SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_03: My name is Pastor Webb.
SPEAKER_03: My name is Webb.
SPEAKER_03: Not Mr.
SPEAKER_03: Pastor Webb.
SPEAKER_03: My name's Webb.
SPEAKER_03: I'm one of our pastors here, though.
SPEAKER_03: It's my privilege to take us to the Word this morning.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know about you, but I often find myself louder than I think I am.
SPEAKER_03: I often find myself pretty intimidated by the great stories of church history.
SPEAKER_03: Those men who accomplished, those men and women, excuse me, those men and women who accomplish such great feats that it seems beyond us like something we could never attain.
SPEAKER_03: May I ask you, have you heard of Polycarp?
SPEAKER_03: Have you heard of Polycarp?
SPEAKER_03: He's one of the Apostle John's disciples.
SPEAKER_03: He was martyred in Smyrna.
SPEAKER_03: Very likely Polycarp was the one to whom the letter to the church in Smyrna was addressed in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_03: Very likely that's the case.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus told that church that they would be persecuted, and he called them to be faithful unto death.
SPEAKER_03: According to the word of the Lord, when the men came to arrest Polycarp, he first served them a meal, then he asked them for an hour to pray.
SPEAKER_03: They granted it, and he stood there and prayed for two hours, his disciples tell us.
SPEAKER_03: A preacher after a preacher's heart.
SPEAKER_03: Prayed for everybody he knew, knowing he was on his way to the grave, including, including the very captors who sat at his table.
SPEAKER_03: When they brought him in to the arena full of pagans to execute him, Polycarp's famous line is, I have served Christ for eighty-six years, and never once has he done me wrong.
SPEAKER_03: How could I betray him now?
SPEAKER_03: Polycarp's disciples also record this exchange with the judge or the pro-council.
SPEAKER_03: The Pro Council said, I have wild beasts at hand, to these I will cast thee unless you repent.
SPEAKER_03: But he answered, Call them then, for we're not accustomed to repent of that which is good in order to adopt that which is evil.
SPEAKER_03: And it's well for me to be changed from what is evil to what is righteous.
SPEAKER_03: But again the Pro Council said to him, I will cause you to be consumed by fire, seeing that you despisest the wild beasts, if you will not repent.
SPEAKER_03: But Polycarp said, You threaten me with fire, which burns for an hour, and after a little is extinguished.
SPEAKER_03: But you're ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_03: And then Polycarp said, But why tarryest thou?
SPEAKER_03: Bring forth what thou wilt.
SPEAKER_03: What are you waiting for, man?
SPEAKER_03: We know why we're here.
SPEAKER_03: Such bravery for the cause of Christ.
SPEAKER_03: I find myself humbled.
SPEAKER_03: Or another one, maybe a little more ordinary example, Charles Simeon.
SPEAKER_03: Fresh out of seminary.
SPEAKER_03: Fresh out of seminary, Charles Simeon was appointed the Sunday morning preacher by the authority of his denomination in a church, but that church did not want him.
SPEAKER_03: They locked the building so he couldn't hold extra Bible studies.
SPEAKER_03: They hired other preachers to preach during the week.
SPEAKER_03: They blocked pews so that people couldn't come and hear him speak.
SPEAKER_03: They refused to answer the door when he came to visit them.
SPEAKER_03: For twelve years.
SPEAKER_03: He just kept preaching.
SPEAKER_03: When he got to Matthew chapter 5, verse 44, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
SPEAKER_03: I think he earned it when he said this.
SPEAKER_03: No enemy was ever yet won by a vindictive conduct.
SPEAKER_03: We may, it is true, silence him by power, but we can never gain his affections by anything but love.
SPEAKER_03: He stayed there for 54 years.
SPEAKER_03: Fifty-four years.
SPEAKER_03: This church is 60 years old this summer.
SPEAKER_03: How does somebody do something like that?
SPEAKER_03: How, friends, do you keep hope alive when your loved ones resist the gospel?
SPEAKER_03: How do you keep going and stand your ground with polycarp, ever gracious, ever respectful, but honest to almost to a fault, when that hour of trial comes upon you?
SPEAKER_03: How do we do that?
SPEAKER_03: Here's my answer from the scriptures for us this morning.
SPEAKER_03: We stick together.
SPEAKER_03: We grow up together.
SPEAKER_03: Because God is good.
SPEAKER_03: And then, after 86 years of serving Christ like Polycarp, or maybe at the ripe age of 24, with Charles Simeon, you'll be ready.
SPEAKER_03: Whenever that hour befalls you.
SPEAKER_03: Would you look with me to the book of 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 1?
SPEAKER_03: Peter wrote this letter to five city regions in backwater rural northern Turkey.
SPEAKER_03: The letter is all about enduring suffering and trials as sojourners and exiles, pilgrims on the earth, because God has given us a blessed and living hope in Christ Jesus of eternal life and glory.
SPEAKER_03: And so Peter answers questions like, how do we wait for eternal life?
SPEAKER_03: And how do we respond when our neighbors belittle us?
SPEAKER_03: And how do we endure when the emperor persecutes us?
SPEAKER_03: Why, Peter, if Jesus died to save us from sin for eternal life with him, then why does all of this stuff keep happening?
SPEAKER_03: What do we do?
