Now let us turn together to 1
Peter 5. I shall read verse 5b to the
end of verse 9. 1 Peter 5b. Yes, all of you gird
yourselves with humility to serve one another, for God resists
the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God,
that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your anxiety
upon him, because he cares for you. Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil, as
a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour. whom
withstands steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same
sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the
world." What an amazing contrast is set
before us in the few verses read in your hearing when comparing
them with the several verses that precede them. On the one
hand, as we saw last Lord's Day in studying together verses 6
and 7, on the one hand the child of God is commanded to humble
himself under the mighty hand of God, confident that as he
does so, God is committed to exalt him in due season. Further, while humbling himself
under God's mighty hand, he is at the same time to be found
casting all of his anxieties upon God in the confidence that
God constantly cares for him. We saw that the mighty hand of
God is joined to the large, caring heart of God in the midst of
the peculiar pressures and anxieties and sufferings that the people
of God in this place were experiencing. Here then is the emphasis of
those verses connected with the duty to humble ourselves with
respect to our fellow believers, girding ourselves with the apron
of humility that we might serve one another and the consolation
that as we are humbled under the hand of God, He will exalt
us, and as we continue to cast all of our anxieties upon Him,
He is continually and without ceasing caring for us. That's
the one picture. But then, like a thunder rumbling
out of a blue sky with a few puffy white clouds floating across
that sky, Peter calls these believers to sobriety and wakefulness and
active resistance in the light of the presence and activity
of another powerful being other than God. not as powerful, but
powerful nonetheless. A being whose only intention
is that of a ravenous beast of prey who looks upon afflicted,
suffering, and persecuted children of God as nothing more than a
main course for his next meal. And do you see the contrast?
Here is the God who says, humble yourself under my hand and I
will exalt you. Cast all of your anxieties upon
me because I care for you, this beneficent, large-hearted, loving,
heavenly Father of His people. Yet there is this other being
concerned with the same people called upon to humble themselves
under the mighty hand of God, called upon to cast all their
anxieties upon this God. This same group of people are
the object of the desires of this other being whose heart
and soul is set upon one thing, and that is to make a meal of
those people. I say the contrast is a stark
contrast. As Peter is desirous to bring
his letter to a close within short compass as he writes to
these believers in Asia Minor, he is not only concerned that
they respond to their present circumstances, which, as you've
been reminded again and again, form the context of this letter,
But he is also concerned now as he brings the letter to a
conclusion that they understand the central place of humility
on the one hand and on the other hand of wakefulness and watchfulness
in the presence of their adversary, the devil. And so this morning
we move on in our study to consider together just verse 8. It was
too much to seek to attempt to open up in one message verses
8 and 9, though we have one complete statement within those verses,
but we'll consider verse 8 this morning under two very simple
headings. First of all, our duty succinctly declared, be sober,
be watchful. Verse 9a, Whom withstands steadfast
in your faith? We leave off for the message
this morning and just concentrate upon the first part of verse
8. Our duty succinctly declared, be sober, be watchful, and then
our danger graphically described. Your adversary the devil, as
a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour. Now here
the minds and hearts of God's people are savoring the sweetness
of those two promises. My God will exalt me in due time. Whatever is presently pressing
in upon me that constitutes the hand of God upon me, whatever
the agency may be, as I humble myself beneath that mighty hand,
I do so with a thrilling confidence in due season that God whose
hand is upon me will exalt me. And whatever anxieties come to
me in the midst of this combination of affliction and suffering and
persecution and trial, God himself has declared that he wants me
to cast all those things upon him because he constantly cares
for me. And then right when the people
of God would be savoring those promises and those perspectives,
As I've already intimated, like a thunderclap on a clear day,
here come these two terse, succinct imperatives. With no introduction
to them, no transition from the previous thread of thought, he
cares for you, pause, be sober, be watchful. And he uses aorist
imperatives which give an intensified sense of the urgency of a directive. A present imperative, as you've
been reminded many times from this pulpit by those of us who
minister here, focuses upon sometimes the beginning and the continuance
of a given deed. An heiress imperative focuses
upon the critical nature of that which is commanded and calls
to immediate and sometimes radical action in response to that imperative. Well, here Peter smacks us then
with these two imperatives. We're turning over in our spiritual
mouths the sweetness of those two preceding promises. He will
exalt me. He does care for me, but The
realization of those things is never to lead to spiritual sluggardliness,
is never to lead to carelessness. Whenever God makes a commitment
to his people in grace, it is to be the incentive to engage
all of their faculties in pursuit of the will of God. Work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling. Why? For it is
God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good
pleasure. So we have then these two verbs
in the imperative form. Let's look at them for a moment.
Be sober. This verb is found only six times
in the New Testament and three of them are here in 1 Peter.
