Our Adversary, the Devil
Based on a sermon preached at First Baptist Church, Glasgow, Missouri.
(This is not an exact transcription.)
Background: Peter is writing to encourage groups of believers who are going through persecution. His ministry was originally to the Jews but God gave him the privilege of ministering to Gentiles as well.
Introduction: Peter is writing to encourage groups of believers who are going through persecution. His ministry was originally to the Jews but God gave him the privilege of ministering to Gentiles as well. He’s finishing up his first letter, addressed to various groups of new believers, and giving them words of encouragement.
The text begins with verse 1, of chapter 5, to set the context. Let’s focus on verses 8-11:
(1 Peter 5:8-11 NASB) 8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. 10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. 11 To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
I. Peter gave two commands in verse 8
Note that Peter gives a pair of commands in verse 8. The first one is “be of sober spirit”. The King James Version renders it as “be sober”, and we usually think of being sober as being free from the influence of drugs, alcohol, or other things that might cause a lack of sobriety. As true as that is, that isn’t really the meaning here.
May I share a rather personal illustration here? After I graduated from high school, I had a job at a service station—a full service station! Remember those? I pumped the gas, checked the oil, put air in tires, and washed maybe thousands of windshields! Not too far away was a road that led into a subdivision, and sometimes folks would get their fuel at our gas station.
Where I was raised, high school football was and is a very popular sport. So, on one Friday evening, the local high school had a home game. It’s no secret that schools big enough to have football teams usually show a lot of pride in their team. Well, a student (perhaps a sophomore or junior, she apparently didn’t have a driver’s license at the time) was walking about a mile or more from the station to the stadium. I jokingly asked, “where are you going, all by yourself?”—but genuinely concerned, as anything could happen to young ladies of any age. She laughed, bought a soft drink from the machine, and said she was going to the game. Amazed, I said, well, be careful and went back to my duties.
Fast forward a few weeks. Another Friday evening, another home game, and the same girl.
Only this time she had some “friends”. The car was a two door coupe, where three people could sit relatively comfortably in the back seat. Oh yes, there were three in the back, all right, and in the middle was the same girl. No soft drink this time, as she had a bottle made of glass with a golden colored liquid inside. As I recall, the beverage made mention of a “high life”. I can’t speak to that, but she sure looked high to me. I’ve thought about her, off and on, over the years and hope she found salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord. For a fact, she wasn’t totally sober at that particular moment.
So, being of sober spirit isn’t necessarily the same thing as being sober, or simply free from the influence of something else like drugs, alcohol, or other kinds of things. Having a sober spirit means having a sense of self-control, for lack of a better term.
The second command Peter relayed to the believers was to be “on the alert”. Peter would know about that, personally. He had been a fisherman long before he followed Jesus as a disciple. He surely would have known, for example, where the fish were biting, or where they weren’t; and he would have learned how to judge when storms or waves would appear seemingly out of nowhere onto the Sea of Galilee.
He also would have known, or remembered, that he had to be on the alert when Jesus had asked him, James, and John to stand guard or watch while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36, and Mark 14:32 for references). Did he succeed? At least twice, Peter and the others fell asleep when Jesus, humanly speaking, needed them the most. What a rebuke that must have been, when Jesus asked them, “Couldn’t you stay awake for an hour?”
And, Peter knew about being on guard when he remembered going into the "danger zone", so to speak! He tried, apparently, to mix and mingle—or stay insignificant—around a charcoal fire in the high priest’s palace (King James Version) or court (NASB), according to John 18:15. He wound up denying Jesus at least twice, maybe multiple times. He repented, after weeping bitterly (Matthew 26:75).
There’s also a message for us, and it isn’t just watching out for the expected. Sure, we need to watch and be careful when we’re driving, or playing games, engaging in sports, or what have you. Some years ago I drove to a church which was on the other side of a small, but highly arched, bridge. The “arch” was such that I literally was driving blind, not able to see what was on the other side due to the height. Something told me to drive slowly, and I did. Good thing, too, as there were a few young children, riding their bicycles, not expecting traffic, I suppose, on a seldom-used piece of roadway. I shudder to think what may have happened if I had gone the normal (30 mph) speed and hit any of those children.
No, it isn’t just the more or less normal things we need to watch out for. There is the spiritual aspect, too, and we do have enemies. The world, the flesh, and the devil all have each one of us in their targets. They want to see us fall, and they want to see us fail. They would rejoice greatly if and when we stumble and face problems. Imagine a bully in school or somewhere that gets you in trouble, and gets his or her kicks from doing this. Now multiply that by a factor of 10 or more and you’ll get the idea.
Peter was careful to give us a couple of sound instructions—now, he’ll tell us why.
II Peter gave information about our adversary in verse 8
Adversary, foe, enemy, any number of terms could be used to describe our greatest adversary, the devil himself. The image Peter has in mind is that of an opponent in a court of law, perhaps like a prosecuting attorney, or perhaps someone who believes he or she has a legitimate case against you.
