I feel constrained of the Lord tonight to
ask you to turn with me to the
eighth and the ninth verses in that fifth
chapter of Peter's first letter, and perhaps it
might be helpful if we read our text
again and try to get it clear in
our minds as we come to meditate upon
it.
Be self-controlled and alert.
Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a
roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because
you know that your brothers throughout the world
are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
The enemy.
The closing paragraphs of this inspired apostolic document
are as full of truth and of grace
as was the very wonderful first chapter.
Those of you who are familiar with it
will recognize 1 Peter as one of the
great monumental chapters of the New Testament.
But the grace that enabled Peter, Peter of
all people, to write such a chapter and
to write these four chapters that precede this
one, that same grace enables him to conclude
the message that God had for these harassed,
scattered, sometimes bewildered Christians of the first generation.
Grace gave Peter the ability to show the
flock the way through the darkness and the
way through the storm in such a manner
as would honor their Lord and their God
and bring glory to themselves.
Now, what is Peter to say as he
concludes this letter?
Well, there are so many things here that
would normally, would naturally invite our attention.
This is so full, so very full of
truth and so very full of precious truth
that we need to grapple with that one
is really hesitant to know where to begin.
You take that word.
He tells these people, most of them have
lost their employment, means of livelihoods, their homes,
their friends, they've lost everyone apart from their
God and their Savior.
And yet the great Apostle Peter tells them
to cast all their anxieties upon God because
God cares for them.
And it is Peter's word.
He knew something of life's troubles.
He knew something of temptation.
He knew something of having to fight and
battle with Satan.
He knew something of the fury.
And he knew what it was to worry.
He was a worrying type.
Nevertheless, he has told them that.
Cast all your anxieties, all of them, roll
them over, he says, roll them over onto
him who cares for you.
And you might be tempted to think, well,
now there's nothing more to say.
There are some people who thus conclude that
when once we get rid of our anxieties
and roll them onto the strong shoulders of
the God of Gilead and the God of
Gethsemane and the God of Calvary and of
the empty tomb, there is nothing more that
there is.
Having got rid of our anxieties and learn
to humble ourselves before God and in relation
to one another, this is Peter's thought pattern.
Now, he says, there's an enemy on the
prowl, get into battle with him.
Be self-controlled, be alert, your enemy, the
devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking
for someone to devour, resist him, standing firm
in the faith.
And then he gives one or two reasons.
You know, there is a danger that we
think of the Christian life as something passive.
Getting rid of all our problems, getting rid
of all our troubles, hurling them all on
the Lord, and precious though that truth is,
it is not all the truth.
Having got rid of our anxieties, what then?
Then, says Peter, look into the eyeball of
the enemy who is prowling around to destroy
you and make war against him.
Don't suffocate in your spiritual luxury of having
your anxieties cast upon God, but stand on
your guard, declare war, and standing steadfast in
your faith, march on.
This is a great word, and I find
it a very challenging word to me at
this present time, and I'm sure it is
likewise for all of us.
Whatever our circumstances, it points to the inescapable
pathway of Christian duty, irrespective of our circumstances.
There's an enemy to encounter, there's a warfare
to wedge, a warfare that we can only
effectively tackle whilst we are resting in God,
who alone is our sufficiency.
Whilst we have ceased to worry because he
cares for us, and we are prepared to
be wounded for the glory of our God
and the well-being of our soul.
This is a soul-stirring passage.
Were we to say nothing more, but you
see, there is something more that must be
said.
The apostle is not simply the exponent of
divine truth here.
He's not simply expounding the word of God.
He's doing that, but he is a vital
witness to the immense issues involved here.
He's actually dipping the pen in his own
ink, in his own blood, metaphorically.
He has been this way.
Peter had known something of the fury of
Satan.
Peter had been humbled and humiliated, wounded sorely
by the evil one.
But the Lord God of all grace has
brought him back again, and now he is
able to minister to his brethren, to his
brothers and his sisters, just as Jesus said
he would.
When thou hast turned around again, you will
help strengthen your brothers.
And here he is involved in that very
ministry that was given him by his master.
