1 Peter 1:22 Having purified your souls by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another continually, from a pure heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you.
2:1 Therefore, having rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind, 2 like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you
Introduction: How do you Increase Desire?
We have been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and this is our third week on this particular paragraph. This section is so incredibly rich. Two weeks ago we learned that our new birth enabled us to have undying love for people that does not give up when they become hard to love. Then last week Peter commanded us to crave the truth of God’s Word because it gives life, sustains life, and grows us toward becoming what Jesus Christ died to make us. But that left us with the question - how do you generate that craving? I said last week – you cannot cure an anorexic just by telling her to eat. You have to do something to correct her desires and cravings and restore her appetite for food. And it is the same with spiritual anorexics. So many of us have spiritual anorexia – we do not take in nearly enough nourishment from God’s Word because the appetite just is not there. How do you fix that? How can you obey a command to crave something you do not naturally crave? Are you in control of what you crave?
Let me ask you this – when you think of the various cravings you have, is there anything you have ever done that has contributed to the existence of those cravings? I lived about 40 years without ever once having the slightest desire for the Bang Bang Chicken and Shrimp entrée at the Cheesecake Factory. When I first tried it, I didn’t like it at all, but I ate it anyway because my wife liked it, and I could not afford to buy two entrees at that place, so we had to share. We go there every year for our anniversary. And over the years, I have learned to like that entrée. In fact, now I really like it. I have noticed the last few years, as soon as August starts approaching (the month of our anniversary), I find myself craving Bang Bang Chicken and Shrimp. This year it hit me in early June!
I tell you all that simply to illustrate the fact that even though you cannot just cause yourself to have a craving by simply willing it – you cannot just flip a switch and create a desire in your heart – even though you do not have that kind of direct control over your cravings, there are some things you can do that will result in certain cravings. So to obey this command we need to do those things that will lead toward a craving for the Word of God. The French have a custom, before you eat a meal, of saying, Bon appétit. It means “good appetite,” and that is the perfect thing to say to someone before a meal. And that is what Peter is saying to us here – Bon appétit – and then he goes on to give us two principles to teach us how to have a good appetite.
Abandon Appetite Suppressants
The first one we see in verse 1. This is another one of those times where the translations make it sound like a stand-alone command, but really it is a participle that modifies something else. In the NIV, verse one sounds like a command: “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice, etc.” But literally it is:
2:1 Therefore having rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit … crave pure spiritual milk.
So the ridding yourself of these sins is the preparation for craving. You have to lay aside these kinds of sins off before you will be able to crave the milk because these are appetite-killing sins. All sins will destroy your appetite for God’s Word, but especially these. Can you see what these sins all have in common? Look at the list – these are all sins belong to one specific category. They are all sins against love. And sins against love will destroy your appetite for God’s Word.
Malice
The first one is malice. That refers to ill-will, which is the opposite of love. Have you ever had someone hurt you or really treat you poorly, and later you see that person get humiliated, or you hear that they suffered some hardship, and something inside you feels glad to hear it? That is malice. Any time you are glad to hear about someone else’s trouble, or you wish they would experience some trouble – that is malice. And malice is the exact opposite of love.
Deceit
The second word in the list is deceit, which is another massive failure to love. Truth is our only connection to reality. When a person is insane we call them schizophrenic, which means there is a schism between them and the real world. They hear voices that do not exist, see things that are not there, believe things are true that are not true – they are detached from reality. The more detached a person is from reality the more we regard him as insane. And we have compassion for people like that, right? We try to cure them. Nobody desires that. I have never heard anyone say, “My hope and prayer is that someday I will lose my mind and become insane.” That is a horrifying thought to most people because God designed us to love reality. And when someone lies to you, they are taking that away from you. If I lie to you, I am placing you in a situation where you believe something that is not reality. God gave you the blessings of sanity and being able to perceive the real world, and I have taken a little piece of that away from you. So lying is a major failure of love.
