The Enduring Church - Dec 29, 2024 (Jordan Wilcox)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Awesome.

And uh yeah, I do just want to start by saying it's it's so good to be here with you guys.

And uh yeah, likewise, I could you know reciprocate a lot of what Miles said, thankful for his friendship and his example.

And uh just want to encourage you guys that when I, you know, when I chat with Miles and hear the things that God is doing here in this congregation, um, that's encouraging to me.

It feels uh like home here in a lot of ways, because our church in Northbury is very similar.

We meet in a gym.

I I'll admit I had a little bit of gym envy when I walk in.

I don't know if that's just a church plant thing.

So maybe uh, I don't know, I know we see the weaknesses in our own space, but I came up, man, this is awesome.

And it's just good to good to be here with you guys to uh to worship and to see what God's up to here.

Um if you have your Bibles with you, I would love it if you'd open those up with me to the book of 1 Peter, chapter 5, and we're gonna be this morning in verses 6 to 11.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

So this is right towards the end of Peter's letter, and I'm gonna start by reading that.

And maybe um, Miles said, you guys have done this a few times, so maybe as we read God's word, we could just stand together as we read that, and then you can grab a seat after I finish reading and we'll we'll get into it.

So this is 1 Peter chapter 5, starting at verse 6 down to 11.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

It says this.

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.

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.

To him be the dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

You can grab a seat.

So in in uh 1952, uh a long-distance swimmer by the name of Florence Chadwick set out to become the first woman to swim from Catalina Island, which is off the coast of California, to the mainland.

So that's a that's a distance of roughly 26 miles, which is significant.

Um, and so as she set off from the island that morning, she was joined by uh a number of small boats that were kind of rowing along beside her, cruising along beside her.

Um they were watching out for her safety, keeping her on course, uh looking out for sharks, and just kind of generally being there for her in case anything came up.

Now, about 15 hours into the swim, which is kind of mind-boggling.

Like, just imagine doing anything for 15 hours, let alone swimming.

It's hard for me to comprehend.

But 15 hours into her swim, um, this thick fog set in.

And the fog was so thick that she could she could barely see the boats that were just like meters away from her traveling alongside of her.

At one point, um, she begged to stop and be taken out of the water.

Um, but her mother, who was traveling with her in one of the boats, um, convinced her to continue, saying that she could make it, to keep it up, and so she did.

She kept going.

But eventually, um, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and they pulled her out of the water.

And it wasn't until she was out of the water and onto the boat that she discovered that she was actually less than half a mile away from the shore.

Can you imagine?

She had come so close to her goal and yet had given up right as she was about to cross the finish line.

Um, today we're gonna be we're gonna be spending our time going through a portion of Peter's first letter that comes right at the end of his book.

And if you are familiar with the context of 1 Peter, you know that uh Peter writes this letter to Christians in Asia Minor in the first century who were struggling with the pressures of living life in a hostile world.

And so, right away in his introduction, uh he calls these Christians elect exiles, which is, I think, just an awesome way that we understand ourselves as Christians.

We are elect, we are chosen and loved by God, and yet on the other hand, we're exiles in the world.

We don't really belong here, right?

You feel that.

We feel strange for our allegiance to Jesus, and sometimes we experience pressures from the world because of our convictions about who Jesus is and what he's come to do.

And so Peter's writing this letter to these sort of uh struggling Christians, and as he comes towards the end of the letter, I think the key issue on Peter's mind as he wraps this up is the endurance of the flock.

I think Peter wants to make sure as he closes out this correspondence, he wants to set these Christians up to be able to endure the suffering and the persecution that they're facing from the world around them and to be able to endure those things that they will face in the future and ultimately to be able to make it to the end.

And I think, honestly, that's that's the sort of thing that we need today, isn't it, as well?

Not just a you know, a kind of motivational speech that will fire us up for a moment, but we need a vision for the long road ahead, for what Eugene Peterson referred to as a long obedience in the same direction.

We need a vision for the enduring church.

I think, you know, I think a lot of us will be familiar with the fact that often it's it's not getting started on some sort of project or endeavor that's difficult, right?

It's actually getting started is often the easy part.

It's actually finishing that and seeing that through to completion where we find our challenges.

