Earnestly Loving and Heartily Feasting

What kind of people will we be?

Have you ever tried to walk in really heavy winds?

We often had pretty heavy winds in ND. Like 30 mph sustained winds for a whole day.

Standing outside was exhausting because you just kept getting pummeled by the winds, never feeling like there was going to be a break.

These last weeks (and for many like me, these last months) have felt like that.

Feeling like the winds of trials and difficulty just keep blowing and blowing.

How do we stand firm?

Peter’s stated purpose for writing 1 Peter is to encourage and equip the churches scattered across what we know as Turkey, to stand firm in the middle of persecution and difficulty.

We started this series on Easter Sunday with Peter’s incredible description of the reality we live in now because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our resurrection reality.

Then in vs 13 Peter uses the word “therefore” to transition from what God has done for us to how we are to live out of response.

As we look at the last 2 challenges, I want us to ask the question: What kind of people will we be?

1 Peter 1:22–2:3 ESV

22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. 1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

The two challenges/commands in these passages are:

To love one anther

To desire the pure milk of the Word.

We are to be people who love one another earnestly and people to crave the word of God heartily.

But these two imperative are literally birthed out of two identity shaping experiences these Christians, and all Christians, must experience.

Two Identity Shaping Experiences

1) Purifying Obedience.

It kind of sounds like Peter contradicts himself in verse 22. He just finished talking about how our faith and hope are in God, who saved us, but now it sounds like our obedience (follow rules) is what makes us pure.

But Peter doesn’t use the word obedience here like we often think of the word, like obedience training a dog to sit and stay on command.

Peter understand obedience to be submission.

He is saying “your souls have been washed from the stains of sin (purified) by your submission (obedient surrender) to the Gospel of Jesus (truth).

Obedience is submission to Jesus.

Peter knows what submission is.

In John 6, Jesus has just called all those who are following him at the time to complete surrender to Him. He says “unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood you will not receive eternal life.”

At the time, those listening didn’t understand that Jesus was talking about the cross and the necessary response to place our faith in Christ’s finished work for salvation.

It says many of those follow Jesus walked away because His words were so strong.

So Jesus turns to His remaining disciples and says this:

John 6:66–67 ESV

66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”

To which Peter boldly responds:

John 6:68 ESV

68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,

There is no where else for us to go, no one else for us to turn, for you Jesus are truth.

That is obedience, that is what Paul is talking about in Romans 10:9

Romans 10:9 ESV

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, meaning the king, the boss, the shot caller, the number one in your life.

Everyone of us obey something in our lives

We submit ourselves to money, self-interest, family, politics, comfort, conformity, consumerism, and all kinds of other things.

All with the hope that whatever it is will save us.

But Peter is pointing to the only experience, the only decision that truly has the power to save, the power to purify us from the brokenness of sin, submitting our lives to Jesus.

And that obedience results in a changed heart and a transformed life.

2) New Birth through The Word

The second experience Peter points to is our new birth through the living and abiding Word of God.

This kind of language is lost on us today.

Born again has now become a political classification, which has robbed it of its tremendous meaning.

Peter uses this description the same way Jesus did in John 3 when he was talking to the super religious Nicodemus.

To be born again means total life transformation. It means to literally be made new.

It is a concept that is shared by throughout the New Testament and even has roots in the Old Testament.

To be born again is not simple believing a set of doctrinal ideas, or being conformed to a set of rules, or trying to be a better person.

It is death and resurrection of our soul that will one day lead to the death and resurrection of our whole self.

Romans 6:8–11 ESV

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

This what we show off in Baptism, the death of our old life and birth of our new life in Christ.

And all of this is awakened and accomplished by the Word of God

The Living and active Word of God

The imperishable, abiding Word of God

The result of our New Birth through the Word is a changed heart and a transformed life.

Two Fundamental Responses

The grammar in this passage is so essential to understand and is SO consistent with the rest of the bible.

These 2 commands (imperatives) are RESPONSES that flow OUT OF the two experiences.

THEREFORE, since you have submitted your life to Christ (obedience to the Truth) and have been transformed by the Word of God (new birth), then we ought to be people who:

1) Love Earnestly

Peter weaves the challenge to love one another throughout this passage.

In 1:22-23 he points to the outflow of a submission to Christ and new birth through the Word is earnest, familial love.

The experience of salvation and new life in Christ creates and cultivates love for the family of God in our hearts.

That is verse 22a, but in 22b we are told to “love one another earnestly.”

Peter is saying the love flows from our transformed hearts, but it also requires action on our parts to choose to love as well.

Love is bred in the heart of a born again believer, but we also must battle the sinful nature that is still in us (the bible calls this the flesh) in order to live out love in the way God calls us to.

Since we have been born again by the imperishable Word of God, we must strive to be people of LOVE, especially, but not exclusively, toward our brothers and sisters in the faith.

The second part of this command comes in 2:1:

1 Peter 2:1 ESV

1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

To put away literally means to “be done with” or “take off and throw away”.

