Would you turn in your Bibles
with me please to the book of 1st Peter chapter 2. I've entitled today's message
as newborn babes. Those are the words used in this
text of scripture we're going to read in 1st Peter chapter
2. 1st Peter, I mean the Apostle
Peter in the days, early days of the church was prominent as
one that God, the Lord Jesus Christ, had by his grace given
the gospel to for his people. And he writes later in this book,
it occurs to me in chapter five, he says, the elders which are
among you I exhort who am also an elder. So he was old when
he wrote this book. this epistle. Of course, he wrote
it by the Holy Spirit. It's the word of God. But he
used the character and the experiences of Peter. And at this time, he
was an older man. And he wrote it, if you also
look at the last part of this book, he says that he wrote it
to the church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, salutes
you. So he wrote it in what we would call now country of Iraq. It was nowhere near Jerusalem. He was writing to the strangers
scattered abroad. You can see that the church was
in what would outwardly appear as turmoil and dispersed dispersion. But this was exactly the way
that God designed it. He designed his gospel to go
forward in all the world, and the way that happened was through
trouble, through persecution. And it reminds me on the heels
of everything that Ramel said to us, that the apostle Paul
also said this, that when I am weak, then am I strong. God always
uses our weakness. He always uses our weakness to
glorify himself. We had nine children in our family,
Brad and I. And during the years of the life
of our childhood, I remember my mother praying. I would hear
her at night. Didn't mean to do that, but I
would hear her at night working, praying. I knew that she was
always concerned about our salvation. That was the one thing she was
concerned about. But as God would have it in his
providence, at the time appointed, he brought my mother to understand
the truth of the gospel years after that. So that she believed
what she believed then was not the truth of the gospel. But
she, by God's grace, heard it later. And I say this because
in her life, she realized that God always does his work. in such a way that leaves us
without any basis for taking glory to ourselves. She couldn't
take any credit for the salvation of her children. God did it. God did it. She could take no
credit for her own salvation. Now I tell you that as a little
story of my own life. In our own experience, the Lord
reached into our lives when we were not thinking of him. We
were probably thinking religiously, but we weren't thinking of the
Lord Jesus Christ as he really is. We were ignorant of him.
And the gospel comes to us as light shining into the darkness. And that's always the way it
is. And so when the apostle Peter writes, he writes with not only
the authority of an apostle of Christ, who at this time, Peter's
on earth, the Lord Jesus is in heaven. Peter had just been with
him these three and a half years. You would think that if any of
the other men were strong and burly and rugged, it was Peter. But think of this man whose forearms
were likely huge because of his fishing trade, pulling in nets
and constantly working with his hands and so forth. And then
he walks to Jesus on the water. And here's this man who is confident. He's a leader. And yet he finds
himself sinking when he's coming to Christ because he sees the
waves. And he's sinking and he cries out, Lord, Save me, I'm
sinking. And the Lord Jesus Christ reaches
down. I don't know what he looked like
physically, it doesn't matter. But with almighty strength, lifted
up that burly fisherman, grabbed a hold of his forearm perhaps,
and jerked him up out of the water, set him on the water.
That's Christ, our Savior. Now he writes to us, and he writes
with all of the emotion of a shepherd, a shepherd of Christ's dear sheep. And he's concerned to write to
them with the greatest degree of consolation that he can give,
with the greatest accuracy of the truth, he doesn't want to
distort it, he wants to give it as pure as he can give it.
But he also wants to give it to them in such a way that he
gives it to them as God's dear children. He knows they need
to behave as God's children. He reminds them of who they are,
what they were, who they are. They were sinners. They were
elected by God the Father. They were redeemed by the blood,
the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were given
a new nature, a spirit. created by God, raised spiritually
from the dead to life, Christ now dwelling in them. They have
this new nature. They're born of God. They're
children of God by birth, who were chosen and adopted by him
from before the foundation of the world. And so he's speaking
to them in this light, and he reminds them of all these great
blessings. And he reminds them of the fact,
as we read last week, that all flesh is as grass. And this amplifies,
this shows, shines a great contrast on the grace, contrast to what
we are, that we are but grass, withering grass. And what a great
adoration and admiration we have for the Lord Jesus Christ and
His grace to us, because we are withering grass, all flesh is
grass, and yet He chose us, redeemed us, and birthed us by His Spirit.
