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Jan 06, 2013

A Fresh Start (Part 7)

Passage: 1 Peter 2:1-3

Preacher: Tim Badal

Series:Strangers in a Strange Land

Detail:

As we jump back into this series “Strangers in a Strange Land,” we find ourselves in 1 Peter 2:1-3.  I love how sometimes the calendar works so well with plans we don’t even think about having.  We have a great way to kick off this new year of teaching by kicking off the second chapter of this book.

I want to look at this passage under the heading of “A Fresh Start” as we look to the New Year.  We all love fresh starts.  There is something special about a new opportunity or a time to start afresh.  One of my favorite times in ministry is starting a new series.  It always makes my studying more fun as I embark on looking into new thoughts and new passages of Scripture.  That’s exciting for a pastor.

I know some of you who are students still have a couple vacation weeks left but you’re probably looking forward to the start of a new semester.  If you had some grades that you weren’t so proud of in the last semester, they are hopefully just a distant memory now with the thought of new classes and a new beginning to come.  Cubs’ fans, can you believe we’re only six weeks away from spring training and a new season?  This will be the year—a fresh start.  Amen!  For all you believers out there, I’ll leave it at that.

For many though, a fresh start means distancing yourself from the past year.  A fresh start helps us forget and move beyond the things of yesterday.  Some of you have probably resolved to do some things differently this year.  Maybe 2012 was a year when you were stagnant in your faith.  Maybe you had some great desires to do great things for God and His Kingdom.  Maybe you wanted to live a more holy life but it fell by the wayside.  Maybe you have made some spiritual resolutions to read your Bible a little more this year.  Maybe you’ve already found yourself falling off the wagon in your New Year’s resolutions—only six or seven days into it.  As the calendar turns and we come together for the first time in this New Year, we have the opportunity for a fresh start.

First Peter 2 gives us a wonderful springboard to that end.  My prayer is that we as individuals and as a church will live out these words in the year of 2013.  Let’s get into the passage.  We’re going to look at three ways we can have a fresh start in this New Year.  I’m going to start reading in 1 Peter 1:22:

22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for

 "All flesh is like grass

    and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers,

    and the flower falls,

25 but the word of the Lord remains forever."

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

 

1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.  2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

 

Let’s pray.

Father God, we bow before You.  We have tasted that You are good (1 Peter 2:3).  We are so thankful for what You have done in our midst this past year.  Great is Your faithfulness and we thank You for it.  You are good.  Your love endures forever.  I pray that we would frequently taste of Your goodness in this New Year.  Let it become part of the very fabric of our lives.  Let everything we do give glory to Your name because of all the great things You have done.  I pray that we would live like this, but it means we have to rid ourselves of things.  Peter is going to teach us that today.  Your Spirit is going to lead us to that.  There are a myriad of things that might be holding us back and I pray that each of us would rid ourselves of those things and get them out of our lives.

Lord, I pray by Your Spirit today that we would have the power to once and for all say no to sin and move on to the pure spiritual milk of Your Word (1 Peter 2:2).  I pray that we would become people of Your Word.  I pray that the Bible wouldn’t be something we just paste on our sign and in our literature, but the very thing around which we as a people center ourselves.  Let every aspect of our lives be funneled through You and Your living, abiding Word (1 Peter 1:23).  Thank You for Your Word.  Thank You for Peter’s words to us as he reveals Your Word to us today.  In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.

 

How do we get a fresh start spiritually?  I am encouraged that every day the Lord gives us has opportunities for fresh starts.  Scripture tells us as believers that no matter how often we fail, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).  No matter what happened yesterday—because you have oxygen in your lungs and are living today—you have the opportunity for a fresh start this morning.  Praise God!  No matter how much we fall or find ourselves hindered by sin, we can have a fresh start—not only in this New Year but in each day as we have the opportunity to kneel before our God and confess our sin to Him.

I want to look at this fresh start because it sets a theme for us in this New Year.  We are going to look at this passage a little bit differently.  Usually we start with verse one, go to verse two and then end with verse three.  Today, I’m going to start with verse three, then go back to verses one and two.

