Sermon Transcript
Well, let’s take out our Bible. We’re going to look together again at the book of 1 Peter. We’re in 1 Peter chapter 1, and as I was looking at this passage, it got me thinking about eating. I think about eating a lot, actually. I love to eat, you know.
My mom was the one that introduced me to eating. I should have told her thank you before she went to heaven, but I still love to do what it was she taught me. And so, because of that, it’s important for me to take to heart the 23rd pound. You familiar with the 23rd Pound? It’s actually kind of a, you know, a takeoff of Psalm 23.
This is what it says: My appetite is my shepherd, I always want. It maketh me to sit down and stuff myself. It leadeth me to my refrigerator repeatedly. It leadeth me in the path of Burger King for a Whopper. It destroyeth my shape, yea, though I knoweth I gaineth.
I will not stop eating, for the food tasteth so good. The ice cream and the cookies, they comfort me. When the table is spread before me, it exciteth me, for I knoweth that sooneth I shall dig in. As I filleth my plate continuously, my clothes runneth smaller.
Surely bulges and excess weight shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall be pleasingly plump forever. Amen. We love to eat. Actually, this week we got to talking about eating in our home. Bernice was getting away with the grandkids, a few of our grandkids for just a few days.
And as she was preparing to leave out of concern for my dietary wellbeing, I asked her a question. The question was, what am I supposed to do while you’re gone? How am I supposed to eat while you’re gone? You know, why ask that question? I mean, there are a lot of other questions I could ask, right?
I mean, could I ask like, what can I do while you’re gone to help out around the house here? Is there anything I could get done so that it would make your life easier when you get back? I could have asked those questions. I didn’t ask those questions. My biggest concern was the food issue.
You know, like, how am I going to survive with the cook gone? And she said, well, Well, I’m not going to tell you what she said, but anyway, the reason why I brought up this food matter isn’t because, you know, we’re almost at lunchtime today and I want you to be thinking about food right now, what you’re going to eat for lunch. That’s not the reason at all. If you’re thinking about that, please stop thinking about that. But it’s because we’re going to actually do some thinking about food, and it comes up in this chapter, this section of Scripture we’re in, 1 Peter 2:22 through chapter 2, verse 22.
And if you like to eat, you’re gonna be able to identify, I believe, with the analogy that Peter draws here. So, let me read this little section of Scripture. 1 Peter 1:22, I hope you have your Bible open or use the message notes. It says, now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of a perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God.
For all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever. And this is the word that was preached to you. Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted the that the Lord is good.
Now, if you just look at those last 2 verses, chapter 2, verses 2 and 3 there, you’ll see 3 words that speak about this whole matter of eating. You’ve got crave, you’ve got tasted, and you’ve got grow. And those 3 words are connected to God’s Word. So, back in verse 22, the truth. Verse 23, the living and enduring Word of God.
Verse 25, the Word of the Lord. And also in verse 25, the Word that was preached to you. And then verse 2, pure spiritual milk. So, what Peter wants to do, and I hope this helps us as well, but he was trying to help the exiles, those Christian believers that had been persecuted for their faith and now had gone to live wherever they could. But he wants them to understand the ongoing place of the Word of God in their lives.
He wants them to see that their need for God’s Word is like a baby’s need for milk, and not just a baby, but a newborn baby, as you see there. That need for milk is intense, it’s real, it’s ongoing. The baby can’t live without it. The baby wants the milk right now. And Peter wants to say to his audience, but also the Word of God is speaking to us this morning, about the importance of God’s Word.
Now, is this something that could be helpful to us? Well, here’s what I know statistically. Of those that go to church on a regular basis, only 1 out of 5 read the Word of God weekly. 1 out of 5. Sometimes during the week, they find time for reading the Word of God.
You say, what? Really? Yes. There are so many distractions and demands on our lives, it could— those distractions and demands could easily push the Word of God out of our lives. Wouldn’t you agree with that?
