Living Hope for Life's Biggest Battles

Well good morning. It's so good to see you guys. Isn't it a beautiful day? It's great to be here. Also want to say hi to everybody who's watching us over in Munsky Hall at the venue service there this morning and we also have a midweek group in Salinas that watches our services down there as a worship service midweek and also a group in Brazil that watches our weekly service, so we want to say hello to all of those folks and it's great to have them join us kind of by the magic of the internet and video and stuff, isn't it? It really is.

And as we start out today, I also want to give a shout out to the leadership team of our family camp. Loris Burlock and Rachel Nye led a whole great team that had literally hundreds of people as you can see up at family camp at Camp Hammer last weekend. A lot of new people. If you've never gone to one of our Labor Day weekend family camps, we do this every year and it is a great way to connect and get to know people, but let's all show our encouragement and appreciation to everybody who worked so hard on this fantastic weekend last weekend at family camp. Really good job.

Well my name is René. I'm one of the teaching pastors here at Twin Lakes here if you're new and I just want to start up by asking you a question. Does it ever seem just a little bit disconcerting to you when you think about the fact that we live here in Santa Cruz with beautiful mountains and redwood forests, beautiful places to go walking, but living right up in those forests completely wild are mountain lions? Does that freak out anybody else besides me? Just a little bit. Not many people freaked out. Perhaps you will be by the time I'm done with you this morning because this is a photo from the California Fish and Games website. This was taken right up here. I think this was taken over by Wilder Ranch. Look at that look in the eyes of this mountain lion. They're now tracking lions all over the place. I've seen a lion at the Pasatiempo exit of highway 17. My daughter has seen a lion crossing highway 9. This is all just recently. They're out there folks. Anybody disconcerted yet? No?

Perhaps this will push you over the edge. Let me show you a story that was on ABC News' website earlier this year. Headline, "Man attacked by mountain lion saved by bear." I don't know what's worse, but the article says, "Robert Biggs, 69 years old of Paradise, California, set out Monday morning for one of his usual hiking and gold panning trips near Whiskey Flats." Now I like this story already. One of his usual gold panning trips near Whiskey Flats. Out he goes, "When he came across a mother bear and a cub sitting on a streambank, Biggs said he had seen these two before, the mother bear and the cub, and he stopped to watch the bears for a few moments, but as he turned to leave something jumped on his back and knocked him to his knees and here he is on the ABC News website describing what happened next.

Something jumped on my back and I thought it was a friend of mine doing a joke on me. Larry, I thought he came down the mountain and were trying to scare me and I turned and it was, I could see that it was an animal right at first and not sure what it was and I had my rot pick and I come around and swinging real hard and hit it in the side of the face and it just screamed and hollered and I came back again to give it another blow and a nudge came up off the ground on my left side and grabbed it by the neck and it turned out to be the mother bear and the bear was 350-400 pounds and overpowered that lion and they just shook and went to the ground and they rolled and the tremendous noise of the sound of these animals fighting was tremendous. I almost 100% sure that the bear was trying to save me. It could work the way the bear acted around me the two times before that I've been there. She's real calm and not nervous at all unless me high-five with the cub that was there the yearling the year of spring before.

Okay. First of all, don't go high-fiving baby bears, all right? Just as your pastor I feel compelled to tell you that's not a good idea. Don't do it. All right, but second here's the main thing. A man that age, he's nearly 70 years old, he's not gonna have much success in a fight with a mountain lion, okay? It took a bigger opponent than him to defeat that lion. Now why am I bringing this up? Because the Bible says there is a similar reality happening on the spiritual level in your life. The Bible says there is an unseen prowling lion out there seeking someone to devour. You are no match for it, but the good news is God's got your back.

Grab your message notes that look like this. All summer long we have been going through the book of 1st Peter. We've seen that his theme in this book is living hope. Even through all the life's tough times you can live with hope. And this morning we actually wrap up our study in the book. We're going all the way through to the very last verse. We are in 1st Peter chapter 5 verses 8 through 14. Please turn there if you have your Bibles with you as we talk about living hope for life's biggest battles. And this is so important because life's biggest battles are fought on the spiritual level. Do you agree with that? Life's biggest battles are fought on the spiritual level.

