Grace For The Humble

Open your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 5, and we're going to finish our book this morning. I thought we'd title today's chapter and today's lesson, Grace for the Humble. And we're just going to start right in and read verses 1 through 5 here. Peter writes,

And so Lord, we ask you as we begin this last, just the summary and the ending of this book. Lord, would you just really help us to absorb the things that you want us to? Lord, help us right now to clear our minds and to set our hearts upon the work of the Spirit within us and just to continue to grow our spirits, Lord, through this word that you've given us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we start off this section seeing, looking at the job of elders. Initially, you think it's just someone who is older, but then we talk about the shepherd aspect. So we see that he is talking definitely to people who are leaders in the church. And he says that what they do should be exercised willingly, eagerly, and by setting a good example. And you remember last chapter, we sort of ended off with serving one another in love. And so being an elder shepherd is definitely a way of serving the body in love. We talked about the gifts that are used, the speaking gifts and the serving gifts. And someone who is operating in this capacity would use maybe the speaking gifts or maybe the serving gifts or back and forth or both of them. But Paul told Timothy when he wrote to him, he said, if anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, which is all the same word, elder shepherd, overseer, he desires a noble task. But the point here is the motivation. It should be willing and it should be eager and it should be wanting to seek the benefit of those that they're serving and the reminder that they're under shepherds. Because he talks about when the chief shepherd appears. So these are under shepherds. And in a perfect world, elders and pastors and overseers would always be willing and always be eager and always want to seek the benefit of the flock, right? But world is hostile, life is hard, people get tired. And so this is a good exhortation for Peter to bring to them just by way of reminder. John Piper wrote a little piece that I had read, the piece was called Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. And he is talking to pastors and he said, we don't punch a clock, put in our time and go home. He said, we never cease to be pastors. And as pastors, we labor for eternal fruit. We're entrusted with a unique calling that involves our entire person and our whole life. And that's really true. It's not a job like I'll go and do this for eight hours and then I go home and do something else. So this exhortation of Peter as a fellow elder is really good. It's like, hey, be willing, be eager to do this. This is your role. And I also thought about the aspect of when Peter says in here, let me go back to it and find it. He said, as a fellow, yeah, a fellow elder and a witness of Christ's suffering, he is speaking to them as one who knows, one who's right in there with them. It doesn't mean a lot to you when someone exhorts you from a place of knowing, a place where, hey, I've walked in your shoes. And I'm really grateful that Paul and I have an opportunity really to have a lot of pastors and when we go to pastors conferences and that speak into our lives from that place of knowing. But I was thinking about this extra layer on this passage for anyone. What kind of fellow are you? Well, you're a girl. You're not a fellow. But what kind of... When he says, I am a fellow elder, what kind of fellow are you to someone else? You've walked in those shoes. You understand what they're doing. Maybe as a woman, you have lived somewhat of a bivocational life in that you've raised your family while you have been working and you understand what that's like. Maybe you and your husband own a small business and you understand what that's like. Maybe you raised five boys in a row and you understand what that is like. You get what I'm saying? It's like you are a fellow of some type to someone else where you can come alongside them and say, as a fellow mother, let me encourage you. And that's really important because people want to hear from someone who has walked in their shoes. So I think we can lift out that example too and apply it to whatever our own life looks like and not come to someone with an attitude of like, been there, done that. But like, hey, I know. I know what the struggles are. Let me encourage you with that. And then also we see the contrast here between elders, which by nature are older relatively, and the youngers. Their only job as the young men, they only have one job in this passage, and that is to be subject. Be subject. And you may have guessed it. That's our word. That's our word. Hupotasso, rank under, be subject to. That's what they're called to in the body of Christ. Be subject to those that are over you. Many young men aren't able to do this. Pride gets in our way, and it's similar with all the different things that we've talked about in this book. We see the model. We see what the Lord desires for us, but sometimes there are things that kind of get in the way and it's difficult for us to do. So let's move on and just talk about humility. And what I want to do is start the next verse, and I want to take those three little words and move them to the front of the verse to help us see that we're turning a corner. Those three words are all of you. When you read the passage about elders and young men, you may have checked out and thought, well, interesting intellectually, but it doesn't apply to my life. But now we turn the corner and it says,