So that the Word of God gets 2nd, 3rd, 4th place, or no place. Or maybe the only place that we ever open a Bible is here in a worship service like this. And so, I think that this could have a tremendous value in our lives this morning. So, I hope you’ll stay with me. Don’t be thinking about lunch.
Be thinking about the Word of God here for a few moments. And really, there are 2 reasons that we need to contemplate this morning for the importance of the Word of God. Number one is because God’s Word births new life in us. God’s Word births new life in us. Now, Peter begins there, and he reminds them, verse 22, that when they obeyed the truth, that is the Word of God that Peter preached to them, found in verse 25 there, when they obeyed the truth that was preached to them, they were born again through the Word of God.
You see that in verse 22? They were born again through the Word of God. Now, we can ask, what truth is he talking about? Well, I think we can just back up into what we talked about last week. Peter talked about when he was talking about this new life that a person can come to through Jesus Christ.
And he presented the gospel in verse 19, the truth about the promised Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And in verse 20, he talked about Jesus and how Jesus came because that was in God’s plan. It was His eternal plan that Jesus would come and give His life for people like us so that we could have a relationship with God forever. And the truth that God raised Christ from the dead, verse 21, and also in verse 21, the truth that faith and hope are found in believing in Jesus Christ. So that truth.
So the Bible teaches us that if a person wants to come to salvation, to confess with their mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead and will be saved, that truth. But as many as received Him, John 1:12, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even those who believe in his name. Acts 16:31, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And so what he’s saying here is that the truth of the Word of God was birthed in you and it resulted in a brand new life. You were born again through the Word of God.
God’s Word worked in them to bring them to a place of belief. Now all of that says right at the outset, hey, if we’re not using the Word of God when we’re sharing about Jesus with others, we need to start using the Word of God. Because it’s the Word of God that births in people new life. In fact, Hebrews 4:12 says, for the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.
It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. What’s that saying? It’s saying that God’s Word is much more powerful than our words because it can penetrate a person’s soul. We can’t do that with our words. But the Word of God can.
It can convict a person so that they see their need and they understand that they need a Savior and Jesus is that Savior. Of course, what word are we talking about here? Well, not just any word, but we’re talking about God’s Word, and we’re talking about the entirety of the Scriptures, but we’re also talking about the specific statements or commands or instructions that are found in the Scriptures. So, speaking about the entirety of the Scriptures, you see verse 23 says, for you’ve been born again not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God. And that word, Word, you might want to make a note of this, is the word logos.
In the Greek language, logos, or some people say logos, but it’s the word logos. And this logos speaks about the entirety of Scripture. All of Scripture, all of it is inspired by God. So, we’re talking about the entirety of Scripture. And what Peter wants to help us understand and his readers to understand is that the entirety— now, think about this in light of what you know about how people feel about the Scriptures.
Peter wants us to understand that the entirety of Scriptures are imperishable. They’re not perishable. Verse 23, they’re not subject to decay. There’s no expiration date on the Scriptures. It’s kind of like lettuce, you know, it’s going to get old, then you’re going to have to throw it away.
Not at all. And the Scriptures, secondly, are living. This is the living Word of God. Maybe you’ve heard of a Living Bible. Maybe you’ve read the Living Bible.
The Living Bible was the first Bible that I ever read, and really, it’s appropriately named because the Bible is alive. It’s alive. It’s not a dead book. It’s filled with life-giving words. And so, he says, this Word, this imperishable Word, this living Word, and this enduring, verse 23, this enduring Word.
This is a Word that has eternal impact. It’s not like a fad, you know, that this fad comes and goes, where it’s here today and it’s gone tomorrow. This Word is going to continue to have an impact in other people’s— in our lives so that So that it will always be relevant. Human thinking will be replaced, and human ingenuity and philosophy will be replaced, but not the enduring Word of God. Now, do you know of any other books that can claim to be enduring and living and imperishable?
Any? Do you have a diet book that is? I mean, are you kidding? How many diet books do we have? Like 14 on our shelves, you know?
And it’s like, this is the new one. This is the new way to go. This is how to do it. I mean, they’re replaceable. What about medical books?