Now if you're thinking maybe you say, "Well wait a minute, I don't know if I agree with that." What about physical battles like cancer or other diseases? Those are tough battles no doubt. But why do some people go through those battles upbeat and optimistic and others are defeated from the instant of their diagnosis? Because of what is happening at the spiritual level. Spiritually they're hopeful or they're discouraged. Maybe you say, "What about addictions or what about temptations?" Those battles who are won or lost at the spiritual level. Somebody's addicted or somebody's tempted to some sort of an addiction. People either go to their higher power, to God in humility and in his power start recovery or they remain spiritually proud and on the path to destruction. All of life's biggest battles happen at the spiritual level and you and I are fighting those battles every day.

Now some of you right now are staring down the biggest temptation in your life. Maybe you feel that lion's claws in your backs right now while I'm talking to you. You're facing a temptation to go back on your marriage vows or to sink into self-loathing and isolation or to relapse into an addiction or to just sit around being discouraged and depressed. So I want to cut right to the chase here. You and I need to know how to win these spiritual battles and there's four things Peter talks about as he wraps up his epistle here. He says, "I will have spiritual victory when I remember some very simple things. I want to sort of de-exoticize spiritual warfare for you this morning because Peter keeps it very simple. It starts with this. Number one, resist my enemy. Resist my enemy. Jot that down in your notes. Now this means I need to recognize my enemy and I need to know how to effectively resist him and this is so important that I want to warn you ahead of time. I'm gonna spend 80 to 85 percent of my time this morning right on this first verse and let's read this first verse. 1st Peter 5:8 out loud together. Let me hear you church. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him. Standing firm in the faith.

Now in this passage Peter talks about the devil and that's kind of a weird thing to think about. In fact instantly an image probably pops into your mind when you hear that word. So let me just say this. Almost everything about that image in your mind right now about the devil is probably not in the Bible. So I want you to take that mental image and just pop it. I want you to take everything you've seen or learned from those deep theologians like Stephen King or movies like The Exorcist or comic books or TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or cartoons about a guy in red pajamas and horns and a pitchfork and throw it all out. Because basically none of that stuff is in the Bible. When the Bible talks about the devil that is not what it means.

This is important because most of what we imagine we know about the devil and how to fight the devil was borrowed from Greek mythology about the Greek character Hades and other pagan mythologies and not the Bible. In the Bible the devil does not rule over hell. In fact in the Bible the devil does not live in hell. He's never been to hell. In the Bible the devil doesn't offer contracts for your soul. He doesn't have that kind of power. The devil doesn't wear red. He doesn't carry a pitchfork. He doesn't have goat horns and on and on and on. All of that stuff is why reasonably sophisticated people when they come to Bible passages warning about the devil roll their eyes and think oh brother what are we gonna talk about next in church Casper the Friendly Ghost, you know. So throw out what you think you know the Bible teaches about spiritual warfare and just let the Bible speak for itself here.

In fact this is so important that I want to define some key words in this verse very carefully or we will mythologize them and define them in ways not intended by the original author. All right so I'm gonna rush through this so jot this down in notes. Peter says first to be self-controlled. Now when you hear that you may think he's talking about some kind of Marine Corps like discipline, right? Resist Satan by being disciplined, by being perfectly behaved, resist Satan by not making any mistakes. I used to think that that's what it meant. Fight temptation by being practically perfect in every way. Which is horrible advice because that's self-defeating. But the good news is that's not what he's saying here. One translation renders this stay cool. Stay calm. You know those t-shirts and posters you're seeing everywhere these days. Keep calm and carry on. Well that's kind of the idea here.

