Scripture: 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
4:12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.
4:13 But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when His glory is revealed.
4:14 If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.
5:6 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time.
5:7 Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
5:8 Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.
5:9 Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.
5:10 And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.
5:11 To Him be the power forever and ever. Amen.
When I was growing up, I heard from those older than I how much things had changed, how they used to drive a horse and buggy down the streets now clogged with cars, how certain diseases that used to be sure death to people were now cured with a shot or a pill, how much easier it is now to contact a distant relative or to travel to them, compared with days of hard travel overland through dangerous areas of the wild. Those were pleasant trips into nostalgia and I enjoyed listening to them reminisce.
But then they would say something like, “but the more things change, the more they remain the same.” I had difficulty understanding that, but as I grew older, I understood.
We no longer live like the early Christians of Peter’s time; transportation, medicine, travel, it’s all changed. What hasn’t changed is the character of human beings, our desires, our dreams and wishes and hungers. And then there are our anxieties, our fears, our needs and our capacity for sin.
We worry about this, we fear that, we make bad choices that lead us down paths we never wanted to take, where sin costs us more, and keeps us longer than we ever intended. And when we aren’t shooting ourselves in the foot, life seems to conspire to bang us around, even as the enemies of Christ are busy using our own faith against us. Since the time Peter wrote these truths in today’s scripture, nothing really has changed in the human condition. As believers in Christ, we are destined to suffer with Christ.
However, Peter reminds us that more important than what we believe is what we do about that belief. The Christians of Peter’s time, rejecting the common worship of Caesar for belief in the Christ, made the effort to create communities of believers marked by love and supportive togetherness with Christ at the center.
They knew that without an orientation toward Christ, the beginner and finisher of our faith, we stumble about on our own efforts, following humanistic paths leading us into dead ends and futile ways. Even though we are new people in Christ, without putting Him first in everything, we lose our sense of belonging to Him as a transformed and different people, and instead we find ourselves conforming to the worldly culture that twists itself around us.
And even belonging to Christ, we make ourselves vulnerable to the world, and feel the persecution that falls to us. For the humility of the Christ alerts us to the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune the world directs at us. The humility of Christ, however, is often misunderstood and misapplied and we suffer in ways that need not be.
For here Peter is not talking about the kind of humility we assume as we confess our sins and pray for God's forgiveness. The emphasis here is on the humility necessary for us to recognize how helpless we are apart from the "mighty hand of God." Owning up to our weakened state, we do need help. We are not God. Instead, God waits for us to call upon Him for divine help. Peter reminds us, "Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you."
Daniel B. Wallace, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary points out, "Biblical humility is not being a doormat for an uncaring omnipotent taskmaster ... No, Biblical humility is not self-deprecation or a dispensing of our self-esteem. Just the opposite. It is recognition that our worth is to be found in our Maker."
But persecution falls to Christians nonetheless, in various ways and degrees. Around the world Christians are being attacked and martyred. However, there is no reason to think such persecution is the only severe testing of the faithful. Peter wrote, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you." For believers, any testing of the faith is equally dangerous. Sometimes it can be as simple as the deliberate spoiling or destroying of the faith of our youth.
For example, the Hitler regime in Nazi Germany did not forcibly take the children away from their churches. The government simply instituted youth programs on Sunday mornings that competed with the churches. Is that any different from the way our own communities set up athletic program after program for youngsters on Sunday mornings? No one would state outright that these youth baseball and soccer programs are designed to take our children away from their churches. And yet that’s the result. There is no thought given to the importance of religious worship and instruction. Community leaders do not consider it, and church leaders do not protest, and we begin to see the result of faithless children becoming self-absorbed adults.
We know from history that under the worst conditions for Christian churches during the Roman Empire, Christian believers were murdered when they refused to offer a sacrifice to the Roman emperor or gods. Yet, how easy it would have been for those ancient Christians to excuse themselves for making a little gesture to satisfy their persecutors. Think about it, the loss of youth worship experience to the community youth athletic programs is equally blatant, and maybe more so than the sprinkling of incense on the altar of an alien god.
I know, someone will feel it’s not fair to pick on the Sunday youth programs. And yes, there exists plenty of other competition which tests our faith. However, the Sunday morning youth programs are obvious competition and highly tempting for the faith. Who wants to jeopardize their child's starting position in the lineup, or their future in sports, or standing among their peers by going to church instead of to practice or a game?
On its face, it seems like such a benign choice. And yet, a religious education and experience that would positively shape a child’s life are being traded for a temporal reward worth much less. From such “benign choices” sprout dangerous consequences.
"Keep alert," Peter writes, for like "a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around looking for someone to devour." In our very own social order today, one does not have to look far to see how the demonic rises up in every kind of shape, form, and disguise. That roaring lion also comes accompanied by wolves who come near to us in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:15). But no matter what mask the demons wear, we can be sure that in one form or another, the basic temptation is somehow the same, and aimed at we who believe. In one way or another comes the tempting suggestion that you cannot trust in a gracious God. We can recognize that suggestion behind its disguise and sniff out the presence of the lion who is stalking us, even as it is accompanied by the serpent’s echo from the Garden of Eden, “God didn’t really mean what He said.” But oh, yes, He did, and He does.
Two years before his death, in 1962, the nation’s old soldier of World War II and Korea, General Douglas MacArthur, addressed the cadets at West Point on the Hudson River. His speech has to rank among the finest pieces of literature on record. In part, MacArthur said, "From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds ... This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: 'Only the dead have seen the end of war'." Both Gen. MacArthur and the Apostle Peter recognized that no one escapes the suffering and pain of war and death that mark our world like a plague. But it is Peter who encourages us to stay aware of how things really are and resist the evil as it comes to us.
Such encouragement does not come off the top of Peter’s head, or roll easily from his lips. Instead Peter shares what he knows from the heart of the God of all grace who made sure we could be strengthened, restored, and renewed in the face of all temptation and suffering through the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter’s final words in that chapter read, "To Him be the power forever and ever. Amen." To which you could only add, "Peace to all of you who are in Christ."
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