Speaker: Well, good morning, pastor PJ sends his love and affection.
Where is he?
Well, uh, governor Newsom is looking for some help for his next election campaign.
Pastor PJ said I could be nowhere else.
Just kidding.
He's not doing that this weekend.
He is preaching at our sending church in, in, uh, Aliso Viejo, California.
So he is there, in fact, maybe right now, even either
preaching or beginning to preach.
He's preaching two services this morning, nine o'clock and 11 o'clock,
uh, California time, and then he preached last night, five o'clock California time.
So if you think about him while you're hearing this message, if
you're not satisfied with it, maybe pray for Pastor PJ to come back.
Hopefully it comes back soon.
And in fact, if you're visiting this weekend, I would encourage you to
give us at least two goes because this is not a fair representation
of what you're normally gonna get.
You want to hear Pastor pj, he'll be back next weekend, so please be here for that.
Pray that he gets back safely from California.
Well, speaking of California, that's where I grew up.
Southern California in particular.
Uh, and, and in fact, here's something interesting.
I didn't grow up going to church.
Which is why when my dad took my brother and I to church in Paramount,
California, it was unusual.
It wasn't something that I was used to or even something that I desired,
but eventually we kept on going and showing up, you know, several weeks,
several months at a time, and I joined this thing called Royal Rangers.
If you're part of the Assemblies of God or ever had any interaction
with the Assemblies of God, it's basically a Christian Boy Scouts.
And so I was in this Christian Boy Scout thing called the Royal Rangers, and
I went there and I had a great time.
Met people that I really enjoyed and I started to get
acclimated to church culture.
Well, we moved from Paramount to a church in Cerritos and that became
the church that we started frequenting much more regularly, much more often.
My brother, my dad, myself, uh, we got connected.
One thing that you should know about my family is that we have a colorful
history, let's put it that way.
And when my dad went to prison, I was sad because I could no longer go
to this church that I still enjoyed.
You might be asking, where's your mom here in this situation?
Well, my mom would call herself a Christian as well, but she was more
into being a Christian at home, didn't want to go with us, and so
she never really got connected.
My brother and I though we loved it there.
Uh, we loved it because we were surrounded by so many people that cared about us.
And so when my dad went to prison, people at the church found out pretty quickly and
they began to offer one after the other.
Help us help you get to church.
What do you need from us?
How can we be there for you?
What can we do to help get you to church?
And so we began to get offers all over the place from people that
really wanted us to be there.
I was impressed by that.
And so I accepted and I had people pick us up on Sunday morning and
Wednesday and then drop us off again.
And then on Sundays I also had people who not only took care of us at church,
but took care of us after church.
They said, well, hey, since you're with us, we normally go to lunch on Sundays.
Why don't you come along with us and enjoy lunch?
My family and I never went out to eat.
In fact, well, maybe not never, but it was a rarity.
So to go out to eat with a family and go in and enjoy this really delicious
food was a really rare treat for me, and I, I really appreciated that
my brother and I found ourselves.
I loved by a group of strangers mostly, who really had nothing to do with us,
other than our connection to Adam.
Adam as in the original man.
We, we all, all we shared was our humanity, but these people love my
brother and I in such ways that it kept me going to church, even though I
really had nothing to do with church.
I wasn't a Christian, at least not to the way that we define it today.
But I kept going.
I kept going and going and going because people were showing me love, and I found
that so irresistible and so attractive that I could not help but continue going.
Love is a very powerful work of God's spirit in the life of his people, and
it's so powerful because it's attractive.
Even unbelievers, when they see love operational within a body of
believers like ourselves, it is so attractive and so compelling that
people can't help but take notice.
Maybe that's the reason why this morning, as Peter opens up our letter, he's gonna
tell us something that is so foundational to our Christian faith that if we get it
right, we really get Christianity right.
In many respects, of course there's doctrinal issues and there's,
there's things that we ought to believe about who Jesus is and why
he came and what the atonement is.
That's important.
Don't, don't get me wrong, but the spirit of our faith is found in love.
Love is the essential elements of what makes our faith, our faith.
It is so essential and so foundational that God himself
defined himself by this word.
You've, you've read it before, maybe you've memorized it.
God is love.
You heard it in the sermon, uh, in, in the scripture reading the
scripture says, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples.
If you have really sound theology, you heard that verse right?
Of course you didn't, and you heard the verse that that Pastor Mark
read, which is, people will know that you're my disciples by the
love that you have for one another.
Needless to say, this sermon can hit you one of two ways.
1, 1, 1 way is like, yes, I know this, and therefore you might be
tempted to quickly check out or you might pick up your phone and start
streaming the Charlie Kirk Memorial.
I understand if, if your, if your attention is elsewhere,
that's one way to respond to it.
I don't want that for you.
The second way to respond to this is, okay, remind me of the basics.
I need to hear this.
This is so essential, so foundational that for us to miss this is to miss
something foundational to every other aspect of our Christian faith.
I hope for the second, because if we get this right, this kind of love has the
ability to transform a whole community.
It has the ability to mobilize us in ways that fear and intimidation can never do.
You can mobilize people in one of two things, you, you can use fear and
intimidation to say, look, if you don't do this, aren't you even really a Christian?
I mean, get to it, kid.
One of those things.
Or you can motivate people by saying, look at how loved you are,
and therefore, how love ought to flow through you into other lives.
Two main motivations, fear and love.
Love is the far more enduring and far more powerful.
This is why this morning we have to be reminded about it.
So please open your Bibles.
Turn to one Peter chapter one.
We're gonna pick up at verses 22 through the beginning of chapter two, verse one.
As you're making your way there, let me remind you where we've
been, where, where have we been?
Well, the beginning of Peter's letter is a celebration of the glory
of God because of his salvation.