By the way you know the story behind these? The British government had all these posters made with this slogan on them during World War II but the war ended before this public relations campaign really began and so these signs all ended up stored in some warehouse in the UK. And then about a year ago someone found 15 of these old signs printed during World War II in a warehouse in London and brought them to Antiques Roadshow, the TV program. And this slogan became a phenomenon because people saw that show and thought hey we need to hear that message today. And we do. Keep calm and carry on. Now you see it on coffee mugs and on t-shirts and posters all over the place. And of course pop culture being what it is people have also come up with alternatives like now panic and freak out. Well in a way that is exactly what Peter is saying. Do not panic and freak out when you think of your spiritual adversary. Keep calm and carry on.

And part of what this means is not blaming everything on the devil. Some people see a demon behind every bush and blame Satan for every headache and every flat tire. I know a pastor who said a woman once asked him for counseling and in his office told him that she thought she had the demon of nail biting. Now what happens when you overreact like that to life is that you don't take responsibility for your own choices. Stay cool. Stay calm. Don't panic and freak out. And then he says be alert. Now let me define this word for you. He's using a word there that in Greek is also used for soldiers who are on watch, on guard duty. He's saying keep a lookout because there's an unseen spiritual adversary in life.

Now it's interesting to think of who wrote this. I want you to think of Peter's own experience with staying on watch. This is a great stained glass image of this most famous story. In the Garden of Gethsemane the night Jesus is betrayed the Bible says Christ asked Peter and James and John, the closest disciples of Jesus Christ, he said keep watch with me. Same term. Keep watch. Stay alert. And what happens? Do they stay alert? No. What happens? They fall asleep like instantly three times and Jesus keeps coming back. Guys, guys could you not stay, keep watch with me. Keep watch with me. They go yeah yeah Jesus. And right back asleep they go. I have a question. Show of hands. How many of you when you're tired you cannot stay awake? You just have a hard time. That scares me that it's that many people in a morning church service raising their hands. That explains a lot. How many of you are married to somebody like that? Can I see that show of hands? I thought so.

Well the Bible says then Jesus returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. Simon, he said to Peter, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing but the body is weak. Can I hear an amen on that phrase? Right? I'm sure Peter is thinking of this instance when he says keep watch. He's saying don't make my mistake. I fell asleep on my watch. And what happened when the mob came to arrest Jesus? Peter's waking up. And instead of being a support to Jesus, he's stumbling around as a blundering idiot. He's cutting ears off of people and then he goes and he denies Jesus three times and then he gets emotionally overwrought and basically has a nervous breakdown. And Peter's saying don't make my mistake. Stay cool and keep watch.

And then he says your enemy. And here he identifies your real ultimate enemy in life. This is the enemy of your peace of mind. This is the enemy of your happiness. This is the enemy of all that's good in the world. Now this is very important because if I asked you right now who is the real enemy of peace and joy today because of the time of the century in our nation, some of you would say well it's the Democrats. And some of you would say well it's the Republicans. And some would say it's the Tea Party people. They're driving me crazy. And some of you would say it's militant Muslims. They're the real enemy. And some would say it's the gay agenda. That's the enemy. Some of you would say it's militant atheists. That's the enemy. And you'd all be wrong. Because the Bible says our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil.

And this is why it's possible to do what the Bible says again and again to love your enemies. Those who consider themselves your enemies. You can love them. You can bless them. You can pray for them. You can care for them because they're not really your enemy. They're people that God loves and God died for. He loves them unconditionally. So you got to realize who your real enemy is. I want you to look at how Peter describes this enemy. The word there is technically the word for legal adversary like an opponent in a lawsuit. Elsewhere in the Greek language in the first century that's how this word is used. Your, your legal opponent. Your legal adversary. Now that's a fascinating image. Follow me here because here's how spiritual warfare works.

