How much could be said today about being trustworthy as a servant of God. The trustworthy are not going to buckle to contemporary trends. They're not going to buckle to worldliness in the church. So many have. Although they know the truth; they believe the truth; they love of the truth, they are not altogether trustworthy, because whatever comes along they buckle and give way to it. Silas is trustworthy. There are people who preach a lot of truth – and we give thanks God for that – but they also preach some wrong things. You see people living grand lives and taking huge salaries in the ministry, when the Lord said, ‘The servant [is not] above his Lord’, and set a standard of reasonableness and simplicity for all of us.
Peter says, ‘I have written briefly’, and there's a message in that for all shepherds of God's people, all preachers. We are not to be self-indulgent, and take too long, be too elaborate, too complex, preach only to the intellectuals or preach only to this or that class of person. All our preaching is to be accessible. It's all locked up in these words: ‘I have written briefly.’ Exhorting: there must be exhortation, must be application of the word. There is so much application in 1 Peter. You can see he was 30 years a preacher. He preaches the doctrines, then he applies them.
‘And testifying’ – that’s a special word. What he means is bearing witness. This was particularly applicable to him, because he was a witness of the risen Lord. He saw the risen Lord. He followed him throughout his ministry. He had, as an apostle, a special ministry to give testimony to the things that he had witnessed: the miraculous works, the teaching, the deportment of the Lord. Everything about him and his rising from the dead and his ascension into heaven. He had seen it all, seen even Calvary, we believe, and witnessed the sufferings. So he is exhorting and testifying. But we too testify, not as having seen the risen Lord, but having received him in our lives and tasted his goodness. We tell others our testimony, our experience and what he’s done for us.
Human ideas must change, be modified or fall away altogether, but the word of God as delivered by this inspired apostle will never pass away. Suffering tests our confidence in what we stand for, since we are obliged to weigh the truth against the experience of sufferings in persecution. It is especially important that we are defended against any undermining doubts by a certainty that we do not suffer in vain. He writes as one who is wholly convinced within himself and, knowing how this has strengthened him, he wishes to give the same assurance to his readers. When the world has passed away, then those who have made the Lord and his truth their refuge will be left standing, in the same position they have retained since they first looked to Christ. That will be the glorious outcome of their faith.
Silas is the contracted form of the name used in Acts, but the long form Silvanus (meaning in Latin ‘of the forest’, from ‘silva’, ‘forest’ or ‘wood’) is used by Paul in his epistles. This is the same man chosen by Paul to accompany him on his return to Galatia to visit the churches founded there by him and Barnabas on their previous journey (Acts 15:40). Peter adds his vote of confidence in this servant of the Lord.