Christian Security

Once again, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 5. First Peter chapter 5. We’re nearing the conclusion of our studies in this most practical of letters, written to believers scattered throughout the world of Peter’s day. And since the fifth verse, we have been challenged by the intense practicality of what Peter has been communicating, and that in very clearly definable areas: first of all, regarding the matter of humility, and we saw that in verses 5–6; and then concerning the whole notion of anxiety and how to deal with it in verse 7; and then, last time, dealing with adversity in verses 8–9, and primarily in relationship to the whole question of spiritual warfare. And now, this morning, in verses 10–11, we come to the matter of security. Security.

Now, the very word immediately connotes for us all kinds of things, because we live every day of our lives confronted by the need for and the nature of security at multiple levels. It’s not unusual for us to hear mentioned routinely the National Security Council. We will receive mail through our doors or in our boxes asking if we have ever considered a home security system. We may be fortunate enough to drive a car which already has a built-in security system. We are asked if we have enough financial security. We are asked if we are personally secure. And to cap it all off, the one identifying number which each of us is forced to spit out with amazing frequency is called a Social Security number.

Recognizing the insecure nature of so much of our existence, the marketing geniuses play on it to great effect and amazing profit. This is not a slam against marketing geniuses who are present this morning, let me hasten to add. But if you are going to market a product, and you know that there is a felt need and a string upon which you can play with frequency and effect, then the chances are you’re going to use it. And on account of that, you will discover that everything from high-level annuities to the kind of glue that they tell me is used for making sure that your false teeth don’t fall out, it’s all sold to us under the banner heading of the desire for security—a kind of, you know, “Would you like to be able to talk your head off without talking your teeth out? Then you need the security of” such and such, whatever it is. I don’t mean to make light of it. Those days will fast be upon me.

In most cases, the guarantee which is offered on these levels is a guarantee for the life of the person or for the life of the product. But here in 1 Peter 5:10–11, we discover that Peter is going far and beyond that, because his interest and his teaching concerns a security which is actually eternal. His readers, as we’ve noted, were confronted by an alien culture, they were surrounded by the imminent threat of a persecution which would impact their lives—their physical well-being—and they were doubtless tempted to assume that suffering should be avoided at all costs. And they must surely have wrestled in their minds with the whole notion that God would ever allow them to go through so much en route to the fulfillment of his promises to them. And in that respect, they are not unlike most of us this morning. I would put it to us that we probably, if we were honest, work on the basis that if you can avoid suffering at all, then do it, because it surely must be counterproductive. And if there is a way somehow to bypass the way in which God appears to be leading us down constricting paths and over difficult thoroughfares, then we’re going to try and do that.

Now, Peter has been addressing this, actually, from the very beginning of his letter. And there is a sense in which, as you come to these concluding verses, he has now come full cycle. Because if you flip back to 1:6, which is months and months ago now, you will see there that in relationship to the whole nature of salvation, he has pointed out to his readers at the very beginning, he says, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now”—notice the phrase—“for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.”[1] There is no bypassing, in Peter’s mind, the nature of suffering in the believer’s life. And in verse 7 of that same first chapter, he goes on to point out the profit which comes from walking that path.

And now, this morning, drawing his letter to a close, he wants his believers to whom he writes to understand that their security is in God. Of course, as they read their Bibles and they would read the Psalms, their minds and hearts would be full of this: “God is our refuge and [our] strength, a very present help in trouble”—Psalm 46.[2]

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
 here does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
  [who made] heaven and earth.[3]

Psalm 121. “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from [this day forth and] even for ever[more]”—Psalm 125.[4] And so as he writes, he is not writing to a group of people who were unfamiliar with this truth. But now, in the fullness of God’s revelation in the person of his Son, Peter is able to draw, as it were, the wonders of all these truths. And as he does so, he gathers them in an encapsulated form in two verses, which I have found to be amazingly helpful in this whole matter of living in the realm of security.

