A Set Of Five Relationships

So 1 Peter 5, 5 through 9, I am using this morning the Macaulay outline, which is good. He sets forth five relationships in these five, six, seven, eight, nine, five verses. One is relationship to the elders. We have, as believers, have a relationship to one another, to God. And the fourth one is to pressures and anxieties. Macaulay brings this out. And then the fifth one he brings out, our highlights in these verses, is relationship to the devil of all people. So I'll read five through nine here, first Peter five.

You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders and all of you clothe yourselves with humility towards one another. For God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, but resist them firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.

And so I have. In these verses, you can see the underlines. I've underlined the five set of relationships. There's to the elders, be subject to the elders. Act with humility towards one another. That's the second one. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, the third. And then in relationship to cares or anxiety, that's the fourth.

And the fifth there is The devil who's prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Okay. Verse five, and our first relationship here is to elders. The likewise ties our subject today being subject to elders to that which had gone before from last week.

We are talking about elders of a flock engaging in shepherding or poiminoing and episkopoing or overseeing a flock. And what they do is they guide and they lead and they protect. They find pasture. They feed the flock with rightly divided sound doctrine. And they do that through teaching. And I think The Greek word for teaching is didasko. So that's what they're engaged in.

But Peter turns to the, and he says, younger men, and he wants the younger men to be subject to those elders. These elder, under shepherd or teachers, I put all three there. elder under shepherding teachers, this is what I'm calling him this morning, and a review from last week. They were delegated authority by Christ Jesus himself, the chief shepherd. And he did that when he said, Peter, and he said that three times, feed my sheep, tend my lambs, tend my sheep.

And he restored Peter to fellowship after he had fallen. By the way, he had been snared up by the devil, hadn't he? He denied Christ at his crucifixion, at his trial. So he was being restored and that's one of the things of the devil prowling around devouring someone. Peter's a good example of that.

So the elders have this delegated authority to superintend the flock, and they were accountable to Christ for the flock's condition. So what Peter's saying is, therefore, non-elders, which he says is young men, but lambs within this flock, or members of the assembly, They are to be subject to your elders and elders is always plural.

There is always more than one. And we've seen it many times before, but the word for subject is hupotasso in the Greek, which is a lining up under or a ranking under. It's a military term and it always has a positive mindset. associated with it, you always husbands or wives to husbands, slaves to masters, you always line up with a positive attitude and not begrudgingly to these overseeing under shepherds. So the, all of you. When he says, be subject to your elders, all of you, that would be the whole, the flock in general, the young and the old, male and female, you know, they just addressed men typically in the scripture back then. But I think it means at least, I guess Constable and Macaulay would tend to mean that this is the whole assembly.

The mature believers, the young believers, everyone, be clothed in humility towards one another. And so that gives us the first and second of these two relationships that Macaulay brings up. One to the elders and the other, number two, to one another. And we'll continue on this relationship, two, to acting with humility towards one another. The clothing yourself with humility is meant to say you are to gird yourself with one article of clothing with another.

So in ancient times, they had an undergarment and then over the undergarment, they'd wrap that robe, right? And everyone knows that picture. It's a robe and you tie it together with a rope or a sash. And that word is ekobamai. I mean, you just wrap it around your torso. Merriman called it a, you know, everyone wore bathrobes back then, basically. And there was, there was little, there was, there wasn't too much difference between men and women's clothing back then.

But the added element of When Peter says to clothe yourselves with humility, he's talking about a slave garment or an apron where a slave would put on this apron to keep the clothes under his, to keep those clean and to do work, you know, to I don't know, clean the floor, or tune a piano, or I don't think there were pianos back then, but you know what I'm saying. So, shoe a horse, did I say that already? Anything that would get you dirty.

There's this apron that they gird themselves with to do work, and it has the idea when Christ Wash the feet of the disciples. He girded himself with a towel and he dried the feet of his disciples. Same kind of thing. And it's interesting that Christ was, he was serving, wasn't he, in that capacity. He was being a servant and think of the humility that took for him to wash his disciples' feet. You know, there's a...