So in a minute we're going to talk about humility to God, but here this is humility toward one another. Like last week we talked about love one another, now we have humility toward one another. So what I want to do is I want to kind of review what we have learned so far about a life of humility. It's in the title of our Bible study, right, Walking in Hope, Holiness, and Humility. So let's go back and review all of those words that we have had sprinkled through, and it begins back in chapter 2, verse 13. The first time we see it is, be subject, hupotasso, for the Lord's sake to every human institution. And then in 2.18, servants, be subject to your masters with all respect. In chapter 3, verse 1, wives, be subject to your own husbands. And now we kind of wrap this up with this concept that we just saw, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. Why should we do that? Peter answers us, because God opposes the proud, but he willingly gives grace to the humble. Do you need grace in your life? This opens the door. This is what opens the door. God opposes the prideful heart, but he gives grace to the humble. So we should ask ourselves, what is humility? Maybe in your study guide you wrote a definition of humility, and maybe you read the definition that we had in there from Charles Spurgeon, I'll read that for us. Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself. I really like that a lot, to make a proper estimate of who you are, a right estimate. This is really important because this is our channel for God's grace to flow into our lives. We need to make a right estimate of who we are. It's not easy to walk in humility, but we are not left without strength for the task. God will give us the grace that we need. In all of these situations that we have talked about, all the times in this book that we have hit this word, be subject to, God's grace is there to give us what we need in order to be obedient to that. So let's also add these next two verses.

What an important phrase that we see. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. And you guessed it, that word under is hupa. It's part of the same thing we keep talking and talking and talking about as we talk about be subject to, which means ranking under. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. So I want us to camp on that just a little bit because I feel like in my own life, I can always feel that pride rising up in me. Maybe you guys can too. So I just want to process this being under the mighty hand of God. And I want to start with a quote from A.W. Tozer. I started reading the book Knowledge of the Holy again. And he says this. He said, the Christian religion has to do with God and man. But its focal point is God, not man. Man's only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image. In himself, he is nothing. And I read that quote. And I thought, that is the bedrock of our understanding of who we are, having a right estimate of ourselves, that our only claim to importance is that God chose to create us in his image. And that's a really eloquent way of saying that we need to have a right estimate of ourselves. God is everything. God is the beginning and the end. And he's the one who made us important. And I think that that is why a concept of a creator God and an account of creation is so foundational to our Christian faith. And I know that that concept is really attacked and stripped away from a lot of Christian-ish circles. But it's such a bedrock because of this concept. So Genesis 127 that says, therefore, let us make man in our own image, male and female. It is foundational. I also think it's why the enemy is so set on destroying the account of creation, is because it is our foundational understanding for walking in any sense of humility, for having any kind of a proper estimate of who we are. We are important. Every one of you here is important because you bear the image of God, because you were created in his image. You were created with flesh, spirit, and soul, with that eternal spirit that has the potential to be united with the spirit of God. And it makes you different than the rest of God's creation. So when he says here, be clothed with humility, we discussed that a little bit in the study guide. To be clothed properly in life helps us moderate our existence between too hot of temperatures and too cold of temperatures. You guys often, most of us, we carry an extra sweater or something. We're always moderating to be comfortable. And in the same way, to be clothed with humility helps us to moderate our perspective and have a right perspective of ourselves so that we are neither too prideful nor think too lowly of ourselves to think that God doesn't care. We want to have a right perspective. And so the dangers of being too prideful would be that somehow we don't remember that all men are created equal with that capacity, with that eternal spirit to be united with Christ. And somehow we might even forget that we don't become angels. We don't become gods. God made us who we are. And if we think too lowly of ourselves, we can get caught up in all kinds of false and heretical teachings about the fact that we're merely another one of the animals on this planet. We should have no higher existence than them, or no lower, or all that kind of stuff. And you can get way off persuaded in that, not remembering that we are created specifically in the divine image. We have an eternal spirit. Also, if we think too lowly of ourselves, that somehow we don't have a creator God that is actually watching, involved in the affairs of our life, we might not think God even cares. Like, why pray? He doesn't care. He's not watching. Do you understand what I'm saying? And so it's very important, I think, that pridefulness has become our greatest social problem in these days. We just, as a culture, we have become so prideful in ourselves as if we are the gods of the universe. And we are just banding together to, I don't know, do what. But I find it interesting, too, as we keep reading here now, in this conversation about having a right attitude about who we are, now is the time that Peter introduces a warning about our ancient foe. And he says here in verse 8,

