1 Peter 2:1-3 | Getting Out of a Rut

Sunday Morning | September 22, 2024 | John C. Majors | Louisville, KY

Pastor John's sermon, based on 1 Peter 2:1-3, is part of the larger series titled "1 Peter: Finding Joy in Suffering." In this particular message, Pastor John discusses three practical ways to get out of a spiritual rut, guiding us to grow deeper in our faith. First, he advises us to "Change your clothes," which symbolizes removing destructive emotions like envy—a powerful negative force that doesn’t just want what others have but wishes ill upon them. Pastor John highlights a quote from Tim Keller, emphasizing how dangerous envy can be. The second step is to "Get hungry" for spiritual growth. Pastor John unpacks three layers of hunger: having a deep longing for God, constantly seeking growth, and choosing your spiritual nourishment wisely. Lastly, the sermon reminds us to "Remember the good taste" of God's goodness, as reflected in Psalm 34. This final step encourages us to hold on to the experiences we've had of God's goodness and let them fuel our faith journey forward.

You can join us on Sunday mornings at 11 AM for worship. We are located at 8911 3rd Street Road, Louisville KY 40272.

Transcript

0:29

Well, good morning, Valley View. Great to be with you. While we continue in our study of the Book of First Peter, we wrapped up chapter one last week and we're entering into chapter two. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to First Peter chapter two. If you have a church Bible, that page number will be up on the screen here in just a moment. That'll let you know where to turn. And if you don't have a Bible, we really want to put a copy of God's Word in your hand. Those are out in the connection corner. You can slip out at any time, or you can nudge someone next to you and ask them to go grab one. The page numbers that are on the screen are tied into that Bible in particular. So turn there and I'll start by reading the whole section that we're going to cover today. First Peter chapter two, and we're reading verses one through three today. So put away all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. When we lived in Arkansas, lived there for a number of years, there was a state forest probably an hour away from home. It was a great place to go, full of old fire roads where you could just drive down a random dirt road and pull off the side of the road and camp park. It was open to everyone and my son one time my oldest son and my youngest son went camping, just the two of them, and they're going down one of these roads and you can get deep in the woods away, even imagine this. Even further away from people in Arkansas than you can get just by going to Arkansas deep in the woods. And they're going down this one road. And it had rained recently. So a lot of water staining right in the middle of this country road. And he had a lifted truck. So you know feeling pretty brave. It goes right into it. And the front end just drops all the way down into it. And he couldn't get out, couldn't go forward, couldn't go backward. There was no going anywhere. Now there's different things you can do in that moment. But what it made me think of is how in life, at times you'll be going along. Everything seems great. In fact, I'm out on a camping trip. I'm excited about what's ahead of me. And out of nowhere you drop into a rut. Have you had that happen? You drop into and specifically here, a spiritual rut. I thought things were great and now I just can't seem to get going. Last week when we looked at First Peter, the theme was love. We are to be all about love. We are commanded to love. Love with brotherly love, love with a sincere love, love earnestly. And yet there are seasons where you go, I don't got it in me. I've hit a rut. And I need others to come love me I can't seem to get going again. What do you do? How do you get out of a spiritual rut? We're going to look at three ways in this passage today in particular. Or Peter tells us, here's how you get out of a spiritual rut. So let's look back at verse one. And that's going to give us the first step here in getting out of that spiritual rut. And don't worry, I'll share what happened with my children and whether they made it out or not. Eventually we'll get to it. First, look back at verse one. So put away all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander. The first way is to change your clothes. Now bear with me what I mean by that first, and you may have heard this at times. If you're in a rut, if you're in a funk, people oftentimes just practically will say, do something to change. Take a shower, shave, go for a walk, put on fresh clothes, get something to eat, change your physical environment somehow to just kind of get things going. So I'm using that theme in each of these ideas, but pulling them from what the text says. The first one says, put away, change your clothes is the first step. And here's what I mean. Put away all malice and deceit that word put away is often used in context of put off. It's used in the context of clothing. Take off something and set it aside. It's used of clothing, but it's also used of character qualities, of moral attributes. And actually the imagery was used of baptism in early baptism rituals in the church. People would literally they, as they're coming down to be baptized or moving towards the water, they would have on an old dirty outer garment