He made us His own children. and these things are given to
us. And he says this in verse 23 of chapter one. He says, being
born again, not of corruptible seed, not as your parents gave
birth to you, but of incorruptible, the seed of the spirit of God
by the word of God. And that reminds us of John chapter
three, where Jesus told Nicodemus, unless a man is born of water
and of the spirit, in other words, water and the wind, those two
physical things represent spiritual things. Water, the word, the
wind, the spirit. And he says here, being born
again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, the spirit
of God, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. In
1 John 3, verse 9, it says, God's seed dwelleth in the one who
is born of God. That seed is the Spirit of God. And for all flesh is as grass,
all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers,
the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth
forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached to you. Now, he's talking to these people
who had seen persecution, They were scattered, they were dispersed.
They had heard the gospel, they had embraced Christ in faith,
and they were walking with him. And he tells them that the word
of the Lord now, the word of the Lord which by the gospel
is preached to you, that endures forever. Everything else, you
cannot put your trust in that. The Lord's Word alone will last
forever, and that's what we must rely on. That's what we must
look to, is what God has said concerning His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's what's true. That's what's
lasting. That's what will be our salvation.
When this world fades away, God's Word will stand. Now, chapter
two and verse one, notice what he says here. Wherefore, that's
what the word means, therefore, wherefore, in light of everything
else that he's been speaking about here. Wherefore, laying
aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and
all evil speakings as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk
of the word that you may grow, thereby, if so be, you have tasted
that the Lord is gracious. Now I wanna just look at those
few verses there, those three verses in this second chapter.
Notice what he says, wherefore, considering all of the grace
that has come to you, considering the fact that God's word alone
endures forever, Wherefore, do this, lay aside all these things,
and as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word. That's simple, isn't it? If so
be you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. The if, in verse
three, is referring back to not only the fact that if you have
tasted, but he's referring back to those things in the first
two verses. If you have tasted, then, that's
what the first two verses are. They're the then of this if.
If you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, then lay it aside,
these things, and as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk
of the word. As you think about these verses
here, I want you to see the negative laid aside and the positive. Now, I wish that I could give
you an illustration of this, as it ought to be, but the only
illustration I have to give you is the one that God has told
us of in his word. Newborn babes. When we think
of a newborn, I have a granddaughter who my daughter, Hannah, just
yesterday, I think it was, or maybe the day before, she sent
us a picture. And she was tasting her first food, banana mashed
up. You should see her face. She
was so excited. She was overjoyed to be tasting
this banana. And she just wanted to take the
bowl and stick her face into it. She was so excited. She's
a newborn babe. And she didn't have any pretense. She wasn't pretending that she
was something, she wasn't. She's just a baby. She doesn't
think about putting on airs. She's just herself. She says
what she wants, she grabs for it, and everything she's thinking
shows up on her face. That's just the way she is. She
doesn't have the skill that we as adults do to put on this way
of looking so people can't see what we're really thinking. She's
a newborn babe. Now, we have been born of God. We don't really understand. It
doesn't really sink in, the significance of what that is. We have been
born of God. Think about it. Before birth,
after birth, you come from not being in the world to being born. And everything is new. I mean,
it takes babies years for them to even get a sense of sounds
and sights and depth perception and understand words. Everything
is new to you because you've just been born, right? Now, when
you're born physically, Your physical body is naturally adapted
to your environment and what's there in front of you. The first
thing you want, the first comfort you receive is what? Your mother's
breast. And what is it you desire? And
God has given you as a newborn baby the ability to latch on
and to drink of your mother's milk. And you receive comfort
from being in your mother's arms, being pressed against her body,
and drinking that sweet nourishment from your mother. This is your
life. You just take it in. And this
is all you need. You just drink it in. And when it's taken away,
you feel disoriented. And when you wake up, I need
something. I don't know what it is, but there it is. And now
suddenly you're comforted and you're quiet. Now, as we are
born of the Spirit of God, everything that we previously lived upon,
we lived upon in our flesh, in that natural self that we were. And what is that? How did we
live then? What was our environment like?
