Longing that Leads to Growth-Prerequisites

Q: What does the Bible say about spiritual growth?

The Bible encourages believers to long for the spiritual milk of God's Word to grow in their faith (1 Peter 2:2). In 1 Peter 2:2, Peter urges Christians to desire the sincere milk of the Word, just as newborn babes crave milk, so that they may grow into their salvation. This growth is not merely intellectual but involves a deepening relationship with Christ and transformation through His Word. Believers are called to feed on Scripture, which nourishes their souls and helps them mature in faith. To experience this growth, individuals must also engage in putting away sins that hinder their spiritual appetite.

Q: How do we know that longing for God's Word is essential for growth?

Longing for God's Word is essential for spiritual growth as it nourishes the soul and fosters maturity in Christ (1 Peter 2:1-3). Peter presents a clear connection between spiritual longing and growth in 1 Peter 2:2-3. He instructs believers that growth in salvation is dependent upon the sincere desire for the Word of God, akin to how a newborn craves milk. This longing reflects a genuine taste of the Lord's goodness, which leads to an insatiable hunger for His truth. Without this desire, spiritual malnourishment occurs, stunting growth. Therefore, a longing for Scripture indicates an active faith responding to the grace received in Christ.

Q: Why is it important to put away sin for spiritual growth?

Putting away sin is crucial for spiritual growth as it removes obstacles that hinder our appetite for God's Word (1 Peter 2:1). In 1 Peter 2:1, Peter provides instruction that before believers can long for the spiritual milk of the Word, they must first put away all malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, and evil speakings. This prerequisite is not merely about avoiding wrongdoing but creating a heart posture conducive to receiving God's truth. Sin disrupts our relationship with God and clouds our judgment, making us indifferent to His Word. Embracing holiness and actively turning away from sin is vital to maintain a healthy spiritual appetite and thus allows for true growth in grace.

