1 Peter 5.8, 9

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The Adversary

1 Peter 5:8, 9

3/14/99

 

Begin Slow, talk low.  Rise higher, take fire.

Introduction:

            You may have read the Reader’s Digest article that talked about the dangers of road rage.  It told the story of a mini-war that took place on one of America’s roadways that had a very tragic ending.  One driver did something he shouldn’t have done, and another driver reacted very negatively (and no the driver was not Dr. Raiford from last week’s sermon!).  Before long, the two angry drivers were racing side by side down the interstate.  One of the drivers even pulled out a map, drove up next to the other vehicle, stuck his arm out the window and slapped the other car with it.  The end of the story is that a fatal accident took place which changed the lives of many innocent people forever. 

            I was very interested in how a state trooper responded in that Reader’s Digest article.  He mentioned that to get into a mini-war on the roadways violated one of the fundamental rules of warfare.  The rule is “know your enemy.”  Know what he has.  Know what he can do. 

            I believe the same principle applies in the Christian life.  We must know our enemy. 

Big idea:  Effective Christians are alert to the presence of the enemy.

 

1 Peter 5:8, 9  (read it)

 

I.       The Identification of the Enemy  (vs. 8a)

II.    The Strategy of the Enemy  (vs. 8b)

III.  The Defense Against the Enemy  (vs. 8,9)

I.       The Identification of the Enemy  (8a)

A.    Peter calls him our “adversary”

1.     The word is used at times of someone who is legally against another person.  Here it seems to refer to an opponent in general.

2.     Satan is the sworn enemy of the believer. 

a.      Let’s get one thing straight right from the start.  Satan hates you!  Especially if you’re a believer.  His hatred runs deep for your Father, why shouldn’t it run deep for you?  Our Father banished Satan from heaven.  Our Father will one day sentence Satan to the lake of fire. 

b.     It would only make sense that Satan would seek to strike out at God by striking out at believers.  Satan can’t touch God.  But he can touch us in a very limited sense.    

c.      He see’s the children of the One Who has gotten him by the throat and he makes them a target. 

B.    Our adversary has several titles in the Bible

1.     He is the “devil” (vs. 8)  The name means false accuser or slanderer

a.      We see the devil in his prime as the accuser of Job.  (Job 1:9-11)

b.     In the opening chapter of that book, Satan presents himself before God. 

c.      God says to Satan, where have you been keeping yourself lately?  And Satan says, I’ve been roaming back and forth, up and down the earth. 

d.     And God says, “well, have you seen my servant Job?  Isn’t he a dandy?  He’s been faithful to Me!”

e.      Satan’s response is somewhat of a scoff.  “Job isn’t such a great servant!  You’ve blessed him so much, how can he help but serve You?  I could get him to curse You!  Let me have a whack at him, and he’ll turn his back on you so fast he won’t know what hit him!”

f.       And so God allowed Satan to do what he wanted. 

g.      But notice a couple of things. 

                        aa.  Satan was in God’s control

bb. Satan accused Job of serving God for selfish gain.  That’s why he’s called the devil.  It means slander, the false accuser.

cc.  Revelation 12:10 says that Satan is the accuser of the brethren “which accused them [the brethren] before our God day and night.”  He’s the devil.

The great thing about it is that while Satan is accusing, we have an advocate before the Father which is Jesus Christ the Righteous.  (1 John 2:1)

2.     He’s called many other things than just the “devil”

a.      He’s the Father of lies (John 8:44)

b.     John 8:44 also tells us that “He was a murderer from the beginning.”

c.      He’s called the tempter in 1 Thessalonians 3:5.

d.     2 Corinthians 11:14 states that he comes in disguise as an “angel of light.”

That’s a small wonder since one of his names-Lucifer- means “shining one” or “star of the morning.”

So we have a great enemy as believers.  He is powerful.  He should not be underestimated.  He is the devil, and he is a liar, a murderer and a deceiver.

II.    The Strategy of the Enemy  (vs. 8b)

A.    The comparison

1.     He hunts like a lion

2.     “walks about”-  prowls around. Always on the move.  Going from place to place, and he’s looking, watching, observing.

3.     He knows the proper time to move in for the kill.

4.     He’s a roaring lion-  Peter is using some words here that would communicate volumes to his readers.  They undoubtedly had heard about the lions that the Romans used in their coliseum.  It may be that even as Peter wrote this, there were some readers who knew of Christians who had been torn to shreds by the lions of the Romans, because they stood for Christ.  but the real danger lay not in the physical lions, because they could not touch anything but the physical part of man.

The real danger lay in the spiritual lion.  The devil.  He was the real enemy of the believer. 

5.     Notice that he devours his prey.  He swallows his prey.  He is thorough.  He gets everything he can get.  He is aggressive. 

So that’s the comparison.

      B.  The significance of Satan’s strategy.  How it affects us. 

His ploy is to be near you without you without knowing it.  To have his eyes on you when you are unawares.  To lie to you and make it seem natural, like the truth.  He’s the father of lies.  He’s deceptive. 

If you’re ever going to detect him, you’re going to have to be watching!    There’s more going on behind the scenes than you or I could ever imagine. 

He sneaks up on his prey.

Just as the army uses night vision goggles to see into the night, so the Christian has to have spiritual vision to see into the spiritual world.

The only One Who issues this spiritual vision is God Himself.  To get it, one must be in constant fellowship with God.

Be ready, you’ll likely find the work of Satan somewhere at some point of time in your life. 

