1 Peter, 5:8-11

So today we're starting 1 Peter 5, 8-11. Forgive me, I've got a little bit of a tickle this morning, but most of the good stuff is written down, so you don't have to worry too much, right? So, alright, let's read the verses together if we could, because for some reason I just like that.

Ready, go. Be sober of spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Okay. If I start to sway, like, kind of slide over this way, just somebody motion, and I'll move back this way. Kind of pace in life. Okay, so this verse is kind of a doxology as we'll move into the next few verses. He'll do his personal Farewells and all that business. So this is kind of the summing up of a lot of this stuff and the last big kind of powerhouse verses of the book of Peter before he gets into the more personal stuff. It's kind of an exciting set of verses to teach or to be a part of and to study together.

So verse 1 Peter 5 verse 8, Be sober of spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. So the word sobriety has a lot of different nuances and connotations and can affect the way that we obviously interpret the passage.

A lot of people throughout history have hopefully wrongly interpreted that this means that Christians need to be really, really boring, right? Really serious, boring, horribly stern people. Do you think that's biblical? I hope not, because Vern's sermons will be right out. I actually encountered a group of Christians who are part of a so-called Christian commune, and their teaching within the commune is no humor. None. Humor was sinful. Oh my. Anybody want to sign up? I wouldn't fit in there at all. Oh, I'm so sorry. So, yeah, I think a lot of people try to interpret verses like this, that we just need to be so serious and stern and straight-faced and never laugh and never smile and, you know, gosh, any kind of light-heartedness or levity is right out. And I don't think that that's at all what's being connotated here.

Of course, there is a level of seriousness to sobriety. but it's not in conflict with joy or even with our sense of humor. So, praise the Lord for that, that we can still laugh and we can still have the joy that the Lord gives and the happiness and the levity and lightheartedness that comes with all the assurance that we have. However, I think what this is talking about more so is just, I'm sure you've known people or you see people on TV and perhaps they're not always like this, but at least in television, their whole existence is silliness. They just lack the ability, I don't know if you've ever been around kids a lot, there's definitely a lot of kids who just lack the ability to take anything seriously. Even a very serious, serious matter, they lack the capacity to straighten their face out and address things with the seriousness that they require. So I think that's what's being insinuated more so than anything else.

Yes? I just have a question. Do you think this could in part imply clear-mindedness? I think it. You know, we've run across groups that have said, okay, don't be drunk with wine, but be drunk with your spirit. They can't think. Whatever this, quote, spiritual drunkenness is that they have, they can't even think at all. And I'm wondering if there's an implication here, you know, being able to think. I'd say that's pretty sound. I mean, would you concur? Yeah. Just to repeat the question for the tape and everything, if the sobriety has anything to do with clear-mindedness.

And specifically, the clear-mindedness that would be conflicted by those members of the Church, or those people of the Church who would talk about a spiritual drunkenness, or something to that effect, relating to the verse that says, do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. Some have interpreted it to mean, be drunk with the Spirit, which is, of course, bad exegesis to begin with, but even still, It really is fascinating. Verses like this constantly call us to... the fruit of the Spirit calls us to self-control, not to out-of-control, drunken spiritness. But there is an element of self-control, sobriety, and clear-mindedness that is always required of Christians.

And the ability to take things seriously is so important. I mean, if someone comes to you, especially a non-believer, with their problems or their issues, and an opportunity comes up for you to share your faith and share the Lord with them, and you just act like it's all a joke and tease them or something, what good is that? So, I think there's an element of that. So, as we move into... I'm sorry... Vigilance, I'm sorry. Be on the alert is the thing here. And I really love the King James Version saying that it's vigilant. What comes to mind when you think of the word vigilant? What mental images do you get?

Ideas. Watchful. Absolutely. Anyone else? Being on guard. That's the word that comes to mind for me. Motivated because you believe that it matters. I like that. Being on guard, motivated because you believe that it matters. I like that. Absolutely. To me, I just get the image of like, whether it's medieval or even, you know, a modern soldier watching the periphery. My father-in-law was in Vietnam, and one of his jobs, one of his nightly jobs, he was actually with a radio station, but he was in a somewhat frightening area, so one of his jobs was to sit out at night and just watch, and he didn't dare go to sleep.

