July 13, 2003
"Tie On the Apron" 1 Peter 5:5-14 Pastor Jon MacKinney
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We all have principles that we live by, certain things we believe to be true. You can tell what a person believes to be true by their actions. The person who, at the Grand Canyon, stands back from the edge has a healthy belief in the law of gravity. And every year, it seems like it’s a European tourist that decides to test that and falls over. The person who saves money for years and years in a good investment is demonstrating a belief in the law of compound interest, that if you leave it in there it will start to grow, and all of a sudden at some point it should take off, as long as you’re not invested in something that doesn’t go the other way. The person who goes through their life very carefully and always seeking to avert disaster is a firm believer in Murphy’s Law, that if something can go wrong, it will and so they seek desperately to try to keep that from happening. A person who careens down the road at 115 miles per hour with a blood alcohol level of .172, as the allegation is of someone who shares my last name did last week or last year in Scottsdale, is demonstrating a belief that nothing bad can happen to him or to those he may encounter. So, what we believe dictates how we live. Our actions are shaped by principles, what we believe to be true. And, in fact, it’s much easier to tell a person’s real core values and the principles they live by what they do rather than what they say. It’s easy to affirm values and truth. But talk, as some people say, is cheap. It’s how we act.
Now, the Bible, of course, is full of principles like this. And Peter, as he brings this letter to a close, is going to restate one of those principles very clearly. It really is an incredibly vital principle for the Christian life, one that is so powerful that it will impact the way you live – your attitudes, your actions, your speech, your state of mind, as well as your enjoyment of life – this one principle. We’re going to describe that principle first of all, and then we’re going to spend the rest of our time applying that principle, as Peter does here in 1 Peter 5:5. Here’s the principle. It’s this, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Peter quotes that here in the end of verse 5. It’s from Proverbs 3:34. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
Now, there are a ton of examples in the Word of God about God opposing the proud, aren’t there? There’s the men who decided to build the Tower of Babel. "We’re going to built this tower, reach up to the heavens." There was Nebuchadnezzar, who at one point looked out upon the city of Babylon and said, "Look at this great city of Babylon which I have built!" And God removed his sanity and he spent the next seven years of his life out in the woods growing his nails and his hair. Herod, who received the praise of people when he’d finished giving a speech. When they said, "It’s the voice of a god, and not a man!" decided it’s pretty cool. Immediately, he was eaten by worms. (That’s a way to go.) Goliath, who stood before the armies of Israel and mocked them and their God.
Proud people, people who are proud, find themselves opposed by God. Now, we need to break this statement down. It’s easy to say proud people are opposed by God, but we need to know what these words mean. This word ’proud’ that’s used in Scripture is a compound word that means, the first word means ’above’ and the second part of the word means ’to appear.’ So, the word basically means ’to appear to be above’. And anytime you’re above that means you’re above something – you’re above the ground, or in human relationships we are above someone else. I have told you before that when I was in college, the group a friends that I was with when we would really talk about it, found we all considered ourselves slightly superior to everyone else in the group. We found a group that we felt we were each slightly superior to. Of course, it doesn’t really work, does it? Because if everyone feels that they’re slightly superior to everyone else, sooner or later someone is going to fall on their face. So, a person says, "I am the greatest. I am the best. I am the most important. You need to bow down and worship me." Maybe that’s why pride comes before a fall – because a person has elevated themselves to a position that they cannot really maintain. I mean, it’s easy to say it, "I’m the best." But, there’s always a problem when someone else comes along and challenges that assumption and then you have a race or a competition or maybe even a fight and you find out that you aren’t the greatest. Someone else is.
Of course, in the most dangerous manifestation of pride a person believes that he is above God. That’s what Satan believed, didn’t he? "I’m going to take over the throne of heaven." It’s most dangerous manifestation is when a person says, "I’m better than God. I know more. I know how to live better than God tells me to live. I know what’s true rather than what God tells me is true. I am above God. I am more intelligent. I am stronger. I am smarter. I am more capable of running my own life." Now, that’s a problem because, as you see there, God opposes the proud. Now that word ’opposes’ is a powerful, powerful word. It means ’to line up against’. The word begins with the phrase ’anti’, so it’s obviously got the anti and it means ’to line up against.’
