Closing Words (Part B)

He says he walks around like a roaring lion. He's on the prowl. Lions roar.

Once you've heard it once, you always know it. Seeking whom he may devour. But get this, he can't devour everyone. Not because he doesn't have appetite enough.

Not because there's not enough room. But because God has strengthened his saints. That's what he was telling Peter, I've prayed for you. You're going to be victorious. You're going to return to your brethren and then you've got work to do.

And he's doing it. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1st Peter. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio. Specifically, how you can get a free copy of this teaching.

Today, Pastor Rick continues his study called Closing Words as he teaches through 1st Peter chapter 5. Within the confines of Christian teachings, this is what God is looking for. We don't have to puff ourselves up. We don't have to promote ourselves. We don't have to think more highly.

We already think highly of ourselves. It's just veiled in many sophisticated ways sometimes because of our frustrations. So with all scripture that has to say about this, I'm surprised that it ever took hold. But anyway, many of you, I'm sure, follow that because you want to submit to your leaders. And the Christian leaders are teaching us things. We want to follow and get it right. The problem arises when we're not very versed on the scripture and it's a process, not trying to be too hard or too light. That would undo everything I just said. It says that He may exalt you in due time.

There it is. God will lift you up. God will give us what we need. I mean, how does a person say, I feel a calling to the ministry knowing they are completely inadequate, ill-equipped, not qualified regardless of how much edumocation they may think they have.

I know it's education. I should say that because it's probably someone that, anyway, that He may exalt you. So I can speak for myself coming into ministry.

I'm just trusting God to fill in the blanks to help out. And He has. Sometimes not fast enough.

Sometimes He's let me fall flat on my face, at least in my perception, my thinking, so that He can get to problems. You said that too harshly. No one cares about your opinion on that. Yeah, I mean, this is my trip home. When you leave the sermon here, I know you're going, that was the best sermon ever.

You'd have to go to the Sermon on the Mount to beat that one. Me, I'm going, you idiot. I can't believe you said that. Okay, maybe you can clean it up next week. No, that would be petty.

So that's welcome to my world. Why are you so quiet? So in due time, He may exalt you. In due time, God will take care of these things.

Humility accepts the truth about ourselves. Not an easy place to get to. I'm in my position, okay? I'm not eloquent. What are you going to do then?

Well, search for what I have instead and just use that. And that is for all of us. In verse 7, He says, casting all your care on Him, for He cares for you. Again, persecuted Christians He's writing to.

He's fully aware. As I've been reading this, and this will come up towards the end of this letter, as I've been reading through 1 Peter this session, I get the feeling Peter's not in the trouble zone. He's not in the hot zone where he's getting the persecution yet. And this in no way disqualifies him from addressing it because he has been persecuted already and he knows his life will end violently through persecution. And so when he says, cast your care upon Him, he knows that there are those that are hurting the people of God that hate the people of God.

Now here we are in a relatively peaceful environment. We are surrounded by mostly Jesus lovers. But outside these walls, there are many people that hate that you love Christ.

They hate what He stands for. They don't mind letting you know this. And this is something that is to stir us to be concerned about lost souls. That our testimony would be good enough, it doesn't have to be perfect, we have to try to make it perfect, good enough to draw people to us. I mentioned earlier leaders, good leaders, I think they stir a desire to follow them.

I know when I find a man, speaking of my, I think back in my military days, I can remember the men that I admired and did not mind their orders, what they wanted to do. In fact, if they were going along, I was jolly about the whole thing. This is a good thing. It is something that we also want to use in preaching the gospel, where people want to hear from us. They want our opinion on a particular matter, whether it is political, or domestic, or spiritual, or to us everything is spiritual of course. And so, we tend to cast some of our cares on Christ.

I know I do. I try to cast them all. This Greek word for cast, it is the same Greek word, only found one other place in the New Testament by the writers of the New Testament who wrote in Greek. It is when Jesus, they put their clothes on the donkey for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday. They cast their clothes onto the donkey. And so, you are saddling Jesus with your problems.

