Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.
Turn to First Peter, chapter 1. We're in a book called First Peter written by Peter. We call the study Rock Solid because the name of the author means "stone," not stoned, but a stone. He was rocky. Jesus picked him and made him into something great, and we have his letter before us. First Peter, chapter 1, and let's pray together before we begin.
Father you took a very simple Galilean and you used him, Peter, a man who was changed by what we just got through singing, changed by your love. And we think about your love, you're love never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me. We who have been recipients of that great love, it's a marvel to us. And, yet, it is our calling as well, having received your love, to become ambassadors of your love to others who need to experience that as well. Lord, I do pray that this will not be just a sermon. We're so good at not hearing important things, and tuning out to pulpit talks and sermons. By your grace, Lord, I pray these things would transform us, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
I think you'll agree that our society is becoming less personal, that the personal is being substituted by the virtual and the technological. We're becoming really good at communicating in technology, but one-on-one, eye to eye, person-to-person, we're losing that. To be a friend today doesn't mean the same thing that it used to mean. Get my drift? You can be a Facebook "friend," doesn't mean the same thing.
To like someone today doesn't mean the same thing that it used to mean. You can "like" somebody's Instagram post. To follow someone today doesn't mean the same thing that it used to mean. People boast about their "followers" on Twitter. Those words are changing. The truth is you could have hundreds of friends and followers and likers on social media and not have very many close actual friends. And all of that technology is making an impact, there's a consequence to it.
According to Forbes magazine: "Recent studies have found that despite being more connected than ever before, more people feel more alone than ever before. Surprisingly, those who report feeling most alone, are those you'd expect it from the least: Young people under thirty-five who are the most prolific social networkers of all." Let me give you a case in point. Been to a coffee shop lately? Go to a coffee shop and look around. It's now the place where people go to be alone together. [laughter] That is an oxymoron in and of itself---alone together. Here we are together, but we're alone.
They're not communicating with each other, they're looking at a device, a screen. They're communicating but not personally, but virtually. Harvard Business Review found that teen performance went up 50 percent when teens socialized more and e-mailed less. Isn't that interesting? When I was a kid, social networking was called "outside." Right? "Get outside." "Go find your friends." "Go play." There's one thing we ought to be great at as a church, and that is, love. It's the personal, not the virtual.
If there's one place love should flourish, it ought to be in the body of Christ. Psalm 68 describes God as somebody who sets the solitary into families. God is about taking the isolated, the solitary, the alone person and bringing he or she into a network, a family, reality. A computer can't do that, and social networking can't do that. That's where it takes real people. We live in a love-starved world; our love should flourish. With that thought in mind, I take you to First Peter, chapter 1, beginning in verse 22, finishing off that first chapter and Peter's first thoughts.
"Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because 'All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.' Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you."
I want you to see something as we start. The very core of this paragraph is a single phrase in verse 22, the "sincere love of the brethren." That's the core. That's the center. Everything else revolves around the thought of this "sincere love for the brethren," followed by a command to "love one another fervently." Everything is connected to those thoughts. Allow me, if you will, to catch you up to where we are but by seeing where we have been.
Peter sits down with pen in hand to write a letter to young believers who are struggling, and this is what he tells them: "You guys have been picked by God, selected by God, brought on the same team. You are elect." That's verse 1 and 2. "Once you have been selected by God, he has given you a living hope because of a resurrected Christ," that's verse 3. "That living hope gets better and better all the way into heaven where it is reserved for you. It is incorruptible; it does not fade away." That's verse 4 and 5.
"So that even though you may struggle now, and go through trials now, and not be able to see God clearly now," that's verse 6, 7, 8, and 9; "you have what the prophets predicted, what preachers proclaim, and what angels ponder," that's verse 10, 11, and 12. "Therefore," he says in verse 13, "Therefore you and I ought to live holy lives and be obedient to God, because he redeemed us at an incredible price---the precious blood of his Son." That's verse 13 through verse 21.
And now he caps it off and says, "And a sincere love, a brotherly love, an accepting love, a healing love for your brothers and sisters." When you think of love, you usually don't put that in the context of sports. What does it take to win a football game? Not love. You don't need love on a football team, right? You don't love; you gotta be a good football player. You'd be wrong if you said that, according to one source.
In fact, a legendary source, Vince Lombardi the legend, the coach one time of the Green Bay Packers was asked this: "Coach, what does it take to make a winning team?" Not love, right? Listen to what his answer is, and I quote: "First you teach the fundamentals. A player's got to know the basics of the game. Next, you got to keep him in line, that's discipline. The men have to play as a team. Third, they've got to care for and love each other."
