Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 5:10
Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter
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Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles
Message: Hope in Sovereign Grace
Airdate: 11/12/2026
Program: 2399
Hope in Sovereign Grace: Part A
1 Peter chapter 5. I’m going to read the larger section that we have been sitting on here for a few weeks, and our aim is to focus in on verses 10 and 11. I begin reading now in verse 6. “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 whom he may 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.”
Now you’ll notice that we are in the homestretch here in our study of 1 Peter. We only have a few verses remaining. And we have spent quite a bit of time here in verses 6 and following because all of us need a little bit more humility. All of us need a little bit more awareness of the enemy. All of us need a little bit more strategy on how to fight him. And we all need the encouragements that this passage has, I think, been truly a blessing to us. And frankly, those are the glamour points in the text. If you’re reading through 1 Peter, maybe devotionally, you kind of... those stand out to you, right? “Humble yourself before the Lord.” “The devil’s a lion prowling around seeking who he may devour.” You’re like, “Okay, I got to note that today. Don’t forget that as I go out today.”
Once you get past verse 9, and you hit verse 10, it’s like a shoosh, right? You’re like, “Hey, I’m almost done. Now I’m done,” right? And you easily skip over some of these verses. Like, frankly, I have verse 10 and 11 here. I didn’t expect to be doing a whole message on this passage, honestly. But as I get into what Peter is saying here, I believe what he is saying in verses 10 and 11 are the anchor to everything else that he has been saying here. These well-known quoted verses, verse 10 anchors all of them.
Now, I do want to note that there is some, call it irony, call it humor. There’s not a lot of humor in the Bible. So whenever you see a little bit of ironic humor, you sort of have to enjoy it, right? And I think we’ve got a little bit of that here, because Paul says in verse 7 that we are to cast all our anxieties on Him, knowing that He cares for us. Great. “I’m going to take all my anxieties. I’m going to be anxiety-free.” And then in verse 8, he says, there’s a lion wanting to eat you. Okay, now, what exactly is that? Because I don’t know that I can be anxiety-free and aware of a lion that is trying to eat me.
I had a flight this week. I think there’s sometimes, and maybe you have as well, the little pre... thing that they do before you fly, you know, where they have the recording playing, and, you know, they go through all of the potential contingencies that might happen on that flight and what you’re supposed to do if it does. So they’ll say, “Please buckle up,” in case something happens where you’ll wish that you were wearing a seat belt, so buckle up the seat belt. And “If we have a water landing, your seat is a flotation device,” so take a look at it, make sure you know how to pull that out. “In the case that oxygen is eliminated from the cabin, masks will fall from the ceiling. Breathe normally.” And it’s like, I don’t think if we’re in a spiral and there’s no oxygen and we might be going into water and I’m trying to pull my seat up and the mask comes down, I don’t think I’m breathing normally in a moment like that. It’s kind of like what Peter is saying here. “Cast all your anxieties on Him. He cares for you.” There’s a lion trying to eat you. I don’t see how those two things can simultaneously happen, which I think is why verse 10, again, is the anchor.
How can I live in a world where there are swirling circumstances that are beyond my control? How can I live in a world where things happen like we saw in the news this week? And how can I live in a world, my own world, where I got all the dramas of my own life happening, and I can give my anxieties and my fears to God? How can those simultaneously happen? Verse 10 tells us how we can go through suffering, go through trials, and do so without them overwhelming us.
So again, verse 10. “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.” “And after you have suffered a little while,” he says. This is a theme in Peter. He talks about trials, he talks about sufferings, perhaps more than any other letter in the Bible, but he talks about them in terms of their fleeting nature. They are temporary. He says this in chapter one, verse six, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” So a little while.
Now, how could Peter say that our trials are temporary, or they are here for a little while? What happens when you’re having a great time? We always say things like, “Wow, the time has flown.” We’re on vacation. Everything’s awesome. You’re like, “Man, these days are just...” When things are going great, time goes like this. What happens when things go bad? How fast does time go in the waiting room at the hospital? Drags on forever, doesn’t it? It’s like, “Man, this is lasting.” Or in our trial, we’ll think, “This is going to be part of my life forever. This is just... oh my,” you know, we get that sense. And Peter here says, Christian, you got to realize that that trial, no matter what it is, it’s only there for a little while.
