Purified Hearts, Passionate Love
Notes
Transcript
When is the last time you purified your souls? What does it even mean to purify your soul? Have you ever seen your soul?
When someone looks at you and laughs and tells you to go look in a mirror, you know something has gone wrong with your face. Well maybe not your face, at least I hope not your face but something that has gotten on your face. But as soon as someone says to look in the mirror we quickly go look in a mirror and can see exactly what they are talking about.
But how do we do that with our souls and why should we do this?
Follow along as I read our passage from 1 Peter. Peter explains to us about purifying our souls in this passage. He explains about purification as well as the “mirror” we should be using is the “enduring word of God.
22 Since you have purified your souls in obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brothers and sisters, fervently love one another from the heart,
23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.
24 For, “All flesh is like grass, And all its glory is like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off,
25 But the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word which was preached to you.
1 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander,
2 and like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation,
3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
1. Purification Precedes Passionate Love
Purification is the process in which an person who is unclean, according to Levitical law, becomes clean again.
An unclean person is cut off from society, from the sanctuary and the holy festivals. The Day of Atonement was an annual day of purification for the Hebrews. But there were also ways of ceremonial purification through different ceremonial acts.
An example of purification is Leviticus 13 and 14. Chapter 13 explains the test for leprosy and chapter 14 gives the law for the cleansing or purification of a leper.
There are a myriad of things which can make a person unclean under Levitical law each requires a person to purify themselves. You might purify yourself from one transgression and go out and commit another and would then be required to purify yourself again.
We need to keep in mind that while we talk about purification like the Day of Atonement but these ceremonial cleansings had to be repeated each time. They merely covered the breaking of the law. They didn’t really make the person clean.
All of this changed with Jesus. Matthew 8:2-4 reads:
2 And a man with leprosy came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”
3 Jesus reached out with His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
4 And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
This passage in Matthew would have upset every Jewish religious leader because Jesus was showing once again that He had the authority to forgive sin. Prior to this, each person had to go through the ceremony for purification from leprosy and then see a priest to be pronounced clean. Jesus simply pronounced this man as being clean and he became clean.
We should find this amazing.
This past week I read a FaceBook post that said singing Amazing Grace is good but what is better is to be amazed by God’s grace.
What we should be amazed at is that when Christ died on the cross, when He said it is finished, all sins were forgiven for those whom God calls.
In Leviticus we read how a person can become cleansed from leprosy. In Matthew we read how Jesus had the authority to cleanse a person from leprosy. But we also read in the Gospels that Jesus died in order that we become purified completely. Not just for one offense, not for a dozen but we are purified from all our sins.
Once we are purified, it is then that we can really love.
2. Plant Love in Perpetual Truth
A book that I always recommend to couples is the Five Love Languages.
The book lists 5 ways that you can show love to your spouse. As you read and understand the languages, you can then take a short test and figure out which is your primary love language. I encourage every couple to read through this and identify their primary love language and discuss it with their spouse.
Basically, this book teaches that each person will have one primary love language, one primary way in which their spouse demonstrates their love in a way that relates to that person.
As an example, two love languages are time and gifts. If you language is time and your spouse keeps giving you gifts, you won’t feel as loved by them. I am not saying the gifts are bad but it isn’t the primary language the other person speaks,
The Bible was written in Hebrew, Greek and some Aramaic. When I read our passage for the sermon I read it in English. The reasons I read in English is that is our primary language, plus I have forgotten most of the Hebrew and Greek I learned in seminary. But if I were to always read the passage in Latin, or maybe in the original language, you would know I was reading the Bible but you would not understand what I was saying.
So when you love someone, you learn to speak their language. This is important in our human relationships.
However, all that man does will disappear. Humanity is like the flower of grass. We will each die a physical death.
Everything we accomplish in this earthly life will not prevent our death. Everything we own, can own or want to own won’t prevent our death. It doesn’t matter if you are rich, poor or somewhere in between, money will not prevent our death.
