Taste that the Lord is Good

love one another as I have loved you.

That's two different kinds of humans, two different groups with two different qualifications. Here there's a call to love other elect exiles, other born-again believers, others who have been adopted in the family of Christ. You see in verse 22, the sincere brotherly love. The calling of a Christian here in Peter is to unite together in affection for another, a commitment towards one another. Because God has done something unique for all of us. It's helpful in that this command helps us order our loves. Instead of our heart just being guided by whatever it sees, whatever might present itself, or a heart that just keeps falling into love in different ways. No, there's a direction, there's a purpose, there's an order with this command. Church, I want to say that this command is one of the reasons I believe it's important. We emphasize local church membership. This is a very weighty high calling. It needs to be earnest, sincere. It requires a commitment. I see a danger in that if we think, well, I'm supposed to love every Christian everywhere with this kind of intensity, well, we become paralyzed because that's impossible. But the local church is an idea where you see there's those that you were with and you get to focus in and learn how to have this kind of commitment with those who are with you in that covenant. Now, that in no way means you can't love other Christians this way. I had lunch with two other pastors this week and wanted to walk alongside them and care for them and love them, but it does help me kind of focus in where I'm most responsible to fulfill this commandment. It helps direct my love. Now, the high calling is to love one another. So we have to know who believers are, we have to know who we're responsible towards, we have to know this is an affection. Love is a promise, a commitment, Well, how? Peter gives us a number of qualifiers. Earnestly, from a pure heart, having purified your souls for obedience, for a sincere brotherly love. Earnestly. That has the idea of it's constant and continuous. It's an intentional commitment to a long-term love. It's the opposite of fickle. It's better than random acts of kindness. There's a way in which this kind of earnest, continual love is based upon God's work of what he's already done in you. A little later, we'll see in 1 Peter 4, 8, it's this earnest love that lets us cover a multitude of sins. Another qualifier, sincere, genuine. It's not mere emotions that are empty that just kind of, wherever my heart goes, it's an affection, it's a commitment. I do appreciate, I don't feel like loving. Well, that's where you get to practice love and let your feelings catch up with God's commandment. You don't have to feel it for it to be sincere. No, it's sincere when we see it's what God has said, and it's good, and you want to honor God, and you want to sincerely direct your love towards God. Pursuing purity is one of the ways we pursue holiness, and we see there the problem with we might not feel like it's a sincere love. Well, that's how it begins, the whole command.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth.

It's impossible to love one another if we're constantly loving unholy things? If this is supposed to be the holy nation of God, it's impossible to come alongside each other in a love that honors God if we're constantly being enticed and loving and practicing things that are not pure. We have to learn how to love God his way. Now, as we talked about all these different loves, let's, well, I'm gonna have some fun, I don't know what you're gonna do. Love God, love your neighbor, love one another. Notice what's not commanded but assumed in those commands. Love of self. Scripture never says love yourself. It assumes it because you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. It's assumed you love yourself. The danger is that we typically love ourselves poorly when we're not having that love ordered by our love of God or God's love for us. The heart is bent in on itself and we desire this kind of love for ourselves and that is usually what is the most significant love. The call here to purify yourselves is to purify your self-love. to repent of the unhealthy self-love, to repent of prioritizing our self-love. The ultimate how is to seek God in his word and know his love for us so that we love him and so that when we go to his word, we can see how our souls, they take God's good gifts and they twist them. So believer, this morning, there's a significant command It needs to be earnest, your love for one another, that's a constant. It needs to be sincere, it needs to not be fickle, there needs to be a substance to it. There's a brotherly love, there's a way in which God has done something for all of us that really lies behind it, and it requires us to repent of sin. I wanna say also, in order to love somebody, you need to be with them. It's something that takes intention and attention, You cannot love people if you don't know them. Secondly, I want us to see in this context the call to set your hope and the call to be holy and the call to love one another and the call to long for his word. Those four really have to go alongside each other and so it's going to be really difficult. I'd say impossible to actually be holy as God is holy if we're also not loving one another as God said love one another and vice versa. To love one another, what that means, at least at some level, is that we forgive one another as God forgives us. At this basic level, that's how we first experience God's love. That's how we know God's love for us is that he's forgiven us. And so we must be slow to take offense, quick to seek swift and lasting reconciliation. To love one another means we forgive one another as God has forgiven us. To love one another is also expecting obedience to God's word. We're all coming together and loving one another with God's expectations before us. To love one another is to expect obedience to God. To love one another is to encourage each other in the salvation of God. The many ways in which he has come to us to bring about a new life in us together. To love one another is to labor in love as fellow workers