They’ve been replaceable too, or parenting books or fashion books. They’re just all prone to change or to be replaced, but not the Word of God. The Word of God is eternal. See that? And he goes on and he says in verse 24, for all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord stands forever. And this is the word that was preached to you. What he’s trying to help them understand is that like grass, all humankind are like grass. That means we are short-lived. We’re short-lived.
We’re here for a short period of time, then we die and we go somewhere else. And the picture here is, is that as grass is temporal, people are temporal, but the word of God is eternal, this word that was preached to you. And specifically, what he’s talking here about is the rhema. So, in verse 23, we’re talking about the logos, okay, the entirety of Scriptures. Now we’re in verse 25 where it says, but the word of the Lord, and then also, and the word that was preached to you.
The words for— the word for word that’s used twice there, I’ll say, in verse 25, the word that’s used here is rhema, R-H-E-M-A. So, whereas you have logos over here, entirety of Scriptures, he changes the Word now to refer to the Word, and now he’s talking about the rhema. And what’s the rhema? The rhema are the specific statements of Scripture, the specific commands and instructions found in the Word of God. And he’s saying that these specific instructions and commands are going to stand through time.
They aren’t going to become obsolete. They will stand the test of time. So, just take the subject of salvation. We know that the Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. And so, God made absolutely clear He’s going to send a Messiah, Jesus the Messiah.
He’s made it possible for us to have relationship with Him now and forever. Well, that salvation plan, Jesus is not going to— God’s not going to change it. It stands. It’s eternal. He’s not going to replace it with a new salvation plan, you know, kind of like a revised and updated version of the salvation plan.
No, what He has set in place It’s going to stand. It’s eternal. Now, you know this, that for years people, even, you know, people that perhaps we know, they’ve questioned the validity of God’s Word. They’ve questioned the accuracy, the reliability. They’ve questioned the inspiration of God’s Word.
But that’s been going on forever. I mean, seriously, you can go all the way back to the garden. I won’t say forever. Go all the way back to the garden, to the time of the garden where this happened. In Genesis 3:1, we’re told this: Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
And he said to the woman, did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden? Did God say that? He said, you must not eat from one tree, right? But what he does at this point is Satan is calling into question, he’s calling into question God’s Word. He’s basically saying, you can’t trust God’s Word.
You can’t literally trust what God says. Let me help you understand the truth. And he deviated from the truth to say, I know better than God. And quite frankly, that’s been going on since the garden. Satan has been pushing people to question the Word of God, what the Word of God really means.
So now we get to a point, even as perhaps Christ followers, where we might begin to question the Word. You say, well, I don’t really question the Word. Well, let me ask this. Do you ever come to something that’s in the Bible and you say, you know what? That one area, I don’t buy it.
And I all of a sudden minimize whatever it is that the Word of God says. People all around us that say the Bible is full of errors, that it’s unreliable, that it’s a book of myths, it’s a book of contradictions, it doesn’t apply today, we’re smarter today than they were when they wrote these words, and all of that sort of thing. What it really means is this, and so we reinterpret the Scriptures. You know what I say to all of that? That kind of critique on the Scriptures, you know what I say to that?
I say baloney. Now, that’s not— you know, that’s a Christian term you can use. There are a lot of other terms you could use, but we can’t use those, so we say baloney. But actually, what I say to people is I say, well, you know, have you read it? I love to ask that question.
Have you read it? Have you studied the whole matter of textual criticism? What’s textual criticism? It’s actually scholars and researchers getting together to to try to discover whether or not this Bible that we have is reliable, and whether or not it’s trustworthy, and whether or not these are actually the words of God. There are people that have given their lives to that study.
I haven’t given my life to that level of study, but I’ve studied it to some degree. I’ve been trained and tested in the subject to some degree. I’ve spent hours reading the Bible. I’ve written on the subject. I’ve spoken on the subject for more than 40 years now.
