Under The Mighty Hand Of God - 1 Peter 5:6 Series

1 Peter 5:5 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." 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.

Introduction

Review

Last week I made an effort to show you one side of the coin of humility - the side that faces toward people. I told you there is another side that faces toward God, but we did not have time to look into that then. Verse 5 talks about the man-ward side of humility, and verse 6 talks about the God-ward side.

We found last week that the man-ward side, humility toward people, is when you tear off your "I'm important" badge and consider others more important than yourself. Or another way to think about it is this - humility toward people is when you look at everyone from the perspective of a slave, rather than a master. We have a natural, in-born, built-in propensity toward a master mentality: "Serve me." Humility is a slave mentality: "Your needs are more important than mine. How can I serve you?"

If you approach people with a master mentality, not only will you have a lot of anger issues and relational conflicts, but God will oppose you. But if you live with a slave mentality, God will give you grace. Humility creates a vacuum that divine grace fills.

All that was last week. Now in verse 6 Peter brings up the God-ward side of the coin - humility toward God.

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand

The reason I am describing this as being two sides of the same coin, rather than calling them two different kinds of humility, is because they are not separate things. You can see in verses 5 and 6 that Peter is speaking of one, single virtue. All humility toward people grows out of humility toward God, and all pride toward people grows out of pride toward God. The coin does not exist without both its sides. You cannot have true humility toward people without first being humble toward God. And if you are humble toward God, you will be humble toward people. Humility is one, single virtue with a side that faces toward God and a side that faces toward people.

Essential for Salvation

And that virtue is such an essential component of salvation that very often Scripture refers to believers as "the humble" and unbelievers as "the proud."

Psalms 149:4 For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation.

That phrase “the humble” is a synonym for “his people.”

Psalms 18:27 You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.

Psalms 147:6 The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.

There are two categories of human beings: lost and saved - unbelievers and believers - enemies of God and children of God - proud and humble. All true believers have humbled themselves before God - otherwise they could not be saved.

Matthew 18:3 unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

So every Christian is humble.

“How can that be? In last Sunday’s sermon, almost every symptom of pride on the whole list described me. I've got all kinds of pride in my heart.”

God refers to us as the humble, not because we are perfectly humble, but because we humbled ourselves enough to repent of our sin and bow the knee to Christ as our Lord, and when we become aware of pride in our hearts, we repent. We still have prideful responses, but when we see them in our heart, we repent of them. We all stumble in many ways when it comes to pride. But if you will bow the knee to Christ and repent of your pride, God will count you among the humble.

So every true Christian has a degree of humility. In fact, your whole life is based on humility before God. However, even though bowing the knee to God is the thrust of your whole life, still there are all kinds of pockets of pride in our hearts that we battle against. And in verse 5 Peter calls us to fight against the lingering remnants of pride toward people, and now in verse 6 we need to fight against the lingering remnants of pride toward God.

Symptoms of God-Ward Pride

So what is pride toward God? Pride toward God is elevating one’s self to God’s place. I told you last week that when we behave in selfish ways toward one another it is because we have an "I'm more important than you" badge pinned on our heart. But if you could take that "I'm important" badge and turn it over and see what is on the inside of it it would say "I'm God." The root of pride toward people is pride toward God. And pride toward God tries to elevate self right up to God's throne, and shove Him off. It is the attitude of the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14.