In fact, I'm gonna throw you know Miles and myself under the bus a little bit, but um he and myself and a and a fellow pastor friend of ours last year around this time started chatting, and we were like, hey, you know, in 2024, we're gonna set goals and habits and we're gonna hold each other accountable, and we're gonna do this together, and we are gonna crush 2024.

And I was looking back at our text thread, and on January 3rd of 2024, we're going, we're sharing files, and uh, we've got all these things, sharing our goals and all these things going on, we're giving feedback, and we're just like set up to succeed.

And then the next text on that thread came on November 28th.

Okay, so so we're talking like by my count, that's like almost 330 days later.

January 3rd, we're like, here's what we're gonna do, hold each other accountable, and then November 28th, our friend kind of sheepishly peeps up.

He's like, hey, about those goals, right?

And so I and I think we we feel that dynamic as we approach the new year, this temptation to get going on things that we can't finish.

And we can laugh about New Year's resolutions or goals because at the end of the day, maybe they're not the most significant thing.

But when it comes to following Jesus in the world, this is significant.

And I and you know, I don't have to paint this picture too clearly.

You guys, you guys know intuitively that following Jesus in this world is not always easy.

In fact, it you know, it often feels much more like a grind.

And there are seasons when it can feel like you're following Jesus in the midst of a thick fog, you're not sure where the shore is, you don't see the boats alongside of you, you've lost your orientation, all of those things going on, and I'm sure a lot of you know people who were once seemed to be following Christ, who who maybe sat in these chairs and yet slowly over time just drifted away from Jesus and drifted away from the gospel.

And so the question is how do we how do we endure, how do we make it to the end as followers of Christ?

Knowing that how we finish matters, how do we make it to the end?

And I think this is the question uh that Peter is is answering for us in 1 Peter 5 as he lays out his vision for the church that endures and how we endu that.

So as we as we make our way through that, I think we're gonna see kind of three movements and three things that Peter wants us to see that are essential if we are to make it, if we are to endure.

First, um, I think Peter thinks we need a humble trust.

Second, we're gonna need a watchful resistance, and then third, uh a patient hope.

And so we're just gonna work through those things in order as we walk through this text and uh just invite you to track with me as we do, starting at verse six.

Listen to what Peter says there.

He begins this section by saying, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all of your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

Now, if you were to just look in your Bibles and look back to uh verse five of chapter five, you'll notice that Peter is picking up the same theme that he had just closed this first part of chapter five with.

And there he was addressing the church.

He was addressing elders and members of the church as a whole, and he was saying to them, here's how the church really thrives.

It thrives when both elders and members act in humility towards one another, when they consider others ahead of themselves, when they humble themselves under the Lord.

This is how the church is really going to thrive, quoting from the book of Proverbs.

And so now, as Peter is entering into this final exhortation, he's pulling from that same line of reasoning and thought to equip us to endure.

And so he says, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

Now, I think we need to understand that whereas in the previous passage, Peter was addressing relationships within the church, I think now he's moving into the train not so much of interchurch relationships, but how the church humbles itself with regard to the world around it.

And I think the idea here is, church, you are gonna need to show humility in order to endure maybe the suffering or the mocking or the slandering that you received from the world outside of you.

This is like it's a humbling thing to be treated as exiles in the world.

And Peter's saying, listen, church, this is this is just our call.

There's gonna be a day when God exalts us at the proper time.

That time is not now.

Now, our job as followers of Jesus is to patiently accept and receive that this is part of the journey that Jesus has called us to ask, uh to walk as we pick up our crosses and as we follow after him.

But there's something I want you to notice here.

Watch what Peter goes on to say.

He says this: he says, casting your anxieties on him.

Now, I think we need to see that that phrase is not a it's not a separate command.

We might, you know, we might read this as if Peter's just listing off here's what you gotta do, humble yourselves, and then here's the second thing you gotta do, cast your anxieties on God.

Um, that's not that's not how the flow of thought goes.

If you pay attention, you'll notice that the language Peter uses there, he's saying that casting your anxieties on God is connected to the initial command, which is to humble yourselves, right?

And so casting our anxieties on God functions to further define what it looks like for the church to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.

So you might say, How do we humble ourselves?

Peter would say, cast your anxieties on God.

Now notice that uh Peter assumes that most or all of these believers in Asia Minor in the first century have anxieties, or we might say have cares or worries or burdens that they they bear from day to day.

