Join the Resistance

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"Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."

1 Peter 5:8

Main Readings: 1 Peter 5 & Philippians 3

Supporting Readings: Luke 22 & Job 1-2

Peter has certainly spent a chunk of time in this letter talking about suffering, I’m sure you’d agree. And so, as we spend time in the penultimate passage of his first letter this morning, it’s probably worth knowing that Peter uses the word more in this letter than any author does in any other New Testament book.

19 times he uses the word suffer, suffering, or suffered. That’s almost as many as the Apostle Paul uses combined in his writings.

It’s more than in the narrative of the early church in Acts. And more than in Hebrews too. Both of which use it 9 times.

That doesn’t mean the other writers don’t focus on suffering by using other terms and phrases – they do – but it’s enough to tell us that Peter wants us to grapple with Christian suffering.

Remember, the people who Peter’s writing to were undergoing severe persecution for their commitment to Christ.

That persecution was coming from people in their very own society.

And that’s rarely the case for us. Though, from time to time we may have to suffer ridicule for being known as a follower of Jesus. And we may have to suffer isolation from family members for owning God’s truth before them. Yet, by and large, we can live fairly easy lives as Christians in the UK, without suffering too heavily.

Nevertheless, Peter wants us to be under no illusions that we’re somehow not under attack. He wants us to know that every Christian is under attack.

He wants us to know that all suffering faced by Christians – of whatever kind – is a ploy on the part of a very terrible and very invisible enemy.

He’s an enemy that is so opposed to Jesus that he would do all in his power to give you every reason to reject Jesus.

And one of his chief means of persuading us is suffering.

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It’s very easy to see who Peter has in mind because he names him. He calls him the ‘devil’ in verse 8. And he names him as ‘your enemy’.

Peter describes him in colourful descriptive language. He says that he’s a ‘roaring lion’. A lion that is on the prowl. And who is specifically looking for someone to devour.

In reality, the only literal animal Satan takes the form of in the bible is a serpent. So, Peter’s language here is to convey to us what Satan’s approach is like.

The idea is: would you want to find yourself at the mercy of a hungry, massive, alert and focused lion, on the lookout for a human being to eat? Answer: no way!

Well, neither would you want to find yourself at the mercy of Satan then! And yet so many Christians don’t take him seriously.

And that’s mainly because he can’t be seen. And yet, he is certainly there and certainly hunting us all down!

He doesn’t have teeth to tear you apart with, he has suffering. He doesn’t want to eat your flesh. He wants to eat your faith.

And so, this word from Peter is loving and kind and designed to preserve you from falling foul of the faith-destroying effects of Satan’s chief weapon – suffering.

For the Christians Peter is writing to, their main thought might have been: is it worth it to follow Jesus when so much suffering comes with it?

That’s not so likely to be our main thought. Our main thought is morelikely to be, how can God love me if he would allow so much suffering to come into my life?

Many many Christians have walked away from God when suffering came into their lives, believing that if God were real, and if he were good, he would not let that happen. And that’s exactly what Satan is aiming for.

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Let me remind you what the book of Job reveals to us about the way that Satan operates. In chapter 1, we see a Job who lives a charmed life, full of abundance – wealth, health, family; you name it, he’s got it. And he feared God and shunned evil.

And Satan’s assessment of the situation was that there was no wonderJob was faithful to God – God gave him everything he could want.

But Satan reckoned that if God took everything away from Job, that he would curse God to his face.

So, God gave Satan the power to do that very thing. And Satan went and took everything Job had from him – even his children.

But Job didn’t curse God. So, Satan said, ‘ah, but you haven’t touched the man himself! Make him suffer, in his flesh, and then he will surely curse you to your face.

So, God gave Satan the scope to inflict Job with sores on his skin. And Job cursed the day he was born. But he didn’t curse God.

What was Satan’s aim? Well surely, it was to get Job to walk awayfrom God by bringing suffering into his life.

That’s Satan’s plan, that Peter has in mind here. And he wants us all to be abundantly aware of it – so that it doesn’t catch us out. Because let’s be honest, if we walk away from Jesus – for any reason – we’re lost!

We’re going to die in our sins. We’re going to suffer for all eternity in hell. So, the stakes are massively high. Peter says, ‘you can’t affordto take Satan lightly – and many of you are’.

The way he’s going to help you not to take Satan lightly is by telling you some things you must do, and by encouraging you that God has doneeverything necessary and will bring you through if you really are his – and show it by doing what he is calling you to do.

He's going to tell us how to prepare for Satan’s suffering. How to combat Satan’s suffering. And how to draw strength for the fight.

