1 Peter 5:6-11: Responding to Adversity

1 Peter 5:6-11: Responding to Adversity

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 1 Peter, and today the next passage we come to is 1 Peter 5:6-11. It says,

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we know that in order to rightly understand both what this passage is teaching and how it connects to our lives, we need the Holy Spirit. So please, send your Spirit to minister to us through this passage today in a most powerful way. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen. 

Life is filled with difficulties of various kinds—financial hardships, relational conflicts, health issues, stress at work, parenting challenges, feeling lonely or isolated, losing a loved one, and a wide variety of other situations that can be quite difficult to get through. 

And, of course, there’s no shortage of ways in which our secular society often suggests that we seek to get through these difficulties. One feature that many of these suggestions have in common is that they emphasize various techniques and methods. Just to give a few examples, a quick Google search reveals that some of the most common suggestions for getting through difficult times include engaging in mindfulness and mediation, seeing a therapist, replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts, surrounding yourself with positive people, getting on medication, joining a support group, and prioritizing various “self-care” activities such as going on a vacation, relaxing, and engaging in a hobby. These are the kinds of ways the world will suggest that we seek to get through difficult times. And I’m certainly not saying all of these suggestions are bad—though some of them obviously have more value than others. 

However, the Bible offers us something vastly superior. Whereas the world offers us techniques, the Bible offers us truths—specifically, truths about God and who he is and what he does for us. It all makes me think of someone who’s out at sea and gets caught in a storm and has their boat destroyed. In that situation, they’ll obviously grab on to whatever they can to stay afloat—whether it’s a piece of their wrecked boat or a random piece of driftwood or whatever it is. And that’s a lot like we see people in our predominantly secular society doing as well. In an effort to say afloat, they grab onto whatever techniques that are suggested to them that seem like they might work. Yet, in reality, these usually aren’t that much better than random pieces of debris or driftwood. What’s really needed is a ship—preferably a very large ship that can easily handle the storms that are often encountered out at sea. 

And that’s exactly what we find in the Bible. Ultimately, the Bible gives us a way to get through life’s difficulties that’s far superior to the random pieces of debris and driftwood we find in secular culture. As I mentioned, the Bible gives us God—and not just any god but an awesome God and a glorious God—the God of the universe. 

In the Bible, we read that this God is sovereign over everyone and everything. Nothing is beyond his power or outside of his control. Instead, he rules over everything and sovereignly orchestrates every detail of our lives to accomplish his perfect purposes. Not only that, the God of the Bible is a good God, who has blessed us with every good thing we enjoy, as well as a loving God, who loves us more than we could ever comprehend. It’s been said that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”—but that doesn’t apply to God. He has absolute power and yet is also altogether good and loving in all of his ways and all of his purposes. This means he always acts with our best interests at heart. 

And finally, the Bible gives us a God who’s not only infinitely powerful and infinitely good but is also infinitely wise. He never makes mistakes or fails to give adequate consideration to something but instead has a perfect understanding of everything and always operates in that understanding. I appreciate the way J. I. Packer defines God’s wisdom. He says that for God to be wise means that he’s always able to determine both the best ends and the best means to those ends. In other words, God has a perfect understanding of the absolute best goals to pursue and the absolute best ways of achieving those goals. He’s perfectly and infinitely wise.

So, as we seek to get through the trials in life we’ll inevitably encounter, the Bible gives us something far superior to the flimsy techniques and various self-help methods that our secular culture encourages. Instead, it gives us God. So, the best thing we can do in the midst of our trials is to cultivate a deeper knowledge of this great and glorious God—with a particular emphasis on his sovereign power over our trials, his absolute goodness in our trials, and his perfect wisdom behind our trials. As Psalm 46:1 reminds us, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” God himself is our refuge in the midst of whatever storms and trials come our way.

However, that being said, we do also find some practical guidelines in the Bible for how we can respond to the difficulties we encounter. And we find a few of those guidelines in our main passage of Scripture today of 1 Peter 5:6-11. The main idea of this passage is that Christians can persevere through adversity by responding to it in the proper way. Again, Christians can persevere through adversity by responding to it in the proper way. In fact, there are actually three ways in which this passage tells us we should respond to adversity—and we’ll spend the rest of our time this morning discussing these. 

Humbling Ourselves before God

According to this passage, the first way we should respond to adversity is by humbling ourselves before God. Now, the call for humility actually begins in the verse that comes just before our main passage—verse 5. Peter writes, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’” Peter then drives home this idea in verse 6, where he writes, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.”

Humility is a distinctly Chrisian virtue that’s based on the understanding that everything commendable about us and everything good we possess ultimately comes not from us but from God. As the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV), “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” When you think about, there’s nothing that’s as foolish or simply out of touch with reality as pride. 