That is a picture that comes out of this. And so, when you cast your cares on him, you give it to him. And the word for casting your care is anxiety. The translators could have used that word anxiety here. They did in Philippians, chapter 4, where Paul says, be anxious for nothing in the New King James. That same word, anxious, translated there in Philippians is the word used here for your care. Your anxieties, the things that spook you, and there's no shortage of them.

In fact, the line goes around the corner, does it not? Give them to Christ. Let him. You can fight your own battles or you can give them to God. And that does not mean that you will be ejected from your problem. These Christians, as I mentioned, will suffer escalating persecution, but the words that were written to them are no less true, accurate, and necessary. And so, may I never, may I never have self-courage enough to try to overcome my problems without Jesus Christ or contrary to Jesus Christ. We matter to God, even if we are being persecuted. Now, there's a warning that goes with this beautiful verse, casting all your care, for he cares for you.

I know as a Christian, a young Christian, I used to write verses down that I wanted to memorize on index cards, and this, of course, was one of them. But we cannot walk according to the course of this world and claim such promises. You get that. You cannot, God used something extreme and a little absurd, you cannot be actively robbing banks, and while you're doing that, saying, I'm casting all my care on the Lord because he cares for me.

You cannot claim that promise. So that leaves you and I to fill in the blanks. Is there any course of this world that we're not getting out in the open before the Lord? Yeah, I mean, you know, we struggle with things, but we take it to them.

Lord, you know I have this problem, and I hate it, and you hate it, and I'm working as hard as I can, and just please help. Well, that person can cast all their cares on the Lord, but the one who is ignoring what they're doing and they know it's wrong and still want to come claim Christ, yeah, you got an issue there. Well, let's get back to some of the teaching part of this as I've been giving application, I hope. In verse 7, we have what the Good Shepherd does. He cares for us.

We cast our care upon him. In verse 8, we have what the enemy does. In verse 9, we have what the disciples do. And then in verse 10, we have what God will do.

And that's something that Peter arrived at without even trying. You see, when you do a book, you outline, you think it through. But when you do a letter, we tend to just let it flow. Sometimes we may sketch a little, first I'm going to do this, I'm going to hit that. This is a letter that he is dictating to Sylvanus, the amensaurus of the letter, the one writing the letter. I told you about that eloquent stuff. And so here he is just speaking it, just saying it. He might be pacing back and forth, he might be lying on a cot, he might be having a yo-yo in his hand, just bellowing it out.

Not likely. But, and so I think the reason why I point that out is because scholars come along and they find, they discover these, look at that, God is speaking in verse 7, the enemy is doing in verse 8, then it's genius. Well, who's the author and finisher of our faith?

Who is the author of these things in the scripture of the Holy Spirit? Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Be sober. Or be something else. What is, if you're not sober, then what are you?

It doesn't take a very intelligent person to figure that one out, we all know the answer to that. The enemy is going to be sober in his attacks on you, we better be sober in response. Otherwise we're destabilized. And he will take advantage of that. When we get to the second letter of Peter, and he deals with these false teachers in the church, we'll find that they take advantage of destabilized Christians.

They make merchandise of them, they exploit them, they gobble them up. A professed believer who has not matured over time becomes a delicacy for forces that are harmful spiritually, if not to them, through them. We don't want to be that person. So he says be vigilant. Stay awake, that's the Greek word, that's the meaning, stay awake.

Or be careless, lazy, indifferent, and foolish. That's the opposite, I don't know if you're not vigilant, then what are you? How much New Testament energy is packed into that word for our thinking and our living? Vigilant. How much potential for Christ's likeness is in that word? Matthew, Jesus speaking, Mark pardon me, Mark chapter 13 verse 37, Jesus said, and what I say to you, I say to all, watch, it's just how he says it.

