[N.B. Earlier in the service we had a short presentation on Rosa Parks.]
Today we’re continuing our series of ‘Great Messages of Encouragement’. We’ve had four talks so far. We’ve remembered that God will be with us. That he will strengthen those who wait on him. That there’s a glory to come that far outweighs any present sufferings.
Today, we’re going to look at a short passage in 1 Peter.
BACKGROUND
Peter (as I’m sure you know!) was one of Jesus’ disciples. When he wrote this letter he was probably in Rome. He’s writing to Christians living in various provinces in Asia Minor, an area that is now Turkey.
Very early in his letter, Peter talks about suffering. He writes, ‘In all this’ – our new birth, our inheritance – ‘you greatly rejoice, THOUGH NOW FOR A LITTLE WHILE YOU MAY HAVE HAD TO SUFFER GRIEF IN ALL KINDS OF TRIALS.’
Christians in Peter’s time were experiencing a lot of trials.
We think that Peter wrote this letter in about 64 A.D., plus or minus a few years. At that time, Nero was the Roman emperor. He was, by all accounts, savage, cruel and very possibly mad.
In 64 A.D., there was a great fire which destroyed two-thirds of Rome. According to a historian called Tacitus, many people believed that Emperor Nero had himself ordered the burning of Rome! ‘Consequently’, he wrote, ‘to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted THE MOST EXQUISITE TORTURES on a class hated for their abominations, called “Chrestians” by the populace.’
So, Christians in Rome were having a really hard time. But it’s clear that the people Peter was writing to were also suffering. Peter wrote to encourage them, believers in his day. But his message encourages us too.
THE LETTER SO FAR
We’re going to take a look at a passage in 1 Peter 5. That’s the last chapter in 1 Peter. Before we look at that, we should have at least an idea of what Peter has been talking about up to this point.
There are three words in Peter’s letter which come up repeatedly. They are love, suffering and glory.
Peter really emphasizes love! Let’s take 1 Peter 1:22 as an example. Peter writes:
“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth SO THAT YOU HAVE SINCERE LOVE for each other, LOVE ONE ANOTHER DEEPLY, FROM THE HEART.”
Peter is calling us to an extraordinary level of love. If we’ve been going to church for some time, we’ve probably heard sermons where the speaker has told us that in Greek there are three main words for love. There’s ‘philia’, brotherly love. It could be sisterly love, of course, or we could say friendship. There’s ‘eros’, which is romantic love. And there’s ‘agape’ which is unconditional love.
Peter is saying, ‘YOU HAVE SINCERE LOVE’. That’s philia, ‘brotherly love’. But Peter wants more.
Next, Peter says, ‘LOVE ONE ANOTHER DEEPLY’. Now, Peter is talking about agape love. When John wrote ‘GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD’ [John 3:16] he was talking about agape love. When Jesus said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ [Luke 10:27] he was talking about agape-love.
Peter wants us to progress from philia-love to agape-love for one another.
This is challenging. But Peter hasn’t finished! Finally, he adds, ‘FROM THE HEART.’ ‘From the heart’ comes from the word ‘ektenos’. It means ‘fully-stretched … extended out’.
So Peter is calling on believers to show agape-love, fully extended. Wow! A big ask! What might that look like? I’d like to give you one very small and simple example.
Do you remember Jesus’ parable about a king commending his servants? [Matthew 25.] The king tells them: ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Jesus said, ‘I was a stranger and you invited me in.’ How can we apply that? Suppose someone new comes along to Rosebery Park. After the service, you go for your coffee. You see this new person. What do you have to do? [pause] What you have to say is, ‘Hi! Would you like to come and join us?’ The person was a stranger and you invited them in. You did what the king asked you to do.
I met someone who said that she prayed before a service that God would guide her to people to talk to. Unfortunately, things don’t always work as well as we’d like.
A long time ago I was a student in London and attended a big, lively, studenty church. I thought it was great. But a friend of mine told me that she hadn’t received any real support at our church. She left feeling very disappointed.
I think we know how we should show love. But we aren’t always great at doing it. I’d certainly put myself in that category.
Love is a theme in this letter. Peter comes back to it several times.
Two other words that come up quite often in this letter are suffering and glory. Peter puts them together more than once. Here’s 1 Peter 1:6-7 for example.