I put on 2 different pairs of socks this week and realize really quickly that there were holes in the bottom.

I find great joy in ripping my holey socks off my feet and throwing them in the trash.

I have a drawer full of nice, comfy socks, so why would I keep wearing the holey ones?

If we have new life in Christ, if we are born again from the living, abiding, and imperishable Word of God, why would we continue to put on the things that are cancerous to our Christ-centered community and our witness to the world?

Implicit in the command to “Put away” is the opposite command to “put on”:

Jen Wilken says:

We can infer from the list of negative behaviors that those born again of the living and abiding word ought to eagerly clothe themselves in a garment not of malice but of goodwill, not of deceit but of truth, not of hypocrisy but of genuineness, not of envy but of generosity, not of slander but of praise. This is the robe worn by the chosen exiles of God, a garment that marks them as aliens and strangers.

John 13:35 ESV

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

How we love one another through times like these serves as an incredible witness to just how satisfying the goodness of God really is.

Jen Wilkin

Imagine how alien and strange our lives would look if we lived as those who love one another earnestly. What if instead of quarreling and coveting, we lay down our lives for one another after the example of Christ? We would seek the good of others above our own. We would be open-handed and vulnerable, honest about our weaknesses, and humble about our strengths. We would overlook offenses and assume the best about the motives of others. No victim mentality. No self-preservation.

If we are to stand firm and live in light of the resurrection, we must be people defined by love.

2) Feast Heartily

Peter compares our desire for the Word of God to a newborn infant’s desire for its mother’s milk.

This is a powerful, and admittedly awkward, analogy he uses if you have ever experienced a hunger newborn baby.

A hungry newborn will make it quite clear just how much they want their mother’s milk. They are often inconsolable and frantic until they taste what they are craving.

There is a nursing term called “rooting” where a baby will start searching for the source of its milk when it is hungry.

I can remember the times when our girls were hungry for milk as newborns. They would eagerly search for milk in any persons arms, but would not be satisfied until they found the only thing that would truly satisfy their craving.

They had tasted the goodness of the milk that gave them life and allowed them to grow.

What a wonderfully powerful analogy as we consider the command to “crave the pure milk of the Word”.

Jen Wilken says

Newborns are designed to need a mother’s milk to survive and thrive. So also, believers are designed to need the pure milk of God’s Word, the Bible, to survive and thrive.

"if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good”

The qualifier here is, if you have tasted in the goodness of God, then you will long for a steady and hearty diet of the pure, living, and abiding Word of God.

Peter includes the word “if” here not as a question, but as a qualifier. He wanted his readers to contemplate whether they really have tasted the goodness of God?

Have they submitted their lives to Christ?

Have they been born again by the Word of God?

Is God’s Word a craving of their hearts?

The true test is the answer to this question: does the Word of God appeal to your senses? Does is sound good as you hear it? Does it look good as you see it worked out in your life? Does is taste good as you feast on it?

Does is convict you, challenge you, move you, inspire you? Does it make you question your motives, give you clarity in decision, or bring hope in the middle of troubled times?

If not then you likely have not tasted the Goodness of God and the nourishment of His Word.

But there is a tendency to confuse hunger for God word with not knowing how to feed ourselves.

Jen Wilken is helpful here as she draws out Peter’s analogy more:

Any woman who has ever nursed a child will also attest to this: though nothing could be more natural or needful than nursing, getting the hang of it is extremely difficult. It requires perseverance on the part of both the mother and the baby. Though babies need pure milk to survive, they must learn how to receive it.

We know we need to be in the Word to survive and to thrive, and it seems like something so necessary and natural should be effortless to acquire. But it isn’t. It requires perseverance on the part of both God and his child. God’s perseverance is unquestioned, but our own quickly give in. We do not expect our time in the Word to require practice, but it does. We must learn how to receive it, through repeated efforts to do so, humbly accepting help.

If we are to survive; if we are to thrive; if we are to stand firm in this world we need, we must feast heartily on the Word of God.

Reading it regularly on our own

Meditating and studying on it as we go throughout our days

Listening to it taught and preached

And digging deep into it in community

A Step of Hopeful Obedience Today

I always try to end my sermons with a moment of response, where we all take a moment to reflect on how God might be calling us to respond to His Word.

Today I have a response that is much more tangible than just considering.

There is a link in the description and, if you are signed up for our texting service, you just got a text with the link in it, to sign up for one of our 4L groups.

Some of you are already in a group, but many of you likely are not.

One of our convictions that is straight out of the Word of God is that we need one another, and that is even more true in this season.

So we are challenging each of you listening in the Ohio County area to sign up to be a part of a group that will be meeting online weekly through this season.

In these groups we will connect in community, pray for one another, and spend time digging deeper into the Word of God from the Sunday sermon.

For now each group will be meeting weekly online until we are able to physically gather, at which time we hope to have our groups meeting together in a physical location.

There are all kinds of excuses you can come up with, but as we heard from God’s Word today, our resurrection reality calls us to Love one another and to crave the Word of God.

Here is our opportunity to heed the call toward both.