Well, it's described in verse one. We have to lay this aside,
but this is what we lived. Malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies,
and all evil speakings. Those were natural to us. That
was our environment. We liked it. We thrived on it. We lived upon those things. We
got vengeance. We sought revenge when someone
did us wrong. We were offended easily when
they did something we thought we didn't deserve. How dare they? Why am I not getting what I deserve
in life? I deserve these things. And we
have this attitude. When someone else was preferred
before us, or maybe they were more skillful, we envied them
and we wished that something bad would happen to them. That's
envy. And hypocrisies. We're constantly, we were constantly
trying to present ourselves as something that we were not. And
this is the way we live. We grew into this and we became
mature in this. Malice, guile, guile is deceit. Hypocrisies, putting on a pretense
and envies, always desiring what we don't have because someone
else seems to be getting better than we have. And all evil speaking. That's what our flesh lives upon. And now, he says, as newborn
babes, Those things, you are not in any way dependent upon
those things. That which is born of God is
not dependent upon the things you used to live upon and thrive
in. In fact, it's exactly the opposite
now. Your newborn babes desire the
sincere milk of the word, the truth of it as it truly is. We
don't have to claim to know what we don't know. We don't have
to put on hypocrisy. We don't have to claim to have
experienced what we've never experienced. And we don't have
to claim to be somebody that we're not. Why? Because in the
new birth, we've been given the eyes to see that all of our standing
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ has washed
us from our sins. We're pure before God in his
own precious blood. In his own righteousness we've
been clothed. And the Spirit of God has been
given to us in order for us to see this by what he gives, which
is faith. And that faith is something that
was foreign to us before. It's not of the flesh. Now it's
new. Now we live by the faith that
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're newborn babes. Our environment
is completely different. It's a spiritual life. And if
we think that this is describing something that's too radical,
think about what God says it is when we're born of God. He says that we've been translated
in Colossians 1.14, I think it is. We've been translated out
of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his own dear son. Now, you were in this kingdom.
You live with another ruler over you and you were so well adapted
to it, you didn't even know you were in bondage and in deception
and you were deceived and you were deceiving others, you were
deceiving yourself. And you live this way, you even
talk this way. You know, I go sometimes to a
place where I'm around people who I'm not normally around and
their talk is different. And every other word is, hey
dude this, and bro that, and you never know what they're saying,
and it's cool, and you're using words that I don't even know,
what are you saying? Every once in a while you get
a substantive noun or verb in there, and everything else is
just fluff. This is talking about things
that aren't real. It's trying to make up a relationship
that doesn't exist. It's living in an imaginary,
vain world. A world of deceit and pretense.
A world that's empty and dark. Has no truth in it. No life in
it. But as newborn babes, now we
have the truth of heaven. We have the life of Christ. And
we have the Word of God and we live upon the Word of God by
faith. As newborn babes then, desire
this. Desire this. Lay aside these
things. You know, when we were, before
the Lord saved us, we were slaves of sin. The Bible describes us
as servants of sin. We were debtors to the flesh. We had to do these things. We
were slaves to it. Our flesh ruled over us. But
now, we've been given the seed of God himself living in us. We have a new nature. And in
this new nature, we live by faith. We walk by faith. Christ is the
desire of our heart. We want to be found in him. and
we trust that we are before God found in him. So how do we live
with those around us? We don't have to put on deceit,
do we? We don't have to pretend something. If someone says, well,
what about this? Well, what about it? I don't
have to act like I know that or have been that. Let's just
look at it honestly, right? We don't have to be anything
because all that I am, I am in Christ as a believer. God's spirit
living in me, Christ himself living in me is my life. You
see these things so many places in scripture. I want to take
you just a couple here. Look at Colossians Chapter 3,
and we'll just read the first few verses here, Colossians Chapter
3. He says back in verse 20 of chapter two in Colossians, he
says, wherefore if you be dead with Christ, if you be dead,
to what? From the rudiments of the world,
the things of this world, the things that are natural to our
flesh. We enjoy the world's religion before the Lord saved us. We
were happy to labor right alongside everybody else in religion. and