As Peter’s told us, multiple times already, we need to be ‘alert and of sober mind’. Imagine facing a roaring lion, half asleep. Imagine facing a roaring lion after drinking all night! You’d be overtaken in seconds!

No No! Your best chance against a lion is alertness and soberness. After all, the lion is alert and sober!

And so is Satan. He’s a fully awake, T-total lion-of-a-contender; with you in his sights.

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Back in chapter 1, a mind alert and fully sober served hope in the return of Jesus. In chapter 4, a mind alert and fully sober served prayer.

And what did Peter say last week? He said, ‘cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you’.

Which requires two things – it requires prayer. That’s how you do the casting. And it requires hope. Because there is no good reason to cast off your anxieties unless they can be replaced with hopes that exceedthe very suffering that caused the anxiety in the first place.

An alert and sober mind then is one that has learnt to cast all its anxieties on God because he cares for you. And you’ve done thatthrough prayer. And you’ve done that in the sure and certain hopethat there is grace to be brought to you when Jesus returns.

I think that’s baked into the cake of this letter and it’s in the very flowof these verses we’re in this morning too.

If you carry your anxieties, instead of casting them off onto God through prayer, you go into this battle with a mind that’s half asleep.

If you carry your anxieties around with you instead of hoping in God by casting them on him, you go into this battle with a mind that is half drunk. And this adversary is going to make mincemeat of you.

But with minds that have cast off anxieties, onto God, you can resistthis devil who wants you to doubt God’s goodness by bringing suffering into your life.

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Peter uses the language of warfare here. Words like ‘resist’ and ‘stand firm’, they convey a fight. And Peter said before, ‘arm yourselves with the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus’. In other words, let the mind of Christ dwell in you.

Well, what have we just been told? We’ve been given good commandsfrom God. We’ve been given abundant promises from God. And we’ve been given helpful warnings from God.

We were told last time to clothe ourselves with humility toward each other. We were told that God opposes the proud – that was a warning.

But gives grace to the humble - that was a promise. We were told to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand – namely the suffering that he has willed for us. And he will lift us up in due time. We heard that he cares for us.

This, then, is the arsenal of God’s goodness that he has given us, with which to resist Satan. With which to stand our ground in faith.

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When these commands are believed to be good for us. When these warnings are believed to be for our benefit. When these promises are received as captivating. Then, we have the attitude of Christ on, and we stand firm in our faith.

Armed like this, Satan cannot win!

He wants to eat our faith, so that we doubt God’s goodness in the midst of all the suffering. But our faith is strengthened by the commands, the promises and the warnings, that God is for us. That this suffering is refining – as Dave has said – and not consuming.

We are able to embrace suffering as God’s goodness, not his withholding his goodness from us.

Do you believe that?

I mean the next time suffering – of any kind – comes are you going to be able to say ‘this is God being good to me?’

You absolutely will, if you have cast your cares on him and by faithresponded to his commands, heeded his good warnings, and stood on his kind promises in hope.

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If Satan is real. And he’s really out to get you – as Peter tells us he is here – so this is essential for the Christian life.

It means that day-to-day we need live incredibly hopefully about the future. Every Christian should be like that.

Jesus has triumphed at the cross. He will triumph when he returns. He has saved you. He is saving you. And will most definitely save you in the end.

And every day has to be lived in the light of that reality. It means that every day you have a God who cares for you. Who is mightily powerfuland can handle all your cares.

He doesn’t want you to carry them yourself, he wants to carry them for you and in this way, he will protect you from the faith-destroying effects of suffering.

It means, as trouble comes, you are totally trusting that God has got this in hand. You’re totally trusting that this is light and momentary– no matter how hard it is. You’re totally trusting that God has an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs all momentary suffering. That attitude, you arm yourself with every day.

And look what Peter adds. There’s camaraderie that is yours too. You’re not the only Christian to go through this suffering! All the saints are undergoing the same kind of suffering he says in verse 9.

He means that God is not singling you out. He means that Satan is not only attacking you. He’s got his sights trained on all the saints.

Is God’s goodness reserved for other believers and not for you? Because somehow God hasn’t ordained suffering for them, but he has for you? Of course not.

God has ordained suffering for all his people. Because, by it, he refinesus. Satan wants to devour the faith of all the believers. He wants to take as many to hell with him as possible. He wants to use suffering to undermine the faith of all the saints. And it’s a strategy he’s going to use to the very end.

So, expect this, but don’t think you’re a special case. God has designed this for all his people. Satan has designed this against all God’s people!