And in order to help us trace our line through, I’m going to notice with you three headings. First of all, we’re going to consider the pattern which God designs, then the power which God displays, and then, finally, the praise which God deserves. And we’ll spend longer at the beginning than we will at the end, by design.

The Pattern Which God Designs

First of all, then, notice the pattern which God designs. And three words will help us to get a handle on this. And the words are all there in the text. They are these: “grace,” “glory,” and “suffering.”

First of all, “grace.” The pattern which God designs for his children emerges from who he is. And the opening phrase of the tenth verse tells us who he is. Peter says he is “the God of all grace”—that dimension of his being whereby he grants to us what we don’t deserve: where when we deserve judgment, he grants to us acquittal; where when we deserve punishment, he grants to us a welcome; where when we deserve death, he grants to us life; and all of this on account of what Christ has accomplished at Calvary.

Now, the word “grace” is a very familiar word in Christian parlance, and it’s very familiar in our poetry and in our hymnody. And indeed, its very familiarity may rob it of something of its significance. However, when we think of the transformation which was brought about in the life of that foul-mouthed slave trader John Newton, of whom it was said not only did he know every curse word which had ever been invented, but he was the forerunner of the creation of curse words amongst the slave-trading fleet of his day…[5] If somebody had said, “John Newton,” somebody else would have said, “Bad guy.” “John Newton,” “Filthy mouth.” “John Newton,” “Party animal.” “John Newton,” “Cruel rascal.” “John Newton,” “Capitalist running dog.” “John Newton,” and so on.

And then one day, they met John Newton, and John Newton’s mouth was cleaned up, and John Newton’s life was changed, and John Newton’s vision was transformed. And John Newton expressed it in these great words:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me, John Newton!
I once was lost, but now I’m found;
I was blind, but now I see.[6]

And Newton discovered that the origin of the transforming power of Christ is grounded in God’s grace. It wasn’t that John Newton became religious—yes, he became a pastor, as it turns out, and an effective one in the Anglican Church in England—but it was that his life was transformed. And so he had discovered what here we find clarified: that God, who designs the pattern of our lives, is the God of all grace.

When you read the Bible and read the New Testament, you discover that the Bible is full of this from cover to cover. And I was mentioning last night at our student meeting that the little character Zacchaeus, one of my favorite characters… You can read about him in Luke chapter 19. And the lovely thing is that in Zacchaeus’s case, Jesus did not come and say to Zacchaeus, “I want you to clean up so that I can come to your house.” He said, “Zacchaeus, I want to come to your house so that you can clean up.”[7] In the story that he told in Luke 15 of the prodigal son, you will remember that the father did not send a servant to clean up his son who came out of the smelly pigsty, but the father himself came and embraced his son. There’s times to embrace, and there’s times to refrain from embracing, says Ecclesiastes.[8] And if your son has just emerged from a long sojourn in a pigsty, you may want just to think twice about it. But the picture which is given there is a picture of grace: “Come on, Son! Come back to me!” Not that God, who is pictured as the father, dispenses some of his servants: “Go down and get my boy, would you? Clean him up and bring him back to me.” No! He says, “Come here, my son,” and he sends the servant to start the shower.

Until we have discovered that God is the God of all grace, we have never discovered God. Until we have come to understand the implications of grace in our lives, we have never understood humility—until we begin to focus on the pattern he designs. And grace is actually the flipside of mercy, which Peter addressed, of course, back in 1:3, where he said of God, it is “in his great mercy” that he has “given us new birth.” And by his mercy, he does not give to us what we do deserve, and by his grace, he gives to us what we do not deserve.

And he is “the God of all grace,” not just some grace. Whenever we experience grace, it is we experience God. And the variegated nature of human need is more than matched, as he says in 4:10, at the end of verse 10, by “God’s grace in its various forms”—various needs matched by various grace. That is why I can say with conviction this morning, on the authority of God’s Word, that there isn’t a man or a woman or a young person in this auditorium who is possessed of a need and a concern and a longing and a burden which “God of all grace” is unable to match.

Until we have come to understand the implications of grace in our lives, we have never understood humility.