and they would take it off, lay it aside. They had clothes underneath, don't worry. And then they would go down in the water, be baptized. And when they came out, they'd put on a new clean, fresh garment. I’m putting aside the old ways, I'm taking them off, I'm laying them aside. And I'm putting on new habits, new ways of life, new new living, new ideas in Christ. And so here we're told, if you want to move towards love, one of the steps is change your clothes. Put away those old things where we went to in our flesh was envy, deceit, malice, hypocrisy, slander. That's where we went naturally, we got to put those away. Now this isn't fun, but we need to take a minute and talk about each of those words. I like to skip right past these and not dwell on those personally. It's gross. They're dirty. I don't like them. They remind me of many ways I've acted in my life. But look at each of these words-- malice. First, also, I need to say, why do you think he listed these here? Why do you think his audience in particular needed to hear these? They were likely struggling in this area. Put these aside. Malice. That word malice is also translated as evil or wickedness. In fact, just a few verses later, if you look at chapter two, verse 16, it says live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil. Malice, evil, evil intent. But here's the thing about malice with evil, it's not just evil for evil’s sake, it's evil directed at towards someone else. I am being evil with the intent of hurting someone else, not just evil for my own fun, but I actually also want to hurt someone else. We got to put that aside. We got to be done with that. The next word here-- deceit. That word is also used to speak of the Sanhedrin council when they were working behind the scenes. That word is translated as stealth. They were working in stealth. They were working in secret with the intent of putting Jesus to death. They had to do it in secret. They had to do it in stealth because they knew if they did it openly, it wouldn't be seen as something acceptable. That should be a clue, by the way, if you're navigating behind the scenes trying to accomplish something and you know no one else will approve of it, let that be just a slight red flag that maybe I should pump the brakes just a little. Again, the deceit with the Sanhedrin in particular, it wasn't just I'm being deceptive for my own gain, but I'm also intending to hurt someone else. Like I said, these words aren't fun. The next word hypocrisy. We talked about that a little bit last week. We talked about that some that the contrast of hypocrisy and sincere. The thing we didn't talk about with hypocrisy, though, here's the really-- Hmhmm. I'm trying to think of the right word, insidious part of hypocrisy. It's when I say to someone, you need to live this way. I'm telling you, you should live this way. But then I want I have this standard for you that I'm not willing to live up to. You know, Barna, you've probably heard of George Bonner. He's done a number of surveys, especially among in the Christian community, and he actually went around, wrote a whole book on it, partnered with another guy, wrote a whole book on what do non-Christians think of Christians? I'm going to survey non-Christians, not Christians. I'm going to ask them, what do you think of Christians? Take a wild guess at what was the number one word they used to describe Christians. Man, y'all jumped right all over that. Hypocrite. Yeah, hypocrite. Who wants to be called a hypocrite? That's the last word I want to be used of me. That that feels terrible. And here you have a whole swath of society labeling a whole another swath of society that way. Now, is that fair? I don't know, maybe it's not. Maybe it's a misperception. There's probably some truth to that. Here's the positive side of that, though. There's actually a positive side to that. The only way that you have the ability to call anyone a hypocrite is if they are public about their beliefs. I can't call you a hypocrite. I can't say you're not living up to that standard unless I know what the standard is that you've stated. So the only reason anyone can call a Christian a hypocrite is because we're open in public about our beliefs. We're not hiding anything here. Our statements of faith and beliefs are on the website. It's not in secret. I taught it in our pastor's class last week. I want you to know what we believe. I want to be very clear. There's no secret knowledge that you attain to after multiple levels of giving enough or being around long enough. No, no, it's it's all there out in the open. And so it's actually probably pretty good that the culture is going. We'll see it. You say you believe that. Yeah we'll see. And they're there to call us on it when we're not. That's not fun. I don't like it. And yet part of it is really healthy. But the pressure is for us to live up to what we see in Scripture. None of us are going to do it perfectly. We're all hypocrites at some level. We're none of us are going to do it perfectly. And that's why we lean on Christ. Hypocrite. Next word envy. There was a whole series of books written on the seven Deadly Sins, and that's just kind of a, you know, that's not necessarily a biblical list. That's a list. The Catholic Church in particular put together these are the sins you really want to avoid, by the way, avoid all sin. There's not seven that are more deadly than the others per