Most of us could relate to this. I mean, who hasn’t heard about Job and the problems he faced. None of them, by the way, were his fault! Satan accused God (!) of protecting Job and made a proposition, namely, that if God allowed Job to lose his property and later his health, Job would curse God. God gave permission for Satan to afflict Job, even to the point of horrible skin disease and loss of almost all he had, but Job stayed true. This was a classic example of an accuser being found false, and the believer remaining faithful and true to the Lord.
Peter and other of the early disciples would have known, also, about the illegal trial of Jesus Himself, just before He was crucified. Humanly speaking, Jesus didn’t stand a chance against the lies, misquotes, changing charges, and an appeal to the pride and personal welfare of Pilate, the Roman governor. Even the thieves who were crucified with Jesus insulted Him to His face, along with many people who walked to Calvary, only to mock and watch Jesus suffer.
Lest we think the accusations stopped there, we don’t need to look very far to prove that isn’t the case. Just about any time a Christian wants to actually live like a Christian, follow the Bible’s teachings, or take a stand for Biblical morality, watch how often he or she promptly gets accused of being—you name it—anything from racist, sexist homophobes, bigots, religious zealots, right-wing reactionaries, and any other thing the accusers can think up.
Peter didn’t stop with giving an image or identity of the adversary. He also described some of his strategy or method of operation. Peter said the Devil walked about, like a roaring lion, seeking something to devour (verse 8, paraphrase mine). Somewhere I’ve read that a lion will roar, in order to scare or frighten the prey into “freezing” or not knowing where to go or what to do to escape. The young lions and sometimes the lionesses would then come in for the kill, dragging some of the prey back to the pride (term for a group of lions).
Sometimes, depending on the relative hunger, the lion would gulp the prey down whole, not bothering to chew.
What a picture of our adversary! He’s prowling around, just like he did in Job’s day, roaring to frighten the prey—us!—into either not fighting or, even worse, just giving up. He’s waiting to find us and devour us, gulping us down in one bite, so to speak. He will keep on being the “accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10)” for some time in the future.
We’ll never completely understand, I think, the absolute hatred Satan has for all of humanity; especially those of us who renounced our allegiance to him and became believers in the Lord Jesus Christ!
Lest we get too discouraged, please let me remind all of us (myself, too, as I need to be reminded) that even when—not, if—when we stumble and fall, and we become aware of sinning in any capacity, we may (and sometimes do) feel bad about it, as well we should. I mean, we have committed sin against God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ, and deserve any and all kinds of punishment for our sins. But let’s not stop there.
John, the apostle, would write, some years after this, that “ . . . if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; (1 John 2:1, NASB). That word “advocate” is the Greek word “parakletos”, or “one called alongside to help”. One rendering I’ve seen or heard of is “defense attorney”, which means He, Jesus Christ, defends us whenever we are accused! And even when we are rightly convicted of sins, Jesus pleads our case by, in so many words, declaring that He has already paid the penalty for our sins by His own death on Calvary’s cross. He’s defended so many of us, and even myself, many times but He’s never once lost the case! We are FORGIVEN, hallelujah!
III Peter gives another command in verse 9
We would love to stop there, I think, rejoicing in the grace and goodness of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We can’t, though. Not yet. We’re still here to live, work, and witness to what He has done and there’s only one way to do this. It’s by standing firm against all the Devil throws at us. What did Peter say in verse 9?
The first thing is that each believer (and that’s us, folks—I need to do this, too) is to resist him. Maybe some of us remember the “Flip Wilson Show” from back in the early 1970’s. Mr, Wilson had a sketch or portion of the show where he would dress like a woman named Geraldine. She would go and purchase something (a new dress, or whatever) and when asked why, “Geraldine” would reply, “The Devil made me buy that dress!” Well, many of us laughed about it back then! Some of us still do. But really, there isn’t anything funny or humorous about yielding to the Devil.
James had already written to believers, some years before this, to “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). This advice or encouragement is still valid! It’s still good for us today. We DON’T have to yield to the devil, no, not for a moment. He’ll try anything in the book to cause us to veer or wander off the pathway, then accuse us to God whenever we do! But, if we resist him, if we say No and mean No, if we call on our Heavenly Father for assistance, we don’t need to fall for any trick of the devil.
Peter also reminded his readers--and us, too--that we’re not alone in this struggle. Other believers in other lands are going through their own dealings with the devil. In some cases, they endured fierce, fiery persecution. John would later write Jesus’ message to the Church of Smyrna about troubles to come (Revelation 2) and Peter had already mentioned the problems his audience was going through at the time of his letter. After all, Peter had endured his own share of persecution. Just look at the first few chapters of Acts! And yet, he encouraged them (and us) that we have victory in Jesus!
Let’s wrap it up here. Peter’s first commands were to be of a sober spirit, and to be on the alert. We need not say much more about this, except that our enemy, the devil, is prowling about like a roaring lion seeking someone—you and me!—to devour. But if we resist him, we can, and we will, overcome with the power our Lord makes available to us!
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. http://www.lockman.org