What I'm telling you, I'm telling all my people, that's those living then, those who would live later, we today. Watch, pay attention, no time for sleeping because there's a reason why. You're adversary the devil. I remember when I was in boot camp and the last part of it, you know, you have to play war and you're at night and you're on an island and there's more bugs than you can shake a stick at and I was determined to not fall asleep, I didn't want to get caught, but that would be death. The drill instructors were allowed to shoot you dead if they caught you sleeping on your posts, no they weren't, but it felt like that, but anyway, I was determined to stay awake and not scratch because I felt like, you know, I joined it, I may go to war one day and I may be laying an ambush for somebody or hiding, you know, you want a tip, don't sneeze when you're hiding and I don't want to give my position away and for the first 20 minutes it was brutal, bugs were just capitalizing on, then everything went calm, just like, this is kind of nice, too bad I don't have some beans. Anyway, I stayed awake and I watched, to this day you can tell I'm very proud of myself here. Humility, we can get back to that later, well that was in the other verse, it's not in this verse. It was an accomplishment, that kind of pride. I didn't go back and say, did you guys scratch?

Bunch of losers. No, I didn't do that. And what I say to you, I say to all, watch, because your adversary the devil. Peter would recall, the devil, once speaking through him and Jesus calling him out in front of everyone.

How humiliating. What could you imagine Andrew, his brother, going, Peter, he said you're the devil. I heard him, I was there, don't try to deny it. Get behind me Satan, you're not mindful of the things of God but of the things of men, what?

How much is in that? Peter knew that Satan also asked for him, there was more. Luke 23, Jesus said, Simon, Simon, and you know when they repeat your name, as with any parent, there's something serious coming. Simon, Simon, indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. And of course, what would you say at that point? I know what I would say, and what did you say when he asked for me?

I have a vested interest in this. So the Lord goes on, but I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail, and when you have returned to me, strengthen your brethren. And so he knew something about the works of the devil when he says, because the adversary, your devil, he also saw the devil gobble up Judas Iscariot. He saw that, and he heard Jesus say, watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, so watch.

He says, he walks around like a roaring lion, he's on the prowl, the lion's raw, once you've heard it once, you know, you always know it, seeking whom he may devour. But get this, he can't devour everyone. Not because he doesn't have appetite enough, not because there's not enough room, but because God has strengthened his saints. It's what he was telling Peter, I prayed for you, you're going to be victorious, you're going to return to your brethren, and then you've got work to do.

And he's doing it. He is strengthening his brethren. Satan the predator, devouring others to feed his hatred, but he can't devour everyone. Well, who can he not devour, as I said?

Those who have set a watch. Verse 9, resist him, because you can't kill him. That would have been nice, but you can't. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. The writer to Hebrews says, remember the prisoners as if chained with them, those who are mistreated, since you yourselves are in the body also.

Don't lose sight of this, the brotherhood, the suffering that we endure. So, resist him. Any other suggestions for fighting the devil?

It's the only one I know that works. You will still take some hits, but without the resistance, you will be gobbled up. The God resists the proud, we are to resist the devil, resist the devil, but flee youthful lusts. You can't really resist that, you've got to run from it, as Joseph gave us an example. Steadfast, that's a firm commitment.

I'm not going to negotiate, I'm going to stand as best I can. Satan has one target that he continually aims for, you and I, and that is our faith, to break it down. If he cannot kill it, which he will try to do, if he can just ruin it.

And he does a good job, if you're not watching. He says, in the faith, true faith, never contrary to truth, tonight we'll be discussing the pattern and the presence of God. The pattern and the presence. The presence was the tabernacle, but it had to be according to the pattern that God gave Moses. You just can't make up.

Well, you know what, I don't like the whole goatskin thing on the thing, what I was thinking was this nice silk, you just can't do that. And many try, and so they end up with either the pattern, but no presence, or the presence and no pattern. They either have, they have a mess, is what I'm saying. They feel like they have God with them, but it's not according to God, so he's not with them.