together in proclaiming him. to pray for our beloved neighbors and friends and family members together who do not know Christ, to labor in love and praying with and for each other and sharing the gospel with one another. One of the ways we love one another, especially as we think of Peter's context, the letter's context, is walking in trials, suffering together. Again, all of these assume we must know one another with an intention and an affection The high call to love one another is part of what it means to be an elect exile. We've seen the command, love one another, that's a who. How, earnestly, sincerely, with a purified soul, pure heart. but let's go next to the why. Notice in verse 23, since, right? So 23 to 25, that's really a why, but our second point, the word of the Lord remains forever, that's his big why. Why would you love one another? Well, because you've been born again by that word that remains forever. Our second point, the word of the Lord remains forever.

Since you have been born Again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. For all flesh is like grass, and all is glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

Notice the foundation for this high calling of loving one another, the church, the elect exiles together, it's because of what God has already done. And that is very similar to Jesus' command, right? Love one another as I've loved you. Here it's love one another because God has given you new life. God has given you new life for a purpose. To spread his life, that requires loving one another. God's given his life to live for him. We have to see that the measure of our love is God, and it might be we can measure our own love for God by how much we actually love one another. Now, we all tend towards affinity groups. We all tend to be with people who are similar to us in either age, culture, We like to be around those who we feel comfortable with because they share something similar. And that's not completely unhelpful, but I want to focus in here to see the most important thing about you if you're an elect exile is that you've been born again. And so the affinity group that we really want to pull into the most importantly is those who've been born again. It's completely understandable. I see it culturally. I see it as a human being, why we want to be with those who are like us and the way we can kind of comfortably have different conversations and assume categories, people who get my jokes. There's only a few people who laughed. But our discipleship model does want to provide those kind of conversations when helpful, like the Titus II class. That's an intentional way in which Paul actually seems to say there's a way in which women should be training one another. And we want to provide that. We actually want to support that. And if you're a young lady, I don't know where else you're going to have godly women sitting down and teaching godly biblical principles for what it means to be a woman. Please wake up early and make sure you prioritize that. If you're an older godly woman, I don't know where else you're going to have the opportunity to help other young women think through that. It's a significant priority, I think, based upon what Paul teaches in Titus. We have different ways in which we try to separate out those who don't want to think about marriage and parenting or living a faithful life as a college student or in my workplace or in retirement. Those are all helpful. But for the most part, we're all wanting to come together as born-again believers, because that's what's most important about all of us, to learn how to faithfully walk as elect exiles. Now notice that phrase above, brotherly love. Not only is it he's given us new life, but we're all adopted into the same family. It's the God who gives us life and the God who brings us into his love that commands this love one another. We have to come to the point where we see what God says about us is the most important thing about us. It's not whatever accolades or accomplishments we have on this earth, it's what God has said. And the reason this action, this declaration from God, what he has said is so important is I think you can see how it played out in the early church. In the Roman Empire, The men and the women, they didn't ever gather in a place like this. They never shared a meal like this. Different classes never shared a time of spending a meal together in a place like the church would today. The church was the light in this place because men and women, rulers and peasants, rich and poor, all gathered together in a way that that culture, that government had never seen. It was unheard of that these kind of people would actually be rubbing shoulder to shoulder together, and they did it because they realized, well, our position in this culture, our position in this society isn't what's most important, it's what God has done for us. If you want to be a true light, it's learning how to show the world what that light actually does, because we come together for different purposes. So we see there, We were going back to that command of love and what the word of God says, well, love your neighbor. Well, that also means your enemy. Love one another, even when they're difficult, because we're all children of God. And these things are clear because of what God has said that we need to trust his word. Notice he goes from, it's because I've been born of God or sorry, born again. And then he does what Peter keeps doing. It's a key way of making sure we're reading Peter. He likes to build these contrasts, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. He's constantly setting aside what is eternal and what is temporary, what is fleeting and what will remain forever. Now, the cause and source is what he means by seed there. That's an unusual word. It isn't necessarily the seed you'd plant. The word here really focuses on the source, the cause. You've been born again of imperishable, eternal power. Let's walk back through and see how this life has been spoken of in Peter so far and what he said. This isn't new, he's already introduced this. Look at verse three of chapter one.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to his great mercy.