Now may I invite you to turn
with me in your Bibles to 1 Peter, 1 Peter, and for the first time
this morning I'll say chapter 2, 1 Peter, chapter 2. I shall read the first three
verses in your hearing. Putting away, therefore, all
wickedness or malice, and all guile and hypocrisies and envies,
and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, long for the spiritual
milk which is without guile, that you may grow thereby unto
salvation, if or since you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Now, just a few moments ago,
I asked you to turn in your Bibles to the book of 1 Peter. And I noticed that many of you,
not all of you, but many of you, most of you, either have a Bible
in your hands or spread out on your lap. And if I were to ask
you, what is the unique nature of that book that you hold in
your hands or is spread on your lap? that book that contains
this portion of the Word of God which I've read in your hearing,
if I ask you what is the unique nature of that book, what makes
it totally different from any other book you might ever hold
in your hands or place on your lap, I hope most of you would
answer by saying, It is the only Spirit-inspired revelation of
the mind and will of God given to mankind. What makes this book
utterly unique is that it is the only Spirit-inspired revelation
of the mind and will of God to mankind. As Peter himself writes
in his second letter, No prophecy ever came by the will of man,
but holy men of God spoke and by inference wrote as they were
born along by the Holy Spirit. And I trust on that fundamental
tenet of our faith None of us will ever waver, and that we
as a church will never equivocate in making our joyful confession
that this book contains the very words that reflect the mind and
will of the one true and living God. However, as you have been
instructed many times, God did not give his words to us in some
kind of special celestial or angel language. He gave his words
to us through men. Holy men of God spoke as they
were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And they spoke in the
thought patterns, the figures of speech, and all of the various
tools that men use when communicating their thoughts one toward another. And that means there will be,
as we have been instructed in great detail in recent weeks,
figures of speech. There will be figures. There
will be things in the Scriptures deeply embedded in the circle
of the thought and the experience of the biblical writers. There
will be similes. Certain things will be like this,
or metaphors. Certain things will be said to
be this or to be that. There will be references to historical
events, and some of those, because we are not in the world of the
biblical writers, convey very little to us. And we have to
go back and try to understand what made that clear to the biblical
writer that he would use to illustrate a truth, something that is all
darkness to me. For example, in our reading in
Mark chapter 2 this morning, How many of you have ever seen
a liter of wine in a wine skin? Well, all of those to whom Jesus
spoke, that would have been a common part of their life, to see the
skin of a smaller animal tied off at the four legs and where
the neck would be, the wine had gone in, and a wine skin was
something very common to them. It's not common to us. In this
day of pre-shrunk cloth, many of you have never seen a piece
of unshrunken cloth, but that was very common in our Lord's
day. And so the task of the responsible expositor, when he comes to such
passages, is first of all to take the listener back into the
world of the writer, and to seek to make clear to our minds what
was very clear to theirs. But thankfully, there are other
portions of the Word of God where the biblical writers, under the
guidance of the Spirit, make reference to things that are
supracultural and supratemporal. They are realities not bound
by any given culture, at any given time, in any given set
of circumstances. For example, when Jesus is displaying
the largeness of the Father's heart to his children, he says
this, If you, beneath it, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good
gifts to those who ask? Well, you don't need to be embedded
in Palestinian culture to know that the basic disposition of
a father is to give good gifts to his children. You see, there's
a reference, an analogy, an illustration that rises above the limitations
of any given cultural setting. Now, why have I said all of that?
Well, for the simple reason that I want to tweak your minds. Some
of you are still half asleep when it comes to the sermon time,
and I make no embarrassments that I labor at my introductions
to try to tweak your minds. But I'm also doing that to lead
into the study of the passage this morning. Because in this
passage, the heart of what Peter writes, under the inspiration
of the Spirit, makes reference to something that is not peculiar
to first-century Middle Eastern culture. He talks about newborn
babes that have a yearning, a passionate appetite for milk. Now, that's
a supracultural reality. All of us, in one way or another,
have been acquainted with the passion of a newborn babe for
milk. And at the center of this passage
is Peter's exhortation, as newborn nursing babes yearn, long for,
have a passionate desire for the sincere milk of the Word,
or what the ASV renders as the spiritual milk which is without
guile that you may grow thereby. But now, before plunging into
this text, which I trust you recognize is one that from the
very outset should not involve a lot of detailed, concentrated
thought to get back into the world of the biblical writers,
let me take just a moment to make sure you have fixed in your
mind the ground Peter has already covered in that first chapter.
After his opening identification of himself as an apostle and
the identification of these believers in Asia Minor under the figure
of elect sojourners of the dispersion, he then breaks out in verses
3 to 12 in this marvelous eulogy, blessing God for his great salvation
in Christ, a salvation which, as Peter identifies it, has as
its great focal point the hope that is set before us. Blessed
be this God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who has begotten
us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead, unto an inheritance, undefiled, etc. And that theme
of hope is central in his opening up of this amazing salvation
purchased at so great a price for the people of God. And then
he begins in verse 13 to tell the people of God how they are
to walk in the light of the real circumstances in which they find
themselves against the backdrop of the great salvation that is
theirs in Jesus Christ. And it would be, I trust Edifying,
but I'm choosing not to do it this morning, to see how as Peter
begins to say to the believers, this is what you ought to be
and to do in the light of what you have and are in Christ. each of those imperatives takes
