Taste - the LORD is Gracious

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Peter chapter 2. Well the sermon is going to come from 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 1 through 3. We're actually going to read 1 Peter chapter 1 beginning at verse 22 through chapter 2 verse 3. If you're using the provided New King James Pew Bibles, you can find that on page 1076. 1 Peter chapter 2, we'll start the reading at chapter 1 verse 22. Hear now God's perfect word.

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit, insincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.

Prayer for Illumination

Because all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you. Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Thus ends this portion of the reading of God's word. Let's pray.

Sermon

Oh Father, you have given us Your Word, You've given us faith. Lord, now we pray that our faith might increase and be even more firm and strong. Lord, we pray that Your Holy Spirit would please bring light to our eyes, understanding to our minds, hope to our hearts. Lord, we pray that as we have the preaching of Your Word, that Your Spirit would be working in us Lord, we confess to you that it's very easy to get distracted. We confess to you that it's easy to have heard words like this before and get bored or think it doesn't apply to us. Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would please teach us, give us doctrine, Lord, from your Word. We pray that your Spirit would please use it to correct us where we are erring, rebuke us where we are sinning, But Father, we also pray that your spirit would use this word. Lord, that we would be equipped for every good work. Lord, thank you for the work of your spirit. In his name we pray, amen.

I was talking to a lady one time and she was expressing to me why she didn't go to a certain Bible study anymore. I was somewhat surprised and curious by her reasoning. You know, she had gone, then she wasn't going, and I just kind of asked her why she wasn't going anymore. And I'm not, don't go into speculation here, right?

But the point is, the person was telling me that what had started off what was good, what started off with wanting fellowship and spiritual milk, What started off as encouragement and edification ended up becoming a pool of toxicity and gossip, slander, and tearing other people down, all under the guise of prayer requests. And that has stuck with me for years and years and years now that even sometimes Christians can take something that's supposed to be good and starts good and then kind of whitewash it with religious intent.

And that's really what Peter is getting at here in verses one through three of chapter two. He's urging the Christians, commanding the Christians to put away very specific sins because they have been born again in Jesus. That these sins don't belong in their mouths or in their hearts anymore. Because they aren't loving to one another, they aren't building up of the community in love.

But instead, to rejoice in God's graciousness and in the word that is pure that he's given us. And so that's what this is calling us to do, is to cast aside those things that taint our souls, to hunger for the pure milk of God's Word, and to savor the sweetness of our God's goodness. So first, let's look together at verse 1.

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and All evil speaking. Peter is not using an exhaustive list here, but he's pointing out five areas or categories of sin, both of the mouth and of the heart, that if you don't get rid of these, you won't be doing what chapter one had said, right? We have had our hearts purified by obeying the truth through the spirit. So now what do we do?

Insincere love of the brethren. We love one another fervently with a pure heart. If you are habitually or regularly committing these five sins he lists in verse one, you will not be loving each other fervently. We will not be caring for one another in the way in which Jesus Christ has called us to love one another and has shown us by his spirit we are to love one another. And so what are these five different vices that will destroy Christian community and our antithetical to biblical love? Well the first that Peter lists here is malice. Malice is an ill will or a desire to harm another person.

The idea behind this is almost like King Saul, when he was so mad at Jonathan, because he knew that Jonathan covenanted himself with David, that David was going to be the next king. And so what does Saul purpose in his heart to do? Kill David. Didn't matter if his son got in the way, just get him out of the way.

This ill will or malice is what this is talking about. This desire to harm others. This is the same way, and often these sins are overlapping and mixed with each other. We can also say that's part of envy and jealousy. But another way in which we look at church history and we see is what Nero did to the early church.

He wanted power and he wanted authority. He starts a fire in Rome. And what does he do because he wants to rid the Christians out of the kingdom? He blames the fire on the Christians. So he can torture them and expel them wholesale. He had malice against the Christians.

So my question to you is, do you look at your brothers and sisters and do you pray for their well-being? Or do you hope for their ill-will? How do you think about other Christians in the church? How do you think about other Christians in your life? How do you treat them? Wanting to love them fervently, or do you desire their downfall and their harm?

The second of these five sins that are antithetical is deceit. And deceit is a good translation here. The Greek word is dolon, and this idea of decitos is also cunning and crafty, treachery. It's deliberately distorting the truth so you can be gained.

