I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I don’t take lightly standing in the place where Brother Chad is given responsibility to lead and to speak. So I appreciate that. I also want to give a good report on your pastor as the director of the men’s ministry there at Choose Life. He is representing the Lord and you all very well. Well, he’s done a lot of good things and we’re thankful to have him there with us and leading the way in a very important work that he and the other brothers are doing. We hope that God is using in transforming the lives of the young men who need the Lord by means of his word. I’d like to direct your attention this afternoon to 1 Peter chapter 2 and I will read 1 Peter 2 verse 1. Wherefore, laying aside.
All guile, all malice, all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. I want to use verse 2 for my comments this afternoon and title the message, Things You Need to Grow. Things that you as a church need to grow. I don’t think Peter has primarily in mind growing to be a big church. Now, I pray that that… What happened here, I know we all at Heritage, we want to grow. But I don’t think Peter has that in mind primarily for two reasons. In the second epistle, chapter 3 verse 17, he says,
Beloved, beware, lest you be led away with the error of the wicked and fall from your own steadfastness or stability, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So what keeps you from being led away with the error of the wicked is growth in grace. Secondly, I don’t think he’s primarily talking about growing a big church, although that’s fine, if it’s by the Lord’s methods and in the Lord’s timing, is because persecution is often a time of church decline. And that’s what’s happening in this book. There’s slander, there’s reproach, there’s evil speaking, and there’s suffering. And typically when that happens, initially, there’s a separation and there’s a decline in Christianity, although suffering is often used for a time of great growth. So the kind of growth… The growth I’m speaking about, and I think Peter’s talking about this afternoon and in this epistle, is the growth of your soul, the enlargement of your soul, or as your pastor prayed, that we would grow in Christlikeness. And when that’s there, by the grace of God, then you’ll start to see some other kinds of growth, we pray, and trust God to work out. So here are four or five things, depending on the time, that you need to grow. First, you need the gospel. I know you know that. You may be thinking, Brother Chad, did you invite him over here to tell us that? Well, yes. That’s what we need to remember. Peter, in 1 Peter 1, verse 23, says this, Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. Verse 25, chapter 1. But the word of the Lord endureth forever, and this is the word whereby the gospel is preached to you. Chapter 2, verse 1. Wherefore, verse 2, grow.
The word that is preached to you, by Peter, is the gospel. Therefore, grow. You need the gospel to grow. Now, the problem is, so much of the time, we think of the gospel as kind of a foundational thing. The problem is, I don’t think about foundations. When I walked in this building that you’re using, I noticed the color, I noticed the design, I noticed the pulpit, I noticed the instruments. I didn’t once think of the foundation under my feet. Now, of course, I did, because I knew I was going to use this illustration. But I didn’t think about the foundation. And so we think of the gospel kind of as a foundation for conversion. God uses the word to convert us. And then we kind of move away from the gospel and we grow. Well, Peter emphatically saying there is no growth without the gospel. Chapter 2, verse 5. Ye also, as lively or living stones, are being built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, able to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Two things here. A spiritual sacrifice is empowered by the Holy Spirit. A sacrifice of love, a sacrifice of obedience, whatever the sacrifices we’re called on to make, they’re spiritual, they’re influenced by the Holy Spirit. But they’re acceptable only by Jesus Christ.
Now, what does that mean? What kind of sacrifice is only acceptable to God?
A sacrifice that is resting upon Him. His sacrifice.
I’ll never forget the first time, not the first time I heard the song by Charles Wesley, Jesus, lover of my soul. Now, whatever Charles Wesley’s theology was, he wrote some great songs, if you know that old hymn. In that hymn, he says, All my trust on thee is stayed, all my help from you I bring. And that just blew me away.
What’s Wesley saying? He’s saying, all my sacrifices that I bring to you come from you. They come from the Gospel.
