1 Peter 5:6-11
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
10 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. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
The God of Grace Silences the Roaring Lion
It was an all-too-common experience. There you sat, in the dark. As little as a week ago, you had been home with your family breaking bread at the dinner table. Now you sat in the dust and the dark with your hands in shackles. You could hear the muted roar of a crowd somewhere above you. But that wasn’t the roar that caught your attention. There was another roar – one you had never heard before but could immediately identify. Long before the gate was lifted you knew what you’d see there waiting for you.
Nero started it. He hated Christians. He wanted to rid the world of them. So, he used their bodies soaked in pitch to light the streets of Rome at night. He executed them publicly for sport. And if you were especially unlucky, you might find yourself behind that gate dreading the moment that it’d be lifted, and you’d be left staring into the gaping mouth of a hungry lion.
That was the world that Peter lived in when he wrote his first letter. It was a world in which Christians lived in fear, and although the setting and circumstances have changed, the fear has not.
Do you ever wonder why life can be such a struggle? Do you ever wonder why your problems don’t just evaporate even though you go to church and pray? Do you groan because of the carelessness, lovelessness, recklessness of people in your life – even your own family? Well, Peter says, wake up and realize what you’re up against: you have a fearsome enemy – worse than a lion in a Roman coliseum, worse than a wicked Roman emperor. This enemy is the devil who prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.[1]
I began my study for this sermon thinking about the devil. I tracked down other passages about him that describe him as a red dragon,[2] the ancient serpent,[3] the father of lies,[4] the accuser who masquerades as an angel of light,[5] the ruler of the kingdom of the air,[6] the one who holds the power of death.[7]
I looked more closely at this passage and carefully parsed out each qualifier:
The word for enemy here is a courtroom term, which fits with the devil’s proper name, i.e. Satan, which means accuser. Satan is the one who stands before God and accuses you of having done something worth eternal damnation.
He prowls, meaning that he is not idle. He’s not sitting back on some hellish Lazy-Boy twiddling his thumbs. He’s on the prowl. He is actively searching for someone like you.
Peter compares him to a roaring lion. Lions are the king of the jungle. They’re fierce and fearsome. They have claws and teeth that can tear flesh from bone. They’re deadly.
And this one is roaring. He wants you to hear him coming. He wants to intimidate you. He wants to be the loudest voice in the room or in your ear. He doesn’t want you to hear anything else but the terror of his tongue, and to know that he is coming for you, to devour you.
The devil isn’t a plaything. He isn’t a character for some cartoon. He isn’t a sympathetic antihero. He is not trying to enlighten you to some truth that God has withheld from you. He is a being of pure malice and violence. He does not have your best interest at heart. He wants nothing less than to devour you.
I began my study for this sermon thinking about the devil. But after I did all that research, I realized that while this may be the one sentence in this entire passage that jumps off the page and captures the imagination, this really isn’t what this passage is all about. Peter’s comments here are much more about the God of power and the God of grace.
Peter begins this portion of his letter by saying,
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”[8]
Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand. It’s easier said than done, isn’t it? When you’re dealing with those doubts and fears about the struggles and problems and pains of life, you don’t want to wait for someone else to get around to solving it; you don’t want to wait for someone else’s definition of “due time.” You want it handled now and preferably by you. Isn’t that why we get so stressed? It’s no accident that one of the first places you feel stress is the literal muscular tension in your shoulders and neck. Your body is reflecting the attitude of your heart that is saying, “I’ve got to buckle down and take care of this.”
We don’t naturally like to lean on God’s mighty hand. We like to imagine that our hands are strong enough. And if they’re not, then the lesson we often take away is that I’ve got to get stronger until I can handle all the problems in my life, until the power of my presence can silence all my opponents at work or my rivals at school (or trolls online).