So what should our focus be on while we are living now? It must be on God.
4 “Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
5 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
When Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment He restated Deuteronomy 6:5 and then paired this with a second commandment.
37 And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the great and foremost commandment.
39 The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”
Love is at the center of God’s law and the Word of God.
Specifically loving God and loving your neighbor.
If loving God is the center, how do we sow love, not just the feeling but how do we sow love so that it will last?
I believe a key way we sow love is by sowing the word of God. If the center of God’s law is to love God and love our neighbor then we must know God’s word so that we can sow God’s word.
According to Isaiah and to Peter, everything will wither and die, nothing which man does will last. But the Word of God will endure forever. Sowing the word is being loving toward God and toward our neighbors. It is the only thing in this life which will last.
And then one day, for those who heard and were called by God, we will get to meet the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
3. Purge Malice, Pursue God’s Word
What do we do from now till then?
Peter tells us to purge ourselves, rid ourselves of all malice, deceit, hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
That is a long list of things but why did Peter mention these things? Why didn’t he just say purge sin?
I think Peter listed these because these particular sins will tear at the very fabric of a church family. In particular, these work against the very idea of love.
Two things you will always hear from non-Christians about Christians; they always say the church is filled with hypocrites and that Christians hate.
The truth is we are all hypocritical and we all hate. That is why Peter tells us to purge ourselves of all these things. We must turn away from these things, which will divide us, which will break down love in the family, which will cause us to stumble.
And they also cause non-Christians to not be a part of us.
So we must purge ourselves. Peter tells us how.
We long for God’s word.
Have you ever gotten really mad at someone or something and at the same time praise God? I don’t mean just singing songs so that all you are doing is paying lip service to praising God. I mean really praising God, Telling God how much you love Him, telling God how much you want to serve Him.
Can you remember a time you have really been praising God and at the same time have murderous hate going on?
If you can remember a time, well I don’t want to call you a liar but you are a liar. We cannot hate someone and love God all at the same time. We cannot have murderous love on our hearts and love God at the same time.
The same goes for all these sins Peter listed. If we spend time in God’s word, desiring His word in our lives at the same level a newborn babe desires milk from their mother then these other things in our live will start to disappear.
How do I know this? Well the Bible told me so. I also know from experience.
You might find this hard to believe but yesterday, Susan and I got into an argument. It was an argument over a life changing decision. Susan had to be changed so she saw it my way or life would not go on. The argument was about a fan. We were talking about two fans we have in the living room and where they should be located. She talked about swapping the two fans but I completely missed the word swap.
Because I was not fully engaged in the conversation I missed a critical word which I then used as an excuse to talk harshly to her. And she reacted to my tone so the matter of two fans positions turned into an argument. Now you might be laughing but if you are in a relationship with someone, you have experienced this.
But this particular argument took place while I was working on this sermon. I had taken a short break on writing when the conversation started. So I missed a word and off to the races we went. After the argument, as I sat there thinking of how right I was and how wrong she was, I looked over at this sermon and I had to push the laptop away because I could not write while I was angry.
It wasn’t until I went back and apologized for the wrong I did before I could even start to work on this again.
We cannot love God and hate man. We cannot love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength and hate our neighbor.
The first command is to love God with all of us and the second is like it, love your neighbor.
If you love God you will love your neighbor but if you don’t love God you cannot love your neighbor.
If you are thinking or have thought, I know I am a Christian but I still can’t love so and so.
Let me assure you bout your salvation by reminding you what I said near the beginning of this. Being made pure, being purified is a process. Sometimes it is a painful process and sometimes it is just a growing process; a process of having Scripture illuminated for us.
On the back of your handout are some questions I hope you will take time to answer for yourself.
But right now, the first question you need to answer is what is your relationship to God.
Are you in a relationship? If you aren’t then you need consider that first. Without God we cannot really love.
If you know you have that relationship then ask yourselves those questions and hopefully grow in your relationship.
Let’s pray.