He says, you've been born again to a living hope.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again through a
living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And so this whole magnum opus is his, his glory to God saying, isn't
this amazing that you've been saved?
And by the way, the prophets long ago prophesied about the
salvation that you now enjoy.
And there are looking into it saying, what is this about?
Who is this gonna be for?
And they realized they were preaching their sermons and prophesying
their prophecies For your sake.
You've been the benefactors of this incredible salvation.
And so Peter then picks up at verses 13 through chapter
two, and he now applies that.
That is, if you've been saved, here are the things that make
sense because of your salvation.
He says in chapter 13 or verse 13, he says, being sober minded,
you're to set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you.
That's the first application.
You're to look forward to the future and set your hope there.
Don't put your hope in this life, and that's important because he's
talking to beleaguered believers.
These are Christians that are enduring some kind of persecution,
some kind of suffering.
They're feeling the cultural pressure, push in on them, and
Peter is saying, hold on, calibrate.
Remember where you're going.
Your life will be filled with suffering.
Suffering is to be expected, but this is not where your hope lies.
Set your hope on the future, the grace that will be brought to you.
He then says in verse 15, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy.
A second implication and application of the gospel is that
you now look like the gospel.
Your life is conducted with holiness.
You live set apart.
You live distinctly.
You don't look like the world looks.
That's hard to do in, uh, in, uh, in this particular part of the
country, because of the Bible belt.
There's a, there's a christianese that kind of permeates our culture.
Now.
Peter says, your job is to be holy, as God is holy.
And then thirdly, he says, you are to also in verse 17, conduct yourselves with fear.
Throughout the time of your exile, which means you live with
reverence and awe for God's glory.
I live for him.
I live to honor him.
That's the way that I should live.
That's the way that I should conduct myself.
He then goes on and he gets to verse 22, our verse for this morning.
He says, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, here's the
fourth command, the fourth application.
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth
for a sincere, brotherly love.
Here's the imperative love one another, earnestly from a pure heart love one
another, earnestly from a pure heart.
This whole verse is packed because this controls the rest of your
reading of one Peter chapter one.
He's saying, if you've been saved by the gospel and which is what he
means by having purified your souls.
To have your soul purified is to have your soul cleansed, remade made,
pure and righteous in God's sight.
Having purified your souls, your immaterial self, the thing that is
redeemed by God, having that purified by your obedience to the truth,
which is a reference to the gospel.
He's not saying that you obeyed God's commands and therefore
you became a Christian.
He's saying you obeyed God's first command to all people everywhere, which is repent
of your sin and put your faith in Jesus.
When that happens, your soul is purified before God.
Because God applies the saving work of Christ to your life.
You now stand righteous before God.
Regardless of any sin that you've ever committed, past, present, and future, you
now possess the righteousness of Christ.
This is the gospel.
It is first to command before it's an invitation.
The gospel does invite you to come to him, but it is a command to repent of your
sin and put your trust in Jesus Christ.
Remember the beginning of Jesus earthly ministry.
He says the first, the first words out of Jesus' mouth, he says, repent for the
kingdom of God is at hand, first word.
And so the command of the gospel is repent.
Turn from your sin, put your trust in Christ.
When that happens, your soul is purified.
Now, I want you to notice a word in here that is actually so small
you might miss it, but it is so small and yet so important that you
need to see it in full color here.
And it's the word for you.
See that word there?
Having purified your souls by your obedience to, to the truth
for a sincere, brotherly love.
The word for carries the weight of implication, the weight of
purpose, because you've been saved.
You've been saved for this reason.
You've been saved by God for this specific purpose.
Now I'm gonna ask you a question.
It's kind of a trick question, but not really.
Okay.
If someone's gonna ask you why are you a Christian?
What's the purpose of your Christianity?
What might you say to them?
I don't call it out, but what would you think?
What would you think?
Okay.
Why are you a Christian?
What's the purpose of your life?
Someone asks you, you would probably say, you've been raised in the church,
or you've been around church long enough.
Well, I'm saved to glorify God, right?
It's question number one of the Westminster, shorter catechism.
Well, what's the purpose of man to, to glorify God and enjoy him forever?
Or as John Piper says, to enjoy and glorify God by enjoying him forever.
So glorifying God, you would expect Peter to say this and wouldn't you if
this is the purpose of your salvation.
He's saying, look, you purified your soul's by your obedience to
the truth for God's glory and honor.
But he doesn't say that.
He says, you've been saved.
You've been purified for a sincere brotherly love.
What is happening there?
Well, at the very least, what we can id, what we can understand is this God's
glory, which is the ultimate purpose of my life, is somehow integrally
connected to my love for other people.
My horizontal love or my vertical love influences my horizontal love.
Peter is saying, the reason of your existence is for
a sincere, brotherly love.
You're saved for this purpose, which means then that my glorifying God
is connected to my loving people.
Simple as that.
You're safe for a sincere, brotherly love.
He says, because you're safe for this purpose, then here's what you should do.
Here's the imperative.
Love one another, earnestly from a pure heart.
This is the expectation that God has for his people for all of life.
This is what it looks like to be a Christian Love one another,
earnestly from a pure heart.
This is the hallmark of every true believer since the beginning of time.
It controls us.
It compels us.
It informs us.
It challenges us.
It sharpens the way that we understand ourselves and the church around us.
I put it like this.
Point number one, you gotta realize the purpose of your salvation is love.
Is love.
And I can say that on a multi, on multiple layers, multiple levels, God
has loved us and so we love one another.
Yes, absolutely.
But the love that we have now is informed by the love of God, and the
love that we have now is and must be expressed toward other people.
If it's not, I'm short cur, uh, shortcircuiting the way the
gospel is supposed to work, I'm, I'm denying my job description.
One of my first jobs was working at McDonald's.
It was awesome.