Humbling ourselves and letting go of all our anxieties and trusting them to someone else is the most unnatural thing to do, but it’s what God invites you to do – and not as some heavy-handed demand made by a disappointed dad, but with promises of comfort and hope from a father who loves you.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.[9]
The almighty God promises to lift you up in due time. Is the devil fearsome? Is your enemy fierce? Are the problems and pains he causes in your life severe? They may be, but God is stronger. He is the one who cast the devil out of heaven. Jesus is the one, as we read in our Gospel for today, who drove out demons. The devil may be a lion or a dragon or a serpent, but Jesus is the one who was born to crush his head.
I shared with you all those references that describe the devil. It’s funny – almost every one comes from passages that aren’t talking about the devil; they’re talking about how God frees you from the devil:
He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.[10]
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil.[11]
So the Lord God said to the serpent… “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”[12]
The he in every one of these passages is Jesus. Jesus was born to crush the devil’s head. Jesus died to break the devil’s power over you.
Are there doubts and worries and anxieties in your life? Absolutely there are! What about my mother’s health? What about the family farm? What about the most recent piece of legislation that’s all over the news? Or whether I’ll find a friend or place that feels like home?
The future is so uncertain. Except for one important thing:
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.[13]
The God of all grace has called you to his eternal glory in Christ. He’s called you – the same one who frets and worries, like Martha, over many things. He’s called you – the one who while trying to get out of a hole in your life just digs it deeper. He’s called you – the one who is guilty of what Satan accuses – you don’t always trust in God to do what is best; you can’t always wait patiently for his time; you all too often take matters into your own hands and make matters worse.
But that’s what makes him the God of grace. He doesn’t wait for you to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. He promises to lift you up in due time. He doesn’t insist on you being worthy of his glory to call you to it. That’s why he sent his Son – his perfect Son to share in your humanity and to die the death that you deserve, so that he could show you grace and forgive you your sin.
That’s how much God cares about you, and that’s why you can cast all your anxiety on him. He loved you so much that he was willing to sacrifice his own Son – not to lions in a coliseum, but on a cross outside of Jerusalem – so that you could live in the knowledge of his grace and peace forever. He loved you so much that he couldn’t bear the thought of eternity without you, so he defeated the devil and answered his accusations with the blood of his Son. “So what if every one of these Christians in this room is guilty? My Son has paid the price for them with his own blood and now they are free, from sin and death and the devil forever.”
Is the devil fearsome? Is your enemy fierce? Yes, but he’s been defeated by Jesus – the one through whom the God of all grace has called you. And it’s because of Jesus that you can humble yourself under God’s mighty hand. Letting go of your cares and concerns is scary. It makes you feel vulnerable to rely on someone else to take care of you. But who better than the one who sacrificed his own life to save you?
It’s hard to unburden yourself from anxiety. Sometimes it even feels irresponsible, e.g. “If I don’t worry about this who will?” God will and he does. Imagine that! The God who created the universe – who oversees all that exists – knows about you and every little thing that robs you of sleep at night. And he doesn’t just know; he cares. About you! You are the thing that concerns the Almighty God. You are the reason he sent his Son. If you can cast your anxiety on anyone, it is the God who has the power to do something about it and the grace to care.
Is the devil fearsome? Is your enemy fierce? Are the problems and pains that he causes in your life real? Absolutely. You are up against a lot in this world and on your own you wouldn’t stand a chance. But you’re not alone. The family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.[14] But much more than that the God of all grace will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast[15] so that you can resist the devil by standing firm in the faith.[16] You don’t have to rely on your strength. The Almighty loves you and cares about you. To him be the power for ever and ever.[17] Amen.
[1] 1 Peter 5:8
[2] Revelation 12:3,4
[3] Genesis 3:1; Revelation 20:2
[4] John 8:44
[5] 2 Corinthians 11:14
[6] Ephesians 2:1,2
[7] Hebrews 2:14
[8] 1 Peter 5:6,7
[9] 1 Peter 5:6
[10] Revelation 20:2
[11] Hebrews 2:14
[12] Genesis 3:14,15
[13] 1 Peter 5:10
[14] 1 Peter 5:9
[15] 1 Peter 5:10
[16] 1 Peter 5:9
[17] 1 Peter 5:11