SPEAKER_03: That's 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_03: And in broad strokes, Peter's answer to all those questions is this those trials prepare you for heaven, refining you as gold in the fire, so that while you w suffer and wait, while you suffer and wait, be holy in all of your conduct, just like God is holy and his.
SPEAKER_03: But more specifically in chapter 2, here's our text for this morning.
SPEAKER_03: So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
SPEAKER_03: 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.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: We'll start right in verse one and warm up by knocking out verse one.
SPEAKER_03: Each word, each word hits hard if you linger on it for just but a moment.
SPEAKER_03: So put away.
SPEAKER_03: Put away speaks to take off or lay aside.
SPEAKER_03: It's that feeling you get when you take off your boots at the end of a long day of work, or the way the air moves over your sweaty skin when you peel off an outer layer on a hot day, or maybe more specifically, that sweet freedom that comes when you finally take off that plaster cast you've been wearing for six weeks and you feel the cold air.
SPEAKER_03: Take it off, lay it aside.
SPEAKER_03: Elsewhere in Scripture, the men who stoned Stephen in Acts 7, put aside, laid aside, put off their garments at the foot of a young man named Saul.
SPEAKER_03: And all of the apostles love this word.
SPEAKER_03: Paul writes, put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life.
SPEAKER_03: Elsewhere he writes, now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, and malice.
SPEAKER_03: That's Ephesians and Colossians.
SPEAKER_03: James says, therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness.
SPEAKER_03: And the author to the Hebrews says, Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.
SPEAKER_03: This surely is a gospel word, my friends.
SPEAKER_03: This stuff we're supposed to put away is a sweaty cardigan on a hot day.
SPEAKER_03: You don't want to wear it anymore.
SPEAKER_03: It makes everything else worse.
SPEAKER_03: Just take it off.
SPEAKER_03: Put it off.
SPEAKER_03: Lay it aside.
SPEAKER_03: I might even go so far as to say it doesn't fit anymore.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't fit anymore.
SPEAKER_03: Malice is just the word for evil or wickedness.
SPEAKER_03: Kakia in Greek just sounds bad, right?
SPEAKER_03: Paul tells Titus that they were both once so foolish as to pass their days in malice.
SPEAKER_03: It's just fun, I guess.
SPEAKER_03: It's getting a sort of rise out of things that are bad just because they're bad and it's fun.
SPEAKER_03: Knock it off.
SPEAKER_03: Just get rid of it.
SPEAKER_03: Deceit is the stuff of trickery, double-tongued manipulation and treachery, baiting one another into things, leading somebody to think that things are different than they actually are, so that they'll do what you want or what you don't want to do for all that.
SPEAKER_03: It's scheming to get the better of somebody else.
SPEAKER_03: Is there a knife up your sleeve when you embrace your brother?
SPEAKER_03: Like Judas, do you betray with a kiss?
SPEAKER_03: Just lay it aside.
SPEAKER_03: Hypocrisy is just deceit of the same kind about our own character.
SPEAKER_03: It's giving people the impression that you're holier than you actually are, pretending to be something you're not, to control the way they think of you, and therefore to control how they treat you.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: So start this sentence with me in your heads.
SPEAKER_03: Just in your heads.
SPEAKER_03: What would people think if they knew that I that whatever that was as your homework for the week?
SPEAKER_03: Either knock it off or tell somebody about it.
SPEAKER_03: Or both.
SPEAKER_03: Else you're a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_03: And hypocrite doesn't fit people who follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Envy is that cursed covetousness, that that cursed wanting of things that pretends to some possession in the world.
SPEAKER_03: Do you want what's not yours?
SPEAKER_03: Take it off.
SPEAKER_03: Put it away.
SPEAKER_03: Envy, covetousness, discontentment before somebody else's good circumstances.
SPEAKER_03: You know, this is the very first mold that sin poured itself into.
SPEAKER_03: Pride and unbelief took hold of Eve's heart, and she ate of the fruit because she wanted to be wise like God.
SPEAKER_03: Satan whispered.
SPEAKER_03: She envied her creator just like Satan before her.
SPEAKER_03: But it starts, starts with thinking you deserve something, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_03: With thinking you deserve a happy life, or you deserve a well-furnished home, or you deserve a reliable car, or you deserve a well-paying job, or you deserve conflict-free relationships, or the freedom of a healthy income.
SPEAKER_03: Well, maybe you deserve it more than somebody else does, right?
SPEAKER_03: If I could press very tenderly on something I know is a sore spot.
SPEAKER_03: Do you deserve a big family?
SPEAKER_03: Do you deserve believing children or grandchildren?
SPEAKER_03: No.
SPEAKER_03: No, we we don't.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, we don't even deserve the breath in our lungs.
SPEAKER_03: I know it can be hard, trust me.
SPEAKER_03: I almost scratched that paragraph out.
SPEAKER_03: I know it can be hard, but the word is envy.
SPEAKER_03: So just remember.
SPEAKER_03: Remember that because of sin, you deserve less than nothing, worse than nothing, even.
SPEAKER_03: Yet somehow in Christ you remain rich in his gracious and glorious gifts.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, even the unbeliever who scorns God's name has it better than he deserves, and you and I have so much.
SPEAKER_03: If we but have life, that most precious of gifts.
SPEAKER_03: So by all means, let your request be known to God.
SPEAKER_03: Pour out your heart before him in prayer, but stop short of envy.
SPEAKER_03: Don't go there.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't fit.