its clue from what they have already been given in Jesus Christ. For example, since they are called
to a salvation which has as its glorious focal point the hope
that marvelous, that wonderful inheritance that awaits them.
His first imperative in verse 13 is, set your hope perfectly
on the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus
Christ. Their life before God is to be
a life of steadfast hope. Verses 14 and 15, it's to be
a life in the pursuit of universal holiness. Verses 17 through 21,
it's to be a life of appropriate fear. And then Peter says in
principle, you not only have a life to live before God as
elect sojourners, blessed with so great a salvation, a life
of hope, a life of holiness, and a life of appropriate fear,
but you have fellow travelers. And so he lays upon them that
fourth imperative in verses 22 to 25, they are to love one another. They are to love as those who've
experienced the purification of their souls in obedience to
the truth. They are to love one another
because they have been begotten of imperishable seed. Now when we come to chapter 2,
Note that at the center of this fifth imperative, and this is
the fifth imperative, is this issue of longing for milk that
we might grow. Here in verses 1 to 3, everything
is clustered around the imperative of verse 2. As newborn babes,
here's the only imperative verb, long for the spiritual milk which
is without guile, that you may grow thereby unto salvation. And the bare bones of that imperative
is, long for the milk that you may grow. Everything else leads
into it or flows out of it. Or to change the imagery, everything
else is like a satellite surrounding that central concern, shedding
light upon that concern. So we might well call verses
1 to 3 the mandate for the longing that leads to growth. The mandate
for the longing that leads to growth. Long for the milk that
you may grow. That's the heart and the soul
of this fifth imperative. Now do you see what Peter has
done? From three imperatives that point us to the Christian
life primarily in relationship to God, a life of hope, holiness,
and fear. Then he says your Christian life
is also to be marked by concerns that relate to your brethren.
You are to love one another from the heart fervently. But then
he says the Christian life is also to be concerned with your
own personal growth. And he now lays before them the
imperative to long for the milk that they may grow. And in the
opening up of these verses, we'll consider, first of all, the prerequisite
to the longing for spiritual growth, verse 1. Verse 2, the
precept which mandates longing for spiritual growth. And then
verse 3, the personal experience which leads to the longing for
spiritual growth. So we'll consider the prerequisites,
the precept, and the personal experience. Now, I had hoped
to be able to expound and apply all three verses this morning,
but to do so would mean I would keep you for an inordinate length
of time and violate the biblical injunction, love does not behave
itself unseemly, and as you would that others do unto you, even
so do ye also unto them, for this is the law and the prophets.
So, God willing, this morning we'll take up heading number
one, the prerequisites to the longing for spiritual growth,
and God willing, next week, verses two and three. First of all,
the prerequisites for the longing for spiritual growth. As Peter
now, with his pastoral passion, fulfilling his commission given
to him by his Lord some thirty years earlier to shepherd his
sheep and to feed his lambs and care for his lambs, he is about
to lay this injunction upon them to long for milk that they may
grow. But notice, before he does, he
sets out a prerequisite. Verse one. Putting away, therefore,
all wickedness or malice, and all guile and hypocrisies and
envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes long. There
is no ability to long as newborn babes for the milk that we may
grow in Peter's mind, apart from this putting away all malice,
all guile, hypocrisies and envies, and all evil speakings." Notice
that the verse begins with the word, therefore, putting away
therefore. And as some of you will remember,
you have been told whenever you find a therefore in the scriptures,
you should pause and ask, what is it there for? It is there
for a reason. And don't slip over the therefores. When you find the therefores,
immediately God is saying, invalid if detached. Don't take this
unit of thought from what precedes. It is either a consequence, a
deduction to change the imagery. It is superstructure built on
a previously laid foundation to change the imagery. It is
the tail to which is attached a body and a head. When you find
a therefore, stop and ask, what is it there for? When the letter
was written, there were no chapter divisions, no verse divisions.
If you were sitting in one of those churches in those five
provinces of Asia Minor and one of your elders were reading this
letter, you would have heard the words go right on from being
begotten again of imperishable seed by the word that lives and
abides forever. The quotation from Isaiah 40
right on into the words, putting away, therefore, In the light
of what I've just established, in the light of what I've just
said to you in my letter, therefore, in the light of those things,
I now direct you, putting away all wickedness and guile, hypocrisies,
etc. Well, what's the connection?
Well, those of you who have been here for the expositions, I hope
you readily answer that question in your own mind. He has just
set before them that fourth imperative, love one another from the heart,
fervently. Verse 22. He has reminded them
that in giving that commandment to love one another, he is not,
like Pharaoh's taskmasters, telling them, make brick without straw. He has told them that they all
have this twofold spiritual experience. They have purified their souls
in their obedience to the truth, which according to verse 22,
tends towards unfamed love of the brethren. In other words,
one of the inevitable accompaniments of the purification of the soul
in conversion is the implantation of a disposition to love the
brethren. So he says, having purified your
souls unto the experience of this disposition, love one another
from the heart fervently, having been begotten again of imperishable
seed. behind your purification of your
souls in your obedience to the truth was the sovereign, gracious,
mighty work of God in begetting you anew by means of the imperishable
seed of the Word. That Word which lives and abides
forever, that Word which he identifies at the end of verse 25 with the
good tidings preached to them, and now he says, therefore, in
the light of these realities, that you have experienced soul
purification unto the love of the brethren, in the light of
the injunction to love one another from the heart fervently, in
the light of the fact that you have been born of the Spirit