Because you knew that it mattered. You knew there was the possibility at any time that something could happen. Something could come up. You could see something that you needed to see. That's always a vibrant image of vigilance or watchfulness or alertness to me. The world is so seductive. In some level, in a wartime situation, it seems so obvious. There are people out there who want to do us harm, so we have to watch. That's easy.

But in our culture now, with all that flies around and in the spiritual realm, it's harder to see the enemies or the bullets or the adversity coming a lot of the time. So our watchfulness needs to be almost two-fold over because it's not just Oh, there's a bad guy, there's a bad guy. It needs to be a daily in and out thing. So obviously in need of that watchfulness as the flesh, the world and the demonic forces are constantly about us. The reality that these evil things are designed to seem innocuous. They're intentionally trying to slide under our radar as if we are to pinpoint them, we must be serious and alert.

The proof of this is that, for proof of this, you need to travel no farther than the Christian bookstore. And the shelves of the Christian bookstores, I'm sure you've been in them. You know, there's some great gems in there, some great authors, of course, and I'm not trying to take anything away from visiting the Christian bookstore or doing business with Christian business people. But, there is a lot of stuff on those shelves that's just warmed over worldliness, right?

It's not even... some of it's not even really Christian sounding, it's just awful encouraging. In fact, I was listening to one of the local Christian music stations not long ago, not local Christian, but one of the Christian music stations on the internet long ago, and I noticed they used to say that they were, you know, emphasize that they were positive, and they were helpful, and then they'd also say that they were Christian music. So the message that there was Christian was very much a part of their rhetoric and their advertising and all that. Well, now they just seem to focus on the fact that they're positive and the fact that it's uplifting. I mean, if you listen for long enough, of course, you will hear some Christian things and the music is Christian, but at the same time, in the things that they talk about, it's almost just like they're trying to say, oh, we're family safe.

Is it enough to just be family safe? Is it enough to just be happy, positive? I would severely challenge any of us that feel like we could sacrifice the message of Christ and just be awful nice to people. Anyway, we'll move forward. It's not to say that we need to be paranoid, but rather that we need to be discerning. We don't need to be cynical or jaded about everything that comes along, but we need to be standing firmly in the light of Scripture and in the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

This is an important step to moving towards maturity, because just as a child learns over time to discriminate what they should or shouldn't eat, so we need to learn to discriminate what is and isn't healthy food. has eaten a whole bowl full of dandelions or something. You shouldn't eat all the dandelions. Did you ever read the book, How to Eat Fried Worms? No, you didn't? Oh, it's such a cute little book, you should read it, or borrow it, or read it in any effect.

It's about a kid who gets dared to eat worms every day for lunch or something, and he takes the dare, as it were, and he learns that he can fry them up, and cover them in ketchup, and that they're pretty good. I think they actually made a movie out of it.

You know, you don't imagine two adult business guys going, hey, you should really eat worms for lunch. No, I don't want to eat worms for lunch. It's just unheard of to think that adults would do that, because you've learned to discern, but kids, they're like, well, worms, spaghetti, what's the difference? I've always wanted to try that. Do you have to put anything on them? Lightly salted. Slip them in with some popcorn. I don't want to make too many friends that way. I've already got a bad garlic habit. Breathing into the mic. Apologize.

And now we move on to our very real enemy. What are some popular conceptions, some misconceptions about the devil? What picture do you get? Let's start from the world. Just say all your information was from TV. What would you get of the devil? He's in charge of hell. He's in charge of hell. That's right. It's tempting. Isn't that it? Man, the devil's everywhere. He's right behind a bush. He could be standing right beside you. He's always after you or me. It's not our old sin nature that's after us. That's right, exactly. It's not my fault, the devil made me do it. Absolutely.

As you get into the kind of anti-supernaturalist ideas and the idea that all those are just kind of vague personifications. So that's the bad side of you and you get into that almost dualistic nature or idea of, okay, there's this one sitting on this shoulder and this one sitting on that shoulder and, you know, who am I going to listen to today and all that.