We encountered it in 1 Peter 1 in verse 13, wherefore girding
up the loins of your mind a figure of an oriental man with his robe
and he ties up the loose ends around his middle with a sash
that he may be ready to run and walk and work without impediment
Be sober. There's our word. Be sober and
set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto
you with the revelation of Jesus Christ. Then in chapter 4 and
verse 7, we encountered it again. But the end of all things is
at hand. Be therefore of a sound mind. And here's our word. Be sober
unto prayer. Leighton, commenting on this,
said, there are times when God's people far more need repetition
than they need novelty. Someone could charge Peter with
forgetfulness or just riding one of his pet hobbies. But no,
Peter was commissioned by his Lord to feed the sheep, to tend
the sheep, to feed the lambs. And Peter knows that it's the
things that get emphasized that stick. And having called to this
grace of sober-mindedness in earlier portions, he once again
now commands them to be sober. Now the word, some of you may
remember when we did a word study of it in the earlier portions,
it means literally to be stone-cold sober, to have no influence of
alcohol on your brain or any other kind of of chemical or
whatever else we would take that would keep us out of touch with
the reality around us. And therefore, in terms of a
less than literal wooden meaning of be sober, that is, never let
yourself get tipsy with alcohol, that's taught elsewhere. Drunkenness
is condemned by the Word of God, but here Peter is saying that
you are to be in total possession of all of your faculties in relationship
to all the realities that are around you. Be sober. It's the opposite of drunkenness. It's the opposite of being fast
asleep. And we are commanded to maintain
by the grace of God a continual disposition and mindset of sobriety. Listen to one of the commentators,
Edmund Clowney, as he comments on this. To be sober is to be
realistic. Drunkenness brings delusions
before stupor sets in. The hallucinations of spiritual
drunkenness are not amusing pink elephants. It doesn't hurt, it just keeps
me from speaking. The hallucinations of spiritual
drunkenness are not amusing pink elephants, but devouring monsters. The ideologies of political oppression,
the fantasies of sexual lust, the jealous hatreds of personal
spite. The world seeks orgies of perversion
before it sinks into the drunken stupor of hopelessness. Sober
reflection is the opposite of the carousings of the old life
in lustful inebriation. Chapter 1, verse 14, he calls
them to a lifestyle that is radically different from their former lifestyle. Sober watchfulness grows with
the practice of prayer. Chapter 4, in verse 7, and is
alert to the assaults of the devil. Chapter 5, verse 8, our
text for this morning. Christian realism knows the actuality
of sin and the folly of utopian dreams. We are to be sober, fully
awake, and nothing dulling our spiritual senses. But then the
second imperative is, be watchful. And this verb is found many times
in the New Testament. It's a call to be wakefully active. with a mind clear of the influence
of the distorting images of reality brought by spiritual drunkenness,
that keen, alert mind that's not playing tricks upon a man
or a woman because of some form of spiritual intoxication, that
clear mind is to be informed by wakeful, concentrated, and
observant spiritual eyes. In trying to show how these two
things fit together, this may be a poor illustration, but it's
the best I have. Have you ever sat talking to someone whose
eyes were wide open, but you knew they weren't hearing a word
you were saying? They had that long ago and far away look. They
weren't sleeping, but they were doing what we call daydreaming. So you can only daydream when
you're awake. You nightdream when you're asleep. You dream
real dreams. In daydreaming, you are awake physically. But
you are not intensely concentrating upon the business of the moment,
the conversation of the moment. So Peter says, in essence, it's
not enough that you stay awake and are in the framework of being
in touch with reality around you. Being awake, being sober,
you must be concentrating in this dimension of mental and
spiritual awareness of what is going around you as the people
of God. It is this duty of watchfulness
that is central in New Testament ethics. Our Lord Jesus makes
it central in respect to His second coming, Matthew 24, verses
22 and following. He says, therefore, watch Therefore,
watch, disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, could you not
watch with me one hour? Could you not remain awake and
be wakefully active? Could you not remain with me
here and let your mind cause you to enter into what I am bearing
as I wrestle with my Father? Could you not watch with me?
Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation. So you get
the feel of these two words. As Peter seeks to give apostolic
counsel to these believers in the face of the present pressures
and the future ones that will come, he calls them by these
two succinct terse imperatives to be wakeful and to be watchful. Surely then, the posture of humility
under the mighty hand of God joined to the confidence that
He will exalt us in due season, that blessed release from distracting
anxieties as we cast all of our cares upon Him, As we are enabled
to comply with the previous direction, humbling ourselves under the
mighty hand of God, we don't have a spirit agitated that we
feel we could order our circumstances differently and better than God
has done. We know the rest of heart that
comes. from resigning ourselves not
like a Muslim to this distant, unfeeling God, but to our Heavenly
Father. It's the hand of our Father upon
us. And when we humble ourselves
beneath that hand, we comply with his encouragement to cast
all of our anxieties upon him, then our minds are clear. We
can be awake, we can be sober, and we can be watchful, rather
than being sleepy-eyed with the pressure of our own unresolved
anxieties. Rather than being distracted
by our own internal conflict with God and His ways with us,
there is blessed freedom and release when we humble ourselves
under the mighty hand of God while casting all of our anxieties
upon Him. Now then, we can indeed be sober. Our minds are not being numbed. and by the boons of internal
rebellion and by the heavy spirits of irritation with God's ways
are carrying the burdens upon our own back. From that liberty
comes this wholehearted embrace of what God is doing, the realities
with which God has surrounded us, and Peter as a wise pastor,
having urged them to humble themselves, casting all their anxieties upon
him, assumes they've taken that directive to heart, and in the
context of gracious compliance in the power of the Spirit, he
now tells such people, not those who are fighting God, not those
who are carrying all kinds of burdens they ought not to be
carrying, but those who have humbled themselves, casting their
anxiety upon them. He tells them now in this very
terse and pointed way, this very succinct way, be sober and be
watchful. Now that I'm not reading too
much into the conjunction of those two things in the order
of them, I just asked you to turn for a minute for a parallel
passage in the epistle of James. James has quoted the same verse
from Proverbs that Peter quotes in verse 6 of chapter 4 in James. God resists the proud but gives
grace to the humble. Be subject therefore unto God,
but resist the devil. See which one comes first? Be
subject therefore unto God. And when we are subject to God,
The spirit is free from all of the agitation that comes when
we've got controversies with God, we're not satisfied with
the ways of God with us, his dealings with us in his providence,
dark or smiling, whatever they may be, you cannot effectively
resist the devil. In a sense, he's carrying on
his work within your own heart. because you're not taking the
posture of joyful, conscious resignation to your God. So Peter
then sets before these people there in Asia Minor what I have
called their duties succinctly declared. Now secondly, let's
look in the text as we consider our danger graphically described. Our danger graphically described. Now, there's no connective, no
and, no but. It's a textual question and my
judgment has been carried as I've looked into the matter that
we should read the text as it is, I believe, in most of the
translations you have. Be sober, be watchful, not because
or in the light of the fact that. Be sober, be watchful, and here
comes this statement. of the danger in which the people
of God are, all of them, all of us. Be sober, be watchful,
your adversary the devil is a roaring lion walks about seeking whom
he may devour. Now note with me, first of all,
the identity of our enemy, then we'll look at the activity of
our enemy, and then the intention of our enemy, all from this text.
First of all, the identity of our enemy. Our great and constant
spiritual enemy is identified as our adversary, the devil. Now this word adversary is used
most frequently in the New Testament, the few times it is used to describe
an opponent in a lawsuit, a literal litigious adversary. Matthew
5, 25, agree with your adversary while you're in the way, lest
you go into court and he get more than his share of what you
were reluctant to give to him. Adversary there is in a legal
sense. The parallel passage in Luke
12, 58, has the same usage. But here, and possibly in Luke
18.3, it may have the less restricted sense and be adversary in terms
of one who is opposing us. And the difference really is
not of great significance. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew
satan means adversary, called this in the New Testament 30
plus times. He is addressed, he is designated
as Satan, just transliterating from the Hebrew into the Greek. And so Satan, the adversary,
is called likewise the devil. Again, over 30 times, diabolos. Now you know where Bunyan got
his diabolians in the Holy War. From this word. And this means
a vicious slanderer. And there are several usages
of it in the New Testament where it's not referring to the devil
or to devils, to demons, but to people who are devilish. And
they are called diabolos. 1 Timothy 3 and verse 11. We find these usages primarily,
if not exclusively, in the pastoral epistles. Women in like manner
must be grave, here's our word, not devils. Not devils. Same word. Not slanderers. Not
devils. 2 Timothy 3 and verse 3. 2 Timothy 3 and verse 3. Without natural affection, implacable
slanderers. There it is. Devils. Diabolos. So Peter, writing to these believers,
said, your danger is this. You have an enemy. And the identity
of that enemy is Satan, the slanderer. The devil himself is your adversary. He is your adversary in the context
of all that you are experiencing as the people of God. Your trials
past, your present fiery trial, the opposition of the unconverted,
their wagging tongues, their unreasonableness. And in a very
short time, these people, as well as Christians in many parts
of the Roman Empire, were going to experience concentrated persecution
officially launched from the imperial seat there in Rome,
from which place Peter is writing this epistle. In Revelation 12,
9, God, as it were, does a composite of the names by which this one
spiritual being is identified. In Revelation 12, and verse 9,
we read, And the great dragon, number one, the dragon, was cast
down the old serpent, number two, he that is called the devil,
number three, and Satan, number four, the deceiver, number five,
of the whole world. Here, under the guidance of the
Spirit, John gathers together all of these names and titles
by which this one spiritual being is identified. It is this powerful,
malevolent, evil being called the devil. Now, it is not my
purpose to take this text and launch into an exhaustive study
on the devil. I've never done that in all my
years of ministry. I don't know whether that statement
should be viewed as a confession. Even preparing for the ministry
this morning, I wondered, have I done well not to bring at least
a brief series of messages? I don't know. But if you have
all kinds of questions, well, how did the devil become the
devil? And when did he become the devil? And how can all of
the believers be resisting one devil if he is not omnipresent
and omnipotent? All kinds of questions. I'm not
going to answer those questions. I do commend to you an excellent
series of studies by Pastor Robert Fisher from the Southern Family
Conference of 1998, excellent material on the subject of spiritual
warfare, in which he gives a very helpful, biblically-based, sound
description of much of what the scripture teaches concerning
this being. Suffice it to say, Peter identifies
the enemy of those Christians in Asia Minor and of us as our
adversary, the devil, the slanderer. Now then, second issue is the
activity of our enemy. Look at what the text says. Be
sober, be watchful, your adversary the devil, that's his identity,
as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour. As a lion, leaving off the modifiers
for now, as a lion, your adversary the devil, as a lion, And what
did Peter know would immediately come to the minds of those first
century listeners when this particular part of the letter was read?