Now, how many of you have played football some time in your life? Just a couple of you. Okay, football. In football, it’s all about the line of scrimmage. You come up to the line of scrimmage and you get down into your stance (I won’t demonstrate it.) and you look up into the eyes of someone else and you are lined up against that person. And the first play of the game is always interesting, especially on the line of scrimmage, because in the first play of the game you look across at that guy and he looks at you and there’s going to be a test to see who is going to dominate for the rest of the game and usually, and I’ve played on enough losing teams to know, that in the first two or three plays of the game you find out who’s going to win because the people on your line are being flattened by the bigger, stronger, more talented people on the other side.
In wrestling, at least back when I wrestled back in the late ’60s, at the beginning of every match, their team would line up on one side of the mat and your team would line up on the other (all by weights) and they would introduce when you would go out and you’d go out there and shake the guy’s hand. And there was always a lot of, what we called it back then, psyching out. You know, the stares and these baleful looks and these intimidating faces. Because right now you’re lined up against each other and then at the beginning of the match you shake hands and you’re lined up against each other so it’s an oppositional thing. Imagine yourself as a proud person going to the line of scrimmage, getting into your stance, looking up into the eyes of …. GOD. The game is over, folks, when you’re lined up against God. The question of who is going to win is not even a question. The question has already been answered. You are going to be a greasy spot on the field. "Wasn’t there a player here?" "Yeah, but he lined up against God. And poof! He got flattened." That’s exactly what this word is ’to line up against, to oppose, to resist’. The person who is proud, according to this principle, is going to be lined up against God, going to be lined up against the Lord, and it’s not lined up in a good sense because these illustrations I’ve given you are combat games. The person who is proud has decided to take God on. God’s got all the power. God’s got all the wisdom. God’s got all the time. God’s got all the knowledge. And a person who is proud has decided to go mano a mano with the Lord. You know the bad thing about this word ’opposes’? It’s in the Greek tense, the present tense, which means continual action. This game never ends. The person who is proud, the person who has set himself up in God’s face and says, "I don’t care what You say. I don’t care what You say is true. I’m believing this. I don’t care what you say. I know better than you." - that person has set himself up to be under the continual opposition of God. There’s never going to be a whistle. There’s never going to be a timeout. God continually lines Himself up in opposition to the proud. Now, I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a place that I want to be. I’d rather be anywhere else but under the active opposition of God.
Now the problem with this principle, from our point of view, as believers who have chosen to be submissive to God is this: We see people who are actively, proudfully resistant to God and we don’t see this flattening that I’ve been describing. In fact, sometimes we see that they’re getting along really nicely with their stable of cars and their mountain retreat and their money and their power. In fact, Jeremiah said this very thing in verse 1 of chapter 12, it says, "You’re always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before You. Yet, I would speak with You about Your justice. Why does the way of the wicked prosper and why do all the faithless live at ease?" Isn’t that a good question? Don’t you love the Bible? It’s such an honest book. We all ask this question, but maybe we’re a little afraid to address it. Jeremiah, by the power of God and by the unction of God, is taking this question to God. And God says, "That’s a good question. Why do the wicked prosper and the faithless live at ease?" And the answer to that question is "Give it time." Give it time. They are prospering for a short time. They are living at ease for a short time. The principle is, that you cannot successfully resist God. He is like the United States Government. He is a Rock that never stops grinding. And ultimately, and maybe this is a crude way of saying it, He will get you if you consistently resist His plan and His purpose.