So those are definitely, I think, of particular interest is that we think of them as the king of hell, right? Imagine, kind of, you go down, dig down far enough, you'd eventually break in and then as you get to the very bottom, a big old throne made of who knows what. That's the picture that I see most often than not, you know, someone... yeah, anyway, cartoons, as it were. So, do you think those are founded on scriptural truth, or...?

Maybe it's actually, I think, kind of a too far extrapolation, the prince of the power of the air. And so people then assume he must be the king of hell. Yeah, I think that's... she said... She said, for those in the back, he's the prince of the king of the air, and I think we over-extrapolate that, beyond our regular knowledge of what we really know to be true.

And what we really know right, of course, comes from the word. And then, anything beyond that, the best thing we could say is the best guess or logical, like, well, if you logically play this out, then that, which is not authoritative, quite naturally, as the word is.

So, in 2 Peter, we're actually going to spend a good amount of time talking about Satan and Satanology and all that business. So, I don't want to fall too hard on it or spend too much time here. We'll just kind of focus on what these verses say. about Satan, and leave the rest to our next semester's study, as it were.

But anyway, the first thing it tells us here is that he's the adversary, adversary of the believer. Now this adversary here can mean, obviously, just your regular old enemy or adversary, and it can also have the the idea behind it that you've got an adversary in court, someone attacking you in a courtroom setting. So it's got both the idea of, and then we're going to actually move on to his proper name, the devil, or no, his proper name being Satan, move on to the devil, which is also another word for accuser. So you get this idea that he's our adversary, that he's our accuser, and that he's, well, in any way, by no means our friend. It's important to notice that Peter encouraged us to be vigilant because of the devil. Modern thinkers and anti-supernaturalists would like us to forget or disbelieve that there's a real enemy who faces us.

And while he is limited in space and time, we know that a third of the innumerable angels of heaven are in his service. So there's such a difficult tension that we have to strike if we're going to be balanced in our understanding of the devil and of demonic forces. One is we can't support this devil behind every bush, the devil made me do it idea where we downplay our role, downplay our flesh, downplay our responsibility and play up the devil as if he's just pulling the strings on our life and the one to blame. On the other hand, we can't ignore them altogether. We can't just pretend like the devil and demonic forces aren't a part of it.

A good example being the Lord exercised many, many people. Now, there's of course a special concentration of that action in the Gospels, and then once you get into Acts, you see significantly less talk about demonic possession in that, but the reality is that those demonic forces are still out there. That's still a reality that we have to deal with.

So what are the two verbs ascribed to Satan here? Two verbs does he get in this sentence? What two action words does he get? Prowls and seeking. Absolutely. So we've got... Let's see. He's actively prowling or walking around. I love the word prowl because it's so graphic, you know, the idea of, as we're going to talk about him later, a lion prowling around. This is great imagery, I guess, to say. Satan is actively walking around. This is in the active voice. He's actively walking around and actively seeking to devour.

The reality is that satanic forces do not take days off and they do not wait for us to catch our breath. We have in them a ruthless enemy who will take advantage of any situation, take advantage of any difficulty, and any chinks in our spiritual armor. He is not above taking advantage of our doctrinal errors, our family relationships, or our political situations.

He is, as the word devil would literally be translated, an accuser. So he is accusing us, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but accusing us before the Lord. As we talk about the courtroom drama, he is the one accusing us. And we'll get into it, well, anyway, as we move into the next paragraph. He's also described as a roaring lion. What do we usually use a lion as a symbol of? Power. Power, authority. MGM. MGM. Oh really, absolutely. As a king, as a figure of authority. That's absolutely it. I want to back up to that word liar a little bit.

Could we safely say that that's all he does, to use lies? Could we safely say that all Satan does is lie. I don't know. He's definitely the father of lies. When you're making a sword, if you take a lie and you temper it with the truth, the lie becomes three times as strong. So even the truths can... Yeah, temper it. The best lie is 90% true.