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to SUFFER GRIEF in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – MAY RESULT IN PRAISE, GLORY AND HONOUR when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
These ideas of suffering and glory are connected. Jesus appeared to two disciples after his resurrection. They didn’t recognize Jesus at first and they didn’t understand what had happened. Jesus told them:
“Did not the Messiah have to SUFFER these things AND THEN ENTER HIS GLORY?” [Luke 24:26].
Paul makes the connection clear too. He writes:
“Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed WE SHARE IN HIS SUFFERINGS in order that we may also SHARE IN HIS GLORY” [Romans 8:17].
Christ chose a path of suffering. If we follow Christ, it will lead us into suffering too. We can’t avoid it. The world is going in one direction and Jesus calls us to go in a different direction. Jesus faced temptation. He got into conflicts. He bumped heads. So did Rosa Parks. And so will we, if we follow Jesus. We have to share in Christ’s suffering to share in his glory.
New Testament writers often have lots of brief instructions in the last part of their letters. That’s true of 1 Peter too. I’m going to look at one very short section, 1 Peter 5:8-9a.
1 PETER 5:8-9A
Peter writes:
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him…”
Peter tells us that there is a devil. He’s our enemy. He’s like a roaring lion and he wants to devour people. It isn’t a very nice picture.
Note that our enemy isn’t fear. Peter didn’t write, ‘Your enemy FEAR prowls around like a roaring lion.’ He wrote, ‘Your enemy THE DEVIL prowls around like a roaring lion.’ We’re in a spiritual battle.
How can we resist a lion? And yet, people do! In the Old Testament, King David killed at least one lion in his youth. Someone called Benaiah went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. In Kenya, Maasai boys used to have to kill a lion as a rite of passage to turn them into warriors. They’ve stopped doing that now.
Peter says that the devil prowls around LIKE A ROARING LION. So, if we understand something of what lions are like then we’ll have an idea of what our enemy, the devil, is like. What are lions like?
I once worked in Botswana in Africa for a year and a half. Soon after I got there, I bought an old Land-Rover and went on lots of trips. I remember once hiring a guide and walking through a game park with him. At one point, we followed some lion tracks. The guide had a rifle with him, but he was very alert and sober! Lions are dangerous!
Later on, I finished that job and left Africa. But I really wanted to go back to Africa. I bought another Land-Rover, a newer one. I shipped it across to Dar-es-Salam in Tanzania and my brother and I then spent three months driving across Africa. We saw lots of lions. Lions are very well camouflaged. Their colour blends with the colour of dry grass. If we saw lions they were mostly just lazing around. They didn’t look dangerous. But they definitely were!
During our trip, we once or twice saw animals that were migrating. There would be a long line of animals, for example, wildebeest. The strongest animals were at the front and the weakest animals were at the back. That’s where the lions were too. The lions didn’t want to attack a fit, healthy wildebeest. They wanted an easy meal.
I never saw a lion attack its prey. But I’ve read that when lions attack, they cause their prey to panic and disperse. They lions can then isolate and attack a weaker or slower animal. A group is a difficult target. A solitary animal is much easier.
So, if the devil is like a lion, what is he like? Lions are dangerous. You don’t let down your guard when lions are around. They’re well camouflaged. They might not look dangerous. They prefer to attack weak and isolated animals. All of those things are true of the devil too. He’s dangerous. He’s camouflaged. He might not look dangerous. He prefers to attack weak and isolated Christians.
Peter had first-hand experience of this. When he met Jesus, his name was Simon. Later, Jesus named him Peter. Peter means ‘rock’. But at one point, Peter wasn’t at all like a rock. The day before he was crucified, Jesus told Peter that he would deny him. Peter was sure that he wouldn’t. He failed to recognize the threat. That night, he fell asleep when Jesus urged him to stay awake and pray. He certainly wasn’t alert. In the morning, he went into the palace courtyard on his own. Multiple mistakes. Fear overpowered him and he denied Jesus three times.
But Peter learned his lesson. He became the leader of the twelve apostles. He became a powerful preacher. He worked miracles.
What does it show us? The devil CAN be resisted. It must be possible to resist the devil or Peter wouldn’t tell us to! But resisting the devil demands something of us. We need to take the danger seriously. We need to be sober and alert. We need to pray to God for strength. We need to stay close to other believers. All of those things will make it much harder for the devil to attack us.
Lions aren’t only in Africa or in safari parks. Lions will cross our path: lions of fear, lions of pride, lions of doubt. We CAN resist them; we CAN stand firm. There will be lions along the way. But the path to glory lies through them.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 13th February 2022
