Humility

1 Peter 5, verses 5-9 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. You may be seated. I'm going to remind you two things right now. One of them is, when a man stands up to preach, he has effectively one job, and that's to communicate what Jesus Christ's Spirit has put in the text to you.

It's not to promote myself. It's not to tell you my opinions. certainly not to tell you my stories of success or failure or whatever anything about me in that respect in that sense when you do that you're inevitably going to say things that are going to cut people a little bit unless of course well let me put it this way you're going to cut people and unless everybody in the room is dead some people are going to bleed and so when I preach the word of God to you there's going to be things that are said sometimes where your initial reaction may be to actually be angry. And so I want you to consider if God is the one that's speaking to you through the preaching, which is why sometimes things hurt us and sting us a little bit.

So if it makes you feel any better, I have to go through all the same stings and stuff. I just do it all before it comes into this room. And so there's a whole lot of confessing and repenting and things that happen in my private life through this study. that by the time I get here now, I'm just able to shout it and sound real confident in it. So don't read too much into that.

But thanks to the Lord, sometimes by Sunday, I feel like I've kind of got it at least understood for the moment. Secondly, I want to remind you that when we study the Scripture, one of the main things that we have to do when you're reading the Scripture at home, when you're looking at a verse and you're like, what does this verse mean, or what could this word possibly mean, is that you have to look at the context. This is why, for those of you who are taking the Greek class with me, one of the things we're going to find out is that the same Greek word used in different parts of the Bible is going to mean different things.

And especially the children in the room are going to want it to always be the same thing. And I think we kind of want that too. But context matters, you know. When we say things to each other, we very often say things, and we know exactly what we mean, and the other person knows exactly what we mean because of the context we're in at the time. And so understanding context is important.

So when we look at 1 Peter, chapter 5, verse 5, and Peter starts with the word likewise, and then he says, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. The two questions that would immediately come to mind are, what does he mean by younger and elders here? and why does he say likewise? And I want to tackle the likewise first. If you go back to 1 Peter chapter 1, which seems like forever ago now, but it really wasn't that long on a calendar.

In 1 Peter chapter 1, in verse 13, Peter said, therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you in the revelation of Jesus Christ. And he says, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. So we got this command to be holy.

In the midst of suffering and trials, we got this command to be holy. And I made a big deal out of this five months ago or whenever we talked about it. And I told you that the rest of the book is actually the outworking of this command. and so in the end of the first chapter we're told how to focus on Christ and think about the word of God in the second chapter of first Peter Peter begins by telling us that we're God's people and he relates that to the old testament temple and he teaches us about these living stones we are and then he tells us in verse 11 of chapter 2 to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against our soul.

And then in verse 13 of chapter 2, he says, Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. So we have this idea of submitting. Okay, well, you're a Christian, and you're in the midst of a difficult world. You're sojourning. You're in exile in a strange land. And he says, Submit to your governing authorities.

And then down in the end of chapter 2, verse 18, he says, servants, be subject to your masters. And then we went over what that means and we saw how Jesus was the perfect example of that for us. And then in chapter 3, Peter says likewise, wives. Tells wives who to be subject to, who to submit to. And then in verse 7 of chapter 3, tells husbands how they are supposed to live.

How a husband submits to God in a sense. Tells us in verse 8 of chapter 3, how all of us should have unity of mind and sympathy for one another and things of that sort. And so when we get down to chapter 5, verse 5, and I see the word likewise I just think it a continuation of these previous thoughts I don see any reason to think that likewise means something magically different than it meant in the other times he used likewise I think Peter is saying, like the servants that are subject to masters, like all of you being subject to governing authorities, like wives being submissive to husbands, like husbands living with wives in an understanding way, likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. he's telling the young people in the church what they ought to do.

Now, this is an interesting phraseology because the way you read it, it says, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. And the neat thing about being a Bible preacher when you study is you find out that all these other guys had these different opinions on what it meant. And I was telling Jason this. I said, it actually became very freeing because I can disagree with some of the greatest Bible expositors that ever lived because some of the other greatest ones who ever lived disagree with them too.