Yeah, isn't it? I mean, if it was flat out unbelievable, it wouldn't be of any, you know, real temptation or problem. You know, if he was saying, hey, you've got to believe in pink elephants on Pluto or something. it just wouldn't be believable. They'll go and put a whole bunch of truth in there and then put the twist. That's the problem. Absolutely.

So, to say the best lie is just... Oh, yes, bud? Can Satan do anything without God's permission? Can Satan do anything without God's permission? That's a fine question. That's a fine question. We'll discuss that a lot more next semester, but does anybody have any good thoughts to offer on that? He says whatever he wants. God gave him the earth to do whatever he wants. I'm sorry? Did he give up free reign? Well, on earth he did. Take a look at the first couple of chapters of Job. He's limited. He's very limited.

So it's almost as if God has put Satan on a sort of a leash. is one way we look at it. And as we look at Scripture, we can find even that God has a purpose for Satan. I mean, Satan exists because God allows Satan to exist. I think the minute that Satan defied God, and as we read about different accounts, or the accounts of the Bible, of the fall of Satan, as he defied God, God could have just kind of pulled the plug on his existence, wiped him out completely, but he didn't do that. So God has a purpose for Satan, though that might be baffling to us at times.

And Satan, in his spiritual insanity, may not be fully conscious of the limitations that God puts on him. Or he may be only too conscious of those limitations. Who's to say what the mind of Satan is like? I don't want to see it, personally. Oh no, that's a fascinating question. I'm sure we'll nail that down in spades in the next semester.

But I would put forth that God allows Satan. God allows Satan to do what he is going to do and tells him what he cannot do and what he can do. In Jude, it talks about certain demons who were specifically put in confinement because they left their dwelling place. So there's a certain element of where demons can cross the line and have to be punished for it. Though Satan can do maybe more than we want him to be able to do on our side, God's got it all under control in His sovereignty. That's really good. Who said that about Joe?

I never thought of this. If it's true, I'm not convinced. Absolutely. It's really fantastic news when you think about it. And you know, when you consider that we actually have Christ within us, And we know that He even created Satan, not in a fallen state, of course, that He certainly is more powerful than Satan and we have Him within us. Absolutely. Greater is He who is in us than He is in the world. Absolutely. 100%.

When He created Satan, He knew that Satan was going to fall. We're heading down a long and difficult philosophical road that I'm not prepared to walk down today. You're absolutely right, though. When he created Satan, though he might have known, or though he did know, no question, knew that he would fall, he also yet created him a way out. Oh, absolutely, created a way out. Absolutely.

I'm going to stop us here, move us right back into the passage, I'm soon enough to sit down all together, which might be all the better for all of us, but still. I'd hate to take us over again. Also, we've got this idea of Peter describing Satan as a roaring lion. We describe this roaring as a roar of famished hunger. I mean, his deepest desire is to devour someone, like a starving lion. Lions, obviously, are often times scavengers, I've read. So, they're out there, they'll eat other people's kills. They're just starving. They need to eat, eat, and eat, and eat, and eat, and eat. That's a big part of what it is. You can imagine even a dog who's been starved or mistreated can become quite a dangerous So a starving lion, something with that size and that power is definitely, once again, just the graphic imagery is fantastic.

Satan's insane pride has led him to place himself in opposition to the Almighty God. His pride is beyond limit, he's brazen, he touts his limited authority, his limited authority before all the earth. He's talking about trying to scare people and show all he's got authority and all the power and all this and all that. The reality is it's all under the reign, under the sovereignty and control of God. Let's see. Yeah, brilliant.

Alright, so 1 Peter 5, 9-10. Did anyone have anything else to add before we move on? We've got more, we've discussed the devil a little bit more in the next verse. We have more time to sneak those Satan comments in if you need to fit one in. but resist Him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." Okay.

So, if you were to go to the store, or the Christian bookstore, or even the Walmart, and survey about 10 or 15 books on spiritual warfare, the popular books, not the older books, what do you suppose you'd come up with? Lots. Yeah, spiritual warfare is awful popular. What are the sorts of things you would hear, and what are the sorts of things you probably wouldn't expect to hear?

