Love One Another

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, good evening. This is a, this is kind of a strange thing I think we’re doing, but I think it will be interesting if you can put it all together after a year of us doing it to have all five elders preaching through the same book, doing a paragraph or so at a time, because if you’re teaching through a book you have a certain point that you want to grab and maybe weave through the whole thing. But that was in paragraph six and you’re doing paragraph four and you know that kind of thing. So I think one of the things I want to try tonight and I think I’ve accomplished it in my notes is there was a seminary professor that was an interesting guy and he said that you should be able to preach the passage without cross-reference. So in other words, the idea that the people first Peter was writing to, they didn’t have a New Testament, they had his letter. The only thing they had was his letter. So they had to read his letter and then by the context of the letter understand what he was saying. Now, you know, for us that if, well, wait a minute, it’s the whole

word of God and I know this reference and I know that thing and I can put plug that in Peter knew some of that and so I should know some of that and I should be able to go back to that not everybody had a Bible not everybody memorized their Old Testament and so a lot of these guys put a lot of stuff in here with very few words and that’s why you know preachers that want to quote exegete, the passage can find a lot of stuff in here by the definition of the words and where it’s used before and stuff like that. So it’s kind of an interesting method. I don’t think it really flies when you’re pastoring a church or like Shawn is doing going through a book over a couple year period.

I think it’s fascinating how God when he sets his word up has this structure and you teach through the structure to instruct the people, but the sheep have all these things going on and it is absolutely amazing, even though we’re planning to do this, how different situations weave into what you wanna say. And a person can sit there going, he’s talking exactly to me, how does he know that? Well, he doesn’t know that. Holy Spirit, God super intended that for you to hear on that Sunday in that particular place and that particular phrase, rung your bell. It’s just weird how all that happens, but we have to be faithful to the source, which is the word.

So my paragraph that was given was, or two paragraphs, I guess, there are three, ever how they range them. And it’s 1 Peter 1.22 through 1 Peter 2.3. Remember, they didn’t have verse markers or chapters. This is just like getting a letter from somebody. And so I get this letter, and Jim has taught the congregation the previous week, and Sean Yoo started this off right. So two guys have preached on this, and then I get the letter, and I’m supposed to work through this on this Saturday at the synagogue, wherever we’re meeting. So it says, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God for all, well, I went a little faster, didn’t I? For now I’m, there’s quotation marks here, and we’ll get into that a little bit. For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. So put away all malice, all deceit, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

That’s a lot of stuff in there. So you look at it and the normal way is, what is this guy trying to tell me? And there seems to be two primary commands here. And the commands in the whole little passage here, There’s two primary things being said. One of them is love one another earnestly from a pure heart, and that’s in verse 122. And then in verse 22, long for the pure spiritual milk, which is the word of God, but in this particular translation, it’s long for the pure spiritual milk. So you need to long for the word, and you need to love earnestly from a pure heart. Oh, okay, I can do that, I guess.

That’s an interesting commandment, right? When you know, well, I needed the savior and I’m really not that good a guy and I don’t like everybody and this is a tough world I’m living in and these Romans are kind of persecuting us and this is not a good time to live And, you know, what am I gonna do in here? And so now I have to apply it and figure out what the heck I’m being instructed to do. Okay? So that while 122 through 25 and two one through three all deal with the subject of the word of God, okay? Because notice that having purified your souls by your obedience and then the perishable seed, but through the living and abiding word of God kind of closes that paragraph out.

So it looks like the word has something to do with it. And my soul needs to be purified in some way. I need to have a certain attitude, but how can I have that attitude? Well, maybe I need to get it some way that isn’t from me. And the way I get it, the word is the seed by which we have been born again. But if I look up here and you have been born again, not of a perishable seed, okay, that one is like human offspring, so I’m not born by that, but I’m born by imperishable seed through the living and abiding word of God, which is like, now wait a minute, I got this Bible here, or I have my septum that I’m carrying around, or somebody has it and they’re reading it to me, and I go, oh yeah, okay, there’s a thought seed that I have, and then supernaturally, the spirit’s opening that up in my head, so I do have this living thing going on here.

But I also have a son or maybe a daughter, and that little baby needs to be nurtured and brought along, and so he weaves all of that in here too, and shows you how just by looking at your life, you start to see these pictures of how these things are. So after that, the relationships of the word of God to the mutual love of the believers all weave in together so that we are supposed to have an appeal to the eternal nature of the word of God. And with that shows the love of the believers should be what? Eternal. So once we get in the family, we have been chosen by God to be part of his family, adopted as his sons and daughters.

And now we are forever, right? With him. Now, everybody that’s born gets to live forever, right? Everybody knows that, right? Once you’re a being, you get to live forever. But then the issue is, who are you going to live with forever? You have this short life and then you die, but we know that you are an eternal being according to the word of God. So which one are you going to be with? And how do you, it’s way better I think to live with God than without him, right? Everybody would agree to that, at least here I think. And so how do we do that? We appeal and look at the nature of God and how do we learn about the nature of God through the word of God?