So I can have a little fun deciding what I think it means. But when you look at the verse 5, and it says, you who are younger be subject to the elders. There's two interpretations that you can get from this. One is that people who are in the church who happen to be lower in age, in their number, they have to basically listen to all the older people. and certainly it would be a generalization it wouldn't mean every single time and then the other way you can interpret that though especially in light of the fact that the very same word is used for elders in the first verse of chapter 5 presbyteros is that what Peter's actually telling people immediately after giving the elders the pastors the bishops of the church a charge of how they're supposed to act overseeing the flock and not domineering over them.

Immediately after doing that, Peter is following it up by telling the rest of the church basically how they're to function in submission to those elders. And that's the interpretation I take. I don't think it's a generalized thing where all the younger people submit to all the older people. I think it would be a weird way to phrase it if he just meant children and adults.

I think what Peter's following it up with is to say at this point you who are younger generally the younger crowd in the church is going to be the people who aren't yet the elders that doesn't mean that a young man will never be a pastor but as a general rule the younger people are the ones that submit to the elders and if you're an older saint in the church you're to submit to the elders as well but a lot of times some of the older saints in the church that have a little wisdom under their belt, even though they're not elders, they're the ones the elders kind of go to to get a little help sometimes. And so he's telling people, submit to your elders. I just told the elders you have a hard job.

And we're going to talk more about the elders' job when we get to a later verse. But he just gave the elders a charge of four verses, how they're supposed to act. Three verses, really. The fourth verse was a promise of what they'd receive when Christ returns. they gave them a lot of commands. And if you remember last week, we went and we read a bunch of the qualifications for elder.

We talked about the seriousness of these things. I asked each one of you to do homework and to read a document that describes what elders and deacons are supposed to do. And if you haven't read it yet, we have a bunch of copies of it. And I want everyone to understand what those things are. And because elders have these responsibilities, you're to submit to them. just like wives submit to husbands, just like we submit to our governing authorities.

And if you were here when we talked about all those things, we know that none of those things are submission in any type of absolute sense. When you see a situation where abuse has occurred, whether it's with spiritual abuse in the church, whether it's with a husband abusing a wife, whether it's with governments abusing their citizens, whether it's with masters abusing their servants or slaves, when we see abuse, what we see is people who have violated the scripture. But just because some people violate the scripture doesn't mean other people have to violate the scripture.

And so if you're in a situation where you're to submit to another authority, you need to see what that means. But let's continue. And then we're going to talk more about how to submit to your elders in a church when we get to verse 8 and 9. So Peter follows up this, Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders with, Clothe yourselves, and he says, all of you, with humility toward one another.

So Peter has gone from wives, husbands, and then he went to all of you, and then he came back to elders, and then he talks to the younger people, basically everyone else in a sense, and now he goes to all of you again. He says, clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. And he says why? For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

One of the interesting things here about clothing yourself is if you think about what that means, turn to Ephesians 4, 24. We're going to do a whole bunch of page turning now. I think my proudest moment will be when people in the church have to buy new Bibles because they realize, well, we're moving around too much and I need stronger pages. But let's talk about what it means to clothe yourself.

Everyone in here is clothed. Praise the Lord. There's nobody in here where I'm worried that we even have to worry about how much there is and stuff right now. But Paul says to the Ephesian church, after explaining doctrines to them of election and their salvation and Christ making the church one, he gets to this chapter four and he says, put on the new self. created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness But the point is that I want to draw your attention to is he says put on the new self You clothing yourself in something In Romans 13, Paul says something similar.

We could just go forever on some of these things. In Romans 13, 12, the night is far gone, the day is at hand. so then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. There's this idea of putting things on, of clothing yourselves, of covering yourself up with something. An Old Testament reference, Psalm 93.1. Some of you might know this one.

I think it's a... Chris Tomlin made a song out of it. I'm not necessarily promoting Chris Tomlin if you don't like him. I was just recalling that. Psalm 93.1. Yahweh reigns, he is robed in majesty.