 

  1. 1.  Examining Your Situation

Notice what Peter says in verse three: “If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”  Peter cites what many scholars believe is his favorite Psalm.  In verse three, he is quoting Psalm 34:8.  He has asked the question, “Have you tasted that the Lord is good?”  In other words, have you experienced the work of God in your life?  Are you experiencing God and His goodness on a daily basis?  Are you seeing His goodness and kindness that comes from a life lived out in devotion to Him?

Now, Peter is not trying to strike fear into the minds of born-again believers by causing them to wonder if they are saved or not.  I want us to be very clear with this.  Because we are so quick to presume spiritual things about ourselves that might not be true, this New Year presents a great opportunity for us to ask ourselves, “Have I tasted that the Lord is good?”  It is not for you to look at anybody else, but to look deep within yourself and ask that question.  Nobody else can answer it for you today.  From the quietness of your heart ask yourself if you have lived and seen God’s goodness as you’ve lived for Him?  If you haven’t, then we need to stop there and say, “Today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day when you can taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).

Now some of you may say, “Tim, I don’t know what that means.  I just saw people eating communion.  Is that what it means to taste that the Lord is good—to eat a tasteless wafer of bread and drink some lukewarm grape juice?  Is that what you mean?”  No, that’s not what we’re saying.  We’re not dealing with the issue of communion or the Lord’s Supper.  We’re talking about tasting spiritually.  Have you embraced and experienced the goodness of God in your life?

I’m indebted to a man named John Piper—a pastor from Minneapolis—who speaks about this tasting in this motto: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  Now you might say, “Well, what does that mean?”  It means that as followers of Jesus Christ, our number one desire should be for God to be glorified.  Piper tells us that God is most glorified in us—He receives the most glory through our lives—when we as Christians find our satisfaction in Him.  So if you want to know if you have tasted to see that the Lord is good, you need to ask yourself the question, “Am I most satisfied in Him?”  Is that your greatest desire?  Is it your greatest pursuit and longing to find your satisfaction in God?  That is what Peter is trying to address in this passage.

Piper goes on and uses that motto to build a whole philosophy of life called Christian hedonism which he defines as a philosophy of life in which the Christian seeks to maximize his joy.  Don’t we all want joy-filled lives.  So through a study of the Scriptures, Piper says that joy is found and maximized through an understanding that the only true way to real joy is to seek it in Christ.  Every desire we have and every pursuit is placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and we seek to find it in Him.  If you want joy in your marriage, you have to put your marriage under Christ.  If you want your family life to be a place filled with joy, then you have to put your family under Christ.  If you want your job to be a joy, you have to put it under Christ.  Wherever you desire joy, the Christian finds joy by being under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Joy grows as Christ grows in our lives.  As we taste and see that the Lord is good, He receives more glory and we are more blessed and content as a result.

This is what Peter is trying to tell us.  Have you tasted Christ in this way?  The best way to understand more of this tasting is to go to the text Peter is quoting.  Hold your spot in 1 Peter but turn back to Psalm 34.

Let’s try to understand a little bit more about this tasting.  What is it?  What are we supposed to do with it?  What will happen once we begin to take in the goodness of God?  Psalm 34:8 says what we’ve already heard, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”  Now Psalm 34:8 seems to be a refrain or segue between the first and last parts of Psalm 34.  David is saying, “In light of what I’ve addressed in the first seven verses, let’s taste and eat up this stuff because God is good.”  Then as we go on to the rest of the passage and begin to do what is addressed here, we will in fact taste and see that God is good.

So what does this tasting involve?

  1. This tasting is to happen at all times.  Look at Psalm 34:1 with me.  As we examine our lives, we need to ask ourselves the question, “Have I tasted?”  But now the Psalmist is saying the tasting doesn’t just happen at a certain point in our lives; it happens all the time.  Verse one says, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be continually in my mouth.”