"The difference between mediocrity and greatness is feeling that these guys have a love for each other. When you've got that sort of team spirit, you've got a winning team." I want to give you four basic instructions on how to have a winning team here among us as believers, four aspects of Christian love that are put in four directives that are memorable: first, demonstrate your personal liberty; second, celebrate your spiritual family; third, radiate a mutual loyalty; and fourth, cultivate scriptural dependency.
All four are mentioned in these verses. Look back to verse 22 where the paragraph begins. He says, "Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love for the brethren." Let me unravel that, if I may. It will help to know that the vocabulary is put here so that when it says that "you've purified your souls," it speaks about something that happened in the past, but it has continuing results. In other words, you were saved in the past, and that makes a difference now.
It's the present participle that simply is there to demonstrate not only have you been cleansed in the past, but you therefore have new capabilities in the present. You've been saved, and you have a capability of loving. You now love your brothers and sisters. Simply put, the first reason that love should be evident among us is because you're a saved person. Why should you love? Because you're saved, and the fruit of salvation, "the fruit of the Spirit," it says in Galatians 5, "is love."
There's so many Scriptures, and we don't have the time to chase them all down, but especially in the New Testament, it is filled with indications or commandments to love each other. The most famous are the words of the Lord Jesus who said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. For by this shall all men know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another." Boy, that's quite a powerful statement, right? You prove that you're saved by your love for each other.
A few years ago I was in an airport in Trivandrum. Most of you have never been to Trivandrum. It's a little town in India, quite a big town, actually. I was going from one town to another town, hopefully to get to this town. That was my goal---coming back home. I'd been there speaking in India for a couple of weeks. I was with a buddy of mine, another pastor. We were in the airport in Trivandrum and we noticed this girl. She was having a tough time paying for her meal. She ran out of money.
She had big suitcases, but little money, so I paid for her lunch. We carried her bags to the plane. We got her situated, sort of calmed down. She had been in India for some time, and she was trying to get back home. And we were able to share the love of Christ with her. Well, she had been on an ashram in India, Rishikesh. That's where the Beatles once stayed to get spiritual enlightenment. She went there to get spiritual enlightenment.
And she said in our conversation, "I didn't find any spiritual enlightenment here. I was in this ashram and they were just all trying to take advantage of me. I felt very used and cheapened by this whole experience." But just our being with her, she said something interesting. She said, "I was raised in a Christian home, and now my faith has been affirmed by you showing me unconditional love." An amazing statement. That's the principle---salvation should affect relation.
Our salvation should affect every relationship in life. Once we have been loved, we have been set free now to love other people. Hudson Taylor put it this way: "If your father and mother, sister and brother, if the very cat and dog in your house are not happier for you being a Christian, it's a question whether you really are." I hope you have a happy cat. [laughter] Notice what it says in verse 22. What kind of love for the brethren? "Sincere." Now, you know what sincere love is; it means it's the real deal. It's not fake, it's sincere, it's real.
Now the Greek word, listen to it, because you'll recognize it---anupokritos: without hypocrisy. Don't be phony in your love. When Paul wrote to the Romans, he said, chapter 12, verse 9, "Let love be without hypocrisy." Don't pretend, really love people. There's nothing worse than fake love, nothing worse than saying, "Oh, I'm at church now, click." [smiles insincerely] [laughter] "Hi, brother." If you don't really mean that, don't do that, because it's weird otherwise.
It's sort of like plastic fruit. [laughter] My mom had a bowl of it. I remember as a kid she bought this plastic fruit, and my job was to dust it every week. [laughter] That is, like, the worst. And it was bad because I didn't know it was plastic when she first brought it in, and I took a bite of an apple, and I got this waxy, plastic junk in my mouth. By the way, do you know that the word sincere in our language comes from the Latin that means "without wax"?
Sincere, sine cera, literally means "without wax." Let your love be without wax. This is where it comes from: in ancient times porcelain dealers, statue makers would use wax to fill in their mistakes. Can you imagine making a statue, spending hours and hours upon a work of art, only to have the ear or nose of the statue you are making fall off with a chisel? You have two options: you start all over again; or you get some marble, dust, and wax and you fashion a fake appendage and put it on.
