Living Hope Leads to Obeying God’s Holy Word

I wanted to give you a heads up about something new this year. Remember how we observed Advent for the first-time last Christmas. We thought that it might be helpful to join other churches to observe Lent. Just like Advent is a time for preparation for Christmas, Lent is a time of preparation for Easter. Lent is often marked through a time of entering into the suffering of Christ by giving something up to remember His gift. Lent begins on February 22 and we will have more resources for you in the coming days to help us focus on Christ during Lent. Let’s pray that we would focus on Christ now!

Some inventions have unintended benefits. Some inventions have unintended benefits. Did you know that NASA’s quest to explore outer space has led to the some very helpful discoveries that we use every day? These heavenly inventions had earthy benefits. Here are some of them: “artificial limbs, scratch-resistant sunglasses, insulin-pumps, air purifiers (those came in handy during COVID), workout machines, portable computers, computer mouses, solar cells, water filtration, invisible braces, baby formula, camera phones, LEDs, athletic shoes, grooved pavement, memory foam, CAT scans, and LASIK eye surgery.”^[1] Let’s go further back in history than space exploration to another invention. An invention that was intended to harm, but has become helpful in the greatest way. Did you know that the invention of one of the worst torture devices in human history has led to the discovery of how to heal the human heart? I’ll say that again, did you know that the invention used in the most horrific crime in history led to you being loved and you loving others? The Romans are known for romantic love and Valentine’s Day as will be celebrate on Tuesday, but their most famous contribution to the world was something that people all over hang around their necks every day – a cross. The Romans invented crucifixion. 

One of the evilest instruments known to man has been used to save us and move from hate to holiness, from lust to love, and from impurity to purity.  This morning we are going to not only understand the command to love one another, but the cause of loving one another. The Cross of Jesus Christ radically transformed loathing into loving one another. Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter 1:22-25 to find out more. We our continuing our series in 1 Peter and learning the living hope we have in Jesus Christ because He suffered, died and rose again from the dead. So far we have learned that though we live in an increasingly hostile world, we have a living hope as elect exiles and born again children of God. Because of Jesus, we have this living hope along with a lasting inheritance. We have salvation based on God’s multiplied grace and peace as predicted by the prophets in the Old Testament over two millennia. We have learned that God calls us to be holy as He is holy. Remember last week: Be holy as God is holy in your minds, your hearts and your conduct. As an action point yesterday, we challenged you to fast and pray. We asked you to be holy in your mind, ready for action, by seeking God for a plan with what you are going to read from His Word this year, what you are praying for, how you are going to serve and what you plan to give to TBC this year. Did you make your plan? It’s not too late. If you didn’t make a plan before God, maybe you need more motivation. Love motivates our obedience. And so today, we are going to see how this living hope which leads to holy living through the Holy Word of God purifies us to holy loving. We are going to see how our salvation has the intended benefit by God to build a community based on loving one another. Lest we think salvation is just about Jesus and me for all eternity, it’s about Jesus, you, me and all God’s people for all eternity. Let’s read 1 Peter 1:22-25.  Read 1 Peter 1:22-25!

“Love one another earnestly from a pure heart!” “Love one another” is one of the most repeated verses in the New Testament as it occurs 13 times (John 13:34 twice; John 13:35; John 15:12, 15:17; Galatians 5:13 (calls it the royal law); 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 1 Peter 1:22 (from our passage this morning); 1 Peter 4:8; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 3:23; and 1 John 4:12). It is a command. “The Christ-filled life is the life of brotherly love.”^[2] This is why we can summarize 1 Peter 1:22-25 this way and more importantly, learn why we should love one another: Love one another because you are purified and born again by the Word of God! Love one another because you are purified and born again by the Word of God! This love provides a living and lasting hope. We often seek a love that will be reciprocated. We love to be loved back! That is the disappointment of Valentine’s Day. We often hope our efforts to love will be met with an equal or greater love. But it usually isn’t. This is why we should not look for the greater love on Valentine’s Day. The greater love is found on Good Friday at that torture device the Romans invented. “You would think that those who walk in hope and holiness would also be able to walk in harmony, but this is not always true.”^[3] It is because of the fact that not all parties are seeking the love of Christ to love each other. Their “love” is selfish rather than being found in their Saviour. It is fleshly! Flesh doesn’t last. But true love will last. This is we must love one another because we are purified and born again by the Word of God.