This is what happened in the Bible when you have Jacob. And Jacob purposely deceives his father Isaac so he can steal the blessing from his brother Esau. He goes through great pains to do this. Remember the hair on his arms and putting on the clothing of his brother. He's purposely trying to deceive even his own father.

And we're no strangers to this deceit in our American political system. We don't have to go back too many decades to remember the Watergate scandal and purposely trying to cover up the spying on a political adversary and trying to hide it and deny it until finally the truth comes out and the whole thing falls apart.

This purposeful deception to try to get personal gain, that will ruin a congregation. It will ruin a family. It will ruin our love for one another. We must put away deceit. The next is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, this is one that we throw around all the time, but this is pretending to be someone we're not.

In Greek theater, there was a person called the hypocrite. It would be the person who would stand there and they were to play act, but they had two different masks. As they played one character, they would put on a mask and speak the lines of that one character. But then as a scene went on, they would take away that mask and put on a second mask, and they would behave and act another way in this scene. And this is the word picture that God uses here.

Who are you? Are you someone different when you walk in church than where you are in your workplace? Do you just put on a church face with your church clothes? Or are you a person of integrity when nobody else is looking, when nobody else is watching? Are you the same person in private as you are in public?

Pretending to be something we're not is exactly what the Pharisees were doing with their outward shows of piety, their outward religion, but in their heart they didn't have a true love for God or for their neighbors. And Jesus calls them, you hypocrites. You hypocrites. This is not lost on us. You can smell hypocrisy in culture and in the church or in a family a thousand miles away. This is exactly what we know when we see some climate activists like Bill Gates saying, we've got to get rid of CO2 emissions. And you see how many miles he flies on his private jet.

And you think, oh, so the rules don't apply to you, huh? Are you a hypocrite when it comes to your children? Do you have a standard for yourself, but a different standard for your kids? Do you have a standard for yourself by which you judge yourself, but then when you go and you think about other people in the church, do you have a different standard for how you judge them? Often we will like to judge ourselves with a much lighter standard, and those people out there with a much firmer standard.

It's hypocrisy. And the Lord's telling us here, put away that hypocrisy. The fourth that the Lord tells us here to put away that's the opposite of biblical fervent love is this resentment of others' blessings leading to discontentment, jealousy, or envy.

Jealousy or envy. This is Joseph's brothers. mad at him and angry that somehow he gets this coat of many colors and he gets these visions and somehow we're going to bow down to you. Yeah, right. Fat chance, Joseph. Let's kill him. You see envy and jealousy and malice put together there. It's just put that type of sin away from you. And act like that doesn't happen in the church.

I was just talking to some Indian pastors the other week. And we're being honest with each other about this one specific sin, even in pastors. There are many, many pastors in the country today who are not content with the ministry God gave them. So instead, they're always looking for the bigger and better church, going to the next place, wanting more people, more money, more prestige, all the while forgetting that they were called to love the people who are right in front of them. So much so that they're even willing to poach members out of other churches. You know there's actually this thing that some churches will do where they'll say, oh there's this church over here and we will do what's called geo-fencing. For advertising we will put a map around that other church and we will advertise our church to the people in that church.

So we can get them to come to our church instead. It's that ministry envy. And this happens all over the time. And again, we can sniff it out, we can taste it, we can smell it, and it's, ugh. But it's antithetical, it's opposite, it's breaking down of this fervent Christian love for one another.

And God says, get that out of you. Put it away. Lay it aside. The last of these that Peter mentions here is all evil speaking. Some of your translations might have it something like slander. This is a speaking ill or an evil of other people, often falsely. But why? Why would you speak these evils against someone? Because you want their downfall. You want their harm. This is exactly, again, what happened in Jesus' own life. Jesus never stole from anyone. Jesus never hurt anyone. Jesus never did anything wrong.

And yet, what did the Pharisees do? He must be casting out those demons by the power of Beelzebub. Oh, he's trying to tear down the temple. Oh, he's trying to, he's doing, etc., etc., etc. Bringing all sorts of false accusations against him, even at his trial. It's the opposite of fervent love. And it's a cancer in our hearts.