Because as Shawn has said, the natural revelation to us after we believe, we see it and yes, somebody made it. But the natural man suppresses that. Now that we have the word of God, we realize, oh my goodness, look at this wonderful stuff, and isn’t it cool? And that’s amazing. Well, there’s just layer after layer for eternity now that we learn about that and we enjoy the presence with him. So how do we then practice some kind of heavenly life here about that? Well, by knowing the word of God and by loving the believers. Now, we have to show the love of believers and that would be eternal also. And Peter appeals to the nurture of the word of God.

In other words, the feasting of the word of God is the thing that grows us and results in the growth of the saints. And as we grow, we love one another. And we love one another in a supernatural love. This is in giddy, you know, oh, I’m gonna send a Valentine to him. It’s, you know, these are people that you feel for and you want to help Shepherd or if they’re going through a hard time, you wanna come alongside them. Not necessarily best buddies, but you are supernaturally connected in a body life and that body life is what changes our community or what people come and visit and they go, I like what’s going on here, I wanna be a part of that.

So somehow I think we’re demonstrating this maybe not the best we can because we probably will never be able to do that till we get to heaven. But I think that as you do that, that’s attracted to people and they do come and enjoy and maybe even believe. Now the issue is, so you might wanna say, well, wait a minute, unless you’re a believer you can’t love. How about that?

That’s right. You can’t do that unless you are a believer, all right? And that’s where he starts explaining it in the text here, all right? So I have to keep the text in front of me in this one. And then I actually cheated and print Jim’s section and Sean’s section because there’s parts of reference here that you wanna look back maybe to the verses that come before it. But I’m gonna try not to jump out of the book and tell you about what Peter said in Acts or what he said in 2 Peter, or what Paul says in Romans, and try to stay in Peter. So, in verse 22, that we’ve, having purified your souls by the obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

Since you have been born again, ooh, okay, I’m born again, not of a perishable seed, again, you have been born once, you’re a person, but of the imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. So now I’m qualified that that’s how I can do it. I need to love everybody, but I have to have this qualification in order to be it. And the people that I’m loving, who are they? They are centrally other believers that you’re in fellowship with, right?

So then verse 22 through 25 contained one central command supported by two explanatory phrases. The command is to love one another, and the two phrases are having purified your souls in verse 122, and having been born again in 123. And the Greek, those are both perfect participles which stress the event in the past with an abiding consequence, all right? So those things, having been purified in your soul and having been born again, happened to you at a time in the past, but they have a continuing consequence in your soul growing you in your examination and your experiences as you do that, you get better and better at doing this, hopefully.

And it’s upward and to the right, remember that. I didn’t do that on Tuesday. Oh no, I lost my salvation. oh, I got it back on Wednesday, so I was nice to Betty over here. And then, you know, it’s this way, you know, not perfect every day. And we still do sin, okay.

Some people can get off on a track where they literally think that they can reach a point where they do not sin. Well, if you’ve read 1 John, you don’t have that problem. Okay. So we won’t go there but just think about that. Doesn’t work out. All right, so let’s see. In verse 22, Peter commands the saints to love one another. This love is described as fervent and proceeding from the heart. The basis of such love is obedience to the truth by which the saints have purified their souls, resulting in a sincere love of the brethren. Lot of words, right? Yada, yada, yada. It’s basically knowing the people, relating to them, really one-on-one conversations that it’s heart-to-heart kind of thing that you’re doing with people.

And what do you really feel about this kind of stuff? And why are you basing that on? And yes, I know you feel that way, but can we as a Christian feel that way? all those kind of real life applications. And why would we not wanna do that that way and like Jesus does? And I had a professor that told me, and I thought this was really wise, when he told it to me, I got it, but I didn’t really get it. The longer I’m a Christian, the more I get it. People can get lost, especially when you really get serious about your doctrine and your Bible study and stuff, you can get lost in the epistles and theology and all that kind of stuff.

But there’s a time when you should just reach back and just read the gospels and read what Jesus does with people. It is stunning how many questions you can get answered to different situations watching how Jesus responds to the authorities, the disciples, other people that are following him around, the leaders of the country that are quizzing him, all those kind of things. He masterfully answers questions sometimes without answering it, just sitting there, taking it all. And it’s very instructive how maybe sometimes the best thing you can do is just shut up and be there. Other times, you wanna get right in their kitchen, right?

calling snakes or whatever. And it’s very, I think it’s a real sign of real love knowing when to turn that volume up and when to turn it down and when to just take it. And it’s just, it’s interesting. And do you do that right all the time? No, but that’s the kind of relationship that you should have and want to do. Okay, so Peter calls for the same kind of change in his first epistle, having been chosen by the Father, set apart by the Holy Spirit, and cleansed by the shed by the Lord Jesus. Okay, 1 Peter 1, 1 through 3, and 18 through 21. Believers are being given a living hope. One through three, one, chapter one, three through nine.

We are fixed in our hope on those blessings which are brought to us in the return of our Lord. Verse 113, the result should be a lifestyle of holiness and fear during the time of our pilgrimage on this earth, 14 through 21, Jim hammered on that. So he’s written this letter, I’ve read it to this point, if I’m the person sitting in the pew listening to the teacher and I’m going, wow, okay, yeah, I get that. Now, didn’t one felt got me all the way to the end? But no, I got to live today. Okay, so I must be able to work here in the middle. And I think this little section applies to how do I practically work it out right now, knowing that it has everlasting consequences.