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy means to put on a mask – pretending to be something you are not. And that is always a sin against love – for a couple reasons. First, because it is a form of lying. If I make you think I am something I’m not, then you are detached from reality when it comes to your interactions with me. Second, it is a failure of love because it makes intimacy impossible. If I put up a false front, then all your interactions with me are interactions with an imaginary friend that does not exist. It is not loving to hide yourself from people. It is not loving to make yourself inaccessible to people. So many people want others to love them, but they make it impossible to do so because they refuse to expose the truth about what they really are. And so they sin against love by becoming hypocrites.
Envy
Envy has to be one of the ugliest sins there is. Envy is when you are unhappy when someone else has something good happen. You get word that someone won the lottery or got a promotion or some great thing that you really wanted, and hearing about that it dampens your mood. That is envy. Love rejoices with those who rejoice. Envy grumbles when others rejoice. One of my kids had a sleepover with a bunch of friends once, and there was only one bed. So to be fair, everyone slept on the floor. No one got the bed, because there would be too much envy if someone got the bed.
What an incredibly ugly sin that is. If I have to sleep on the floor anyway, what harm does it do me if you are on a bed? I am no better off just because you are uncomfortable. Envy is the flip-side of malice. Malice is when you are happy when they suffer. Envy is when you are unhappy when they are blessed. They get something you really wanted, and you have animosity toward them.
We are all born with this wicked sin. It is built into us from birth. I was teaching this principle to a bunch of little kids once, so I had them all gather around me and I gave each one of them an M&M. And they were all very happy. Then when I got to the last kid I had him hold out both hands and I dumped the rest of the bag in his hands, spilling over into his lap. Now none of those other kids were happy. Did their situation change any? No – they still had the exact same treat that was plenty to make them happy a minute ago, but now they are miserable. Why? Envy. Envy is anti-grace. If God wants to show grace and give someone some extra special blessing, envy gets mad. Envy begrudges people the very grace of God. And anything that is anti-grace is anti-God. It is an ugly, wicked, vile sin against love.
Slander
The last in the list is every kind of slander. The word slander literally means to speak against. When you are against someone in your heart, eventually that will find its way out of your mouth. Even if you try to hide it, people will pick up on the fact that you are not supporting that person – you are opposing them. You are not on that person’s side. You are not working to cause people to have a high opinion of that person. You are not covering over that person’s faults, you are not making much of their strengths – your speech is against them. And that kind of negative talk comes in a thousand different forms, so Peter just says – “Get rid of any and every form of it.”
They are Appetite Suppressants
If you want to increase your appetite and craving for God’s Word, you have to lay aside those sins because they are appetite killers. Years ago we had a friend who was an anorexic, and the problem was so severe she was hospitalized. She was on the verge of death, so the doctors sent her to a psychiatrist. And predictably they put her on antidepressants. The amazing thing is one of the side effects of the antidepressant they gave her was appetite suppression! Now, I may not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but it seems to me even if you graduated last in your class in psychiatry school you would know that if the problem is anorexia, appetite suppressants are not the way to go. And what Peter is telling us here is that one of the side effects of sin is suppression of appetite for God’s Word. All sins are appetite suppressants.
This is one of the many reasons why you never want to have an attitude that says, “I’ll go ahead with this sin now, and I’ll just ask forgiveness later – after I’ve enjoyed the sin.” Maybe God will be gracious and grant you a truly repentant heart later, but even if He does, and you receive full forgiveness, the damage to your appetite remains. Now your capacity to desire God’s Word is that much smaller.
How Unholiness Suppresses Appetite
You see, whenever you are doing something that someone else disapproves of, it makes you shy away from that person. If you are a chain smoker, and you have a friend who believes smoking is a sin, you will find yourself less and less interested in being around that person. So when we sin against love – when someone comes along and hurts me or offends me, and my soul turns against him – I am unhappy with him – I do not want to love him – as soon as I have that attitude toward someone, that attitude will cause me to have less desire for a book that condemns that attitude. Holding on to an unbiblical attitude makes you want to back away from Scripture so you do not feel condemned.
Psalm 119:5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! 6 Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands.
That psalmist spent huge amounts of time, day and night, meditating on God’s Word. So he wanted less and less sin in his life so that time in God’s Word would not be constant shaming.