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So, we can see very much what Peter has in mind for us to do. Mindset – let it be Christ’s. Posture – let it be faith. And camaraderie – remember the family of believers who are going through the samething.

But Peter doesn’t tell us what to do without giving us incredible reasons to do those things. Incredible reasons to trust that there will be a glorious victory at the end of all this cosmic warfare with our spiritual enemy, the devil.

And that’s where he goes next. From verse 10 onwards Peter is all about God. What he has done - for you. What he will do – for you. And who he is – for you.

When we have taken account of all this, we will see that there is everyreason not to doubt God and his goodness. And every reason to believe his perfect plan, which does include suffering for a little while.

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Peter reminds us that, in spite of the suffering God has planned for us, he is the God of ‘all grace’.

That is to say, his grace comes in many forms – even in the form of suffering.

There is a completeness to the grace God imparts to us. It’s notlopsided grace. It’s not grace which is sufficient for only some things.

No, he is God, and he knows all things. He knows exactly what we need. And he’s telling us; his grace is sufficient for all those needs.

There is a way in which suffering delivers grace to us that notsuffering simply could not deliver.

And since God’s grace is always good. He is always good – even when he has ordained suffering for us.

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As we know, grace is God’s underserved favour towards us. And since it is undeserved it had to be won for us. Which of course it was when Jesus went to the cross.

The cross is the apex expression of God’s grace to us, and as you know, it came through suffering. Jesus had to die to win us this amazing grace – this undeserved favour.

Since, then, God did not spare his own son suffering, how will he not, together with Jesus, give us everything that would be good for us. The answer is: he will. He will give us everything that is good for us.

And the basis for the favour that he has extended to us is that, in eternity past, he set his love on us and then in the fulness of time, he called us. You can see that in verse 10.

We saw this towards the beginning of the letter also. Peter said there in chapter 2, that we were ‘called out of darkness and into his wonderful light’.

That doesn’t mean that he called, and we responded because we wanted to respond. We were dead in transgressions and sins.

It means, when he called, he caused us to respond to that calling - his calling created the response.

And what this tells us is that God is sovereign. He makes the impossible happen.

What looks like setback, and maybe even defeat, isn’t. It’s victory – God’s way.

Everyone who is called by God will be glorified. Elsewhere, Paul says, ‘those he called, he justified, those he justifies, those he justifies, he sanctifies, and those he sanctifies, he will glorify!’

It’s an unbreakable golden thread of God’s sovereignty working for us. Even though that thread takes us through the loom of suffering – and it does.

Peter’s way of saying it here is: ‘And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will restore you’.

It is inconceivable, that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, should allow you one drop of suffering that would be bad for you, if he, at maximum expense to himself, did not spare his own son but gave him up for you, to call you into his eternal glory!

It’s inconceivable that he would do such a thing as waste the cross – that cost him and his son an infinite sum– by not bringing every singleone of you, he has called, to his final glory.

And therefore, Peter is saying ‘don’t doubt his goodness, or his power, or his purpose for you when you encounter suffering in this life’.

Don’t doubt him. You cost far too much to let go. You are far too precious to him, in Christ, to abandon to Satan.

This eternal glory that he has called you to and will most certainly see you in, pulls us on. Can you feel that?

If the call of Jesus, on the cross of Jesus, is pushing us from behind, then the eternal glory of God is pulling us forward.

The temptation – and this is what Satan wants – is to stand still under suffering. But – and Satan knows this too – standing still is reallygoing backwards.

It’s like the subtle effects of a rip-tide when you’re in the sea – you don’t sense it, but you’re not treading water at all, you’re being dragged out to sea. In this case, to hell itself.

God’s eternal glory is set before us. It carries the promise of no suffering. No pain. No sadness. No Satan.

God’s eternal glory is the goal of our salvation. It’s where the fulnessof everything that has been hoped for comes to fruition.

The hope of chapter one’s ‘alert and sober mind’ lands – it lands here. It is presence with God. It is experience of God firsthand. It is unmitigated joy in God for evermore.

Can you see how, if you set this before your very eyes, you can’t helpbut be drawn through the suffering, and hardships, and challenges of life which Satan is designing to make you tread water for a while.

‘I don’t think God’s being good to me just now’. ‘I don’t think God’s got the power to prevent this from happening’. ‘I don’t think he cares for me – otherwise why would I be experiencing this?’ ‘I don’t think I can pray to him just now after everything I’ve been through’.

‘The anxiety is too much for me to bear – I constantly feel on the edgeabout what might be just around the corner - but don’t tell me to cast on him because I can tell you, he’s forgotten me’.