All my obedience that I bring to God comes from God. It comes from the Gospel. Without the Gospel, there is no obedience, there’s no sacrifices. Because Christ must be the source of all sacrifices. If He’s the source and He’s the Gospel, that means we need to stay with the Gospel. To grow. The Gospel is not just the foundation, it’s the paint on the walls, it’s the stage, it’s the lighting, it’s the roof, it’s the sheetrock, it’s everything. Because we will never grow without the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Listen to Paul in Colossians 2 verse 6. He would say, As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. Now, how did you receive Him? Did you receive Him as a half-Christ? Did you receive Him as His sacrifice? Christ gave you 99% of what you needed, but you’ve got to supply the 1%. You received the whole Christ. Whatever you knew at that time. Jesus is the lover of my soul. He died for me. He bore the wrath of God on my behalf. My salvation is in Christ alone. Now, Paul says, take that, and I’ll keep walking in this way. Rooted in Him, built up, and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. So, rooted in Christ. And you’re growing out of the same root. That’s how you received Him. That’s how you grow. And the root is what produces all the fruit that’s hanging on the branches. There’s no growth unless we’re rooted in Christ and being built up a spiritual house, offering sacrifices, resting in His sacrifice, so that we’re not trying to bring something to God as if He needs our sacrifice. You know well, probably Hebrews 11, verse 6, which says, Without faith it’s impossible to please Him, that is God. But he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
Faith is a coming to God, believing that He is. Now, if Jesus were right here, and He were standing right there, and I used that verse to describe Him, I, first person, would say to you, second person, He is third person. Now, if Jesus changed that, if that’s the first person, what would He say? He would say, that’s right, Pastor Mike. I am that I am.
To come to Christ believing that He is, you must come to Christ believing that He’s the I am of Exodus 3.6. He’s the independent God. He doesn’t need you. He doesn’t need your works. In fact, all your works come from Him by being united to Christ by faith. And God is only pleased with a sacrifice that’s resting in His Son, a sacrifice where He has no pleasure in it. We cannot grow as Christians or as a church unless all that we do, all that we are, is owing to Christ, singular, as the source of everything we are. So we can’t move past the Gospel. At 58 years old, on the 29th of this month, I still need the Gospel, just as much as the day I was converted by the Gospel.
I like what the psalmist says in Psalm 102, verse 16. Where he speaks about God growing Zion. He would say, When the Lord shall build Zion, He shall appear in His glory. Isn’t that what we want as churches? We want when God builds up a church, we want Him to reveal His glory. We want God to be seen and known. Now, the New Testament equivalent, the type of Zion in the New Testament is the church. So we could say, When the Lord builds up the church, He shall appear in His glory. Now, here’s the question. What kind of people is He going to use to build His church? Verse 17, Psalm 102.
He will regard the prayer of the destitute. He will not despise their prayer. Now, get the picture. When God appears in His glory, He builds Zion with destitute, bankrupt, needy, helpless people. Do you qualify?
There will be no building without it. So here’s how you build with the Gospel. You get just as rich. Glow, destitute, bankrupt, and helpless as you possibly can. And God is going to appear in His glory. Because only the giver gets the glory. And the recipient of that Gospel gets all the help, all the filling, all the grace that we desperately need. So as a church, I want to encourage you. The kind of growth that God is after is the growth of your soul in such a way that God is being exalted, God is being magnified through people, that are needy, bankrupt, and childlike. As Jesus said, the way to get into the kingdom is to humble yourself and be like this little child. Now, a child, for parents sometimes, can be a little bit cumbersome. I’m not trying to discourage you children here, but you know, they always want you to hold them, feed them, carry me, Dad. You know, I like that, but sometimes I’m exhausted. See?
God will never say He’s too tired to carry you. In fact, He demands. You become childlike. He carries. He feeds. He empowers. He supplies. You just become like a little baby in His hands. Now, the pride of man, that’s offensive. But for someone who really needs Jesus, that’s glorious, isn’t it? So, the first thing you need to grow is the Gospel. And that’s not something we look back and say, I remember when I was converted. We grow in our need. We need for the sufficiency of the all-gracious Christ by whom we offer sacrifices resting in His sacrifice alone. Number two,
you need trials.
