1st Peter #8: Encourage each other by leaning on Christ

1st Peter #8: Encourage each other by leaning on Christ

END

Today we end our journey in the first epistle of Peter.

Five imperatives

The end of this epistle presents us with five imperatives and a host of encouragements.

The first is simple:

1 Peter 5. 7
Cast all your cares on him, for he himself takes care of you.

Pun There
is a pun here, the original would say,
“Lay your worries on Christ for He cares for you.”

God understood very well

The pun is not there to distract us but to reinforce the idea that God understood that we had concerns and the nature of these.
The proof, He gave what He has dearest to carry all our worries!

If the text of 1Peter tells us to “unburden ourselves”, it is because the text of Isaiah reminds us that Jesus took on all our difficulties, as well as our sin.
He is waiting for us to hand them over to Him:

• Jesus has done His part,
• He is waiting for our response.

Isaiah 53/5
4 Yet it is our sufferings that he has borne, it is our pains that he has borne. And we, we considered him as punished, struck by God and humiliated. 5 But he himself was wounded because of our transgressions, broken because of our transgressions: the punishment that gives us peace fell on him, and it is by his wounds that we are healed.
the punishment that gives us peace fell on him,
and it is by his wounds that we are healed.

In the temporal domains of our daily lives, the sufferings, the pains and all the hassles that poison us, in the spiritual domains, the transgressions and faults.

Jesus is not a psychological outlet

Jesus is much more than a psychological outlet. He took care of it, not only as if we put what burdens us on words that we would pin on a board to let off steam and exteriorize what overwhelms us.

To have the victory
But if Jesus took charge of it on the cross, it is to have the final victory, as we have just read!

What is certain is that God is the opposite of indifferent, He expects us to hand everything over to Him because He has already taken everything, that we throw all our worries back to Him.

• For He really cares about us,
• He really cares about our concerns,
• He has the best answer,
• victory is in Him for all things.

The apostle Peter continues with imperatives in the verses of the following passage:

1 Peter 5. 8-11
8 Be sober, be vigilant: your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
9 Resist him with unwavering faith, knowing that the same sufferings are imposed on your brothers and sisters in the world.
10 The God of all grace has called you in Christ to his eternal glory.
After you have suffered a little while,
he
will • restore you himself,

• strengthen you,
• strengthen you,
• make you steadfast.
  11 To him be the power forever and ever! Amen!
  Imperative because it is vital!

Decision making

Not only is God attentive to our concerns, but He is attentive to our decision-making.

Direct impact on eternity
In this, my way of leading my life has an echo on my eternity.
God considers my positions and my decisions with goodness and justice, with regard to eternity.

Disproportion between now and eternity

If it costs, even if these decisions involve suffering, even if we have the impression of never getting out of it, it is ultimately nothing compared to eternity.

Disproportion between hardness and glory

In the face of present hardship, God promises us to know His glory through Jesus Christ.

Losses, More Than Made Up
If our positioning for Him here below has crushed us, Christ will lift us up.
If our standing for Him here on earth has shaken us, Christ will make us firm, strengthen us, make us unshakable, setting us on a solid foundation.

Restoration of all things
This joins all the promises that we can perceive from eternity in the presence of Christ.

Not extreme Christians
The positioning in question here is not only when we are Christians in Syria or Iraq, facing the Islamic State, as Portes Ouvertes reveals to us.
The text tells us that:
the same sufferings are imposed on your brothers and sisters in the world.
All believers have this position, so all of us and even me!
But to fully grasp what Peter wanted to share, verses 8 and 9 could be transcribed as follows:

1 Peter 5/8-9
Do not be distracted, stay alert!

For your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion,
he goes around, looking for who will be swallowed up.

Resist, oppose him, being firm in the faith, let it be unshakable.

Entertainment

Sobriety, of which Pierre speaks here, is not “fewer fries or aperitifs”, but that our lives are not dispersed in secondary projects.
And that in the end everything that is secondary becomes our main interests, concerns, life projects and investments.

Take stock

How to know?
What is mobilizing my thoughts at the moment?
What is my current project?
Is it important ?
Or is it secondary?
What is its interest with regard to eternity?
Is it what God clearly desires with regard to the Bible?
Is this positioning, this project something that costs me or, in fact, am I just like everyone else?

Another proposal

There is no doubt that the enemy of God knows how to give us a host of projects, ideas or life orientations that occupy us and make us forget God.
Didn’t he make another life proposal to Adam and Eve?

Assets in pause mode from God
Missiologists have found that there are three main periods of life
when people are more available to question God:

• children (often in relation to the consciousness of death),
• students (existential questions),
• old age (death is approaching).

The big distraction

In the meantime, the enemy has succeeded in distracting everyone’s attention with things so unfundamental that they are useless with regard to eternity with God.

Resisting costs

• Not doing like everyone else costs.
• Going with the flow costs nothing.
  This is what the apostle is talking about.

Observation
Look at the number of people with whom we shared the faith who have now become detached, whose faith is extinguished…
We celebrated the 100 years of the EBG and the IBG.
Many people weren’t there, because their lives of faith have come to a standstill.

• They did not become atheists.
• They devoted themselves to life projects which took up all the space:
• following their marriage,
• following their work,
• following their hobbies,
• following the escalation in their investments.

They let themselves be swallowed up
The enemy easily crunched them, or more exactly, by devoting themselves to the priorities of our society, they let themselves be swallowed up, instead of remaining firm in their faith.

But what faith is it?
When it comes to “faith” in the Bible, it can be about two ideas:

trust in God, believing that God exists and I trust Him, for example, Abraham;
“faith” can also be the content of faith, the best example, the temptation of Jesus:
The enemy prowled, like a lion ready to pounce, around Jesus, waiting for the favorable moment after 40 days of fasting, of physical frailty but of lucidity, of spiritual vigilance; Jesus answered with the content of faith, because “God said”.

Summary

In short, what Peter underlines, on behalf of God, in these verses, is that the more my faith is maintained and alive, the more I have a chance of having a balanced life: • that is to say
, who does not allow himself to be fooled by all the essentials of our society, who does not disperse himself to the point of forgetting the essential advice of God, •
but that I have a balanced life capable of making the right decisions even if they cost !

1 Peter 5
12 It is through Silvanus, who is in my eyes a faithful brother,
that I have written these few words to you

• to encourage you
• and to attest to you that it is indeed by the true grace of God that you are attached.

Peter encouraged his readers, reminding them of the content of faith, so that they do not become attached to delusions, but to the true grace of God!

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