How does spiritual warfare work in the movies? Like if you go see movies like Hellboy or Constantine or something. Satan and his demons are like breathing fire and they're causing inanimate objects to fly through the air. Here come the kitchen knives. You know right? In the Bible that never happens. That's not in the Bible. In the Bible here's how spiritual warfare actually works. In a court of law your opponent doesn't like breathe fire on you and make you know kitchen knives fly across the room, right? In a court of law what does your legal adversary do? He's doing battle primarily with words and with evidence that he or she is going to interpret negatively against you. And this is also the tactic of your spiritual adversary.

And the next word Peter uses to describe him backs this up. He calls him the devil. Now again throw out what you think you know. Because this is not a name like Mr. Devil. You know? Satan-deville. That's not Satan's name. This is just a description. This word means liar, accuser. You have a spiritual enemy true. But the tactic is very prosaic. It's not exotic. It's not you know it doesn't require a cult knowledge to battle him. The tactic is very simple. As if he is a legal opponent in a court of law, his role is to twist evidence and to slander and accuse. You have heard his lies. Lies like you are a worthless piece of filth. And I'll give you exhibit A. Exhibit A is your attempts to follow God are a joke. You call yourself a Christian. You keep failing. In fact you don't even know if you actually believe or if you just kind of hope to believe. Just give it all up and live for yourself. Exhibit B. Let's stop looking at you. Let's look at all those other hypocritical Christians. You really want to count yourself as one of them? They're either weird or stupid. Every single one of them. Exhibit C. Look at all the suffering you've gone through since you committed your life to God. If there was a God, your life should be easier. Why aren't you all your prayers answered? Proof there is not a God.

This is where the spiritual battle takes place in your mind. The battle for your marriage, the battle for your integrity, the battle for your reputation. It is fought in the mind against lies. It is really a theological battle. It is a fight between on the one hand the lies and the slanders and the tactics of this pestering spiritual legal opponent and on the other hand the truth of God's Word. And Peter says as we saw he's a roaring lion. It's almost like Peter is saying to these first century Christians in danger of persecution from Nero's government. It's almost like he's saying I know you're worried about those lions that eat Christians in the arenas. It's as if he's saying don't worry about a lion you're gonna see for the last 60 seconds of your life maybe. Worry about the spiritual predator that's always there in the world seeking someone to devour. And that word means of course to destroy, to consume. And this is important because sometimes in our pop culture the devil's portrayed as somebody who just wants you to have fun, right? He wants you to have a good time. Like Mark Twain famously said, "I prefer hell, I prefer heaven for the climate and hell for the company." Right? Everybody down there is having fun. But listen the devil doesn't want you to have pleasure, not really lasting pleasure. All lasting pleasures are from God. The evil one wants to destroy you. Destroy your ministry, destroy your relationships, destroy your peace of mind, destroy your potential.

So how do you prevail against this unseen spiritual opponent? And I know it's, I know we want to have this sort of idol almost in our minds of what the devil looks like. Does he have horns? Has he read? Whatever. Again, please put those things aside. All these descriptions about the devil in the Bible, your unseen opponent, he's a lion, he's a legal adversary. These are all figures of speech used to describe something that can't be seen but that is real. So how do I fight an opponent like this? This is serious and this is where many Christians go weird. And may I as your pastor just be very bold in saying something here. There is so much kooky stuff going on right now that people call spiritual warfare, but really in my opinion it's just Christianized witchcraft. So many books you can get on Amazon. Here's just an example of one. Everyone's guide to demons and spiritual warfare. And this is names and pictures of demons in it because inquiring minds want to know, you know. Basically it's got all kinds of spells you can cast against the devil and incantations and formulas. Hey, it sells right? And so what happens is you end up having Christians who think more about the devil than they do about Jesus. The Bible's plan is much simpler.

