so that you will believe another, “I’m
beyond God’s grace, I’m ruined.”
And that traps you in a
cycle of temptation and accusation.
You come back to that sin over and over, and
you feel more and more estranged
from the grace of God. Not robbed of your crown. Robbed of your peace.
Robbed of your
effectiveness. That’s how the Devil
devours suffering believers.
Let’s get a little more specific about the
lies.
Long lists made by past generations of
believers. Let me mention just three.
Satan takes the past and
brings it to mind.
Past
sins, past failures, past bad decisions, regrets. Ever do that when suffering?
You can never be of any use
to God. Your life is ruined.
You may be saved but your life is on plan B,
or plan C, or plan D. All lies.
What Satan is trying to get
you to believe is that the grace of God is not sufficient
to
make all things new. He is trying to get
you to believe that God is not
sovereign, that all things are not working
for the good of those who love God.
Satan causes you to
misinterpret God’s dealings with you.
Accusation makes you look at trials in your
life and say—I’m being punished.
Since by nature self-righteous,
when things going well think, I must be doing right.
So, when things go bad we think, It must be
my guilt. God punishing me.
And when you look at your
life you can always find something to feel guilty about!
So not only is there the sorrow and pain of
this trial but the added weight of guilt.
Job’s friends used by Satan
for this. Accused Job of being guilty of
a secret sin.
Though they had good intentions, they pulled
a believer down. That’s easy to do.
I’ve done it before. I’ve pulled people down that way. I’ve been a tool of Satan.
Satan takes a recurring
sin that you thought had conquered, and accuses you with it.
A real Christian wouldn’t keep doing
this.” Thomas Brooks puts it this
way: “Says
Satan, Your heart is not right with God; surely your estate is not good; you
flatter yourself to think that God will ever eternally own and embrace such a
one as you are, who complains against sin, and yet relapses into the same sin,
who with tears and groans confesses your sin, and yet ever and anon falls into
the same sin.”
Do you see how subtle that
is? Look at your sin! Look at your weakness!
Look at yourself! But who does Satan not want you to look
at? Your Savior.
So he keeps you from experiencing the grace
of God when you need it most.
Paul
says in Romans 16 that by Christ’s death and resurrection we can be
certain that he will soon crush Satan under
our feet. He is a defeated enemy.
Our
battles with him are his last raging attempts to strike out at God and Christ.
As Revelation 12 says: He is filled with fury, because he knows his
time is short.
So
what does this knowledge of Satan do for us?
It
doesn’t scare us. But it makes us more
sober-minded people.
It
gives us a bigger context for looking at our suffering—
a terrible, invisible spiritual battle. Good and evil. Darkness and light.
So impresses on us one final reason that we
need to learn to suffer well.
We
want to be in step with God’s purposes—not give an inch to the Devil.
What
does that look like? Brings to second
point.
MP#2 How we are to resist the Devil.
Peter
doesn’t give us any new tactics for dealing with the attacks of the Devil.
You sometimes run into Christians who think
that there are certain words
and phrases you can use against the Devil
that are particularly effective.
Ways
you can bind Satan. You pray these
words. Say these words aloud.
But
the Bible never tells us to do those sorts of things.
It always says: The way you resist the Devil is to be serious
about living
the Christian life. That’s what Paul says in Ephesians 6, what
Peter says here.
Be
self-controlled and alert. It’s
literally the word sober. Abstain from
wine.
It’s one of Peter’s favorite words in his
letter. Studied it several weeks ago.
Peter’s
point is that as a Christian you don’t deal with suffering by getting drunk.
You don’t deal with your pain by limiting
your view, trying to shut out the world.
Finding things that numb you so you don’t
have do deal with life.
You
do the opposite. You look up. You face reality.
You try with all your might to see the big
picture.
Then
he says: Resist the devil, standing firm
in the faith.
And he elaborates on standing firm in three
ways.
First: Ponder the sufferings of your brothers and
sisters in Christ.
Stand
firm in the faith “because you know that your brothers
throughout the whole world are undergoing
the same kind of sufferings.”
Remember
the context of this letter. Growing
persecution of Christianity
throughout the Roman Empire. These Christians were hearing stories.
They were getting letters and reports of
arrests and martyrdom.
Peter
tells them to ponder those stories. Look
at those examples of faith in trial.
Compare your suffering to theirs. Compare your bravery to theirs.
I
recently read that in the 1600s in England, most homes had only three books—
the Bible, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and
Pilgrim’s Progress.
You
can imagine a cold, dark evening with no TV, no internet, no Netflix—
the family sitting around the fire and
feeling a little restless, a little bored.
And
the kids say: Dad, read us some stories
from Dr. Foxe’s book.
So
he reads about the early Roman Christians thrown into the arena—
and little boys and girls and old men
singing and praying as lions ate them.