Well, they would have immediately suggested that the activity of
our adversary the devil grows out of his very nature, which
is likened to that of a vicious, ravenous beast of prey. To say lion in that setting was
to say a vicious, ravenous beast of prey. And he does what he
does because he is what he is. The activity of any beast is
determined by the nature of that beast, and God has made the lion. a vicious, ravenous beast of
prey. And so Peter says, as you think
of the activity of this enemy, think of it in the category of
a ravenous, evil beast of prey. And then he adds, as a roaring
lion. Your adversary the devil, not
just as a lion, that's the simile, but as a roaring lion. Now what's
the significance of roaring? Well, I didn't go to the local
zoo or into the Bronx Zoo or down to Turtle Back Zoo and ask
if they had a lion amongst their more tame animals. But I went
to the scripture and looked up all the references for roaring
lions and the answer to the significance with Peter's mind steeped in
the Old Testament is unmistakably clear. Let's look at three or
four passages and I think you'll see what aspect of the activity
of the devil Peter is highlighting by saying, as a roaring Lion. Judges 14 and verse 5. Judges
14 and verse 5. This is a section of the Word
of God most kids love to have read to them in their early Bible
stories. The life of Samson. And we read
in Judges 14 and verse 5 these words. Then went Samson down
and his father and mother to Timnah and they came to the vineyards
of Timnah and behold A young lion roared against him, and
the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as
he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand. Now,
the lion's roar was the announcement that he was about to pounce upon
his prey. This ravenous beast was hungering
and was moving about, and when he saw Samson, he roared with
a view to making Samson his meal. And he got a surprise. Samson
tore him apart with his bare hands. But do you see the conjunction
between the roaring and the lion rising up against him? And then
in Psalm 22, the psalm, part of which could never have been
David's own personal experience, but points to David's greater
son, the Lord Jesus. And in the midst of this very
graphic description of how he will be treated, verse 12 of
Psalm 22, many bulls have compassed me, strong bulls of Bashan have
beset me round, they gape upon me with their mouth, now notice,
as a ravening and a roaring lion. The lion that is ravening, he's
ravenous, he has an appetite, he's out to make a kill, to fill
his belly. In conjunction with being a ravenous
lion, he is a roaring lion. His roar is found in conjunction
with his going for the kill. Psalm 104 in verse 21. Psalm
104 in verse 21. The young lions, now here it
becomes so clear, the young lions roar after their prey, and they
seek their food from God. So the roaring again is found
in conjunction with the animal being set upon getting his next
meal. One other reference in the prophecy
of Amos, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, alright, in the
Minor Prophets, Amos chapter 3 in verse 4, will
a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of
his den if he has taken nothing? The prophet Amos assumes that
anyone in Israel who knew anything about lions would know. that
a lion does not roar in the forest when he has no prey. He roars
in conjunction with getting or going after his prey. Now whether
that fits in with National Geographic filming of concurrent lions in
Africa, I could care less. My Bible is the infallible interpreter
of itself. And so there was in the consciousness
of anyone who knew his Old Testament that with the concept of a roaring
lion was not a lion trying to impress people with his lung
power. Not a beast that was trying to impress people with the thickness
of his vocal cords that he could roar more stentorially, if there
is such a word, than any other beast. But he roars when he's
ready to pounce and consume his prey. And as we think of the
activity of our enemy, He is not only a ravenous beast, like
a ravenous beast, your adversary, the devil, as a lion, but he
is to be understood as a roaring lion, constantly prowling about
for the kill, not tying him press with the sound of his roar and
the capacity of his lungs. Look further at the text. He
is as a roaring lion walking about. A present indicative of
a common New Testament word, peripatetic. We talk of someone
being a peripatetic. They're always walking around
this place and that place. It comes directly from the Greek
verb. He is walking about. He's roaring, seeking to pounce
on his prey, but he doesn't stay in one place and hope the prey
will just somehow come by his path. He is constantly, incessantly,
restlessly walking about. And while he is not omnipresent
nor omnipotent, our Bibles in Job chapter 1 indicate that he
is to be found in this aggressive restlessness in his opposition
to the people of God. You remember the incident described
in the book of Job. Chapter 1 in verse 6, Now it
came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord, that Satan, the adversary, also came
among them. And when the Lord said unto Satan,
Whence do you come? Where do you come from? Whence
comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From going
to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said to Satan, Have
you considered my servant Job? For there is none like him in
all the earth, the perfect in an upright man, one who fears
God, turns away from evil. Then Satan answered the Lord
and said, Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a
hedge about him, about his house? You see, the devil seemed to
be very conversant with many details about Job's life and
circumstances. Why? Because he said, I'm roaming
to and fro throughout the earth. He's not omnipresent. The Scripture teaches he has
a host of his minions, his lackeys who do his will, numberless evil
spirits. And when the Scripture says that
we have dealings with the devil, it does not necessarily mean