of God, you have known the influence and power of the imperishable
seed of that Word, it has brought forth new life, And I'm about
to give you an injunction which says, in essence, the word that
breeds you now must feed you. The seed that gave you life must
be the food that sustains life. Therefore, and then he's going
to give his prerequisites before he gives the precepts. But there
is an intimate connection between that immediate preceding context
and what he's now about to say, and that, I trust, will become
increasingly clear as we work our way through this text. So
we've considered that connective in the prerequisite to the longing
for spiritual growth. Now he says, in the light of
these things, putting away, and then he names five specific kinds
of sins. Now what is this putting away? The word can literally mean to
take off and shed a garment. It's used that way in Acts 7.58,
where it speaks of those who took off their garments and laid
them at the feet of a young man named Saul. That's in the incident
of Stephen's stoning and martyrdom. But most frequently in the Scriptures,
it's used metaphorically. The putting off of a garment,
what I did with my jacket, took it off, stripped it off me and
put it on a hook. It's used as a metaphor for putting
off moral evils. It is used several times, about
a half a dozen times in the New Testament, for the putting off
of various sins and evils. And we'll make reference or turn
you to several of those references in a few moments. Now, the form
of that particular verb, for you Greek students, it's an aorist
participle, It could mean that Peter's referring to what they
already had done in their conversion, and we could translate it this
way. Having put away, therefore, all malice and all guile and
hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, when you purified
your souls in your obedience to the truth, you made a definitive,
radical, hard breach with the dominion of these sins. and linguistically,
grammatically, syntactically, contextually, in every way, that
could be a legitimate rendering. And there are some very responsible
Greek students and very devout students of the Word who say
that's what Peter is saying. Just as the command to love one
another is predicated upon the reality of soul purification
and the new birth, So the command to long for milk that you may
grow is predicated upon the fact that they have put away these
sins definitively in a very marked way in their conversion. Now
that's a truth taught in the word of God. If you have not
made a definitive heartbreak with sin, with all sin, you're
not a Christian. I didn't say if you have not
gained the mastery over all sin. If that were true, none of us
would be Christians sitting here, for if we say we have not sinned,
we are liars and the truth is not in us. But if you have not
in the heart repudiated sin as your master, and sin in terms
of specific sins, you've never repented. And except you repent,
you'll perish. So it could be that Peter's referring
to that, and linguistically, that would be perfectly legitimate.
It could mean that what Peter is doing is he's using this form
of the verb in order to, as it were, shroud it with the aura
and the climate of an imperative, but he's so concerned that we
focus our attention on the central issue, which is long for the
milk that you may grow, that he uses this participle, but
it takes the flavor and the overtones of an imperative, and what he
is saying is, Now in the light of all of your privileges, as
those who have purified your souls have been begotten again
and are now called to fervent love one to another, now you
must determine throughout the course of your life, if you are
to cultivate real longing for that word that you may grow,
that you will not expect that word to grow in a heart that
to any degree tolerates these five sins. Therefore, putting
away as the pattern of your life, putting away whenever you are
conscious that the garment of malice, the garment of guile
and hypocrisies or envies is beginning to cling to you or
you find it upon you, put it off, put it away, get rid of
it. And as I've tried to look in
every context where this word, put off, is used, and there are
at least five other passages in the New Testament where it
is used, and in three of the five the exact same construction
is found, and it's clear in those five instances that he's telling
Christians, already converted, already born of the Spirit, that
this is to be part of their present activity. And therefore I'm expounding
the passage, convinced in my own judgment that what Peter
is doing is not making a reference to what they did in their conversion,
but what they are to do as the pattern of their life as long
as they are sojourners and until they come to their blessed inheritance. For you who want to look up the
passages at your leisure, Romans 13, 12, cast off the works of
darkness. an injunction to believers, Ephesians
4.25, where believers are told to put off certain sins, Colossians
3.8, Hebrews 12.1, the well-known passage, we are to lay aside
the sin that does so easily beset us and every weight. And James
1.21, which is in many ways a parallel passage, and the same form of
the verb is used here, its participle form. James 1.21, speaking to
believers, wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing
of wickedness, and there's the central imperative, receive the
implanted Word. Now, I know that took a little
time to work through that, but this is the Word of God, dear
people. And we who are called upon to expound it are to cut
a straight course in the Word of truth. and persuaded from
the text of Scripture that Peter is saying to believers who have
indeed experienced that dramatic, definitive purification of the
soul in their conversion, they have been begotten again. He
is the realist who recognizes that while sin no longer reigns,
it remains. And while no longer do they voluntarily
wrap themselves up in all of the sins in which they once lived,
they have put those off, they have put off the old man, as
Colossians says, and have put on the new man. But just as Paul
says in Colossians, those who have put off the old man are
to go on putting off the specific sins that yet cling to them from
what they were when they were yet in the dominion of sin. So he says you must put away,
like an old garment, like a moth-eaten garment, something that you no
longer want to have clinging to you, you must cast off and
discard if you are to long for the milk that you may grow. Peter
says two things are necessary if you're going to grow. There
must not only be wholesome food, but a healthy digestive system.
You can put all the wholesome food you want into a little babe
who has a sick digestive system and the child will not grow.
You need wholesome food and you need a healthy digestive system.
And here Peter is setting forth what I'm calling the prerequisite