it seemed good to us, the more that we did that was pleasing
to others, the more confident we felt in ourself. That's the
way religion does. The more we're able to keep up
with those around us, the more confident we are. We begin to
think of ourselves, I'm kind of doing better now. I used to
do these things, now look, I've got a lot of things I've knocked
off and some things I've added on. I'm doing pretty good. We've
completely missed the truth. Because the fact is that a believer's
life is a being brought down in self. It's what Paul describes
as those things which I considered before to be gain, now they're
most nauseating and repugnant as dung. I count them all loss
that I might have Christ. and to be found in Him, not having
my own righteousness. So he says here, you died with
Christ to the rudiments of the world. But look in chapter three,
verse one, if you then be risen with Christ, and this is the
same people who are the newborn babes, if you then be risen with
Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits
on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things
above, not on things on the earth, not temporal things, not the
world's religion, not the world's politics, not the world's possessions,
not the world's applause, not the world's stability. Our life
is Christ. He says so. You are dead and
your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our
life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory. And he goes on, mortified therefore
your members which are upon the earth, and he lists them here.
Same pattern, right? You were alienated in your minds
by wicked works. You were just withering grass.
God chose you to salvation before the world began. He redeemed
you at the cross. He gave you His Spirit. He birthed
you as His children. And now you're newborn babes.
Your environment, the way you live, is a spiritual life. It's nothing like the flesh before. The Word of God is your food. Christ is your life. And faith
is that activity of the soul that reaches out and comes to
God by Him. As newborn babes, therefore,
desire the sincere milk of the Word. It doesn't mean milk as
the basic essential truths that we need to go beyond. It's talking
about the things that are true and substantive that grown men
need to live on. But in this new life, this newborn
life as babes, there's nothing more singular than the word of
Christ and Him crucified, is there? We live upon Him. The Word of God is the Lord Jesus
Christ, isn't He? He is the Word of God. And so
the written Word is about Him, the Spirit of God reveals Him
in that Word, and we drink Him in. And in Isaiah 55, ho everyone
that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money,
come ye buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk without
money and without price. Why do you spend your labor and
your money on that which satisfies not? Hearken, listen diligently
unto me and eat that which is good. God's word, the gospel,
these things are our life, aren't they? He says in verse three,
if so be you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Now, one
thing I want to avoid doing in looking at this verse is trying
to set up some kind of an intangible, undefinable level of experience
as a Christian that you need to come to, which you probably
can't get your hands around, and I can't either define, but
somehow it's tasting. What do you mean? Well, it's
just tasting. You believed on Christ, but you need to taste
him. You know, bringing it up to another level so that no one
knows what it is, but some people claim that they have it. You
know what that is? Hypocrisy. That's hypocrisy. That's pretense. That's deceit.
That's guile. We've put that away. We have
the Word of God. It's not by private interpretation,
is it? No, but it is by revelation. And God's revelation of his word
is a revelation of what? The Lord in his grace. Look at Matthew chapter eight.
I wanna see these people that experienced, that tasted that
the Lord is gracious. Matthew chapter eight. This is
just an example and you can probably jump to many now when we look
at this. It says in Matthew chapter eight
and verse two, And behold, there came a leper. A leper is someone
who had a disease that went, you could see it on the skin,
but it went deeper than the skin. That was leprosy. It went deeper
than the skin. And it made the man unclean in
the eyes of God's law. And he had to cry out, I am unclean. Do not come near me, I'm unclean. But this leper, who was not to
come near, notice, there came a leper and he worshiped Christ. And he said to him, notice the
words, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. Now that is
the purest statement of worship I can find. If you will, it's up to you. Do what seems
good to you. Right? We could go to many examples
of this, but there's one that I just recently read about. David,
when they brought the ark, when Absalom came in and overthrew
the rule that was in Jerusalem, and David fled with his people,
and they thought, well, let's take the ark with us, and David
told them, no, no, no, you take the ark back. If the Lord is
pleased with me, he'll bring me back to see his habitation.