Love the jump.
One of the first things they did for me is they walked me through the kitchen.
They said, here's where the, the burgers are assembled.
And they took me to the fry machine.
They showed me how the fry machine works and where to get fries to
refill the machine, and then how to put the baskets into the fry, into
the fry batter or the fry oil stuff.
Uh, it's been a long time, so I remember all the terminology, but
they walked me through all the work that I was supposed to do, and then
they put me in the drive-through.
They said, okay, here's your job.
Your job is to get everyone through the drive-through.
With speed and accuracy, that's your job.
Your job is to get people through the drive through with speed and accuracy.
And so they taught me how to use the computer to punch in their orders.
They taught me how to take the money, uh, and, and to do all the, the things
that I needed to do in that thing.
I became a wit.
I love the drive-thru.
It was one of my favorite places to work.
Um, not at first, but I, I ended up loving it.
On occasion, the drive-thru would get so impacted.
I would have orders taken, I'd be waiting on the kitchen staff to
do their job so I could do my job.
So on those rare occasions, I would go to the kitchen and I'd
start putting burgers together.
And if the runner was behind, I'd help the runner bag the food and take it to
the window so I can get people through the drive through with speed and accuracy.
That was my goal.
That was my job.
They were very clear about that.
Now one occasion my manager said, Hey, you stay in the drive through.
You let the kitchen do what the kitchen does, and you let the
runners do what the runners do.
You stay in the drive through.
I said, but my job is to help get the drive through through with
speed and accuracy, isn't it?
My job at this point then is not just to punch in the orders.
My job is to help get people through the line, which means
I should help the runner.
I should help the kitchen staff.
I should do these things.
It makes perfect sense because of what my job is.
My job informs what I do.
Who God has called you to do or to be informs what you do.
Your job from God is to love one another.
Your job then is to do what God calls you to do in every way possible.
It fits your whole life.
In fact, when Jesus was asked Jesus, what's the greatest commandment?
He said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind,
and strength, and with all your mind.
This is the first and great commandment, and a second is like it.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
This is what your life's purpose is.
This is what your job description is for your Christianity.
When you become a Christian, you are now remade by God to live a
new life of love for the brothers, in particular, for the church.
Now, obviously, you should love everybody.
You should love your neighbors.
You should love your coworkers.
You should love everybody.
But notice that Peter is talking to our love for one another.
He calls it brotherly affection, brotherly love.
This is how you should feel about God's church, about God's people.
Of course, the problem with this is that many of us know, we know this,
we know that this is the reality, but I wonder if you've ever had this
experience where you confuse the acts of love with the affection of love.
Let me put it like this.
Let's suppose for a second you are, you're a part of our setup team for the
church, and you're setting up the stage pieces and you're, you're setting up
the, the speakers and putting up the, the projector stands and all of those
wonderful things, and maybe you're just a, a really, you're a bit snippy with people.
'cause you're, you're, you're focused on getting the job done.
You're so focused.
You don't realize that one of the vocalists is really down today.
He's not having a great day, but you, you're missing it 'cause you're,
you're, you're focused on the stage.
Uh, maybe you also miss that someone in the back there seems to be really weighed
down by something pressing, but you don't pay attention to that because you're
so focused on setting up the chairs.
I gotta get the chairs set up and get the chairs set up straight.
That's not a bad thing.
The acts of love have to be there.
But the affection of love is I want to pay attention to more than just
the chairs and the stage pieces.
These are the means to the end of loving the people that are here, like
doing the dishes, that the means of loving your family is doing the dishes.
No one does dishes because it's fun, right?
No one's doing that here.
No.
No one's gonna vacuum the floor because it's fun.
You do it because it's a means to the end of loving your family.
And the same thing can happen in the church where we get so caught up doing
the things, the features of love, the acts of love, that the affection of love gets
overlooked, or at least minimized because we're so focused on getting the work done.
We live in a culture where the work is prioritized over the, in the inner person.
And that's not a bad thing per se.
But Christians can't be happy with just going through the
external actions we demand of ourselves, and the Lord does that.
We have a kind of love that is informed by the love that we have for the
Lord and our love for one another.
Now, the problem is that love is often defined in a variety of ways
For many people, love means you accept me unconditionally regardless
of what I think or feel, or do.
You have to love me.
Love is often conflated with the idea of tolerance.
If you truly love me, you will tolerate everything about me, regardless of whether
that's offensive to you or anybody else.
In fact, we, we talk about the word truth here.
We sometimes add a pronoun to it.
My truth, your truth, his truth, her truth.
Love must be if it's going to be effective, if it's going to
be useful for God's purposes, love must be defined by God.
We don't get to redefine love, we can't inject our own meaning
into it, lest we lose its essence.
If God is love, that means there's a definition to love.
And love has hard edges love.
First of all, if we're gonna follow what God says, love first
of all is a decision to exercise.
In fact, let me, let me take you there.
I've got three points under our first point here.
First of all, love is a decision to exercise.
We know that because Peter calls us, he, he gives us the
imperative love one another.
If that's the case, then I should know.
I, I can be compelled to love by God.
God expects me to love.
It's a decision that I make.
It's not primarily a feeling, even though it comes with feelings.
And ideally, my love for you has feelings.
But before it's a feeling.
It's a decision.
It's a decision I make.
I choose to love you regardless of whether I feel like it or not.
If I had a bad night of sleep, that doesn't change the fact that I
love you and I choose to love you.
Love one another is Peter's command.
Therefore, we know our job is to fulfill that command by, by doing it.
In fact, if you have your Bible, uh, look at what Peter says in first
Peter chapter four, verse eight.
This is the same letter.
He's so intent on you getting what he's saying, that he needs to
repeat it, and he says it in verse eight of first Peter, chapter four.