for longing for spiritual growth. And what is it? It is the putting
away in the light of all that we are as purified, born again,
children of God, commanded to love one another. You are to
put away, says Peter, these five things. And as he lists them,
The structure is such that it's clear he's putting them in three
categories structured by the alls. Notice this even in your
English translations, it's very clear in the original. Putting
away, therefore, all wickedness, that's category number one, and
all guile and hypocrisies and envies, that's category number
two, and notice the all again, all evil speech. You have three
alls. And the three Alls place these
in three categories. Organically related, practically
related, but distinct. Category number one. Peter says,
putting away all wickedness. Now the word used for wickedness
is a word that if you wanted to use a term that would describe
in the broadest way anything that was the opposite of good
and virtuous, This is the word you could use. However, most
frequently in the New Testament, when it is used in a list of
sins, it is not speaking of wickedness in the broadest, most general
sense. It's speaking of wickedness in
a more specific and limited sense. It is the wickedness manifested
in what we would call a malicious spirit. ill will, malice, the
disposition of moral baseness that is eager to injure another. You see, it's not the accidental,
you didn't see the person behind you, you turned quickly and your
elbow caught him in the nose and you bloodied their nose.
It's when you see the person across the street and everything
in you says, if I could, I would. Give him not only my elbow, but
my fist. It's the disposition that desires
to harm another. In a real sense, this first mentioned
sin is the mother of all the sins that follow. And so Peter,
as he would exhort these believers to cultivate this newborn babe-like
longing for milk that they may grow, the milk of the Word of
God, the same Word that begot them unto life through the blessing
of God and will now nourish their life. He is a wise pastor knows
that no amount of effort to ingest that milk will ever produce growth
if it's ingested in a heart in which there is the toleration
of the slightest bit of malice. It's impossible for a malicious
heart to be a heart hungry for the Word and hungry to grow. And so Peter says, there must
be a putting away of all malice in all of its manifestations,
however hidden from the eyes of men. When known to us as it
is known to God, that malice is to be put away. There is nothing
another person can ever do to you that justifies for one millisecond
the entertainment of a disposition of malice. Never. Never. Ah, but it makes no difference. There is nothing any fellow creature
can do to you that ever justifies the disposition of malice. So
Peter says, putting away, therefore, not just ninety percent of your
malice, not just ninety-nine and forty-four, one hundred percent,
so it equals ivory soap in its purity, but putting away all
malice, all malice, whenever a threat of it attempts, as it
were, to put itself back upon us as our native dress when once,
for some of us perhaps, malice was a garment we wore day and
night. Grudges against all kinds of
people for all kinds of reasons. And when God saved you, the basic
power of that horrible, moth-eaten garment was broken, and you put
it off. Oh, how easy it is to slip back
into the entertainment of a malicious spirit. Peter is saying, here's
the first prerequisite for the longing essential for spiritual
growth, putting away all malice. Category one. Now, category number
two. all grouped together by the second
all, all guile, and hypocrisies, plural, and envies, plural. All guile. What is guile? Guile
means deceit, cunning, or craftiness. The term was the one originally
used when you wanted to describe what you did in baiting your
hook for a fish. You beguiled him. Now, you kids,
if you go fishing with Dad, Most moms don't like to fish. Some
do. But suppose you're going fishing with mom and dad. And
you put a minnow on your hook. Put the hook through the minnow's
lips or through behind its dorsal fin, and the little minnow's
swimming around there in the water. What is that minnow saying? And
what are you making the minnow say to any unsuspecting fish?
What you're saying is, hey, fishy, fishy, I've provided a free meal
for you. Have you got any sense, little
fishy, fishy? Certainly anyone with any sense
will take a free meal. Nice little fat minnow. Swimming
around in the confines of the sports shop. He doesn't even
burn up as many calories as all the other men. Does that make
him look fatter than all his fellows? Hey, fishy, fishy! Free meal. What are you doing? You're trying
to get a fish in a frying pan. You're offering him a frying
pan, not free meal. The free meal is what? It's guile.
You're trying to catch the fish by deliberate determination to
deceive him. You promise a minnow or a worm,
and all you're going to give it is a hook and a frying pan.
That's your intention. You're not just unwittingly passing
a minnow in front of me, and it just happens that the fish
goes from the water to the frying pan. It's your purpose. It's
your calculated, determined purpose. Now Peter says, putting away,
therefore, not only all malice, the disposition of ill will to
a fellow human being, and in particular to your brethren,
but all guile, all deceit, all cunning craftiness, the deceitfulness
that harms others through trickery and falsehood. He says, put it
all away, every single bit of it, And also he says, while you're
at it, put away that which grows out of the guile, hypocrisy. The basic concept of the word
is play acting. It means to hide your true identity
from another. That's what the actors used to
do in the plays of that day. They'd put on the mask. To do
what? Hide their true identity. Deliberately
assume the identity of another. And Peter says, putting away
all It is described by one as follows, the one who conceals
his real motives, a man who meets you with a face that is different
from the state of his heart, who communicates with words that
are different from his true feelings. He greets you with a smile and
with the language of a brother beloved, but in his heart his
affections have long since died. And rather than have the manly
or womanly courage to say, my brother, my sister, there was
a time when I could greet you with an open face and a warm
heart that was behind that face. My heart has grown cold to you.
Can you help me work through this? Here are things that are
putting me at a distance from you in my affections, but know
the mask is warm. Hope all is well. Peter says,
putting away all hypocrisy, all of the ways and all of the shenanigans
that we can indulge in, in order to take the role of a hypocrite. You see, it is to lapse from
the very thing Peter emphasized in verse 22. He said, You have
