JESUS IS KING. This morning we examines 1 Peter 5:6-14, addressing how believers can navigate a broken world while belonging to God. It explores Peter's three key commands: humbling oneself under God's mighty hand, being alert to sin's deceptions, and resisting the devil through faith and fellowship. Ultimate restoration comes from God Himself. God will restore, strengthen, establish, and secure those who trust in Him, both in this life and eternally.
Key Questions: What can restore this broken world? What can I do in the meantime?
"Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." (1 Peter 5:6-7)
"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)
"Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings." (1 Peter 5:9)
III. God's Promise of Restoration
"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast." (1 Peter 5:10)
Key Applications:
BBCC Verse of the Week: 1 Peter 5:6-7 (NIV) Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-14 - Study/Discussion Guide
The Apostle, in order that humility may dwell among us, wisely reproves this haughtiness and pride. And the metaphor he uses is very appropriate, as though he had said, “Surround yourselves with humility on every side, as with a garment which covers the whole body.” He yet intimates that no ornament is more beautiful or more becoming, than when we submit one to another. (John Calvin) – see James 4:6–7, 10
Peter exhorts his churches to express a similar confidence in God’s justice. By turning over their fears and worries to God, they express their trust in him and rely on him to bring about vindication and justice. The reason for turning over fears to God is because “he cares for you.” In summary, these two verses are concerned with persecution and suffering and the appropriate Christian response. Believers are to humble themselves before God by submitting to his will, which now includes suffering; they are to turn over their worries to him and let him bring about the justice that he has promised in his own time. (McKnight)
Spiritual sobriety and alertness are necessary because the threat of destruction is real and the devil is a true adversary. Fierce animal imagery is also used in Daniel and Revelation to symbolize world systems deformed by the powers of darkness and sin. Peter may be implying with the lion imagery that satanic powers are at work in the sociopolitical system of the Roman Empire, under which his readers are suffering. The roar of a lion would scatter a flock of sheep in panic, so this threatening image coheres well with the shepherd-flock motif in 5:1–5. When a lion is on the prowl, neither the shepherd nor the sheep sleep, but both are alert and watchful. (Jobes)
As C. S. Lewis said when writing about his world-famous book The Screwtape Letters, consisting of letters from a senior devil to a junior one on how to tempt people, some people dismiss the idea of a devil by thinking of a ridiculous little person with horns and hooves wearing red tights. They can't believe in a creature like that, so they decide they can't believe in the devil. Other people become so fascinated with the devil that they can think of little else, and suppose that every ordinary problem in life, or difficulty in someone else's personality, is due to direct devilish intervention. Lewis steers a wise path between these two extremes, and so should we. (N.T. Wright)
In the letter opening, Peter identified his audience, paradoxically, as both "strangers in the world of the diaspora" and God's elect. In the letter closing, he repeats these identity markers through references to his own location in Babylon and to the "fellow elect" who joins him in his greeting. Likewise, in the letter closing, Peter pronounces "peace" on his audience, echoing his greeting in 1:2. In a parody of the letter opening, however, Peter no longer locates his audience "in the world of the diaspora in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (1:1). They are, rather, "in Christ" (5:14; cf. 3:16; 5:1o). Between these two references, in the letter body, Peter places a premium on the status of believers in relation to God, on their liberation in Christ, and on the manner of life that flows from these. They are to distance themselves from their own pasts, but are never urged to withdraw from their disbelieving peers. (Green)
Discussion Questions:
Pastor Samuel Sutter // sam@BBCCOnline.org