He says this above all that is more than the other things I'm talking about here.
Keep loving one another earnestly.
Since love covers a multitude of sins.
Keep doing it.
Don't stop.
You're doing good at it.
Keep going.
Do it even more.
Do it more.
It's so important.
He says it again in his second letter.
I won't turn you there, but second Peter, chapter one, verse seven, he
tells, he tells his disciples, supplement your faith with brotherly affection
and brotherly affection with love.
Same, same two concepts built into that in his second letter.
So first Peter, chapter one is Peter saying, look, this is so important.
It bears repeating multiple times over multiple letters.
Love is a decision that you get to exercise for another person.
That's why he says in his command, love one another.
Now love is a decision to exercise, but it's also a decision
to exercise with intensity.
That's why he says love one another.
Earnestly.
The word earnestly is a stretching word.
It means to stretch a muscle out to its furthest capacity.
Uh, it, it has the connotation of something like this.
When you exercise, you're working out, you're lifting weights, uh, you, you
stretch your muscle beyond its current capacity to expand its capacity.
One of my kids is really into working out right now, and so
they're always choking down.
Lots of calorie laid in food, and they're going to the gym and doing heavy weights.
I'll let you figure out which one of my kids that is.
Adam, but just kidding.
It's not.
It's not Adam.
Uh, he's constantly pushing himself beyond his limits so that he can
add muscle to his frame, and he's been pretty successful at it.
This is what God has in mind for us to love someone earnestly, is
to say, I'm pushing myself beyond what my natural limitations are.
And I'm doing so with the intent that I'm growing it.
I'm expanding it.
When God deposits love into us, he's express, expecting that
we'll express it and expand it.
So when he says love one another earnestly, he's calling us to love
in such a way that pushes us beyond what our current capacities are.
This is intensity and intentionality.
I mean, just think about this.
If I, if I'm, if I believe I'm called to express earnest love for people,
how would that impact the way that I understand my role here at church?
What I do when I show up, how I interact with people when I'm setting up or tearing
down, or what time I show up and how late I stay after it influences and informs
all of these interactions that I have on a regular Sunday morning, on a Wednesday
night when I'm going to small groups.
It reframes my work as a Christian from I have things to do.
Two, I have people to love.
Do you see that love one another earnestly changes it from, I've got
things to do to, I have people to love.
When I preach my job is to say, I have people to love, not a sermon to preach.
The preaching is the medium that helps me.
Love you.
Love is a decision to exercise with intensity.
Thirdly, love is a decision to exercise with intensity for
their good, for their good.
That means my love for you doesn't have an ulterior motive.
I'm not loving you.
So that.
You give me gifts for my birthday.
I'm not loving you with the understanding that when I bring you dinner on
Thursday, you bring me dinner on Friday.
I'm not loving you with the intention that I'm trying to get something from you.
Instead, I'm loving you to give something to you.
Peter says, you're to love earnestly with a pure heart.
A pure heart.
Now, if you're paying attention at the beginning of verse 22, he
says, having purified your souls, your soul has been purified.
Yet, he now calls them to act with pure love.
Do you see the connection there?
Peter is saying you might possess the reality of having been loved and
set apart, but the actuality and the practicality needs to be lived out.
You can be a Christian who has been saved by God and yet
your love is stale and cold.
And when you realize that as a Christian, your job is not to say, I must not be
a Christian, then your job is to repent and say, Lord, I have a cold love.
Will you forgive me for this?
And empower me to now love the way that you call me to I repent and I decide
to love the way that God has called me.
Love is a decision to exercise with intensity for their sake.
It's with a pure heart.
Now, how can we do this?
Romans five, Paul says this, God's love has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit.
That is when you became a Christian.
God takes his dump truck of love and douses you with it.
You've been immersed in submerged in the love of God, which means you now possess
a new reality, a new ability to love that is beyond your natural capacity.
This kind of love is impossible, apart from the power of God.
Let me just say that if you're not a Christian, this is not to you.
If you're not a believer, I can't command you to do this because you
don't have the capacity to do it, not the way that God calls us to.
Something has to happen for this kind of love to be possible, which
is why we move on to our next verses here in verses 23 through 25.
Take a look with me first Peter, chapter 1, 23 through 25.
If you happen not to have your Bible, it's on the screen for you,
but if you do have your Bible, please follow along there with me.
He says that you're to have love for one another, earnestly from a pure heart.
Verse 23, since, or because you have been born again, not of perishable seed.
That is, we're not just talking about the biology here.
You're not just, you haven't just been born a person, but you've been
born again by imperishable seed.
That's a reference to God's work through the spirit.
You've been born again, John chapter three, by the work of
God through the spirit of God.
He says here in the second half of verse 23, you've been born again
through imperishable seed, through the living and abiding word of God.
Now we're gonna cheat for a second and look, I want you to
look at the bottom of verse 25.
When we read the word of God there, I want you to see what Peter has in mind.
Look at the bottom of verse 25.
What is the word of God?
This word is, you see it there.
The good news.
The good news that was preached to you.
So in verse 23, when we read the Living and Abiding Word of God, we're looking
at Peter's shorthand way of saying, this is the gospel, the good news.
Okay?
You've been born again, not a perishable seed, but of imperishable through
the living and abiding word of God.
And now Peter's going to.
Is going to ground that in the word for Isaiah chapter 40.
He says, all flesh is like grass and all of his glory, like the flower of grass.
He's saying, all people are like grass.
It's beautiful for one short season of time, and then it dies
and becomes stale and decays.
It goes away.
He's saying that's what human life is like.
You start life young and strong and healthy, have a full head of
hair, and then something happens.
You quickly begin to change.
Things begin to change.
Your life begins to change.
You no longer possess the same vitality you live and you die.