And I think probably foremost on Peter's mind is the anxiety that comes from, again, living as exiles in this fallen world.

One scholar speaking about this dynamic said it like this: He said, Many anxieties result from professing faith in Christ in a polytheistic society that is hostile to the exclusive claims of the gospel.

The loss of status and respect, the loss of family standing, loss of friends, perhaps even loss of one's livelihood, and in extreme cases of one's life.

These are real possibilities for the Christians of Asia Minor.

So those are the sorts of things that the churches were facing there.

Basically, their whole social and economic lives could have been pulled out from under their feet at any moment.

And I don't know about you, but like if I'm in that situation, that's gonna cause some sort of worry or some sort of fear.

And I'm guessing that even in this room today, some of you guys, you know, depending on where you work, um, depending on who your family is, whether or not they know and love Jesus, some of you guys might hear these things and say, I get that.

Right?

I I feel those same sorts of things where if I were to maybe explicitly speak up about my faith in Jesus in the workplace in certain contexts, that would not go well for me.

Like there'd be conversations with my employer where they would say, That just can't happen here.

And if it continues to happen here, you're gonna have to look for employment elsewhere.

Some of you guys might know what it's like to have family members that when they heard that you put your faith in Jesus, like instantly, we're like, What are you doing?

Like, what is going on?

And and you felt that the distance and that separation as they kind of pulled away from you because of your newfound faith.

But my guess is that in this room, you know, in addition to that, there are a whole host of other reasons that you might be tempted to worry.

So I think, you know, we worry about our kids, we worry about our careers, we worry about our financial situations, we worry about our health, we worry about our reputation, we worry about politics, we worry about the economy, we worry about the state of the world and housing prices, we worry about all sorts of things.

What is it for you today?

If you were to just take a second right now and uh and pay attention to the things going on in your heart as you you walk into a space like this on a Sunday morning, you know, the burdens that you carry.

And if you were to try to just put your finger on a few of those and document those and just bring them to mind, what would be at the top of the list for you?

Now, with those things in mind, I want you to think about this image that Peter is giving us again.

Peter's saying, when those specific fears and worries and anxieties arise, when the prospect of being mocked for your allegiance to Jesus begins to weigh on you, here's what you do: you you take the worries and you cast them onto God.

That's what Peter says.

Maybe it'll be helpful for you to imagine.

Um, just picture this image with me, that you live your life carrying with you a backpack of sorts that you carry that is filled with the weight of those sorts of things, whatever that list is for you.

Right?

And I'm guessing that um most of you, you know, when I use that image, you know exactly what I'm talking about, right?

Just this feeling of weight that's kind of always there.

Sometimes you forget about it in a joyful moment, and then as that moment recedes, the fear and the worry and the weight just kind of slowly seeps back in.

You know, in some seasons it might feel lighter, some seasons it might feel heavier, certain seasons that weight is gonna feel unbearable, but it feels like a weight on your soul, these worries and fears that we carry.

Peter's saying, here's what you do.

When you fear, when you feel those worries arising, you take that backpack of burdens, you take it off of your back, and you cast it on God and you let God carry it for you.

You might be thinking, well, which ones do we cast on God?

Peter says, All of them, every single one, big, medium, small.

You take all of those fears, all of those worries, anxieties, you cast it on God, and instead of carrying those yourself, Peter's saying, you let God carry them for you.

So I think it's an amazing image that Peter's saying God wants to bear your burdens.

Isn't that awesome news?

That we serve a God that's like, listen, that's that's too much for you.

I don't want you to, I don't want you to bear the weight of that your whole life.

Here's what you do give it to me.

I got it for you.

Like I just find that amazing.

Now we're we're gonna we're gonna come back to this in a bit, but um, there's an implication of this that I think it might make us a little bit uncomfortable depending on where you're at in the room.

But I think it needs to be said.

Um, the implication is this if humility looks like casting our cares on God, I think Peter's saying it means that holding on to these worries and cares and anxieties is a form of pride.

You with me?

Scholar Tom Schreiner said it like this worry is a form of pride because when believers are filled with anxiety, they are convinced that they must solve all the problems in their lives in their own strength.

Listen to this.

The only God they trust is themselves.