 

Now some of you find yourself tasting the goodness of God where you are right now and do so once a week.  You’re faithful in your attendance at Village Bible Church and you come every week at 9:00 or 10:45 a.m.  You enter the same building and taste the goodness of God.  You taste it in the fellowship of others as people declare how God has moved in their lives.  You taste it through the songs.  Your heart is warmed by the thought of what you’re singing as it speaks of embracing God in new and profound ways.  You are touched and you taste the goodness of God as we open up the Scripture.

 

Now there’s a problem if this is the only time you taste the goodness of God.  The Psalmist is reminding us that we shouldn’t simply taste the goodness of God here in the building of Village Bible Church, but we are to taste it at all times and in all ways.  Christians are to exercise this tasting not only in worship but also in our love for one other, in the study of Scriptures and in the offering of our prayers.  Tasting the goodness of God will also impact the way we use our money and conduct relationships like marriage and family.  It’s going to strike a chord in the heart of our local evangelism as we look at the lives of our neighbors and friends.  We will say, “Hey, I have tasted and seen the goodness of God.  I want to share that goodness with others.  I don’t want to keep this to myself; it is too good to hoard it for myself.”  It’s too good to keep it here in the Fox Valley area, we need to take it to the uttermost parts of the world as we declare the goodness of God to people who have never heard it before.

 

This tasting will happen in our times of triumph when we see God is good, when we find ourselves in plenty and when we have all that we need.  But we will also praise the name of God in our times of great suffering when we can say, “Even though He gives and takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).  This tasting is supposed to be happening all the time.

 

It’s an ongoing tasting that happens in every part of our lives.  The desire of every Christian should be, “Lord, I want to taste Your goodness in my marriage.  I want to taste it in my family life.  I want to taste it as I hang out with people in the neighborhood.  I want to taste Your goodness in my job with a tough boss.  I want to taste it in the good and the bad.  I want to taste Your goodness every day of my life.”  Our desire as a church body for 2013 should be to taste God’s goodness no matter what our circumstances are.  That should be our desire and it should be happening at all times.

 

  1. This tasting is to be done together.  Look at verse two, “My soul makes its boast in the Lord…”  Let’s stop there a minute.  When we say it should be done together, that involves a couple steps.  While we need to taste the goodness of God together as an assembly of people, it begins with you and it begins with me.  You and I need to be taking in the goodness of God privately as we live our lives.  When we open the Scriptures on a daily basis, pray and interact with our God in every detail of our lives, God is going to be very good to us.  We are going to see it.

 

God’s goodness is not always what our desires for goodness are.  But if we would keep our eyes off ourselves and open our eyes to the goodness of God, we would be amazed at the goodness God is declaring and showing each and every day.  We just need to open our eyes to it.  God allows us to experience His goodness.

 

Let me give you an example from this last week of how God showed His goodness to me.  God moved in our family in a way that we would have never thought.  We had a situation with no apparent answer.  It wasn’t a terrible problem; I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  But as parents, Amanda and I have been working on this perplexing issue.  We’ve wondered, “How are we going to do this thing?”  Then God—in one fell swoop—answered it so clearly.  I called Amanda and said, “You know that problem we had?  It’s done!  You’re not going to believe how it happened.”  She said, “Well, that’s not you.”  I said, “I know it’s not me.  It’s all God.”

 

So we gather together in the community of other believers every week, not to talk about who won the playoff game, who won the Bowl game or how your Christmas activities were.  That’s not the intention.  Those things aren’t bad but they should be secondary.  The number one reason we come together is to say, “God showed up in my life this week.  God made Himself evident in me this week.  I want to tell you about it.”

 

But if we’re not experiencing God and tasting Him, then the only thing we’re going to talk about is the Bowl game or how our mothers-in-law drove us nuts during the Christmas season.  We’re going to talk about the presents we did or didn’t get under the tree.  We’re going to talk about the fiscal cliff.  This is the problem with many churches.  We’re not tasting and experiencing God on a daily basis and then when we gather together, we have nothing to talk about.