He, that is the Father, has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Continuing in verse three, it's hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So there we've been born again through Christ from the Father. 112, if we drop down, says we've been born again, the salvation that's come. It came as we heard the preaching of the good news by the Holy Spirit. 118 says the salvation, we were ransomed with the precious blood of Christ, not with imperishable things, not with perishable things, but with the precious blood of Christ. Now we've been born again with this imperishable source. through the living and abiding word of God. Now, I wanna be very clear. Peter is not confused about the, who has caused the salvation. It's the Father who declares us alive. It's the Son who was risen again, who gives us his eternal resurrected life. It's the Holy Spirit who seals that life and blesses the word of God that's proclaimed. And it is the very living and abiding word that has power to save us. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all one God who is bringing about the salvation, and he brings it about with his word. This is why we're a people of the book. This is why we gather together. We want to make sure we're feasting in the fullness of what God has said, because it's that word that has brought us all life. It's that word that is imperishable. It is that word that is living and abiding. Praise God, he has spoken. And praise God, he still speaks. Not some new revelation that we need to have beyond the scripture, but he's still speaking in and through and by this word as we speak to one another from it. God speaks truth. One of the most humbling things that I've continued to meditate upon from a few messages ago is verse 12. It's by the Spirit that we heard the gospel. How encouraging is it that even right now I'm encouraged, I hope you're encouraged, it's not the effectiveness of the preacher, it's the power of the Spirit that allows you to actually receive, understand, believe, and obey. It's not your power that lets you receive it, it's the very power of the Spirit that blesses the word of God as we seek to come under it. Notice verse 24, he clarifies what that word is. It's the good news, it's the gospel that's been proclaimed to you by the power of the Holy Spirit. The good news of God has gone out. God has given us his words of truth, his words that are good, his words that are victorious over sin and death by giving us life. This is what we all come to know. This is why we love one another. Let's hang out there for verse 24 and 25. And why is he quoting here from Isaiah 40? Love one another, you've been born again, not of perishable, but the imperishable seed. Through the living and abiding word of God, that good news that is proclaimed, Isaiah 40 is making a contrast again. Grass, flower withers and falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. That is the main focus here because it's that word that brings salvation. It's that word that allows us to ascend up to heaven where God's thoughts are greater than our thoughts. The life we've received is perfect and eternal. What Peter has been doing from verse three of chapter one is setting up how sure our salvation is, so that we have a sure and genuine faith, so that we know how to persevere in the midst of the trouble and persecution as elect exiles. Everything in this world is perishing. The grass withers, the flower fades, it falls, but the Word of the Lord, it stands forever. Everything that consumes our attention, that demands our fear or our love, if it's not of God, it's fleeting, it's dying, it's perishable. It's really a good word if you feel this persecution, if you feel that pressure, because whatever that pressure is, whatever that problem is, guess what? It's falling, it's withering. It's not forever. But the word of the Lord remains forever. The tribulation, the persecution is temporary. It will end, but the word of the Lord remains forever. The problems of this world, sickness, sorrow, disease, disaster, temporary, it will end, but the word of the Lord remains forever. The sin that continues to pervert our hearts and cause us to have an unhealthy self-love and to not love God the way we desire, it will end, but the word of the Lord remains forever. The pleasures of this world that continue to entice us away from God's holiness, they're temporary, they will end. The word of the Lord remains forever. I like to encourage folks to memorize verses and this is it. But the word of the Lord, see, you're halfway there. That's what I call easy load ammunition. When you're feeling overwhelmed by something that is clearly temporary, a sickness, a sorrow, a persecution, a trouble, a difficulty, Instead of letting that just consume us and overwhelm us and pound upon us. Oh, how good it is to know that it's temporary and the word of the Lord. But the word of the Lord remains forever. What good news? This