0817 GREETINGS FROM BABYLON

AUGUST 17 = 1 PETER 5

GREETINGS FROM BABYLON

Here in the final chapter of 1 Peter, we find some important instructions about elders who serve as shepherds, and various other instructions. But I’d like to focus on some small details from this chapter. For every word of Scripture is God breathed and profitable for our lives.

So here are a few choice sayings in this chapter:

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

I don’t know about you, but I am much more aware of the word “anxiety” in people’s lives the last few years. Anxiety is a psychological condition, something that needs counseling, or medication, or both. Anxiety is a natural response to difficult circumstances that are out of our control. It is some sort of combination of worry and fear, and we fix it by taking more control of our surroundings.

On the other hand, perhaps anxiety is really a spiritual problem, or a result of weak theology. According to Peter, you can resolve anxiety, not by taking more control, but by giving up control and handing the reins over to God. 

And it’s all of your anxiety, Peter says. Not just the emergencies, and not just the daily little things, but all of it.

How can you do such a thing? By knowing a very important truth: That he cares for you. That’s why I say some anxiety could be the result of bad theology. If my understanding of God is that he cares for me, in every little detail and major hurdle, then I can trust him to cast all my anxiety on him. 

A friend of mine in ministry was worried about various things going on in his church. He couldn’t sleep at night, because he kept trying to resolve people’s problems in his head. Finally, he realized that he could just hand all those matters over to God to let him hold them, since God was going to be up all night anyway. He never had problems with anxious thoughts keeping him awake after that.

The other little detail that I want to point out is Peter’s final greetings.

“She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark.”

Who did Peter say is in Babylon? She. “She” is the church, the bride of Christ. Peter had opened by addressing his letter to “God’s elect, exiles scattered abroad.” But Peter is writing now from Rome, the capitol of the Roman Empire, a city known for its pagan and idolatrous ways. Peter had described the lifestyles of such people elsewhere in his letter. Here, he only needs to allude to a powerful capitol city of a people who conquered Israel and took her people to captivity there. So the church is scattered abroad, but there in Rome is a congregation of people who are held in captivity.

And where is Babylon? It was an ancient city in Mesopotamia that had been destroyed almost seven centuries before Peter’s letter. It represented all that is corrupt and antichrist, going all the way back to the Tower of Babel and through the attacks on the nation of Israel.

Why would Peter refer to “she” and “Babylon,” rather than to say the church in Rome sends greetings? Because Peter was imprisoned there in Rome, and the guards would check any letters to be sure no inappropriate information was being sent. So Peter used wording that would be clear to his readers, but would get past the guards.

So it is for us today, you know. We either are aliens in exile, or we live in Babylon, as foreigners and strangers, held captive in a culture that opposes God and the truth, persecutes believers in Jesus, and reminds us daily that this is not our home, where we are free to follow Christ and glorify God in our actions.

But it is not all bad news. Not at all. We may live in Babylon, but we were not the ones who chose our neighborhood. God chose it for us, just as he chose us to be in him as heirs together with Christ. As Peter says it, “chosen together with you.”

So fear not, fellow traveler. We are walking through Emmanuel’s land, and soon we will know for certain that we have returned to the land of our citizenship. There we will see and know in full just how much he cares for us, and we will be with the Lord forever. Amen.