se. But one in particular was envy on that list, and one of the guys who wrote a book completely about envy, he said. Of all the seven deadly sins, envy is the only one that is no fun. I thought, that's an interesting perspective. There's plenty of sins that are fun, otherwise people wouldn't do them. But envy is one. There is no fun to it at all. Tim Keller defined it this way. This will be up on the screen. Envy is not just wanting what someone else wants. That would be maybe more like jealousy. They have that. I'd like that too. It's not just that, it's also wanting that other person to suffer harm and loss because they have what we don't. Who are you to think? How come they have that and I don't? Who are they? That's not fair. There's never a happier day when they face a challenge. That's a picture of envy. He goes on to say that the the really challenging part of envy is it often stays hidden beneath the scene, kind of in the background, not necessarily out in the front. It reminds me of the Corvette Museum. Many are envious of those who owned corvettes, but I mean, the museum in particular, you may remember. Yeah, they built that museum and they thought it was on solid ground, but what was deep underneath? Mammoth cave, let's build it close to Mammoth Cave and see what happens. All along there was a cave hidden. And over time, it's eroding. It's chipping away. And like envy and bitterness and malice in the heart, it's it's chipping away until all of a sudden the floor falls out. Out of nowhere, seemingly. Envy works like that. It's working in the background. It's there. It seems hidden, but it's chipping away at the heart. Put that aside. We've got to put envy aside. If we're going to love others well, envy has got to go. We're almost done with all this last list here on the list. Envy and then slander. You know, slander is when we speak ill of someone. And by the way, it could actually be the truth. Yeah. Sometimes we call it a prayer request. Right? Do you hear about so-and-so? They need prayer. It could be the truth. But here's here's what makes it slander. It's with the intent to harm. I want this to hurt them when I share this little morsel with you. I want it to hurt. Challenging list. We've got to put these aside. What do these have in common? You know, there's a lot of lists of sins in the Bible. You can find lists in various places where they'll say, don't do this, don't do that. What do these have in common in particular, here in first Peter? The thing they have in common here, all of these are meant to hurt others. There's plenty of sins that I might do that are just only for me. Gluttony might be one. I'm not trying to hurt anybody else. I just want another slice or 2 or 3 or whatever of that pie. That's just between me and the Lord at that point. And of course, maybe it hurts others down the road, but these are done with the intent to harm others. No. When I do this, I hope it hurts them. We’ve got to put those aside if we hope to love others, we've got to put on new clothes. To put on love, we've got to put on Christ, put on new clothes. That's the first way we move towards love. That's number one. Now look here at verse two for the second way we move towards love. We get out of a rut. Number two, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation. So second way that we get out of a spiritual rut is get hungry. Number two, get hungry. Sorry to do this to Baptists. I know it's just been like 37 minutes since you last ate. You're already looking forward to lunch, though. You're already thinking about it. But look, we've got to get hungry, it says here, for pure spiritual milk. We gotta get hungry for the right things. The way you replace a bad intent is with a good intent, with moving, with hunger toward the right thing. And as I looked at this verse in particular about how do we get hungry? I think there are three layers here in particular, maybe kind of like a three layer cake, you know what I mean? Tres leches. Wait, that's not three layers. That's three milks. Even better. What other desserts can we talk about? Let's just take a second. Talk about desserts for a minute. Increase your hunger. Get hungry for the right things. There's three layers here in this passage. First, look at the word like newborn infants long for pure spiritual milk. Long for it. That word long is the main command of the whole passage. Last week it was love. This week it's long, long for it. Now, that word longing connected with a newborn infant has a powerful thrust. If you've had an infant, you know what I'm talking about, man. You can almost time it to the minute when they're going to start crying, needing to eat. And when you go from every 2.5 hours to every 2.75 hours, it's like a whole new day. And when they go three hours without eating, you're like, you've remembered your name again. They don't wait for you to feel good about feeding them when they're hungry, they demand it in the moment. They scream, they yell. They do whatever it takes to get your attention. They long. They desire it so deeply. And by the way, it's not just it's not just the babies. Sometimes it's it's the mothers too, you know what I'm saying? I remember the first time when Julie was nursing, and normally we would go maybe like to Chipotle and split a burrito. And the first time we go when she's nursing, she orders the burrito. And I was like, you know what? Actually, I'd like salsa on