Or, if you're a porcelain maker, and you got a chip in a cup or a plate, you could put some wax and porcelain and hide that little scuff quite easily. So that when statue makers and porcelain dealers wanted to say that their product was the best and it was real, they would say it is "sine cera," it's without wax. And the way to tell is to hold it up to the light, hold it up to the sunlight.
You can imagine how embarrassing it would be on a hot summer day if a woman decided to honor her Uncle Fred at his birthday party by putting a statue of Fred in the backyard, and about 12 noon when you unveil the statue and the hot sun comes out, Fred's nose just drips down to his mouth. [laughter] It's with wax. It's not sincere. Insincere love is when you fill in your love with cheap substitutes. Example: you pay somebody a compliment, you don't really mean it.
You're not really trying to encourage them, you're trying to manipulate them, and get something from them. And to butter them up is the best way. Or, you give somebody a hug, not because you care, but you want to get close to that person physically. That is insincere love. Matthew Henry put it this way, "Hypocrisy is to do the devil's work in God's uniform." Who among the twelve apostles was the one who had insincere love? Easy answer: Judas Iscariot.
He was the guy who when the woman poured oil on Jesus to anoint him for burial in that house, he spoke up and he said, "This could have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor." Ooh, it sounds like he loves the poor. He doesn't. It's insincere love. It's got wax in it. It's dripping with wax. Because John says, "PS, this guy didn't care for the poor, he was a thief and he wanted to take that money for himself."
On another occasion Judas Iscariot sees Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he has Roman soldiers in tow, he walks up to Jesus and kisses him. That's a sign of love, affection. That's insincere love. That love has wax in it. He was simply trying to identify Jesus to the soldiers who would take him away. Let love be without hypocrisy, sincere love, real love; not fake love, not phony, turn-on-a-click smile, fake, Christian love---the real deal, because the real deal will heal people's hearts.
Dr. Paul Tournier a physician, a Swiss doctor, said, "I'm convinced nine out of every ten people seeing a psychiatrist don't need one. They need somebody who will love them with God's love, and they will get well." Demonstrate your personal liberty. Second aspect, second directive: celebrate your spiritual family. Look at the word in verse 22. See it with your own eyes as you look down at the word "brethren"---brethren: brother, sister. It's a family word. We're in a spiritual family.
And then in verse 23, "Having been born again." These are family words. You're in a spiritual family because you've had a spiritual birth. The basis of our unity, the real basis of your loving unity is our birth. Not our first birth, our second birth. We're in the same family. We call on the same heavenly Father. We trust in the same Savior. We all have the same Holy Spirit living inside of us. We all come to salvation exactly the same way---by trusting in the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed for us.
There's an old saying in families: "Blood is thicker than"---what?---"water." Simply put, you can mess up, you can fall down, you can fail, but if we're related by blood, we're going to get you through this, man, because we're family. Blood is thicker than water. Well, Peter has already said that we have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Lamb without blemish and without spot.
Moody said, "You can be a good doctor without loving your patients, you can be a great lawyer without loving your clients, but you cannot be a good Christian without love." Because we're part of a family and we recognize that. We're part of a family. The woman sitting next to you right now is your sister in Christ. Might be your wife, but it's your sister. The man sitting next to you is your brother in Christ. Some of us have really messed up, but we're family, and we love each other in spite of the mess. That's real family love.
There was a psychiatrist who came home after a busy day. He was tired, bone tired; dragged himself into the front door and saw his wife. And he just put his head in his hands and he said, "Sweetheart, I have heard of one problem after another problem. after another problem all day long. I do not want to hear any more problems. So whatever you have to say to me, give me good news. Don't tell me about another problem we're having in our family."
She thought a moment and she said, "Well, the good news is two of our three children didn't break an arm today." [laughter] That's one way to put it, right? "One did, but I won't tell you that, two out of three did not." It could be that two out of three people sitting around you right now is okay, but please be sensitive to that one who is not. And you're family, so let's get through that. So, demonstrate personal liberty; celebrate spiritual family; third, we're to radiate a mutual loyalty.
And that brings us to verse 22, the command that is written in the text, that which everything revolves around. In verse 22, "Love one another fervently with a pure heart." Now here's what I want you to notice, this is important: this is put---listen carefully---in the imperative mood, which make it a---what?---a command. An imperative is a command. Peter is writing, "I am commanding you to love each other fervently." Now, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you do that?