You need trials. Samuel Rutherford once said, and I’m paraphrasing, the king’s best wine is in the cellar. And he understood in times of affliction is where God brought him to the place of the choicest wine. He meant his experience with God. Isn’t that the truth? Now, let me ask you, has your deepest times of growth in Christ been you got money in the bank, got the best house, best job, best benefits, best vacation package, best computer, best car, best everything? Probably not. Your times of greatest growth have probably been when things have fallen, when things have fallen apart.
You need trials. It’s not that they may help. You need trials. And God aims to bring you trials. That’s part of His plan of salvation. Now, Brother Chad prayed that we would be more like Christ. Now, let me tell you what that means from God’s perspective. If you pray, make me more like Christ, which we all pray that we want that, God’s saying, okay, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to put you right in the fire. 1 Peter chapter 1. We have been begotten again into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Verse 4. To an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, reserved in heaven, it fades not away, reserved in heaven for you. So, you can rest assured your inheritance is reserved and nobody is going to change your reservation or take it from you. By the resurrection of Christ, your reservation is secure. But what about you? Verse 5. Who are kept, that is the elect of God, in verse 2, are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. The word kept speaks of a garrison of Roman soldiers that come in around a defenseless city and protect it. So God says, He’s garrisoning your faith. He is protecting your faith and He’s going to keep you, your faith, until the last time ready to be revealed at the coming of Christ. Now, here’s the question. How does God protect your faith?
Now, as parents, the way we protect our children is we don’t let anything bad happen to them. If we could help it, we would protect them from any kind of harm, if we could.
Here’s what God does to protect your faith. Verse 6. Wherein you rejoice, even though now, if need be, if it’s necessary, and it is, that you’re in heaviness or grief through all kinds of testing. That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried, with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. So how does God protect you? He doesn’t put you behind Him. He pushes you right into the fire.
You must go through trials to grow. And the growth is that your faith may be found. That means it’s moving toward an end. It’s growing. At the revelation of Christ, it may be found to glory. And honor and praise at the coming of Christ. Because you’re becoming more like Him by means of the fiery trials that God puts you through. Now remember, Peter deposits that text in a book all about suffering. And he makes it clear that the suffering that they’re experiencing is not willy-nilly. It’s not happenstance. It’s by the will of God. It’s by the sovereign direction of the Holy God. Who is testing His people so that the dross that’s still mixed in with their faith, that old man baggage that we still carry with us, is again and again moved out of the way. It’s taken out by the fire. You know, when gold is purified, it’s refined, they put it in the crucible. It’s mixed with all kinds of impurities and ore. But the only way to get the gold separated from the ore, the impurities, the dross, is to put it in the fire. The slag floats to the top and the gold, the goldsmith scoops it off the top and the gold comes forth more shining. That’s the imagery that Peter is using to tell us trials are not just by chance. It’s not just something came in and touched your life this past week. Every single trial is under the sway of the sovereign God and every single pain, loss and difficulty you experience is aimed by your Father. To chase and to train you and to make you more like Jesus Christ. Because He works all things after the counsel of His own will. Everything is after the counsel of His sovereign will. It’s according to a purpose. And what purpose is that? As the elder read to us just a few moments ago.
He’s predestined to adopt you, to bring you into the family. And so God is making everything in your life serve the purpose, the predestination which is to make you like Jesus. Which that includes every fiery trial, every pain, every tear, every sorrow. God will not waste pain in your life because He will not waste the blood of His Son which purchased for you every single trial you will ever go through. So Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 5 he would tell us then God is resisting the proud but giving grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time casting all your care upon Him for He is caring for you. Now get this. To humble yourself under God’s mighty hand the hand that was working in 1 Peter the hand working through the Roman government through all the suffering and persecution and the slander all that’s under the mighty hand of God. And so Peter says humble people stay there.