When I decide I want to cling to some sin, it makes me less interested in a book that reveals the truth about sin. The truth is that sin will not be worth it, it is not the path to happiness, it will only lead to destruction and regret, it leads in a horrible direction that I do not want to go – that is the truth of the matter, and when my soul decides something else is true – the devil’s lies about sin being satisfying and worth it – when I want to believe that is true, then I am that much less interested in the truth of God’s Word. So every sin is an appetite suppressant.
So many Christians have no appetite for the Thanksgiving dinner of God’s Word because they spoil their appetite with the junk food of sin. There is a difference between satisfying your appetite and spoiling it. When you spoil your appetite, you eat something that is not satisfying at all, but it does take away your hunger, so you cannot enjoy the things that really would satisfy. That is what sin does. And so Peter says, “After you have laid aside all these sins, then crave pure, spiritual milk.” The craving will never happen as long as those sins are continuing.
And that is especially true when it comes to sins against love, because love is so important to God. When you decide to give up on loving someone, you are going to shy away from the book that calls love the greatest commandment. And you shy away from a God who gave that commandment. You shy away from the God who dearly loves that person you do not love.
The Writer of Psalm 119
So if you are ever going to increase your appetite for God’s Word you are going to have to throw off sin. That is definitely the pattern we see in Psalm 119. Nobody craved pure spiritual milk more than the writer of Psalm119.
Delight
131 I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.
123 My eyes fail … looking for your righteous promise.
20 My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
40 How I long for your precepts!
97 Oh, how I love your law!
14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.
127 I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold
16 I delight in your decrees
24 Your statutes are my delight
119 I love your statutes.
54 Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I lodge.
111 Your statutes … are the joy of my heart.
159 See how I love your precepts
162 I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil.
163 …I love your law.
174 your law is my delight.
167 I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly.
35 Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.
47 for I delight in your commands because I love them. 48 I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love
62 At midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws.
72 The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.
92 If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished
140 Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them.
143 Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands are my delight.
Have you ever in your lifetime met anyone with that kind of craving for the pure spiritual milk that comes through God’s Word?
“How did he get that much craving?”
A lot of it came from his resolve to set aside sins in his life.
Obedience
8 I will obey your decrees
11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
22 … I keep your statutes.
30 I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart on your laws.
31 I hold fast to your statutes
32 I run in the path of your commands
33 Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees; then I will keep them to the end.
34 … I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
44 I will always obey your law, for ever and ever.
55 …I will keep your law.
56 This has been my practice: I obey your precepts.
57 …I have promised to obey your words.
69 I keep your precepts with all my heart.
88 I will obey the statutes of your mouth.
59 I have turned my steps to your statutes.
60 I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.
100 I obey your precepts.
101 I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.
102 I have not departed from your laws
106 I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws.
112 My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.
129 Your statutes are wonderful; therefore I obey them.
145 … I will obey your decrees
146 … I will keep your statutes.
168 I obey your precepts and your statutes
Does that mean he never sinned? No – he also talks about how distressed he is about the sin in his life and how much he longs to be free from it.
5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees!
The very last verse of the psalm:
176 I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant
He wandered and strayed and stumbled and sinned against God in all kinds of ways just like we do. But his steadfast resolve, and the constant battle of his life was to keep throwing off sin, and the result was an insatiable, driving appetite for God’s Word and for God Himself.
The fight against sin is an upward spiral – kind of like the way Andrew showed us that wisdom works in Proverbs. You use your wisdom to understand the Proverbs so that you can get more wisdom. And this is the same way – you fight against sin – and that increases your appetite for the pure, spiritual milk, and that results in more growth and greater victory against sin.
So, how can we create a craving in our hearts for the Word of God if it does not exist right now? Or if it does exist, how can we make it stronger? Step 1 is to stop gulping down appetite suppressants. Declare war on all the sin in your life, and do not let up in that war until the day you die. You cannot ever let up, because sin will not ever let up. It is constantly warring against you.
1 Peter 2:11 …abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.
So step 1 is to keep fighting against sin.
Taste and see
Now step 2. Now that you have cut back on the appetite suppressants, the next step in working to increase your appetite is implied in verse 3.
2:2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up toward salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
He calls their attention to their tasting of God’s goodness in the past. This language comes from Psalm 34 which puts it in the form of a command.
Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
You cannot snap your fingers and cause a craving to pop into existence, but you can taste and see that something is good. That is the key to craving, isn’t it? Have you ever craved something you never tasted? That is impossible. You have to experience something and enjoy that experience before you can develop a craving for it.
And even the things you do taste – you do not automatically start craving them just because you put them in your mouth once. The first few years I had that meal at Cheescake Factory I did not like it. I thought it was way too spicy, and way too expensive, and I had a bad attitude about it. But over time, the enjoyable atmosphere of being alone with my wife, having some time off from work, talking about the joys and blessings of our marriage, the delightful conversations we had, the laughs we shared, the anticipation of the slice of chocolate coconut cream cheesecake that was coming for dessert – over time, bit by bit, I took a liking to that meal, and now I crave it.
How do you cause a craving? Tasting. Taste of the goodness of God through His Word with a receptive attitude. (And the receptive attitude part is crucial. You cannot learn to like something if you have a negative attitude about it. You have to be willing to like it before you can learn to like it.) But if you are willing, and you read your Bible expectantly and longingly, and you are alert to the benefits that come from it, you will begin to crave it.
Clarification on Milk
Last week I told you that the milk represents the Word of God. But then I also said you can read the Bible without tasting a drop of pure, spiritual milk. I want to clarify that a little bit, because I know it may sound like a bit of a contradiction to some. The milk is not just the words. Words are tools to convey meaning, but just because you see or hear the words does not necessarily mean you got the meaning. You can hear or read words and misunderstand them. You can hear and understand them but fail to receive them. If you do not believe them, or if your heart rejects them in some other way, it is like looking at milk, thinking about milk, taking a bath in milk, studying milk – but never actually drinking any. So when you see this phrase, pure, spiritual milk – do not think about your Bible. Think about the life-giving, soul-growing grace that comes through the Bible when the Bible is understood and its message is believed, accepted, and welcomed into the heart. The words in your Bible are the milk carton. And there are people who have spent their life looking at the carton, and yet they have never taken in a drop of the actual milk.
Craving Milk = Desiring God
The milk is the grace of God that comes through the Word, which means craving milk is craving God Himself. The only reason to crave the milk is the fact that it brings us life from God. To crave milk is to crave God. That is why it has the effect it has on the soul.
The Effect on the Soul
Have you ever read your Bible and set it down afterward thinking, “Man, that just hit the spot”? Have you ever found it satisfying and delightful? Those are the times when you drank the milk. All those times when you read and it is just information and education and nothing else – you are looking at the milk, thinking about the milk, not drinking it.
You can tell when you have actually taken in the milk itself because of the effects it has on your soul. It revives you.
Psalm 19:7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
In Psalm 1 we have the promise that if we meditate day and night on the Word of God, we will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. That is a picture of health and life and vitality. And part of that is joy.
Psalm 19:8 The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
The milk causes joy. And also, insight.
Psalm 19:8 The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
And on top of life and vitality and refreshing and renewal and joy and insight – the milk from God’s Word gives strength in your inner man.
Psalm 119:28 My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word.
On top of that, comfort.
Psalm 119:50 My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life.
52 I remember your ancient laws, O Lord, and I find comfort in them.
All of those things happen when you taste the milk. And the result is craving for more.
Psalm 19:10 [the ordinances of the Lord] are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
Job 23:12 I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.
Be Creative
So what should you do if what you are doing is not getting the delicious, satisfying truth of Scripture into your heart? Try something else. Do something different. Take another approach. Find a way to taste that goodness. If the way you have been doing your devotions for the last three years is not causing a craving – you are probably not tasting.
If reading through the Bible in a year is not giving you a taste of the goodness and sweetness of the milk of the Word, try something else. If your approach is to read a chapter one day that you don’t understand, and the next day you move on to another chapter you do not understand, all that will do is make you desire Scripture less and less – because it is no fun to spend a half hour every day looking at a bunch of words that either do not convey meaning, or do not seem to have relevance or significance. In our Basics of the Christian Life class I gave some suggestions of how to make your personal Bible study more enjoyable and satisfying. So check out part 2 of that class if you want some ideas for various resources that will help you.