Well, what does this mean? The Lord is robed. He is put on strength as his belt. You know, we have these references here. And so we know that God is without body. So it's not like there's this body that's putting on these things.

Okay, so we understand from our confession, God doesn't have a body. He's spirit. And so when he says he's robed, we have to make sense of this somehow. So if you want to be a strict Bible literalist, God's wearing a robe, and he's got a belt, and the belt is strength, and now it's getting weird, and I don't even want you to picture these things because it's idolatry.

The idea here is that God is covered in these things, in a sense. That there is a covering, that when you clothe yourself, you're covering things. Many of you have walked in here, and you're wearing clothing, but you're exposing some parts of your body praise the Lord everyone in this room is actually exposing their face right you go all around this country right now this is why you've got to understand context somebody listens to this sermon 20 years from now it might not make sense what I'm talking about because you all know exactly what I meant I'm talking about wearing a mask and people are clothing their face now they're covering it, they're hiding it they may not be thinking of it that way at the time, but that's effectively what's happening.

The reason why you wear clothes, some of it's to protect yourself from elements, but a lot of it's just to protect other people from you. That's why we wear clothes. Okay? Most of us, most of us, we're actually helping other people out by a little bit of modesty. And so what I want you to see here is that when Peter says, clothe yourself with humility, what he's saying is to cover yourself with it.

He says, you're taking your baser parts in a sense, and you're hiding them. We want everything we do to be covered in humility. Why? Because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Turn to Proverbs 3. This is actually a quote.

Proverbs 3.34. Proverbs is after Psalms. If anybody's watching, I just went the wrong way. Proverbs 3.34. humility. Humility is what God desires. Toward the scorners He is scornful, but to the humble He gives favor.

It doesn't sound the same as, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, but that's exactly what Peter was quoting in the Greek version. So, that's the verse. God is scornful towards the scorners. To the humble He gives favor. In Psalm 119, verse 21, the psalmist cries out to God and he says I'll give you a second to turn there I don't want to go too fast Psalm 119.21 You rebuke the insolent and accursed ones who wander from your commandments You take away from me scorn and contempt for I have kept your testimonies God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble He hates haughty eyes.

I couldn't help but think that Peter may have been thinking of Proverbs 16 when he wrote this section. So let's look at Proverbs 16, 1 through 10. We're actually going to see some similarities to exactly what Peter wrote. I won't say it was on his mind. But Peter knew the Scriptures. And the Holy Spirit, who was working through Peter, he absolutely knows them.

So in Proverbs 16 we have some interesting verses. Now let me give you a little tip about reading Proverbs. Most people read Proverbs like they open fortune cookies. So that's kind of the conventional way of reading Proverbs is we just pick one verse here and it's kind of like if you just printed all the verses separately and you put them on little slips of paper and then bake them into cookies and then every time you eat a cookie you open it and you have your proverb and you have one verse. and what I'll challenge you to actually understand is that if you read the Proverbs in whole chapters and if you actually study through them and I learned this from another guy, Dan Phillips who wrote a book on it that the Proverbs they're not independent thoughts just all randomly crammed onto a page together there's context there's context in these Proverbs when you read them and you read the beginning of a chapter and you read through to the end of the chapter and you start to see how it all works together.

And sometimes they're very different thoughts. You go from working hard to adultery in the same proverb maybe. There's some that are hard to figure out. But if you study through them, you'll start to understand the different ways that God's describing our lives. So in Proverbs 16, remember the context of what we're talking about is clothe yourselves with humility toward one another for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

And just to be fair to me I could do probably 30 sermons on pride and humility and at the end we all say well that hardly scratched the surface so I just going to do one All right So if I don't say the thing that you think is the thing that should be said about it, then just tell me after, we'll stick it online or something, but I'm not going to hit everything. But listen, the plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from Yahweh. So man plans things, but what this is saying is even what comes out of the man's mouth is not even completely controlled by the plans he made inside.

God's the ultimate one in control. In the beginning, the beginning of humility is recognizing who God is. So there's a famous phrase that most of you have probably heard. Humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. And everybody thinks that's a neat little thought.