Second word to notice is the word “glory”: he is “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory.” Now, the word “glory” is an interesting word. We know it from the hymn: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”[9] We refer to the flag, a flag, as Old Glory, and we use the word multivariously.

Glory is essentially the blessing of God’s eternal presence. And we have seen already in 4:14 that the suffering church already tastes the glory of God. If your Bible is open there, you will notice that: that God has already given to us a taste of his glory. And the glory is akin to the inheritance which will never fade away, which “can never perish, spoil or fade,” in 1:4. What is glory? It’s the blessing of God’s eternal presence. The blessing of God’s eternal presence is the blessing of an inheritance which will never evaporate in our hands, which will never get lost as a diminishing return in the money markets of our days, which is absolutely secure for us, being held in will call. And this morning, whatever our status in life, whatever our need in life, whatever part of the scriptural, biblical pilgrimage we find ourselves upon, there’s this wonderful truth: that God is designing a pattern uniquely for our days, and we may trust him because he is the God of all grace and he is the God who, because of initiative, is calling us to eternal glory.

The hymn writer—it may have been Havergal again—he or she said,

When all my labors and [my] trials are o’er,
And [when] I am safe on that beautiful shore,
Just to be [with] the dear Lord I adore,
Will through the ages be glory for me.

And then the refrain:

O that will be glory for me,
Glory for me, … for me;
When by his grace I shall look [on] his face,
That will be glory, be glory for me.[10]

So when we have had a glimpse of Christ, then we can actually sing, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Now, that word, hold on to it carefully, because the very next word is the word “suffering.” And the prospect of glory, you will notice, is eternal, and the experience of suffering is transient. Notice the masterful juxtaposition between these two notions. What we anticipate will last forever; what we experience now will pass away. And if ever there was a valid use of the word wee—that is, w-e-e, the Scottish word for “small” or “little”—then it is here. Glory will be eternal; suffering will be for a wee while—just a wee while.

We say, “A wee while? Do you realize that I have been in this chair for the last seven years? Do you realize that I am only a young person, and the doctors have told me there is no prospect of relief this side of the grave?” Well, far be it from me to look on to a circumstance like that and ever appear either to understand it empathetically or to be able to pronounce upon it. But on the authority of God’s Word and in light of what we discover here, we must acknowledge this truth: that even if we lived to be a hundred years old, it would be a wee while in the light of eternity. For our “days are [faster] than a weaver’s shuttle.”[11] And even if we were to endure suffering for all of our days, as some before us have done, still, in light of the eternal glory which is prevailing, it would be simply a matter of time.

And the Bible here is declaring what human experience confirms: that Christian faith does not remove us from the painful experiences of life in a fallen world. It is faulty thinking, many times emerging from flaky preaching, which finds those who name the name of Christ scurrying around, either denying the fact of suffering, thereby making liars of themselves, or seeking to run from suffering, assuming that down that street, where there is none of this experience, there will be progress and blessing in our lives.

Far from that being the case, we must be honest enough to acknowledge that we serve a Savior who was the one Son of God. He had one Son, who was without sin but not without sorrow. He was “a man of sorrows,” and he was “acquainted with grief,” says Isaiah 53.[12] He was the kind of individual who, in seeing the horror of what Calvary meant, people would hide their faces from him. And so it’s hardly surprising that Peter, having lived so close to that, having experienced the pain already in his own life, looking out on the prospect of his death, he says, “Listen, let’s be honest about things: suffering is a part of our days. But it’s not forever.”

You see, if somehow we could bring heaven right into sharp relief, if somehow we could bring heaven into focus—that we’re not dealing here with mythology, but we’re dealing with reality—if heaven can once break in upon our souls, then we will be able to put everything else in perspective. But until it does, it’s very hard for us. And so we find ourselves saying with Cowper, who was the friend of Newton,

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.
He plants his footsteps in the sea
And [he] rides upon the storm.[13]

Loved ones, if you’ve been going through your days, and if I’ve been going through my days, deciding on the basis of my own faulty logic that suffering is never in the purposes of God and that when it comes, I should deny it or run from it, then we’re missing the point completely. In actuality, more spiritual progress is made through our tears than through our laughter.