The grass withers and the flower falls, but in contrast to the temporal, to
the temporal nature of mankind, he says The word of the Lord remains forever.
And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
In other words, to put it differently, he's saying the
word of God that is powerful and effective now and to eternity.
There's a power source in the word of God that is beyond human comprehension.
You and I, we will perish, we will we'll grow.
We'll experience the glory of our lives, and then we we'll
perish and, and, and fall away.
But the word of God do the gospel.
Endures and changes, changes us in fundamental ways.
In fact, the whole reason Peter says this, the whole reason Peter says this
is because he wants you to believe that you have everything you need to love
the way that God calls you to love.
He wants you to believe that you have point number two, ample resources to love.
God calls you to love.
He says, love one another with brotherly affection, earnestly.
And then he says, by the way, I've given you the gospel.
I've given you a new, a new spirit, a new life.
You can do this By God's grace, you possess everything you need to love the
way that God has called you to love.
I
the love that God gives us is an enduring love.
In fact, this is one of the qualifiers, one of the evidences of real love.
This is big because this is different than what our culture says.
So as you're making your notes, I want you to hear what I'm saying.
Real love.
True love.
Genuine love.
God's love.
The definitive love that scripture speaks of is enduring love.
It is covenantal.
It has a permanency about it.
It doesn't wax and wane with the tides.
It doesn't.
It doesn't go away when times get hard.
Real love is a committed love that says, I'm in it for the long haul.
That's what real love is.
Isn't that the love that God shows to you?
Isn't that the love that God offers to you?
He says, if you'll repent over sin and trusts in me, I
will love you to the very end.
In fact, that's how John in chapter 13 talks about Jesus' love for the disciples.
He love them to the end, to the very end, and so real love them has a
quality and endurance that doesn't fatigue, at least not ultimately.
This is what love looks like.
It's enduring.
This is the hallmark of the Christian faith, an enduring, genuine love.
This is what it looks like.
Practically speaking.
Then, if this is your pursuit, if this is what you're trying to do, you can
understand how this would affect us.
Now I just think about the fact that when you're interacting with
people, you might say to people, man, this person's really hard to love.
This person is just difficult to love.
They're a very draining person.
They possess, uh, uh, character flaws and quirks and idiosyncrasies that
just really rubbed me the wrong way.
Maybe you see this person in church and instead of, you know, instead of
walking past them, you try to avoid them so you don't have to talk to them.
They're breath smells, and when they talk to you, they're leaning into
closely and maybe they're, you know, they got bo and they're not really
making me feel good when I talk to them.
There's a lot of reasons why you may not jive with someone who is also a Christian.
Excuse me.
There's a lot of reasons why you may find it difficult to love someone who's sitting
next to you, and scripture anticipates that, which is why he's saying, look,
you've been given a spirit, you've been given a mission to love people,
and whether or not you feel it is not the question, it's whether or not you
will obey God's call to love the people that he's put in your, in your midst.
Loving people like this is hard.
Some of you might have said, I can't keep forgiving him.
I can't keep forgiving This person, this person in my small group,
they dominate every conversation.
I just don't have the energy for them anymore.
I don't have the patience for this person.
This person is too messy.
They're too, they're too challenging.
They're too problematic.
Or maybe you might say, they've never even thanked me.
I serve so I, I'm always serving and they never even thank me.
They never say, Hey, thanks Tom for doing the thing that you did.
Hey, thanks for showing up early.
Hey, thanks for coming late.
Hey, thanks for making the food.
They never even thanked me there.
There's so many reasons that we might struggle to love one another.
And I, the scripture speaks to this, the.
What's God's answer to us?
Keep going.
You can do this at this point.
Lots of people will say, you know what?
I need to find a new church.
I'm just not jiving with these people.
They're not.
I mean, yeah, maybe the, the, the worship's okay.
Preaching's, right, but man, I just, I'm just not connecting.
You know?
They, they're just this, that, the other thing.
Or I had a fight with so and so and we're just not gonna,
we're not cutting it, Ralph.
I'm just gonna find a new church.
The transient nature of our love infects all of us.
We're all consumeristic minded to the point where when things get hard, it's
really easy to say, what's time to bail?
You're hard to love.
It's time to bail.
I mean, people do this all the time with their marriages, don't they?
People do it all the time today when you, this is awful.
Today.
It's apropos and even encouraged in some ways.
If someone has a political disagreement with you, hey, de unfriend me.
I don't wanna follow you.
I don't wanna talk to you if you voted, I saw this one.
When, when Trump got elected, if you voted for Trump, unfriend me.
No friend of mine.
Okay.
Love is transient.
In our culture, it waxes and wanes.
It's up, it's down.
Even within the church, there are times when we, we might be led to believe,
well, man, if someone's toxic, if someone challenges the way that you
live and think, then maybe you just need to exit away from that person.
Remove yourself because they're toxic to your life, and I understand you
shouldn't be without boundaries.
Not saying that you should be foolish, but probably scripture pushes us
beyond our comfort far more than what we might be willing to admit.
Loving people is hard.
Loving them well is hard.
People are messy.
We're all messy.
Loving people well is hard, and scripture, I think would encourage
us to pursue beyond what's easy.
You guys heard that someone won the Powerball, right?
Powerball?
Not that I encourage gambling.
The Powerball was $1.7
billion, billion with a b.
I didn't realize that we were getting that high in the numbers.
$1.7
billion.
You could spend a hundred dollars every minute for the next 30 years
and still not run outta money.
It's a lot of money.
If it was you, be sure to tithe off of that.
Don't tell me but tithe.
Just kidding.
Don't do that.
See me after
need a building.
But here's the thing, if that's all that person has, if that person is
not in Christ, they are poorer than the poorest Christian, because as a
Christian, you don't just have $1.7
billion.
You have, according to Ephesians chapter one, the ladies are
studying this, they know this one.