Oh my, spiritual mapping, tell us a little bit about that. Spiritual mapping, as I understand it, and I really haven't done a lot of investigating on this, where people map out where there might be demonic spiritual activity in greater, you know, like maybe down the street at that house or that business or that church that's a cult church. There's demonic activity there more than there's demonic activity, you know, in the three houses around Holly Hill. Just by being in proximity closer to Holly Hills, you're safe from the demonic forces.

I'm not familiar with the 1040 window. Show my historical ignorance. Splash some holy water? The prayer walking. Really? Oh wow. So you're going to drive the demons out of this area and then you got to go over there and hope they don't jump back to where you just prayed? Okay, so there's a lot of this kind of exercising our authority, or exercising authority on Christ's behalf over demons, or over the spiritual powers, over Satan, over something to that effect, and that's a huge temptation, or a huge thing that we see in spiritual warfare today. In fact, I grew up in an evangelical organization that was outreach-based, could promise you that not a prayer meeting would go by. We usually pray before we had any sort of event, or a weekly thing, or a Bible study even.

It was just constant to pray for this, oh, and we bind Satan from coming here tonight. We bind this, we were just binding Satan all, I don't know, as Vern so happily pointed out. Who was letting him out every time? I don't know, but we were binding Satan like, you know, daily at least. Boy, he's slippery or something. I don't know. Maybe we didn't have the strength to bind him tight enough. Whatever. Things would still go wrong in clubs sometimes.

Anyway, we see these ideas and boy, they're attractive to us. As Jude talks about, if you have eight minutes today, read the book of Jude because it's fun. It talks about us as people. playing with things that we don't understand and where we have no rights to be. That seems like one of those places, as Jude talks about, us getting involved and binding and controlling and commanding and, you know, like we're just going to kick Satan around and beat him up and, you know, I don't know about you, but if Satan was a very high and powerful and beautiful and wise angel, I'm not sure that I'm up to the task of beating him up today or taking him down today, especially not if there's no biblical mandate to do so, which I don't see at all. So anyway, that's the origins of that, I'm afraid I couldn't tell you where that all comes from, but the reality is that that's a very constant thing.

Let's see. It's not as if our job is to whip the enemy in some way or the other. Some groups will even go to the extent of mapping out cities and trying to identify strongholds of demons and then praying over those places or prayer-walking those places. This, however, is not scripturally sound. In scripture, we see Satan as a defeated foe.

Furthermore, we do not see the believer being commanded to make an offensive attack against the foe, but rather we see the encouragement to stand strong in the victory that Christ has already won. It all rolls defensive. It's been pointed out dozens of times before, but the reality is that when you talk about the armor of God, shield, belt, the shoes, all this, helmet, it's almost all defensive. It's almost all defensive in nature.

We're standing on what Christ has done. We're not needing to go out there and, you know, make it happen, because ultimately the Lord is the one who's going to conquer Satan in His time, and there's nothing we're going to do to hasten that. Hasten the Lord's timing. So the imperative here is that we would withstand the enemy. The basis is that we are firm in our faith. The word faith in Greek is preceded by the definite article, so it's not just the general character of faith being alluded here, but rather the faith, being the specific doctrines taught in the Bible.

All of Satan's attacks will be attacks either directly or indirectly on our doctrine. And I think that's something that kind of slips by, because I always think of his attacks as personal. You think about, if Satan was going to attack me, he'd give me leprosy, so I'd have to be really miserable and uncomfortable for the rest of my life. It'd be a physical, it'd be an outward attack. But isn't that even an attack on my doctrine? Isn't that even an attack on our belief on whether or not God is capable to protect us? from things capable to provide for us. I mean, I'd say every attack that satans make is going to be an attack on our doctrine.

We'll go over it a little bit later down here, but the reality is that, I think it's a very safe statement, that satan doesn't really give a hoot about you or I. Satan wants to get at God. And God loves us, so satan will get at us to get at God. his attacks are going to be centered on giving us a wrong impression of God. Look at his first attack on humanity, Eve in the garden.

Did God really say that? That's an attack on her doctrine, right? And there's Adam standing right beside her. Did he really say it? I don't know. I was there, but, you know, I mean, that's his whole thing. The word says, we're not unaware of his wiles. He's been doing the same thing for a long time, and you know what? It's working pretty well.