Now the second part of this principle is also something that we need to look at. The second part of this principle says, "God gives grace to the humble." The word ’humble’ is just the opposite of the word ’proud’. It means ’lowly thinking’. When the word for ’proud’ is above, the word for ’humble’ is ’below’, to think of yourself in a lowly manner. Now, this does not mean, and this is very important because for so many years Christians were, humility was just this whipping of yourself, "Oh, I am a worm. I’m a terrible. How low can I get? Can I get lower than a snake’s belly. I’m a terrible person. I’m not allowed to have any kind of a positive self image." That’s not what this word means. Not what this word means. In fact, this word is very nicely defined here in Philippians 2:3 when it says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility," and here is the definition of humility, "consider others better than yourselves." Now the word ’better’ there doesn’t necessarily mean that they are superior. It means that they’re more important than you. You cannot be a servant of someone who you consider less important than you. If you consider people less important than you, then you will say, "How can you serve me? I’m going to give you the privilege and opportunity to be part of my entourage and to take care of me because I am obviously more important than you are." The person of humility says, "I am here to be a servant for people who are more important than me." In other words, their needs are more important than mine. And to this person, to this person, God gives grace. That grace, that wonderful word grace, the unmerited favor of God. Grace, the infinite riches of God manifested in the giving of Christ. This wonderful, infinite ocean of mercy and of love and of gifts that God is just waiting to pour into lives of people who are humble. People who are servant oriented so that God can entrust with His grace and mercy, knowing that they will not keep it for themselves but will give it to other people.
For years, 2 Corinthians 9 has been used by some people, especially on television to say, "If you will give money to God, then God will pour money into your life so you can be rich." It’s called ’seed faith’, playing God like some kind of a cosmic one-armed bandit. You put in money and you pull the slot and because you gave it to Him, then He’ll pour it into you. That’s not what that passage says. What that passage says is the same that this passage says. When God finds a person who is other oriented, who sees himself as a servant, who is not into it so what I can get out of it, but what I can give to others, God will pour into that person the grace and the power to do those things. God gives grace to the humble because He knows the humble aren’t going to keep it for themselves because there are other people who are more important than them that are going to get it. You see the principle of God? God opposes the proud, but He pours grace into the life of the person who sees himself as a servant.
Do you know people like this, people who are servants, people who are living their lives for the benefit of others? You find them and you think, "I’m going to find this person who is just so unhappy because they don’t get to keep anything for themselves. They just pour into the lives of others." The fact of the matter is, that when you find a person like that, they are living high off the overflow. God is pouring so much into their lives, they can’t get rid of it all fast enough. And they’re just loving it. You find a person like that and you find them in a situation where the world goes, "You must be miserable there. You don’t have TV and you don’t have running water." And they say, "We’ve got the running river of God’s grace and that’s more than enough for me."
Now, there’s the principle: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And we all have choices. We have a choice here. We can either say, "Well, I’m going to remain proud. I’m going to remain proud. I know better than God. I’m going to watch out for myself. I’m going to be self oriented. I’m going to make myself the most important person in the universe." Okay, that’s a choice, but recognize the outcome that you will be lined up, as long as you persist in that attitude, you will be lined up against God play after play. Play after play after play. But, we can have the choice to be servants, to live according to God’s wisdom for the benefit of others and not for ourselves.
Now what does that look like? What will we do if we are like that? So, we have chosen the path of humility. It’s one thing to think that, "I have chosen the path of humility." But, what does that mean this afternoon? What’s that mean tonight? It means, first of all, that we have to tie on the servant’s apron. Look back at verse 5, "Young men, in the same way, be submissive to those who are older. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another." Now that word ’clothe yourselves’ is a very rare word in the New Testament and it means ’to tie something on yourself’. And it’s specifically used to describe what servants do when they go to work. They tie on the apron. Our daughter Amy was a server down here at P.F. Chang’s for a while and you always knew when she was going to work because she’d put on a tie (oftentimes one of mine) and tied on this apron. That means she was going to go be a servant for eight hours. Tie on the apron. Jesus, of course, did this very thing in John 13 when he gathered the disciples together. He got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around His waist – the sign, the very sign – everybody in that room knew what He was saying. He was saying, "I am your Servant. You are more important than Me." Brothers and sisters, if the Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of the universe, the Master of the universe is willing to tie on an apron, is willing to say, "You’re more important than Me," we can rest assured that it has nothing to do with self image. Amen? Because I’ll guarantee you that Jesus had an accurate self image. He knew who He was. He was a servant and He embraced that task and that role.
