1 Peter 1:5

IN HIS KEEPING

‘Kept by the power of God.’

1 Peter 1:5

In other words, heaven is kept for God’s people, and they are kept for heaven. To every true Christian such a thought is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable consolation.

I. What the text does not mean.

(a) It does not mean that God’s children are kept from sin. God is indeed ‘able to guard you from stumbling,’ as St. Jude tells us (24, R.V.). Yet, as a matter of fact, ‘if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’

(b) It does not mean that God’s children are kept from sorrow. The shadows of life fall on the Christian’s pathway and the Christian’s home as they do on those of other men. God has indeed promised that He will wipe out every tear from the eyes of His people. But that time is not yet.

(c) It does not teach that God’s people are kept from danger. Sometimes they are killed by an earthquake or a railway accident, slain in battle or drowned in the cruel sea.

(d) Nor are God’s people kept from sickness. Some of His dearest saints have been grievously afflicted. Yet even here, as in all else, the Christian has the best of it; for God makes all his bed in his sickness, and surprises him with sweet visits of love.

(e) Nor are God’s people kept from temptation. He has never promised they shall be free from temptation in this world, though He has said that He ‘will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that they may be able to bear it’ (1 Corinthians 10:13).

II. What, then, does the text mean?—It means that their souls are safe. It does mean that ‘as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even for ever’ (Psalms 125:2). It means that every soul that has been led by grace to flee to Christ alone will be kept by the power of God, and shall never perish.

III. Kept ‘through faith.’—God first puts faith into the hearts of His people, then He takes care of it. He tries it in the furnace, He lets it fall into the sea of sorrow or persecution, but all the time He keeps it alive. Faith is a tender flower which only God Himself can plant—a flower which never grows of itself in nature’s barren soil, a flower which even, if once planted, must be watered and tended by the same gracious Hand that planted it. Like a lovely fern, whose home is a warmer clime than ours, it needs constant care and skill to protect its life. This God promises in the text.

—Rev. F. Harper.

Illustrations

(1) ‘There is a grand sermon by one of the greatest of Welsh preachers, Christmas Evans, which beautifully illustrates the text. He describes the evil spirit spreading his wings and flying through the air, when on one of the wide Welsh moors he espied a young lad, in the bloom of his strength, sitting on the box of his cart driving to the quarries. “There he is,” said Satan; “his veins are full of blood, his bones are full of marrow; I will cast my sparks into his bosom, and set all his passions on fire. I will lead him on, and he shall rob his master, and lose his place, and find another, and rob again, and do worse, and he shall go on from worse to worse, and then his soul shall sink, never to rise again, into the pit of fire!” But just as the devil was about to dart a fiery temptation into the heart of the youth, the dismayed evil one heard him sing—

“My God, the spring of all my joys,

The life of my delights,

The glory of my brightest days,

And comfort of my nights.”

The fiery dragon fled away, because the youth was “kept by the power of God.”

(2) ‘ “But I saw him pass on,” said the preacher, “hovering like a vulture in the air. There, beneath the eaves of a little cottage, he saw a girl of some eighteen years of age, a flower among the flowers. She was knitting or sewing at the cottage door. Said Satan, ‘She will do for me: I will whisper the evil thought into her heart, and she shall turn it over and over, again and again, until she learns to love it; and then the evil thought shall be an evil deed, and then she shall be obliged to leave her village, and go to the great town, and she shall live a life of evil, all astray from the paths of my Almighty enemy.’ So he hastened to approach to dart into the mind of the maiden; but while he was approaching all the hills and crags seemed to break out into singing, as her sweet voice rose high and clear, chanting out the words—

‘My God, I am Thine;

What a rapture divine!

What a blessing to know that my Saviour is mine!

In the heavenly Lamb

Thrice happy I am,

And my soul it doth dance at the sound of His name.’

Here, again, the dragon fled away, for the maiden was ‘kept by the power of God.’

(3) ‘ “So he passed from the valley among the hills, hut with hot rage. ‘I will try the old, and all in good time for me.’ For he saw an old woman; she too was sitting at the door of her cot, and spinning there on her wheel. ‘Ah!’ said Satan, ‘it will be good to lay hold of her grey hairs, and make her to taste of the lake that burneth with fire.’ And he descended on the eaves of her cottage; but as he approached near he heard the trembling, quavering voice of the old woman murmuring to herself lowlily, ‘For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.’ And the words hurt the evil one as well as disappointed him. And he fled away, for the old saint was ‘kept by the power of God.’

(4) ‘ “And now,” said the preacher, “it was night, and he passed through another Welsh village, the white cottages gleaming out in the pure moonlight on the sloping hillside. And there was a cottage, and in the upper room was a faint light trembling, and, said the devil, ‘There is old Williams, slowly, surely wasting away.’ The evil spirit enters the room; there was the old man lying on the poor bed; his hands and fingers were thin and wasted, his eyes closed, the long silvery hair falling over the pillow.… But as Satan himself moved before the bed, to dart into the mind of the old man, the patriarch rose, stretched forth his hands, and pinned his enemy to the wall, as he exclaimed, ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ The old man sank back; it was all over, ‘kept’ to the last ‘by the power of God’; and those words beat Satan down to the bottom of his own bottomless pit.” ’