It ain't broke, don't fix it, right? would be to ask what are the results in the church or the body as a result of defensive postures versus offensive postures? How is it affecting the savings of the church? Wow. The question or more statement was that As we look at the outplay of a defensive or an offensive posture, how does that affect the church? How does that affect, let's see, how can we judge the process by the outcome?

When we see an offensive thinking church that's going to go out there and whip the devil. Resist is a key word that he selected there, and that really points to the issue brought up there, and that's the point. If we're resisting Him, we resist Him by putting our focus on the Lord. The offensive approach puts our focus on Satan. Absolutely. Take a military situation where you're trying to take a castle or take a city. You're thinking about that city. You're thinking about the target that you're trying to destroy, almost exclusively.

If you're defending something, you're thinking about the thing you're defending, not that we're defending the Lord. Please don't misunderstand me. He doesn't need us to defend Him. And yet, at the same time, with a defensive posture, we are sitting and resting in what we are and not focusing all our time on Christ.

Yeah, thank you. That's absolutely right. So, the outcome is whether or not you're satanically focused or focused on God and focused on Christ and what he's done. Any other comments on that? That's a good point. Absolutely. For the sake of the people listening online, I want to repeat that. He said that defense is an acknowledgment of our position, and offense is what we're doing, our action. Is that a fair summation of that? I think that's absolutely right. If we're standing defensively, we're standing in our position. Absolutely.

Contending for the faith, as a matter of defensively. Norm? I'm sorry. Oh my. Oh my. Well, brilliant. Okay. Let's... Sorry? Our defense should be based on the armor plate of God. That's how we're going to defend ourselves. We're not in a position to be so much offensive. We are to defend the faith. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

We're being defended by putting God's armor, the armor God's given us. I was just thinking, as you said that, the enemy is really a much smaller enemy than we ever consider. First of all, God is so much more powerful than him, and only a third of the angels fell. We're customing anything to you? That's fantastic.

And that's what it gets down to when you talk about Satan, isn't it? Isn't it absolute insanity? I mean, to try to put yourself in the place of the being that created you, isn't that absolute insanity? To try to oppose the one force in the world that could just wipe you out of existence altogether? Is there any other definition for that? Or is there any other way to describe that than the word insanity?

Do these concepts of fantasy lead us down the path of forming concepts like power and praise? I would imagine so. I think that honestly it sounds to me like the offensive thinking and the All that kind of, we're binding all this business and that business is incredibly man-centered and focused on man's sovereignty. It's my ability to do this and my responsibility to do this and it gets into that almost, you know, I don't like to draw a huge thing between Armenianism and Calvinism, but that very Armenian, like, we got to go save everybody or else, because that's our job is to go save everybody, right?

One of the problems with a lot of the aggressive spiritual warfare is that it fails miserably to recognize what Christ has already done. That the aggressive spiritual warfare fails to recognize what Christ has already done. Absolutely. There comes a time when you have to fight back, though. Because it's so politically incorrect to do that.

Where I work, there's a Muslim that killed a couple guys last summer. And we don't hear about it in the paper. You're kidding. We don't hear about it. It's just some crazy guy. It's really not a false religion attacking us. That's how Satan fights us, through false religion. And they even had to call the cops. And when they shot the cop, then the cop killed him. And that was a different kind of warfare.

Wow. Where did they walk? I just, I'm dumbfounded. I don't think you believe me. I believe you. I would never call you a liar. But that's shocking to me. It was just a month ago in Salt Lake City. Wow. In a mall. They're having spiritual warfare against false religion there as well. Nobody said it. We're in a war. We're in a war. Aster did. He said there 2,000 years ago, you've got to be discerning. How can you be discerning when your borders are wide open and you give them money to come and live here? Oh my. Oh my. And it's a reality.