world will not always be the way it is. Our hearts will not always be the way they are. The word of the Lord is sure and perfect in power. And whatever God has said, whatever promises he made, he keeps. All the commands of salvation, we went back through in verses three to 12 of chapter one. Every word, every promise he's kept, even at his own hurt. It's easy to lose hope whenever we can't see past our nose, but this is why we have this verse, but the word of the Lord remains forever. It's the word that saves us, it's the word that allows us to set our hope in the things above that we looked at earlier in the last week in 113. It's the word that commands us, that pulls us out of the sorrow, out of selfishness, out of persecution. It's the word of the Lord that remains forever. It's trustworthy. Our last point, long for His word. That should be obvious, right? That's kind of the thing that we should see as the obvious next step. Love one another because the word of the Lord remains forever. That's really the main focus there of 22 to 25, but because it might not be obvious, if this is the word that remains forever, we should long for that word. That's the main command in chapter two that we see there in verse two. Long. for the pure spiritual milk, which is the very word of God that remains forever. This is the logical conclusion. If purifying yourselves for obedience by God's truth is that first declaration in order to love one another in 1.22, now we see there's another way we're gonna put off sin so that we might long for that word that cleanses us. The way the text reads in the ESV, there really shouldn't be a period at the end of verse one. There's really, the main verb is long for the pure spiritual milk, having put away all malice. Verse one is dependent upon that command. It can be seen as a prerequisite or something we're doing while we're pursuing and desiring the pure spiritual milk. We are putting away these things. Why would it be that in order to long for pure spiritual milk, we need to put away malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander? Well, that's because we need to develop the right appetite. We need to develop an appetite for the love of God, for the truth of God. As we see this concluding thought, love one another, having purified your obedience, it's now we're gonna consume that very word of God like pure spiritual milk. Verse one is a lot of stoppets in order to know how to start the longing for the word of God. That language put away, it'd be the same language you would have for changing your clothes, put something off. Here we could say, get that off your plate and put something on, right? Put the sweets off your plate, put some vegetables on there. Would be a way we could think about that passage. Put it off. Quit consuming that. Quit consuming these sinful behaviors, and this is not some absolute list of all the sinful behaviors, but it's significant. Put away, take off malice. That is a hatefulness, a wickedness. It's a general term that just means bad. Put away all deceit. As the people of God and the people of God who's truth, we are to be truthful. We're not to be cunning and crafty like Satan. We don't want to be children of Satan. We want to be children of God. That means we're children of truth. Put away hypocrisy. This is kind of that acting term. You pretend to be somebody else. It's the opposite of sincere, as we saw earlier. It's inauthentic. Put away envy. This is desiring what God has given somebody else, believing a lie that you deserve better. Put away slander. This is speaking unhelpful, ungodly things against others. It's misrepresenting the truth about them. It's evil speech. I want you to see here that whole list of things to be put away, set aside, repented of. They all have some element of denying truth if we practice them. They're all centered around truthfulness. We'll take a moment here. If you're a child in our audience, right, if you're a child, I want you to stop coloring whatever you're doing. I want you to look at me. Be trustworthy. It is so important for you to practice truth, to always tell the truth, to be trusted by your parents, your peers, your teachers. It's important for you to be a good friend that you can be trustworthy, you always tell the truth. It's important for you to be a child who honors your parents, to always tell them the truth. Practice being truth tellers and keep getting better at being truth tellers. If you practice lying, there's something I just gotta warn you of. There's no such thing as one innocent lie. It compounds. Lying only leads to more lying. Truth-telling is what is good for your soul and your growing up. Christian, are you living out the truth as a trustworthy and truthful father of Christ? Are you putting away these practices. And it is written to a church, it's written to churches, it's written to those who would be saying and hearing these things. There's a way in which we shouldn't