Now, how could Peter say that? Because there are some trials that last most of our life. You might have something that has happened in your life that you are going to live with and deal with for the rest of your life. And so you look at that trial, and you say, “Peter, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That is not a trial for a little while.” Here’s why Peter can say that. Because Scripture calls us to view life redemptively, from the perspective of redemptive history, from the perspective of the big picture of what God is doing. Our lives, James says, are like vapor. They are here, and then they’re gone. Now, the good news is that means that the trials that we have in this life are also like vapor. They are here, and then they are gone. When compared to the big thing that God is doing, the scope of redemption, specifically, when you think about eternity, once we get into eternity, all the things that we went through in this life, good or bad, all of them will seem to us to have been so very short.
And that pain that I went through with that situation that I was involved in, that suffering that I had, “Man, I look at that now and it just seems like it is so small when compared to the grand scheme of what God has for us in the future.” So we’ve got to look at these things redemptively and from the perspective of eternity. Paul calls trials in the Christian’s life light and momentary, 2 Corinthians 4:17. Friends, we live forever. We live forever. And that means that thing in your life will someday seem so small when we see Christ, as the song lyric goes. So look at the trial through the perspective of redemption. And by comparison, it’s going to be here just for a little while.
“Well, thank you, Peter, very much. When I get to heaven, I’ll make sure to look at the trial that I’m in right now from that perspective. But right now, I’m not in heaven. I’m not in eternity. It’s not tomorrow. It’s today. Do you have anything that can help me for now?” Okay? Now is when I need my help. And this is what Peter has to say for us so helpfully here in verse 10. Peter urges us to view the trials in our life from the perspective of the sovereign grace of God, that we are to derive hope from His sovereign, powerful grace. Again, verse 10, “The God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
At first glance, you may not realize that we are really on the edge of a mystery here. We’re on the edge of a mystery. Because whenever you look at admonitions in Scripture that call us to look at life and trials, salvation, from the perspective of what God does, it always creates this tension with, “Well, then what’s my responsibility?” The sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Loads of books have been written on this, lots of struggles in understanding this. It’s a mystery. But it’s important to know the mystery, because if you grabbed all of the exhortations that we have had in this letter, like don’t live like the pagan world, crave the milk of God’s word, respect those in authority over us, win unbelievers to Christ by the example of our life, and many other things. If you just pulled all of those exhortations about what we’re supposed to do out and focused on those, guess what happens? All of your hope is derived from your performance and your obedience to those exhortations. You have to derive hope in your trial from how well you are doing with those things. And what do we know about our doing of those things? Always it is imperfect, human, flawed. You try to do that very long, you end up being a legalist, where all of my hope is built upon how well I perform in these things.
And God steps into that... that’s the man’s responsibility... into that tension is the sovereignty of God. That there is a God who has certain qualities and characteristics and has done something Himself. Spurgeon was asked, “How do you reconcile these two, God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility?” He said, “I don’t have to reconcile friends.” It’s a good quote. So, I note the mystery. I can’t explain it. But I want you to see why it’s important to realize the tension of the mystery, so that we understand that while we have responsibility to these things that Peter has called us to, that the foundation of our hope is not us. And it can’t be us. It is God Himself.
And this is how, especially in the times of suffering. Again, when life is awesome and everything’s great, I don’t mind maybe looking at my performance and saying, “You know what, I’m doing pretty good. I’m a pretty good person.” It’s when life is hard and when I have failed or there are things that I can’t control, when all of a sudden my need to lean into God becomes even more evident. You ever have a moment like that in your life? Could be your job, could be something else. You realize, “I am not in control.” And that’s what Peter now... into that gap, that control gap, steps the only one who’s really in control. And that is God. That is God.
Notice what Peter says. “The God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ.” Peter points us to the sovereignty of God, the sovereign grace and His call on our life. And he says that we are to rest in the fact that God is the one who is doing the saving. Again, the God of all grace. The grace of God is God’s goodness, His favor, which He gives to us freely. We do not merit it, or it wouldn’t be grace. He gives it to us. He is the God of all grace. There is no limit to the grace of God. He can give grace to somebody else, and it doesn’t mean He doesn’t have just as much to give to me. We don’t need to be jealous of the grace of God in other people’s life. It is an infinite grace that God has.
He is the God of all grace who has called you. The calling of God is God’s summons to our hearts to believe. The call of God. Lots of it in Scripture. Romans talks about it a lot. And the point of the call of God is that salvation begins with God. It is not me rationalizing, having feelings warm towards God, that all of a sudden is the initiating moment of salvation. That God is the one who starts it. He is the one that does the calling. He called us from eternity past to believe. So salvation is a God thing. It’s a God thing. And the grace of God ensures that it can only be a God thing, and that we cannot take any credit for our salvation whatsoever.