Now, there are two things I want to
focus upon tonight.
Only two things in this particular passage.
We shall look first of all at the
roaring lion prowling for prey, and then at
the resisting prey defying the attacker.
The two evident pictures that emerge from the
passage.
First of all, let's look for a moment
at the portrait that we have here of
the roaring lion.
Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a
roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Without any word of explanation or apology, we
are faced squarely with this apostolic portrayal of
our arch enemy, the devil.
The apostle doesn't find any need to explain
his belief in the existence of the devil
any more than he does to explain the
existence of God.
The devil was not just someone he happened
to believe in.
He had been confronted by him, humiliated by
him.
He knew him, recognized him.
Many have known him but have not recognized
him.
Many have been involved with him but they've
not recognized him.
Peter knew the foe.
Christianity inherited the Jewish belief in the actual
objective existence of a malign being whose set
purpose is sinister and evil.
But Satan was no mere item on their
creedal confession.
Let me repeat that.
The New Testament shows us a community of
men and women that grappled with Satan, that
made war against him.
And they did so by the blood of
the Lamb and the word of their testimony.
And they loved not their lives unto death.
Paul warns us of the hosts of hostile
agencies that gather around him to menace the
Christian positions in the Christian church.
Whilst Peter refers to him as an all
too familiar foe.
And Jesus was tempted by him in the
wilderness.
Now Jesus Christ wasn't shadow boxing for 40
days and 40 nights in the wilderness.
When he came out and when he told
his disciples what had been going on, he
wasn't teasing them, he wasn't leading them astray.
That had been a real fray.
And the New Testament believed him.
And later on, as we've indicated, the apostles
and the whole community of the Christians came
to know something of the power of this
malign enemy of our souls.
If it be cynically asked where the devil
may be encountered, as someone did once ask
me for his address.
Clearly we can't do that.
But I'll tell you what we can do.
We can show you his handiwork.
We can show you his footmarks.
We can show you the works of his
hand.
From Eden to the fall of Babylon.
From Eden to the end of the Old
Testament.
And from Herod to Hitler.
To this sex ridden age in which you
and I are living.
We can show you the damage.
We can show you the problems he causes
to emerge.
We can show you the hurt.
We can show you the wounded lives and
homes and societies and nations warring against each
other.
We can show you the works of Satan.
And we can tell you how to discover
his character.
It is at this point that Peter must
have been writing with great emotion.
You see, as we've indicated, he had passed
through the peculiarly harrowing experience of being in
Satan's hands.
In the lion's paws.
He had not only been cowed to cowardice
by his loud roaring so that a flimsy
damsel could trip him up.
It's the kind of thing you'd really never
expect in Peter's life.
A sweet little girl.
Tripping up this big burly fisherman who could
stand for himself in any storm and in
any trouble.
Just a few quips from her and he
was down on his face in the mud.
She had Satan on her side.
Peter had gone that way and he knew
something of the fury of the enemy.
David Livingstone somewhere says of how he was
helping someone who had been caught between the
teeth of a lion and had been rescued.
But almost every bone in his body had
been broken.
Some to a pulp and his body was
a mess.
And David Livingstone says that there were occasions
when all the hideous terrifying pains of that
experience would come back to him even years
afterwards because he lived for a number of
years.
And he would relive the whole experience and
I don't know whether somehow or other there
are times in the experience of the Apostle
Peter when all the anguish of that awesome
moment when he denied his Lord with oaths
and curses don't come back to him.
Peter is writing out of a felt poignancy
of soul as the memory of his galling
experience lives on.
And his words are the more profoundly relevant
on that score.
You see, Daniel was saved from the lion's
den.
The paw of the lions didn't touch Daniel.
Peter was saved from the lion's mouth.
Yes, Satan exists all right.
It's true that the medieval church completely and
outrageously outdrew the biblical presentation and went to
unwarranted lengths.
But the pendulum nowadays has swung in the
other direction and apparently very few people believe
in the existence of Satan.
And of course that serves his purpose very
well.
He's able to do so much better when
people don't think he's around.
But the word written as well as the
word incarnate speak to us of an enemy.