Don’t leave
the hand of God. Don’t leave the fire. Stay in the trial. Now if God gives you a way out that is according to His word then we don’t have to stay in the fire. But don’t do anything to dishonor God because the fire gets too hot. Now Peter puts his finger on what we would tend to do to make us want to leave and depart from God. We wonder is God really caring for me? Does He love me? Ever had that thought when things get so tough so difficult. Maybe I’m talking to someone today who’s going through a trial that nobody knows about but you and God. It’s intense. It’s hard. Maybe the thought has passed through your mind. Does God really care for me? Peter wants to make it clear that when you’re under the mighty hand of God that’s working in your trial He is loving you in the trial. He’s loving you in the fire. He’s loving you because He’s making you like Christ which is the best possible thing God can do. He’s doing the best He can do for you. Isn’t it?
So, brothers and sisters if we’re going to grow we need to grow we need trials. And God’s design is to bring trials into your life. Not because He wants to harm you. Not because He doesn’t care. Not because He doesn’t love you but precisely because He loves you. He’s going to do whatever it takes to make you like Jesus. Whatever it takes. Clearly Peter says it takes a fiery trial. A refiner’s fire. Now, aren’t you glad it’s not a consuming fire? In the last day God’s going to be like a consuming fire like the California fires. Have you seen those awful pictures? The point of a consuming fire there’s no recovery. You don’t pick up things and dust them off. It’s wiped out. God is not a consuming fire because in Christ His wrath His fire has been absorbed so now He is a refiner’s fire to you. So we must remember at our deepest, darkest most painful experiences of life God is refining. He loves you. And He’s drawing you in. So stay with God in the fire. Stay with Him. And grow. Number three, you need worship.
You need worship. I want you to notice the four words that Peter’s going to use for worship in our text.
Desire the sincere milk of the Word. Verse 2. If so be that you’ve tasted or since you’ve tasted that the Lord is gracious. The second word, taste. To whom coming adds into a living stone. The word coming. And then the word precious. Disallowed indeed of men but chosen of God and precious, highly valued, worthy, a treasure. Those are all worship words. Have you ever noticed that Peter didn’t say read the Word? It used to baffle me. Of course that’s implied. You know that you can read the Word and read the Word and never grow? The devil does that. Pharisees did it.
True growth is when you desire the Word because you’ve tasted something that’s so good that you’re coming to Christ as a treasure. A treasure. Worship is an experience of the heart that’s tasted and desires and is coming to Christ as supreme treasure. That’s what worship is. And so Peter clearly says what it takes to grow is not just reading. We need to do that but it takes desire.
Two things need to happen in our lives for that to take place. Negatively, you need to stop eating things that spoil your appetite. Right?
Tasting. Tasting. That’s an appetite word. Desiring. It’s like eating home-cooked food every time when I go home to my mother’s house. I love my wife’s cooking. She’s good. When I go home, I start to smell the aroma of being home. And I know my mother’s going to cook because I’ve tasted it. I desire it. I’m coming. It’s treasure to me.
Peter takes that and applies it to the soul. That’s what has to happen to grow. So this is what we need to do to stop spoiling the appetite. Verse 1, Wherefore, lay aside malice,
guile, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, desire.
I was a young boy. I would come in often just at the wrong time, about 15 minutes before dinner would take place. And I’d say, Mom, can I have some cookies? She would say, No. It’ll spoil your appetite. Peter’s making clear what keeps us from growing is that we’re putting things in our body spiritually that circumvent and prevent growth. So he said, we’ve got to lay that aside to stir up the God-given desires in the new birth. See, because you have tasted the grace of God in conversion. You do desire Jesus Christ to be exalted. You do come to Him and He is truly precious. I trust to you.
But what happens at times when He’s not? It could be you’re having malice. Now all of these are desires that counter
the desire and the tasting of the grace of God. Malice is a desire for someone to be harmed. Now you can imagine with the Christian suffering, likely some of them thought, Lord, can you just drop a big boulder on Nero, the emperor?
Or maybe the president of the U.S. You ever thought that? That’s malice, beloved. You thought, Lord, if you could just take him out. I mean, open borders? Inflation? Do you ever just kind of clench your fist and think, okay, get those thoughts out of my head? Surely I’m not the only one here.