So now the next thing is our relationship with our fellow Christians should be characterized by mutual love for one another. And this is made possible by the purification of our souls, a purification provided and accomplished by the Godhead, not necessarily by us. God does it. In which includes our obedience to the truth of the gospel. And then this purification of our soul has made it possible to love one another without selfies, desires and ambitions of the flesh, enabling us to sacrifice our lives to the brethren, brothers and sisters. That’s a lot of kind of high up there talk, but we actually at times are practicing that here and have had it practiced to us and we should be practicing it with each other.

And we can walk down the whole thing of, okay, Dave, in verse 22, you have the Philadelphia kind of love and the Agape kind of love. This is an interesting thing. You guys have probably heard this before. You have brotherly love, which is there in verse 22 where it says, sincere brotherly love and then love one another. The brotherly love is Philadelphia, that word. Then the other kind of love is agape love. Now, there’s a very interesting thing in the Exegetical Fallacies book about agape and Philadelphia and that kind of thing. One of the interesting things is that Tamar, when she was raped was agape’d, if you wanna go down that path, which should fry some people’s brains that have listened to a lot of sermons about this is true agape love.

Most of the words are somewhat interchangeable. Agape has a little bit of the flavor of that, but the brotherly love also has a flavor of that in that we are, you know, you have this love for one another, And if you really have a true brotherly love, it’s going to work itself out in the love one another earnestly from a pure heart, right? So he’s showing that the two things, you kind of shovel the deck and put the things together. And he has different words to phrase it. And it is brotherly and it is godly. And it is like that. So sometimes you can beat the pulpit here, this one’s a gopi and this is what you gotta do.

No, it’s all kind of the same thing and living it all together. There’s paragraphs that I read on just this, knowing this, and I know that the commentators that wrote the paragraphs know this, and it’s interesting that they still use it because they can fill up paragraphs of a book with all that stuff in there. But the basic thing is you care for one another and you want your souls to share the experience and you want to bring them along to be more Christ-like. So, whatever that is, you know.

Okay, so further, the love of God requires the children not to be a hypocritical one, but a sincere, genuine love. You know, oh, I feel your pain, and I’m right there with you, and I can’t handle this anymore. I don’t want 10 more minutes where this person’s gonna make me nuts. And you can feel that way sometimes. Is that wrong? No, I think that’s an opportunity for you to grow in your love and your patience and your endurance. And remember that God is amazingly patient with us, isn’t he? I mean, he hasn’t just incinerated us right from the get-go. So he patiently waits for us to grow. We should be able to patiently love one another into the next level.

The love is not a front that we put on to impress others, rather is a genuine love which follows through with a truly loving attitude and actions and seeks best interest of our brothers and sisters at our expense. Having our hearts and souls purified enables us to love from a pure heart. And we’re purified, notice that we have to get purified through the living and abiding word of God, right? Which is imperishable and we’re the perishable ones. So the imperishable things is actually working on the perishable thing, making it eternal and more Christ-like.

So finally, the love of God requires of us for which we are able to strive is a lasting love which never fails. The translators have chosen to render it, one, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. So love one another earnestly from a pure heart the second half of the sentence is the whole gain of that thing. All right, a lot of words there, isn’t it? For just those two, we just did one verse there, right? We could be here all night. This is crazy. Now, the thing is, what do you wanna take away from this? Because I told Shawn this afternoon, I said, his introduction to what I was gonna teach tonight, he basically preached the sermon in about, eh, three or four sentences.

And that is something that you need to keep in mind because in our club of being Bible-believing Christians, we have put the sermon and the teaching, which is very important on kind of a level that if, if I don’t talk for three hours about the first paragraph, I really haven’t, you know, touched in the truth. But the basic thing I think that God wants you to do is understand the principle and go out and practice it. Not just talk about it, but practice it. Which, you know, I hope we’re showing this in our church, even though we are supposed to be the elders and the teachers, it’s way better to know us in the personal discipleship kind of relationship, life on life, to know how to do this and how to make that happen than it is just to have somebody stand up here and lecture you.

Because your mind’s going 100 miles an hour, what about that, what about that? You don’t get to ask those questions when some guy’s just talking. And so once you get to know him, you can look over at him and say, hey man, why are you being such a jerk? You know, that’s a whole different kind of discipleship and relationship that we should have, not only with our wives or our friends, but with pretty much everybody, you know. So anyway, did a little sidetrack there. And so the new birth was brought about by the seed of the word of God, or by the word of God. The nature of this seed or word is that it’s living and abiding, not the seed, the sperm that brings out human life, that one perishes.

This is a living and abiding forever kind of seed. As the word of God lasts forever, so should our love for one another. So should it? Forget it. It will. If we are saved, we’re going to live together forever and ever in some kind of relationship that I don’t begin to understand what it is, but from the descriptions in Revelation, it must be pretty amazing what’s going to happen.