Satan, the devil.
The tale of his non-existence is paying
dividends to the cause he represents.
Let us believe the word of God.
An enemy indeed.
Actually, the Greek word has often been used
for an opponent in a lawsuit.
And he is something of that.
He's the arch-accuser.
Have you noticed that in your experience?
First of all, he's the accuser of God.
The devil loves to put any blame on
God.
And he will whisper the most sinister notions
in your ear to blame God for all
kinds of things.
But when he doesn't accuse God, he accuses
the brethren.
He accuses Christians falsely.
Now, it's one thing to have to face
our own faults and our own sins.
That's very humbling for all of us.
But he is the false accuser.
He will make you believe that you have
sinned when you have not.
And he will remind you of sins that
God has forgiven and put under the blood
of his Son.
And God will never do that.
It's only the devil does that.
You know the language of Scripture.
God says, As far as the east is
from the west, so far have I removed
your transgressions from you.
I've buried your sins in the depths of
the sea.
I've cast your sins behind my back.
These are all biblical metaphors.
The devil will bring them up from the
bottom of the ocean.
The devil will go to the outermost parts
of space and bring back your sins and
remind you of them and throw them in
your face.
God will not do that.
When the blood of Jesus Christ covers them,
God will never bring them out.
That would be to dishonor his Son and
to dishonor his covenant.
But the devil does.
And he taunts you and he tantalizes you
with them.
And when he doesn't accuse the Father or
accuse the brethren, then he'll get us to
accuse one another.
And this is as sad as anything.
He'll make the saints little accusers of one
another.
And we begin to bite and to devour
one another and play the devil's game for
him.
Oh, brothers and sisters, we have a malign,
we have a bitter, we have an awful
enemy to battle with.
Let's beware of him.
That lion is still abroad tonight.
And what's he trying to do?
Well, Peter puts it in this way.
He describes Satan's endeavors in these words, seeking
whom he may devour.
Devour.
Having first described him in general terms, he
now becomes more pointed and particular.
And, of course, his words have a peculiar
relevance to the historical situation in which these
Christians lived.
They have been overwhelmed by an evil power,
a power of a state that is evil.
And it is snarling bitterly at them.
But now listen to, look at what he
has to say.
Let's just try and examine, albeit very briefly,
some of the things that Peter wants us
to get hold of.
The murder of Satan's approach is described in
terms of a roaring lion.
It would appear that the apostle still has
in mind the image of the church as
God's flock.
You notice he has referred to us as
the flock of God in verse 2 back
there.
That's the image of the church that he
had at the beginning of the chapter.
And he seems to have the same image
of the church in his mind right here.
And so he speaks of the enemy as
a lion roaring.
The picture is of the creature encircling the
little flock.
The lion walking around, parading around the little
flock in the center, eyeing them, looking at
them, watching at them, frightening them, making them
a little nervous, a little timid, and more
and more timid as the moments go by,
waiting to pounce on his prey.
And the great apostle Peter would remind you
that there is such a thing going on
in your life and mine right here on
earth.
There is an enemy that is prowling around,
seeking whom he may devour.
A roaring lion.
Now not that Satan always appears as such,
of course.
He dons this gate only when it serves
his purposes.
At other times he will masquerade as the
angel of light, as Paul tells us in
2 Corinthians 11, as the champion of culture,
of education, and enlightenment generally.
He loves to do that.
I think that's the gate he loves best.
He can as easily assume the philosopher's ponderous
air as the high priest's vestments, and he
likes to do that.
He likes to have a foot in the
religious life of the day and the cultural
life of the day and to come out
from the university hall or from a church
or a cathedral and be known as such.
And as an angel of light, speak with
authority.
He has mastered the art of hypocrisy and
he can play any game he likes.
And there are times when it is most
rewarding from his point of view to plug
the arts or champion the sciences.
He can sometimes produce results of extraordinary proportions
by giving sin the veneer of art or
otherwise rationalizing it so that it becomes acceptable
to people.
But when that guise fails, Satan condescends to
another.
He becomes, as he was in the book
of Genesis, the serpent, or as he is
called in the book of Revelation, that serpent.
