Hope Under God’s Mighty Hand Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

Passage: 1 Peter 5:6-11 | Message By: Josh Bondoc | Series: Thriving in Exile









If you’re a Christian today, I’m sure you have been through trying seasons in your faith journey where everything seemed to go wrong in the worst way possible. Maybe some of you today are in that season right now. In these moments, when the worst of the worst is all that you can see around you, it can be tempting to ask:



God, where are you?

Where were you during that time? Where have you been all this time?



In these moments, it can be tempting to lose sight of who God is and what He has done for you in the past. As a result, it can be tempting to question what God is doing for you in the present. And of course, it can be tempting to doubt and forget what God has promised to do for you in the future.





















God Is Doing Something



This is what the apostle Peter addresses in our passage this morning, as well as throughout his letter. God’s activity for the believer is what he encourages his Christian readers with, who were the suffering exiles in his day—which means that it’s also for you who are suffering exiles in this day. God is doing something.



Right in the first chapter, Peter tells us that “God has caused us to be born again... to an inheritance... kept in heaven [past tense] for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith [present tense], for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time [future tense]” (1 Peter 1:3-5).



This is the motivation that Peter gives to his readers—what God has done, what God is doing, and especially what God will do for you—who are exiles in this world and are presently suffering in this life.



And not just any kind of suffering, as we saw in chapter 2 and at the end of chapter 4, since Peter talks about suffering for doing good as a Christian (1 Peter 2:19-21; 4:12-19)—which is God’s will for them! This is what God is doing right now, testing and purifying them through their sufferings, so that they receive glory in the end.





















So, in chapter 5, when Peter exhorts the elders/shepherds as the frontline Christian sufferers (in light of Ezekiel 9), as well as everyone else in the flock/congregation to be humble, Peter gives them the same motivation—God is doing something.



And that’s the connective tissue in today’s passage, which is basically a bookend in its structure. We’ll break this down to three main sections (future, present, future), and the first sub-section under 1) Hope of Future Glory can be summed up like this: Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand and later on be exalted. Let’s look at that first part, Humble Yourselves.



1. Hope of Future Glory (5:6)













a.









Humble Yourselves



“Humble yourselves, therefore.”



Well, who is “yourselves” referring to? If you go back to verse 5, Peter uses the same word: “Clothe yourselves—all of you —with humility toward one another.” So the exhortation to “humble yourselves” is directed to the elders (5:1-4), young men (5:5a), and everyone else in the assembly or congregation (5:5b).





















But why humble yourselves? Well, Peter says “therefore.” In other words, we could also say “because of this or that.” What is therefore there for? Usually, we just have to look back at the previous idea, which in this case is the last part of verse 5: “For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”



So, Peter says: “Humble yourselves, therefore—because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.