purified your souls. in your obedience to the truth
unto, here's the same word with the alpha privative in front
of it, it's the same Greek word with a little A in front, which
means the negation of it. You have been purified unto unsane,
unfaith, literally non-hypocritical love to the brethren. The purifying
of your souls brings you into an orbit where for the first
time in your life you know what it is to be real with your fellow
man. Now Peter says you can lapse from that. The moment you find
yourself drifting back into hypocritical love, into Judas-like love. And how sickening it was in the
earlier morning hours to read again, as I've told some of you
I try to do frequently on a Lord's Day, to read the account of our
Lord's death and resurrection. Bring myself afresh to the realization,
why am I gathering with a group of people on the first day of
the week? Because Jesus died and rose again. And Lord of the Sabbath has made
this his special day. Mark 14 says when Judas came,
he not only kissed him, but the Greek of Mark is emphatic. It
says he kissed him much. He slobbered all over. All he
needed to do, he had told the chief priest and the soldiers,
whomsoever I kiss, all he needed to do was plant a little furtive
kiss on Jesus' cheek and the signal would have been given.
But he slobbers all over the Son of God in sickening hypocrisy. To make you feel sick, may God
help us to feel sick in our own hypocrisy. And we would deliberately
do with our bodies and say with our lips that which is not the
disposition of our hearts. Peter says, put it all away. That's what the leaders were
doing in Luke chapter 20, verses 20 to 23. Listen to how Luke
describes it. They watched him send forth spies
who feigned themselves to be righteous that they might take
hold of his speech. so as to deliver him up to the
rule and to the authority of the governor. They were calculated
hypocrites. They wore the face of righteous
men who were hanging on the words of the righteous teacher and
the righteous Lord of heaven. Then he gives an example of how
they conducted themselves. They asked him, saying, Teacher,
we know that you say and teach rightly and accept not the person
of any but of a truth. You teach the way of God. We've
got a sincere question to know how we may please the God whom
you fear, because you teach his way honestly and righteously,
and you don't bend the truth to please men, and we want just
such a teacher. A bunch of bald-faced hypocrites.
They wanted no such thing. They were there to listen and
to catch his words and twist them that they might have a semblance
of a rationale to put him to death. Peter says, you want to
have a holy yearning for that milk that you may grow? Then settle it in your mind and
heart that such a disposition will never be found long. in
the heart of one who entertains any form of hypocrisy, putting
away not only all malice, the root sin, but all guile, deceit,
and cunning craftiness, all hypocrisies, all play-acting, all face-wearing,
and he then goes on to say in the second category, envies,
another plural. Now, what is envy? It's amazing. And how when you're a preacher,
you think you know what a thing is. Everybody knows what envy
is, until you've got to state, envy is. If you had to write
on a little tablet, envy is. Well, you know what envy is.
Yeah, but what is it? What is envy? You know in your
heart what it is. Can you articulate it? What is
envy? What is envy? Though surely it's something
akin to what I'm going to try to describe, and here I'm indebted
to several of the commentators who helped me to crystallize
my own thinking. Envy is the feeling of displeasure
produced by witnessing or hearing of the benefits received or the
blessings received by another. is the feeling of displeasure
produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage or prosperity
of another. It's that vicious attitude that
reasons, he doesn't deserve what he got, and I would like to have
it. And in reality, I believe I deserve
it more and ought to have it. That's some of the ugly stuff
of envy. And when you read your Bible,
it's not shocking. that with respect to the religious
leaders who handed Jesus over to the Roman authorities, you
know what was the Christ-killing sin? And Pilate knew it. It's amazing. Pilate listened
to all these false accusations being hurled, but the Scripture
tells us in Mark 15 and verse 10 that Pilate knew that for
envy, And you have, for you Greek students, you have Dea with the
accusative, on account of envy, based upon their envious spirit. He knew that for envy, he perceived
that for envy, the chief priest had delivered him up. What did
he have? He didn't have wealth, they didn't have. They were wealthy.
They were the fat cats in Jerusalem. Possessions? No, no. What he
had was the love and the devotion of the masses that they thought
belonged to them. We're the official leaders in
Israel. We can't stand this jolly upstart
rabbi coming down from northern Palestine and everywhere he goes
the crowds follow him. And it was their burning envy,
the scripture says, that led them to hand him over to the
Roman authorities. It's interesting that it's listed
next to murder in two lists of sins, Romans 1.29 and Galatians
5.21. The sense of displeasure at what
another receives in the will and providence of God can be
so deep-seated that the only way that envy can vent itself
is to destroy its object. It's listed next to murder in
two contexts. It's listed next to strife in
two other contexts, Philippians 1.15 and 1 Timothy 6.4. But you
say, no Christian would ever fall prey to such a hellish spirit. Paul apparently was not of that
mind, for he says in Philippians 1.15, Son indeed preach Christ
of envy and of strife. And it's there that you have
the dia with the accusative. I'm sorry, I got away from my
notes. It's there. I don't know about the Mark passage,
but here in Philippians it is. The dia with the accusative,
on account of envy. Their great passion in preaching
Christ was motivated by envy. Envy of whom? Envy of Paul. In
the providence of God, he had been given a chief place in the
advancement of the gospel. and their envy burned in their
breasts, and when they saw him in prison, they said, Aha! We
can now take the field from Paul. He said, They preach as they
do, seeking to heap sorrow upon me and my imprisonment. But he
said, They don't know me. As long as they stick to a true
message and preach Christ, I'll rejoice. I have no envy in my
heart, for to me to live is not being number one in usefulness.
To me to live is Christ, whether in a prison or standing in the
Areopagus, or in the synagogue, or before the crowds on the street
in the Roman Empire. My one passion, he says, is whether
by life or by death Christ be magnified in my body. You see,
Paul rose above the basin of envy. Peter says, before I can
enjoin you, elect sojourners of the dispersion, with this