He put this guard on, as we've said,
in Eden.
And as serpent, of course, he's no longer
the champion of the arts or the sciences.
He's not concerned with religion or with culture
of any kind.
As a serpent, he's the enchanter.
He's the seducer.
He's the one who entices.
He appeals to the sensual.
And once he casts his ugly spell over
men and women and begins to get his
poisonous fangs going, brothers and sisters, we're in
for trouble.
Nothing but the blood of Christ can shield
and shelter us.
Here in 1 Peter 5, however, Satan is
the roaring lion, frightening the saints, or trying
to.
Arrogantly and threateningly he surrounds the bleating sheep
and the defenseless lambs of the good shepherd,
savagely roaring in order to strike terror into
their hearts, ready to pounce.
Where his damnable philosophies are rejected and his
seductive approaches rebutted, this is what he does.
Oh, his psychological warfare is well thought out.
When I meet him in this capacity, I
love the words of our Lord and often
turn to them.
My sheep listen to my voice.
There's another voice even when Satan roars, the
lion roars.
I know them, says Jesus, and they follow
me.
I give unto them eternal life and they
shall never perish.
No one shall snatch them out of my
hand.
My Father who has given them to me
is greater than all.
No one can snatch them out of my
Father's hand.
Those words are precious anywhere and anytime, but
I tell you they're precious when the lion
is abroad.
The motive of Satan's lion-like tactics is
to devour, seeking whom he may devour.
The psychological harassment is but the prelude to
his ultimate hope of gulping us down.
That's literally what he said.
You're gulping people down.
Satan aims, you see, at nothing less in
the long run than the total destruction of
the saints.
He tried to destroy the Savior.
Now he tries to destroy the saints who
owe their being and their existence and continuance
to the same Savior.
That is of our goal.
And as he moves toward it in the
might of his fury, he will first do
his utmost to devour your testimony, to get
you to do something that would so bring
you into disfavor in the public eye that
whatever you say for God from now on
will not count.
And you know there are many testimonies that
have been forever spoiled by Satan.
Not only to devour your testimony as a
believer, but to devour your experience of grace
and of God so that even you begin
to think that what you experienced of the
grace of God yesterday was not real.
And it is as if you were never
born again, as if you were never converted,
as if God had never laid hand upon
you.
He gets you to believe that that was
all a figment of your dreamy imagination.
And it's all evaporated.
Oh yes, and your potential as a saint
and as a servant of God.
He would take your gifts one by one
and he would misuse them or he would
misuse you in such a way that you
will never be capable of using the gifts
that God has given you.
We have a very real enemy here.
Not a man of straw, not a person
of straw, not an enemy of straw, but
a live, malign spiritual being.
Saints of God, let us get this clear.
We have to deal with a devouring lion
abroad, not with a petty wasp.
He's the king of the forest.
And listen, you and I can't afford to
play with him.
He's not a plaything.
Don't pet Satan.
Don't get near to him, if you can
help it.
Keep a distance between you.
Keep the cross of Christ between you and
him.
Keep the Word of God between you and
him.
Keep obedience to God between you and him.
Be separate from him.
He even entered that little community of apostles
who gathered around the incarnate Lord of glory.
And he even with his fan sought to
get them.
And he left the marks of his teeth
upon their Lord and upon some of them,
as we've already indicated.
Now, let's look at the other picture that
we have here, over against that.
And it's a remarkable picture, really.
It's a kind of contradiction here, isn't there?
We speak of a resisting prey.
This is one thing that sheep and lambs
don't do.
They don't resist very much.
Oh, I know you've seen sheep battling with
their horns occasionally, but it's a comparatively rare
thing.
But Peter brings in this image of making
war here.
The sheep making war.
A flock making war with a lion.
Be sober, he says.
I'm using the older translation now.
Be watchful.
You have self-controlled and alert.
Be sober, be watchful.
Whom resists steadfast in the faith.
Tread carefully, says Peter.
Now, brothers and sisters, this is a word
for us.
And if this is the word of God,
you and I were seen and foreseen by
God to have need of this word tonight.