just with the one devil, that horrible, powerful, deceptive,
malevolent spirit called Satan, the old serpent, the devil, the
adversary. But there are times when it's
referring not only to him, but all of his minions, all of his
underlings, all of the organized host of darkness that are under
his direction, and ultimately, not under his control, but they
work in concert. Remember, Jesus said, if Satan
divided against himself, he knows better than to divide himself
against himself, his kingdom would fall. So there is in His
wicked kingdom, there is this cooperation among these evil
spirits. And we must understand that there
is this constant activity of the devil and his associates. There is a restlessness, this
constant walking about and having then looked at the identity of
our enemy, the activity of the enemy. Now note what Peter says
about the intention of the enemy. What is his intention? And again,
the language of the text is clear. Your adversary the devil as a
roaring lion walks about seeking, seeking, another present tense,
constantly seeking whom he may, an aorist infinitive, whom he
may gulp down. And that particular form of the
verb points to the fact that he is content with nothing less
than getting you and me in his gut. walking about constantly
seeking whom he may devour, not whom he may simply harass, take
his paw and leave some claw marks across the side of the face,
cut him and leave him with a few bruises. No, he is walking about
constantly seeking whom he may devour. Now, this word devour
When it's used in the New Testament, there are a couple of instances,
it literally means to swallow down. Matthew 23, 24, when Jesus
is exposing the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees,
he said, you strain out a gnat and you swallow. You gulp down
a camel. It's a very humorous as well
as a biting analogy. You stand there when you open
up one of the legs on the wine skin with a piece of muslin underneath
it and over the top of your cup so if any flies or any of the
sediment that was in the wine when it was tread down, trodden
down in the open wine vats, it will get strained out. He said
you strain out gnats. And after you've got your cup
of wine, you go and you sit down, and the camel that's tied up
to your tent, you turn around and open your mouth and swallow
him down in one gulp. The Lord uses this gross illustration,
tinged with sarcasm, with irony, with humor, but it's gulping
down. That's the verb that is used.
And in Revelation, 12 in verse 16, it is used in a way again
that gives us a very clear picture of what it means. And the earth
helped the woman and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed
up the river. There's our verb. In the Greek
translation of the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures, this is the
verb that is used in Joseph's dreams. when he sees the fat
ears of corn swallowing up, gulping, eating, ingesting the lean ears
of corn. And it's the very verb used in
that same Greek translation of the Old Testament in Jonah 1,
verse 17, where the Lord prepared a great fish and the fish swallowed. So, poked him down. Now here's
the picture that Peter wants to paint in the minds of all
the believers in all the churches among whom this letter would
circulate. Your adversary, to be identified
as the devil, Satan, the old serpent, all of the various names
by which he is designated, that particular evil spiritual being,
that's your adversary. What is his activity? It is an
activity that reflects his nature. It's the nature of a ravenous
beast. And in expression of that nature,
he roars. He is out to get his prey. And
in his roaring, he is constantly walking about, seeking whom he
may gulp down. Now, the $64 question comes. Why? Why would the devil bother
with little old me? Hadn't he got more important
things to do than trying to make me his next meal? Make you his
next meal? You never went to the devil and
said, let's be enemies. No. But Peter assumes that every
believer has an adversary in the devil. How come? Well, the
answer to that question goes all the way back to Genesis 3
in verse 15. That's where it has its tap roots.
That's where it has its tap roots. Remember, Adam and Eve have sinned.
And in their sense of shame and guilt, they seek to hide from
the presence of God. And God comes both in grace and
in judgment, both in mercy and in strictness. And he's dealing
with the different ones involved in this. And in verse 15, or
verse 14, we can take up the reading. God said unto the serpent,
because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle and
above every beast of the field. Upon your belly you will go,
and thus shall you eat all the days of your life." Now notice,
I, Jehovah God, says, I will put enmity between you and the
woman. Now, if you're going to inject
enmity between two people, what is their condition before you
inject it? They are in a relationship of enmity. They are together. God is saying in these words
to the serpent, Eve, and by implication Adam, have aligned themselves
with the devil. And God says, I'm going to come
and break up those alignments. I will put enmity. There is now
amity. Adam and Eve have become a son
and a daughter of the devil in their rebellion against God.
And they would have gone on in that rebellion aligned with the
devil through life and through all eternity and gone to that
place prepared for the devil and his angels. But God comes
in grace and says, I'm going to break up these alignments.
I am going to engender enmity between you, Satan, the adversary,
the devil, the old serpent. I will put enmity between you
and the woman. And the verb assumed, I will
also put enmity between your seed and her seed. Both the devil
and the woman will have a seed, they will have a progeny, they
will have a people that come from their loins. And though
the devil's seed does not come by his procreation, it does come
by spiritual alignment. And God assumes that the devil
will have a seed. He will have a people who are
aligned with him. And the woman will have a seed.