And you know what I believe? I believe that the Bible’s trustworthy. I really do. I believe that this is literally the Word of God, and there’s no way that I want to reinterpret it to mean something other than what it already says it means. I just want to understand what it means.
But don’t take it from me. Take it from Jesus, who said this regarding the Scriptures. Matthew 5:18. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. And in this context, he’s talking about the entire Hebrew Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets and the Writings.
He’s talking about— he is just substantiating that the Hebrew Scriptures are, in fact, accurate, that they are the words of God. And some of your Bibles where it says the little smallest letter there, he’s talking about the jot. And some of your Bibles say then, with regard to the least stroke of pen, the tittle. So, a jot and tittle. What’s a jot and tittle?
Well, jot is actually the 10th alphabet of the Hebrew alphabet, and it is the smallest letter that you find in the alphabet. And the tittle is this little swirl or extension. You could see that extension there on the baith, and the calf has no extension there. It’s like the difference between the calf over here on the far right If that was an O, then the one with the tittle would be a Q. That little hash on a Q, it makes it a different letter from an O to a Q.
And what Jesus is saying is that even a little tittle or even a little jot is not going to disappear from the Scriptures. Now, I call that a high view of Scripture, wouldn’t you? He’s not questioning the Scriptures, he’s substantiating the Scriptures, it’s trustworthy. He didn’t say some of it’s trustworthy and some of it’s not trustworthy. He didn’t say, you know that story of Jonah?
I don’t know how it got in the Bible. I have no idea, but, you know, it should not be there. He didn’t say that. He substantiated the book of Jonah, that Jonah’s all about God’s plan to save people, even the Assyrians. He longs to redeem people who are outside of His family and to birth brand-new life in them.
And that message continues all through the Scriptures, and it comes from the truth. Then you get at the end of the Bible, just in the last couple of verses of the Bible, this statement, Revelation 22:18-19, I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. What book are we talking about? The book of Revelation. If anyone adds anything to them, to these words, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.
And if anyone takes words away from the book of this prophecy, or this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. Now, there’s a whole bunch of theology we could pull out of that passage, but all I want you to see in this passage is Jesus is substantiating the Word of God. He’s substantiating, first of all, the book of Revelation, but this actually is applicable to the entire New Testament canon. What’s that? That’s the 27 books that make up the New Testament.
He’s saying they’re God-breathed and they’re God-inspired. Every word is inspired by God. They are words that birth life in us.
So, all of that’s to say, let’s don’t let Satan undermine the Word of God in our minds. We want to trust it. We want to come back to it. Time and time again. This book is filled with life, and when we’re talking about matters of life and death, this is the book that we’ve got to come back to.
Some time ago, I read about a wife who spoke at her 40-year-old husband’s funeral. Died at an early age, and he died from cancer. She said that he kept a stack of publications by the chair that he spent most of his time in in the last months of his life. And she said, in this stack of publications or magazines like the GQ magazine, Gentleman’s Quarterly, and she held it up. She said, you know, he left these magazines, but he also left all those clothes in his closet.
And she showed a catalog of Porsches, and she said, you know, this is a wonderful car that he owned, but it’s still sitting in the garage. And one by one, she went through all these publications, these magazines, these books, and said they really represent great success. But then she spoke about what was really important to him as he came up on death. The final days and the final hours of his life, as it was obvious the cancer was taking over and he was close to death, she said that the pile of reading materials got shorter until the only focus that he had those last days and those last hours was on the Bible and his prayer journal, those 2. The Bible and his prayer journal.
Why? Because when you’re facing death, the only thing you wanna be reading is something that’s gonna tell you that there is life after death and to be able to find the comfort and assurance that comes from that. A while back when I was over in Phoenix, one of the members of the church got in touch with me and said that she would like for me to come over to the hospital that she was in. So I went over there and she said that she was facing uncertain prognosis. She wasn’t sure if she was gonna live.
So she said, I wanna find out for sure that I’m going to heaven. You know, like I have the answer on that one, right? But she said, I want you to tell me, am I going to heaven? And of course, I mean, I’m not the one writing her name in the book, but I can go back to the scriptures just like any one of us can go back to the scriptures Scriptures. And so that’s what we did.