Tread carefully.
Yes, even you.
Oh, I know you know the word.
You have an experience of the grace of
God.
And you've grown in grace and in the
knowledge of your Savior, yes.
And you've overcome him a thousand times by
the grace of God.
Yes, even you.
I want you to notice Peter's commands to
be sober and watchful.
They embody the minimum safety measures required of
those who know that they are encircled by
such a hostile superhuman foe who plans nothing
less than their total destruction.
This is the minimum we can do.
Be self-controlled, be alert.
Or as I'm going to use them, be
sober, be watchful.
Be sober.
Now, what does this mean?
I deliberately use the English be sober because
it brings out something that the other translation
doesn't.
Peter has the same kind of underlying attitude
in mind here as he did in the
opening chapter.
You remember, he pleads with his readers to
gird up the loins of your mind.
Be sober in order to hope fully for
the grace that is to be revealed at
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Be sober in order to hope fully.
As if to say you can't really live
the life of hope unless you're sober.
What do you mean, Peter?
Well, you see, what he really means is
this.
You and I are living in a fallen
world.
And there are all kinds of things in
this fallen world that can make us spiritually
like drunken men and women.
We can get drunk on different things in
this world.
Now, you may not touch the bottle.
You may not have anything to do with
drugs.
You don't touch liquor.
But I tell you, in Peter's language, you
can get drunk.
You can get drunk on pleasure.
And you can be seeking pleasure from morning
to evening.
And when Monday comes, you're thinking of the
weekend.
And when the weekend comes, you're thinking of
the next weekend.
And you're all thinking and planning for the
pleasure of your body.
Many people live for that.
Pleasure drunk, that's all they think about.
Or you may be thinking of just sheer
material well-being.
You can be quite drunk with it.
You only think about this.
You only dream about this.
You don't work just to make a living
and to pay your way and to have
something to use for God.
But really, this is what you live for.
It's your soul.
And taking this, if this is taken away,
there's nothing.
There's nothing in life.
It's money.
It's possessions.
And the prestige and the power that goes
along with it.
And so we're drunk, quite dead drunk.
Now, I could use many other analogies.
There are people like that, who are drunk
and they've never touched the bottle.
Now, what does Peter say?
He says, listen, he says.
It's a very dangerous thing to be drunk
when there's a lion around.
Whether you're drunk physically because you've been on
the bottle or whether you're drunk with pleasure
or whether you're drunk with materialism or whether
you're drunk with this or that or the
other, it doesn't matter.
If you're intoxicated, that you're only thinking of
one thing and you're absorbed with this, that
or the other, with the devil prowling around
seeking to devour you, you're not safe.
You're trebly unsafe.
You see, my friends, in God's good world
where we are placed, our lives are fallen
to us in very pleasant places.
But the tragedy is, we can, in this
graphic language of the apostles, we can get
drunk on anything.
We can become intoxicated with anything.
We can misuse everything.
This is a sad and a very challenging
matter.
But it's a very urgent call to us
in our day and generation to be sober.
But not only sober, be watchful.
Be on the alert.
You can't be watchful if you're drunk, of
course.
But these two are there to be separated.
Oh yes, we are to be both sober
and watchful.
Now, we are not simply imperiled by over
-excitement or over-indulgence in something.
But we can also be imperiled by the
very opposite tendency, drowsiness.
You see, if you just simply fall asleep
when there's a prowling lion looking for you,
you're as much in danger as if you
were dead drunk.
And brothers and sisters, if as a saint
you're just fast asleep, you're as much imperiled
as if you are dead drunk.
In this situation.
Oh, I know many Christians who just because
they're asleep, they don't think they're sinning against
God and they don't see any danger anywhere.
Scripture would deny that.
It would challenge that.
And so the Word of God calls upon
us, awake thou that sleepest and arise from
the dead and Christ shall give you light.
It's only a matter of degree between a
groove and a grave.
And we need to arise from the dead
because when we sleep, you see, we become
very much like dead people.
We're unaware of what's going on around us.
If you're really sleeping, you don't know what's
going on.