SPEAKER_03: Put it away.
SPEAKER_03: An ancient Roman apologist I'd never heard of before named Minucius Felix once said, He's rather poor, who although he has much, desires more.
SPEAKER_03: I'll say that again.
SPEAKER_03: He rather is poor.
SPEAKER_03: He actually is poor.
SPEAKER_03: He rather is poor, who although he has much desires more.
SPEAKER_03: Brothers and sisters, think on God's grace instead, and put away all envy.
SPEAKER_03: And finally, lay aside all slander.
SPEAKER_03: Katalalia.
SPEAKER_03: Literally, against talk or down speech, to reduce somebody with words, to speak lowly of others.
SPEAKER_03: Usually it's used in a public setting, in a sense like defamation.
SPEAKER_03: Peter himself tells us what the word means.
SPEAKER_03: He uses it in the next in the next chapter here.
SPEAKER_03: Whoop, too fast.
SPEAKER_03: There we go.
SPEAKER_03: Peter says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against, when they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
SPEAKER_03: And a little later, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
SPEAKER_03: In other words, Peter says that unbelievers do the thing to us we are to put away.
SPEAKER_03: Don't talk about people the way unbelievers talk about you.
SPEAKER_03: So two rules come to the front, I think, two guides.
SPEAKER_03: First, stick to the simple truth.
SPEAKER_03: As graciously as you can as you'd return it to yourself.
SPEAKER_03: Don't exaggerate for effect.
SPEAKER_03: Undersell a brother's weaknesses if you must.
SPEAKER_03: Unbelievers falsely accuse Christians.
SPEAKER_03: Just like they did Christ.
SPEAKER_03: And second, the opposite of down talk.
SPEAKER_03: Speak only to build up.
SPEAKER_03: Don't tear each other down with your words.
SPEAKER_03: Use your words, even when they're unpleasant or harsh realities.
SPEAKER_03: Use them to build one another up if you must.
SPEAKER_03: Not to tear each other down.
SPEAKER_03: I don't see anything in this word specifically for that dreaded secrecy of behind their backs.
SPEAKER_03: It's not there.
SPEAKER_03: But I will say, if you if you say anything in private, you're afraid to admit to in public, if your yes turns to no when the lights come on, we're just talking about treachery and deceit again, aren't we?
SPEAKER_01: Right.
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of commentators take this word for slander and they look down in the chapter to say that Peter is telling the church to not slander back at the unbelievers who slander them.
SPEAKER_03: And sure, Peter does say that, but I don't think that's what he's saying right here.
SPEAKER_03: What Peter says right here is specifically about believers in the church slandering one another.
SPEAKER_03: That's what the therefore is therefore.
SPEAKER_03: For the so in verse 1.
SPEAKER_03: Scroll back up on your Bibles or turn the page.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 13.
SPEAKER_03: At verse 13, we get this great therefore, right?
SPEAKER_03: Therefore, that is because of the first 12 verses in the blessed hope of the gospel that Peter shows us there.
SPEAKER_03: Therefore, he says, set your hope on Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance and be holy in all your conduct.
SPEAKER_03: That section's personal.
SPEAKER_03: That's about you.
SPEAKER_03: The commands are given to the whole church, yes, but they're specific.
SPEAKER_03: They're about you.
SPEAKER_03: But then look at verse 22.
SPEAKER_03: This is what I want you to see.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 22, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere, brotherly love.
SPEAKER_03: Love one another earnestly from a pure heart.
SPEAKER_03: Since you've been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.
SPEAKER_03: For all flesh is like grass and all its glory, like the flower of grass.
SPEAKER_03: The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.
SPEAKER_03: And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
SPEAKER_03: Look at how Peter grounds the command to love one another earnestly from a pure heart by saying, Since you've been born again.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus taught us, right, that in order to be saved, we had to be born again of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: That's what happens when we become Christians.
SPEAKER_03: We start a new life.
SPEAKER_03: We get reborn as new creations, new people, a new man in the place of the old man.
SPEAKER_03: And Peter's emphasizing that this new birth, this born-again-ness happened because of the gospel of Jesus Christ that contains the word of God.
SPEAKER_03: You got saved because of or through what you heard from God's word.
SPEAKER_03: So what does being born again of the imperishable seed of God's word have to do with being brothers and loving one another?
SPEAKER_03: Brothers, biological brothers, have the same blood, do they not?
SPEAKER_03: Born of the same seed.
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
SPEAKER_03: Now we're getting somewhere, right?
SPEAKER_03: Christians, born-again Christians are a different kind of brother than even biological brothers.
SPEAKER_03: Peter says, because you've been born again of imperishable seed.
SPEAKER_03: A word, the living and abiding word, you'll be brothers forever.
SPEAKER_03: Because you have the same thing that gave you birth and progenerated you.
SPEAKER_03: So even when the grass withers, even when the flower falls, you and I, if we're in Christ, we'll still be siblings.
SPEAKER_03: So long as the word of God remains true, you belong to me, and I belong to you.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, I am yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: So this is where the word brothers and the title of my sermon comes from.
SPEAKER_03: That little so in verse 1.
SPEAKER_03: That little so in verse 1 clues us into why Peter picks this list of stuff.
SPEAKER_03: This list of stuff.
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't pick other things, like those works of the flesh back in Galatians, right?
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't say sexual immorality or impurity or sensuality or idolatry or sorcery and so on.