 

Rob Wyber [19.08] was here this morning.  He experienced God in a powerful way.  Do you think Rob is going to talk about the Bowl games?  No.  He’s going to say, “God was good to me!  I experienced God.  In a moment of crisis, God was there.”  I’m a witness of Rob’s faithfulness to God in a time of trial.  That encourages my heart.  We should gather together and say, “Wow!  God’s been very, very good to me!  He has been good and I want to declare it.”

 

  1. We should declare this tasting to others.  Look at what the Psalmist says in Psalm 34:2: “My soul makes its boast in the Lord…”  You do that part in private.  But then look at what happens in the rest of the verse, “…let the humble hear and be glad.”  So we experience the goodness of God in private, then we declare it to others who are glad to hear it.  They’re overjoyed to hear it.  Look at what happens in verse three, “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!”

 

Do you want to know how to recognize someone who has tasted the goodness of the Lord?  They grab the person next to them and say, “Hey, let’s go praise God together.  Let’s go into that worship center and proclaim the goodness of God to everyone because He has been so very good to me.”

 

Let me tell you something.  If you aren’t experiencing God’s goodness on a daily basis, then that response will never come.  Worship will become a chore.  It will become something to which you are merely a spectator.  So if you come in without tasting the goodness of God, then you will walk in thinking, “Now you need to bless me.  I need you to taste for me what I didn’t this past week.”  So you say things like, “The worship team didn’t have it this morning.  They didn’t move me.  The songs didn’t change me.  They should have done more of the old stuff (or they should have kicked it up a notch).  Tim is usually good for a couple funny stories but he didn’t bring it today.  The flu must have caught him and his family.  He didn’t have it.”

 

The problem is you become fickle when you’re living off someone else’s goodness.  You become a spectator instead of being overjoyed that you’re in the house of the Lord.  The Lord has given you another day to live and another opportunity to experience His grace and goodness.  We should say things like, “I don’t care if we have no instruments playing; I’m just glad to praise the Lord.  I’m just glad we can open the Word and receive from the Lord that which He has given us.  It is good to be around the table and be able to worship with my brothers and sisters.”

 

So brothers and sisters, it is good for us to taste the goodness of God each day.  It is to be done together.

 

  1. This tasting will also lead us away from temptation.  Look at Psalm 34:14, “Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”  So if we are continually taking in God and His Word—eating His goodness—then we will experience the benefits of honoring Him with our lives.  We will see that He is faithful, He blesses us and gives us contentment.  He doesn’t give us everything we want.  He’s not Santa Clause.  But He gives us what we need.  When we live that kind of life, it’s going to be very hard for the devil to tempt us.

 

I’ve shared these studies about grocery shopping before but I think they illustrate this point so well.  Studies have shown that if you go to the grocery store hungry, you will buy 40% more groceries than if you had eaten before you went.  Did you know that?  Did you also know that 20% of that extra 40% will be things you had no intention of buying in the first place?  When you go into the grocery store famished, there’s temptation all around you.

 

The temptation isn’t in the produce section—well, it is for Keith.  But most of us don’t walk around saying, “Wow, that celery sure looks nice.”  The temptation is not usually in unprepared things.  It’s not as if you go and buy a couple of T-bone steaks because there is no immediate gratification in them.  We find immediate gratification in things that are ready to be opened and eaten right there.  I can assure you that these prepared foods are usually not that good for us.  But we buy these things because we’re hungry and have to get it now.  It’s usually things like Twinkies or chips.  It’s amazing that grocery stores now say, “Go ahead; open it now.  You can eat it.”  Have you noticed they have drink containers in your carts so you can open your drinks right away?  They say, “You can pay for that later.”

 

Brothers and sisters, when we are not tasting the goodness of God, we are going through this life on spiritually empty stomachs.  We’re hungry people.  We’re hungry physically, emotionally, relationally and mostly we are hungry spiritually.  Yet we go through life without feasting on God’s Word.  We’re not feasting on the community of God’s people.  So when we go into the world hungry, the world says, “Here’s all the good stuff” and that’s when we’re vulnerable.  Temptation is really hard to break when your hunger is so big and the Scriptures are so far away.  The world advertises all kinds of things to us.  If you want to break free of the temptations in your life this New Year, feast on God and His Word.  Temptations don’t go away when you feast on His Word, but I can assure you that when you’re in His Word, temptation isn’t nearly as difficult to resist.  However, it is difficult when we go without His Word and without community with His people.