even allow slander, much less you shouldn't be speaking slander, but there's also a way in which you don't allow it. He calls out believers to put these things off. Putting away requires responding, and a helpful way to say that's not true. We wanna discourage hypocrisy. We wanna call people up to the truth of what God says. You notice that the ultimate purpose is that it isn't just we put these things off, but we put off malice, we put off deceit, we put off hypocrisy, so that we would long for God's word like a baby. What a powerful picture this is. like a newborn, long for the pure spiritual milk. And that milk is referring to the very word of God. This isn't the only place that milk is referenced as teaching or the word of God. It's also in Hebrews 5 and 1 Corinthians 3. And there, I just want to clarify, there it's a different kind of teaching. There the author is writing in both places, you should be having a healthier diet, but I've got to go back to the milk diet. There, whenever he writes of milk, it's because they haven't matured and grown up in salvation. They're still just on milk. And there it's a bit of a, it's a correction. Friends, this isn't a correction. This is what's true for all Christians at all times. All Christians, should be like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk. Be like a baby, who has a very simple life. Child's hungry, there's only one source to satisfy that hunger. It's milk. The child's life is this simple, ordered life. They have one need, and they know the remedy for that need, and it's the milk. They haven't confused it with everything else. They haven't conflated it with anything else. They have a purity of need, a purity of desire, and they know the only remedy. Desire, God's word, like a baby, longs for milk. We should be desiring that pure spiritual milk, completely dependent, completely needy. Remember, Jesus said, you have to come to me as a child. It's the same principle. The problem with that teaching is a lot of people use that to pretend they don't have to grow up. No, the whole point is you're coming dependent, needy, hearing the only word that is of truth that's perfectly true. We come to God fully needy. Long for the word of God, because only this word gives life, only this word brings satisfaction. Notice that word pure, long for the pure spiritual milk. It's actually the negative of the word deceit earlier. What a wonderful way to make it clear. This milk, this word of God, it has zero lie. It's all truth. It's inerrant. It's true. It's right. Long for that word that is 100% clear, faithful truth. Put off all the desires that distract you. Put off all the ambitions and the longings and the things that we desire. Long for God's word that's true, that's nourishing. Christian, believers should be hungry. Believers should be hungry. I wanna say I am so thankful for the hunger that I regularly experience at this church. For the first time I preached here just as a guest 14 years ago, it's always been something so appreciated that the church preaching is hungry to hear the word. I'm thankful for that. I don't take it for granted. I'm thankful there are numerous, just really hungry believers who are longing to devour the word of God, to be as involved as possible. Praise God for hungry believers. You know, a classic acronym for a faithful disciple is FAT, faithful, available, teachable. That's not very flattering. We could just say, hungry for God's word. Because if you're hungry, you're going to be available. If you're hungry, you're going to make yourself available because you're going to prioritize. If you're hungry, you're going to become faithful. If you're hungry, you are teachable. And let's just be very clear, it isn't if you're hungry, it's what are you hungry for? We're all hungry. We all have a desire and appetite that we're longing to be satisfied. What are you hungry for and what are you seeking satisfaction from? Are we hungry believers desiring to devour the word of God that satisfies? Are we training our hearts to lust after things that are impure, ungodly, unsatisfied? If you desire to know God from his word, you simply come to him like a child. Hungry, needy, dependent. God is revealed in his word. God has not made himself difficult to find. God wants you to know him. God has designed you to know him. And he makes himself known. But we have to practice truth seeking and putting off of the lies. If you're not a believer this morning, this is the word for you. Take that Bible in front of you, read it. starting Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. And as you open it, every time, Lord, let me know who you are from this book you've given. Lord, let me know who you are, and we pray you will see Jesus Christ as the God who has saved you, the God who became like you as a man, down on the cross for your sins, rose again to give you the new life you need. Take and read. Notice what happens when you long