What that is, you know, we could stand around and talk about the white spaces forever and give great sermons, but we don’t know. But I think it’s going to be better than what it is now because our sin gets shed. So once the emphasis on the perseverance in love apparent, the revelants of Peter’s words in verses 23 and 25 become apparent. Peter first appealed to the purification of our souls accomplished at salvation as the foundation for Christian love. Then the purification of our souls made love for one another possible. Now, once again, Peter turns to our new birth, this time to establish the basins for the the perseverance in love.

So he argues that the offspring should have had the same nature as the seed which produced it. So our love should be lasting because the seed, the word by which we were begotten is everlasting or is in our text says imperishable. So that’s crazy, isn’t it? And he’s giving all these things because our seed, Our humanness is dying, but we have now transferred into the spiritual beings being made more Christ-like and growing in that in all kinds of ways that I’m not sure we all understand. And then every once in a while you get a glimpse of it and you go, oh, that’s interesting. Now I need to proceed in that way.

So Peter argues that the offspring should have the same nature as the seed which produced it and our love should be lasting because the seed, the word is everlasting. The word is not perishable, but imperishable. It lasts like all other precious things Peter has mentioned, things we should greatly value. 1 Peter 1.4, 7, 8 through 19. The imperishable seed is the living and abiding word of God, verse 23. And now in verse 24 and 25, Peter sets out to show us how to his teaching, finds its roots in the Old Testament. And he turns to Isaiah 40, where he cites selectively from that text. Now, this is a little interesting kind of sidebar that I wanna talk about that I think is fascinating.

The whole reason I really fell down the rabbit hole to study the word of God is because when I first got saved, a guy gave me a NIV Bible and it was a chain reference Bible. And he told me to read it and I read it and I started asking questions. And you know, it’d say the word of God. And I said, well, which one of these words is God’s word? I said, I got this NIV Bible you gave me. And then I went back and found this little Bible I had that was a new King or King James version that I had from a kid. And I’d open it up the same place and I’d find different words. And so I’d ask the guy, I said, well, which word is God’s word?

Oh, don’t worry about it. Those are good translations. Don’t get into that. You need to just understand what it is and do what it says. And I said, no, no, wait a minute. If you’re telling me God said it, I wanna know which word God said. Did he say this word or did he say that word? So that got me on this thing that I then went out and got one of those polyglots that had five different versions of the Bible, big fat thing and carried that around for a while. So I had four different versions of the Bible. That just made it worse, cause then I’m going, ah, you know, I couldn’t read through the thing. And then I got to the point when I’m listening to somebody, preach it, I’m going, well, that guy just quoted that.

Which version is he quoting? And I just go down his rabbit hole. And it caused me not to hear what was being written, right? written, right? Because translators work hard on trying to give out what it is. But that did cause me to still wonder what the word was. So the guy that brought me to the Lord brought me to a seminary professor guy and I got to meet him and he just looked at me and I said, well, I’d like an interlinear Bible so I can see the Greek word and I know what the Greek… He says, Greek starts on Monday, you’re welcome to attend. We don’t have in our linear Bibles in our library. And I just barely passed English in high school.

But that did then. I went down that path. And you can find out which word they’re translating. But you still have the problem. What did that word mean to the guy that wrote it at that time? And so then, so I learned that stuff. And then I started looking, OK, this This is a quote from the Old Testament. How many times, when you look in your New Testament, have you turned your Bible back to the Old Testament and seen that the Old Testament translation you have of that is not the same as the New Testament says? Like Jesus will say, as Isaiah said, you know, and you look back there and Isaiah didn’t say those words in that order.

He said something similar, according to your Hebrew translation, But it’s different. The reason it’s different is because Jesus was quoting the Septuagint. Now that’s the Greek translation from 200 BC, okay, done in Alexandria. So what we have is a bunch of Hebrew scholars that were looking at the Hebrew text of that time and they made a Greek translation of it so they could distribute it to the world because remember, Alexander had conquered the world and Greek was the language, the Koine Greek was the language of the world, the business language, and the whole thing. So that was the Bible that most people read.

And if you look it up, Jesus is quoting the Septuagint most of the time. And in this particular instance, that’s why this wording is different than what it is in the Hebrew because Peter is quoting the Septuagint. Now you say, well, wait a minute. I thought the Hebrew Bible was the word of God. Well, it is. But the New Testament is the Word of God, and the writers of the New Testament, if they want to quote the translation of the Septuagint, now that section of the Septuagint has gone right into the Word of God, hasn’t it? And there’s a lot of times where it lends a flavor to it that wasn’t in the Old Testament, but it was hinted at.

All right? One of the most famous examples of this, and you guys can go off on your own little study of this, is the virgin thing. In Isaiah, the New Testament clearly says virgin, and in the Old Testament it says young woman. So the people that wanna jump on the Bible say, ah, it doesn’t say there’s a virgin birth, but it’s very interesting. The only thing that’s quoted is the septuagint, which clearly says virgin will bring the child. So there’s all kinds of fun things you can do and things that will reinforce and you’ll go, oh, that’s so cool. How could anybody have made that a trick deal? Because you’ll read people that are attacking the Bible say, well, everybody just got together and that’s why it all threads together and they just throw all these things together knowing people would answer questions.