And so Peter is telling us, think this through. Be sober-minded. We're in a war. And your adversary has the skills, like a lion out in the wild that is looking for someone to devour. You guys all watched enough TV to know that that lion, who is he going to choose? Is he going to go right into the heart of the pack? No, he's going to find the ones that are separated out. The ones, now I want you to follow this, he's going to find the ones that are not ranking under the leaders and holding together. And it gave me such a great perspective on that phrase, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. God has plans for me. He has a design for my life. He has things he wants me to obey, things that he wants me to rank under for my protection, so that I am a little more naturally protected from that roaring lion who's running around looking for those who are out from under that protection. Does that make sense? So the context of this passage, I always used to think when I was younger, like last week, but no, years ago, years ago. You know, I mean, how many as a mom? I mean, I've taught this verse in Sunday school for decades, right? But if you lift it out, you can kind of think, you know, your enemy, the devil, runs around like a roaring lion looking for somebody to devour. It's like you might think that like anything that's bad in my life, I'm just going to label that. The enemy's after me. And in the name of Jesus, you know, I remember when we were in Seattle, I wasn't in children's ministry. This was not my doing. But they had a Satan puppet. And whenever the Satan puppet came out, the kids were like, in the name of Jesus, get out of here. It freaked my kids out. Aaron couldn't handle that at all. He'd go running into big churches like, ah. But you know, we think that resisting the devil is somehow wagging our finger and saying, you know, in the name of Jesus. But this passage gives us a whole concept of saying, oh, no, this is a lifestyle of ranking under God's intentions and plans for my life and being obedient to him. This is one way I resist the work of the enemy. So I want to dialogue a little bit. We had quite a little study about Satan in our study guide. And so what I want to do is take some of those elements and ask the question, how do we resist? We studied a few things to find out information. And I want to say, how do we resist? For example, here's what I'm getting at. One of the verses that we looked up explained to us that he is disguised as an angel of light. OK, there's a piece of information that we know now. He's disguised as something good. And so how do we resist that, knowing that piece of information? Well, we can make progress in resisting by being purposefully discerning in our lives and not taking everything at face value. That doesn't mean that we become cynical about anything. But what I'm getting at is we've talked about our spirits and our soul. We can apply our spiritual understanding, which is growing because of all this pure spiritual milk. It's getting stronger. We can apply our spiritual understanding to a situation rather than the understanding of our soul, which is our emotions about it or our intellect about it. And so we resist his work by being spiritually discerning. I like that saying, not everything that glitters is gold. That applies really well to this. Also, another thing we learned in our verses, he blinds the minds of unbelievers. And I want to read that verse. It's 2 Corinthians 4, 4. The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the gospel of light of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. So we learn something. He goes around blinding minds of unbelievers, and I would add underbelievers. And so how do I resist that? Well, I'm not sure that I do anything personally to resist that, because I have to say to myself, he's an ancient foe. He's been around a lot longer than I have, and he's much smarter and adept at what he's doing. So I need to go to the bigger power that I have. And I need to fight the blinding work that he has done in the people that I love. I need to go to the Lord in prayer and intercession and say, would you please, and plead for those people who have been blinded. That is a way to resist the work of the enemy. Not going right to the person who's blinded and saying, I will convince you now why you are thinking wrong about this. That is not going to work. That doesn't resist the enemy. I need to go to a bigger power than that. We learn that he snatches away seeds that are sown from that parable of Jesus. So we can resist his ongoing work by sowing more seeds. Every opportunity we have to sow gospel seeds, we sow more seeds. We learned that he is the father of lies. And so we can resist his work by filling up on truth. Like filling, overfilling on truth. You guys all know how much grass seed it takes in a lawn to make a dense enough carpet for weeds not to grow. So we fill up on the truth so that there's no room, so that we're crowding up room for those lies. That's how we resist the enemy. And then the one I saved for last, because it is the context of this passage as we think about humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, is this. Here's what we know about Satan. He broke rank. He broke rank being under God. And the Holy Spirit inspired Isaiah to give us these insights. I wish I had put it in the study guide, and I didn't. It's Isaiah 14, verses 13 and 14. But this is what we learn about our adversary. You said in your heart, speaking of Satan, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. So we learn that he broke rank and would not be under the mighty hand of God. He has tried to get us to do that with him ever since. He started in the garden when he had this conversation with Eve, and they were talking about disobeying God's command. And he convinced her to break rank and not obey God when Eve said, well, if we eat of this fruit, then we'll die. And he said, oh, you won't surely die. God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God. You will now be above. And that's his plan, and she did. And now he tries to get us to break rank all the time. How do we resist that? Well, knowing that Satan wants us prideful. He wants us to not have a proper estimate of who we are. He wants us to believe things that are untrue. That helps right there. But also saying to myself, God's intention for me is to rank under him, to be obedient, to follow the plans that he has for me. And in that lies the protection. So I'll let you discuss and roll that concept around. But for me, I even told the Lord this morning. I was praying in the den, and I said, Lord, I am so prideful. It's so much easier to be filled with pride than filled with humility. Because I like to be the boss of me. Do you guys like to be the boss of yourself? Do what you want to do. It's much easier to be the boss of yourself than to say, God, you are the boss of me today. I will choose to rank under you. I will choose to do what you want me to do. Let's move on to verse 10.

By Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings. And so does Mark, my son. Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ. Now before we finish, I want to go back up to verse 7 in our lesson. And use this as sort of just a little reprise. Verse 7, the phrase, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. What a lovely thing to end on, right? So that's why I saved it for the end. But first of all, I want to point out what the context of this closing of this letter is. And the context, as these words were penned, is the challenge that walking in humility will provide to our lives. The challenge of actually doing that will likely generate anxiety in our life as we war against what we want to do. And questions and uncertainty. And this is when Peter says, oh, cast all those anxieties on the Lord. He will give you grace to do what you need to do. So the context of this casting all of your cares upon him is the difficulty of being who God wants us to be, of having a right estimate of ourselves, and actually being subject to. Think about the exiles. These people were in under foreign governments that were hostile toward their Jewishness or their Christianness. And yet it generated anxiety and care. And he said, cast those cares on the Lord. He's going to give you grace for where you are. So now we ask ourselves the question, is it fair to just lift that phrase up and sing a song about it and use it just in general in life? Cast your cares on him for he cares for you. Well, the good news is, yes. We may lift it completely out of the context and say, this applies to anything in our life. It doesn't only apply to the difficulty expressed here, but it applies to that really bad medical report I got last week. And it applies to all those situations. And the reason that we know we can apply that and say, cast your cares, your difficulties in life, your grief in life, the perplexities of life, cast them on the Lord. The reason we can do that is we know the character of God. We know that he is good. We know that he cares for all that he has made and that he is intimately involved in our lives. And so if we were to have drifted over here thinking God does not care and not having a right estimate of ourselves, we bring it right back and say, oh no, he does. He does care about all the things in your life. And so we can cast our anxieties upon him because he cares for us. So I just wanna end with Hebrews 4, 15 and 16, which says that same thing in a different way.

Father, thank you for that reminder. Lord, you are so good. And we just wanna absorb that. Lord, the things that we want to absorb is not only what you intend for us in that area of obedience, but Lord, today I just feel like we need to absorb just that awareness that your grace abounds toward us as we walk in humility toward you. Lord, your care abounds. toward us as we cast our anxieties upon you and Lord for that we thank you and we rejoice in you and we just thank you so much that as a group of women here we can realize these truths together we can remind one another of these truths together we can walk through life in a sense of humility having a proper estimate of who we are knowing that you care and knowing that you've prepared our eternal home we thank you Lord in Jesus name you