You have with Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
You have all the wealth heaven has to offer in and through Christ.
You have everything.
You're not impoverished, spiritually speaking.
You have everything that you need.
You have all the resources that God can afford.
He's given them to you generously so that you can love people.
Here are those three resources that you have in Christ.
You ready for them?
The three resources, and we'll break them down quickly.
You have a Christ's spirit, B Christ's Word, and C Christ's example.
All three of those I can show you in the text.
Let's take a first.
Take a look first at a Christ spirit.
Look at verse 23.
23 A.
You've been born again of the imperishable word.
You have Christ's spirit who has adopted you.
He's made you brand new.
He's made you to be born again so that you no longer have just a natural spirit.
You have a supernatural spirit, empowered by God.
You've been changed all over.
And in fact, this is called the new birth.
Lots of babies being born here, and I love that.
Have more babies do more of that.
Watching a baby being born is awful.
But it's wonderful, the effect having a baby in your arms.
Awesome.
I'm probably not very helpful for you to hear that if you're thinking about having
more babies, but we all know, right?
It's not easy, especially for the men.
Just kidding.
When people are born again, the kind of traumatic events
that scripture uses is birth.
You've been born again.
Think about what it looks like to maybe don't think about it.
Remember the experience.
Perhaps now someone told you about what it was to have a brand new
baby pop out of a human body.
That traumatic experience is what Peter and the Gospels use to say, this is
what it's like to be become a Christian.
When you get a new spirit, it's like being born all over again.
You have a brand new thing about you.
Two Corinthians five 17 said The oldest passed away and behold the new has come.
You've been made alive with Christ.
His spirit now empowers your spirit.
Pastor Mark just got a new iPhone, I guess.
Apple released some new phones and one of them is a really thin phone.
So small, so light that it is just ridiculously thin.
This is the first and I think the only phone that they've ever sold
where they sell it with a battery.
Because there's no room for a good battery in there.
So in order for your phone to last longer than 45 minutes, they want you to buy a
hundred dollars battery to keep it going.
You don't rely on the human battery to do your thing.
As a Christian, you have a connection to the spirit that empowers your whole life.
You have an unlimited source of energy and sustaining grace through Christ's
spirit who has made you to be born again with an imperishable seed.
Unlike human batteries, we get tired, we grow weary.
We want to go to bed, and then eventually we die.
But the spirit's battery is a power source that endures forever.
You have Christ's spirit that allows you to love people,
even the weird ones.
Don't raise your hand if you think that's you.
You have Christ's spirit.
You have Christ's word.
It says here that you have been born again through the
living and abiding word of God.
This is of course the gospel.
The gospel is what allows us access into God.
And here's the thing, the cool thing about the word of God is that it governs
and shapes the way that I think about you and the way that I relate to you.
Let give you an example.
One time I, I had this student in my ministry who.
He, he is a teenager and so if he doesn't take proper precautions,
his body begins to emit a smell that is not the aroma of Christ.
So I had to make a decision and because I liked this kid, I went and I put my
arm on the shoulder and said, Hey man, I got, I gotta take you aside here.
So I took him to one of the side rooms where there would be no one to
hear what I was about to say to him.
I said, man, you really, really stink.
Do you have any deodorant anywhere at all?
And he said, no, it's at home.
And I said, okay, here's my deodorant.
I shared my deodorant with this guy.
Talk about love.
I gave him my stick and I said, you can keep it.
Please use it.
Please take this and utilize it because your, your body odor is very offensive.
Now, I can assure you this was awkward for both of us.
Neither one of us was enjoying this conversation.
This was not something that he ever expected his youth pastor to
say, but I did it because I cared.
I leaned into the weird awkwardness of addressing someone's body odor because
I cared about him and other people who would be left to smell his residue.
Scripture says that if I have the word of God, I now think about him
beyond what's comfortable for me.
Christ's word shapes the way that I think about my interactions with all of you.
It shapes the way that I see conflict, the way that I see, uh, the, the, the,
the way that I interact and talk to you.
The women went on a retreat recently all about how their words are
changed because of the word of God informing their words to other gals.
The spirit is what enables this, and he does it through his word.
Again, this is not about your feelings.
This is not about whether you feel affection for somebody.
This is about whether you'll obey God's direction to love people.
You have his word, his word, shapes and motivates the way
that you interact with people.
It shapes, it defines the reality, which means if I have an interaction with you
and I, I'm mad, I'm upset, I'm offended by something that you say or, or something.
You know, let's just say we have a fight.
I have one of two options.
One, I can talk poorly about you, to my wife, say, well, man, I was, I was
talking with Jorge and this guy, this guy, just such a jerk, you know, for whatever
reason, I was just, I'm just complaining about him at the lunch table after church.
I could, I could do that, or I can let Christ's word tell me if I have a problem
with a brother, I can cover it and just say, I'm not gonna think about it.
I'm not, I'm just gonna let it be covered over with love,
or I can address it with him.
I can go to Jorge and say, Hey buddy, when you told me
whatever I was offended by that.
I'd really like to resolve this.
Can, can we talk about this?
One of those is easy.
One of those is very hard, but if I trust Christ's word,
I'm gonna do the second one.
Even though it's awkward and difficult and challenging in so many ways,
that's the kind of body that grows.
That's the kind of love that expands.
That's the kind of love that's attracted to people.
It's the kind of love that says, I prefer your good over mine.
I don't want there to be beef between us.
I'd rather let the word of Christ direct me to reconcile with you as
opposed to playing this game of I'm just not gonna talk to you anymore.
And when I see you in the hallway, I'll smile, but behind my smile is venom
and bitterness because you offended me.
And I'm not gonna forget that, by the way.
I'm gonna, I remember that you offended me.
Never gonna let that go.
You see how destructive that can be.