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't list those, although put those away, definitely.
SPEAKER_03: No, Peter chooses malice and deceit and hypocrisy, envy, and slander.
SPEAKER_03: Because these things, these things tear at the relationships in the church.
SPEAKER_03: These things get in the way of brothers loving one another earnestly, as they ought to, because they've been born of the imperishable seed of God's word.
SPEAKER_03: That's why he picks these things, because these things get between word brothers.
SPEAKER_03: So the command then, the real force of verse one isn't just be holy in the general sense.
SPEAKER_03: That's back up in verse 13.
SPEAKER_03: No, Peter's telling the church blood is thicker than water, and the word of God is thicker than both.
SPEAKER_03: You're not just brothers.
SPEAKER_03: You're not blood brothers.
SPEAKER_03: You're word brothers.
SPEAKER_03: So stick together.
SPEAKER_03: Have each other's backs.
SPEAKER_03: In a world that's against you, like it was against the Christians in Asia Minor.
SPEAKER_03: Stick together.
SPEAKER_03: That's why the verb is plural.
SPEAKER_03: After all, the church as a whole is supposed to put these things off.
SPEAKER_03: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, all of you.
SPEAKER_03: All of you.
SPEAKER_03: Stick together.
SPEAKER_03: So let's be a church that sticks together.
SPEAKER_03: A family that has each other's backs.
SPEAKER_03: Because we've been born again into an adoptive family that runs thicker than blood, because it's been born of the Word of God and the blood of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Stick together.
SPEAKER_03: And grow up together.
SPEAKER_03: That's verse two.
SPEAKER_03: Look there with me.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 2 is actually the point of the paragraph, the main emphasis of Peter's Peter's little chunk here.
SPEAKER_03: Your Bibles probably translate verse 1, like the ESV, so put away.
SPEAKER_03: They might do just as well as to say, putting away all these wicked things, long for the pure spiritual milk, like newborn infants.
SPEAKER_03: The emphasis here is actually on the longing, not the putting away.
SPEAKER_03: To long for the pure spiritual milk, like newborns do.
SPEAKER_03: But notice, Peter gives the command to them as newborns, not to call them immature.
SPEAKER_03: The apostles do that elsewhere.
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't do that here.
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't tell them to move on to solid food eventually.
SPEAKER_03: This command was a lasting command for the whole church when Peter gave it.
SPEAKER_03: That's why he says salvation.
SPEAKER_03: It's a command to take them all the way to glory.
SPEAKER_03: Because that's what salvation is in 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_03: Salvation to the uttermost, salvation to the end.
SPEAKER_03: So even Polycarp, at year 72 of his saintliness, should crave this milk.
SPEAKER_03: Even Charles Simeon, on his 2000th sermon, should crave this milk.
SPEAKER_03: No, I think Peter's emphasizing two things when he calls them newborns.
SPEAKER_03: First, that they've been born again.
SPEAKER_03: That's where he starts the whole letter.
SPEAKER_03: We've been born again to a living hope, and we just saw it in chapter one.
SPEAKER_03: Live like newborns, guys.
SPEAKER_03: Don't outgrow the new birth.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_03: And the other thing is some notion of an essential dependency.
SPEAKER_03: They gotta have it.
SPEAKER_03: You gotta have it.
SPEAKER_03: Infants, trust me on this.
SPEAKER_03: Infants just cannot go on without a bottle when they need one.
SPEAKER_03: It's all they can think about.
SPEAKER_03: They start to, in their own way, slander their mothers if they're made to wait, right?
SPEAKER_03: I don't know about you, but I hear the most angry stories of how could you abandon me?
SPEAKER_03: You've never cared for me.
SPEAKER_03: I've been left here to die of starvation.
SPEAKER_03: I need food lest I perish in the way.
SPEAKER_03: And those cries of a baby who's not yet weaned.
SPEAKER_03: Do they need pure milk?
SPEAKER_03: Because it's essential.
SPEAKER_03: It's the only food a baby can rightly process without discomfort.
SPEAKER_03: It's always a funny sight, if you ask me, when newborns are hungry and they're working hard on a pacifier.
SPEAKER_03: But they hear that bottle shake, shak, shak, shha, shha, shaka.
SPEAKER_03: Or they they feel mom draw them close and out goes that plug, man.
SPEAKER_03: Whew.
SPEAKER_03: It's gone.
SPEAKER_03: Enough of this.
SPEAKER_03: Give me that thing.
SPEAKER_03: Have you seen it?
SPEAKER_03: If not, just picture baby birds when mom comes home with supper.
SPEAKER_03: Mmm.
SPEAKER_03: Yum.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: But that's the image at stake.
SPEAKER_03: It really is.
SPEAKER_03: That's the image at stake.
SPEAKER_03: That's the kind of craving Peter wants the church to do so that they grow up into salvation, just like babies grow up on milk.
SPEAKER_03: And nobody grows faster than a newborn.
SPEAKER_03: You know, one of the things that siblings do well, usually from a young age, is that they recognize they're both growing.
SPEAKER_03: A good big sister rejoices when her little sister learns to say her name.
SPEAKER_03: An older brother can't wait until his baby brother is finally big enough to play soccer.
SPEAKER_03: They even let the obnoxious things of toddler tantrums go.
SPEAKER_03: They've got these short memories.