Well, for 2000 years, people have been looking at all these questions and the more you question it, the better it gets. The further deeper you get into it, you go, oh, that fits there and that’s why it fits there, and that’s why it was quoted from there. So those little adventures can be very good. Enough of that. Now we go to this section. The other interesting thing is, he could have been quoting James, because in James 1.10, he talks about the word and the grass and all of that kind of stuff. He could have been quoting Psalm 103, which says, as for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field For the wind passes over it, and it’s gone, and place knows it no more.

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him and His righteousness to the children’s children. But the Septuagint boils it down and says, “‘All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man “‘as the flower of the grass. “‘And the grass withers and the flower fades, “‘but the word of our God abides forever.‘” Which is what’s quoted in our passage. So he knew exactly to pick it from Isaiah. Now, the interesting thing is, what is one of the things that the Christians of Peter’s time, they were persecuted. What are the believers of Isaiah’s time? They were captives in Babylon and Isaiah was writing to them.

So there’s a flavor of him choosing the passage out of Isaiah that he is also sympathetically, maybe even talking to people that he knows are gonna go through hardship like the people in captivity of Babylon. So you can go down little rabbit trails like that too. So that takes care of this middle section that says all flesh, fresh, that all flesh is like grass and all its glory like flowers of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. Now there’s that little sentence is like, bam, good news. Wait a minute, that’s the gospel.

So, and this word is good news that was preached to you. So now all of a sudden he’s given us a whole new thing to think about that this good news and the gospel is all part of God’s forever word, right? Now we, we kind of take that for granted, But remember that these people were Old Testament people. The only Bible they had was the Septuagint or the Hebrew text. They didn’t have any New Testament. They had stories about Jesus, they had some letters, they had other people giving them testimony, they had Peter who was an apostle teaching them. But they didn’t have Bibles like us where you could go, oh yeah, that figures.

They’re the Bereans where they went home and they wanted to check out and see where Paul found that stuff. So all of this happens because the gospel that was given to them allows them to see it. So Peter, I think, puts this thing in there to like cement that all together.

And let’s see, how’s the time going? So down in, let’s see here, the word of the Lord mains forever, yeah. So in the last line of verse 25 equates the Old Testament, the word of the Lord with the New Testament gospel, which was preached to Peter’s readers. It was preached to them, okay? This is not news to us, for Peter has already said something similar in the reference to the Old Testament prophets, remember? We talked about that, that they had, if they were reading the Old Testament correctly, they’re waiting for the Messiah. As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come if you made a careful search and inquiry.

Seeking to know the person or the time of the spirit of Christ within them was indicated as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed in them they were not serving themselves but you and these things which now have been announced to you through those who preach the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things in which angels long to look. 1 Peter 1, 10 through 12, back in the beginning of this chapter, of chapter one. So he’s already set it up that the word of God brings you the good news, even though we’re looking in the New Testament where we see the gospel clearly explained, now he reinforces it by talking an Old Testament quote and then says, and this word is the good news that was preached to you too.

and knowing that he’s talking about the gospel and the Old Testament and kind of shuffling the deck and piling it together for them. So let’s see here. So the word of the Lord is the gospel. The gospel proclaimed to Peter’s readers, the word by which they were born again, that word which commenced their life in Christ is eternal. And thus the love which flows from their new birth must be everlasting as well. The Bible knows no short-lived love for Christians, for love never fails just as his word never fails. So, short-lived Christians, if you’re a Christian, how long are you gonna be a Christian? Forever.

I don’t lose it on Friday or Saturday night and come back Sunday and get on the kneeling bench and get it back again. If I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian. Am I a obedient Christian? Maybe, maybe sometimes not so good. What do I gotta do? Repent, get back on track, right? But if I’m a true Christian, I’m there, right? That’s how it’s handled.

So not only does Peter link the New Testament Gospel with the Old Testament, he also links the Lord Jesus with God. With the term Lord, Peter highlights Jesus’ divinity and he shows that the word of God is identical with the Lord Jesus, all right? So, all fresh, but the word of the Lord remains forever. That’s what they’re talking about, that last little phrase there. So this was the consistent claim of the apostles, Jesus is Lord. One must not only believe that Jesus is the savior of the world who shed blood, cleanses us from sin, but that he is one with God the Father. and the Jesus is Lord thing to us, I hope now, after the 70s, 80s, and 90s controversy of lordship salvation, everybody understands.

You don’t make Jesus Lord. Jesus is Lord. You accept him as Lord and Savior, and there really isn’t any other discussion. It isn’t a process. He’s God and he is always God, all right? So then we go into chapter two, and well, it’s divided into chapter two, and it starts to talk about so the word of God and spiritual growth. Now we’ve already been told that we’ve got to love one another and be earnest and all this kind of stuff. We have this little testimony about the word, and then in these next three verses, we’re told what is going to grow our faith and keep us on track. And so it says, and it starts out here on that one.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants long for this pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up to salvation. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. So that’s a lot of stuff there. And it’s interesting how we need to put away some things as we’re reading this. Well, if we’re Christians and we’re really doing well and we’re loving one another, should we have these things? No, we shouldn’t have them, but maybe we do and maybe we need some fine tuning to look at that. So the focus in this section is still on the word of God and the love it enables and inspires.