There's a denomination that does that, the primitive Baptists, which are popular in the South, but they wash each other's feet. So I don't think we should take that on, but we should certainly think about it. Well, it's washing by the word, isn't it? Well, no, this is, you know, Christ physically washed their feet in John 13 and It's the primitive Baptist, I think they physically wash and they take it as a sacrament, you know.

So, yeah. But you're right. You're right. Washing by the word is in another context, but not so much in this context where we're talking about humility and being humble. Yeah. I think the Mennonites still do it too. I've actually had that done at a Mennonite service. Oh, okay. Oh, great. Yeah, so some denominations still do it. And I don't think it's a, it's not a bad thing. It sounds, you know, because I can see where they're getting that. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's too, too odd, like, you know, transubstantiation. But, you know, that's my opinion.

So humility then, which we are clothing ourselves with, is simply the opposite of pride. But it's also having, and Macaulay brings this out, is having a correct divine viewpoint of yourself, a correct assessment of yourself. You know, Roger and Mike have been talking about the Corinthian believers, who were, they did not have any humility, they were arrogant. And Mike talked about that last week, their arrogance, and it runs through, it's run through the first of Corinthians, till now we're studying, what are we, in chapter five or six? Because they had all the great spiritual gifts, so, And I just paraphrase some of 1 Corinthians here. Paul says, what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast of it as you had not received it?

You are already filled. You have become rich. You have become Kings without us. Now, some of you have become arrogant as though I were not coming to you. So that's a, that's a spot on picture of being arrogant. And so that kind of proves the opposite of what we're trying to look at today. But that's what Peter is telling his, these flocks that are scattered not to be. William Kelly, he has for ourselves.

I said this, I said, lack of humility is the lack of applying the knowledge of Christ's cross work to correctly assess ourselves. Kelly brings this out by saying, it is humbling to have to feel and to have to own how vile we learned ourselves to be. It is a truer, deeper humility to know in his light that our careless and perhaps unworthy failure cost cost him to be, as it were, consumed to ashes in God's unsparing judgment in our iniquity laid upon him. And that we are, I am not worthy thinking or talking about. So we are, when you really think about who you were before Christ and how utterly sinful and lost you were, how could you not be humble in this life?

Andrew, I think this is so good that you pointed this out, because I don't know who I read, maybe it was Coates in one of the None But the Hungry Heart series, but You know, this is true humility is the cross itself, right? I mean, it's really identification. The flesh can self-impose humility, right? I mean, you know, we can buff up ourselves and say we're humble, but the humility really comes for our total ineptness and falling far short of the glory of God. I mean, so that's really identification truth. Yeah. And it's, yeah, we're, all of that was, and he took on all of that and our identification with that cross work is just, uh, this is the only thing that, uh, makes us worthy to him is that he is worthy to God.

So, um, and Kelly was talking about in the Old Testament that when you really think about an animal sacrifice, sacrificing a sheep, you know, you slay it, and then you drain its blood, and then you cook the fat and the meat, and then the meat is given for a feast. But then with the leftover, oh, and before that, the person would place their hand on the forehead of the sheep to identify with that sheep, right? This is me. The sheep is going to slaughter and it's going to be consumed, but not me, but I'm going to place my identifying hand on its head. And then that sheep or that goat or bull was totally consumed and left for ashes and just And that was God's judgment upon that sin.

And he's just saying that has to make you humble when you think about that. Okay. Continuing on here, this phrase, God is supposed to be proud, but gives grace to the humble is from, it's an Old Testament phrase and it's common. It's very common in the Old Testament. And it's, James also brings this out. But I put that it's a self evident axiom of God.

I mean, there's no, you read it and it makes sense on its face. You say, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. That's because you just know God's character. It's one of the things that characterizes his economy, his divine personality. And it appears often, one of the Verses in James 4, 6 through 10, and I'll read that. He gives greater grace.

Therefore, it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourself. Submit, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning. and your joy to gloom, humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and he will exalt you.