I don't know about you, but when I read that, I just thought that was so insightful.

And if you really think about it, often anxiety or worry is a symptom of thinking too highly of yourself, right?

And in your own ability to handle the situations that God has placed you in, we overestimate the amount of control that we have, the amount of agency that we have, our own ability to handle the situations in our life, and therefore we feel the weight and we feel the fear when things aren't going the way we want them to.

When faced with situations that are worrying, we essentially say, I am the only one who can be trusted with these things.

I'm the only one.

If I let someone else carry these for me, somewhere along the line, they're gonna drop the ball, and so so I've got to do it.

And I I wanna be I wanna be really careful here.

I'm not I don't want to say that to like beat down on people uh who you might be here and you you might just say, Man, I struggle, struggle with worry all the time, and I don't want to be the person that's up here, it's like this is a sin.

But I I do think that you will not hear this from anyone else.

Like the Bible is is committed to speaking the truth, and you're not gonna hear what Peter is saying from many other voices in the world today.

And I do think that until we allow ourselves to begin speaking about this at the level of the heart and the things that are going on there, we're not gonna be able to properly diagnose the problem.

And I think this is why Peter says what he says next.

He says, casting all your anxieties on him.

Why?

Why do we do this?

Why should we let God carry our worries and our burdens?

Peter's answer, because he cares for you.

Do you see that?

Did you hear what Peter's saying?

He's saying the God of the universe cares for you.

In other words, you are not insignificant to God, you are not unseen by him, your situation is not unknown to him.

You he is not indifferent to you and your struggles and your fear and your worries.

In fact, the God who is upholding the universe, the God who is sustaining all things, who is giving every living thing life and breath, the God who is working out all things to bring it to his desired end, who is uniting all things in Jesus, cares for you.

It's an amazing statement that Peter is making.

And think about what this means, though.

It means that this God can be trusted with the things that make us anxious.

He knows our needs, and he is not negligent with his children.

And I just want you to consider this for a moment.

How much, if if we're like, if we're gonna be really honest here, how much of our anxiety and worry and fear is caused by the fact that we're not actually convinced at the heart level that God cares for us and loves us?

You know, I think some of us have believed the lie spoken in the garden that God is not actually good.

He's not actually out for your good.

He doesn't want what's good for you.

He's actually withholding good things from you.

And so what you need to do, Adam, what you need to do, Jordan, is grasp at those things.

You need to seize authority and your own autonomy and do what you need to do to make sure that that your life can go in the direction that you want it to go.

I like I I can point to times in my life where I've stood on the precipice of saying to God, God, you, you know, I whatever's going on in my life, like I don't love it, fearful, but I want to trust you.

I want to hand over the reins completely and say to you, whatever, you know, whatever you have for me, I'm like, I am all in and I'm yours, and I trust you with that.

And yet then there's this little thought that comes in right as I'm in that moment of prayer, this question that's like, but what if what if God's vision of what is good for you is not the same as your vision?

You ever been in that place?

And then in that moment you're kind of like, uh I trust you, I do, but you're envisioning all these scenarios, like, I don't want that to happen with my life, Lord, and then slowly just kind of back away, you know?

And I think I think Peter is putting his finger on the issue here.

We need to believe at the level of the heart, uh at the heart level, that God cares for us and that he loves us.

And I'm gonna guess that if you're like me, you're not actually doing a great job of carrying those burdens, anyways, right?

I'm gonna guess that the weight of those things is more likely to slowly crush you over time than it is to lead to your joy and to your flourishing.

And so Peter, like in this one simple line, is inviting us into deep, deep heart work.

It's not an easy thing to come to the place where you can trust God, hand over the things that worry you, and humble yourself under his hand.

And yet I think Peter would say, Church, if you are going to endure.

And to make it in this world that we're living in, you need to release those burdens to God.

You are not capable of handling these things on your own.

You're not capable of handling all the things that life will throw at you.

So trust God in humility and hand over the cares and the burdens and trust that he will carry them for you.

But it's not just enough for us to demonstrate a humble trust in God and his care for us.

I think Peter's gonna say that we also need a watchful resistance.

Look at what he says in verses eight and nine as he begins this next, these next few verses.

He says this be sober-minded and be watchful.

So, you know, if you were to if you were to read through all of 1 Peter, you would see this language in a number of places.