The imagery and emphasis do shift at verse one, even though the general subject matter is the same. While maintaining the focus on the word of God, Peter shifts his imagery from the word as the everlasting seed by which we are begotten to the pure spiritual milk by which we grow. Only one imperative is found in these verses, long for the pure spiritual milk, verse two, and put away a participle of the evils enumerated in verse one. So it’s put away all, see the put away. So put away all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. And then like newborn babies long for the pure spiritual milk, you know, the picture of little baby needs it.

Give me some milk. Okay. So only one imperative is, no, I already said that. Okay. And then carrying out the principle command. So please note that in verse 122, Peter spoke of salvation as that initiated by the means of the word. Now in verse two, salvation is not the starting point as in 122, but the goal toward which obedience to the word moves us, okay? Kinda interesting, huh? And that in two, like New Boredom’s lung for the pure spiritual milk, that by it, you may grow up to salvation. Now does that mean that until I just do this for a whole long time then I get saved? No, but what does it do? You mature into a better Christian all the time.

You should be maturing and you should have that kind of growth that you will know that better. But it’s not, you know, oh today I’m saved because I really yearned for it but tomorrow I didn’t yearn for it as much so I lost my salvation and I got a bath not like that and people will lead you down that but that’s not what that’s saying. And so present, future, okay.

Now, it’s not the starting port as in 122, but the goal which of the obedience of word moves us. Salvation in Peter’s epistles, and again back to chapter one, because we want to stay in Peter, one through 13 has a past, present, and future dimension. So if you read through that, and it was taught that way, that there is a past dimension, a present and a future dimension of your salvation, right?

The answer is yes. Okay, so those things we are instructed to put aside in verse one correspond to what Peter has been saying as well to the things he is about to say. Our initial purification, together with our subsequent purification, the initial is one, two, and then mentioned again in verse 22, and then the subsequent purification, one, 14 through 21 requires the putting off of those things which characterized and enslaved us during the time of our ignorance and unbelief. That’s the malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander, all those kind of bad things. We know those things. We could define them and go down all this word trail.

We might have time to do that, but maybe we won’t. But those things are bad. We know when you’re being bad, you know that. You know how you should talk. And so that you shouldn’t do that. Furthermore, these negative characters qualities enumerated in the verses are hostile to true love. One cannot love with these attitudes and actions as a habit. Finally, these vices are also contrary to an appetite for the word and the growth and the milk of the word produces. We cannot harbor malice and practice guile, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, and still desire the wood. You can’t practice that. Can you do that? Yes, but you repent and move back on track and you move closer and you get closer in the word.

So it’s, you know, it’s not, oh, I was, I spoke a bad thing or, you know, I envied something and now, oh, I’ve lost everything. No, no, no, no, up and to the right, remember that. But that’s the way that we should be moving. Peter specifies certain attitudes and characteristics of the flesh, all vitally important in our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Hypocrisy, envy and slander are stated in the plural rather than the singular. The inference is that various and sundry forms of each of these evils exist, and all of them are to be rejected and put off.

The first evil, malice, rather than an attitude which hopes for edification and blessings of another, malice hopes for and even strives for the downfall of another. It is the opposite of well-wishing. Deceit is deceitfulness or deception, often rooted in hatred and frequently found in our relationship to our speech. Guile is an impure motive of the heart, which distorts or opposes the truth and results in a deceptive or misleading speech. Hypocrisy is the pretense of appearing to be one thing when we are really another. We would never do that, would we? It may be well that the words indicate one thing while our lives indicate another.

The next evil, envy or jealousy, is the most difficult to seek the best for your brother when he possesses what you think you should have. Jealousy or envy is wanting what another has for yourself. Love is the willingness to give what you have to another. That’s a very interesting thing, right? I want what he’s got, but if I really love these people, I wanna give them what I have. Wow, that’s a big difference, isn’t it? Yike.

This is tough. You can’t do that by yourself. You need supernatural help in that. For yourself, love is willingness to give what you have to another. The evil of slander is literally speaking against. It is the evil speech which seeks to defame one another, or slander another. It is the opposite of speech that edifies. tricky business. If people ask you about somebody that’s a heretic or somebody that’s not a good person, do I just love him and tell them how wonderful that person is? Or is the loving thing to do to honestly tell them who that person is? Not stretching it, but letting them know, no, this is a bad dude, you don’t wanna hang with him.

If it’s true, is that, am I defaming him? Am I speaking slander if I’m telling you the truth stuff? This is a touchy thing. And a lot of people, I just won’t talk to you about that person and all of that kind of stuff. But wait a minute, I wanna know. Is that guy a good teacher? Is he okay? Is that a good place? Should I be there? We pray for other churches. Do we think this church is the best church and we’re trying to do the best we can? Of course we do, or I hope we do. But the thing is, do we think the gospel’s being preached in other churches, people are getting saved there? Absolutely. Do we think they do things wrong?