On the back of your bulletins, I've listed 12 diagnostic questions. I'm not going to read each of them to you today because, well, I'm not and that would take too much time, but I'm gonna challenge you or dare you to go home and ask these questions, not to yourself. Don't go home and read and be like, oh yeah, I'm good, check, check, check. I'm gonna challenge you to do it with somebody who will tell you the truth. Maybe ask your spouse, ask your brother or sister, ask your parents, ask one of your children. Does this sound like me?

Are you the type of person who shows bitterness, harshness and unkind attitudes? Are there times in your life when you're not fully honest with people or transparent? Are you the type of person who reflects love and encouragement? Or are you the type of person who likes to tear other people down with your words and with your attitude and your actions?

Honestly, ask someone who knows you well. Do you see growth in my spiritual maturity and character? You can go through those by yourself and see, do these sins that Peter has here still have a root in your heart? Notice the extent of this laying aside as well. Did you notice that?

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, all evil speaking, all, all, all, these have no place in the Christian life. You need to treat these sins like cancer. Right? You don't go to the doctor and the doctor tells you, oh yeah, hey, I got good news. You only have 50% of the cancer from last time. What do you want? You want the eradication. You want to know that you're in remission. Right? Do not Stop until it's absolute warfare against these sins. Put them to death. Lay them aside. Don't entertain them as pet sins.

But if you found yourself entangled in these sins, this is the exact point of the gospel. That Jesus Christ knew that sin in your heart, knew the depths of the corruption of the fall in your soul, and still died for you while you were still a sinner. He's not waiting for you to become good enough when you finally lay aside all these perfectly.

Then He'll finally be your Savior. No, now! Now He's your Savior. Notice, it's the therefore. Therefore, since you have been born again, you do these things. It's not once you have done these things, then you're born again. It's no, you have been born again, you are the beloved of God, you've been given His Word, so now be the children that He's called you to be.

Take away that malice, and replace it with love, prayer, and care for others. Take away, put away that deceit and become the type of person who tells the truth and who's a person of integrity. Take off your two masks and be a person who walks the walk, who lives a consistent life and judges consistently. Put away your envy and learn the secret jewel of contentment and the gift of generosity. and grace and gratitude. Put away evil speaking.

I don't know if that means you gotta start being like a little kid again and when you say those nasty words or those words that are meant to tear other people down. I wonder what it would look like for us adults if we actually went to the bathroom and got a bar of soap and scrubbed our tongue, if we would keep doing this. But if you're feeling overwhelmed by this malice or the struggle with envy, take courage because God is greater than these sins. The Holy Spirit can incrementally, gradually turn you away from those sins and turn towards life.

The good news of Jesus is that His blood has made us free from being slaves to these sins. They don't need to mark your identity. When people think of you, they do not have to think of you as, oh, that's that hypocrite over there. People do not have to think of you as a liar, or a slanderer, or someone who's motivated by your envy and jealousy.

That's what the blood of Jesus does. He's redeemed you from that yoke of slavery. From those sins. And so look to Christ with the new heart He's given you. So if you're going to put off those things, What do you do? Verse 2. Instead, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby. Desire the pure milk of the Word. We have a baby in the house, and I don't care what's going on, that kid is rude.

When he wants to eat, he lets it known. Give it 20 years, and that kid's going to look back at this and go, Dad, you were so embarrassing, right? But the point is, right now, it doesn't matter if we're sitting with friends. If he wants to eat, he's going to start crying. And if Olivia's sleeping, it doesn't matter. He's going to wake up, and he's going to cry. And if we're out in the car, and we're driving, and it's a long road trip, it doesn't matter. If Judah needs to eat, Judah has to eat. And He lets everyone know it. Because He desires what's going to nourish Him.

Do you desire the Gospel that way? Does the Word of God, is it so meaningful and essential to your life? That when things are going wrong in your life, and you feel your spiritual blood sugar go down, you know, there's something wrong. I've got to get to the Bible. I've got to go remind myself of the Gospel. And get first priorities right again. This is the picture that God gives us through the Apostle Peter. We must be like newborn babies desiring the pure milk of the Word. This is a sad thing. We often end up in this place of legalism again. Because, okay, I'm going to desire the pure milk of God's Word. I'm going to bake that into a system. I'm going to do my breeding plan. And that's how I'm going to desire it.

