Day 227

Today's Reading: 1 Peter 5

Puritan writer Thomas Brooks said: “If God were not my friend, Satan would not be so much my enemy.” In today’s chapter, Peter warns that our enemy, the devil, prowls around us like a lion wanting his next meal: “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Satan seeking to devour means he is on a mission to take down God’s children.

There is a Bible study tool called “The law of first use.” It can be a valuable tool when studying a topic in the Bible. It works by looking at the first time a word is used in the Scripture to see how it is used. If we applied it to “devil,” we’d find it first appears in Genesis 3. And the first thing the Bible ever says about the devil is this: “The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made” (verse 1, NLT). This means that Satan is shrewd in Operation Devour. He shrewdly finds ways to devour people. Another Puritan writer, William Jenkyn, said it like this: “He hath an apple for Eve, a grape for Noah, a change of raiment for Gehazi, a bag for Judas. He can dish out his meat for all palates.”

I do not want to be the devil’s next meal.

I have learned some interesting things about lions when they are on the hunt to devour. We can learn some of Satan’s tactics since Peter describes the devil as a lion. Or, as Paul says, “We are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11, NKJV). For a hunt to be successful, a lion must first stalk close while undetected and then attack with a rush before the surprised prey has a chance to flee. A lion’s prey knows that a visible lion is a safe lion because they are too slow to catch an animal alert to its presence. A herd of gazelle will allow a lion to walk past them at only a hundred feet away!

A second way lions hunt is that they catch whatever is easiest! They often kill the very young, sick, old, or careless.

And finally, as Robert Simmons observed, “when the fire goes out, the lions move in.” When the fire of a camp goes out at night, this is a lion’s signal to move in to devour its prey. Simmons tells the story of a doctor and his wife who had traveled to the jungle in Africa. After a long flight from America and a full day of birdwatching and photography, they went to bed in their tent with a campfire outside. They had been warned to keep logs on the fire all night, or the lions would come in. The fire was blazing hot when they fell into such a deep sleep that they failed to notice when the fire became smoldering embers. Under the guise of darkness, a lioness stuck her head into the tent and killed the doctor’s wife.

One of the ways we keep from becoming the devil’s next meal is by keeping our hearts on fire for God. Remember in Luke 24:32 when the two men on the road to Emmaus realized, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” (emphasis added). Our hearts will stay on fire as God speaks to us through His Word. Every time we open God’s Word, it’s like putting another log on the fire.

Finally, when does the devil devour? Again Robert Simmons offers his insight: “Where stragglers roam, lions feed.” These are animals out grazing alone. He says:

In Africa, lions will lay out watching herds. Lions know their own strength, but he also knows the strength of numbers. When he looks at a herd of zebras, he knows if he attacks one and the herd stampedes, they would trample him. When he sees one rebelliously remove himself and independently feed away from the herd, that can be his next meal. When that zebra gets far enough away from the pack, the lion pounces, pulls it into the tall grass, goes for the jugular, and has begun eating the meat