My wife told me this morning, she got
up twice in the night.
I didn't know she'd moved.
I was asleep.
I didn't know it.
Well, nothing happened.
She didn't do anything sinister.
But my friend, when there's an enemy around
looking whom he may devour, you can't afford
to be asleep.
And you know, there are multitudes of people
in our churches who are fast, fast asleep.
As a matter of fact, there are some
people and there are whole tracts of their
natures that don't ever seem to have come
alive.
They will never be tempted to get drunk.
They'll never be tempted even with sensual pleasures.
It seems that they're even beyond that kind
of temptation somehow.
They've never really come alive sexually, sensually.
And there's no thanks to them somehow.
They're like stones.
And when they come into the things of
God, they're like Christian stones, christened Christians, but
stormy.
It's not only that they're unemotional, but the
manifestation of life is negligible.
They're like corpses that have been painted.
Men and women, are we alive?
Then we should be alert to the enemy.
And finally, not only alert to the enemy,
but we should resist him.
Yes, being sober and vigilant, we may and
we ought, says Peter, resist the very lion
we set upon our destruction.
We must refuse to be cowed by his
roar or to capitulate to his demands.
Our Lord has commanded us to fight the
fall.
Our Lord has commanded us to resist the
devil.
Whereas we are summoned by Peter to humble
ourselves before God.
Remember in this context, humble yourselves therefore under
the mighty hand of God, he says.
And to humble ourselves before one another and
to think well of one another and to
play the humble part.
He says, resist the devil.
Make war against the devil.
But you know, we've turned things topsy-turvy.
So often within the church, what we do
is not humble ourselves before God, but we
resist God and His Word and His Spirit.
Not bow down to one another, but stand
up for our rights and say, no, no,
no, you can't go that way.
I want this and I want that and
I've got to have this and I've got
to have that.
And we fight with one another.
And rather than resist the devil, we just
cow down before him like, I don't know
what.
See, sin turns the whole world upside down
still.
So that the saints of God resist their
God and give in to the devil.
Whom resist steadfastly in the faith.
Firmly entrenched in the faith.
These words firm in your faith or steadfast
in your faith have been legitimately interpreted in
two different ways.
I see some students here tonight and I
see some people who know much more New
Testament than I do.
And let me say that I'm not dogmatizing
here.
I don't know which is to be preferred.
The one or the other.
I'll give you both.
Steadfast in the faith.
Entrenched in your faith.
It could very well have a reference to
our subjective faith.
Our confidence in God.
In other words, go into battle with your
faith in God.
Not with your faith in yourself.
Much as the pastor of the Crystal Cathedral
says you can do it.
With your faith in God.
In God and God only.
We can do battle and win only in
so far as our faith is in God.
It's not a matter of do it yourself.
It's not a matter of having the capacity
innate in ourselves.
It is only by His grace that we
can win through.
And it could be a reference to that.
That we must be entrenched in faith.
We must make sure that we have real
faith.
This is the victory that overcomes the world.
Even our faith.
Our confidence in God.
You see it elaborated in the illustrations we
have in Hebrews 11.
By faith, Abel.
By faith, this one.
By faith, that one.
They all live by faith.
And by faith they conquer.
It could be that.
But it could also mean something else.
It could be, be entrenched in the faith.
And the reference could well be to having
knowledge of the word of God.
Of the teaching.
Of the revelation of God.
Given us in the Old Testament now and
in the New.
In which case you might ask, well what
does it mean then?
Well what it would mean is that we
should become more and more like our Lord
in His temptation.
By Satan in the wilderness.
You see, he was so entrenched in the
word of God.
In the faith.
That he could even discern when Satan was
quoting scriptures.
As a smoke screen.
And even when Satan was putting on his
best spiritual garment.
His religious garment.
And he was really putting on a good
front.
The blessed son of God could see through
it all.
He could see through the mask.
He could see the enemy behind the mask.
And tear it off.
He was entrenched in the word.
In the faith.
Now fortunately we don't need to choose between
these two.
I think both are true.
You need faith, confidence in God.
But you also need the word of God
to do battle with it.