 

A couple of years ago at a men’s retreat, a man asked me, “Why can’t we do this every week?  Just have men’s retreat going on all the time?”  I said, “Number one, if you want to spend that much time with men, you’ve got a problem.  It gets old after a couple days.  But why do you want that?”  He said, “I don’t sin during these times.  Sin isn’t an issue here.  I feel so close to God when I get away from everything.”  Well, we don’t need men’s retreats to make that happen.  We can benefit from them occasionally but God has given us His Word to help us all the time.  His Word is pure spiritual milk, which we’ll look at in a moment (1 Peter 2:2).

 

  1. This tasting is sweetest in times of trouble.  Look at Psalm 34:4-8:

I sought the Lord, and he answered me

    and delivered me from all my fears.

Those who look to him are radiant,

    and their faces shall never be ashamed.

This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him

    and saved him out of all his troubles.

The angel of the Lord encamps

    around those who fear him, and delivers them.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!

    Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

 

The greatest times of taking in the goodness of God are when we are at our weakest—when we find ourselves in trouble.  Maybe you find yourself right now in a world of hurt and pain.  It is in that moment that we get to taste His goodness and it’s the sweetest.  It’s the greatest. 

 

I’m so glad for a church full of people who show me in times of trial that they can see the goodness of God.  We have people who are on transplant lists waiting for organs and I’m so glad they don’t say, “Why does God do this to me?  What is His problem?”  But each of them—to the individual—says, “God is good.  God is going to figure it out.  Whether He gives me a new organ or not, I’m going to praise Him.”  What a church!

 

I was sitting with Rob in the emergency room when his kids were all taken in ambulances to the hospital, and he could still say, “God is good.”  That’s a good man and a good church.

 

I’m glad that in our times of trouble, God is sweetest.  If you’re not experiencing that, then you need to examine your situation and ask the question, “Am I tasting that the Lord is good?”  Because if you’re not, then I have nothing more for you right now.  Just stop there with point one; it’s the shortest sermon you’ll ever get. 

 

  1. 2.  Eliminating Your Sin

If you want to experience the sweetness of tasting God, then notice that it involves eliminating sin.  Let’s get back to 1 Peter 2:1 now, “So [in light of all this] put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.”  Let’s stop there for a moment.  If you want real intimacy with God, then Peter says you need to get rid of some things.  If you say, “Hey Tim, I want that.  In 2013 I want to experience and live that.”  Well then, you have to get some things out of your life.  Peter starts listing some of these things.  It’s not an exhaustive list, but the things he shares come from the passage we read earlier at the end of 1 Peter. 

Look at verse 22, “Now having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth [for what?] for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.”  Then he says in verse one, “Therefore, put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy…”  You see, Peter understood and is preaching to us today that if we want to taste the goodness of God together, then there are some things we need to rid ourselves of as a community.

Notice in the text that the sins he wants us to get rid of involve both our attitudes and actions.  So if you say, “Well, I don’t do that kind of stuff,” then you need to ask yourself if you think that kind of stuff.  Don’t think you can get off easy because you don’t do those things.  Doing them and thinking about them is the same thing as Peter explains.  Notice also that he isn’t just saying, “You who struggle with malice,” but he says, “…all [kinds of] malice…”  These are general statements of wickedness.  They are categories of sin that affect us, so let’s deal with each one of them here in a moment.

Peter says, “Put away…” or “get rid of” which is the Greek word apotithēmi.  It speaks of taking off a piece of clothing.  He’s saying, “Remove that clothing of sin from your life.”  It speaks of removing a soiled cloth you have which has gotten dirty in the work of the day.  It’s also used as an athletic term for  runners disrobing to get down to the minimal shorts and shirts for their race.  The writer of Hebrews speaks of this when he says we are to “…lay aside [put off] every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).  This is what Peter is referencing.