fifth pastoral imperative, that you long for, that milk that
will enable you to grow, I must exhort you to put away all malice,
category one. Category two, all guile, hypocrisies
and envies. And now category three, look
at the text. We have another all, and all
evil speakings. Again, plural, all evil speakings. This word is found only one other
place in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 12, 20, but its verbal form is
found two more times in this epistle, and there the meaning
becomes very clear. Look at chapter 2 in verse 12.
Having your behavior seemly among the Gentiles that wherein they
speak against you. There's our word in its verb
form. They speak against you as though
you were evildoers. Then in chapter 3 and verse 16,
having a good conscience that wherein you are spoken against,
they may be put to shame who revile your good manner of life
in Christ. Speaking against is synonymous
with reviling, abusive, negative, denigrating, running down, disparaging
speech. As one has described it, it is
a vice that deliberately assaults the character of another and
usually takes place behind the victim's back. It's doing with
words what you'd never do to a person's face, assault them
with your fists or even assault them with your words, but it's
assaulting them with words generally behind their backs. One commentator
has very helpfully written, it operates either by denying or
darkening a neighbor's virtues. Never highlights them. If it
can't deny them, it will darken them. If they shine at 100 watts,
we'll try to put a screen and make those virtues shine only
at 20 watts. It operates either by denying
or darkening a neighbor's virtues, and either by attributing to
him evil or imputing to him evil designs as he does good. If you can't get away with imputing
evil, then you'll put evil motives upon the good that another does.
MacDonald notes that it can even act under the guise of a pious
prayer request. Quote, I mention this only for
your prayer fellowship, but did you know that so-and-so, I only
mention this so you can share the burden with me, did you know
that? And as one author has said, neither righteousness nor truth
demand what follows in the giving of the so-called prayer request.
Neither righteousness, justice, nor truth demand it. It is the
use of words to tear down, to batter the character, the name,
the reputation of another. And Peter says, if you are to
have this longing for the milk that will enable you to grow,
you must put aside, put away, shed as a vile garment all evil
speakings. John Brown, the godly Scottish
commentator writes, Calumnius or vicious slander is the worst
form of this evil, but all whisperings and backbitings, all sly insinuations,
hinting at faults and hesitating dislike, every species of statement
having for its object the lowering the reputation of another which
justice does not require as well as truth warrant is included
in this prohibition. And then he uses this graphic
imagery. The mouth becomes, as it were,
the vent through which the smoke and flames of the infernal fire
of malice and envy, which rages in the furnace within, escapes,
polluting and withering all around. That's graphic imagery. What
is this evil speakings that Peter writes about? It is letting the
mouth be the vent through which the hellish flames and smoke
of envy and malice within the breath vent themselves. And what
does that smoke and fire do? It withers and blasts all that
it touches. And Peter says, here's the prerequisite. As I'm about to enjoin upon the
believing community in Asia Minor this fifth pastoral exhortation
that they long for the milk that they may grow, there must be
a putting away of all wickedness and all guile and hypocrisies
and envies and all evil speakings. Now let me, in closing, make
just several quick observations upon the text. Do you see now
the connection between these sins and the previously enjoying
duty of brotherly love? Do you see the connection? Peter's very selective. He's
not just picking out all kinds of different sins that they might
be vulnerable to in that society at that time. No, Peter is very
conscious of the significance of his therefore. having just
reminded them that they purified their souls unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, that he has commanded them to love one another
from the heart fervently in the light of the divine begetting,
and they have been begotten again of an imperishable word which
is to feed them. Peter is saying you cannot be
fed if you're going to be indifferent to the injunction to love one
another from the heart fervently. Therefore, he says, putting away
all that is contrary to that love, all malice, and all guile,
and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings long for
that milk by which you may grow. You see, Peter's about to demonstrate
that Christians grow in the context of being part of a living temple,
that's what's coming in chapter 2, a priesthood, and the people
of God. You don't grow in isolation.
God has no lone ranger Christians, no lone ranger children. When
he begets you, he begets you into his family. And if you're
not sensitive to the kosher relations within the family, you won't
grow. And Peter's underscoring that. I confess for years, from
the time I memorized verse 2 in the Navigator's topical memory
system as a baby Christian, It was years before anyone pointed
out to me that that injunction to grow has something to do with
something more than just you and God vertically. You want
to grow? Then you've got to be sensitive
to your horizontal dispositions and attitudes and relationships.
Putting away therefore, putting away therefore, do you see from
the passage and the context, the connection between these
sins and brotherly love? I hope you see it. Secondly,
do you see the connection of these sins with each other? These
are not set out randomly. Put away all malice. If malice
is allowed in any way to remain in the heart, what will it produce?
Guile, hypocrisies, and envies. And if those things are allowed
in the heart, they will come out in evil speakings in the
mouth. And you see, if you start to
deal with them at any point, you'll end up in both directions.
If you say, I've got to stop my evil speaking, That will drive
you to knees and say, Lord, why am I speaking evil? Well, it's
because I have envy. Why do I have envy? Because I
have malice. And it'll take you right back
to the foundational issue of the ill will that's in your heart
until you cry to God that the love of the Spirit will suffuse
your heart. and regulate all you do. So note
not only the connection between these sins and brotherly love,
but the connection between these sins with one another. And then
thirdly, note the possibility that the best of saints can fall
prey to the worst of sins. There's no indication that Peter
had received information that the believers there in Asia Minor