I'm getting to my third point.
Let's not go there yet.
You have Christ's spirit.
You have Christ's word, and you also have Christ's example.
You have Christ's example in verse 25.
Peter says, this is the good news that was preached to you.
This is, this is the gospel that was given in the gospel.
You have the example of Christ who lived and died in your place,
raised for your justification.
You have Christ's life for you.
And if you get that, if you understand what Christ has done for you.
What else can you do?
But say, well, I wanna live like Christ.
If Christ loved me, stinky, rebellious, evil, his enemy, if he was able to love
me like that, then surely I can find it in my heart to love the brothers,
even if we offend one another, even if we step on one another's toes.
I have Christ spirit.
I have his word, I have his example.
Loving difficult people means becoming aware that we ourselves
are difficult to love if we're just honest for a few seconds.
I know that I'm difficult to love, and yet Kristen, to her credit, has
stayed in this marriage for years now.
I love her for that.
We're all difficult to love in a variety of ways.
Let's just be honest.
We recognize that.
We recognize that Christ loves us.
He gave us the example of what it looks like to love to the
fullest, and surely I can.
I can love you and I can forgive you, and I can do my best to make
it work at a church because I care about God's glory and about the
people that I'm sitting next to.
Highly countercultural, but Peter's not done yet.
If this is the kinda love he calls us to, then he has some really specific
application he wants you to get.
Here's what he says.
In conclusion, he might say the word so there could be translated.
Therefore, therefore.
If this is the kind of love that God calls us to put away, all malice,
all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, all slander, he gives a vice list of all
these kinds of things that can have an effect on the Christian life.
In fact, these are so, uh, these sins if allowed to, if allowed to
simmer or to grow in the body of believers can destroy our church.
I don't think that's hyperbole.
I think that's genuine.
If we allow these sins to permeate our relationships, we almost guarantee
that our church will die before she ever has a chance to truly live.
Relationships are that important.
So Peter says, you gotta put these away.
Put these sins away.
Here's what the word put away means.
You ready?
You tracking with me?
Okay.
Here's what put away means.
It means take off.
Take it off and dispose of it.
I'm not gonna put it on the floor 'cause it's a nice jacket.
Dispose of it.
Get rid of it.
Take off the old garments that you used to wear when you were a sinner
who hated God and put on new clothes.
Have you ever had the experience where you put on an old pair of
pants or an old shirt and then it doesn't quite fit anymore?
Like, oh man, this is, this is tighter than I remember.
The shirt must have shrunk.
Things are changing in my, in my, my closets.
Most of us, perhaps we take off the shirt or the pants and we put them
back in the closet for the day that we'll be able to fit them again.
Peter is saying you can't do that with your old sins.
You can't take off those clothes and say, I'm just gonna put them here in
case I wanna pick up envy again someday.
In case I want to pick up hypocrisy, I'll put the hypocrisy back on.
Now he's saying, take off the old cloth, take it off, repudiate it.
Which is why point number three is repudiate the sins
that corrode Christian Love.
Get rid of it.
Set 'em a fire.
Kill them.
Crucify them, dispose of them.
I can't think of stronger language to tell you what Peter is saying here.
Put it all away.
Be done with that.
When my brother was young, he, he got cancer that was aggressive, and so the
doctors prescribed an aggressive form of treatment for my brother Philip.
We had chemo and radiation therapy both together attacking
the cancer cells in his body.
The effect on his body was that he lost all of his hair.
He was thin as a rail.
He lost continence.
He wasn't able even to have the strength enough to hold his bowels inside.
So everything changed.
I mean, it was a, it was a horrendous time for my family.
But the doctors assured us this is necessary because the cancer
is so lethal, it's deadly.
If we don't get a handle on this.
I think Peter would say the sins here are lethal to our body.
These are cancerous sins that if we allow them to spread, if we allow
these kinds of sins to permeate our culture in our body, we're effectively
giving ourselves the kiss of death.
So what you ought to do then is replace malice with goodness.
We're putting off these old sins, we're putting on the new goodness,
then means I care about you.
I love you.
I wanna do good to you.
That's my goal.
When I see you, I want to do good.
I wanna make sure that the way that I interact with you is
righteous and holy and upright.
I want to do good.
I'm not gonna pay you back when you sin against me.
I'm gonna do what I can to do good.
Don't be malicious, be good with them.
Replace de seat with truth instead of pretending to be something
I'm not or to, to say something that I really don't mean to you.
I want to give you the unvarnished truth.
This alone can have the power to transform our church when we speak the
truth and love, as Ephesians chapter four says, it creates a context where
there's authentic relationships, which is why number three, we wanna
replace hypocrisy with authenticity.
We shouldn't have the kind of relationships where we expect one another
to act in ways that are unbecoming.
In fact, when we talk about hypocrisy and truthfulness, I mean, just think about
the, the critic who hates the church.
What's the one thing that they're gonna say about Christians?
Christians are all, say it with me, hypocrites.
It's the one that we get all the time.
And maybe there's something to be said about that.
Okay?
We, we don't live up to the standard that we profess.
We know that that's actually why we're Christians in the first place.
We believe we don't live up to the standard of perfection.
We all fall short of the glory of God, but it doesn't mean we justify it.
As Christians, our job is to replace hypocrisy with authenticity, and at least
what that means is that we're turning from our sins on a regular basis, repenting
of them, and trusting God to change us.
I understand that when you come to church on a Sunday, there's
a there, there's an easier sense in which you can put on a mask.
It's easier just because we're interacting with each other only for a few hours,
and so, you know, can I really get into all of my life's messiness right
here and right now is the best place.
I don't want people to hear what's going on in my life.
So I understand that here you might be a little more superficial, which
is why it is essential that you have a place within the body of Christ.