Let’s break that down. We talked about loving one another with a sincere brotherly love, earnestly from a pure heart. Will power alone will not make this happen. It starts with a purified soul. Love one another because you are purified and born again by the Word of God. Love one another because 1) you are purified. (v. 22) I admit I stumbled over the word “purified.” At first when I read purified, I thought it meant that we need to keep purifying our souls through obeying God’s Word. I was thinking Peter’s audience had already purified their souls through obedience. Which is true! However, not through behaviour first, but through belief. This is really important because one can read these verses and think that a Bible reading program and effort to obey each command will purify one’s soul. Understanding the verb tense of the word “purified,” which the ESV tries to convey “having purified” is really helpful. The word “purified” is in the perfect tense, which means that it is a past completed action, but has ongoing results until the present. Think if you are married. You got married and it is still affecting your life. Or you were baptized and that continues to remind you of your new status of being born again as God’s child. You have also been purified your souls because you obeyed the truth. The truth being the Word of God that has been preached to you (v. 25). “The truth is the whole gospel reality.”^[4]This is why salvation is both an act of faith and an act of obedience. Recall both the invitation and the imperative of God in Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” You must trust in Christ to the point of actually following Him. The order is important. It is faith and then obedience. To try to obey God without faith will not lead to salvation. But faith without obedience is dead. Recall 1 Peter 1:2 in describing elect exiles, “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood. Grace and peace be multiplied to you.” God the Father’s foreknowledge (aka forelove) of you and God the Spirit’s sanctification to make you holy leads to obedience to Christ and His commands. But when you do not obey, there is still blood-bought grace and peace in abundance for you. Isn’t that amazing? Our amazement should turn to action: Love one another because you are purified and born again by the Word of God. Love one another because you are purified!

Maybe you are stuck on what I just said that salvation requires you to believe the call and command of God? Am I teaching works righteousness? No! It helps to hink of the command as a delight and not just a directive. At Christmas, parents may call out, “Come, kids, it’s time to open up your gifts.” It is a directive, but it feels more like a delight. I think I can say with certainty, no child has said, “Mom and Dad, you are so mean asking me to obey your command to come and open my Christmas gift.” Sadly, God is calling people to come and receive His ultimate Christmas gift of His Son Jesus and many disobey in their disbelief and rejection. Is that you? Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy than in Jesus! As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “Those who are strangers to Jesus are strangers to all lasting happiness.”^[5]

Love one another because you are purified, but also because you are born again. Love one another because 2) you are born again. (v. 23) Isn’t this what verse 23 says, “Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” Many of you know the pain of infertility. Infertility is on the rise and according to the government “roughly 1 in 6 or 16% of couples suffer from infertility.”^[6] It’s painful and we want to acknowledge that pain. It is often a frustrating quest for “seed that is so perishable.” Human flesh will whither and waste away. Our physical bodies will not last, which is why we need to be born again through the living and abiding Word of God. May I encourage you with this thought if are born again? “Embracing Christ entails belonging to a new family – spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers, spiritual brothers, spiritual sisters and spiritual children.”^[7] You will always have this family because you belong to God’s forever family. And you and I now share spiritual DNA. “Everything that springs from a seed shares its nature.”^[8] Our new nature is that of our Heavenly Father. This is why in Peter’s other book in 2 Peter 1:4 he reminds his readers, “by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” In the last three months, we have preached three times on being born again. To be born again is to experience spiritual rebirth. It changes our position – we are holy and because our position has changed, our practices change – we love one another. Being born again in the indicative then precedes the imperative to love our spiritual family. Our spiritual rebirth comes from anadoption orders by God the Father. Our adoption papers are the Word the of God. This why we are called to love another because you are purified and you are born again by the Word of God.  

Love one another because you are purified and you are born again 3) by the Word of God. This is what read at the end of verse 23 “through the living and abiding Word of God.” The Word of God is living. It lives in you and with you. That is because the Word of God is not only a book, but a Brother! The Word of God are precepts, but also a person! That was so helpful to know because when I first read these verses – I thought I had to try purifying soul was done only by reading God’s Word. But that is only focusing on the message of Scripture. God’s Word is living and abiding. God’s Word is to be read, but more importantly, God’s Word will remain because Jesus is God’s Word (John 1:1, 14). God’s Word is not just the message, but also the Messiah. Verse 25 makes this clear, “This is the good news that was preached to you.” Charles Spurgeon declared, “The gospel is perfect in all its parts, and perfect as a whole: it is a crime to add to it, treason to alter it and felony to take from it.”^[9] There is ongoing purification happening because Satan and the world is always trying to sully your soul. But the living hope is that the living Word of God personally washes and purifies your soul. The Word of God – the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, washes and purifies your soul. Specifically, Christ’s love washes us and remember He is source of our love as well. Recall Ephesians 5:25-27, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” We love because of this continual purification and obedience to the truth and Word of God. It is why we have taught in the past Wayne Cordeiro’s S.O.A.P. method of reading Scripture: Scripture – read a short Bible passage out loud or write it out. Observation – What do you notice about these verses, especially how it points to Christ? Application – what do I need to believe and obey from these verses? Prayer – Ask God to help to believe and obey. I have practiced this daily for the last 15 years and nothing has helped me grow more than a daily cleansing in God’s Word as I wash off the world’s lies. 