Peter's saying the stakes are much too high for us as the church to walk through our lives as if we exist in some sort of country club.

He's saying there is a serious and alert watchfulness that we will need to learn if we are to endure in the world.

And I, you know, I know that the regular temptation in my life, and I'm gonna guess for most of us here living in the West, is to drift away from this sort of sober-mindedness into a kind of sleepy, lazy, lethargic spirituality.

Do you feel that?

At any given moment, like I feel that pull towards just kind of going easy and resting and going along with the current and all of those sorts of things.

Peter's saying that's not the posture that we need to make it to the end.

Here's the reason why that's dangerous.

He goes on to say this your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

So, why the need for alert watchfulness?

Paul says, uh, Peter says, first, you have an adversary that, first of all, exists, which is maybe the most important thing that we need to realize and remember living in the West that would have us just say, nah, nah, there's nothing there.

All you can see with your eyes, those are the only things that are really going on.

There's nothing behind the scenes causing anything or at work or tempting you.

Don't just look the other way.

The only real truth is what you can see and taste and touch and smell.

Everything else, don't worry about it, right?

Peter's saying, you have a real adversary, the devil.

Second of all, the devil is a deceiver.

He is incredibly effective at getting you to believe things that are not true.

He traffics in lies and deceit.

This is the primary language that he speaks.

And then third, Peter says he's like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

So Peter's saying, this is the reality that Christians face.

That's why we need to be alert.

Now, we gotta be careful that when we when we see this picture that Peter is painting of the adversary, he's like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, that we don't kind of misunderstand what he's saying.

I think one of the ways we often get caught up is in the thinking that because our adversary, the devil, is like a roaring lion, that his tactics in our life will always look as obvious as a roaring lion looks, right?

If you know, if you're on a safari and you're traveling through Africa and you got a roaring line, roaring lion come up, like it's pretty obvious you need to get out of there and give some distance, right?

But honestly, like most of the ways, most of the devil's schemes in our life aren't necessarily obvious and aren't necessarily to get us to jump immediately into the worst kind of evil, but to just feed us little lies about who God is and about who we are and about what will make us happy.

And he just kind of sows these seeds of deception and then he just lets them grow in our lives and watches as we believe them and send our lives in another trajectory, right?

So this is what happened in the garden?

We referenced that earlier, just this planting, this question did God really say, You will not surely die?

And then everything begins to unravel from there.

So, for example, let's just ask this question.

Um, Peter knows these guys are facing suffering.

So, how does the devil seek to devour Christians through the prospect of suffering for their faith in Christ?

The answer is by deceiving us into thinking that the worst thing for us is that we could go through earthly suffering, and therefore we should do whatever we can, including our loose, including loosening our allegiance to Jesus, to get away from it, right?

Peter wants us to see the prospect of suffering and say, that's not good.

Warning bells going off.

What do I need to do to make that go away?

Here's what you need to do: loosen your allegiance to Jesus, and everything's gonna be fine.

Again, Tom Schreiner said it like this the devil roars like a lion to induce fear in the people of God.

In other words, persecution is the roar by which he tries to intimidate believers in the hope that they will capitulate at the prospect of suffering.

If believers deny their faith, then the devil has devoured them, bringing them back into his full.

But think about what this would, think about what this would feel like, right?

The suffering, the prospect of you know having your friends and family want nothing to do with you, of losing your job, of being mocked and slandered in the public square for your faith, that's gonna feel like the lion or like the danger.

It's gonna feel like that is the dangerous thing.

And so, in fear of that suffering, you kind of give into the temptation to deny Christ, and that's gonna feel much more comfortable.

And so it feels like you're running from the lion into safety when in reality you are running from safety into the mouth of the lion.

You see what I'm saying?

And even then, probably most of the time, this you know, a lot of us think that there's gonna be this big grand moment where we're forced, you know, deny your faith in Christ or lose your life for him or something like that.

Who knows?

But I'm guessing more likely this would be more like a long, slow process.

You know, maybe first you begin to notice the way uh the message of the gospel or of the scriptures starts to press up against our cultural narratives, and you just feel that tension as you sit in church and you hear Miles preaching, you're like, oh, I just I don't like that.

You know, I people if my friends weren't here, they would be shocked.

Something like that.