So many little triumphs Satan makes in us through suffering when we forget that this life is a veil of tears; that we are born to trouble as sure as sparks fly upwards; and that God’s weight of glory which far outweighs all this light and momentary pain, is just around the corner.

And I can hear someone saying, ‘you make light of it when you call a lifetime of suffering light and momentary’.

Well speak to Peter. I don’t suppose many suffered as much as Peter – purportedly crucified upside down for his faith in Jesus in the end.

But even before that – when he was with Jesus at the last supper, before Jesus’ death. Jesus abruptly turned to Peter and said this: ‘Simon, Simon, Satan [just like we have here] Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faithmay not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers’.

So, Peter knew all about this. He had firsthand experience of Satan’s deception. Of failing to understand that suffering has to come beforeglory.

And it’s that same Peter who says, ‘after you’ve suffered a little whilewill himself restore you’.

Paul uses the terms light and momentary. Because when you put this suffering for a lifetime next to the eternal glory to be received, it palesinto insignificance. So great is that glory!

Like Jesus, we are called to remain faithful through the suffering, to death, and then to enter into glory. It was his pattern. And he has left it that we might follow in his steps.

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How do we know Peter has in mind a whole lifetime when he uses the phrase ‘a little while’? He says after you’ve suffered ‘a little while’ then restoration.

Maybe he means a season of life. Because, after all, suffering does seem to come in seasons. More or less at different times. And that’s true.

But he does mean ‘a lifetime’. He does mean after you have suffered a lifetime you’ll be restored.

How do we know that? Well, we know because he already said this back in chapter 1.

There he said, ‘In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials’.

That’s the same as here. But he goes on. Listen closely. ‘These [he means the trials] have come so that the proven genuiness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honour’ When?

He says, ‘When Jesus Christ is revealed’.

So, Peter’s concept of ‘a little while’ terminates on the second coming of Jesus.

And we know that if Jesus doesn’t return in our lifetime, then we’ll die. And we know that death marks the end of suffering also.

So, we can know with confidence, Peter isn’t talking about a seasonof suffering here, he’s talking about a lifetime of it.

The experience of that suffering will rise and fall in seasons, but suffering will be the hallmark of our lives.

And if we belong to Jesus, make no mistake, it is a tool of Satan to get us to distrust God and walk away from him.

But we fix our eyes on the glory to be revealed when Jesus returns.

So, if ‘a little while’ means a lifetime, then it sounds like the ‘restoration’ God promises here; and the ‘making strong’ God promises here; and the making ‘firm and steadfast’ God promises here, will all come after this life.

And that’s right.

Peter is not saying that after a season of suffering God will restore you. He’s saying after a life of suffering, God will restore you.

And by restore he has in mind resurrection. What was sown perishable in the first place will be raised imperishable. God is going to restorethis broken body which, if you think about it, is a massive source of suffering.

God is also going to make us strong Peter says. By which he means unshakable. We get knocked so easily here.

A little challenge and we’re blasted sideways by it. But not there. We will live in a restored world where there will still be challenges to overcome, but we’ll be strong, immovable, unshakable in the midst of them. That’s the image.

‘Firm’ Peter says. Strengthened with power, like Philippians 3 says. God will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body in the power that enables him – namely the power of the Holy Spirit. When we see him, we will be like him!

And ‘steadfast’ too, Peter says. Founded on Christ. Permanently tethered to the rock which cannot move. No drifting. No question whether the anchor will hold. Steadfastly moored forever and ever.

I sense there is no one word that can capture the grandeur of the glory that is coming and so Peter resorts to a pile of future tense verbs to convey it to us.

It can hardly be a wonder to us that Peter finishes by exalting the power of God. ‘To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen’.

It’s fitting that Peter chooses power over glory. He’s been telling us that we wage war against a formidable and powerful enemy.

He told us what to do to resist him and has then given us all these incentives to resist, which are rooted in the power of God himself – who is mightier than Satan.

Every single one of us is going to have suffering this week in our lives – of one kind or another. If you’re a believer in Jesus, Satan wants that suffering to kill your confidence in God. To doubt his goodness and his power.

Let’s get alert and sober minded then, trusting promises; obeying commands; heeding warnings; and praying in the Spirit on all occasions.

And let’s not forget that this is the same for all the family of believers worldwide – you’re not being singled out. Pray for them too!

And let the awesome power of God, in what he has done, and will do, give you every confidence to hope in his grace – which will bring you into his glory after you’ve suffered.

And which will result in stunning resurrection realities at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ!

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There is so much practical help for us as Christians here, for the week which lies ahead. And indeed, for the rest of our lives. I hope you feel it. Amen.