We didn’t talk about her career. We didn’t talk about all the places she vacationed. We didn’t talk about all the things that she did for others. We didn’t talk about how much she gave to the church. We talked about the Scriptures.
So I read for her John 11:25-26. Jesus said to her, speaking to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?
If you believe this, then there’s life after death for you. I shared that with her. I asked her, do you believe this? She said, I do. I said, well, Jesus said you’re going to be with him forever.
There’s going to be a resurrection for you, too. And then I read John 14:1-3. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me.
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I’m going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am, in my Father’s house. And I read that to her.
You know what she found in that passage? She found comfort, as we all would find comfort. It’s the kind of thing that the Word of God does. It gives us life. It gives us life initially in bringing us into the family, but it gives us life continually.
Continually, it births new life in us. Why do we need the Word of God more than just on Sunday? Because it births life into us. God’s Word births life. But there’s a second matter Peter brings up.
God’s Word grows new life among us. It grows new life among us. Go back to 22 again. He says in 1:22, now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart. I love this little section of Scripture because it helps us understand the perspective we ought to have on the Word of God with regard to its entirety, logos, with regard to its specific statements, rhema, but it also helps us understand in a very important matter connected to the Word of God, and that matter is love.
Love. The love that we share for one another. And this verse reminds us that it’s God’s desire that His family, His children, those who are brothers and sisters in Christ, that they have a sincere love and that they have a deep love. And this sincere love, the word that’s used for love over here, the first love that you find there is phileo. Phileo.
You’ve heard of the city of Philadelphia, right? The city of what? The city of brotherly love. So, this word produces in us a sincere love so that we love one another sincerely. We’re talking about a love that embraces each other as brothers and sisters in Christ where we genuinely care about each other, whatever our color, whatever our political differences, whatever our age, or whether we’re single or married, small or big, educated or uneducated, rich or poor, healthy or sick, that we share a love with one another, a family love for one another because we’re all together in God’s family.
Family. Do we get that? That whoever God chooses to put in His family is my brother and my sister in Christ, and we want them as a part of the family to be a part of this encouraging fellowship and this supportive fellowship and this comforting fellowship in a place where wisdom can be found and understanding and prayer and more. So, we are to grow together in this brotherly love, but we also are to grow together in loving one another deeply, and the second love that’s used here is a That’s agape. So you’ve got filial over here connected to sincere love, and you’ve got agape over here connected to loving each other deeply.
And that word deeply in some of your Bibles is translated stretched or fervently. We’re to love one another deeply or fervently. And the picture here that was used to help those understand in this world was that word meant to strain like an athlete who’s reaching for the tape, who’s leaning into the tape or clearing the bar. We are to strain to love each other. And it’s pictured a muscle that was stretched to its limit where, you know, come on, you could do 5 more reps. No, I can’t.
Yes, you can. It’s that kind of stretching. And it was used to describe a stringed instrument that’s stretched to a tighter pitch that it might yield a different note. And God wants some different notes among us, so he’s saying we’ve got to stretch in our love. Now, if the Scriptures did not teach that, we would be just fine getting along without stretching in our love toward one another, wouldn’t we?
Well, of course I love him. Of course I love her. Are you kidding? I mean, I’m supposed to, right?
I don’t think my mom would have loved my dad like she did when their marriage was on the rocks. I think she would have just said, enough is enough, but God’s Word told her to stretch in her love deeply.
See, the Word of God produces in us a whole different perspective on relationships as well. Thus, we need it to grow us. In fact, in chapter 2 and verse 1, Peter says, therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, of Some kinds? Of every kind. See, these are relational sins.
Malice. What’s malice? It’s wickedness toward each other. It’s evil actions. It’s an unforgiving spirit.
It’s wanting harm to fall on somebody in the body of Christ. Deceit. What’s that? That’s deliberate dishonesty. It’s misleading others for personal gain, not really telling the truth.