Men sometimes tie on an apron every time there’s cooking to be done outside. Do you know? We tie on the apron and then our wife prepares the meat, tenderizes the meat, often cuts the meat, brings it to us. We throw it on the grill. She reminds us when it’s burning. She’s in there doing the vegetables, the dessert and everything else. And then we bring in this burnt offering and everybody tells us what a good job we did cooking. Well, anyway, for a while we tie on the servant’s apron. But, humility, thinking of other people as more important than ourselves, thinking of other people to be served by us, that is to be a major characteristic of our lives. If you want to be one of those humble who stand in the waterfall of God’s grace, then it begins by tying on the apron and not taking it off and saying, "I am called by God to be a servant." And the proud will laugh at you. "That’s no way to get ahead! That’s no way to get people to respect you, to be a servant! You’ve got to demand it. You’ve got to dominate." This same thing went for the hot blooded young men who there in these churches, who might have been pushing (I’m just speculating here) might have been pushing for the churches to rise up against their persecutors and to maybe fight back. And Peter says to them in verse 5, "Be submissive to those who are older. Consider them as more important than you. Be servants." So, we begin with that servant attitude. Tie on the servants apron.
Secondly, remember Who it is you are serving. Remember Who it is that we’re serving. Sometimes it’s easy when we’re serving someone and we look at that person and maybe they’re unappreciative. Have you ever found people unappreciative of your service? Any moms here who have ever cooked a meal and the kids said, "Yuck!"? That’s one of the worst statements of unappreciation that there is – that one word rejection of your labor. And at those times, moms, when your service has been thrown into your face, remember Who you are serving. Remember Who you are serving. Look here at verse 6, "Humble yourselves, therefore," under whose mighty hand? God’s. God’s mighty hand. It is God who has called you to be a servant. And it is therefore Him who you are serving. Ultimately it is Him. He is the Audience. He is the Master. He is the recipient of your service and you are taking care of His children. So, then it doesn’t matter, does it, if we are notice or appreciated or praised? Because, ultimately, God will lift you up in due time.
Now, we can look at that verse and say, "Okay, so that means that people who give service I don’t have to appreciate and in fact I can abuse them because, after all, they’re serving God." I guess if you want to go that way, you can, but remember something here. The people who are servants, who have a servant heart and a servant attitude, they are also human beings. There can be a lot of heart felt praise and thanks can just be a wonderful gift of God really into that person’s life to encourage them in the path that they have chosen to be a servant and to serve you. So, even though we are serving God and that means that we should be able to (and that’s an ideal statement) be able to overcome abuse, rejection of other people, don’t do it. Be appreciative of that servant. So, remember Who you are serving. It is God who we are serving.
The next response to this principle is this: Stop worrying. Stop worrying. How did this get in here? Well, look at verse 7. Verse 7 is a verse you’ve seen framed on somebody’s wall, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Isn’t it interesting that that verse taken out of context is powerful, but in this context it just explodes. Because the life of a servant can be a life of anxiety because while a person is busily serving others, the question can come, "Who’s taking care of me? Who’s watching my back? Who’s making sure that I’m being provided for? Who’s making sure that I’m being protected? I’m out there giving and not taking." And it can be a cause for a certain amount of anxiety. "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." People who are servants who don’t protect themselves may be abused, unappreciated, underfed, hurt, penniless, homeless, jobless.