were guilty of any of these sins or all of them as a pattern.
Unlike Paul writing to Corinth, there were certain sins he knew
were patterns among them. And he could say, it's been reported
to me. This and this is so. It's well known. It's commonly
reported. And you're even bragging about
it. There is this sin in your midst. There's no indication
in the context that Peter is addressing these sins because
they were dominant in the life of the congregation. But Peter
was a realist. He knew his Bible. He knew his
own heart. And he knew that all of us, every one of us, in any
moment can be vulnerable to the vilest of sins. And therefore,
he says, putting away, therefore, all malice and all guile and
hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, whenever they
arise, recognize there is never at any time, in any set of circumstances,
any justification for them, put them all away. Finally note the
uncompromising necessity of constantly dealing with these sins. If you
and I would have a healthy appetite for spiritual food, that's the
connection, this is the prerequisite. Yes, Peter says, I want to exhort
you to long for the milk that you may grow, but I know that
exhortation will be fruitless Unless you have a disposition
that says, I can never afford the luxury of indulging any of
these sins at any time in any circumstance. The moment I'm
conscious of them, I must put them off. Put them off by going
first of all to the fountain open for sin and uncleanness.
and confessing my sin of a malicious attitude, confessing my sin of
hypocrisy, my sin of guile, my sin of evil speaking, and then
crying to God that by the grace and power of the Spirit, He would
enable me to continue to put off any recurring presence of
those sins. It was to be an uncompromising
disposition with all of them. And these are ones who've been
furnished with the grace necessary. They have purified their souls.
They have been begotten again. Verse 3, they have tasted that
the Lord is gracious, and therefore they cannot sit back and say,
oh, well, God's got to do it. No, God has given to us all things
that pertain unto life and godliness. We are to put away. Put away
in the dynamics of grace and in the power of the Spirit, out
of gospel motive. Yes, but you are to put these
things away. I'm to put them away. You're
not to sit back and say, Oh, God, take them off me. He says
you shed them. And when you throw back at God
what he's put on you, you're in bad shape, my friend. You're
tempting God to chastise you very, very severely, because
what you're saying is, God, you didn't get it right. You should
just tell me I'm ready to take off from you all malice and guile. No, God says you put it off.
Having put off, you've done it. Not having had taken from you.
It's not a passive partisan. It's an active. You and I are
engaged in the putting off. But for you who are not Christians,
you see, we're back again to square one. Jesus said you make
the tree good and the fruit good. An evil tree cannot bring forth
good fruit. You may be sitting here today saying, Pastor Martin,
you've described my heart. I sit here today, and I do have
malice, and I've got frowns to feel this way. Sure, I can't
be honest with people. If I were honest with people,
I'd lose my job. I'd lose half of my so-called
friends. I can't walk in a pious, non-hypocritical way. It's impossible,
my friend. It is impossible, given where
you are. They that are in the flesh cannot please God, the
scripture says. Jesus said an evil tree cannot
bring forth good fruit. That's why Jesus said you must
be born again. You need the purification of
the soul in obedience to the truth. You need to be begotten
again by the word of God. You need to see, even through
this message that has expounded the duty of believers, that God
is again saying to you in the gospel, you ain't got what it
takes to do what I've demanded here. You don't have it. But
it's in Christ, and Christ is accessible to you in the gospel.
That's what Peter says at the end of chapter 1. He said, this
word by which you've been begotten again, this is the word that
was gospelized to you. This is the word of good tidings
that was preached to you. It's not some mysterious thing.
And we preach that word to you. From Mark chapter 2, Christ delights
to call sinners. He says, come as a sinner. Don't
fix yourself up. I'll fix you. Don't get yourself,
I'll sort you out. Come to me. Come to me. Come
to me. Come to me. I'll cleanse you. I'll renew you. I'll give you
both the desire and the power to put off malice and guile and
hypocrisy and envies and evil speakings. Oh, my unconverted
boy, girl, man or woman, go to Christ. And in Christ, you too
will be furnished with the grace and the motives and the power
that these people had because they were in Christ. But they
got into Christ the only way sinners get into Christ, by a
believing, obedient response to the gospel. That basic message
that says God has sent his son to die for sinners. He has raised
him from the dead, seated him in his right hand, and the living
Christ invites you to come to him. and promises that all who
come to Him, He will receive. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank You for
Your Holy Word. Thank You for this portion of
that Word and how we earnestly pray that the Holy Spirit will
write it upon the fleshly tables of our hearts and that we may
leave this place determined, we who are Your children, that
we will live as those who constantly put away all malice, and all
guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, that
we might by your grace attain and maintain that holy longing
for the milk that will enable us to grow thereby unto salvation. O God, we ask that your word
will do its intended work in each of our hearts. For our good
and your glory, we plead in Jesus name. Amen.

Longing that Leads to Growth-Prerequisites

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about spiritual growth?

How do we know that longing for God's Word is essential for growth?

Why is it important to put away sin for spiritual growth?

Sermon Transcript

About Albert N. Martin

Comments

Joshua

Articles

Featured Authors

Podcast

Sermons

Featured Preachers

Books

Browse by Format

Music

Recent Comments

About

Legal

Subscribe

Account

Articles

Featured Authors

Podcast

Recent Comments

Sermons

Featured Preachers

Books

Browse by Format

Collections

Music

About

Legal

Subscribe

Longing that Leads to Growth-Prerequisites

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about spiritual growth?

How do we know that longing for God's Word is essential for growth?

Why is it important to put away sin for spiritual growth?

Sermon Transcript

About Albert N. Martin

Comments

More from Albert N. Martin

Related Sermons

Same Scripture

Suggested for You

Joshua

Where this book stands in the tradition

Plato

Augustine

The Western Christian Tradition

This Book