for pure spiritual milk. Verse two, when you long for pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. Again, this is related to those warnings, but he's calling all believers to always long for that pure spiritual milk so that we might grow up. To be clear, I don't think you ever graduate from the pure spiritual milk of the gospel. Believer, I sure hope every time you hear it, it refreshes your soul. It reminds us of the grace that has been given to us. The real concern is the idea that we're never going to grow up. We have this weird Peter Pan syndrome that we think it's great to just be a baby, we're not gonna grow up. No, the whole idea that you're designing this pure spiritual milk is that you would grow up in salvation. What that means is you grow to realize how much more you depend upon God, how dependable he is. How His grace overwhelms us, how He lavishes and pours out His love and mercy upon us. The more we grow up in His salvation, the more we realize how dependable He is and how much we depend upon Him. Growing up does not make you independent. Growing up makes you more dependable. I see too regularly free-ranging cowboy Christians who walk around with a strut of a rooster The kingdom has no place for that kind of cock-a-doodle. We grow to be more dependent. We grow to be more dependable. Humbly coming together under his word. Long for that word that gives you new life. Long for that word that allows you to grow up to God and his salvation, to be holy as God is holy, to set your hope in the things above. Our goal as a church is that we provide a steady diet. We usually think about a diet as something you do to lose weight. Well, no, a diet is something that's just the way you eat. We constantly want to think about what is the diet. We're regularly reviewing services, really thinking about what are we doing and how are we growing and what do we need to provide? We want to think about how the word of God needs to be at the forefront of all that we're doing so that we're all growing up together in Christ. Christian, I ask, what is your regular diet? Is it helping you be purified of sins in your soul? What is your regular diet? Are you prioritizing the things that are gonna help you become more holy and to love God more and to love one another? We live in a world where we all have a copy of God's word. What a blessing. What a blessing, because Peter's writing to a group that didn't have the whole canon yet, but for hundreds of years, no one had their own personal Bible, unless you were very wealthy. I fear we've taken for granted that we can now sit with our own Bible and we can devour and we can eat and we can consume. And let me give you a warning. If you're not reading God's word with other people, you're creating a very low ceiling for yourself. Because the whole point of reading God's word together is that others are helping you be encouraged and challenged by what you don't understand or see in God's word. It's a community book, it's meant to be read together. It's actually written to be heard. The loving one another is coming together under his book to help us all know what he has said and to cling to it with faith and to obey it with love. Verse three, what a condition, if,

if indeed you've tasted that the Lord is good.

If you know the God of salvation, if you know the God who gives new life, if you know the father who has made you born again and his son who died and rose again, if you know that the Lord is good, you know that eternal imperishable goodness, you know how to resist the lies because you're clinging to that goodness. Let's just pause here and take those last three words, four words. The Lord is good. The Lord is good. He has not withheld any good thing from us. He gave us a son. The Lord is good.

Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.

The Lord is good. and what he has declared to us remains forever. The Lord is good. He's given us his salvation. He's given us his word. He's given us himself. The Lord is good, and praise be to God that the word of that Lord remains forever. Will you pray with me? Father, we come before you and praise you as our good, faithful, loving God. We thank you that we can see this simple but so important and powerful declaration. You are good. Everything you've said in this word is good and true and pure. We pray for the grace to know how to put off all the things that we have adopted that are bad. The things that keep us from you, the things that keep us from enjoying you, the things that keep us from one another. Thank you, Lord, that you declare such clear truths. You are good. And what you've declared as good will remain forever. And we can now live under your goodness, pursuing those good things that will be forever. Lord, help us to know you. Help us, Lord, to desire you and knowing you from your word. Help us, Lord, to know how to make you known from your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.