That’ll keep you from growing. If all we can think about is how somebody’s harming us, how somebody’s slandering us, how somebody’s causing us to pay more money at the pump,
can’t grow. Guile is a desire to achieve a selfish purpose by deceit. Now when you look at all these words, this is likely what these Christians were tempted to feel. They were tempted to feel towards their persecutors.
That’s difficult when someone is causing you pain for no good reason. You’re actually doing what God says and you’re being persecuted for it. Guile, hypocrisy, the desire to look and to be something you’re really not. Whether it’s cool. I don’t know if that’s a young person word anymore. I’m out of touch sometimes. I’ll just stop there. Just keep it with cool. Whatever it is, you want to look away that you’re not into God. Envy. You desire to have something that somebody else has and you don’t want them to have it. And then on top of that, when it doesn’t happen, you slander, evil speaking. So Peter makes it clear when you look at the way he constructs the two verses. Wherefore, lay aside these as newborn babes desire. You have been given the capacity to worship in the new birth. You have been given longings for Christ. We spoil our appetites when these attitudes rise up in us. So Peter knows that temptation says lay them aside. So that’s the negative. The positive is we have to then go to the knowledge of God. If we’re desiring the sincere milk of the Word, the implication is we want to know Christ. As Peter said in his second epistle. We want to grow in grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Now listen to how he says it in the first chapter. Verse 13 he says, Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, that’s an old imagery of the tunics in that day that they wanted to get ready to work. They would bind up those garments and tie them in a sash so they could move freely. So Peter takes that imagery and says do this with your mind. Gird up the loins. Gird up the tunic in your mind. Get ready to do some thinking because you’re suffering. Be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children.
So hope is the confident expectation of a future good. If you just look that up in any Greek concordance, that’s basically what you’ll find. But I want to illustrate hope for a minute. Hope is like that package you get on your front doorstep. When the delivery guy comes and he rings the doorbell and he walks off and you pick up the package and there’s a big smile on the box. You’re smiling because you used that, right? And I don’t know what you think about that company, but we’ve all used places like that. And so when you bring that box inside, and at my house it’s never my box. It just never is. It’s always my daughter’s box. I mean, she orders all kinds of things. I’m disappointed. I want it to be my box. You know why? I want to smile. So when you get that box, you know that when you open that box, you are hoping, you’re expecting, your confident expectation is, I’m going to smile.
That’s hope. Now for me, it’s the lawnmower part. I will be a happy guy if the part fits and the thing will start up. Or a dishwasher part or something real simple like that. But the point is, whatever is in the box, you are hoping that it will deliver on your expectation for some kind of… joy or happiness.
My happiness may not be yours, but it’s still what? An expectation for good. So Peter says, hope, not in this world, but in the coming of Christ, where Christ will deliver on your expectation, what your desires are for that He gave you in chapter 2. Your expectation for fulfillment and joy. We have it in part now, but in the future, it’s coming in a, in a big way. As obedient children.
This is how Peter says that. Not fashioning, not shaping yourselves according to your former lust and your ignorance, but as He which hath called you as holy, be ye holy in all manner of behavior or lifestyle. Notice the language that Peter uses. When you were disobedient children, when your hope was not in Christ, and in the world, before you were born again, when you were one time darkness, your hope was lived out in a way that you were shaped, you were molded by former desires.
Ephesians 2, 2 and 3 tells us, we all lived according to this former way, fulfilling the lust of the flesh and the desires and the lust of the mind, and were by nature, children of wrath, even as everybody else. So what shaped our life? No matter what path you were on or what path I was on, everything I did was shaped by a desire that was selfish and self-centered. I was disobedient. Now, Peter says,
don’t live according to former desires when you were ignorant, which means what? The reason you and I live that way is we were ignorant, not in an intellectual way. You may have, you may have, but always had a very high IQ. You were ignorant of God. You did not know the supremacy of Jesus Christ. You didn’t know Him as precious. That’s one of Peter’s favorite words. You didn’t know Him as treasure. So your entire life was shaped by former desires because you treasured everything but Christ. Now watch this. Now be holy.