I love the way the great nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon said it. I’ve taken the liberty of modernizing his language a little bit, but he essentially writes, “O believer, learn to reject pride, seeing that you have no ground for it. Whatever you are, you have nothing to make you proud. The more you have, the more you are in debt to God; and you should not be proud of that which makes you a debtor. Consider your origin; look back to what you were. Consider what you would have been but for divine grace. Look upon yourself as you are now. Does not your conscience accuse you? Do not your thousand wanderings stand before you, and tell you that you are unworthy to be called God’s son? And if God has made you anything, are you not taught thereby that it is grace which has made you to differ from others? Great believer, you would have been a great sinner if God had not made you to differ. O you who are valiant for truth, you would have been as valiant for error if grace had not laid hold upon you. Therefore, be not proud, though you have a large estate—[because] you once did not have a single thing to call your own except your sin and misery.”

Isn’t that good? I love how Spurgeon says that “the more you have, the more you are in debt to God.” And nobody’s proud of debt, are they? Nobody boasts of debt. I mean, just imagine a group of people boasting of how much student loan debt they have. One of them says, “I have $50,000 of student loan debt.” So, another says, “Oh yeah? Well, I have $100,000 of debt.” So, the third one says, “I’ve got you both beat. I’m carrying a student loan debt of $200,000.” How utterly ridiculous, right? Nobody in their right mind boasts of how indebted they are. Yet it’s just as ridiculous for us to boast of anything else—because every commendable thing about us and every good thing we possess ultimately comes from God and therefore only makes us all the more indebted to him. So, it’s with very good reason that Peter tells us to humble ourselves here in verse 6. 

And the thing about pride is that it always seems to show up in the most unexpected places—including when we’re going through a season of adversity. And that’s really the context in which Peter’s telling his readers in this passage to be humble. In the midst of their adversity, he tells them that they need to humble themselves. 

How is that? Why would Peter say something like that to these suffering Christians? Well, think about it for a moment. How much of our difficulty in accepting suffering is actually a form of pride? How much of our frustration and dissatisfaction in the midst of suffering is actually the result of us imagining that we have a better understanding of what’s best for us than God has? The fact is that we often don’t like God being in the driver’s seat of our lives and driving the vehicle where he wants it to go. Instead, we often think that we know better than God and therefore desire to be in the driver’s seat ourselves so that we can steer the vehicle where we want it to go. And that’s a form of pride. 

So, humbling ourselves in the midst of adversity involves admitting two things. First, “I’m not in control.” And second, “It’s okay that I’m not in control, because I don’t know what’s ultimately best for me anyway—and God does.” Humbling ourselves means accepting whatever suffering comes our way as what’s ultimately best both for God’s glory and for our good—even if we can’t understand it. So, in what specific area of your life do you need to do that today? In what area of your life have you been quietly questioning God’s wisdom—and therefore need to repent of that pocket of pride in your heart? 

I also appreciate how Peter says not only to “Humble yourselves” but to “Humble yourselves…under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.” This phrase “the mighty hand of God” is commonly associated in the Bible with God rescuing the Israelites from their Egyptian captivity. Just to give one example among many, in Exodus 5:15, Moses says to the Israelites, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” 

And according to Peter, Christians also can count on God’s “mighty hand” to one day deliver them from their trials as well and to, in Peter’s words, “exalt” them “at the proper time.” In some cases, that might happen to some extent during our earthly lives, and it will certainly happen to the fullest extent in heaven. So, humbling ourselves under God’s mighty hand means bowing to his wisdom in our earthly trials and believing his promises about the future. Our trials are momentary, but our exaltation will be eternal. 

Casting Our Anxieties on God

Then, moving forward in the passage, we find a second way in which we should respond to adversity, and that is by casting our anxieties on God. In verse 7, Peter continues the sentence he started in verse 6 and elaborates on the humility he just told his readers to have. According to Peter, humbling yourself under God’s mighty hand involves “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

Think about all of the things that often function as sources of anxiety in your life. Perhaps stress at work or unpaid bills or a medical diagnosis you or a loved one have received or relational friction with someone you know or the pressures of raising children or caring for aging parents or simply feeling overwhelmed with a busy schedule. According to Peter, we’re supposed to cast these anxieties upon God. In saying this, Peter’s actually echoing the words of David, who says in Psalm 55:22, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you….” 