But if he does not take delight in me, then let him do what seems
good to him. That's what this man's saying.
Lord, if you will, if you will, would it be okay with you if
God saved you only if it seemed good to him? That's the truth
of the way it is, isn't it? God doesn't save us because it
seems good to us. He saves us because it pleased
Him. The leper comes to Jesus and
worshiped Him. You know, when you worship, you
worship God, you worship Christ when you realize that He's sovereign,
and He does whatever He wills, and what He wills is always good,
and if He leaves me in my sin, that's good. but all that he
would have mercy upon me. Lord, if you will, if you will,
you can make me clean. And the Lord Jesus said, as he
would say to anyone who comes this way, he said, he put forth
his hand to the leper, the unclean, which if you touch, you were
unclean. And he touched him and he said, I will. be thou clean,
and immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And if you look at
verse 17 of the same chapter, that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying himself took our infirmities
and bear our sicknesses. Now see, that's tasting that
the Lord is gracious. He came to the Realization by
God's hand, which was a hand of mercy, but it didn't feel
like mercy to him. It felt like oppression. It felt
like affliction. But it's good for me that I was
afflicted, that I might learn. Learn thy precepts only by being
afflicted. The leper in Matthew 8, he was
afflicted, and yet it was God's hand of mercy because it brought
him to see all of his salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. When
he was brought low and he had nothing, and in fact, when he
was under the sentence of death and separation from God in his
leprosy, he saw that his salvation was in Christ. And he put himself
into his hands as it were. Lord, if you will. And the Lord
Jesus was pleased to be merciful because that's his nature. He
is gracious. Taste and see that the Lord is
gracious. When God saves us, he shows us
his requirements of us. And then he shows us that we
fail to meet them. He shows us we're guilty and
he shows us we're helpless to either remove our guilt or to
change our inward corruptions. We might be able to change some
superficial outward behaviors, but then it pops up somewhere
else, doesn't it? We suppress this thing and it
pops up over here. And someone points it out and
we get all indignant. No, that's not true, I'm better
than that. And so we pop that down and something
else pops up. But when the Lord saves us, we
come to that realization that, you know what? In the eyes of
God, I have nothing, I am nothing, I know nothing, I've experienced
nothing spiritual. I am a sinner only, dead in my
sins, and what can I do to be saved, Lord? And the Lord says,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, believing on Him ascribes
all of my salvation to Him and looks for nothing of that in
me. Otherwise, when we see these
words like this, we begin to say, the one whose taste of the
Lord is gracious, we begin to imagine, what does this mean?
It means, well, it must mean like this. It means I had some
kind of an experience or I felt a deeper, I don't know, spirituality,
a higher level of something. It's all baloney. And tasting
the Lord as gracious means that you're going to be brought to
nothing, and then you're going to see a way and outside of yourself,
not introspectively, not looking at your navel spiritually, but
looking at Christ, looking away, looking to Him, and seeing there,
there is the one who pleases God, and in Him alone is all
my salvation, and God must see me in Him, not in me. You see,
that means I have tasted. The Lord is gracious. That's
what the publican said. God, be merciful. Look to Christ,
the propitiation for me, the sinner. And Jesus said, that
man went down to his house justified. He was only a sinner, he was
an utterly helpless sinner, and he cried out of his guilt to
the one who cannot receive sinners, and he received him for Christ's
sake. The one who is holy, who cannot
pervert justice, justified him, even though he was a sinner,
because he looked upon the propitiation he saw Christ and his shed blood
for him. That man tasted that the Lord
is gracious. And so all of the apostles did
this. Peter, depart from me, Lord,
I'm a sinful man. And Jesus said, fear not, hereafter
I will teach you, you'll be a fisher of men. This is the graciousness of the
Lord. When we see the Lord Jesus Christ, if we could see him,
how would we describe him? Majesty, awe-striking majesty. But you know what? It says in
John 1, verse 17, the law was given by Moses, and you know
the people, they were impressed then. They stood back, don't
touch the mount, we won't touch the mount, quake, it's shake,
smoke. It was terrifying. Even Moses
cried, I exceedingly fear and quake. But grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ. What do we see when we see God?