SPEAKER_03: Because they recognize that they're both growing up.
SPEAKER_03: It does break down.
SPEAKER_03: Eventually, as you all know, at some point it stops.
SPEAKER_03: And I think it breaks when one of them believes they're done growing up, or they've lost hope that their sibling will.
SPEAKER_03: That's when it breaks down.
SPEAKER_03: That's when the fights really start.
SPEAKER_03: So, friends, if you want to endure patiently in a church, if you want to persevere long in a family or a workplace full of difficult people like Charles Simeon did, don't ever lose sight of that hopeful and glorious fact that you still have some growing up to do.
SPEAKER_03: So do they.
SPEAKER_03: And in Jesus Christ, you surely will.
SPEAKER_03: Simeon had this.
SPEAKER_03: He said, I have continually had such a sense of my sinfulness as would sink me into utter despair.
SPEAKER_03: And if I had not an assured view of the sufficiency and willingness of Christ to save me to the uttermost, and at the same time I had such a sense of my acceptance through Christ as would overset my little boat, if I had not ballast, if I had not weight at the bottom, sufficient to sink a vessel of no ordinary size.
SPEAKER_03: In other words, Charles Simeon's sense of his sin was such a heavy weight that it would sink a large boat into the depths of the sea.
SPEAKER_03: It was heavy.
SPEAKER_03: Yet his confidence in Christ was strong enough to keep the wind of assurance tearing through his sails, the wind so strong that if he hadn't that heavy burden in the bottom, it would have flipped the boat over.
SPEAKER_03: You need both to keep moving.
SPEAKER_03: Wind in your sails, strong in a strong boat.
SPEAKER_03: You need both to keep growing.
SPEAKER_03: And so let's stay humble towards each other.
SPEAKER_03: Because Jesus Christ hasn't finished the good work he began in us yet.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: So let's stick together.
SPEAKER_03: Let's grow up together by craving that pure spiritual milk like newborn babies.
SPEAKER_03: But what?
SPEAKER_03: What is the milk?
SPEAKER_03: Peter even says it's the pure spiritual milk, as if we're supposed to just know what he means by that.
SPEAKER_03: And then he turns around and calls Paul's letters hard.
SPEAKER_03: But let's try and figure it out.
SPEAKER_03: There's three words, and two of them are easy.
SPEAKER_03: Pure spiritual milk.
SPEAKER_03: The word milk?
SPEAKER_03: Milk.
SPEAKER_03: Check.
SPEAKER_03: The word pure?
SPEAKER_03: Pure.
SPEAKER_03: Check.
SPEAKER_03: Pretty easy.
SPEAKER_03: Pure is actually, there's a play on words there.
SPEAKER_03: Pure is the word deceit, just like from verse 1 with an A on the front.
SPEAKER_03: Like atheist or typical and atypical.
SPEAKER_03: So this is a pure spiritual milk that's without deceit.
SPEAKER_03: It's unadulterated.
SPEAKER_03: It's pure.
SPEAKER_03: It's free from yeast even.
SPEAKER_03: It won't make a baby sick.
SPEAKER_03: But spiritual is a word we have to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_03: It happens only twice in your in the entirety of your Bibles.
SPEAKER_03: Here and in Romans 12, 1.
SPEAKER_03: You know this verse.
SPEAKER_03: I appeal to you, therefore, Paul says, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
SPEAKER_03: But here's the puzzle.
SPEAKER_03: It just can't be spiritual in 1 Peter 2.
SPEAKER_03: It can't.
SPEAKER_03: If you look at 1 Peter, look down at verse 5.
SPEAKER_03: Peter says, spiritual again.
SPEAKER_03: Three verses later, he says spiritual again.
SPEAKER_03: He says, You yourselves are being built up as a spiritual house.
SPEAKER_03: That's actually the word spiritual.
SPEAKER_03: The apostles use it 26 times.
SPEAKER_03: And every single time they use it, it's spiritual without a doubt.
SPEAKER_03: The word there in verse 5 is the word for spiritual gift, spiritual person, spiritual body in 1 Corinthians 15.
SPEAKER_03: Galatians 6:1, if anyone's caught in transgressions, you who are spiritual should restore him.
SPEAKER_03: Ephesians 1 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing.
SPEAKER_03: That's the word for spiritual in verse 5.
SPEAKER_03: Our word here, logicon, if you're curious, is never used to translate the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_03: No help there.
SPEAKER_03: It's just here in Romans 12.
SPEAKER_03: And spiritual is a good translation, I'll show you in a second.
SPEAKER_03: But Philo, Philo, an old was a philosopher of Alexandria.
SPEAKER_03: He was born 20 BC and died 50 AD.
SPEAKER_03: He was widely read throughout the ancient world, the Jewish philosopher of Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_03: He even came to speak to Roman emperors about the Jewish nation.
SPEAKER_03: Philo used this word almost 200 times.
SPEAKER_03: 200 times.
SPEAKER_03: And just the writings that survive for us today.
SPEAKER_03: And when Philo said the word, it meant rational.
SPEAKER_03: It meant rational or reasonable.
SPEAKER_03: Or one dictionary says thoughtful.
SPEAKER_03: Philo says that rationality reigns and rules.
SPEAKER_03: It's the preeminent king.
SPEAKER_03: It reigns and rules in the soul.
SPEAKER_03: So that's how we get the word spiritual in our translations.