that. On my half. She's like, get your own. What do you mean, your half? I'm eating this whole thing and I'm going to be looking at yours the whole time too. Hungry, longing. How are we building that longing in our hearts? So that's the first layer here is the longing. Second, always keep growing. Always keep growing. If you look back at the verse long for pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. We want to keep growing. There's never a moment you arrive at, as a Christian where you got it all figured out. I don't have to grow anymore. I'm good. That's why our theme for the year, you know, we we presented this Friday night to the whole church. We want to be growing into oaks of righteousness. Yes. Of course, any church wants to grow numerically. But what is as important, if not more important, is that we are growing strong, deep in the Lord, deep roots, able to withstand the storms. We won't. We don't want to be like the little shoots that came up in Matthew 13 that fell among the rocky soil. And then when the wind and rain came, they withered away. They couldn't withstand because they had no root. We want to grow strong. We want to grow deep. We want to be able to stand firm for the gospel in this community, to be a light, to bear fruit to the whole community. That's why I love this picture here of like, newborn infants. You want to talk about someone who grows? Man that little bag of skin folds you bring home, and you can't imagine they're tucked into the corner of a car seat. You can't imagine they'd ever fill up that car seat. In fact, Megan Sanchez was telling me, you know, they just had a baby. Meagan-- Isaac's her husband, he was playing drums today. Little Caleb, you know, they brought him home, and he was born on the larger side. On the chunky side maybe. You know, the sad part of that is you had all these cute clothes for this two month old, and they already don't fit him. And then you think, how could they ever fit into this gigantic six month old outfit? And before you know it, the buttons are just popping off. They're just growing so rapidly. Grow. Keep growing. Don't just coast. Don't just think I got it all figured out. The call is to keep growing. And then the third layer here. Choose your food wisely. Choose your food wisely. Here's how that is portrayed in the passage. It says long for the pure spiritual milk. Long for pure spiritual milk, meaning long for the right things, long for the things that will actually help you grow. We want to. When you need nourishment, you want to eat food that actually helps you grow, not tears down your body. Milk in its purest form is one of the most amazing foods there is. It's like the perfect combination of fat, carbs, protein. It's like perfectly balanced. Surprise, surprise. And they've done all these studies shockingly so. All of a sudden, the amazing ability of breast milk to bring nutrients to children, you know, amazing. God had a plan. God had a design, and it has this incredible nourishment value. We are to long for pure spiritual milk, that word spiritual. It's actually a challenging word in this passage because it only shows up one other place. Shows up in Romans chapter 12, where the context is present your bodies as a living sacrifice, as a spiritual act of worship. Some translations say a reasonable, a true, a pure act of worship. You know, what does that mean? In our longings, in our hungers, they should be true to the need. They should be pure. They should fit the need. I should long for things spiritually. And here's where this comes down to. I should long for things spiritually that actually nourish my soul. And of course, we all find ourselves at times longing for consuming things that don't, that don't nourish. In fact, they do the opposite, that erode our souls. In fact, sometimes our tastes get so deformed that we come to like that better than the truly nourishing spiritual things. Here's what we're called to do here in this passage in particular. Long for pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. Part of what is happening here is he is calling us to be longing for community. There's so many different things that nourishes spiritually, but the context of this passage is community. I mean, all last week it was love, love one another. We need to be loving each other well, sincerely, earnestly, with brotherly love. This week it's don't do things that tear down one another. Avoid those. Put those aside. Next week it will be because you are part of a church. You are his saints. We are meant to build up the church together, not not tear down. And so a key part of gaining the true spiritual milk is how we move forward together in community, how we grow in community, and how we do that as we hunger for the true spiritual milk. Long for it. So that's the second way we continue to get out of a spiritual rut. And then the third way, look at verse three. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. The third way here is remember the good taste. Remember the good taste. Remember what truly tastes good. This verse in particular is a quote from Psalm 34. I mentioned that Peter loves to quote the Old Testament. He quotes it left and right. Sometimes it's a slight allusion, sometimes it's a direct quote, sometimes it's a partial quote. And we're not going to spend a ton of time in Psalm 34, but go ahead and turn there today. I just want to highlight one thing. We're not going to spend a ton of time there, because we're going to spend a lot of time there in chapter three. In fact, before you turn there, if you look at first Peter, you can just see blocks of quotes that are standing out, depending on how your Bible’s structured. You saw that in chapter one. We looked at that last week from Isaiah. You'll see in chapter two there's a few other verses quoted that stand out we'll look at next week. But if you look at chapter three, there's this whole section verses ten through 12 that come from Psalm 34. So we'll spend more time in Psalm 34 then, but turn there now, because I want to highlight one thing. Why would he reference that verse in particular here? Taste and see that the Lord is good, or taste that the Lord is good. Psalm 34. If you have a church Bible that's on page 433, Psalm 34, all I want to do is highlight not any verse in there, but the introduction. This was part of what was originally written. It's not considered a verse, but it's part of the original writing. It's not something we added on later. Some parts of the Bible, usually those little titles were just added to help us understand what's a chapter about, but look at what it writes here. Psalm 34. It says right here at the top of David, meaning it's a Psalm of David. It's a psalm that is attributed to have been written by David. And here's the circumstance he was in when he wrote it. When he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out and went away. Now, if you remember the story, David, first of all, Saul was trying to kill David. David had been appointed as the new king by Samuel. Saul knows it. Saul wants him dead. Understandably so. Saul not approving. But that's what he's after. He's trying to get rid of David. So David has to flee his hometown. He has to flee everything he's known. And he goes to a foreign land. He's an exile in a foreign land. And what happens there? They were like, you mean David, the guy who's been killing our people? We don't want him here either. And so Abimelech, they bring him before Abimelech. But what he does to get get away is to act crazy, to act mad. And he gets set free. So here you have David. Here's why this is quoted in first Peter. What is Peter about? Finding joy in suffering? What does he call us in the first chapter? Elect exiles. David in exile. David encountering suffering. David being attacked by his own king. Being attacked by people that he's fleeing to for rescue. David knows what it's like to suffer. And what does he say in Psalm 34? Look at the verse that's quoted, verse eight. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Listen, of all people who could complain about God, it would be David in this moment. What are you doing, Lord? Why do you hate me? You've got Saul trying to kill me. And now you've got the people I go to for rescue. And they're trying to kill me. And what does he say? God is good. He has rescued me. He remembered. He tasted. He remembered the taste of how good the Lord is. And if you need to get out of a spiritual rut, you got to turn and taste the Lord again. You've got to remember what he has done for you. And look, I know you've had hard times. You may be in the middle of a really hard time, and it's easy to forget how much he's done for you. But we got to turn back there, taste. What has the Lord done? Taste his goodness in the midst of that. Because you can't get. Here's the tricky part. You can't get out of a spiritual rut on your own. You can't. You got to have Christ to step in. Back to my two sons and their journey. They realized that too, sitting on the side of the road, hours from home. You barely see anyone out in this wilderness area. No cell phone service. What do you do? They sat down and waited. Let's see if anyone comes along. Let's pray. See if God sends anyone our way. We can't. We can't get out of this on our own. And they waited hour after hour. And finally here comes beat up old Rambler truck coming down the road, happens to have a strap, pulls them out and they're on their way. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Remember his goodness in the midst of the waiting. Depend on him to get you out of the rut. Put aside the things that we have gone to naturally. And turn to him, long for him. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you that you're the one that changes our hearts. My heart naturally says, if someone wrongs me, I'm going to wrong them back. My heart naturally says, if someone speaks ill of me, I'm going to do the same. My heart naturally says, I'll act however I want no matter what I say. You call us to put aside those old clothes, to put on new clothes, and it's the Holy Spirit working through us that accomplishes that. Jesus, would you help us to just hear from you today to to be guided by you, to depend on you, help us to walk in the newness of life we know in you to walk in the joy of the remembrance of the things you've done in our lives. Thank you, Jesus, for all the ways you've worked in this church. Jesus, I pray that this year would be a year of growth unlike any other in the lives of every person here, that we would grow into mighty oaks of righteousness, that each person here would send down roots deeper than ever before, and they would see you build them up and strengthen them like never before. God, would you move in our lives? Would you grow us, grow us deep, grow us strong? We love you, Jesus. Amen.