In contrast to the flesh, God’s Word is forever faithful. We already learned in verses 10-11 that the prophets were carried along by the Holy Spirit when they prophesied. We call that inspiration. Inspiration is God’s written word through the Holy Spirit using the personality of the human authors. God wrote a book! It is the Bible. It is for you! And it is true! It is truth! Recall the prophecies that predicted “the sufferings of Christ and subsequent glories.” (1 Peter 1:11) Remember Moses recording the prophesy of Satan (the Serpent) being crushed underfoot in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”(Pic of slide 55 from Good Soil Evangelism of the Serpent’s head being crushed) Or recall the patriarch Jacob prophesied in Genesis 49:15 that a ruler would come from the tribe of Judah (pic of slide 93 from Good Soil showing Genesis 49:15, but get rid of the words Offering of Isaac) Another prophet was Nathan who prophesied in 2 Samuel 7:16 that David’s house and throne would be established forever, “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” (Pic of slide 152 from Good Soil Evangelism showing David on the throne) Jesus is the forever King! David himself prophesied in Psalm 22 a number of prophecies that came true at the cross of His greatest son Jesus. Or think about the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 53 predicting the scourging Jesus experienced. (Pic of slide 159 from Good Soil Evangelism showing the prophet with Christ’s whipped back in the background.) God’s Word is true and evidenced by the fulfilled prophecies. It is without error and without fail in its original manuscripts. “Essential to a sincere belief in the inerrancy and infallibility of God’s Word is an assumption that calls His disciples to become a Bible-obeying people, and not merely intellectual stakeholders of theologically orthodox positions.”^[10] (Jeff Christopherson) God’s Word is to be obeyed. It must be taken seriously. It has remained faithful because of the perseverance of Scripture. No book has been more loved and hated than the Bible. People have tried to destroy and ban all the Bibles – to wipe it from the earth – but it is still the most popular book of all time. People will hide God’s Word like it was a treasure or their last bit of food, which it both is! And the Word of God remains because behind the message is the Man and Messiah – Jesus Christ! You can’t kill someone who has already died. The Word of God died and rose again! He is living and abiding with us if we believe and obey the good news that has been preached to you! The heavenly invention of God’s plan has earthly and eternal daily benefits. Love one another because you are purified and born again by the Word of God.So let’s conclude our message with the perfect sign of trusting and obeying. Communion is a command! Jesus commanded His followers take the bread and cup and “Do this in remembrance of Me.” (Luke 22:19) We consider Communion as an ordinance. We must obey ordinances. Jesus is essentially commanding, “Come to the table!” The invitation is for all you have been purified in their souls and are born again through the Living Word of God – Jesus Christ. By taking action to come get the bread and cup at the various tables throughout the auditorium you are saying that you trust in Jesus alone for salvation and are obeying Him. Please come and get the bread and cup to show you trust and obey Christ. If there is anything you are not trusting and obeying Him in right now, you need to repent of this and obey His truth and then partake. 

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^[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-space-exploration/39580591/. Accessed February 7, 2023.

^[2] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible (Toronto: G.R. Welch Co. Ltd., 1976), 189.

^[3] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary – Volume 2 (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989), 399.

^[4] R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. John (Columbus: Wartburg Press, 1945), 71.

^[5] Charles Spurgeon, Daily Treasure (Leyland: EP Books, 2021), 57.

^[6] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/fertility/fertility.html. Accessed February 7, 2023.

^[7] Craig S. Keener, 1 Peter – A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021, 114.

^[8] Keener, 117.

^[9] Spurgeon, 60.

^[10] Jeff Christopherson, Once You See (Cody, WY: 100 Movements Publishing, 2022), 437.

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