We see the humility, the lowliness, the meekness, the grace towards
sinners that Christ had. Now, as newborn babes, as newborn
babes, born of his own spirit, Christ dwelling in you, what
will our life be? We put away these things. Malice?
We don't seek revenge anymore. We forgive as we've been forgiven.
Do we speak guile? Do we pretend that we're one
thing and not another? Do we use double standards in
our speech? No. Transparent, like a newborn
babe. I can't hide it. I'm happy, I'm
sad, I'm crying, I'm sick. They just cry out. This is what
I am, a newborn babe. And now you desire the comfort
of your mother's breast and the nourishment that God has given
to you through his word. the breasts of consolation, the
gospel of God's grace, come to Christ. Come to him and see that
he is the one who bears our sins. I love what Robert Hawker wrote. Let's see if I can find this.
He says, I'll read to you two things, one by Robert Hawker.
He says this, for my own part, this is Robert Hawker, I recommend
him highly. For my own part, I love to feel
my wants. and poverty and leanness that
I may carry all to Christ. Do you do that? Lord, I am a
sinner. I don't know. I have no claims
before you. I can't look to my experience.
I can't look to my knowledge. I can't look to anything of my
own. My faith seems like it's unbelief. My prayers seem like they go
nowhere. I don't have prayers. I don't
have anything, Lord. Carry it all to Christ and make
an exchange for his fullness, riches, and soul-renewing comforts. And very sure I am. Robert Hawker
goes on, that if I did not feel those things, but were puffed
up in my own fleshly mind, the throne of grace would not be
often visited by me. Oh, how blessed, how truly blessed
it is when God the Spirit gives the soul a feeling sense of her
poverty, then points to Jesus, who is all fullness to supply,
then leads the soul to Christ and opens a communication with
Christ for the supply of every want and the enjoyment of all
suitableness and all sufficiency. Isn't that wonderful? That's
what it means to taste that the Lord is gracious. Let me read
this to you and we'll close. This is what Spurgeon said about
this, Charles Spurgeon, when he says to lay aside these things.
He says, this is what we are to lay aside, to put away from
us, to banish altogether. These are the old garments of
the flesh, which we are to give up to the moths. that they may
devour them and leave not a fragment of the old rags for us to wear. Laying aside all malice, has
anyone injured you? Are you angry with him because
of what he has done to you? then freely forgive the injury
and completely forget it. And all guile, that is, everything
that is of the nature of craftiness and deception, be honest, simple,
straightforward, transparent. This is a trait of character
which well becomes all Christians. and hypocrisies of all sorts.
Let us not profess to be what we are not, nor pretend to know
what we do not, or talk of experiences which we have never felt. In
fact, let us never be hypocrites in any respect whatsoever. The
God of truth loves his children to be the embodiments of truth
and hypocrisy he hates with a perfect hatred and envies, we must lay
them aside. All envies of men because they
are richer or more gifted or more highly esteemed than we
are, let us not envy anybody. For envy eats a man's own heart
and slays him as a life has said to Job, envy slayeth the silly
one. In all evil speakings, we are
not to be the respecters of stories, to the discredit of others, or
to make up to exaggerate any evil reports concerning anything
in our lives. Let us have nothing to do with
them. Lay it aside. It's not part of the newborn
babe in Christ, is it? What is? The gospel of His grace
by which we taste that the Lord is gracious when we're helpless
and needy sinners and find Christ to be our all. Let's pray. Father,
thank You for Your Word. May we live upon Christ through
Your Word, by Your Spirit. Give us His grace, Lord. Don't
leave us in ourselves. Bring us to Yourself. Be with
us, walk with us, and cause us to walk with You by faith, through
grace. We live upon Your grace. We do
not live upon our works. We live upon Your grace alone
and Your truth as Your dear children because You've made it so. You've
given us these words to hope in, our Savior to trust and to
hope in. And so, Lord, we pray You'd bless
us for His sake. In Jesus' name, amen.