I don’t think that’s an accident, the construction of what Peter’s saying. How is it then we’re to be holy? Rather than former desire, we have new desires by the new birth. We’re no longer ignorant. We know the supremacy of Christ. So holiness is rooted in knowing Christ in such a way. He’s tasted. He’s desired. We’re coming because He’s treasured. If we don’t worship and desire and treasure Christ, we’re coming because He’s treasured. there will be no growth. You could read the Bible. From now until the Lord comes home. Unless we taste, unless we know Jesus is precious, we can’t take the first step toward holiness because what that would mean is we’re still being shaped by former desires.
So to worship, we need to know Christ. We need to know Him.
We need to know more of Christ. The Bible is a book about Jesus. He would say to the Pharisees, you search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, but they are they which testify of me. The entire book is a revelation of God in Christ. And so when you read Proverbs, you’re not just trying to find principles on how to be a parent. You’re trying to find Jesus somehow in that book. Because that’s what Jesus said in John 5. He said, I’m in Proverbs.
I’m in Chronicles. I’m in 1 and 2 Kings.
So when we’re coming to the Bible, if we’re to worship God, we are coming because we want to know Jesus. Yes, I want to know how to be a better parent, but that can only happen, what? If I’m worshiping.
If I’m no longer ignorant of Christ, but I’m knowing Him. Peter would say in his second book, he’s taking his cue from what he just said in chapter 1. He would say in 2 Peter 1, verse 4.
I’m going to read it.
Verse 3, According as His divine power hath given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us to glory and virtue. So He’s given us everything for life now and for godliness. That’s growth.
Through the knowledge of Him that called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? To be holy. To be Christ-like. Having escaped the corruption in the world through lust. You know the whole world is perishing.
Because of lust. That’s what Peter just said. Alright, you have been delivered from destruction and perishing that happens through lust, which means now you know Jesus and Him as a treasure, which means now you can take on His image. You can really be holy like He is holy. That doesn’t mean we’re God. What Peter is saying is we have to come to Scripture and know Him in such a way that we’re tasting, desiring, coming and experiencing Christ as precious. Because if not, you know what I’m doing? I’m tasting, desiring, and I’m coming to the world as my great treasure. Therefore, I cannot grow. So I encourage you, worship. What feeds off of that, the next one is you need the Word. If we’re to know Christ, the way He’s given to know Him is through Scripture. So Peter says, desire the sincere, milk the Word. Now, that means we need to read the Word, but now I want to talk to you about the preached Word. 1 Peter 5 verse 2, Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof. The word feed is a larger word than just dealing with food, but it certainly involves that. It means to shepherd, to be an under-shepherd.
That means your elders, as long as the elders where I pastor myself, are tasked with feeding the flock, feeding the sheep. Now, something I know about your pastor that he didn’t tell me, based on this past week, and why I’m here. It’s very hard sometimes for pastors because there’s such a burden to preach the Word that it’s hard to take a vacation. It took me a long time to learn this. Because the whole time you’re on a vacation, you’re thinking, what have I got to preach Sunday? And you’re trying to work out this time and you end up neglecting your wife and your family. And so Brother Chad was able to have that time this past week. And he asked me to be here. But what he didn’t tell me, he didn’t want to shortchange you. He knows he needs the time to bury himself in the Word of God, to study, to show himself approved of God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed. He didn’t want to shortchange you because he wants to lay out before you such a banquet from God’s Word that he feeds the sheep of God. And he needs time to do that. Here’s the corollary to that. If his task is to feed you so that when you hear the Word of Christ, you’re tasting, you’re coming, you’re seeing Christ as precious, you need to be fed.
Let’s talk about your responsibility.
How you’re supposed to be fed.
You come ready to taste, ready to desire, ready to see. Your heart has been prepared to receive. The food that your pastor has been laboring to give you on Sunday afternoons. Now sisters, I want to ask you, let’s say you labored over a meal and you spent hours and hours and hours and all the family is there and you’re so excited to deliver this meal and one by one they say, I’m not hungry.
Everybody better start running.
