Brother Love
1 Peter 1:22-2:3
I titled my sermon this morning from a word that I got out of verse 22. Philadelphia it means "brotherly love." When I became a teenager I really started to understand what was being taught in Sunday School , from the pulpit about how God loved the church , and that we should love each other. It really started bothering me that I was not seeing the Love that I was being taught to have. When I was about seventeen I started noticing that the Sunday school teacher who I had for about four years (we only had one teacher for the whole youth group) did not like the pastor. I witnessed some actions that went completely against what they where teaching me. As a result of this I was confused. I left the church because I didn’t know what to believe. The people who taught me to love my brethren could not practice it themselves. For years I thought of the church as a place for hypocrites, but I had one problem. I knew my parents were for real. They actually lived the love they were taught, because of that I had to come back to the church and realize that not everyone in the church was like that.
I noticed that today one of the greatest problems I see in the youth group is the lack of brotherly love. I have really tried to preach hard and to explain that this is not how Christians are supposed to live. Finally God revealed to me that they have seen what I saw as a teenager in my local church. From their parents to their teachers or whom ever in the church, they have seen actions that are not those taught in the Bible.
Today I would like to take this passage out of 1 Peter and try to explain how we should love each other. Notice I am not talking about our love for the world. I personally don’t believe the world will believe us when we say that we love them, because they see how we love and treat each other.
I. Why Brotherly Love
1. Because of who we are (v.22)
The word there to purified your soul means to sanctify. You see when we except Jesus as our Lord and Savior of our lives we become a saint of God. Which puts us in the process of saintification. That means we are in the process of becoming more like Him on a daily bases. The word Christian means to be Christ Like. We are becoming more like Him every day.
1 John 4:8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
2. Because of our spiritual birth (v.23)
We have a new birth, one of incorruption. Just like God’s word (which is incorruptible) and will remain forever. Our new spirit is also incorruptible and it will remain forever.
The Bible gives the illustration of the flower in the field. It may look good for a period of time, but it will eventually die.
I like to lift weights and now that we are down to one car I have been exercising more. Today I can lift just as much as I could 10 to 15 years ago. In some sense I feel like I could live forever, but in reality I know that I am dying. We all are dying, we started dying the day we were born. No matter how hard I want to think everything is okay, it really is not. No matter how much we think we can live in the flesh we cannot. The things of this world will pass away. So we need to live like we are born again.
II. How to have Brotherly Love
1. We need to lay some things aside
Men of Jesus day wore long robes. Suppose on a cold night while getting warm by the fire and someone got to close. His robe suddenly caught fire. What would he do? He would strip it off and lay it aside. Church there are some things that we need to lay aside.
A. Malice (refers to any kind of wickedness)
The word means a deep-seated hatred of others, stemming from a basic selfishness
says; "I will pay back. I will get even."
Proverbs 20:22 Does not say, "I will recompense evil";
Wait for the LORD, and He will save you.
B. Deceit (or guile in KJV) (refers to clever or tricky practices)
"To deceive" or "to catch with bait."
A person is guilty of this when they misquote someone in order to hurt them, makes misleading statments.
C. Hypocrisy (greek word means "acting under a feigned part")
This is a person giving off their judgment from behind a screen or mask.
The person who says that was a great sermon at the door, Then gets in the car and tells their spouse that he had some nerve saying that."
D. Envy (or envies in KJV) jealousy
The green-eyed monster
It has been around a long time. We can see examples of it in the original twelve disciples. Even during the Lord’s supper they argued over who would be the greatest.
E. all evil speaking (more commonly known as gossip)
Personal definition of gossip is "anything you say about someone to harm them or to flaw their character."
Did you know that gossip can be the truth.
How to have Brotherly Love
2. Desiring pure milk (2-3)
My Dad has been a milk man since before I was born. I always remember there being milk in my home. A lot of homes today are missing the milk of the word (God’s word) in there home. And that is why we have a problem with Brotherly Love.
If we desired the pure milk of the word we will taste of something that we will never want to turn away from.
I wonder today if many "Christians" have never tasted the pure milk of God’s word. And that would explain our problem of Brotherly Love.