Of course, it's not that we’re supposed to ignore a situation or live in denial of how bad it is or fail to deal with it in an appropriate way—but rather that we’re told to give the situation to God so that he bears the weight of it instead of us bearing the weight of it. Interestingly, the Greek word translated “casting” in verse 7 is the same word that’s translated “throwing” in Luke 19:35. The context in Luke is that it’s Palm Sunday, and Jesus’s disciples go into Jerusalem to obtain a donkey for him to ride. Then, once they find one, Luke 19:35 states, “And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.” The word translated “throwing” in this verse is the same exact word translated “casting” in our main passage. Just as Jesus’s disciples “threw” their cloaks on the donkey so that the donkey was the one now carrying those cloaks, we’re supposed to “cast” our anxieties on God so that he’ll be the one carrying them instead of us.  

We’re essentially saying to God, “This situation is too much for me to carry on my shoulders any longer. So, here: I’m giving this situation to you.” And that’s actually one of the main functions trials are meant to have in our lives in the first place. God allows trials to enter our lives in order to drive us to our knees, break us of our self-sufficiency, and teach us to trust more fully in him. 

And the primary way in which we cast our anxieties on the Lord is through prayer. This connection with prayer is clearly visible in Philippians 4:6-7, where Paul writes, 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to the Lord in prayer with what feels like the weight of the world on my shoulders and, by the time I had finished praying, I no longer felt weighed down in the least. Those of you who have experienced that know what an incredible feeling that is—to be totally free of the crushing weight that was once on your shoulders. As you leave the room in which you were praying, it kind of feels like you’re gliding instead of walking. In a sense, you don’t have a care in the world. Keep in mind, again, that it’s not that we no longer have an awareness of the situation we’re in or that we aren’t prepared to respond to it appropriately. But the crushing burden of the situation is now on God’s shoulders instead of ours. In Paul’s words, the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” is now guarding our hearts and minds.” And this is also what Peter’s talking about in verse 7 when he speaks of casting our anxieties on God. 

So, instead of fretting about things or allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed with worry or continually plagued with anxiety, what we should actually do is to take all of that energy we’d otherwise spend being worried and anxious and instead expend that energy in prayer. Pour out your heart God—and let him carry those burdens instead of you trying to carry them. 

And according to Peter, the reason we should do this is because God cares for us. Peter speaks of “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” So often, one of the biggest hindrances to us casting our anxieties on God is that we’re tempted to doubt his love and care. As much as we might try to not think about it, the question still lingers in our minds, “If God really cared for you, why would he let you go through this?”

Yet, just to be blunt, we know this question comes straight from the pit of hell because God’s already demonstrated his love and care for us in a decisive and unmistakable way through the gospel. The gospel is a message of God loving us so much that he actually sent his own Son Jesus into this world as a human being in order to rescue us from our sins. Left to our own devices, we’d still be hopelessly condemned in our sins and on our way to eternal punishment in hell. But Jesus came to our rescue. He did this by living a perfectly sinless life in our place that perfectly fulfilled the requirements of God’s law and then dying a sacrificial death in our place that perfectly satisfied the requirements of God’s justice. Essentially, when Jesus died on the cross, he was suffering the punishment our sins deserve. He suffered the full force of that punishment so we wouldn’t have to. Jesus was then raised from the dead and now offers to save everyone who will put their trust exclusively in him to do so. This involves renouncing our trust in ourselves and our own moral effort to make ourselves right with God and instead putting our faith in Jesus to cleanse us of our sins and make us right with God and give us the gift of eternal life in heaven. 

And again, this gospel message of what Jesus has done is definitive evidence that God loves us and cares for us more than we could ever comprehend. I mean, what clearer evidence of that could there be than Jesus voluntarily suffering the agonies of the cross to pay for our sins? So, the next time you’re tempted to doubt God’s love and care, remind yourself of what he’s already done to demonstrate the depth of his love and the extent of his care, and let the glorious truths of the gospel drive all thoughts to the contrary far away from your mind. 

And then, with that renewed confidence of God’s love and care, do what Peter says and cast all of your anxieties upon the Lord. So, let me encourage you: take a moment, even now, and think of a specific anxiety that’s weighing you down this morning and that you’ve been carrying on your shoulders. Maybe something related to your job or your family or your health or your finances or whatever it is. Now, cast that anxiety on the Lord with the confidence that he’s more than able to handle that situation and, quite simply, that he cares for you—more than you can even imagine. Let God carry your burden. 

Being Watchful for Our Adversary

Then, finally, a third way we should respond to adversity is not only by humbling ourselves before God and casting our anxieties on God but also by being watchful for our adversary. Look at verse 8: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” So, Peter tells us to make sure we stay alert—because danger is lurking nearby. Peter identifies this danger as our “adversary the devil.” The word translated as “adversary” was commonly used to speak of a legal opponent and could also be used of any opponent who had hostile intentions. In addition, the word “devil,” in its most literal sense, refers to a malicious enemy who slanders or attacks. And, of course, we know from other passages of Scripture that this devil is often referred to as Satan. So, we have an adversary—often referred to as the devil or Satan—who’s actively opposing us. 