He
reads the last words of some the great martyrs—like John Bradford.
Who
said to the Christian being burned to death with him:
“Be of good comfort, brother, for we shall
have a merry supper with the Lord this night!”
He
reads about Christians being forced to choose between denying Christ or
watching their wives and children abused and
killed before their eyes.
And
then mom says: Enough of those stories,
the kids will have nightmares.
Read something else. So he gets down Pilgrims Progress and reads
about
the adventures of Pilgrim and Hopeful and
the journey to the Celestial City.
Is
it any wonder that the generations of Christians nourished on that,
sparked modern missionary movement, laid
groundwork for Great Awakening?
As
I was writing this sermon Friday, got an email from a ministry called
Voice of the Martyrs. It documents and provides aid to persecuted
Christians.
Photo
of a Nigerian woman named Monica Dra, bandaged, with tube in nose.
Her story was one that is very common
today. Muslim mob attacked village.
Her husband hacked to death. She was wearing a cross around her neck.
The
mob tried to cut off her head.
She survived but could only breath through a
gaping wound in her windpipe.
She
said that as she was being attacked she thought:
“I am a Christian. I am dying today.” She survived and told VoM worker.
“Now
that I have my strength back, I have forgiven my attackers.
Now I have more courage to serve the
Lord.” More courage.
It’s
a strange instruction from Peter, but one you ought to heed.
You feeling down and low in suffering? The discouraging attacks of Satan?
Ponder the sufferings of other
believers. Go on VoM website. Put steel in spine.
Second: Preach the big things to yourself.
Peter
gives a marvelous summary of all his teaching on suffering in next verses.
And the God of all grace, who called you to his
eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself
restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
How do you resist the Devil and stand firm.
By taking God’s truth about suffering, and using it
like a weapon.
Preaching it
to yourself. Like what?
You serve a God of all grace. Grace.
Undeserved favor.
God’s riches
at Christ’s expense. The smile of his
favor upon you.
That means all of his dealings with you are ultimately
gracious.
When God
allowed Satan to attack Job, he was still the God of all grace.
And if there
is one thing the book of Job shows us—God’s grace is sufficient.
Preach the grace of God to yourself.
He’s called you to his eternal glory in Christ.
Wow. What a
huge theme in this letter.
That the path
Jesus followed was the cross and then the crown.
Suffering and
then glory. As a Christian you’ve been
called to that path.
And through your mystical union with Jesus his life is
your life,
his death is
your death. Your experiences reflect
his.
You share
fellowship with him in suffering. Your
trials are redemptive.
Preach the cross self.
God brought good out of greatest evil.
Will in my life too.
What else?
“After you have suffered a little while.”
Another truth
Peter tells us over and over to remember.
All trials will end.
God will lift
you up in due time. Hold on. Don’t despair.
He will himself restore you and make you strong, firm,
and steadfast.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said that the whole secret of
the Christian life is learning
how to quit
listening to yourself and how to start preaching to yourself.
If you listen to your despondency, bitterness,
self-pity, impatience—
going to be
more susceptible to the Devil’s attacks.
If you preach to yourself, you will resist him.
Third: Participate in the life of the body.
Here it is again.
Peter has said it over and over and over in his letter.
You don’t
learn Christian suffering in isolation, learn it in the local church.
You learn it by intentionally devoting your life, over
the years to a group of people
so that you
learn their stories, enter into their lives, walk with them through
the good
times and the bad times, watch their children grow up, sit with them
at the
bedside of dying parents.
You see their faith.
You see them wresting with God.
They see your faith.
You are
mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.
Peter’s been saying it over and over, and here at the
very end, we see that he does it.
He doesn’t
just say: You need the church, church
needs you.
That was the
lifestyle of the great Apostle.
He mentions Silas, a faithful brother. Remember Silas?
Paul’s missionary companion. Church leader mentioned occasionally in Acts.
Apparently
now a member of a congregation in Rome.
Helping Peter.
He mentions Mark.
What a humbling story Mark had.
He was the
young man with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane who was so
scared when
the soldiers came, that when they grabbed him, slipped out of his
robe and ran
away naked. He later deserted Paul on
missionary trip.
And yet, here he is, part of the church in Rome.
Look at the way Peter refers to the church. She who is in Babylon, chosen.
Babylon a
veiled reference to Rome, also symbolic of opposition to Christ.
But he calls the church she. Not it.
Not that church. Not those
people.
But she, the Bride that Jesus loves. The Bride he died for.
Church filled
with solid people like Silas.
And those who disappointed and failed, like Mark, and
even Peter himself,
but who by
God’s grace, were still walking on the path.
Greet one another with a kiss of love.
If you are going to stand firm, resist the Devil, be
sober-minded—
you need the
church. Love her like Jesus does.