Yeah, do they think we do things wrong? Probably. So, okay. So we can work on that and keep examining and going down that trail. But if somebody’s gonna ask me, should I go there? I would say, well, let me think about that. Oh, I just thought about it. I go to this church, I think you ought to come to this church. Should I say, oh no, they’re all the same, just make sure they love Jesus. Yeah, so there’s wisdom in these things too in applying them.

So then the next section here is the withers and falls, hypocrisy, and the new, we yearn for the pure spiritual milk that you grow up, and if you had tasted that the Lord indeed, if he was tasted, that the Lord is good. I think that’s where we’re going here. Okay, milk of the word.

Yes, the instinctive appetite should be enhanced into a developed appetite with the result of having tasted the kindness of the Lord. So it is with our appetite for the word of God, since we have a certain inborn appetite, A much greater appetite can be developed by partaking of the word, which God has provided in us for us. And this appetite should be satisfied just as in eating on a regular daily basis, so that we might grow in respect to salvation. I think that’s really kind of an interesting way of doing it. This commentator put it together that it’s like, you have to eat your three square meals and grow so that you can have your salvation be strong and ready to go out and deal with the world.

I think that’s kind of an interesting way to look at it that solves that grow up into your salvation little passage. Then the issue here is the if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. If I were the translator here, I would have translated the if since, because this is a sure thing that we’re talking about. We’re talking to Christians, Peter’s talking to Christians, And Christians, if indeed, you don’t need if indeed, sense indeed, or just sense you have tasted that the Lord is good. In other words, of course you’re doing that because you’re practicing these things. He’s telling them all these things to grow them up in that.

So, grow in the respect of your salvation. So, we see that the longing for God’s word develops our appetite for it and enhances our partaking of it. The result is spiritual growth. The truth of God enables us to grow in respect to our salvation. The relationship of this verse to Peter’s teaching can be readily seen as newborn babes long for the pure milk of the word, verse two, this assumes of course that we have indeed been born again. This assumes of course that indeed we have been born again and that we have already tasted the word of God, for it is by the word of God that you have been born again. So you’re already in this process.

Don’t think, oh, now I’m gonna be a super Christian and do this. No, you’re already there. Once you know the gospel, how can you tell your friend about the gospel? Will you tell them what happened to you? Your level of learning is enough to drag that guy out of eternal hell. just by the time you’ve turned that corner. That’s how important and how supernatural all this stuff is. So in conclusion, and it’s perfect, this is gonna work out just right.

Sometimes I go too long, sometimes I just get done in a hurry. Okay, as we consider this passage, you need to think about the supreme importance Peter places on the revealed word of God. Obviously, this is, you know, preachers have gotten up and beaten dead horses over this passage for 2000 years now. I mean, this is, all you gotta do is read it and realize, whoa, it seems like the word of God is kind of important here, right? Okay, so that Peter is placed on the revealed word of God. It is the word of God in which the spirit of God employs us to bring about our new birth. It is also the milk of the word which produces spiritual growth.

The scriptures are supremely important to the believer. Well, obviously. Now the interesting thing is, does that mean I have to study this and diagram it and take Greek and do all of that? No. I think you can read it. I think you can listen to it over and over and practice it. I think it’s incredible when you become biblically familiar with a lot of stuff, you’ll be going along and then you’ll realize, oh wow, I just practiced this section of what Paul said or this section that Jesus did, and I just practiced that, isn’t that cool? And then you realize that’s because that became a part of you that you could see things that way that you couldn’t see before.

That’s spiritual growth, and that will happen to you. You’ll go along life and people ask you a question and this kind of a question you don’t even know, and all of a sudden, whoop, it comes in. And I’m not talking facts, I’m talking the ability to love and react properly. I mean, when Isaiah gets killed on a motorcycle, what do you say to them? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, and we’re praying for you.

There is no way, unless you’ve lost a child, that you can really identify with their hurt. their kid got killed. Your kid didn’t get killed. You haven’t felt that. But you can say, I don’t know how you deal, or are gonna deal with this, but I do know that God knows all these things and he can comfort you, and we can do whatever you think we can do for you to help you. I mean, you just, counseling in those things, it’s like being in the hospital after people hear a quote, doctor’s death sentence. Remember, God knows when you’re gonna die. But at that point you realize, well, okay, I guess this is the end of it, or I guess I really am sick.

No wonder I felt bad. And it’s amazing how people that hear that kind of thing, they can either be very calm or they get really irritated. And they can get really uptight or very, I don’t know, supernaturally relaxed. And it’s a great testimony, and I think that that’s something that you don’t need to dwell on it, but that’s, you know, we’re all gonna die someday. So anyway, that’s a long way from the conclusion we need right here, but we are growing these things.

When it comes to Paul’s writing, oh, I shouldn’t say Paul because I have to reference Peter. So we’ll skip that, right? But Paul was a great scholar. He was a rabbi. He was trained. Most people feel that Peter was not trained in that way. Now the problem is Peter’s Greek is really hard, or it is for me.