Hypocrisy, what’s that? That’s pretending to be something that you’re not. It’s using frauds as a means to personal gain. It’s using something that’s going to improve your standing in the eyes of others, but really it’s empty. There’s nothing behind it.
You don’t mean it. Envy is hidden resentment, hating others’ good fortune, wanting what other people have. And slander, well, that’s backbiting. That’s destroying another person’s reputation. That’s destroying what God is doing through another person.
It’s running somebody else down in the body of Christ. In the eyes of other people in the body of Christ. And we might be okay with doing all that sort of stuff, except that when you look at the Word of God, God doesn’t want His family to have any of that, none of that, none of that among us. But He wants our love to stretch so that we let go of not just some malice, but we let go of all malice and all deceit and all hypocrisy and all envy and all slander. And so, when you see that, basically, the question you’re left with, what we’re left with is, well, am I going to take God at His Word, or am I going to say, oh, well, you know, that isn’t really really apply today and believe my will is better?
Do I ignore His life-giving Word, His eternal Word, His enduring Word? I mentioned a couple weeks ago that Bernice and I spent a few days up at Silver Spur with Darryl Delhoussey, who was the speaker there. He just did such an outstanding job. In one of his talks, he was talking about his wife. He said, you know, shortly after we got married, we were involved in the ministry, and, you know, we’re still figuring the ministry out.
Were figuring out, you know, how to be husband and wife and all of that. And he said they had an argument. He and his wife had an argument there at this one point, and she would not give in, he said. It irked him because he was the pastor and she was his wife, he said, and so she should have just agreed with what he was trying to say and what he was trying to do. But it didn’t happen, he said.
So Darrell left. He got up, he left. He walked out of the house And he decided, I’m going to take a long walk. But the only thing was, he said, that I only had my socks on and it was cold outside. So, I only got so far on this walk and decided because I was cold to come back.
And so, he came back and he sat on the porch. And while he was sitting on the porch, God’s Word started working on him while he’s sitting on the porch, which it will do, right? The Word of God will begin to work on us. And because of that, Darryl— actually, this is what happened. Darryl said this.
He said, and I’m going to quote him, the more you know the Word of God, the more vocabulary the Holy Spirit has to work with. That is an amazing statement. It’s profound. Go tweet that sometime.
It’s true. Isn’t that true? That when the Word of God is in you, it’s going to work in you to change you. And there was one verse, there was one verse Darryl couldn’t get out of his mind. This verse kept coming back to him over and over again.
It humbled him. It stretched him to deepen his commitment to his wife. And it opened his mind to her perspective on the issue that was at hand. And so, he took the appropriate response. When she let him back in the house, he took the appropriate response.
So, the point is this: when we know the right thing to do, what should we do? Ignore it? Do it? That’s the point, because then life grows in us. Get a different mic.
Here, it’s kind of in and out. Here we go. I hear it now. Jesus was at a wedding. Do you remember this?
And if I back up, then I’m in the dark. I don’t know where to go. So Jesus is at this wedding, and Mary needed him to do something about the wine issue. Remember this? They ran out of wine.
And so Mary said to her servants, whatever Jesus says, Do it. That’s all she said. Whatever Jesus says, do it. I love that because basically what she was saying is that whatever He says, it’s going to be the best course of action, even if you don’t like it, even if it, like, doesn’t make any sense to you. If He says it, believe it and do it.
Do it. And I think that’s what Peter is trying to say to these people who potentially could be just like us as a church who don’t go deep in our love with each other, or we reject each other, you know, even though we’re members of the same family. But when we go there, we take the Word of God, we assimilate the Word of God, we love each other sincerely and deeply, everybody wins. There are 3 wins when this happens. There’s a win and a win and a win.
We’ve heard about win and win, right? Well, this is a win and a win and a win because God wins and the church wins, or others win, or our relationship with them wins, and you win. Everybody benefits when the family is built up. But it’s all connected. It’s all connected to the Word of God.