Peter then describes what our “adversary the devil” is doing. He’s “prowl[ing] around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Now, most of us have only seen lions at the zoo. And usually—let’s be honest—lions at the zoo are pretty lazy. In the handful of times I’ve been to the zoo, I’m not sure I can ever recall seeing a lion that wasn’t taking a nap. Yet Peter has a much different image of a lion in his mind as he’s writing this verse. He’s picturing a lion that’s out in the wild and ravenous with hunger and prowling around looking for its next meal. It’s actively “seeking someone to devour.” So, let’s just take note of the fact that Satan’s goal isn’t simply to harm us or injure us. His goal is to “devour” us. He’s seeking nothing short of our total spiritual destruction. Satan’s on a very deliberate mission to destroy each one of us and our faith in God and our usefulness for God’s Kingdom.

And this is particularly important for us to be aware of when we’re experiencing seasons of adversity because Satan loves to go after us when we’re at our weakest. I mean, an injured animal is much easier for a lion to catch and devour than a healthy animal is. So, Satan loves to attack us in our weakest moments and during seasons of suffering in our lives. That’s the reason Peter mentions him here in the context of telling his readers how to respond to suffering. 

When we’re experiencing suffering, we’re especially vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. That’s why, for example, Satan tempted Jesus right as Jesus was at the end of a 40-day fast out in the wilderness. It’s because Satan thought, if there was any time he could get Jesus to sin, that would be the time. And Satan loves to attack us as well during what he perceives are our weakest moments. 

He does this in a variety of different ways. One way is through doubt. Satan tries to get us to doubt God’s goodness and love for us in the midst of our trials—and also to doubt the promises God’s made. Another way is through discouragement. Satan tries to get us to believe that there’s no end in sight to our suffering and that no good could possibly come through our suffering and therefore that we have no reason for hope in the midst of our suffering. Then, a third way Satan attacks us is by trying to stir up dissatisfaction within our hearts. Satan loves to remind us of all the things we don’t have and encourages us to idolize those things with the result that we grumble against God and resent God for not giving those things to us. 

And a final way Satan attacks us—and perhaps his most fundamental way—is through deception. Satan tries to get us to believe that our circumstances will get better if we’ll just take things into our own hands and try to deal with the challenges we face in ways that are contrary to God’s will. Maybe we’re going through a difficult time in our marriage, so Satan tries to get us to believe that we’d be happier if we got a divorce. Or perhaps our boss is putting a lot of pressure on us at work, so Satan tries to convince us that things would go better for us if we did something shady in order to get our numbers up. There are countless different ways Satan can try to attack us through deception. 

So, these are all different ways in which we should expect Satan to attack us—through doubt, discouragement, dissatisfaction, and deception. And we should expect him to attack us in these ways all the more aggressively when we’re already facing adversity. So, as Peter says at the beginning verse 8, we need to be “sober-minded” and “watchful.” Be on high alert. 

Along these same lines, Peter continues to encourage his readers in their battle against Satan in verse 9. Speaking of Satan, Peter writes, “Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” So, the most important thing is for us to be “firm in [our] faith”—that is, firm in our faith in both the gospel itself and in God’s other promises as well. Peter also includes an encouragement in this verse, reminding his readers that their situation isn’t unique. They’re not alone in the suffering and persecution they’re facing but instead are facing things that their Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world are likewise facing. 

Conclusion

And then, the greatest encouragement of all comes in verses 10-11. Peter writes, 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

You know, at the beginning, I said that the world mainly gives us techniques as a means of getting through our difficulties—whereas the Bible give us truths. And perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than here. The ultimate way in which Christians can persevere through whatever difficulties they might be facing is by remembering what’s in store for them in eternity—the “eternal glory” to which God’s called us and the time when God himself will “restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish” us in heaven. 

And I love how Peter says that our suffering is only for “a little while.” Did you notice that? Peter says that it’s after we’ve “suffered a little while” that God will bless us in these ways in heaven. In the moment, trials might seem as though they last an inordinately long amount of time. Yet even if they last the longest they could possibly last—which would be for the duration of our earthly lives—that’s still only “a little while” when compared with eternity. And one day, we’ll understand just how true that is. Just as the parents of an 18-year-old who’s moving out of the house and off to college might be amazed at how quickly 18 years can go by, all of us will one day marvel at how quickly our lives have gone by and how incredibly short life on this earth actually is. And yet, for the Christian, that won’t be on occasion of sorrow but rather an occasion of incredible rejoicing—because we’ll be entering into “eternal glory.”