It is through broken hearts and tears and failure that God patterns and fashions his sovereign design.

Think it out! Think about bereavement when it came to your home. Think about what it’s done to you. Think about the difference of wrestling through the struggles of your marriage as opposed to knowing all the lights shine. Listen to the voices tell you, “Run away! Run away!” Listen to the voice of God saying, “I am able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that you can ask or even imagine.”[14] Think about the times you’ve failed exams rather than passed exams.

Sir Edward Elgar, once listening to a young girl sing a solo from one of his works, listened with rapt attention, because it’s recorded that she sang with exceptional purity and clarity and range. She had an almost perfect technique. She sang flawlessly. And when she concluded, Elgar turned to his companion, and he said, “She will be really great when something happens to break her heart.”[15] Barrie, the writer, said, “My mother lost her first and brightest boy, and that is where my mother got her soft eyes, and that is why other mothers ran to her when they had lost a child.”[16] So the very thing that we seek to run away from may be the very thing which would make us. In a macho world, there is no place for broken hearts, for tears, for failure. And it is through broken hearts and tears and failure that God patterns and fashions his sovereign design.

Remember, all sun and no rain, and what have you got? Arizona. Deserts! All rain and no sun, and what have you got? Cleveland! No… You need a wee bit of both and not too much of either. God patterns the design. He does all things well. There are questions that will remain unanswered till we stand before him in eternity, but let God be God this morning in our church and in our homes and in our hearts.

The Power Which God Displays

The pattern he designs, and then, notice, the power he displays. Since God is the God of all grace, there is no experience of suffering which can exhaust his supply. He can meet every need, he can prevail in every situation. And Peter drives this home by using four verbs which he kind of heaps one on top of the other. And we’ll just notice them as we go through.

The first verb is translated here “restore.” So we discover that God, “the God of all grace,” will “restore” us. Now, the word here in Greek has various meanings, but essentially, it is “to put in order.” It is used of the disciples, described in Mark 4, as they were mending their nets. They were taking the shredded nature of the net as a result of the experience out on the sea, and they were putting it back together again so that it might be useful. It is the word which would be used of an orthopedic surgeon who was responsible for the resetting of a bone. It is a word which would be used for making wholeness out of brokenness. It is the picture of a damaged vessel being brought back into harbor so that it may be refitted for further journeys. And it is brought back into harbor not to be tampered with by all kinds of novices but to be touched by the tender care of the Creator. And there is a very real sense in which as we come to the Word of God and we come with expectant hearts saying, “Master, speak by name to me,”[17] which of us this morning, emerging, as it were, from the sea of life, does not feel, at least in some measure, the need to be restored, the need to be refitted, the need to be realigned, that we might face the high seas which are awaiting us once again?

And we live in a world that can’t put the pieces back together again. One of my favorite nursery rhymes is “Humpty Dumpty.” I like the sound, first of all, of “Humpty Dumpty.” It’s a great name, you know.

Humpty Dumpty sat on [the] wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
[And] all the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Well, I want you to know that God is in the business of putting Humptys back together again. So if you wandered in here this morning feeling like a major Humpty Dumpty, I’ve got good news for you: this word “restore” means that in a fractured world that has said, “Just tread lightly through the pieces,” God says, “Not for a moment! Bring me your brokenness, bring me your emptiness, bring me your loneliness, and I can put you together again!” That’s good news! He is the God who restores us.

Secondly, he is the God who makes us strong. Now, the word here is descriptive of supports being put around to prevent the possibility of toppling. That’s the word as it is used here. And as I thought about that word, my mind immediately went to the early days of caring for our children when we were out at a friend or a relative’s home. It was the evening. The children had not yet reached the stage where they were beyond the cot in which they lived—or the crib, I think, is the word here. So they were used to four walls. They lived in that little cage without the roof. And now we were out at Mrs. Jenkins’s house, and Mrs. Jenkins said, “Oh, do stay for supper.” And we said, “Well, what are we going to do, because this is inevitably going to fall asleep, and what do you do?”