You you feel that tension, okay?

And then maybe you just begin to be a little bit embarrassed by it, right?

And so you start to kind of hide it, and you know, maybe whereas you used to go to work and just speak openly about the fact that you're at church on Sundays, then maybe you you just start to keep that part of your life down low a little bit.

And then maybe as you start to explore, you start wondering, and maybe there are other ways of understanding the Bible, you know?

Maybe I maybe find some guy out there who has a different understanding that's a little bit more palatable to me.

And so you begin to find justification for interpreting the Bible in a different way that eases that tension.

And then maybe, whereas you know, you are a faithful churchgoer, you know, like every Sunday you're here.

Uh maybe over time that just becomes every other.

That's it's still regular, right?

Every other Sunday, it's not a big deal.

And then once every other Sunday becomes normal and cool, it becomes like the, you know, once a month, you know, once every four meet weeks, and that's regular, and then eventually it's Christmas Eve, and then slowly and slowly and slowly we drift, I think Peter would say, into the mouth of the lion.

C.

S.

Lewis in his classic work, The Screwtape Letter, said it like this.

He said, It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and out into the nothing.

Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one.

It's a gentle slope, a soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

Every time I read that, I'm just like, Lord, have have mercy on me and on our churches.

So the question is, what do we do when that is the reality that we're up against?

What do we do?

What do we do when that's the sort of deceptive enemy that we're facing that just kind of lures us away, one small step away from the truth, so that we aren't even aware of it?

And Peter says the answer is simply resist him, firm in your faith.

That's what he says.

So we're we're we're watchful and we're alert and we're aware.

And where we see the devil's lies, where we see his deception, where we see our hearts being led away from the gospel, we fight back by standing firm in our faith in Jesus.

Peter says, you keep trusting God.

Now I I want to submit to you, the fact that Peter says, here's what you do, you resist is very, very good news.

And the reason I say that is because I think this means that Peter's saying, this is a fight that through faith in Jesus, believers win.

Right?

Like if you think about it, Peter's saying, here's what you do, fight back, resist him.

Like just to use an example, if you were, if you were like out west and say you're you're hiking in the Rocky Mountains or something, and uh you know you got a guide who's like preparing you for the trip, and he's like, So here's what you do when uh you come across a grizzly bear in the woods, okay?

You will not find any guide out there.

I hope not.

If you do, like he needs to end his career, start something else.

You will not find a guide that's like, hey, if you see a grizzly bear, here's what you do: step up, show him who's bossed, hold your ground, right?

Like, if anything, they're like, you know, you you you won't be able to outrun them, uh, you won't be able to outclimb them, you won't be able to outswim them.

So unless there's a car like right beside you you can get into, here's what you do: you play dead.

And just hope that he gets bored.

That's that's your only hope.

Play dead, right?

Peter is not saying to the church, here's your only hope.

You just you run away or you flee or you play dead.

He's saying you fight and you resist firm in your faith.

Why?

Because Peter knows that in Christ Jesus the church will be victorious.

Right?

I love this.

James 4, 7 says it like this: resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Isn't that a great image?

I love the image of the devil fleeing from believers as we resist him with our faith in Jesus Christ.

His ability to tempt and to devour is limited.

James says, if you stand firm in your faith, he flees.

Colossians 2, I love this passage, says this, and you, church, who were dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, that's Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

Listen to this.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross, and he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

So Paul's saying in Colossians 2 that in Jesus, through his crucifixion, the rulers and authorities and powers have been disarmed.

And they've been put to open shame at the cross.

The moment where they thought they won, Jesus is victorious through his death.

Your record of debt was nailed to the cross.

The sin that kept you from God was dealt with and done away with.

Paul says, Jesus is victorious there.

1 Peter 3, if you were to look back a few chapters, says that Jesus has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

So where is Jesus now?

He's at the right hand of the Father with all rule and authority and power having been subjected under his feet.

And where are you, church?

According to Ephesians 2, 4, Paul says that by God's grace you've been raised up with Christ, and you've been seated with him in the heavenly places.

Which means that being seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father, it means that the rulers and authorities and powers are also under your feet, because you are in Christ Jesus.

Right?

So Peter's saying, because all of that is true, because Jesus has won a victory through his death and resurrection and ascension, here's what you do with a watchful readiness, you resist and you fight by holding firm to your faith in Jesus.