One woman has said this, Ruth Caulkin, writing a poem Tell Me Again, Lord, I Forget. "Lord, You know how I serve You with great emotional fervor in the limelight. You know how eagerly I speak for You at the women’s club. You know how I effervesce when I promote a fellowship group. You know my genuine enthusiasm for Bible study. But, how would I react, I wonder, if you pointed me to a basin of water and asked me to wash the callused feel of a bent and wrinkled old woman day after day, month after month, in a room where nobody saw and nobody knew?" Well, they might worry that nobody’s noticing this. "Nobody’s watching. I’m getting no strokes. I’m getting no money. I’m giving up time. What’s in it for me? Humble people might end up in Africa with mosquitoes." I’m so glad to be from Chicago where there are mosquitoes and in Arizona where I haven’t seen any. But, what should we do with that anxiety? Well, we should do the same thing that Paul tells us to do in Philippians 4:6 which is "Don’t be anxious about it, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." But, why should I present my requests to God? Because verse 7 here in our passage says, "Because he cares for you." Isn’t that a nice phrase. Cast all your anxiety, all your fears, all your uncertainties – "If I do this, what’s going to happen over here. If I go and do this service, who’s going to take care of me?" The same God who opposes the proud with infinite power is going to take care of you with infinite grace. That’s the dynamic of a life of faith. We’ve mentioned before that faith and fear are opposing characteristics. Faith means that I have entrusted myself to God and I believe He is who He has said He is and who He has demonstrated Himself to be. And so, in response I am going to embrace humility, embrace servanthood, and let God worry about the grace part in my life. He has called Himself, earlier in this book, the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a sheep chewing its fingernails or wringing its hands or pacing in a circle. If a sheep trusts the shepherd then the sheep is just being a sheep and he’s not worried about where the next meal’s coming from because he believes the shepherd’s got that taken care of.
What else do we do? So, we tie on the servant’s apron, we remember Who we’re serving, we stop worrying. We also watch out for Satan’s tricks. It says that here in verse 8, "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Now, what does this have to do with servanthood? I’ll tell you. It has the same thing to do with servanthood as worrying does. When we think about Satan’s tricks, we have a tendency to limit him, to say, "Well, he’s going to get me to get involved in some kind of a heinous physical sin. You know, he’s going to try to turn me into an alcoholic or some kind of sexual deviant. He’s going to try to make me rob a bank or kill somebody. He’s going to make me do something bad like that." Well sure, he works in those areas, but he also works and more commonly in the lives of believers in this area of worry and fear. Who do you think it is that crawls up on your shoulder when you’re considering a ministry of service and gets up here and says, "Yeah, but if you do that who’s going to take care of…?" Who do you think that is up there? It’s one of Satan’s boys who wants nothing better than to keep you and I on the sidelines of Christianity, grasping at some little straws that we can pretend we’re living real Christianity, when actually we’re living a caricature of it because we’re afraid to embrace humble servanthood. And so he does the fear thing.
Satan’s plan has always been to cause us to distrust God. Look at what he did way back in Genesis 3. "He [that’s Satan] says to the woman at the tree, ’Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’" So, first he attacks the character, the veracity of God. And then a few verses later, he says to Eve, "God knows when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like God, knowing good from evil." In other words, he says, "God is keeping something from you that’s really good because He’s mean and nasty." And he’s still saying the same things to us today, the same thing. He’s still attacking the character of God. "You can’t trust Him! If you become a servant, your life is ruined! You’ll die penniless!" And God says, "I’ll give grace to the humble." Who are we going to believe?
Watch out for Satan’s tricks. Recognize him and resist him. How? Holding on to God’s truth. Look at it. It says here in verse 9, "Resist him, standing firm in the truth because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering." These believers, we have seen before, in Northern Asia Minor, they were paying the price. They were living under the rule of one of the most proud people in history, the emperor Nero who was opposing God (and very successfully for a time). And most people oppose God very successfully for a time or they seem to. We sometimes mistake God’s patience for incompetence or weakness. Hold on to God’s truth. It means more than just quoting the Apostles’ Creed or saying, "Yeah, I believe that." But, it means living it. Standing is a very active thing. It says, "I am going to live in this truth. I am going to walk every day in this truth. I am going to walk every day and if the principle is true that God gives grace to the humble, I am banking on it. I’m believing that it’s true. I’m going to live that way. I’m going to spend my life considering other people more important than me." That is a radical thing. It’s a radical thing.