And it's not terrible. But what I'm going to say is that any definition of humility that doesn't include having some awe-inspiring vision of who God is in your mind, it's worthless. Any definition of humility that your average pagan can hang around and repeat to each other and pretend that they think they're humble, that doesn't include recognizing Christ as the all-sufficient Savior and King of the universe, it falls short of the definition of humility.

Humility starts with understanding who God is. And then secondarily, having some idea of who you are in particular in relation to God. Now one result of humility may be that you don't think about yourself as much as you used to. But that's not the definition of it. Understanding that God's the sovereign one, that's where humility begins. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, verse 2, but Yahweh weighs the spirit.

I want you to think about this in the context of humility right now, because you're going to see that in a couple of verses. but again this is about us properly evaluating ourselves and God is going to look at our spirit we look at ourselves and we think oh we're not so bad or maybe we look at ourselves and we think we're pretty bad so we find somebody to compare ourselves to who's really bad and then we can feel a little better well you know I'm not like that guy and you know who's like the most famous bad guy right Hitler right? well I'm not Hitler you know that's our measurement of what a good person we are well I haven't exterminated 6 million people why don't we compare ourselves to Christ and the reason is because we fall short and it hurts us it hurts our pride and because we're faithless and when we actually do compare ourselves to Christ and we start to feel that pit of despair that comes from knowing how imperfect we are and how far short we fall instead of running to him we do what Adam did in the garden we want to cover it up somehow we clothe ourselves with our own righteousness rather than clothe ourselves with humility that was really the second sin you can count sins forever if you want to go in the heart but Adam's first sin was eating the fruit and his second sin was deciding he could cover it up with his own works of his hands hide from God might have been the third one you can argue the order of them I don't know how it all works he sent a bunch in his heart before it happened right but Yahweh weighs the spirit commit your work to Yahweh and your plans will be established well this is biblical this is what James says when he tells you to say if the Lord wills we will do this or that commit your work to God and he's going to establish the results. This is the humility. God opposes the proud who think, well, I'm going to do this or that.

We will go into such and such a place next year. We will do this or that, James 4 says. Right after James basically blasts people for pride, he quotes the same verse. Both James and Peter promise that the humble will be exalted one day. The proud will be cut down. And then verse 4, Yahweh has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked, for the day of trouble.

This is our favorite Calvinist, superlapsarian verse. So if you don't know what all that stuff means, I can explain it. But the point is this, the Bible says right here, God's made even the wicked for the last day. But the idea is not necessarily to win a debate on sovereign election. The idea is that God's sovereign. And you need to have humility because God's the one in charge.

And now here we get to the verse I really wanted us to see here in verse 5 of chapter 16 of the Proverbs. Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to Yahweh. everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to Yahweh it doesn't say everyone who marches in a pride parade is an abomination to Yahweh it says that technically we can extrapolate that from other scriptures but right here this isn't talking about the people that we are sometimes quick to say are committing abominations We go to Planned Parenthood. Our church had five men from this room go to Planned Parenthood last week and preach the gospel and stand for the children there and try to interpose on behalf of even the mothers and tell them about salvation.

And we can easily say that's an abomination. What happens there? It's abominable. And God hates it. Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to God. You know the same hell is reserved for prideful people as it is for abortionists?

Do you know that? The same hell. The Catholics standing outside, clothed in their own self-righteousness, they're going to suffer the same fate as the guy tearing apart babies. Pride kills us. And just because your pride, or someone's pride, didn't result in the same abominable outward acts as some people's do, that doesn't make you any freer of the wrath of God. or if you're a Christian today it doesn't mean that Jesus didn't have to suffer because of your pride good news though, verse 6 by steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for and by the fear of Yahweh one turns away from evil I'll give you a little hint, if you read the Old Testament every time you see the word fear of Yahweh Think in your mind.

Don't change it, but you can think in your mind. That's a reference to truly being saved. Truly loving God and being saved. Whenever you see the fear of Yahweh in the Old Testament, it's basically a reference to, like, here's a person that the Holy Spirit has regenerated and granted faith that a Messiah will come. And he will fulfill all of God's promises.