I’m just not hungry. I’m not hungry. Or the eyes are glazed over. Now I know four o’clock is tough and I’m probably already over my time. I get that. You know, when we had another elder ordained at our church sometime back and he’s preaching in the afternoon, I thought, well now I see what these people are experiencing because I’m standing up here. It’s not hard for me to stay awake and my eyes will start to cross and I get it. That’s not what I’m talking about. How do you prepare your souls to receive the message your pastor has labored over? What have you been feeding yourself all week?
What do you do Saturday night? Watch every movie and stay up late and you get up early and you read the news and you come in here and you sing some songs and you’re like, I’m just not hungry.
So we have a responsibility to the pastors to prepare our hearts for worship and to know Christ through the Word. That means we want to be ready and eager to hear. What God has laid on His heart. That means we’re praying for the pastor. Lord, bless him with insight in the Scripture. And that means when you get the urge to call your pastor when you should be calling a deacon, don’t do it. Call the deacon because he’s in the Word. Acts chapter 6. Prayer and the study of Word.
He’s juggling family and director at Choose Life and you’re praying, Lord, give him the time.
Yeah, I can say that here. I might not say that. I don’t know exactly where. I’ve got a couple members here from Heritage. I don’t know you. I’m leaving and Chad has to pick up all the pieces of what I say.
But you see what I’m saying? Desire the sincere milk of the Word, which means hear the preached Word, which means he’s tasked to feed the flock of God, which he has the oversight. He’s been given that, not primarily by you, but by the Holy Spirit. So Paul would say in Acts chapter 20, when he spoke to the elders and bishops of Ephesus, those are the same office in the Bible. You could call him a bishop. I know you probably don’t. And I know why we don’t. But you could.
I have not shunned to declare, I have not held back to declare all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, elders, and to all the flock of God, over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers to feed the church of God, which you purchased with His own blood. For I know that after my departing, grievous wolves will enter in, not sparing the flock. Of your own selves men arise, speaking perverted things to carry away disciples after them. Now when this church grows and gets bigger, according to that message, somebody right here in your ranks could rise up speaking perverted things to carry you captive. And I’ll tell you, it’s always something appealing. It’s never something you’re like, who wants that? It’s appealing. Like something of prosperity. Something good here. Now what’s going to keep you from being led away from that?
Your pastor is feeding the church, the church of God, with the whole council. Because Paul knows they’re coming.
You’re being fed by what he teaches. Stabilizes your soul against false prophets. And brings you to the banqueting table of God’s Word, so that your desires for Christ are being fulfilled. Now who can lead you away captive with that? Look, I’ve got some better food over here. No, my pastor. My pastor, he’s bringing the food. It feeds. I don’t need that. You see the point? It’s the Word. Feed on the Word. Prepare your hearts. Be ready to receive the Word. Pray for your pastor. And then finally, this is the last one. You need community. You need one another or you won’t grow. Now look how Peter says this in chapter 2 verse 5 again. He also as lively stones, living stones, plural, are being built. A spiritual house, singular. That’s interesting.
Why does it go from plural to singular? Because there’s a bunch of stones here. But there’s only one house. Paul does the same thing in Romans chapter 12 verse 1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body singular, a living sacrifice, plural, a living sacrifice, singular. Why does he do that?
Bodies, singular.
Because a stone has no value by itself. Let’s take a brick for example. I know people repurpose bricks. You can do some neat things with bricks. Bookends, put a little soil in the holes.
Plants can rise. But a brick is for being connected with another brick. If you have a brick laying in your backyard, if you have a 2x4 in your backyard, it is a good-for-nothing 2x4. I don’t mean to be a phony. I don’t mean to be offensive. You get the point. It’s an illustration. It’s just by itself. But take that 2x4 and put it in a building and connect it. Wow! Now its purpose is being fulfilled. You are many stones. You are many members, but you’re one body. If I were to sever my hand from my body and lay it over here to the side, I know that’s gory. That hand has absolutely no value. It is zero. It’s good for nothing. But when it’s connected to the wrist and the arm with the body, it now works in tandem with the body to do what God designed it to do. Beloved, you need this body. You need to interact with this community. Because Peter says the building up of the singular body happens through stones, plural, as you connect as the mortar of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God fills the gaps. It fills the gaps. The building is going up. But before another person is added to this congregation, the building is rising up to the glory of God because the stones are coming out of the darkness into His marvelous light to show forth the excellencies, the praises of the God who called you out of that darkness. Same epistle, chapter 2, verse 9. Now let me just close with these words on what that would mean, I think, in the community that’s growing. 1 Peter chapter 4.