And so, Peter says, so like newborn babies, verse 2, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow up in your salvation now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. He’s saying we must long for God’s Word like a newborn baby craves milk. Now, some of you have been over in our nursery. If you’ve not ever been in our nursery and you’re not sure how a newborn baby craves milk, get permission, go over there, and just observe for a few minutes when a baby is hungry. Just go over there and see what happens when a baby is craving milk, because you better get some milk to the kid fast.
Otherwise, your perfect serene Sunday morning, it’s just going to change because there’s going to be some wailing going on over in the nursery. And you’re going to say, well, what’s the fuss with all of that? Well, hey, this is how it works, right? When the body is saying, give me food, give me food, and I’ve already had this kind of food before and I really like how it tasted before. So the baby all of a sudden decides it’s time to eat.
You better get some food in there. And the sooner you get the food, into that baby, the better it’s going to be, like, for everybody, even all the way over here in the sanctuary. It’s going to be better for everybody. That’s the picture. Like a newborn baby longs for the Word, we need to long for it.
We need to crave it and taste it again over and over and over. So let me give you some final thoughts, and you do a little thought work here about is this your relationship to God’s Word? Do you love it? Do you love it? If you’ve tasted the goodness of God, it says, if you’ve tasted the goodness of God, you’re going to love it.
And you’re not going to be able to get enough of it. You’re going to crave it so that you want it over and over and over again. In fact, if you do not crave the Word of God, there’s something wrong. That’s a sign of sickness. Truly is.
It could be a sign that there’s sin in your life. You’ve heard it said, sin will keep you from the Bible, or the Bible will keep you from sin. And oftentimes, people don’t want anything to do with the Bible because they’re living a life of sin, whatever that is. And so, they’re staying away from the Word of God. It could be that.
It could just be that just the general sin of not wanting a relationship with God, that’ll keep you from the Scriptures. But if you have a relationship with God and you’ve tasted the goodness of the Lord, and the more that you taste the goodness of the Lord, it’s going to change you so that you are going to love the Word. You’re going to want to eat it. And that’s the second thought here. Eat it again and again.
One taste isn’t enough, any more than, you know, oh yeah, I ate about a week ago. No, come on. Are you kidding? This is something that’s got to continue. As you eat it, it’s going to satisfy you, but then it’s going to make you all the more want more.
One time is not enough. I like what Jeremiah said. Jeremiah 15:16, when your words came, I ate them. They were my joy and heart’s delight. Can we say that?
When we eat the Word of God, is it my joy and my heart’s delight? Again, if it’s not my joy and heart’s delight, something’s wrong. Find out. Ask God to give you some insight on this. There’s something wrong in your relationship with God.
For I bear your name. And here Jeremiah is saying, you know, when I read the Word of God, O Lord God Almighty, I realize that I got a relationship with you. I mean, wow. And I, through your Word, when I eat it, I develop that relationship with you. I bear your name so that you are more and more obvious in my life.
Hey, listen, if you don’t have an eating plan, you got to get one. If you don’t have an eating plan when it comes to Scriptures, you got to get one. Many of us have an eating plan when it comes to everything else, you know, what we’re eating. Like, I’m going to eat as much as I can. What about the Word of God?
If you don’t have an eating— if your eating plan is, well, it just works out, you know, as I think about it during the week, how is that working for you? How would it be if that was your eating plan when it comes to food? That would be a problem. That would be a problem. I hope you got an eating plan.
Do you? If you’re a beginner at this, you know, reading of the scriptures and all, out on the counter there, the Between Two Worlds counter, the table out there, I put out there today a beginner’s Bible eating plan. Pick it up. It’s there for you. It’s free.
It could be something that maybe can help you begin to think about, hey, where do you get this whole thing going? How do I Develop a habit of eating God’s Word. Last thought here is not only loving it, eating it, but living it. Living it. If you’re going to spend time in the Word of God, don’t let it go to waste.
Use the truth and the power and the hope and the wisdom and the insights that you find in the Scriptures to give you life.