That's what you do.

You know, when I was uh when I was younger, I I had some of you might resonate with this.

I had this dream, this recurring dream.

I don't know if it was a nightmare, it wasn't so scary, but it's just this dream that I had again and again and again, and it was always kind of the same main ingredients, even though the situation was different.

And that the dream was that I would be in a situation where there was some kind of immediate danger, that logically I should have like run away or done something or acted, and yet in the dream I just couldn't move.

Anyone, anyone familiar with that?

Just like, so there's like some snake coming towards me, and I was like my brain would be like, run, get out of the way, and I'd go to run, and it'd just be like my legs would be lead, and I just couldn't move.

And I'd be like, Why aren't you moving?

Just stuck there.

You know, and as I was studying this passage and praying through it, I was just, you know, thinking about that image with the church and praying, Lord, may it not be true of the church in the West?

May it not be true of us that due to our just kind of spiritual laziness and lethargy and kind of sleepiness that is so easy for us, that in the face of this adversary, instead of resisting and fighting back firm in our faith, we are those who just are unable to move.

But rather, who are through our faith in Jesus and in his victory over the powers, fight and resist to the glory of God.

Finally, I think Peter uh says for the church that uh we need a we need a patient hope.

And I think this is maybe one of the most fitting ways Peter could close out this whole letter.

Look at what he says in verse 10.

He says, 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.

I want you to notice that in his final word of instruction, in the main body of this letter, Peter is doing the same thing he does throughout the whole letter, which is to draw our attention away from the present and towards the future.

Do you see that?

Notice this phrase.

He says, and after you have suffered a little while.

Now, like at face value, you could say, Peter, this feels a little insensitive.

Because Peter's not saying, when he says a little while, the idea is not so much that Peter's like, hey, um, you gotta stick this out for a few more weeks or a few more months or just to the end of the year, and then everything's gonna be good.

Eventually, you know, there's this whole revolution coming, and the Roman Empire is gonna become Christian, you're gonna be good, a couple weeks, something like that.

That's not the idea.

A little while for Peter is, I think, their entire life until Jesus returns.

So Peter has the audacity to look at these Christians who have been going through it and who might go through it every single day for the rest of their lives and to look at that and say, after you have suffered a little while.

Like, how can he say that?

If you've been in intense periods of suffering, you know that it feels like it's gonna last forever.

How can Peter say, a little while?

And the answer is that Peter can look at this life and refer to it as a little while because Peter knows that there is something coming, something else coming that is so grand, so joyous, so eternal that it changes the conversation, it changes the categories, right?

And you might think, well, what could be so significant, so as to render an entire life a little while?

What could be thing?

Now notice how he finishes this sentence.

He says, After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ.

Do you notice that?

Essentially, what Peter's doing here, he's he's making a comparison.

In the present, he says, we experience suffering for a little while.

In the future, we will experience glory for eternity.

So that's that's the reality that is shaping Peter's words, looming in the future for Christians is this eternal glory in Christ.

And you can just picture Peter pleading with them, saying, Church, if you could just lift up your gaze to see what's coming.

Like if you only had a glimpse of the glory that is coming for us in Christ Jesus, that's so beautiful, so amazing, that will be so complete and so satisfying, it would render everything else absolutely worth it if you knew that great glory that was coming in Christ.

The Apostle Paul said it like this.

He said, For this light and momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Notice that same comparison that Paul's doing?

It feels heavy and enduring, but he says it's actually light and momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory coming that is beyond all comparison.

And the best part of what Peter's saying here is that on that day, Peter says, the God who called you to this glory, who sent his only son to redeem you, and who filled you with his own spirit, and who loved you, and who protected you, and who guarded you, and who sustained you, will be there, and he will be the one who will greet you at the finish line.

Isn't that awesome?

And one of the things I one of the things I love about watching, um, you know, maybe it's in the Olympics, some kind of endurance race, the end of a triathlon or something like that.

Um, you know, those races that just take so much out of you.

I I don't know what it's like to run that race, by the way, I just have to watch it uh on TV.

Um but the races that take so much out of you, but that by the end of the race, you're like stumbling to the finish line and you you barely look human, you're like crawling and don't know how to walk anymore.