Verse 7. But the end of all things is at hand. Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. First, that means these stones are praying for one another. Peter says watch for prayer. Whatever means you all have to learn about the prayers of the body. So you’re watching for reason to prayer. You’re looking. Just in your conversations over lunch and together, you learn, that’s something I need to pray for. So stones are praying for one another. Praying for one another. And for your pastor and the elders.
Secondly, verse 8. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves. So the stones are being built up a spiritual house as they have stretched out love. That’s what the word fervent in the KJV here, maybe in your Bible it may say, stretched out.
Stretching out. Stones are stretching out to one another. To love. And they’re binding together in love. And particularly, the way this love has expressed itself is the way the elder mentioned in his testimony, charity covers a multitude of sins.
Just covers over it.
Sadly, sometimes in a church, when crisis and conflict comes, people start bolting. Why? Why?
Is that not God’s opportunity to grow the body? It’s an opportunity to glorify. It’s an opportunity for unbelievers and children to see forgiveness and repentance. Don’t bolt, beloved. Stay with it. God is testing you to grow you. And He’s going to bring you conflict in this body to grow you. Stay with it. He’s going to show you things He wants changed within us. And so, when we’re together as stones, united, because we need community, we need forgiveness. We need charity. We need love to cover. Love doesn’t excuse. It doesn’t produce sin. But love is covering. Love is forgiving. That produces growth in the body. Next, he would say, verse 9, use hospitality one to another without grudging.
Like the family that invited another family home from church one day to have lunch and the mother asked the young 12-year-old boy, would you pray? I don’t know how to pray. Well, just pray like we pray. Okay. God, I don’t know, why I invited these people over here today. I don’t know what I was thinking. So, he started saying the begrudging comments of his mom and dad. So, use hospitality without grudging.
Hospitality is to be fond of guests.
I know, sisters, that takes a clean house. So, you brothers, clean that house. Get it ready. And have one another over. Because the aim is not to feed one another. You’re going to eat somewhere. The aim is to minister the Word of God to one another. To be stones. And you’re learning things about each other in the normal milieu of life that maybe comes out that doesn’t come out here in the time you have together. So, Peter says, use hospitality one to another. This is what stones do. And he says, as every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as good stewards. Of the manifold, multifaceted grace of God. So, God doesn’t want us to re-gift His gifts. You know when you did that, right? You got that juicer when you didn’t care about health and you just re-gifted it. That’s what I did. I wish I had it back.
The gifts that God has given you as a stone are designed to be plugged into the body so that you minister one to another. You know what Paul says after he says, he says in Romans 12, 1, to present your bodies, plural, a living sacrifice. Verse 5, he goes right into the spiritual gifts. That’s on purpose. He wants us to know this corporate sacrifice that Rome is supposed to see in the stones, in the body, is through the spiritual gifts, Peter says. Minister one to another as a good steward. You don’t own the gift. You can’t re-gift it. Of the manifold grace of God. There’s all kinds of gifts. There’s all kinds of colors to God’s grace just in this room. He wants you to use that grace to be a stone joined together so that you as a body would display, no matter how small you are, no matter how big you are, it matters not. Because the grace of God is sufficient. So that you would display something about the glory and the excellency of the Christ you love and who is precious to you. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We confess that we are sinners in need of your grace, Lord. And as we hear again and again from your word, we experience conviction. We experience areas where we need to grow and need to change. But Lord, we experience great hope and the sweetness to know that your grace is sufficient. Whatever you call us to be, whatever you call us to do, your grace will supply all that we need in the gospel of Jesus. So bless us to grow in such a way that honors and magnifies your grace and gives the help and hope to sinners that we need. In Jesus’ name, amen.