But I want you to see here the calling that he’s talking about. He doesn’t say that God called you to initially believe, which He did, but that’s not what Peter says. He doesn’t say God has called you to suffer, which He has. What does he say? “He has called you to His eternal glory in Christ.” That is not the calling that summoned me to believe. That is a calling to the end of salvation, the future grace of God.
Think of a race. Lots of people can show up for, like, a half marathon or something, right? They can have the number, they can have the shorts, they can have brand new running shoes. But how do you know who the runners are? Starting line or the finish line? You go to the finish line. You know who the runners are by who finishes the race. And the calling of God is, yes, we are called to believe, that initiating work of God in our life. But what Peter is saying is not that we’re called to show up at the starting line. He says God is guaranteeing that we’re going to make it to the finish line. We’re going to make it to the finish line. It is the future grace of God.
When do you need a guarantee that you’re going to finish the race? Like if you interview people at the beginning of a 10K or something like that, say, “Hey, do you think that you’re going to finish the race?” All of them think they’re going to finish the race. But it’s like halfway somewhere when they’re like, “This is longer than I thought it was.” You know, the person that only ever ran a mile but decides to run the half marathon. When do they need encouragement that they are going to make it to the finish line? It is in the middle of the race. It is when I am struggling that a word comes to me and says, “Hey, by the way, the God that called you to the starting line is guaranteeing you’re gonna make it to the finish line.” All of a sudden you’re like, “Hey, I thought I was going to die, but apparently I’m not. I am going to make it to the finish line.”
“God, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ.” Philippians 1:6, “I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Here’s what Jesus said. “Let not your hearts be troubled.” There’s a good word. “Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.”
So God’s effectual call begins our experience of salvation, places the grace of God upon us when we believe. But the call of God is also to that future state, that every genuine believer who begins that race by faith at the beginning is going to make it to the end. Now, again, it’s not because the runner can be like, “I’ve worked out, I’ve done so many amazing things, I’ve got great stamina and endurance. Look at me, I’m making it to the end.” Because in the Christian life, we all come to the end of ourselves, don’t we? God brings things into our life, and we realize, “I can’t save myself. I don’t know that I can go on another day in this.” It’s a God thing, friends. If I trust in my performance, if I believe in me, I will in the end discover that I am not sufficient. But it is when I am suffering and in trials that the grace of God comes to me and sustains me and ultimately completes my salvation.
Now there’s another marvelous truth in this little phrase here. Notice we are called to His eternal glory in Christ. What is that finish line like? Or on the other side of the finish line. Called to His eternal glory in Christ. Now this is the second time in this chapter Peter has talked about this. Look at verse 1 of chapter 5. He says this, “So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.” A partaker in the glory. So what is it exactly that we are called to? What are we being guaranteed towards or to? Peter says here that it is glory. But it’s not just glory. It is that we partake in the glory.
Now imagine if God had said here, “I will sustain you so that someday, like Moses, you will be able to see my glory.” That’d be awesome, wouldn’t it? If God said, “Hey, I guarantee that someday you’re gonna get to see my glory,” we’d be like, “Oh man,” we’d run, we’d think that’s so encouraging. “Fantastic, I get to see His glory.” Or what if God would say, “I’ll sustain you, and you get to be near my glory,” like Peter, James, and John in the Mount of Transfiguration, you get to be near it. We’d be like, “That sounds fantastic. You mean I get to be near Your glory? I get to be in proximity to Your glory?” What a motivation that would be for us.
But notice what Peter is saying, that we are called and given the privilege of actually partaking in the glory of God. And not just for a moment, like Moses, as God passed by and showed him His glory, or like Peter, James, and John, who had that moment on the mountain where they saw the glory of Jesus as it was unveiled. It is not a momentary proximity to the glory of God. It is not a momentary seeing of the glory of God. We are called to partake in the glory of God forever, okay? Forever. So listen to Romans 8. “And if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, provided we suffer with Him, in order that we may also be glorified with Him.” What is that like? What does it mean to be glorified with Jesus, or to partake in the glory, as he says in 5:1? What lies ahead for us is a partaking in the glory of God, where we are in the midst of it. We are part of it, that glory will be yours. And let that encourage you as you struggle with your trial.