SPEAKER_03: Because in the ancient world, rationality was a spiritual matter.
SPEAKER_03: It was a spiritual matter.
SPEAKER_03: And so it's it's thoughtful, it's reflective, it's reasoned even.
SPEAKER_03: It's the pure spiritual milk that gets to your soul through your mind.
SPEAKER_03: Because you've heard the good news that was preached to you.
SPEAKER_03: And I gotta tell you, this one stumps me.
SPEAKER_03: I have to hold to it pretty loosely.
SPEAKER_03: Most commentators, most of the great commentators point to the context of chapter one and say this is the pure rational milk of the word of God.
SPEAKER_03: Even translating it that way, the pure spiritual milk of the word.
SPEAKER_03: Some of your Bibles may say, I don't really get it.
SPEAKER_03: I don't really get that.
SPEAKER_03: But it is the majority of you, and in a way it does, it does make sense.
SPEAKER_03: If the word God gave, if the word of God gave you new life, through understanding the grace of God and truth, like in Colossians 1, then it would be rational, it would be sensible to keep craving that life-giving word, right?
SPEAKER_03: And the rest of Scripture surely tells us that it's the Word of God that builds Christians up.
SPEAKER_03: But I think a better understanding awaits us in verse 3.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 3.
SPEAKER_03: Peter says, Since you've tasted that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: The emphasis on this verse is, if you've truly been born again, regenerated by the word of God, then you will grow up into salvation.
SPEAKER_03: It will really happen.
SPEAKER_03: They surely will be saved, growing up all the way there, for the word of the Lord stands forever.
SPEAKER_03: If you're a Christian, you will grow up into salvation, Peter says.
SPEAKER_03: But doesn't the word tasted seem to go with the way newborns crave pure milk?
SPEAKER_03: Try this if you have the opportunity.
SPEAKER_03: Give a newborn three sips of that bottle, then take it away for a second.
SPEAKER_03: You know, get your phone out, move your coffee cup from one side to the other, shift your weight in the chair.
SPEAKER_03: Just five seconds is all it takes.
SPEAKER_03: And they will let you know, because something changes about the way they crave it after that first taste.
SPEAKER_03: It's even glad.
SPEAKER_03: Like those baby birds, right?
SPEAKER_03: After they've tasted it and they know that it's good, they crave it more and not less.
SPEAKER_03: And they crave it gladly, even.
SPEAKER_03: So what if, and I'm not alone in this, John Calvin's with me on this one, but what if the pure spiritual milk isn't the word of God, but the goodness of God in verse 3?
SPEAKER_03: The pure spiritual milk, the pure sensible, rational, almost cognitive milk is the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's what it is.
SPEAKER_03: One more thing to make the point.
SPEAKER_03: Peter quotes Psalm 34 here.
SPEAKER_03: You should turn there.
SPEAKER_03: Psalm 34.
SPEAKER_03: It's a great psalm.
SPEAKER_03: It's a fantastic psalm for Christians living as sojourning exiles in the world.
SPEAKER_03: Peter quotes this psalm again later in the letter.
SPEAKER_03: It's clearly on his heart for these churches in Asia.
SPEAKER_03: And David wrote Psalm 34.
SPEAKER_03: David wrote Psalm 34, basically under arrest in a Philistine war camp.
SPEAKER_03: Dale Ralph Davies writes, David is haunted, hated, and hunted by Saul.
SPEAKER_03: That David fled to Gath, a Philistine city where Akish ruled, shows how terribly desperate he was.
SPEAKER_03: Perhaps he thought they would take him on as a mercenary, but David had been decimating Philistine troops, and then he shows up in Gath with Goliath's sword on his back.
SPEAKER_03: It's the equivalent of a steer walking into a meat processing plant, end quote.
SPEAKER_03: Talk about suffering helplessly in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_03: Eventually David loses his mind.
SPEAKER_03: He lets his spittle dribble, tries to earn the insanity plea.
SPEAKER_03: We may think that David was putting on a clever ruse here because we know that it worked, but ask yourselves, how hopeless do you have to be to pretend to be crazy?
SPEAKER_03: He's out of ideas.
SPEAKER_03: How scared must David have been in Gath?
SPEAKER_03: And so David here in Psalm 34 is just like Peter's audience, exiles in a land not their own, enduring hostility, even hostility from a king or two, as they wait for God's deliverance.
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't going to read the whole thing for you, but then I heard that J.
SPEAKER_03: C.
SPEAKER_03: Ryle got saved during a scripture reading, and I can't let it go.
SPEAKER_03: So may the word of the Lord bless you.
SPEAKER_03: Let me read all of Psalm 34.
SPEAKER_03: I will bless the Lord at all times.
SPEAKER_03: His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
SPEAKER_03: My soul makes its boast in the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Let the humble hear and be glad.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.
SPEAKER_03: I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
SPEAKER_03: Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.
SPEAKER_03: This poor man cried, that's David.
SPEAKER_03: This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
SPEAKER_03: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: There it is, right?
SPEAKER_03: Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.
SPEAKER_03: The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
SPEAKER_03: Come, O children, listen to me.
SPEAKER_03: Listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?
SPEAKER_03: Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.
SPEAKER_03: Turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
SPEAKER_03: The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their city.
SPEAKER_03: The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
SPEAKER_03: When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
SPEAKER_03: He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.