There are all kinds of creative approaches you can take. Try listening to a worship song, and then stopping it in various places and mediating and studying the truths from Scripture in the lyrics. Try finding a preacher who has a style that really hits home for you and listen to one of his sermons – and stop it in various places so you can pray about the things that delight your heart. Try the explanatory notes and quaint sayings in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David. Try going outdoors with your Bible and looking at something in the creation and using God’s Word to understand what that thing teaches about God’s nature. Try having six or eight different devotionals within reach so, depending on your mood and needs at the time, you can read from just the right one. Try finding as many attributes as you can from a psalm, then writing a prayer around all those attributes and how those attributes fit together.
For so many people God’s Word is like a coconut. Every day you lick the outside of it, and it just is not satisfying. And you don’t think you like God’s Word because you have never found a way to crack it open and get to the soul-satisfying food.
And I can promise you this – it is not like physical food, which may or may not be satisfying. Some people like chicken and shrimp – others do not. The milk from God’s Word is not like that. To taste it is to like it. If you do not like it, you have not tasted it. If you taste it, you will like it, and if you taste it enough, you will crave it.
So, Operation Activate Appetite – how do you generate or increase your appetite for the pure, spiritual milk? Lay aside the appetite-suppressing sins in your life, and drink your milk (taste and see that the Lord’s milk is good.)
How that Helps with Continuing Love
OK, now how can we pull this entire, three-week-long sermon together? Some of you still are thinking, “I’m still way back in 1:22 trying to figure out how to keep loving this person in my life who is so hard to love.” How can we take everything we have learned and apply it to that?
Someone at church has offended you more times than you can count. You do not like being around that person, you do not want to talk to them, the idea of being warm and friendly and smiling at them is an unpleasant thought to you – how do you take everything we have learned in three weeks in this passage and boil it all down to something that will actually help you have undying love for this person? Three hours of preaching is too much to try to call to mind, so let’s see if we can boil it down to the essentials. Let me give you two R’s and two D’s.
1) Repent of Non-Love
Start with repentance - lay aside sins against love (2:1). Repent of everything in your heart that is not compatible with love, and declare war on those sins. Search your heart for traces of non-love – attitudes of malice or envy, any kind of deceit or hypocrisy, slander, gossip. It will take some digging because these are not considered scandalous sins in our culture so they do not seem like a big deal, they do not cause a lot of guilt, and so we often do not even notice them in our hearts.
When was the last time you ever heard anyone repent of the sin of malice? Half the time when malice is in our hearts we do not even admit to ourselves that it is there. Ever heard of someone being put out of a church because they would not repent of their envy? Or hypocrisy – putting on a phony church face? These sins against love so often fly under the radar, and we go year after year lacking tenderness, lacking gentleness, lacking humility – and we never get serious about dealing with those sins, but the whole time they are destroying our godly appetites like termites in the basement. We need to see these sins for the deadly, anti-salvation, anti-God appetite-killers that they are, and repent, and fight against them.
2) Remember
This is 1 Peter 1:22. Why did you become a Christian in the first place? And why do you keep deciding to remain a Christian? It is because you heard the gospel and believed it. And the gospel pointed you in the direction of love for the saints. In those moments when you struggle to love, remind yourself, “I was born to love.”
Born to Love
In the movie “Chariots of Fire” there is a point where the Eric Liddell character says, “God…made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” That line has captivated the attention of millions of people. And that is no surprise – I mean, how could you not be captivated with the thought of God designing you for some great purpose and then taking pleasure in you doing that thing? It really is a captivating thought – although for most people, it is more of a romantic storyline in a movie than an actual day to day reality. It is one thing to picture a guy like Eric Liddell, the wind in his hair almost flying across the countryside, feeling God’s pleasure. But I have never once heard a plumber say, “God made me good at plumbing, and when I plumb… - when I unclog a toilet I just feel His pleasure.” Some of you do a great job at work, filling out paperwork and sending emails and having meetings, but how many people really have a sense of, “This is what God designed me for and I feel His pleasure when I do it.” My guess is, if I asked for a show of hands and asked, “How many of you are doing something that you feel God designed you to do, so that each day you have a sense that, ‘Yes, this is the reason I exist. I’m doing what I was made for.’?” I would not get very many hands.