And then it's March and your breeding plan is a month behind. And you feel bad. because you tried to bake it into a legalistic system rather than being honest with the Lord. Rather than just saying, Lord, I'm not that good of a reader. Help me to find a way to be still fed by your word.

We bake it in and we end up actually dumping right back into the first one, right? Where we will speak evil about other people. We just can't seem to get their Bible reading plans done. Or those Christians are so immature, they just keep not reading their Bible, we've become prideful even of our own bible reading plans. That's not what this is about.

This is about a true spirit-wrought desire from the new creation that is intensely yearning to be fed by the Lord. Now there are two other times in the bible and specifically in the New Testament, where I've gotten an objection before when I've said, you need to be like a newborn baby desiring to buy one of these. And people say, well, but Paul also said that we need to be, we need to grow out of that spiritual milk and we need to go to meat. Right? First Corinthians chapter three or Hebrews chapter five. One that's a different context. The point of those contexts is you're not supposed to stay spiritually immature your whole life. That's what the point of those contexts are.

But my fear with that is, my fear, and this is just as I have observed this, is one, I don't think we get it out of this one. When you're spiritually mature enough to no longer desire the pure, unadulterated Word of God, That's the point at which you can, with an honest heart and integrity, look at me in the face and say, I love my brother and sister perfectly. I no longer have any hypocrisy. I no longer speak evil ever of anybody at any time in any way.

I'm sorry, when it says that we are to do these things all, all, all, all, all, it seems to me like this is going to be all my life, needing to desire God's word. And just an observation of these, normally it's men, and they're manly men, and they want to grow up, and I'm encouraged by that. They want to be masculine Christians. Sadly, the observation I've made of people who will say, well, that's like babies, and we need to grow up. Well, yeah. But the observation I have, and I'm going to read this, because I want to be very careful in how I say it.

There are some, especially men, who will even scorn this passage as if it were speaking for baby Christians. But sadly, many of these men I've talked to have proven themselves to be those who rule their homes and their lives with a sense of pride and coarse speech that actually betray their hypocrisy, the deceit of their own hearts, and the warped self-evaluation of their own sanctification. These men often desire hearty meat, thick doctrines, and yet seemingly have little love for the gospel, show little fruits of the spirit, and seem to have little desire to cultivate the passive fruits of the spirit, especially in gentleness, patience, and meekness. I warn you, if you think that you are one of those who's so masculine, so bold, so strong, that you don't need the milk of the God's word anymore, your heart's deceiving you.

Because we need the gospel every day. We need to be reminded of God's word every single day. So I need to ask you, evaluate your life. Where do you get your daily bread? Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. So are you going to God's word for your daily bread, or do you go to the daily wire?

Where do you spend more time to try to see the world and see yourself? Do you go to CNN to see your sin? You're not going to find it there. Do you spend more time reading 1 and 2 Peter, listening to his words, or do you listen more to Jordan Peterson? Do you spend more time watching sitcoms and syndicated television than dealing with your need for sanctification?

Where do you go? What are you feeding yourself? How are you building up your spiritual walk with the Lord? You know it in your hearts. I come to your houses and I do shepherding visits with the elders and we're able to say, how are you doing in your spiritual walk?

And this happens time and time and time again. People say, I feel like I'm not doing very well. I feel like I'm far from the Lord and I don't like it. I wish I spent more time reading the Bible. You know it. If you're in Christ, you know that desire and that longing for more of His spiritual food. So, open your Bible. I'm not trying to give you legalism here. I'm telling you, there's a place you can go for the nourishment of your souls.

And you can even bring it along in the pocket computer that you have. Pull out your iPhone or your Droid, whatever you have, open it up and download the Bible app. One of my favorite things to do while I'm reading is I hit the play button. And when I'm driving, I just listen to it talking to me. I'll tell you what, it's even worse sometimes when I'm listening to Jeremiah and it's just like conviction, conviction, conviction, conviction, conviction, and I can't press stop because I'm too busy driving.

Do you feed yourself with God's Word? Are you consuming the pure word of God or are you filling yourself with the junk of this world? Does your Bible have dust on it or do you have a place where you know that you go and that's where you read the Bible, where you get God's word? Do you have a time or a system set in place so you actually feed yourself what you need?