Whatever it says, do it. Believe it. Live it. Jesus said it this way, now that you know these things, John 13:17, you will be blessed if you do them. If you know this, you’re going to be blessed.
Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Same word that’s used for happy in the Beatitudes. You’ll be blessed if you do it. Remember the feeling that you get when you’ve eaten something that you really enjoy? A feeling of full and happy.
Ready to go out and put it to good use.
You know, I think one of the best times to eat the Word of God is first thing in the morning. If it doesn’t work for you, find a time that works for you. Before you eat anything else— and this is another thought I’d give you about this— before you eat anything else, before you read anything else in the morning, read the Word of God.
I’ve stopped looking at email first thing in the morning. I’ve stopped looking at social media first thing in the morning. The first thing I want to do— this is a change that I’ve specifically made in my life this year— the first thing that I want to do is I want to get my mind thinking about God. I don’t want to get my mind thinking about, oh boy, I’m going to have a bad day here. I need God to shape my focus right at the start of the day.
And if you are giving time to that and you don’t have time, If you’re giving time to Facebook and email and everything else, text messaging and you name it, and you don’t have time for the Word of God, you’ve got to flip this. You really got to flip this, seriously.
Fill your mind with God. Fill your mind with the thoughts of God. Fill your mind with the Word of God and let that begin to shape for you how you live. We first came to Fresno, a guy named Jack Nitzel took us out for lunch at Christos. Christos is an amazing Italian restaurant.
If you’re ever in Phoenix, go there. It’s really good. But after that one visit, I became a regular customer. You know why? Because it gave me an appetite for what they served.
In fact, they got me eating things I never ate before that. I started eating salmon. I mean, that’s a big deal for me. You got to understand. But what I tasted there, I craved and I wanted to go back.
And so every opportunity that I could, I scheduled lunch appointments at Christos. It was perfect. Why would I do that? Because I wanted more, not less. It’s the picture here.
God’s word will grow you up. It will do more in your life than you could ever imagine or dream. In fact, it will not only grow you up, it’ll grow you out, a good out. It’ll get you out into the world, hopefully representing Him in the world. A few weeks ago, Bernice and I were in Austin visiting family there, and we ate at a place called Picnic.
It’s brand new. They call it a unique food experience because it’s no gluten, all healthy and natural foods. And so Brent said, I heard about this place. Let’s go check it out. So we went.
We loved it. It just took one visit. We’re sold so that anytime we go back to Austin, we hope we can go back there again and again and again. And I loved what the waiter said on the way out. This is what he said.
It feels good to eat clean. It feels good to eat clean.
Right. That’s what the Word of God will give you. It’s going to penetrate into your soul, and it’s going to do a supernatural work. So, what’s the point of today? Paraphrased in the words of Chick-fil-A, eat more Bible.
That’s it.
We, like newborn babies, need the pure milk of the Word. Eat more Bible. Let’s pray. Thank you, Lord, for giving us this opportunity to stop and think about your Word. In its place in our life right now.
If we’ve been trying to do this without you, forgive us, Lord. We confess our messed-up priorities. We confess we’ve given in to the demands and distractions of the world.
We confess that we’ve not come to a place where we crave the Scriptures. We confess that we’ve called into question the entirety of the Word of God and even the specifics of the Word. Lord, if you embraced it, should we not? If you’ve given your stamp of approval, should we not? Oh God, change our perspective on the Word and use the Word to change our lives.
And I pray that for anybody who’s here that does not yet have a relationship with you, that it would start with a willingness to obey what they already know about Jesus, so that like the believers that Peter was writing to, in obeying New life is birthed in them. We pray for that. And if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that even now. Lord, give me new life. Forgive me for living as if you did not exist.
Forgive me for not receiving the gift of life before now. Confess that I need you as my Savior. Please, God, save me from my sins. Adopt me into your family. Make me one of your children.
Lord, thank you that you hear prayers like that. And thank you, God, that you hear prayers of, Lord, help me do better. Help me get this thing straightened out.
Help me taste and see that your words are good.
And we thank you, God, for working in our midst even this morning. And we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