Or you can move beyond the superficial into the substantial to tell people
where you really are and what's really happening in your heart and in your life.
So that people have a chance to care for you.
This will then mean we're not acting hypocritically,
we're acting authentically.
We're bringing our baggage and all of our sins and all of our
issues to the table and saying, guys, I don't have it together.
Will you please pray for me?
Will you please help me?
Will you please bring me the meal?
Whatever it is, this is the way that we oppose that will truthfully
and authentically bring ourselves to the, to the to the table and
say, this is what's happening.
Help me with these things.
This is how God has designed us to work.
We gotta replace these things.
We put away the sins of hypocrisy and desie.
We bring our truths to the surface.
If you're not in a community group, let me just encourage you this.
This is the time you grow in authenticity by practicing it with other believers.
So if you're not in that, let me encourage you and exhort you,
make this something that you do.
Community groups are important.
Envy, we should replace with honor.
Envy is resentful.
Discontentedness as one commentary.
Put it, it's another way to say jealousy.
When I see you succeed, I'm pained by that.
I don't like to see you get the things that I think I should have.
Envy has no place in the Christian life.
Envy has no place because we're all recipients of God's grace.
We all have his grace to varying degrees.
God has placed us each as he appoints us, he's given us all gifts of grace and
gifts of opportunity and gifts of of, of resources and intellectual ability.
It's all different.
Envy doesn't fit because God has composed us all to be a body, and
that body of necessity is different.
One of us is a hand, one of us is an elbow, one of us is a shoulder, one of
us is a foot, and one of us is a hip.
We can't all be the same thing.
Or else the body doesn't work.
And so we're all gonna be in different places.
And when that happens, sometimes the foot looks at the eye and says, man, I wish I
was an eye stinks being down here smells.
But the eye just gets to sit at the top of everybody and look at all the cool things.
I wish I was an eyeball.
This is actually the analogy that Paul uses.
And Paul says, look, you can't think that way.
You can't be envious of your brother or sister because God
has appointed them to that place.
Does your brother or sister have a lot more money than you have and you think,
man, I'm a harder worker than they are.
What's going on here?
Lord, let God be God.
I could be thankful and I could even honor them and say, Lord, bless their work.
Bless their their finances, bless their investments.
Make them, make them resourceful.
Let them be generous of what they got.
If you are struggling to have a baby and your closest friends have
lots of babies, they don't even try.
They blink their eyes and next thing you know, they're pregnant.
You might be tempted to be envious and say, well, well, Lord, I
mean, we're better parents.
If we were parents, we'd be better.
We gotta stop that.
We can't let envy infect our hearts.
It is cancer to us.
Instead, we ought to honor people.
In fact, Paul says in Romans chapter 12, he says, outdo one another,
compete with one another in what?
You know, this one out doing another in.
Showing honor.
If anyone's gonna compete with anybody, it's gonna be, I want to
honor you better than you honor me.
And that's the kind of competition God can endorse.
That's the kind of, that's the kind of competition God would encourage
us to participate in, out, out, doing another, and showing honor.
Last, replace slander with blessing.
Slander is evil.
Speech meant to destroy someone's character to lower their reputation.
Your job then is not to allow slander to leave your lips.
In fact, again, the ladies in the retreat, one of their key
verses was Ephesians 4 29.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for
building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.
Scripture forbids you to use certain language.
One of the, one of the means of the language is to slander
somebody to cut them down.
Now if you have a real issue with somebody, again, you go to them.
If you have a real problem and you have, you see some sin that needs to be
addressed, you go to them, but you do so first by saying, can I just overlook this?
Can I overlook this offense with love?
And if not, and you deem it wise and prudent, then you go to them.
You don't character assassin them to everybody else in their small group
or the community group and say, well, you know, I heard Pastor pj, you know,
he's got this issue and that issue.
Let's say you resolve it with Pastor pj, you know you're offense with him.
You go to him and eventually you guys, you hug it out.
There's reconciliation.
All the people that you talk to about his sins, what are they thinking?
They still think he's a big, you know, knucklehead because you
slandered his character across all these different people.
This can happen all the time if we're not careful.
Scripture says that we're called to love one another earnestly, and what
that means is that we guard our tongues and instead of using our tongues to
slash and dash and to cut people to pieces, we'll use our tongues instead
to build up, to edify, to encourage.
That's what Peter says.
Now, as I close here, let me encourage you.
When I was putting the sermon together, I thought, you know what?
Compass North Texas does a good job at loving people.
Guys do a good job.
So many people that visit PPJ has told you before they come and they say,
man, that church, they're friendly.
They don't have cliques.
They're not, they're not exclusive.
They, they welcome people and you're doing a good job at this, guys.
You're doing a good job.
Everything I'm saying then is not to be discounted.
In fact, here's what Paul says to the Thessalonian Church, who is also
doing a good job at loving people.
Here's what he says.
He says, now, concerning brotherly love, you have no
need for anyone to write to you.
For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.
In other words, the Thessalonian Church guys are crushing it.
You're loving people, you're doing it good work.
But in verse 10, he says this.
He says, for that indeed is what you're doing to all the brothers throughout
Macedonia, you're loving them well.
But we urge you brothers to do this.
More and more
love for people cannot be put on cruise control or autopilot.
We have to keep pursuing this goal.
And when we do it, it cha, it shape shapes everything.
It changes all of us.
It grows our church, it grows our affection for one another.
It does good things.
It transforms everything.
So our job isn't done.
You're doing a great job.
I don't wanna discourage you.
This message is not meant to do that.
This job is in fact meant to encourage you to keep going, to not grow.
Where we're in doing good for induce season will reap if we don't give up.
And when we quit, when the bell rings, when God either takes your
life or Jesus comes to retrieve his bride, his bride, until then.
Let's keep at it.
Let's pray.