What is that special thing that you could do that would so fulfill the reason God created you that it would bring Him pleasure just to see it? Love. Not the world’s kind of love – Christian love. Undying, eternal, delight in the saints for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter says you were born again for that purpose. The movie character was born to run; you were born to love. God made you for it, and when you do it, if you are paying attention, you can feel God’s pleasure.
When you became a Christian you did not just join a religion. It is not just a matter of affiliation, like becoming a Democrat or Republican or joining a club. When a person first places his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a massive transformation that takes place. God re-creates your inner being.
2 Corinthians 5:17 if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
You get a new nature with different desires, different affections, different capacities – a whole different kind of being.
And that on that day you became a Christian, that was not just a cleansing event – it was also an empowering event. God’s grace does not just cover our sin. It also capacitates and enables and energizes us toward godliness, and the high point of godliness is love. And it makes you an eternal person rather than a temporary person.
So do not live like a temporary person anymore. Live a life that corresponds to what you are. A bird that thinks it is a dog will not make a very good bird. Birds were born to fly. You were born to love forever.
I heard of a guy in the news who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, was given a couple months to live, so he gave away his business, quit working, and he and his wife just splurged on lavish vacations, thinking the life insurance would pay for it all. Finally after two years of that the doctors told him, “We made a mistake - you’re fine.” And they guy was left with no house, no job, and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. He was living as though there were no future for him, and then it turned out there was. That is essentially what we are doing when we live like the world – when we live like natural, temporary people. That guy thought the end was in a few months, and he lived accordingly. And so often we are tempted to live as though our life span in this world – whether it be 70 or 80 or 100 years – is all there is. Temporary people live like the grave is the end. And we used to be temporary people. But now we have been born again of an eternal seed, so now in order to live a life that fulfills our reason for existence we have to make the shift to an eternal perspective.
3) Drink your Milk!
So the two R’s are Repent and Remember. Now two D’s. The first one is Drink your milk (1 Pe.2:3). Drink and drink and drink – read, meditate, study, memorize, meditate some more, listen to sermons, meditate some more – let the Word of God seep into your pores. Drink your milk, and it will make you grow up in the direction of salvation, and salvation moves in the direction of love. When you struggle to love, look to Scripture. It is not just a source of information – it is our source of spiritual life. It is an eternal power source that will provide you all the strength you need to do what is right forever.
4) Depend on the Promises (Trust)
And then finally, trust in the promises of God’s Word. For the milk to be absorbed into your system you have to combine it with faith. (I realize that does not start with a D, so if you want a D, how about the word “depend”?) Depend upon God’s great and precious promises. This is where the Isaiah 40 part comes in. Peter quotes Isaiah 40 in 1:23, and that chapter is all about trusting in God’s promises rather than looking to the things in this world for our security and joy and comfort. When I am tempted to give up on love, that means I am looking at the world’s way – their way of short-term, temporary, perishable way of living and loving – and I am saying, “I want to walk in that way. I want to walk in that path of temporary love like the world does.” But then God’s Word comes along and promises me that the way of undying love is better. God says, “I know it feels impossible, it does not seem like it will bring you joy, it is not what you feel like doing right now – but I promise you, if you go that way I will make it worth your while.” And if you focus your attention on that promise and cling to it and lean on it and bank on it and trust in it – that leaning and clinging and trusting will give you the strength and willingness you need to keep loving with undying love. That leaning and clinging and trusting is faith, and it is faith that causes the milk to be absorbed into your spirit so you are nourished and strengthened. It is faith that enables us to receive grace from God.
How do you increase appetite? Abandon appetite-suppressing sins, and taste of the goodness of the milk. And how to you use all that we have learned to continue in undying love? Repent, remember, drink, and depend. Throw off sin, remember you were born to love, drink your milk, and fix your attention on those promises where God says, “I will make it worth your while” and trust them.
Benediction: Acts 20:32 Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
1:25 Questions
1. What specific thing tends to suppress your appetite for the milk of God’s Word the most?
2. What do you think is preventing you from tasting the goodness of the milk more?
3. Try to think of one person (do not mention who) that is hard to keep loving. Plan specifically how you can apply the two R’s and two D’s to that situation.