SPEAKER_03: Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
SPEAKER_03: But the Lord redeems the life of his servants.
SPEAKER_03: None who take refuge in him will be condemned.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, flee to the Lord and take refuge in him.
SPEAKER_03: Can you see that Peter had this whole psalm in mind?
SPEAKER_03: The entire psalm was in the back of his head when he wrote this letter.
SPEAKER_03: He wants his readers to remember the whole thing too.
SPEAKER_03: Like when a preacher quotes a hymn at you, he hopes that the whole hymn will land on your heart.
SPEAKER_03: And so too when the apostles quote the Psalms, they expect you to know the whole thing.
SPEAKER_03: So read your Psalms.
SPEAKER_03: Peter says, So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 13 and 14 in your psalm.
SPEAKER_03: And the ESV, evil, same word as malice.
SPEAKER_03: Keep your lips from speaking, same language as slander.
SPEAKER_03: Deceit?
SPEAKER_03: Peter again.
SPEAKER_03: Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk so that you may grow up into salvation.
SPEAKER_03: And salvation, I think, is the point of this whole psalm.
SPEAKER_03: It's what David sings about in verse 6.
SPEAKER_03: This poor man David cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
SPEAKER_03: As in, I about lost it back there, Lord, but you saved me.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 18, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_03: The whole psalm is about salvation and deliverance and rescue and waiting for the Lord in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_03: And so it is for Peter as well.
SPEAKER_03: Though I'll admit Peter would have to forgive his readers if they missed those first few illusions.
SPEAKER_03: And I likewise won't hold it against you if you think I'm stretching it.
SPEAKER_03: But I think that's why Peter quotes this psalm outright in verse 3.
SPEAKER_03: In verse 3, that's why he quotes it perfectly.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 8 in the psalm.
SPEAKER_03: Peter says, If as indeed you have, you have tasted that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: He quotes the psalm to point to the psalm.
SPEAKER_03: Blessed is the man who takes refuge in the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_03: And so what's Peter's real point then?
SPEAKER_03: The command is long for the pure spiritual milk.
SPEAKER_03: The whole thing is a reference to David's song of praise and exhortation to Israel to taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: And I think that that's the pure sensible milk.
SPEAKER_03: And so the command then is to crave the goodness of God that you've already tasted in the good news that was preached to you, Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: For surely God rescues, God saves, God delivers all who wait upon him in righteousness.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, crave the word of God, but crave the goodness you see through it.
SPEAKER_03: Crave the God of the Bible and find him in his word.
SPEAKER_03: How often I do this?
SPEAKER_03: Do you read your Bible and just move on?
SPEAKER_03: And you haven't thought for half a second that God is real, that God has spoken, and that he is good.
SPEAKER_03: Don't lose sight of that most basic hermeneutic, or you'll never understand the book of Job.
SPEAKER_03: Taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 19 in the Psalm.
SPEAKER_03: Are you righteous enough?
SPEAKER_03: Are you righteous enough to be delivered?
SPEAKER_03: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_03: Yahweh keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.
SPEAKER_03: Who is that?
SPEAKER_03: The Gospel of John, chapter 19.
SPEAKER_03: Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, that they might be taken away.
SPEAKER_03: So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him.
SPEAKER_03: But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
SPEAKER_03: But one of the soldiers pierced his side with the spear, and at once there came out blood and water.
SPEAKER_03: He who saw it has borne witness.
SPEAKER_03: His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you also may believe, for these things took place.
SPEAKER_03: That the scripture might be fulfilled, not one of his bones will be broken.
SPEAKER_03: In trials, tribulations, difficulties, hard-pressed anxieties, long for the Lord, wait for the Lord like David did, because Jesus did it perfectly.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus was righteous enough to actually receive David's promise, to actually fulfill David's promise of deliverance.
SPEAKER_03: Look to your Lord, Christians.
SPEAKER_03: Do you see any malice?
SPEAKER_03: Do you hear a hint of hypocrisy or envy?
SPEAKER_03: Look to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Did he ever once doubt the goodness of God?
SPEAKER_03: No, despising the shame.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus now has the sweetest taste of God's goodness because Jesus is the righteous servant who truly took refuge in the Lord on the cross, and now he has received salvation.
SPEAKER_03: And the firstborn word incarnate comes with salvation in his wings to give to his wordborn brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_03: But most of all, beloved, see in your Lord one who grew up for you, one who grew up for you.
SPEAKER_03: He didn't have to grow in wisdom and stature.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus was omniscient, even in the manger.
SPEAKER_03: But as Hebrews says, he learned obedience through what he suffered.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus was able to endure the cross in part because he grew up longing for the pure, sensible milk of God's goodness in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_03: And he sought it in the scriptures, did he not?
SPEAKER_03: Despising the shame, Jesus pressed on for the joy set before him.
SPEAKER_03: He did it the human way to redeem humanity so that you could be saved by faith in his name.
SPEAKER_03: On your own, you are not righteous enough to be delivered.
SPEAKER_03: Left to yourself, God would leave you to yourself.
SPEAKER_03: But in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Christ the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: In Jesus Christ, he is righteous enough for all of us.
SPEAKER_03: Take refuge in his name.
SPEAKER_03: Take refuge in his name by faith.
SPEAKER_03: And oh taste and see that Christ the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: And then follow him by faith in his name.
SPEAKER_03: When Peter wrote this letter, when Peter wrote this letter, we have every reason to think that these were backwater locations.