Look at verse 8. Suffering verse for you. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. Some of you aren't going to suffer because you stood up and said, I love Jesus and then someone said, well bake me a cake and you said, well I'm not baking that cake. It's not going to work out that way for some of you. It won't be so obvious.

You'll suffer simply because somebody knows you're a Christian. You won't even get a chance to stand up for something noble. Some of you will be asked to do things you don't want to do at work. You'll be asked to call people things that you don't want to call them at work. You'll be asked to lie. You'll be asked to call men women or women men.

Things like that. And it's not going to feel super noble. It says here, better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. So God's promising you that in your suffering, in your difficulty and affliction that you will face, it's actually better to maintain your righteousness and holiness. Let me read this quote. This is Albert Barnes.

God resists the proud. Okay, so let's get a good definition of what it means to be prideful. The proud are those who have an inordinate self-esteem, who have a high and unreasonable conceit of their own excellence or importance. This may extend to anything, to beauty, or strength, or attainments, or family, or country, or equipage, or rank, or even religion.

A man may be proud of anything that belongs to him, or which can in any way be construed as a part of himself, or as pertaining to him. now this is interesting this next phrase I'm going to read because this is a correction to sometimes what we think about when we think about pride maybe I'm the only one that needed the correction but I'm going to share it with you in case you made the same mistake I've made this does not of course apply to a correct estimate of ourselves or to the mere knowledge that we may excel others one may know that he has more strength or higher attainments in learning or in the mechanic arts or greater wealth than others and yet have properly no pride in the case. He has only a correct estimate of himself and he attaches no undue importance to himself on account of it. His heart is not lifted up.

He claims no undue deference to himself. He concedes to all others what is their due and he is humble before God, feeling that all he has and is is nothing in his sight. He is willing to occupy his appropriate place in the sight of God and men and to be esteemed just as he is. Pride goes beyond this and gives to a man a degree of self-estimation which is not warranted by anything he possesses.

God looks at things as they are and hence he abhors and humbles this arrogant claim. So the point was this, that knowing that you happen to do something better than somebody else is not alone pride. Pride is giving undue importance to yourself because of it. Knowing that somebody else realizes that they're doing something better than someone else doesn't mean they're prideful. so as you love your brothers and sisters and as you want to help people to deal with pride I hope we have a church that helps each other deal with sin I want to have a church where people are talking to each other about sin and they're saying hey I think here's an area where maybe you could use some improvement here an area where maybe your heart needs to be sanctified And I trying to tell you as a loving brother and we talked about that We talked about how hard this is It's very hard to be the person that's doing the giving end of that talk.

And if we don't have the humility to hear people out when they say it, and actually appreciate that they would say it to us in the first place, even if they're wrong, we're going to have a place where people will grow. but just because somebody happens to excel at something and maybe properly acknowledges that that doesn't mean they're prideful I think people can be prideful about those things but that's not the same thing as attaching undue importance to it there was an old, it was Muhammad Ali that used to say it ain't bragging if you can do it and I think he was a little prideful probably based on what we've seen of him but the point of the saying was true though he was the best. I mean, if you ask Tom Brady, are you the best quarterback ever? And he said, yeah, I think so.

I don't know if you can say, well, that's prideful. You know, most people believe that about some athletes, different things like that. God hates the proud. Proverbs 6, 16 and 17. He hates all the eyes, lying tongue. He hates a few things there. hands that shed innocent blood.

Back to 1 Peter chapter 5. God says it casts all our anxieties on Him. I have anxiety about looking at my clock and looking at where I'm at in my sermon. And I'm trying to cast it on Him. But in verse six, chapter five, Peter says, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God. There's no mistake here that I think immediately following the exhortation to elders that Peter says, humble yourselves.

I think one of the problems we have in 21st century churches, we have men who are unqualified to stand before a congregation and teach. men who are unqualified to disciple others or consider themselves leaders of the church, but because of their pride they allow themselves to do it and because they don't have the humility to grow in the process we've ended up with a nation full of churches that are functionally worthless. Places where people aren't being fed the word of God. Places where possibly real sheep are starving to death.