If you’re going to pursue tasting and seeing that God is good in the year 2013, it’s going to mean ridding yourself of some things.

  1. Tasting of God’s goodness involves getting rid of all malice.  Notice Peter says, “…all malice…”  Let’s stop there for a moment.  What does he mean by “all malice”?  It is the Greek word kakia.  It means evil—all evil.  Just get rid of all evil.  It is an all-inclusive word that speaks of all kinds of wickedness.  Peter is saying we must remove any evil attitudes or actions from our lives.  Notice he doesn’t say “some of them” but “all malice”—all of them.

 

This word speaks of run-of-the-mill evil.  It’s the evil that we see, shrug our shoulders at and say, “That’s just what they do on TV.  That’s what they do on our radio stations or in our books.”  It’s the evil we tend to laugh at—we don’t let other Christians know we’re laughing at it but it’s funny.  It’s things the Bible says are wrong but we see as palatable in our lives.  Peter says, “You have to rid yourselves of it.  It dishonors God.” 

 

Peter starts here because this is such a problem.  We get this idea that it’s okay to do these things, but James reminds us that these things may seem to start out okay but in the end they lead to death and destruction (James 1:14-16).  Some of us are playing around with these run-of-the-mill evils that we try to explain away and Peter says, “Get rid of them or they will get rid of you.  They’re going to hurt you in the long run.” 

 

  1. Tasting of God’s goodness involves getting rid of all deceit.  Peter goes on and says “…all deceit…”  This is the Greek word dolos.  It is an interesting word that was used by fishermen.  How apropos—Peter was a fisherman so he knew what this word meant.  He says, “Don’t be one who practices this dolos living.”  You might ask, “What do you mean, Peter?”  It means a fisherman who baits the hook.  So what does that mean?

 

How many of you are fishermen?  You’re deceitful people.  You came to be blessed but I’m going to confront you.  You’re a liar!  You go to the lake and put a little worm on the hook, cast the line and advertise to all the fish that it is dinnertime.  “Come and get it!  I’m a nice fisherman.  I have brought before you a little worm.  He’s wiggling there right before you.  I’ll give it a little tug once in a while so you know it’s alive and there for you—it’s not a dead worm.  Look at the worm.  It’s a beautiful worm.”  Soon the fish sees it, likes it and is thankful for the fisherman: “You’re the greatest person in my life!” and he chomps on the worm.  What does he learn?  The fisherman is a deceitful person.  All of that song and dance of goodness that the fish thought was for him was actually for the fisherman.  It wasn’t for the fish’s benefit.

 

Peter is saying, “Don’t be a person who advertises being there for the benefit of others when in the end you’re only in it for yourself.”  That’s what dolos means.  Some of us point out all of our benefits and say, “Oh, look how beneficial I am to you.  You should thank your stars that you have a friend like me because of all the good I do.  Look how wonderful I am for the church.  Look at all the great things I do.”  In the end, all you’re doing is saying, “It’s all about me.”  You’re playing the part of being this great, beneficial giver to others.  In the end, people bite at that hook and learn that it’s not all about them, their goodness and happiness; it’s about you—the person holding the hook.  A deceitful person destroys a church.  Deceit destroys marriages, families and it will destroy the community of a church because it is all about self.

 

Let me just clarify—it is okay to fish.  It’s under the blood so keep fishing.

 

  1. Tasting of God’s goodness involves getting rid of all hypocrisy.  Notice that deceit leads to hypocrisy.  Peter says, “We need to check our attitudes.”  Hypocrisy is the Greek word hypokrisis.  It speaks of an actor in the theater who plays a part.  He is one thing off stage and then when he gets on stage, he is another thing.

 

Hypocrisy happens when we become actors with each other.  By ourselves, we are one thing—all kinds of language come out of our mouths and we pursue all kinds of evil things.  But then we come to church and say, “God is good.  I’ve had some really great sanctifying moments in my life.  God has really shown His justification in my life as He has clearly dispensed the Holy Spirit in blessing, honor, glory and praise.  Amen.”  You don’t talk like that any other time of the day—that’s hypocrisy.