Or they, it's just a mess. I'm trying to preach this evening sermon before we get there. Hey, then I have the night off. In fact, I'll weave them in together.

All right. Knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world, the persecution that was expanding throughout the Roman Empire, I do believe Peter is physically in ancient, the ancient area of Babylon, we'll cover some of that, some don't believe it, and they're wrong, of course, whenever they disagree with me, you know that. Satan attempts to destroy the church through terror, and he will attempt to destroy you on an individual level. He can't get to the church here, he'll try to get to you, to destroy you through terror. Second Thessalonians 2, for the mystery of lawlessness, don't try to figure it out after a point, is already at work, only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. That he who restrains this mystery of lawlessness is the Holy Spirit, and when the rapture comes, the Holy Spirit will be withdrawn, not absent, and the church will no longer, the true church will no longer be the apostate church which is being developed now, which is more than ever, globally, the apostate church will remain, and thus the woman rides the beast. Verse 10, but may the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. Grace for living, grace for dying. Grace to deal with the penalty of sin, grace to deal with the power of sin. What is grace?

Well theologians have struggled to define it with words. Close, the closest I think we can come is it is undeserved kindness from God. But grace again is one of those things that has to be worked out. It's worked out when we show it to someone else by withholding retaliation and by releasing gifts, blessings to others. Grace is a big deal. One of the best illustrations is if a policeman pulls you over and he says, you were speeding, but I'm not going to give you a ticket, that's mercy. He is withholding a justified punishment. But then he says, as a matter of fact, I've got two tickets to the ball game I'd like to give you.

Box seats, right in back of home plate. That's grace. And that is also something that I like to receive. And I'm amazed that sometimes I can pull it off. Badmouth the Holy Spirit says he's never shown grace through me. He has. He gets the glory. But I know something about grace, and I think it is so unnatural to us in the character of Christ that it has to be like any other great attribute of Christ.

It has to be practiced to be developed. There are those people that are just full of grace. If you ever met someone, man, you can't say anything bad about that person. They always make you feel welcome.

They never overstay their welcome. Grace to hate or not to hate. Well, grace is to not hate those who offend us. The natural man just said, well, what do you expect me to do? It was only natural.

That's right. You spoke it, brother. It was natural.

It was not spiritual. Grace gets us home to heaven. He says, who called us by his eternal glory in Christ Jesus. Peter keeps reminding them in the face of persecution about the glory of Christ Jesus.

It is serious. It's a serious step back to lose sight of the revealed character of Christ as it is given to us in the scripture. That's how cults are born. That's how heresies and apostasy begin to take place in lives. When they lose sight of the character of God full of grace and truth and we beheld his glory, John said. He says, Peter does in verse 10, after you have suffered for a while. Well, there's nothing he could do to stop it.

So rather than curl up in a corner, he was going to do what he could to brace them for it. And he reminds them that this will pass later after this persecution, maybe 40 years or so. There will be another strong persecution come their way, the church. Jesus wrote to a church. He wrote to the messengers of the church. Now, when you go to a service, you say that was a good message because of the messenger. Well, the messengers of the seven churches and revelations are not the spiritual angels. They are the pastors who deliver the message. And so he singles them out. Whatever the flock is doing wrong, he addresses the minister.

He says to the angel of the church at Ephesus, to the angel of the church at Smyrna. Well, to Smyrna, who was not going to receive rebuke, Smyrna in Philadelphia, he said this, do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. I'm telling you, I don't like suffering. I don't like humidity. I don't like mosquito bites.

I do not like suffering. I don't know how I made it this far. We're so glad you tuned in today to study the book of First Peter on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. And we're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information about this program or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick, please visit our website crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music or your favorite podcast app. We hope you'll tune in again next time to join us as we continue our study through the scriptures right here on Cross Reference Radio.