Well, if you’re at all like us, this is what you do: you go and you find a possible place to lay them down. And once having laid them down, you then secure the operation. First of all, if it is a narrow place, you begin to put other things around it. You put a couch here and two chairs there and then every pillow you can imagine, all around, to create a situation in order that that precious bundle may not topple over.

The God described in 1 Peter 5:10 is the God who looks upon his children in just such a way. And if you came into worship this morning tottering, as it were, toppling, then here is a word of great encouragement for you: this “God of all grace, who called you to … eternal glory,” even though in the midst of suffering you find yourself toppling, he is the one who can “make you strong.” And our weakness is more than compensated for by his strength. That’s why Paul says in 2 Corinthians, he says, “Therefore I will gladly glory in my infirmities, so that the grace and power of God may rest upon me. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”[18] And until we acknowledge how weak we are, we’ll never know the wonder of God’s strength revealed in our lives.

Third verb is translated here “firm.” So, we know that he is the God who will “restore” us. He is the God who will “make [us] strong.” Thirdly, he is the God who will “make you … firm.” Now, once again, it’s helpful to be able to go back and realize the derivation of this word, because the word here refers not so much to toppling which may take place but collapsing—not a toppling as a result of an outside force taking us over but a collapsing as a result of a draining of strength from within. We’re not only stabilized by his external mercies which he brings into our lives, but we are strengthened by the fact that he infuses us with power from within. Hebrews 12, quoting from the Old Testament, he says, “Therefore, strengthen the weak knees, and lift up the fallen hands.”[19] Isaiah 40: “They that wait upon the Lord [will] renew their strength; they [will] mount up [as] wings [on] eagles; they [will] run, and not be weary; and they [will] walk, and not faint.”[20] It is the picture described for us here in the notion of “firm.”

And then, finally, he will “make you … steadfast.” And here the emphasis is upon the foundations. He will ground us in such a way that we’re not going to get blown away. Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man
 who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
or standeth in the way of sinners,
 or sits in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
 and on his law he meditates day and night.
That man will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,
 which bring forth fruit in its season;
 and whatsoever he does prospers.[21]

In contrast, “the wicked” are “like the chaff” which “the wind blows [clean] away.”[22] We use the phraseology frequently now—say, “Man, you wouldn’t have… It’s incredible what happened to me. I was just blown away!”

How can I prevent being blown away as I live my days? The answer is that the Word of God is the vital, stabilizing, foundational force. What we find in Psalm 1 is then graphically illustrated by Jesus at the end of Matthew chapter 7 in the story of the wise and the foolish builders, which we’ve sung about in Sunday school, many of us, from our infancy:

The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
And the rain came tumbling down.
And the rain came down and the floods came up,
And the rain came down and the floods came up,
And the house on the sand was demolished!

He was the foolish man.

The wise man built his house upon the rock,
And the rain came down, and the floods came up,
And the house on the rock stood firm.[23]

And Jesus said the man or woman whose house is built upon the rock is not the man or woman who simply hears the Word of God with frequency but is the man or the woman who, upon hearing the Word of God, puts it into practice.[24]

Loved ones, our studies on the Lord’s Day are only stage one. Unless somehow you have a stage two and stage three and stage four in internalizing, along with me, and applying the truth of what we’re discovering, then our house is going to fall down. For the hearing of it without application may simply make us sermon tasters rather than those whose lives have been changed.

So there is a pattern he designs. There is a power he displays—a wonderful truth. He provides us with support so that we won’t topple, with strength so that we won’t collapse, and with foundations so that we won’t be blown away.

The Praise Which God Deserves

So it’s hardly surprising that we look down together at verse 11, and here’s how I end up with my third heading: the praise that he deserves. It’s an exclamation on Peter’s part. It’s like the end of the Lord’s Prayer, which we said together this morning, or 4:11, where Peter bursts out into a similar exclamation.