 

Let me get closer to home.  You’ve been yelling and screaming at your family.  You pull into the parking lot at church yelling, “You dumb kids!  You dumb wife!” or “You dumb husband!”  Then you come inside and are greeted with , “Hey, how’s the family?”  You say, “Oh, couldn’t be better!  Look at us!  We’re in love; our kids are perfect!”  You’re playing the part of a hypocrite.

 

Another example might be that you’re struggling with sin and dying inside because of it.  You come, sit through a service and leave this place without telling anybody.  No one’s the wiser.  You’re playing the part.  There’s no community if it’s all a bunch of hypocrisy and acting.

 

  1. Tasting of God’s goodness involves getting rid of all envy.  Envy is when we desire things others have that we don’t have.  We resent people because of their situation in life, their possessions, the people they have around them or the positions they hold.  But envy is a distortion.

 

Let me reuse an example from my last message.  I might become envious of my brother Keith because I look at him and say, “Man, look at Keith.  He drives a nice car.  He has a full head of hair.  His blood pressure is under control.  His kids are always smiling.  They’re always wonderful kids.  I never see them yelling or screaming at each other.”  Then I look at my car, my hair, my blood pressure and my kids.

 

When I envy, I do a couple of things.  First, I totally disregard all the good things God has given me.  I throw them all down to the lowest point and say, “Look, he’s got everything great and everything I have is worthless.”  God says that is a lack of contentment.  Envy begins with a lack of contentment.

 

Brothers and sisters, when we envy others we are distorting what they have.  I might say, “Man, Keith’s got the life!” but can I tell you a secret?  When I really take some time to get to know Keith—and I do know Keith—I find out that his life isn’t all put together either.  He’s just as messed up as I am.  Can I tell you another secret?  Kate yells at him just like Amanda yells at me!  Can I tell you something else?  His kids do mess up just like my kids do.  We need to understand that envy is the worst kind of lie because it’s lying to ourselves.

 

You know what else happens when we envy one another?  We start to hate one another.  “You have what I want.”  James says we will steal and murder because we don’t have what we want (James 4:2).  “Welcome to Village Bible Church—watch your back because you have something your neighbor wants!”

 

  1. Tasting of God’s goodness involves getting rid of all slander.  Envy leads to slander.  This word slander is the Greek word katalalia.  It is the general sinning of your mouth.  It is literally to speak down about someone.  It involves gossip, tale bearing, back biting, spreading rumors, passing along a bad report, taking cheap shots, disparaging comments and using humor to hurt others.  You can do it in so many ways.  You can slander without even saying anything.  You can do it with an unfinished statement, veiled accusations or the raising of an eyebrow.

 

So what does all this mean?  You say, “Okay Tim, we’ve got all these sins.”  If that’s true, you’re not going to be able to love one another or taste the goodness of God in one another’s lives.  Notice that this list is a progression: 

  • General wickedness leads to deceit. 
  • Deceit will inevitably lead to hypocrisy. 
  • Hypocrisy then leads to envy.
  • Envy will then lead to slander. 

 

Peter is saying, “Believer, get rid of this stuff because in it, you will never experience the goodness of God.  It will staunch your ability to grow.”

 

  1. 3.  Experiencing that Which Satisfies

Not only do we need to eliminate sin, but we also need to embrace that which satisfies.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this point because we know what we need to do.  We know; we’ve heard many messages by many preachers that say, “Get into the Word.”  So here is what Peter says, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.”

Being able to embrace this involves a couple of things:

  1. Embracing what satisfies involves craving the right things.  Peter says we are to be like newborn infants.  He is not saying we are to be immature; he is using an illustration.  He’s saying, “As a newborn craves its mother’s milk, so we ought to crave the milk of the Word of God.”  We need to be careful not to mix this metaphor with other teachings of Scripture where the Bible says we need to move on from the milk of the Word and get on to the meat of the Word (Hebrews 5:11-14).  Peter’s illustration here is a picture of the hunger we need to have for the Scriptures and for the goodness of God revealed in His Scriptures.  We need to crave the right things.