I want to de-exoticize spiritual warfare here. Let me ask you this. If you have an unseen spiritual adversary who attacks with lies, then what are you gonna counter attack with? What? The truth. Watch this. Peter says you resist and by the way that means to withstand, not to strive or fight. You know, don't go devil hunting. You know, don't go, I mean fighting the devil in your own powers like fighting a mountain lion with a rubber band, right? You know, and by the way if the Bible says that your adversary is a roaring lion, how do you fight a lion? I actually googled how to fend off a mountain lion this week. Not that writing this sermon intro freaked me out or anything, but it's good to know, right? Living here in Santa Cruz Mountains turns out there are several websites devoted to this very thing and I just cut and paste some things here. One of them says, I quote, "If you encounter an aggressive mountain lion in the wilderness, following these instructions may help save your life. However, do not hunt down a mountain lion to try these tips out." Now do they really have to say this? Yes, yes they do. They really do. Okay, here they go. Here's their advice and some of you who have never taken sermon notes before are taking notes now.

Okay, number one, stand your ground. Fight or flight will kick in but resist the urge to run. Stay where you are. Number two, do not run. Stay. Try to look as large as possible. Number three, if the mountain lion gains the upper hand, this is when you will want to pull out your gun. Well, and have your mother bear handy, right? But this kind of applies to that other roaring lion too. You don't fight or flight. You calmly stand your ground by standing firm in the faith. In a way you try to look as large as possible or rather you remember that God is greater. You remember that greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. Now what's that look like practically? Let me tell you a story.

Let me take you to Romania. And by the way, did you know that Dan Baker, our worship pastor, is in Romania? He's on a mission trip. He's teaching 600 orphans over there at a music camp. So be praying for Dan. But decades ago under the Romanian dictator Ceausescu's government, the government was trying to wipe out all Christians and they had an interesting tactic. Instead of bulldozing churches, they arrested all the popular pastors who led big churches and under torture they accused these pastors of all kinds of different sins. They didn't really have anything on these pastors but they accused them of sins. Like you know that you've lusted for people in your country. You know that you've thought about getting money from that till you know that you've tried to manipulate people and they accused them of all the stuff and under torture and sleepless nights, pastor after pastor confessed and they got the tape recordings of their confessions. They broadcast them and bring down ministry after ministry, just insidious plan.

Well they arrested this man, a very popular Romanian pastor called Richard Wurmbrand. His story is in a great book called Tortured for His Faith. You can get it for like two bucks now. Paperback on Amazon. I'd strongly recommend it. But Richard Wurmbrand was arrested and they again accused him of all kinds of things. You've had lustful thoughts. You've been nothing but selfishly ambitious. You've been greedy and he never broke. He never gave them anything for their tape recordings even under torture, even after being arrested a total of 14 years. Why? Here's what he would say again and again. He'd say, "Hey you guys, are you guys trying to convince me I'm a sinner? I already know I'm a sinner." He'd say, "I probably thought of undone all that stuff and probably stuff you guys haven't even thought of. I'm a rotten, I'm probably less virtuous than you guys. I'm probably capable of anything but God has saved me by His grace and despite all my sins, God loves me and God loves you so much and let me tell you about the love of God and never gave them anything they could broadcast." That is standing firm in His faith in the face of the accuser's lies.

When you are able to say to the liar, to the accuser, to those voices you might hear in your head, "I've been chosen. I have a purpose. God knew all about my failures before I failed and He still chose me and God's gonna give me an inheritance in His kingdom and He has a purpose for me." That is when you are standing firm. This is how you resist your enemy, not with weird incantations or amulets or memorized prayers or silver bullets or crosses, but with the truth. Listen, the first and most important thing you need to do to win the spiritual battle is deepen your understanding of the faith and especially your understanding of Jesus and who Jesus is and what Jesus taught and what Jesus did for you.

That should be clear and I think this is a time that I can kind of plug that series coming up, Jesus Journey, and I feel I can do this with integrity by the way in case you're wondering. I don't get a dime from these books. I'm not paid to write these books. My time spent writing these books is all extra time, right? Because I want to be able to with integrity say, "You gotta pick up a book. You gotta get into the study and not have you imagining that I'm getting something out of this monetarily because I'm not and neither is anybody else." But this is very important because in this series it's just 40 short but intense days that starts the last weekend of September. Small groups sign up, start next week, get into a group. You're not gonna get the full impact of this if you're not in a group watching those videos we filmed over there. But knowing who Jesus really is will help you immeasurably in your life's battles.