And they finally cross the finish line, and right as they do, someone, a coach or a family member or a loved one, is there to greet them and to meet them, to give them, you know, some kind of energy or sustenance, to throw a blanket over them or water and lift them up and to help them walk away.

Isn't that awesome?

And I think this is the sort of picture that Peter is painting for us.

Life in this world will leave us feeling beaten up and broken.

Peter says that on that day, God will meet you and restore you.

It will leave us feeling shaken.

Peter says, God will confirm you.

It will leave us feeling weak and helpless.

Peter says, God will strengthen you.

We might summarize this by saying that on that day, God is going to bring complete healing and restoration and will make everything right.

And on that day, church, there will not be one single regret that you have for the suffering that you endured for the name of Jesus.

I believe that wholeheartedly.

That every ounce of suffering, every ounce of pain that you experienced in this life, the questions that we have now that we're like, I just I don't know, Lord, I bring those to him, and I'm not sure that I'm gonna get an answer until that day.

All of those things, when you, when Jesus returns and we see this future glory that he has prepared for us and waiting for us, all of that will be like, oh, that makes sense.

And it was worth it.

In fact, it wasn't even close.

It wasn't even close.

It's this vision of our eternal glorification in Christ that we need to tether ourselves to if we are going to endure to the end.

And so day by day, Christians exhibit patient hope as we wait for the little while of our lives to be transformed into the eternal glory in Christ that's coming for us.

You know, I opened, uh, I opened with the story of Florence Chadwick and her first failed attempt to cross the Catalina Strait.

Um, two months later, she got back in the water and uh tried again.

And just like last time, the weather was cold and foggy, and just like last time, you know, the fog rolls in and she could barely see ahead of her, couldn't see the boats, couldn't she see the shoreline, and yet this time she finished the swim and did it in record timing.

After she completed it, you know, she was interviewed and asked by journalists how she was able to, on the second attempt, to overcome the fog and finish the race.

And this is what she said in response.

I love this.

She said, I kept a mental image of the shoreline firmly fixed in my mind as I swam.

Isn't that good?

I kept a mental image of the shoreline firmly fixed in my mind as I swam.

This is what Peter's doing as he closes his letter.

Church, he is giving you a mental image of the shoreline, a picture of our future to cling to.

So when you, you know, when you find yourself swimming in fear and the worry and the anxiety of our world, when the when the fog rolls in, you can't make it left from right, you have no idea what's ahead of you and what's behind you, you have all sorts of questions about how God may have allowed your life to take the shape that it has.

You have all those sorts of things.

Peter's saying, here's the image that you need to keep firmly fixed in your mind.

And it's the picture of the finish line with the God of all grace waiting for us on that day to redeem, to restore, to strengthen, establish, and confirm, and to make everything new.

And I believe you know deeply, church, that when we live with that image of hope, there is God's power to keep us and sustain us.

And just as we close.

I also just want to remind you that one of the amazing promises we have in the gospel is that even as we seek to endure, that God is keeping us.

You know, in 1 Peter chapter 1, very early in this letter, Peter lays out this inheritance that's coming that's imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

He says it's kept in heaven for us, but then he also says that God is keeping us for it.

Isn't that amazing?

The God of all grace, who's waiting for us at the finish line, is also sustaining us so that we make it, might make it to the end ultimately and glorify him in that day.

Let me pray for us.

Father, I thank you.

Uh I thank you for for these people in this room, for this church.

I thank you for Redemption Church New Market.

And Lord, uh, some of these people I know at some level and many that I don't, but Lord, we thank you that you are the God who knows all things and that you are the God who cares.

So, Father, we we ask that as we've sat under your word now, that you would put that word, that good word that you've spoken to work in our lives in the unique ways that we need it.

Lord, I pray that where there's discouragement, uh, that you would encourage, where there is fear and worry, Lord, would we would we hear this invitation to trust you, to cast our cares on you?

Would you would you give us the humility and the trust required to lay down our burdens and let you carry them for us?

And then Lord, I pray that that this church and these individuals would be uh those that endure, and that through the ups and downs, they they keep their eyes fixed on the return of your son Jesus and all that you've promised in order that you may be glorified.

Lord, we love you.

Thank you for this time that we've had together this morning and pray this all in Jesus' name.

Amen.