In Psalms 138 is where Peter and James pick up these terms. Psalm 138, for the Lord is exalted, yet he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar. Proverbs 334, though he scoffs at the scoffers, yet he gives grace to the afflicted. Proverbs 29, 23, a man's pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor. And then finally Christ himself says in Matthew 23, whoever exalts himself shall be humble and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

So it's an axiom that's the same and runs all through scripture. And look at that James passage. It's, you know, one of, it was either James or it was Peter, but one of those guys stole each other's homework, I think, copied each other's homework, because look at the, look at the parallelism from what we're studying today in Peter.

God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourself therefore to God. And Peter says, submit yourself, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Resist the devil. And we have Peter talking about the devil just a little later on.

And it's just very, so I think one of them, maybe one Someone's dog ate someone's homework, so they just said, Hey, what do you have? Oh, they had the same, same wonderful teacher. Yeah, right. It comes from the same. And it's amazing. It really tells you that the whole working independent, totally independently, the Holy Spirit was giving the exact same information to, you know, different apostles. Um, And they wrote almost the same things. It's really quite wonderful. Okay.

Our third relationship is to God and let's see, and then we'll move on to the relationship number four, to pressures. Oh, this, This concept in verse six of humbling yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he might exalt you at the proper time. Let's look at that and what that could mean. I put that this is summed up by waiting on his timing in everything and not rushing into some big spiritual plans ahead of him. And we can do that often. Sometimes we think we have something really figured out and what to do.

And, you know, you could come up with this great mission, but maybe God isn't not wanting you to do that. A good example of how to do it is David, the King David, and when he was anointed by God and Saul. So David was a young shepherd who was 10, 13 years old out shepherding, as it were. And when Samuel came around, Jesse didn't even consider David as a candidate to be anointed as a future King. So. Weren't it for Samuel asking if there was anyone else, David would have never been chosen, I guess. But he was anointed by Samuel very young, possibly at age 13. And then he goes and serves in King Saul's court as a musician. And then Saul sort of goes South mentally and tries to kill him at least three times. And then.

David is hiding with some friends out at the caves in Getty and Saul is there and he stops to, I think, even use the commode. So he's taking care of business there and David can easily kill Saul, but he just cuts off the corner of his cloak while he's not paying attention. And then he doesn't kill him.

And then he comes back and says, Saul, I cut off this portion of your cloak and I could have killed you. But I didn't, please Saul, just, you know, leave me alone. And David was really, David was even guilty that he even did that to the Lord's anointed, wasn't he? That he just cut that piece of cloth off his cloak. So he waited probably 20 to 25 years and under intense persecution from Saul to take his place as King. But that's waiting on the proper time for the Lord to exalt you. David is the good example of that. Okay.

Casting all your care upon him for he cares for you. That's from the King James. In the New American Standard, it's casting all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you. This is a verse that we always, and forevermore, probably take out of context, right? It's one of those verses that you just grab, it's for comfort. And without relationship to the context, but that's good. That's good. There's no harm in that because it's one of those comforting verses to comfort you in trials.

But let's look at it in context and Merriman brings this out. In context, it has the idea of we as believers are on this earth suffering Christ's reproach with him. here on earth, because of our identification with him here. And we feel the hostility and reproach that the cosmos and Satan has towards Christ. And Christ has towards the cosmos and Satan. So we are by association caught up in this human and angelic conflict, you know, every, each and every day.

And we will for as long as we're here on earth until we are taken up physically, right. Physically to associate him in the future with him in glory. So we experience this hostility and conflict. That hostility and conflict will cause us to be anxious or have a load of cares, and we'll all experience this.

But it's normative. It's the Christian life. It's normal. And as Peter says, it's nothing strange. We shouldn't consider it. strange. Andrew? Yeah. Anxiety is fear of the unknown. Yeah. It's not as though we don't have the understanding which casts out the anxiety, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I would say that's a good definition of anxiety. Worry, because worry is Um, being concerned with future things and how things will work out. Uh, I think my mom who, uh, you know, I've been out of the house now for 33 years, I think she still lies up at night worrying about me after all these years, even though it's not her job anymore, you know?