Now I told you that I was gonna spend most of my time on this first point so let's look at the rest of the verses in 1 Peter relatively quickly. I'm just gonna literally mention the last three points that are there on page two of your notes. To win life's biggest battles, I also need to remember I am not alone. Peter says that you can resist because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. Now of course in context he's talking about the horrible depredations suffered by persecuted Christians in the first century but this principle can apply no matter what suffering you are in. If you are hearing a little voice in your head that says, "I'm all alone. Nobody understands. I'm going through, I'm being attacked and there's nobody out there to help me or who loves me or understands me." That's another lie.

The truth is you're surrounded in this room. You're surrounded by people who've probably gone through all of that stuff before. In this room there's people who have been incarcerated. There's people who are alcoholics. There's people who've been drug addicts. There's people who struggle with everything possibly that you could people have been divorced. People who've gone through cancer. People who've gone through grief because of a loved one dying. If you're going through something you are not alone. That's one of the reasons I love our recovery groups, our grief share groups because it helps to know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are going through the same kind of sufferings and that really is important to winning those big battles in life.

Third, rely on God's promise. And now Peter's wrapping this letter up and he's getting into this great crescendo where he says, "And the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ after you have suffered a little while will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast." Listen, yeah wow right? Listen, just like some of the readers of this letter, some of you are hearing this and you are shell shocked because of some stuff that's been going on in your life. You're exhausted. You are bone tired and you're this close to losing hope. But on the authority of God's Word I can tell you that God himself will restore you and make you strong and firm and steadfast. Amen? Yeah, I encourage all the people around you because it's true.

Now listen, Peter's audience knew what Peter was talking about. They knew he did not mean that they, after a little while, they wouldn't suffer anymore. He knew, they all knew some of them would die. Peter is saying whether in this life or the next, God will restore you. Peter's saying, "Hey, I've seen the resurrected Jesus and you have nothing to worry about because God, even if they do kill you, God will restore you. This is a promise for your future and I want to make this plain to those of you who are on the verge of losing hope or giving up. Listen very carefully. This means you are not what has happened to you in the past. You are not how others have at one time treated you. You are not your past habits. You are not your past failures. You are not trapped forever in misery. You do not have endless gloom ahead. You have a bright future promised by God. If God called you to His glory, He's gonna get you to His glory and Peter says that's a promise.

And if you want to fight life's biggest battles, you got to do this. Resist your enemy with the truth, standing firm in the faith. Remember you're not alone. You rely on that promise of God of restoration and resurrection and finally number four, remain in God's grace. It's amazing how often the Bible, the New Testament, comes back to this, isn't it? Peter says, and this is where he's really landing the plane here, "With the help of Silas, whom I regard as a faithful brother, I have written to you briefly." Now stop there for a second. Who's Silas? Well we know who this probably was. Scholars say this was probably the same person that in the book of Acts and some of Paul's epistles is seen as traveling with the Apostle Paul. Now we know from those passages that Silas was an educated Roman and apparently he was Peter's "emanuensis." You may not be familiar with that word. That was like a secretary in the ancient world.

Here's a very ancient depiction, this is a Greek icon, of one of the Apostles symbolically here being inspired by God and then reciting his ideas to an "emanuensis." And the "emanuensis" being educated and a good writer is putting it down in fluent Greek form here as he writes the New Testament. And apparently in the case of the book of 1 Peter, that secretary was this man Silas because Peter says, "I've written you with the help of Silas." But here's something fascinating that we can't see in English. Write at this moment in the text. Peter himself apparently takes the pen and this was typical when an "emanuensis" helped you out as sort of the seal that you yourself were involved, you would write the last few sentences.