SPEAKER_03: These were rural places, small towns spread thin through the mountains and the prairies.
SPEAKER_03: Some two hundred years later, Philip Schaff tells us a Christian gentleman and his wife Makrina suffered severe hardships under Roman persecution.
SPEAKER_03: They hid in a forest for seven years.
SPEAKER_03: They lost most, if not all, of their fairly wealthy estate in Pontus, all for refusing to offer a sacrifice to a Roman god in the presence of a Roman magistrate.
SPEAKER_03: Sound like Polycarp?
SPEAKER_03: Presumably, this man was a member, he was part of one of the churches that Peter sent this letter to.
SPEAKER_03: He and his wife grew up into salvation and they were ready.
SPEAKER_03: These simple people from a small town in Pontus.
SPEAKER_03: They had four kids whom they raised in the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: One of their sons grew up to be a pastor who married an orphaned woman named Amelia.
SPEAKER_03: She was, Shaft tells us, I love this, herself, a conspicuous example of high-minded and gentle Christian womanhood.
SPEAKER_03: Let that be your purpose statement, ladies.
SPEAKER_03: Herself, a conspicuous example of high-minded and gentle Christian womanhood.
SPEAKER_03: Or manhood.
SPEAKER_03: We could all wear that one, right?
SPEAKER_03: With these two.
SPEAKER_03: These two had ten children.
SPEAKER_03: Of them, Makrina, named for her grandmother, would gain renown as simply the teacher.
SPEAKER_03: And on her deathbed, she would comfort her younger brother Gregory with promises of the resurrection to come.
SPEAKER_03: Persevere, endure, even to death.
SPEAKER_03: For there's a resurrection to come.
SPEAKER_03: Gregory of Nyssa, her little brother, would be a divine, a defining voice at the first council of Constantinople.
SPEAKER_03: He secured the place of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Nicene theology.
SPEAKER_03: The Holy Spirit is God.
SPEAKER_03: They had to say that clearly.
SPEAKER_03: And Gregory did, along with his older brother Basil of Caesarea, their friend Gregory of Nazianzus, another little town in the same region Peter addressed.
SPEAKER_03: All of them born and raised.
SPEAKER_03: To some extent, they did go away to school in Athens, but all of them born and raised in these backwaters of Cappadocia, born to a family who suffered persecution in the churches to whom Peter wrote.
SPEAKER_03: Can I ask you?
SPEAKER_03: Do you think those churches stuck together?
SPEAKER_03: Do you think those churches, they think they grew up in Pontus together, think they raised families, preached sermons, sang hymns, and loved the gospel together?
SPEAKER_03: I think they did.
SPEAKER_03: It's very likely where the grandparents of these great Cappadocians I've told you about.
SPEAKER_03: It's very likely there where those grandparents grew up and first tasted that Christ the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_03: And so, oh, you gray hairs, never underestimate a grandmother like Timothy's grandma Lois.
SPEAKER_03: Same for the rest of you.
SPEAKER_03: My friends, maybe we shouldn't be intimidated by Polycarp and Charles Simeon.
SPEAKER_03: Instead, rather we should be inspired.
SPEAKER_03: But we too we too have tasted and seen the everlasting goodness of Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Or another polygon crossing wonderful.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for your son, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: For the first born word incarnate Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Cause us to live lives worthy of the gospel we've heard.
SPEAKER_03: For good you are and good you do.
SPEAKER_03: You're worthy of all our praise and every thought and deed.
SPEAKER_03: So strengthen our hearts, Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Please strengthen our hearts to sing loudly of your grace.
SPEAKER_03: To sing proudly of your word.
SPEAKER_03: To live humbly in need of your goodness.
SPEAKER_03: Father, free us from malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander.
SPEAKER_03: Empower us to put them away.
SPEAKER_03: So that we can live lives like Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Father, your sons talk to his brothers.
SPEAKER_03: He lost not one of them except for Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: The seasons march at your comment.
SPEAKER_03: The old departs, the new year comes, and though celestial is your gaze, you search and care for all our ways.
SPEAKER_03: We offer up to you this day, and all of our tomorrow.
SPEAKER_03: Determine on the steps we choose.
SPEAKER_03: Guide us through each day.
SPEAKER_03: Oh how we want to follow you.
SPEAKER_03: Let perfect love drive out our fear.
SPEAKER_03: So distant town Of cherish saints the sun once kissed.
SPEAKER_03: Whose beauty passed behind the clouds?
SPEAKER_03: Let all our fond and long ears Remind us we are children's dear.
SPEAKER_02: Greatest treasure of my longing soul.
SPEAKER_02: Your grace goes to deep to the law except the heavens tree.
SPEAKER_02: Your truth no felt of perfect wisdom.
SPEAKER_02: My highest good and my identity, I rock and my bear.
SPEAKER_02: And wish to save you off my room and love this and put straight on your shoulders in my face off their May all my days bring glory to your day.
SPEAKER_03: So go this week, longing to see the radiant goodness of your friend and elder brother, the firstborn of all creation, the firstborn from the grave, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: When Jesus came into the world, the author to the Hebrews writes, For it was fitting that God, for whom and by whom all things exist, and bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
SPEAKER_03: For he who sanctifies, and those who are sanctified all have one source.
SPEAKER_03: That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.
SPEAKER_03: And we all said together, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.