I read an article not too long ago by a very conservative rabbi who was saying, if you look on the internet, you'll find more books violently against fundamentalist or conservative Christians, like, oh, conservative Christians destroying America, and titles like this, than you will a single book about the threat of conservative Islam, of fundamentalist Islam, Seriously, I mean, it's just amazing. And you'll find all these books in the, if you go to Barnes & Noble and look in the social issues section and all like that, I mean, just books that are blatantly attacking, overtly attacking fundamentalist Christians. And as this rabbi pointed out, he says, you know, if you want to know how amazingly insane this is, given all of our culture's rhetoric about, you know, accepting and intolerance, Just put in, for a fundamentalist Christian, a racial minority. Or another religion.

But you know, that's really the world. Not Satan. Good point. That's more so the world's doing than Satan. Absolutely. Yeah, but Satan starts these false religions, and then the world carries on. They go away. And after one grows, then he'll start another one that's really close to Christianity. And then he'll start another one. Same old tricks. So then most people say, well, there's so many religions that are wrong. They all must be wrong. But it doesn't matter if they're all wrong. Except one, there might be one that's right.

Amen. Oh my. We're running real close on time here, as much as this is an incredibly interesting topic to me. Let's slide all the way down, since we've only got five minutes left. The meaning of suffering. And I think what is being challenged here, talked about, is our perspective. Also, which is part of what, I think, part of what Tom's saying. Are we going to experience suffering? Yes or no? Yes, assuredly. It's promised. It's not an up for grabs. Hey, if you...

No. When you experience trials of many kinds, the question is our perspective. What perspective does Satan, or the world, take on suffering? If you can just, at the end of your life, count up all the good things that happened and all the bad things, and you had more good things than bad things, boy, you won. You came out ahead. Okay, what's God's view of perspective on suffering, as we've seen time and time again in 1 Peter? What's God's view on suffering?

Conforming us to the image of Christ. Jack, what were you going to say? Growth, growth from glory to glory. Suffering is the tool. Consider it pure joy, perfect joy. We rejoice, we glory in our sufferings. And the reality is that the devil would have us interpret those sufferings as God forsaking us. Would have us interpret those sufferings as God's inability to handle the situation. But we need to know, we need to be biblically founded and know better. Because if we don't, what Ephesians talks about will be ships, lost at sea, turned around, turned about. Without the doctrine, without the faith and knowledge of that, we will be unable to rightly interpret our sufferings and our struggles.

That's a big part of it. All right. Oh, did you have a comment? In 2 Timothy, Paul wrote, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ will be persecuted. Will be persecuted. You can guarantee it. I'm not even going to say pretty much. Claiming God's promises. Claiming God's promises. Yeah, I've never seen him claim that one. And the Lord will make you suffer. Oh, Lordy. All right. Good enough. Right along. Okay, so, the big after. The big after. I just love what this is talking about. It says, okay, this is just something I wanted to point out.

"...but resisting him, firming your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren." Who are in the world? It's just fascinating to me that he made that distinction. This same stuff is being experienced by our brethren. All our brethren? No. Just the ones who are here. Our brothers who have passed on experiencing this?

No. Absolutely not. Just the ones who are in the world. So then you get into, what's the average life span in America? And we'll close on this point. 70, 78, more for women than for men. I don't know why. There's got to be a good reason. Alright, so 77, 78 years.

What's that in the view of eternity? You're going to live for eternity? Absolutely you are. Non-Christians going to live for eternity? Absolutely they are. They're going to be around for eternity as far as we know. What's this 70-75 years? They'll be looking back probably on the best 10 seconds of their eternal existence. But what's it going to be for us?

Just a blink of an eye. Hardly even remember it. Can't even compare. That's what we're heading towards. I would really encourage you to read forward, but we really don't have time now. Talking about what the Lord is going to do in perfecting, confirming, strengthening, and establishing us. As you have time this week.

What a rich couple of verses. Let's pray and we'll move forward. Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for these wonderful gifts, the wonderful gift of these verses, the book of Peter, of your word, Lord. Thank you so much that you have given us the assurance that you're in control, and that all this spiritual war that you have won and you will win, and Lord, that you will perfect us, and you'll conform us, and you'll establish us, because we are in you, in your Son, Lord. We praise You and pray that we could behold You more through Your Word in today's service. In Jesus' name, Amen.