Now, I don’t know if it’s really because it’s good Greek or he used some big words and made it difficult. I’m not sure which way that goes. But he is incredibly steeped in the scriptures as you read his letters. You recognize these allusions and quotations. And so he is steeped in the scripture and well-versed in the Old Testament. So, but Peter does not strike the one as a scholarly type. And yet after his conversion, Peter becomes a man of the word. His sermons are packed with Old Testament references and illusions, and his first epistle is full of illusions, symbols, and quotations from the Old Testament. In the gospel, Peter does not appear to have been a man of the scriptures, but after the book of Acts, truly is saturated with the word of God.

He became a student of the scripture later in his life, and this commentator believed that Peter’s example is one which should be emulated by every believer. We may not be scholars. we should all be students of scriptures so that the terminology and theology of the Bible shapes our thinking and speaking and behavior in our lives. Argy to read through Peter’s epistles to gain his perspective on the scriptures and their critical role in the life of every Christian. And reading it in your own language, I think they read pretty simply in English. I mean, there are some strange things and we’ll talk about those things as we come upon them.

But most of this stuff is pretty straight ahead, but it is poetically put, and he’s talking about really deep stuff when you think about it. In our text, Peter emphasizes the relationship between truth of the word and the love for one another. They seems to be a growing trend for some Christians to belittle an accurate knowledge of the truth while heralding the benefits of love. These two necessities are, the benefits of love. Okay, so some people say the knowledge of the truth while heralding the benefits of love. Too much truth, truth tubers don’t have any love. You know, we’ve heard that kind of thing. But the real thing is these two necessities, love and knowledge of the truth are absolutely necessities that need to be put together properly so that you practice both of them in the right way.

Without the proper knowledge, you don’t know how to properly love. and all of those things again fold together and the edges get sanded up and the practice of it and you will become better at it as you do that. So it isn’t just love, it has to be love with knowledge.

Peter presents love to us as the goal and the result of our obedience, our obedience to the truth purified our souls, producing love for the brethren and laying the foundation for Peter’s command to love one another fervently or persistently from the heart, 122. All right, so the last little part here. The logic seems to be, if I no longer love my mate, then I surely can’t continue to live together with him or her, and I surely cannot be expected to do what love requires of me.

Whoa. Peter’s words require a very different conclusion, don’t they? If we do not love one another, It is not an excuse for disobedience or regarding our relationship. In fact, disobedience is the reason we have ceased to love others. If love for one another is the result of our obedience, then the absence of love is due to disobedience. Everybody drag them on out? Interesting right? is the prerequisite to love. The solution to a lack of love is a return to obedience to the Scriptures. Duh. But it, you know, oh, I just don’t have that feeling anymore. Well, get over it and understand. And as you work on it, you’re going to have a much deeper understanding of that relationship than you ever had before.

Even though at the point of Twitter patience, you can’t think of, I can’t get any higher. Well, believe me, you can get a lot higher. So finally, let us not leave the text without being reminded that Peter expects obedience to the truth, love and growth only from those, only from those who have truly been born again all the way back to the gospel. Without Jesus, you’re dead meat. You’re just, you’re going to hell, all right? You will not understand the world, just like Sean was telling us today and like it says in Romans one. If you don’t understand somebody bigger than you made this, it’s hopeless. And then when you do understand somebody bigger than you made it, then you got the question, well, who’s that?

Well, guess what? God wrote us a letter. He actually wrote us a book and told us how he did it and who did it and all the rest of it. And so as you learn those things, you become saved, you become a Christian. But without that, it’s hopeless. You can pretend, you can look good for a while. I’ve seen guys be in the ministry for 20 years and then stand up in an elders meeting at Grace Community Church that were on staff and say, I don’t believe this stuff anymore. 20 years, they were in ministry.

So, you know, there are fakers and I can’t believe how hard it’s gotta be to be that. I mean, it’s hard enough when you got the supernatural help, you know, to live it and everything, but to think about faking it for that long and then just standing up and say, I never believed this stuff anyway. Wow, that’s incredible. So anyway, if you’re a true believer, You don’t need to worry about that. Keep on trucking. Enjoy all the things. Live life and be a blessing to others. And as you do that, they will be a blessing to you and the body life will continue. So with that, that’s the end of that little section. That’s a lot.

And I tried to stay with what Peter was saying and I hope I didn’t give much heresy out there. But it really is amazing. And I think just in my perspective, generally speaking, we in this church do a really good job of this. It stuns me every time we get to practice this. And I think that it’s really good. And we need to keep on doing it, and we’ll get better at it as we do it. So let’s pray, and we say, Father, thank you for being able to give us instruction books, and give us teachers and that we stand on the shoulders of 2,000 years of your church and all the people that have looked at this and the ability for us to have books and to be able to read about it and help us understand, help us not to get puffed up with that, but to understand and appreciate their labors and be able to have us bring it to the next step up or somebody here bringing it to the next step in our body, practicing it.

I know that has to make you glad for us. That’s why you created us to worship you, help us to understand that and to do that better every day. So we thank you for all of these things. And of course, we thank you most of all for your son Jesus who without him, we wouldn’t even be able to pray to you and understand these things. And without his sacrifice, we’d still be lost. So we thank you for all of these things. In his name we pray, amen.