Wayne Grudem has said this, “a. . .lion attacks suddenly, viciously and often when its unsuspecting victim is engaged in routine activities.” 

But there is one other point that has to be considered here. 

Context:  You have to wonder, why is Peter warning them about the devil?  Oh, I know, it’s always good to have a warning about Satan.  But there seems to be a deeper reason why he is warning them.  Something more at work here.

I think the reason he has brought up the subject of their adversary, is because it’s possible that Satan was working over time in their suffering.  We know Satan can only do what God allows, but it appears that Satan was roaming to and fro during this time of intense struggle to catch the stragglers so to speak.

We know from chapter one that this was a time of concentrated testing in regards to their faith.  Satan wanted to devour those who were lagging in their faith. He was tempting them to turn away from their faith in God.  Just like Satan was allowed to bring about suffering in the life of Job, and his purpose was to turn Job against God, I think he was allowed to test these New Testament believers.  He was watching over the testing process, looking for a meal.  His filthy fangs just drooling over the thought of tripping up a believer. 

            So Peter’s warning is very real.  Very pointed.  Very specific.  In times of intense suffering, watch out, Satan may be seeking to sift you. 

III.  The Defense Against the Enemy  (vs. 8, 9)

A.    Watchfulness  (vs. 8)

1.     “Be sober”

2.     “be vigilant”

3.     The devil is watching you, you should be watching him

4.     Keeping yourself tuned and alert at all times

B.    Resistance  (vs. 9)

1.     Notice that Peter does not say “go out looking for a fight with Satan.”  But he doesn’t say that we are to be filled with fear either.  But we are to be watchful, and when the time of attack comes, oppose Satan.

2.     James 4:7 says, “resist the devil and he will flee from you”

3.     How do we resist?

The armor of God is a good starting place (Ephesians 6).  Examining it, and putting it on.  One of the things talked about in Ephesians 6 to help fight Satan is prayer. 

At times we can tend to feel like resistance and watchfulness is too difficult.  Standing watch takes effort.  The armor of light may become heavy.  We don’t see the enemy so we take off the armor.  We fall asleep.  And that’s when the attack comes!

Sometimes we can be in the trap of Satan and not even know it!  I feel that his attack often comes by lulling us to sleep.  Making us into ineffective Christians.  Not tempting us to do some outwardly heinous sin.  We know that’s wrong.  But passiveness about the Christian life.  Dullness.  That’s different.  As long as Satan has us ineffective, he doesn’t necessarily have to do anything else. 

To be on the alert take energy!  To resist requires struggle!

If we are going to stay off the casualty list, it will take alertness, resistance with the armor of God. 

We’ve seen this morning

Big idea:  Effective Christians are alert to the presence of the enemy.

I.       The identification of the enemy

II.    The Strategy of the Enemy  (vs. 8b)

III.  The Defense Against the Enemy  (vs. 8,9)

Conclusion:

            I’ve referred on a few occasions throughout our study on the book of 1 Peter, to the events that took place in Nazi Germany.  And there’s a reason for that.  I believe that that time period more closely parallels the book of 1 Peter than probably any other time period in recent history. 

            Remember the old hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God?”  Do you remember its author?  Martin Luther.  Written by man who underwent terrible pressure from the Catholic church.  Written by a man who was willing to give his life for what he knew to be truth concerning Jesus Christ.  His tomb at Wittenburg has the first line of the hymn inscribed on it.

            But on November 13, 1933, Luther probably would have rolled over in his grave if he had known how his song was being used in the city of Berlin.  It was being played in a procession of Nazi supporting pastors.  Nazi flags were brought out and trumpets belted out the tune of  “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”  Clothed in the garb of the church, the Nazi movement was given a look of decency, and even looked as if it had God’s approval. 

            But the truth is Hitler himself was influenced by Satanic forces.  He invited these Satanic powers to become part of him, as he was deeply involved with the occult.  The forces working in that day were unquestionably the forces of Satan.  There is historical evidence that substantiates this. 

            But the question is, “where was the church?”  Surely the church took a united stand!  Well, no, it didn’t.  

            One man, tells this about his experience in Nazi Germany:

            “I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust.  I considered myself a Christian.  We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it? 

            A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks.  We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by.  We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!

            Week after week the whistle would blow.  We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp.  Their screams tormented us.

            We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns.  By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices.  If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more.

            Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore.  But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep.  God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians yet did nothing to intervene.”

            Where was the church in Nazi Germany?  I’ll tell you where it was.  It was sleeping. 

            Unwilling to be on the vigil against Satan’s work.  Unwilling to resist.  Content with shallow, apathetic, pathetic Christianity.  Silence.

            I believe that one of Satan’s biggest and most effective tricks is to cool down believers.  Lull us to sleep.  Make us ineffective.  Make us quit praying for people.  Make us quit talking on a regular basis to people about Jesus Christ.  Make us put our Bibles on the shelf.  You know why this strategy works so well?  Because it’s so comfortable.

            Comfortable to be silent. Comfortable not to put on the armor of God.  Comfortable not to be sold out for Christ.  Comfortable to be shallow.

Comfortable not to be alert to Satan’s ploys.  Comfortable not to resist.

And one day, believers will answer for the slumber of their souls. 

Lord, break the silence of our lives!

It is not until a person gets tired of his own shallowness.  Not until he desires a deeper Christianity, a real Christianity, that he will ever move to a new level in his walk with Christ.

So the question is, “where is the church in the face of Satan’s activity in this world?”  Are we asleep?  Or are we awake, vigilant, alert, alive, resistant?

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