 

The question I want to ask you today is a simple one because Peter isn’t trying to get deep here.  Actually, he is trying to get deep—it’s just so simple that we miss it.  Do you crave the Word of God like a baby craves milk?  Just think about it.  We’ve all seen it; a baby doesn’t give you a warning.  He doesn’t say, “Oh, here’s a 20-minute warning.  The belly’s getting a little low.”  The second that baby is hungry, he lets everybody know it.  Far too many of us don’t crave the Scriptures like that.  Here’s the thing: just as a baby proves its position as a baby—by the craving of its mother’s milk—so a Christian proves his Christianity by the craving of the Word of God.

 

Do you understand that?  A baby proves it is alive and is a baby when he yearns for his mother’s milk—nothing else will do.  If you’ve never known that, just live sometime as the husband of a breastfeeding mom.  Have you ever been there?  Your wife has been breastfeeding your baby but she goes out with the ladies one night and you’re left with this kid.  Then it’s “go” time and Mama’s nowhere to be found.  There’s nothing you can do!  You pick up the baby who is saying , “Where’s it at?”  You say, “I’ve got nothing!”  The baby says, “I want Mom.  I’m going to be angry until I get Mom.  I’m not going to be satisfied until I get to Mom.”

 

The Scriptures are the only thing that should satisfy the Christian.  If you’re not craving the Word, then you need to go back to the first point and examine your situation.  “Why don’t I crave it?  Why don’t I long for it?  Why don’t I find myself yearning for it each day?”  Here’s the great promise.  The Word of God is spiritual and pure.  There are no additives.  You’re not going to taste it and say, “I thought it was going to satisfy but it doesn’t.”  As a preacher of God’s Word, I can tell you the Word has met me every step of the way and it can meet you as well.

 

  1. Embracing what satisfies involves growing in the right ways.  Do you want a fresh start this New Year?  Do you want to grow up in your salvation?  Do you want to be mature in the faith?  Get in God’s Word this year.  Let’s not just be known on our sign as a Bible church.  Let’s be people who make the Bible central to who we are.

 

The way we’ll know we’ve done that isn’t through status updates.  I don’t need you to tell me, “Hey, I’m on page 438 in my yearly reading through the Bible.”  I get a kick out of that.  We have these apps on Facebook that say, “I’m on day 32 of reading through the Bible.”  Do you know what would be more helpful?  It would be more helpful if your life just showed it.

 

I know everyone’s going to be on Facebook getting rid of these apps; that’s not what I mean.  Those apps are fine but when I see them, I can’t help but think theological things like, “Just live it!”  We don’t need to tell people, “Well, I’m a Bible-believing Christian.”  We need to show it.  We don’t need to carry a big Bible at our side.  We just need to live lives that show we crave the Word of God—we long for this book.  We need to live out Psalm 119:16 which says, “[Each day] I will delight in your statutes…”

 

Can you say that this year?  If not, let’s do some examining.  Let’s start eliminating some sins and embracing that which truly satisfies.

Let’s pray.

Father God, we come before You and thank You for Your Word.  I’m so thankful for it because it is what gives life.  It is the living and abiding Word of God (1 Peter 1:23).  I’m thankful for the life change it makes in us.  Each day, we hear of the lives that have been changed—whether through the teaching that brings salvation or the teaching that sanctifies.  I’m thankful that we are a people who truly do love Your Word.  Encourage us even more this year to do it with greater craving and greater longing.  I pray that doing so would change the way we fellowship with one another.  I pray that we would taste Your goodness together.  I pray that it would change the way we worship, the way we fellowship and the way we embrace one another in love.

Lord, I thank You for Your Word and what it does in our lives.  I’m thankful for what it’s done in my brother Curtis’ life as he now shows the world that he’s ridding himself of sin and putting on holiness through the symbol of baptism.  We are thankful for that.  Now lead us from this place.  Give us the strength by Your Spirit to live differently as people of Your Word this week.  As we long for the pure spiritual milk of Your Word, let it be that which truly does satisfy us this week.  In Christ’s name we pray.  Amen.