Because shepherds aren't feeding them. And so we all need to take this to heart. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, He may exalt you. This is the promise of God. This is the promise of James chapter 4, verses 6 and 7. We won't go there right now.

In verse 10, in James 4, if you look through James 4, it'll go over these things. But this is the promise that it's your humility in this life that's going to lead to the future exaltation. Isn't that exactly what happened to Jesus Christ? Paul tells the Philippians in chapter 2, you can turn there if you want, he tells the Philippians, let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others, right?

Right after he tells them to have humility of mind and not be conceited, and he says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself. So Jesus who has all reason to be as theoretically prideful as possible but he's not prideful it's not the right word but Jesus who should esteem himself as high as possible actually stepped out of it in a sense, right? Don't mistake my words there.

He didn't stop being God. But he took on flesh. He had a kenosis it's called. And he took on human flesh. He added humanity to his perfect nature. And being in the form of God, he didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and he humbled himself even to the point of death, death on a cross.

And then what? What's it say? Therefore, what did God do? Therefore, God is highly exalted, though. humility comes before exaltation. I think it's the first prayer in our Valley of Vision book. The way up is down.

You want to go to heaven one day? You want to be with God one day? You have to be humbled in this life. So verse 7, casting all your cares or your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. the humility that you have to understand that you have, that acknowledging God as the supreme being, God as the sovereign one, requires that you cast all your cares on him.

You can't simultaneously say, I'm humble before God, and then try to hold on to all your cares and anxieties like he needs you to take care of him This doesn mean that you don this is not a we not trying to tell you to perform inaction I'm not telling you don't do anything. You know, it's not like, hey, I need a job, so I'll just pray for it, because I'm casting my anxieties on God, and then I find out you're not applying for a job. That's not what the Bible teaches.

But we have difficulties and anxieties that Peter has referenced throughout the book. We have persecutions, tribulations, suffering, nakedness, affliction, sword, danger. All the day long we're being killed in Romans 8, we're told, right? We're regarded as sheep led to the slaughter. This is the Christian life. We lost our building.

And I have a small suspicion, I can't prove, that part of it just had to do with somebody figuring out what we teach here and was looking for any excuse just to not be associated with us. And I don't see that getting better right now. I see that getting harder. People with our doctrine, and figure this out before you join around here, people with our doctrine don't get along with a lot of other people that call themselves Christian.

There's other Christians that are going to call the police on people like us for the things that we're doing that we think we do in the name of the Lord. You have to be prepared for these things. Cast all your anxieties on Him. He cares for you. He cares for you. If you woke up every day for one week and you meditated on the fact that He cares for you, I think it would make a difference in your life. you can confess your sin you can pray you can read your whatever version of the bible you're in what chapter you're in right now if you do three chapters a day or all those things do your family worship go to work love your spouse do all the work you're supposed to do but maybe every day for one week meditate on he cares for me that god demonstrated his love for you while you were still a sinner by sending his son into the world to suffer and die the full penalty of the wrath for your sin.

And don't you dare for a second think that he who did not spare his own son is not going to also graciously give you all things. You understand? He cares for you if you're a Christian. And if you're not a Christian, you can't say that. You can go to 90% of the churches in the United States right now and have somebody tell you God loves you, just the way you are, they'll say.

But I'm here to tell you that according to the Scripture, if you are not a Christian right now, if you have not come forward and told people that you believe Jesus died for your sins, if you have not come through the waters of baptism and proclaim Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have no standing to say God loves me or cares for me right now. You are an object of His wrath. And you will suffer the due punishment for your sin if you don't repent.

But the good news is, He cares for His people and you will believe the Gospel. You can wake up every day and you can meditate on, He cares for me. What is it, four words? He cares for me. There's your homework. Last week I made you read a 30-page pamphlet by some guy 400 years ago wrote it.

This week is just meditate on the fact that God loves you. remember that truth and let it be the impetus for all that you do. Peter repeats himself a lot in this letter. It actually makes it really easy to preach. He's like, well, I already preached that. So in verse 8 he says, be sober minded. Be watchful.