Ultimately, that seed will be Christ, the one spoken of in
the latter part of the verse. He, the coming one, shall bruise
your head. The seed of the woman will bruise
the head of the serpent, but in the process, you shall bruise
his heel. And so there is this enmity established
by God in grace, breaking up these alignments, and there will
be a perpetuation of these two seeds. And it does not surprise
us then, when we come to the book of the Revelation, that
this very theme from Genesis chapter 3 is picked up in describing
the opposition which the people of God experience from the devil
and the powers of darkness and all of their cohorts. Verse 17, the woman gives birth
to a child And the dragon waxed wroth, twelve seventeen, with
the woman, and went away to make war, now notice, with the rest
of her seed. With the rest of her seed. The devil is making war with
that seed of the woman. And dear brothers and sisters,
that's why he's your adversary. The moment you quit his ranks
and your alignments with him were broken up by God's sovereign
grace in Christ, you became a marked man and a marked woman, a marked
boy and a marked girl. Because you are now no longer
seed of serpent, but you are of the seed of the woman. And
this one who hated our blessed Lord, sought to lead him into
temptation, Matthew 4, Luke chapter 4, the account of the temptation,
the face-to-face, hand-to-hand combat with the prince of darkness
himself, the one who stirred up Judas. The Bible says Satan
entered Judas and he went and sold the Lord for thirty pieces
of silver. That one who hates Christ. I
say it reverently, he can't get to Christ where he now is. And
the next best thing for him is to get to Christ's seed. those united to Christ in a spiritual
bond. And the devil knows that he cannot
pluck us out of the Savior's hands, but he's determined nonetheless
to do all within his nefarious, subtle, evil power to devour
us, to swallow us down, to consume us. And Peter knows that in the
midst of disappointment, and persecution and opposition, the
devil has a heyday in causing people to turn away from their
alignments with Christ because of the hardship that comes to
them as the fruition and the result of that alignment. And
he does not want them to be ignorant of this fact that they have an
adversary. The moment they were aligned
with Christ by a saving response to the gospel wrought by God's
own power, described at the end of chapter one, purifying their
souls in their obedience to the truth, having been begotten again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, they have an
implacable adversary. And until we breathe our last
and enter the presence of Christ by the door of death or are caught
up at his return as that group living at his coming, you are
the devil's enemy and God wants you to regard him as your enemy. So here in this text, our duty
is succinctly declared. Before Peter says anything about
this wicked, powerful adversary, he calls the people of God to
attention and says, be sober, be wakeful, watchful, wakeful,
watchful. And he does so knowing that he's
about to tell them about their adversary. So we have our duty
succinctly declared and then our danger graphically described. Let me now bring several lines
of practical application. And the first one is this. If
we're to live as we ought in the midst of this present world
system, if we're to live as we ought, we must take the devil
seriously. The devil becomes the brunt of
jokes. Intelligent, I was going to say 20th century people, but
I'll have everybody against me. I can't stand on the pure truth
that we are not yet in the 21st century. And none of us will
be living when we enter it. But nonetheless, at the beginning
of a new millennium, as we begin a new millennium, not many people
take the devil seriously. There are those who worship the
devil. There's a growing cult of Satan worship. And these people,
they do believe in a real devil. They sell their souls to him
to degrees that are frightening. But by and large, sophisticated
people that aren't into some of the bizarre expressions of
Satanism would look down their noses at anyone who claims to
believe and dares to confess his belief that there is such
a being as is described by Peter here. We must take him seriously. Our Lord took him seriously.
He engaged him hand to hand in the wilderness. He engaged him. In the whole event of the cross,
he said, now, he says, is the power of darkness. Colossians
2.15 points to some wrestling and overcoming of the powers
of darkness in his death. Jesus took the devil seriously. He said of a certain woman, Lo,
Satan hath bound for these eighteen years. What is your name? He says to that demon possessed,
that demoniac of the Gadarenes. And the Lord speaks face to face
or mouth to mouth with these demon powers. Jesus Christ, our
Lord, took the devil seriously. The apostles took him seriously.
And many offhanded remarks by the Apostle Paul shows how much
the presence and the activity of the devil entered into his
thinking. Remember the end of Ephesians. Be strong in the Lord
and in the power of His might. Take unto you the whole armor
of God. Why? That you may be able to stand
in the evil day and having done all to stand. Well, why so important
to have armor to stand? For we do not wrestle against
flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and
the world rulers of this darkness, against spiritual hosts in the
heavenlies. The Apostle says, I would have
come to you once and again, but Satan hindered us. He says in
Second Corinthians, treat this penitent brother with kindness
and affirm your love that Satan gain no advantage, for we are
not ignorant of his devices. Give no place to the devil. So-and-so has turned aside after
Satan. This is not some kooky, bizarre
perspective that Peter has. Not only did our Lord take the
devil seriously, we find the apostles took him very seriously. And if you read the risen Lord's
seven letters to the seven churches, there are no fewer than three
references to the devil as he gives counsel and advice to his
people in those various cities and towns in the very area to
which Peter sent this letter. Our Lord takes the devil seriously. The apostles take the devil seriously. And you and I are to take him
seriously. Stay awake. Be sober. Concentrate
your faculties upon the spiritual realities in which you live and
move and have your existence as a Christian. We are to take
the devil seriously. Secondly, If we're to deal effectively
with the devil, we must be determined to walk in humility before God. If we are effectively to deal
with the devil, we must make sure that that spirit which made
the devil the devil does not have any willfully welcomed place
in our hearts, the spirit of pride. If anything in scripture
tells us how the devil became the devil, it could possibly
be the strange passages, one in Isaiah and one in Ezekiel.