It is her job, Andrew. Yeah. Hey, mom, you can relax. I've got this. My wife has got this. Don't worry. So yeah. She has a lot of wisdom, Andrew. So maybe she knows, you know, there's always unknowns in the future. So she just wants the best for you. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew sounds like a bit of overconfidence to me. Yeah. Probably like, don't worry, mom. It's all okay.

So this idea of casting your cares is to throw a palm is what it is in the Greek. But here's something Merriman said again, it's in the Greek if you sort of parse it out with how it reads in the Greek, he says it's this suffering and waiting in humility As you are suffering and waiting in humility, be then humbled by the mighty hand of God while casting your anxiety upon him is the effect in the Greek with the part of Sippel's worked in there and things like that. And the emphasis on the part of Sippel's modifying humility and things like that. I don't understand, but I'll take his word for it. So I think that's good though, it's in context, that's what it is. But you can also take it right out and use it for your cares in life.

If you're experiencing cares, worries, and anxieties, you're experiencing marimba is the Greek word, and Martha had that exact same thing. Um, when Jesus said to her, Martha, Martha, why are you worried and bothered about so many things? As she was trying to prepare her meal and, uh, Mary was not helping. And that word for worry, worried, is the verb meram na'o.

So, um, and then Philippians 4, 6, meram na'o for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgivings. Let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. So again, this whole issue, the mighty hand of God, this humbling, is again, I hate to overemphasize this, but it's really seeing that we have no ability, no strength in the flesh to to worry, I mean, to not worry. I mean, I think that's a mighty hand of God that makes us realize that the great mercy and grace that he extends to us really is a day-to-day experience.

So to be humbled takes the burden away from the flesh is what it does. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. That's easily said and not so easily profound. Easier said than done. Amen. But that, be anxious for nothing, that's that word as well. So, okay. The fifth and final relationship is to the devil. Bet you didn't know you had a relationship to the devil.

Peter has used this phrase, be sober in the spirit, twice before in 1 Peter 1.13.

Where he says, therefore prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Christ Jesus. And then in 4.7 of 1 Peter, the end of all things is near. Therefore be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. And Paul uses this word sober, sober minded. So what does that mean? Well, Roy Smith told us back in when we were studying chapter one, verse 13, that sober had the idea of being serious, being watchful, being circumspect, and focusing your mind on a task.

It's an aorist active imperative. So this is me, but like do it and do it now is how I take that to mean. It's not You know, being humble and being sober in spirit, those aren't fruits of the spirit. Those aren't one of the ones. So we have to, since it's command, we have to take action and do it ourselves. Of course, under the power of the Holy Spirit, but it's something we do.

Be on alert. Take the watch as in a guard tower. lest by remission or inactivity or casualness, you're overtaken by some calamity or maybe some enemy is in the case of a guard watchtower. So that's being on alert. One of my high school friends, I think it was Crystal, Crystal Kay's sister, I went to high school with her and she would always say, be alert. Because the world needs more alerts. It's what she always told me. So that was funny. The calamity then is, the danger is the devil. The devil is our adversary.

Our Antidokos is the word for adversary. And it's the counsel or the lawyer on the other side of a lawsuit. who accuses us both day and night before the bench of God, doesn't he? As in Revelation chapter 12 verse 10, our adversary, the devil Antipokos. The word for devil is diabolos and this one, it literally means to cast against.

It's interesting that the devil casts against and we are to cast our cares upon Christ. Think of that. So the word for devil is cast against. We are told in the verse prior to cast our cares upon Christ, which I think is an interesting little tidbit there. The devil is a slanderer. He's a false accuser.

And when he prowls around like a roaring lion, that has the, in the Greek, of pacing back at, well, going in a circle. It's got the antecedent peri, P-E-R-I, and I don't know the word, but that as in periscope or perimeter. So he goes around the perimeter looking for someone to devour and the opportune time to pounce.

And when he devours someone, he swallows them whole. And the idea is for him to make them extinct. Kind of like a shark just swallowing something whole or our golden retriever who you give her a little piece of chicken and she doesn't taste it. It just goes right down, just swallowed whole. Isn't that kind of like identification? I mean, we're swallowed whole, we rise in newness of life. Yeah, could be. Yeah, I've never thought about that way. But yeah, do you want to expand on that? Any? No. Okay. No, I'm just just that. The old life is put to death and the new life rises. Yeah.