And you know what's interesting? At this point the Greek in the original is suddenly much simpler. It's a little clumsy. It's like if you were writing, do you know a language kind of that like you learned in high school or something? It's like you dictating a letter to somebody who was fluent in Spanish and then taking the pen and in Spanish, the best Spanish you could, going, "Hey, I've written this letter with the help of my friend Jose Santian, but right now I'm writing this to yourself and your Spanish would be a little bit clumsier, right?" Well that's what happens here with the Greek. It's the Greek of Jewish fishermen for whom Greek was a second language, right? And I love this because that's just one of the little details that adds validity to the idea that Peter actually wrote this letter with the help of Silas.

So imagine this rough old fisherman carefully scratching out these words. What he's about to say next, it's so important to him that he takes the pen in his own hand and he tells us the whole reason for writing in case we missed it. He says, "We wrote this to you encouraging you and testifying this is the true grace of God." Stand fast in it. Stand fast in God's grace. This is the core idea of Christianity, grace. Grace is God's unmerited favor. Grace means God doesn't love you if he just loves you because, because he chooses to. So stand fast in the true grace of God because it is so easy to slip into a performance oriented mindset that says, "You know what? You'd be more valuable if you had more money. You'd be more valuable if you were better looking. You'd be more valuable if you were a higher performer. People would love you more or even spiritually. God would love you more if you went on more mission trips. God would love you more if you spent more time reading the Bible and it's easy to, so easy to fall away from grace and that's when you start hearing the lies of the accuser.

So stand fast in the true grace of God. And then I love Peter's little closing send-off. "She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings and so does my son Mark." Greetings from a woman. Peter could be talking about a church because the Bible talks about churches in feminine terms or he could be talking about his wife. We know from the Bible that he was married. And then at the very end of his epistle he says, and this isn't just a throwaway, he says, "Greet one another with a kiss of love, peace to all of you who are in Christ." Now again remember his audience? People under pressure. Ever have this happen? You're under pressure and you lash out at people who have nothing to do with the pressure that you're feeling? It's possible for this first century churches to turn into a bunch of bickering, backbiting people. Peter's, I love the way Peter ends here the same exact way he began with an emphasis on peace and love.

He starts his letter talking about peace and love and he ends it talking about peace and love because in the end these are the most important things even in the midst of suffering. Live at peace and love each other. So wow, right now we are wrapping up our 11 weeks in First Peter. And as we bring this to a close I want us to think back on the whole book because I don't want you to miss First Peter's big idea. If anybody ever asked you, "What's that book of the Bible about?" Well it's about living hope because there will be tough times. Peter says this over and over again. Life is not easy and if you expect it to be you will be sorely disappointed and just because you're living a godly life does not mean it's going to be easy. It does not mean you will not suffer. Life is tough. There will be tough times. But Peter says in a dozen different ways throughout this letter, "God is greater."

And in fact this is so important I want you to say Peter's big idea together out loud with me. Say it, "There will be tough times but God is greater." Say it again, "There will be tough times but God is greater." God is greater than your opponents. God is greater than your temptations. God is greater than your trials. God is greater than your sorrows. God is greater than your worries. God is greater than your struggles. God is greater than any scheme of man, any disease of nature, any tactic of Satan. Times will be tough but what? God is greater. Rest in that.

Let's pray together. Close your eyes and bow your heads with me. With your eyes closed I want you to hear God saying to you, "You are loved. You are chosen. You have such a great destiny. You have such an important purpose even in the midst of this tough life." And let me pray for you now. Lord there are people here today who have almost lost hope. Listening to the lies of their adversary. They're almost in the jaws of the devouring lion. Help them to know there is a greater power fighting that lion. There is hope. There is a plan. There is a promise that will one day all end and that your will is always ultimately done. Help us to never listen to the lies of our enemy claiming that we have no hope. Help us to stand firm in the truth that you are greater, that you love us, that we are here for a reason, your reason. And help us to stand strong in our faith with confidence. And Lord if anybody here for the first time needs to make that commitment to Christ I pray that right now they would say, "Lord I don't understand it all but come into my life and give me your salvation and your hope for eternity and for today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.