Can you imagine me going up to my girlfriend, who would become my wife, Lenya, one time and saying, "I command you---love me"? [laughter] You think that'll go over well? You think it would work? She would say, "Give me one good reason why I should." How do you command somebody to love? How do you do that? Now listen again. Here's why: because there is a kind of love that does not depend on emotion, but it's an act of the will. It's something you chose to do; you don't necessarily feel to do it.
I'm going to clear up this whole mess by simply saying this: there's two times the word "love" is used here. Same word---love, love. But there's two different words in the Greek language. So you'll notice in verse 22, "Since you purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love"---that word is philadelphia, which means brotherly love, family love. "In sincere love of the brethren," here's the second time, "love one another." Different word, it's the word agape love. This is divine love. This is sacrificial love.
"Since you already love each other as brothers, now I'm commanding you: love like God loves; love with a sacrificial, divine love; love fervently and with a pure heart." So, we share the first kind of love, philadelphia, because we're brothers and sisters. We share the second kind of love because he commands us to show it as an act of our will, even though we don't feel like it. The keyword here is love fervently, fervently, deeply.
Some of you will be surprised to know this is an athletic term which means to stretch out a muscle to its limit, to its capacity. Got any weight lifters here? You don't have to raise your hands up. You don't have to raise your hand up to show us how big your muscle is. [laughter] But if you go to the gym, and you put weights on the barbell, you put as many weights as you can handle up to your capacity to lift.
And typically a person will do reps, repetitions until that final repetition is just, like, a struggle. That's the idea: he's stretching the muscle out to its capacity. So, what he means here is go all out in your love. Stretch out your love so far that it graciously forgives and blesses and heals. You see, love is something we gotta work on. You say, "Oh, no, it's not, it's just a warm feeling." No, it's not. You gotta work on it just like you work on your golf swing.
I don't know if it improves you much or not, but isn't it a great feeling to have a good drive and to just see that baby go down the fairway? You go, "Yeah! Payoff, man, all that muscle memory training." Or to have a great serve in tennis, or to work hard in playing an instrument, and getting it down pat. So too we have to work on our love, work on treating people like God would treat them. That takes an act of our will. We decide to show love to people even when we have been hurt by that person.
Now, follow me here. Doesn't God love that way? Isn't the best reflection of God's love is to demonstrate love to somebody fervently who has hurt us? Wouldn't that most reflect God's love? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." God gave his Son to a world, and they killed him, and that hurt God, but that's how God loves.
One of the greatest sentences I ever heard was spoken to me in Baghdad, Iraq. I was there on a special mission, not for the military, but for my Lord, taking some of your shoe boxes a few years ago. several years ago when Saddam Hussein was still reigning there. We brought 27,000 shoe boxes in big 18-wheelers all the way from Amman, Jordan into Baghdad. When we got there, we were sort of quarantined by Saddam Hussein's cabinet.
And I'll never forget we were interrogated by two ministers of his, the minister of religious affairs, and foreign affairs, who asked us why we're there. And we said, "We're not here in the name of America or Canada or Lebanon." We had several countries represented. "We're here in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to tell you that God loves you and loves your children. And we wanted to give tokens of that love from people around the world in his name."
Well, it was an interesting conversation, to say the least, and was televised on Iraqi television. But what was most interesting was that off camera the minister said to us, "Until now, we in this country have believed that it is the Christians of the world that hate us." Isn't that a revealing statement? "But now I realize it's the Christians of this world that love us." When I heard that sentence, it was like, cha-ching! That's the money shot right there.
Just to hear him say, "I now know it's the Christians of the world who love us," was worth the trip. I might not have felt like being there or wanted to extend my love to someone who is called the enemy of America, but it spoke volumes. See, we must never say, "Well, I think I love people enough just the way I am." Really? So often the Bible says, "I know that you love, but keep doing it." For instance, Philippians chapter 1 verse 9, "I pray that your love may abound still more and more in all knowledge and all discernment."
Same idea in First Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 12, "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you." Take a test right now in your mind just for you. How fervent is your love just in the relationships, the close relationships in your life? How fervent is it? In your marriage, how do you stretch out your love to bless your spouse? At home, what acts of your will do you show your children or your parents? at work? with your friends? in your home group? in your church?
Malcolm Muggeridge once said, "The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis or any other disease like that, rather, it's the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love," he writes, "the terrible indifference toward one's neighbor who live at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease."
Now, let me ask you a question: What is your limit? What's your limit to love? Let me put it another way: How much capacity do you have as a Christian to love people? I'm going to answer it for you; you knew that. How much capacity do you have? Romans, chapter 5, says, "For the love of God has been poured out," or "shed abroad," "poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." The language there refers to filling up a bucket or a pot so full that it just keeps on overflowing to the brim and over and over.