Interestingly enough, there is no verb in the Greek. “Be” is added in the English. In the Greek, it simply reads, “To him the power forever.” It’s good. I like that, you know: “To him the power forever.” What Peter is saying is this: God is it all! It’s God! All the majesty, all the dominion, all the authority, all the magnificent wonder of being able to hang stars in space, to control the solar system, to put everything in order, to design such an amazing pattern, he says, “It’s incredible to me.” And so he exclaims, “To him the power forever!” Like the psalmist, who says,

O Lord, our Lord,
 how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You … set your glory
 [among] the heavens.[25]

And then he says, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of man, that thou [should] visitest him?”[26]

Notice the final word in verse 11: the word “Amen,” which simply means, “So be it,” or “I agree with that.” It’s an emphatic endorsement: “To him the power forever. Amen.” Can I ask you this morning: Can you add your “Amen” to this? Can you put an emphatic endorsement at the end of this study, recognizing that God, who is designing the pattern, is also declaring his power and is also deserving of our praise?

The implications, of course, of these great truths are far-reaching. I was trying to remember the words of the song, and I can’t, but it went something like this:

There is no problem too big
And God cannot solve it;
There is no mountain too high
And God cannot climb it.

And then I think the refrain goes,

If he carried the weight of the world
Upon his shoulders,
You can be sure, my brother or my sister, that he will carry you.[27]

Will I add my “Amen” this morning to this truth? Amen. Bless you.

We’ve grown weary of saying “Amen” at the end of our prayers, I’ve noticed. Have you realized that? We used to add our “Amen” at the end of public prayer. It’s kind of dwindled to a whisper. If you agree as others lead us in prayer, add your “Amen.” Let the sound of the “Amen” of God’s people reverberate around: “So be it.” To him the power forever. Amen.

Let’s pray together:

Gracious God, as we take the Scripture to heart, we pray that you will bring it to bear upon our lives. For it is the very Word of God. That’s why you’ve left it to us. Father, I ask that we might, then, internalizing truth, live in the light of it; that those who have burdens, we might help bear them; that those who are toppling, that we might gather around them to prevent them from a fall; that those who are in danger of collapsing from within, that we may be a part of the strengthening process which you’ve designed. And in it and through it all, whatever life may throw at us, we want to be able to say with your servant of old, “To him the power forever.” Amen.

[1] 1 Peter 1:6 (NIV 1984). Emphasis added.

[2] Psalm 46:1 (KJV).

[3] Psalm 121:1–2 (NIV 1984).

[4] Psalm 125:2 (KJV).

[5] John Pollock, Amazing Grace: John Newton’s Story (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 70.

[6] John Newton, “Amazing Grace” (1779). Lyrics lightly altered.

[7] Luke 19:5 (paraphrased).

[8] See Ecclesiastes 3:5.

[9] Julia Ward Howe, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862).

[10] Charles Hutchinson Gabriel, “O That Will Be Glory” (1900).

[11] Job 7:6 (NIV 1984).

[12] Isaiah 53:3 (KJV).

[13] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[14] See Ephesians 3:20.

[15] William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter, The Daily Study Bible, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 273.

[16] J. M. Barrie, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), chap. 1, paraphrased in Barclay, 273.

[17] F. R. Havergal, “Master, Speak! Thy Servant Heareth” (1867). Lyrics lightly altered.

[18] 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 (paraphrased).

[19] Hebrews 12:12 (paraphrased).

[20] Isaiah 40:31 (KJV).

[21] Psalm 1:1–3 (paraphrased).

[22] Psalm 1:4 (NIV 1984).

[23] Ann Omley, “The Wise Man and the Foolish Man” (1948). Lyrics lightly altered.

[24] See Matthew 7:24–27.

[25] Psalm 8:1 (NIV 1984).

[26] Psalm 8:4 (KJV).

[27] Scott Wesley Brown, “He Will Carry You” (1982). Lyrics lightly altered.