After all the word of God is the
sword the spirit uses in battle.
Says Paul in Ephesians chapter 6.
Whom resist steadfast in faith and in the
faith.
Remembering this.
At the same kind of experience of suffering.
Is required of your brotherhood throughout the whole
world.
One of the things that breaks our hearts
so often in Christian battle is.
The devil whispers in our ears that it's
far worse with us than with anybody else.
Don't you get that?
Haven't you heard somebody whispering that in your
ear?
Why is it so bad with you?
With you after all.
You're such a good person.
You're such a decent man or woman.
Why should these things happen to you?
Says Peter listen.
It's true you've lost your homes and you've
lost your jobs.
It's true you've gone through the mill.
But listen he says.
This is true in one way or another.
Suffering is a universal phenomenon.
It belongs to the brotherhood to all the
family.
It's one of the marks of the family.
Our blessed Lord Jesus went into the glory
via the cross.
And he brings his brethren into glory via
his cross and their cross.
Except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die.
It abides alone.
And he brings us also into fruitfulness and
into glory.
Through the way of.
He said don't don't don't don't get sorry
for yourself.
Don't think that you're the only one going
that way.
Suffering is a universal phenomenon within the church
of God.
Whom resists.
Set up the standard then.
Humbled before God to the very ashes of
penitence.
You and I must learn to rise above
the prince of darkness.
In fellowship with all the saints.
We must make war against our common foe.
And that unremittingly.
That's the summons of scripture.
Oh holy spectacle.
That of once proud men and women.
For we were all proud in Adam.
Now humbled as worms before God.
Thus humbled.
Yielding to one another.
Yielding to one another casting all our anxieties
upon God.
And flock of sheep though we are and
lambs.
Daring to make war against the lion of
all lions.
And the lamb in the midst of the
throne.
If I may change.
And move on to the book of Revelation.
The lion in the midst of the.
The lamb in the midst of the throne.
With his spirit in us.
Is able to enable us.
To deal with the lion.
On our tracks.
Sheep and lambs.
Of the great shepherd.
May defeat the lion.
Of whom Peter speaks.
In that atmosphere of humility and self-denial.
The Holy Spirit's mighty power.
Is expressed.
And experienced.
And makes the weaklings.
Strong.
Your real peril and mine.
Does not lie in the fact that we
have an objective.
Forecall the devil.
Our real enemy.
Is in here.
That we think that we can cope in
the power of flesh alone.
And we cannot.
Whereas if we are humble to see.
That we cannot do that.
And are given confidence and trust in the
God of the promises.
And the Savior of the promises.
Then we may rise above our circumstances.
And above our enemy.
And trample him underfoot in the name.
Of our great Savior.
I don't know what's ahead of me.
And you don't know what's ahead of you
good people.
Individuals or congregation.
We don't.
But be sure of this.
There's an enemy around prowling.
In whatever circumstances may be.
He will find some way whereby he pushes
his nose in.
And roars to frighten you.
Into submission.
And he'll do the same with me.
All of us are subject to it.
But none of us need be defeated.
Says Peter.
He by the grace of God.
Came back again.
Because his Savior sought him and found him.
And healed him.
And rehabilitated him.
And that Savior has not changed.
He is able to serve to the uttermost.
And to retrieve his lambs and his sheep.
Even from between the teeth of the enemy.
And to rebuild faith.
And hope.
And love again.
That we may help one another.
In the Christian warfare.
So may it be.
To God's glory.
Amen.
Our Heavenly Father.
We thank you for the good news.
Good news at all times and for all
circumstances.
You have sent us a deliverer.
We thank you for the knowledge of him
that we have already.
Even though we may have but sipped of
the cup of salvation.
We thank you for the foretaste of him.
And we bless you in anticipation of that
day.
When we shall know him in all his
glory.
And all his fullness.
Oh Lord we thank you for such a
hope.
And we pray now that you will enable
us to draw both from our past experience.
And from our future hope.
The inspiration we need to battle today.
And tomorrow if you give us tomorrow.
And to do so entrenched in faith.
Through Jesus Christ your son our Lord.
Amen.