We’re not going to experience the grace of God until we put ourselves in the position, I mean the powerful, really overwhelming grace of God, until we put ourselves in the position where we need the grace of God. Josh Gill, down in Brazil, is finding that out. We sent him out last week. That boy will come back with stories, I’ll guarantee it. He’ll come back with stories and that really quiet young man, we’ll probably have to put a stopper in him to shut him up. He’s already had one wonderful story where a member of his group who was going down there decided to go against AWANA suggestions and put down on his visa application that he was going to be a missionary, which was a big red flag to the bureaucracy in Brazil. But, as God has a tendency to do, in response to the prayers of those young people we saw that government say, "You can come." Because the whole group was in jeopardy because of this one young man’s decision. God can do those things. God can do those things and when we put ourselves in a position of servanthood where we are now being given grace, those stories multiply.
Here’s a tough question to ask ourselves: Is the reason we don’t experience the overwhelming, miraculous grace God in us and through us because we aren’t serving, because we’re too busy taking care of ourselves, watching out for ourselves, have no need for God’s power? Satan wants us to live safe lives, safe lives that do not require God to do anything. "I don’t need You to do anything, Lord. I’ve got it all under control. Thanks so much. Don’t need You this week, Lord. Don’t need You this month. Don’t need You this year. Don’t need You for the rest of my life. Just be there when I die." That’s a caricature. In fact, it’s worse. It’s a perversion of the Christian life. The Christian life is one of daily, minute by minute, dependency on God because what we are doing is beyond our ability.
And finally, we wait for God’s final judgment, because I’ll guarantee you a servant life doesn’t always pay off the day it happens. There was an older couple, they’d served for years, decades, in Africa (this was years ago). They came home on a ship and there was a very important diplomat who was also on the same ship and when he got off the ship, this missionary couple stood back and watched as the band played. And the people had gathered. There was great applause for this returning dignitary. And as the diplomat walked down the gang plank and was whisked off in a lovely limousine to the sounds of music and applause, the husband put his arm around his wife and said, "Honey, it just doesn’t seem right after all these years, that we would have this kind of treatment and this fellow here gets that kind of special treatment." To which his wife replied, "Honey, we’re not home yet. We’re not home yet." Don’t you think it’ll be great to arrive in heaven where our heavenly Father who has provided for us and has been there with us every step of the way is there to greet us? And as I mentioned last week, we will see the reward of our life, which is people we have been used to touch.
The principle is this: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. It’s true. It doesn’t always seem true, but there is ample, ample evidence both in Scripture and in our own personal experience that it’s true. So, the choice is more than just a choice to receive the death of Christ to pay for my sins, though that is the beginning of humility. Isn’t it interesting that a person who is proud cannot accept that? A person who is proud cannot accept the simple fact that he, in his own self, is unacceptable to God but through the blood of Christ he is acceptable? And if a person remains in that kind of pride, he will know for eternity the opposition of God. But, the person who, by the grace of God, will submit in humility and say, "God, You know better than I do. You know what I’m like. And I will agree with You and receive Your provision for my need, the Person of Jesus Christ." That person will stand forever in the waterfall of God’s grace. But beyond that, it is a decision that every one of us needs to make.
Peter reminds them again, at the end of verse 12, "Stand fast in it. Stand fast in the Gospel that I’ve written to you. This is what you’ve got to walk in." Right in the middle of your terrible trial, terrible persecution, perhaps even death for some of them. Called to be a servant to our spouse, to our family, to our neighbors, to those with whom we are united in this church body, to join the ranks of the servants and in doing so, to join the ranks of those who stand in the waterfall of God’s limitless grace.