And if there is any truth in those passages with reference
to how the devil became the devil, it was pride when his heart was
lifted up and he wanted a place higher than the place assigned
to him by the living God. I've already emphasized that
here in 1 Peter, the call to humility comes before the call
to sobriety and watchfulness in the light of our adversary.
James does the same thing as we've seen in reading James 4.7.
If the devil sees in you his own spirit of pride and arrogance,
there's a sense in which he doesn't have to do anything more in a
concentrated way to trip you up. He's already got his built-in
ally, operative within your breasts. Why? God resists the proud ones.
He continually gives grace to the humble. What kind of grace?
All kinds of grace, even the grace to resist the devil. But
God only gives grace to the humble. So you can't get away from the
emphasis of the preceding verses simply because we've moved on
in our study. If you haven't come to grips with that exhortation
to humble ourselves before God and man, He will not make progress
in effectively dealing with the devil. Third exhortation, based
on this text. If we're to deal effectively
with the devil, we must maintain a spirit of sobriety and watchfulness. The apostle does not, first of
all, say, you have an adversary, the devil, who as a roaring lion
walks about seeking who he may devour. Therefore, he's sober. And be watchful. No, he begins
with this terse, condensed, concentrated call to attention. Be sober. Be watchful. And if you don't
comply with those directives, you won't be able to reckon with
what I'm now about to tell you. Your adversary, the devil, as
a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour, whom
resist. He does not picture anyone effectively
resisting the devil. who has not humbled himself beneath
the mighty hand of God and is not casting all of his anxieties
upon him. It's all one piece. And you simply
cannot, you cannot, you will not be able effectively to resist
the devil if you're full of yourself and if you are full of sinful
anxiety, if you are full of those things which so distract from
spiritual concentration that you are unable and rendered ill-equipped
to deal with the devil. And if that's true, dear brothers
and sisters, then we have got to start being more honest in
evaluating the things we do and don't do in some other category
beyond, well, God doesn't forbid it, I'm free to take part in
it, it's my liberty, I will take part in it. Ask yourself this
question. God forbid it? No. Does God command
it? No. All right, I am free, but
as I'm wrestling with matters of my liberty, let me ask this
question. Does this promote or detract from spiritual sobriety
and concentrated spiritual alertness? What does this relationship,
this friendship, this activity, this desire, this conduit by
which I carry on my social relationships, my entertainment, whatever it
is, ask yourself this question. Does it promote or detract from
my ability to be wide awake spiritually, not even to have a little buzz
on? I'm in absolutely stark, frank, real touch with all the
reality that's about me. I'm sober, stone cold sober. You see, you may be laughed at
when there are certain things you cannot do and maintain your
spiritual sobriety and spiritual watchfulness, but who cares? I can remember people in a pastor's
conference years ago, when it came up, not a pastor's conference
here, somewhere else where I was preaching, and we were dealing
with the whole matter of keeping a pure mind, and I said that
at that time, now we're talking about decades ago now, decades
ago, When the standards of common grace were much more pervasive,
and we had a subscription to Time Magazine, I told these preachers,
I don't open the magazine at all until my wife goes through
and censors it for me. They looked at me like I was
weird. Censor Time Magazine, 25 years? Yeah, that's right.