So when you feel like, "I'm done! This is enough. I can't go anymore." Keeps filling it up. It's been shed abroad in our hearts; which means you and I have an infinite capacity, by God's grace, to love people; which means no one in your life should ever be love starved. Because when you run out, he's got more to pour in. And that's the evidence that you belong to him, and that you're in the same family, because you have a new capacity; which brings us to our fourth and finally aspect: cultivate scriptural dependency.
Now watch this. Verse 24 begins with what word? "Because"---he's giving you the reason for it, and he's going to quote Scripture. "Because," he writes all this, " 'All flesh is as grass,' " quoting Isaiah 40, " 'and all the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, the flower fades [or falls away], but the word of the Lord endures forever.' Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you." Good growth requires good food.
If you're going to grow in love, you need to be nourished in your love. This Book, this Bible, this is love food. This feeds love. This nourishes love. This Book, the Scripture reveals how to love, reveals a God who loves: "For God so loved the world." It tells us not only to love, but how to love in our marriages, in our friendships, with children, in respecting parents. It even talks about physical love in the book of the Song of Solomon for you couples; check it out, report back. It's there---how to love.
So, here's Peter's point: God's Word was preached to us and it gave us life, because he says it's an incorruptible seed. It's an eternal seed. It's an unperishable seed. So the seed was planted in the heart, it germinated and brought forth---what?---fruit. Fruit proves the seed is there. Without the fruit, there's no seed, you would surmise. There's no seed because there's no fruit. If there's fruit in your life, it's because a seed has been planted in your heart. "And the fruit of the Spirit," Galatians 5:22, "is love."
So, here's the deal: anytime the Bible gives you a command, it doesn't give you a command unless it gives you the capacity to follow that command. God will give you the ability to do it, which means if you don't feel like loving that unlovely person in your life, do it anyway. If you don't feel like forgiving that nasty person in your life, do it anyway. If you don't feel like caring for that belligerent jerk, do it anyway. If you don't feel like humbling yourself before that prideful person, do it anyway.
Now, if you're an astute reader of the text, you're going to go, "Now, time-out, time-out, time-out, wait a minute, wait a minute." It says that you're supposed to do it from the heart, right? It says, "with a pure heart." Not just mechanically, not just obediently, but from a pure heart. This is how it works: your decision is the engine; your feeling is the caboose. When you make a decision to show love, the feelings will follow. The feelings follow the act of love.
"Love one another," that's a command, "fervently from a pure heart." Those feelings will follow. Yes, society is becoming less personal and more and more virtual and technological, which means you and I, we have to be more intentional about the real deal. I mean, how much love can you get on Facebook really? "Well, I've got all these 'likes.' " Yeah, good friends---not all. Christian love is the love of the will that forgives and heals and proves that we love him.
When the apostle John was getting up in years, it was said that he could stand no longer. He had to be carried from congregation to congregation, and so men would carry him. And people were so excited to see the apostle John; after all, he was Jesus' best friend on earth still alive. He's the closest people got to Jesus. So, this old apostle would be brought into the congregations, and he would lift up his hand of blessing upon them, but they wanted to hear a sermon from him.
In his last days the traditions say that John only gave a five-word sermon. Some of you are wishing for that, I know. [laughter] "Little children, love one another," that's, all he said. "Little children, love one another." Well, it got tedious; people were expecting a sermon. "That's it? That's it? That's, like, kid's stuff. Can't we get any more than that?" And the people actually complained, and one said to him, says the tradition, "Brother John, might you not be able to offer something a bit---well, a bit deeper?"
And John replied, "The Lord's command is that we love one another; it doesn't get any deeper than that." Love one another. Jesus' command to love one another is still the most basic and the most difficult for us to do. But we can do it, because we've been set free, we have personal liberty, and we're part of a whole new family, and we have a brand-new capacity, so we can love fervently. You stressed out to the limit? He'll keep pouring. And if you live that way, it is a force, God's love is a force no unbeliever can withstand.
Our Father, these truths to me are revolutionary. Help me to put them into practice with the people that I say that I love. Help me to demonstrate and show even when I feel slighted or used, to say yes to you, to cooperate with you, to extend the muscle further, and to work harder on that, by your grace; not to earn your love, but to simply prove your love to others who need it so desperately, in Jesus' name, amen.
For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.