Roman 6.11. And the fact that God uses Satan for our good. Yeah, well, yeah, Satan is allowed to do certain things, but very limited, right? we are safe from Satan or we are safe from, what do you call it, possession by demons and things like that, because we are with Christ. But yeah, Satan can give us some problems. And we'll get to this later, but our job is to resist them, right?

And Peter of all people knows what he is speaking of because he was caught up or tripped up or snared by Satan a few times in his life. One was when he was at Caesarea Philippi and This was saying, you know, you are Peter and upon this rock, I shall build my church. And then Peter said, I'm going to go down to Jerusalem and deliver it up and be killed. And he was speaking very plainly about being killed. And Peter said, no, Lord, far be it from me. That will never happen. And Jesus took him and shook him, I'm sure, and said, get behind me, Satan.

Because that was a satanic thing coming from Peter's mouth. You know, Satan didn't want the Lord to go and be a sacrifice for sin and to bring about the ministry of reconciliation of sin. So that's why Christ was... Christ attributed that wording by Peter as being from Satan. And in the garden of Gethsemane, Peter acted, took the sword and cut off the high priest slave's ear. You know, he got snared up by the devil there. At least one other time when he denied Christ three times, right? So Peter knows, Peter knows. that this devil prowls around like a lion. But we are to resist him, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. Verse nine. In resisting, it's a extending our ground or being firm against him. You are to defend your ground, but don't go on the offensive, constable says. It's not an offensive thing. We are to act defensively.

You can see that not even the Archangel Michael, when he was arguing with the devil about Moses's body. didn't bring accusation against the devil. And he said, he left it to the Lord. He said, the Lord rebuked you. He gave it right over to the Lord. He stood his ground, but he let the Lord take the offensive against Satan.

Because Michael knows that Satan, you know, Michael is an archangel, but I think Satan was a super archangel. I mean, he was, he, He was the guardian of the holiness of God before his fall. So he's a very powerful being. And if the Archangel Michael respects Satan's great power and you know, so should we is the idea here. Don't do this. Amen. I said, really? And I was thinking maybe Pope Francis knows that you can rebuke the devil. And you shouldn't rebuke the devil either.

So maybe he thinks he can do that because he believes that in a way he is Peter, right? He's the new Christ. Yeah. I see a lot of Pentecostals. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ. Yeah, right, Michael. And that's exactly what you shouldn't do. You should rely on being defensive and standing firm with scripture, right? And here it is.

Here's what you, it's exactly spelled out in Ephesians 6, 10 through 13, you know, and I won't read the whole thing, but be strong in the Lord, put on the full armor of God, that you'll be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. And then I'll skip down to take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist the evil day. And having done all that, Stanford. And then you don't go on, but if you go on there, you see what, how to gird up with the sword, you know, of the word and the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness. And you shod yourself in all these defensive armaments, right? And that's how you deal with the devil. And that's Christ himself.

Yeah, yeah, I would say, yep, you're exactly right. Also, you know, if Pope Francis, if someone were to tell Peter that he was the first Pope, that would be news to Peter. Don't tell the Catholics that. Right, exactly. But that would come as quite a shock to Peter. So anyway, look at that. Yeah, that's not good. Oh, okay. That got with that new. Oh, the shrinking? Yeah. Yeah, the shrinking that got. Okay.

But anyway, what that says is, and I'll fix that before it goes on the website. But knowing that our fellow believers, are also in the cosmos suffering the same hostility and reproach that we are. And this is ending verse nine here. And this is common to man, as Peter tells us, but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. That's from 1 Corinthians 10, 13. In blue there, no temptation has overtaken you except which is common to man. Both Peter and Paul say that. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.

And I think that ties into the part C of verse nine, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And so I will fix that later. And there you go. So we should probably quit, huh? Yeah, I think so. Amen, brother. Amen. I'll close quickly in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this study and we just pray that you'll give us wisdom in fighting the enemy and looking to you for all our strength and our wisdom. And we thank you that we have you as a resource, Father. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah. Yo, bro.