Well, isn't that being overly fastidious? Maybe for some it
would be, but not for me. It would dull the edge. of my spiritual
sobriety by loading my conscience with the sense of defilement
that I let my eyes rest a second or third time on bared flesh
that it should not have rested upon. Oh, that's extreme. Well, maybe for you, but not
for me. Are you prepared to have even brothers and sisters in
this assembly think you're a bit left or right of center in order
to obey the injunction? Be sober! I will imbibe nothing
through my eyes, my ears, my relationships that in any way
give me a spiritual buzz. I'm determined to maintain stone-cold
sobriety as a man, as a woman, as a boy or a girl. Extreme? No. It shows a heart that desires
to please God and wage an effective warfare with the devil. Anything
that hinders my wakefulness, Let us not sleep, Paul says,
as do others. And I should have mentioned,
I had it in my notes, but I was trying to engage you and didn't
look at it. It's come back to my mind. In 1 Thessalonians 5,
6, these two words are inverted. You don't have be sober, be watchful,
but you have be watchful, be sober. Showing again that the
two stand or fall together. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians
5, be watchful, Concentrate all of your faculties on the spiritual
realities about you, especially the reality of the second coming
of your Lord. That's the context. Be intensely
mentally and spiritually watchful, but if you're seeking to be watchful
and your brain is not registering what you see because you're not
sober, your watchfulness will not do you good. Vice versa. If you're being sober, it is
not an end in itself, you're being sober to the end that you
might be intensely watchful and respond as you ought to spiritual
realities all around you. And if we're to deal effectively
with the devil, we must maintain a spirit of sobriety and watchfulness
at any cost short of sin. And then I want to say a word
to those of you to whom Peter was not writing. Those of you
who do not know what it is to experience all the things Peter's
described in this epistle about God's true people, that they've
been begotten again to a living hope, they've been made living
stones in God's living temple, they've been made a royal priesthood,
they are God's chosen generation, you know the devil has a great
interest in you as well. In fact, the scripture says,
and this is one of the most humbling things for a non-Christian man,
woman, boy or girl to hear, but it's true. The scripture says,
if you have not been aligned with Christ by the new birth,
the internal experience, by faith in Jesus Christ alone as your
hope of life and salvation, if you are not a Christian, if you
are not a child of God, you are a child of the devil. You are
being held in the very grip of the devil. Well, where's the
Bible say that? Well, John 8 in verse 44, Jesus said to very
religious people in his day, you are of your father, the devil,
and the lust of your father, it is your will to do. Oh, you say, but that was the
extreme sin of these hard-hearted, proud Pharisees. That's not true
of everybody. I'm afraid it is, for in Acts
26, the Apostle Paul records what was involved in the commission
he received from Christ as an apostle and a preacher of the
gospel. Listen to these words in Acts 26 and verse 17. Delivering you from the people
and from the Gentiles unto whom I send you, now note verse 18,
to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light
and from the power of Satan unto God. in order that they may receive
remission of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified
by faith in me. Until you are set apart unto
God through faith in Jesus Christ and your sins are forgiven, according
to this text, you are not only blind, you are not only in the
realm of darkness, but you are under the power of Satan. In the book of 1 John, John doesn't
know a third category. In this, the children of God
are manifested, and the children of the devil. Children of God,
children of devil. No middle territory. And sitting here this morning,
it is a sad, sad and horrible thing to have to say. Some of
you are the devil's children. Why? You're still aligned with
him. You got aligned with him in Adam, we all did. As in Adam
all die. For one man, sin entered the
world and death passed upon all men. For that all sin in Adam. In Adam we were aligned with
the devil. It is only in union with Christ
that that alignment is broken up in the blessed exchange whereby
God delivers us out of the kingdom of darkness to use the language
of Colossians 1 and into the kingdom of his dear Son. and
you do what you do, you think what you think, and you want
what you want because you're reflecting the desires of your
father, the devil. You have your father, the devil,
and the lust of your father. It is your will to do. You say,
well, I don't hear any devil whispering in my ear telling
me to do this. You don't need to. You have, as it were, the
devil's very nature in who and what you are outside of A rebel
against God? For the carnal mind is not subject
to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. 2 Timothy 2.26 says
they are taken captive by him unto his will. Taken captive
unto his will. My unconverted friend, boy or
girl, man or woman, you're a slave of the devil. You're a child
of the devil. But the gracious God who in Jesus
Christ came to these people in the first century and has come
to many of us through the same gospel that holds out an almighty
Savior who is true God and true man, who perfectly kept the law,
who died under the curse of that law when the one who knew no
sin was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness
of God in Him, In Christ, you can be delivered from the power
of the devil, and from the disposition of the devil, and the regulating
influence of the devil upon your life. For the scripture says,
Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. And John could write,
For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil. Jesus said, no one can plunder
the goods of the strong man until the stronger than the strong
man comes and binds him and then spoils his goods. Christ bound
him in his cross and in his open tomb. Run to Christ, the great
liberator. You will find deliverance from
the kingdom of darkness and blessed admission into the kingdom of
his own dear son. May God help us as his people. that we will take seriously what
he sets before us in this portion of his word, and God willing,
next week, we'll take up the additional directive, whom resist
steadfast in your faith, knowing there's a tremendous word of
comfort to suffering saints that comes from knowing something.
And Peter points to that stock of knowledge. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you again
for your holy word in which you have declared things that we
could never discover. In a million years were we to
live that long. We could never conceive of them.
We could never figure them out. But we do thank you that your
word has revealed them. And we thank you that you have
not left us in the dark as to why there is so much evil and
sin. and why there is so much that
seems to point in a direction other than the fact that you
are true and good and loving and holy and just and right in
all your ways and how we praise you for that time coming when
the devil and all who serve him shall be cast into the lake of
fire and in the new heavens and in the new earth there will dwell
nothing but righteousness even so come Lord Jesus, we pray now
that you will seal your word to each of our hearts. May it
bear fruit unto a more stable Christian life. And in the lives
of those who know you not, may it bear the fruits of repentance
and faith. Even this day, we ask through
our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.