Because this is the point of all of it. Look with me at verse three. if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. A few things to point out here. One, this is directly alluding to Psalm 34 that John read early for us. Taste and see that the Lord is good. This is a cry of the hearts of God's people ever since the Old Testament. We can taste and see experientially that the Lord is good. But there's this play on words here that happens.

We lose it in the English. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is Christos. Christos is the word for gracious or goodness. But there's only one vowel difference between Christos and Christos. Christ and goodness. It's the difference between an iota and an ita. It's one vowel difference between the two.

The point is, the Lord is so good, the Lord is so gracious that he even gave us his own son. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That is how God has demonstrated his love and the only place that you will find that redemption story is in God's word. We need reminded all the time as we get into his word that God is gracious to us. This isn't just an intellectual knowledge. I'm not telling you to just go to God's words or you end up being really good at Bible trivia night. What's the point of reading the scriptures? Can you say in your own heart, I've tasted and I've seen that the Lord is good. The Lord has been gracious to me.

Is Jesus your own? Do you cling on to Him when you hear the gospel that God has loved you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die? Do you say, yes, and that's for me? When you read 1 Peter, that you have been redeemed not by silver or gold, but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, do you say, yes, I know that that's for me, and it gives joy to my soul because I know that God is that good to me. When you read Philippians chapter 2, and it speaks of Jesus not counting equality with God, something to be grasped, but humbled himself, emptied himself into the form and likeness of the man, was under the whole law, and died for us. Do you say, yes, and I know that he died for me. Jesus did that for me.

Do you experience it? Do you know it? Is it the core of your heart? Is it the heart song? Is it the joy that no one could ever take from you? Is it what you could honestly say that Jesus is your only hope in life and death? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is good? That's why in the early church, often that passage would be read during the Lord's Supper.

That this isn't a figment of someone's imagination or a fairytale or a fable, but Jesus Christ really did come, and his body was broken like that bread, and his blood was poured out like that wine to be a sacrifice for our sins, for our malice, for our envy, For our discontentment and evil speaking, Jesus went to the cross knowing those described us and still died for us.

Jesus hung on that tree for my malice. He was nailed to that cross for our deceit. He died on that tree for our hypocrisy. He suffered the full wrath of God to pay for our envy and jealousy. He loved you so much that he died to pay for your evil words. Brothers, taste and see that the Lord is good. His mercies are new every morning.

Purpose in your heart. If you are indeed in Christ, if you are a new creation, to lay aside those sins that Jesus died to save you from. Endeavor after new obedience. As we hunger for God's word and we cast off sins, our lives serves as witnesses to those around us that we truly are those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Is it true for you? To wrap things up here, the whole Christian life is marked by these. A joy that the Lord truly is gracious. And from that joy, having tasted in the seed that the Lord is good, turning away from those sins that we know caused Jesus to die upon that cross for us. and a new endeavoring to love one another with a fervent, pure love. So you who have been born again in Christ, lay aside those sins that so easily ensnare you. Go to his word, remember the good news of Jesus Christ. Taste and see that the Lord is indeed gracious.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. God, we pray that you would give us truly from your spirit a hunger for your word. Forgive us how easy it is to get distracted and sidetracked with the things of this world. Lord, please remind us of our hope and our joy. Please, Lord, give us your spirit to strengthen us, to put away these sins. Some of us have been struggling with them for decades upon decades. Lord, please renew us. Father, we plead with you that you would give us fresh experiences of the goodness that you have poured out for us in your son.

Lord, I pray for the children today. that they would learn the ways of holiness from an early age. Father, I pray for us adults, that you would enable us to see past what this culture teaches us and what our natural desires long for, and that you would turn us towards what is good and pure and right and just. Lord, we pray for those in the congregation who are parents and grandparents, that we would be faithful models and disciples of the children that you have entrusted to us. Lord, I pray for those who are seniors in the faith, that you would not let them grow tired or weary, but as the years go on, that their joy would increase more and more, and that they would finish their race as well, still desiring your word as newborn babes, and being freed, even now in their elderly age, from sins that have so easily ensnared them. Lord, please, only Your Spirit can do this. Renew our joy and give us a desire for Your Word and turn us from our sins. We pray all these things in Jesus' name.