He says, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. resist them firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world this is what I want you to understand if you study how lions hunt I see some people nodding they know where I'm going even here it's actually kind of neat to watch if you can stomach some of it but if you study how lions hunt and you listen to the people that have studied them, what lions do is lions kind of work together and they find their prey. And at the end of the whole day, when you have a big pack of wildebeest or rhinos or whatever it is lions feel like getting that day, they look for the weakest ones and they get them. When you have a big herd of antelope trotting along together, the one that's running a little slower than the other ones.

That's the one the lions go get. They get the easy one. They don't go to the front of the pack. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. The devil is looking for the Christian who not in the pack The devil looking for the Christian that kind of back a little bit maybe stumbling along maybe a little weaker the one that refuses to stay with the pack sometimes, we'll put it that way and so we're going to apply this submission to your elders here that when you have men in your life, and right now there's one man but hopefully, Lord willing we're going to have multiple men elders.

And you also have men in this room that are not elders and might not be elders that are certainly qualified to help each other with our lives. But people though who you've appointed in your life as the spiritual overseer of your soul, when they look at you and think I have to give an account for this soul. And what I see is I see the gazelle that's trailing back in that guy, that girl.

I see the person who if I was the lion that's the one I'd attack and when the person that you've given spiritual oversight of your soul comes to you and tries to give you a challenge in that area to try to protect you from being the one that gets picked off by the devil how foolish it is to ignore them how foolish can you imagine going to the doctor how unhappy you'd be if a doctor wouldn't tell you what was wrong with you? Particularly if he knew. Or a doctor that refused to run all the necessary tests.

You'd be angry. And yet a majority of Christians go to church and the person who's an analog to the doctor in the situation is the one they ignore when he has something to say. So submit to your elders. Give people a chance to speak into your life. Trust them. If you don't, don't elect them as elders.

It's kind of simple. But once you say, hey, you're our elder, give the guy a chance to actually perform the doctoral duties on your soul that you've appointed him to do. It's far more important than all your doctor's appointments for your physical body. And trust him. This guy's actually willing to go in between you and the lion. It's not like the wildebeest where the fast ones are just going to keep running.

And the lion's just going to pick off the one at the end or get a baby. A good shepherd is actually going to lay down his life for the sheep. And he did. And we've been asked to model him. Those of us who are his under-shepherds. And so help your under-shepherd out.

Let him lead you in the right direction. Let him keep the pack together. you can resist the devil because you're part of a larger group for more reading Psalm 18 has some good stuff there so humility is a virtue from which all other virtues flow and are sanctified for holy use so if you don't have humility all the other stuff you do is going to be kind of worthless the same is true for love that's what 1 Corinthians 13 was all about right that love is never arrogant. You need humility to be even loving.

To be an understanding husband, a dutiful wife, a willing servant, a useful sufferer, a helpful young person, or a blessing to your church as an elder requires that you're clothed with humility. It must cover all of your baser parts. This humility is also evidenced by our trust that our suffering is not in vain and that the Sovereign Lord will take care of us even in the midst of great difficulty and the devil's devices.

Shepherds are to watch for the devil and in particular care for even the weakest sheep. One error of pastors is to just minister to the people who are easy for them. The ones that are really growing and running fast with them. And so that's a challenge. It's a challenge for a church to look out for the people that aren't at the front of the pack in that sense.

Finally, understanding our place in the greater picture of redemption, we recognize that not only do we not suffer alone because of other believers. So remember what it said? Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. So the suffering you're facing, somebody else is suffering it too.

That's supposed to be somewhat comforting. You're not alone. But remember, not only do we not suffer alone because of other believers, we also recognize our suffering as identifying with Jesus Christ himself, who was therefore exalted after his humiliation and suffering. Father, help us to let these words dwell in our hearts this week. We know that you do all things well, Lord, and even through the imperfect vessels that you've chosen to preach your word, your truth can shine forth.

And so we ask that that would happen, that you would work on our hearts that we all may clothe ourselves with humility toward one another so that our church can glorify Jesus Christ. Amen.