Crave Pure Milk

1 Peter 2, 1-3, the three that come right after where we left off last week. So put away all malice, and all deceit, and 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. you may be seated the apostle Peter has been making a few things utterly clear from the beginning of this letter and these things that are clear are that you must be born again and that being born again is a process by which God the Father in heaven, the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit actually cause a person to understand the gospel and believe it.

That's what we just read in chapter 7 of the Confession, in fact, is that it's God who makes people able and willing to believe in the first place. So the condition by which you enter the covenant of grace is actually provided to you by God, the covenant, or the one who made it with you. And at the end of 1 Peter 1, I want to remind you that we are in context here.

At the end of 1 Peter 1, Peter told us to be holy, because God is holy. And then he gave us a bunch of reasons why we should be holy and how we could be holy. And there are somewhat summary ideas, many of them. And at the very end of the chapter, Peter reminds us that we've been born again. Not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through God's word.

So it was God's word that came to any of us that are born again. And it was God's word that the Holy Spirit used to open your mind to the gospel, to understand the truth of what you have to believe in order to be saved. And then Peter continues this thought. I've said this before. I'm going to repeat it to you, though, because I think it hurts us when we study the Bible.

We're used to chapter books. And chapter books end, and a thought ends, and then a new chapter starts a new idea. Like in your life, if something major happens, we say, I'm starting a new chapter. that's the normal way we think in our society that's how chapters are in the Bible the chapters are uninspired they were put there by people just so that it's a lot easier for me to say turn to Isaiah 43 than to try to tell you exactly where in Isaiah to find it out of 66 chapters there weren't any divisions so it's really nothing more than an index so Peter says put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

And so first of all, what we want to see is this word, so. Peter is telling us, because of what I just said, you need to do the following. So because you're born again of imperishable seed, because all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, and the grass is going to wither and the flower fades away, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

So because your flesh is going to fade away, because your flesh is going to die, you don't have to give in to it anymore. You don't have to do what it tells you. It's actually freeing. So as strong as your flesh may be, and I don't know about everybody in here, but in my case, I was saved at 30 years old. My flesh was fed a long, long time with sin and debauchery and worldliness.

And my mind was fed for a long time with a lot of really ungodly thinking. And it could be overwhelming at times, the strength of the pull in my flesh to want to do evil. And for me to have the hope to know that you know what, it's going to die one day. It's going to die. And I get to try to put it to death even slowly at times. So Peter tells us, because of all of this, put away a bunch of things.

And we'll talk about those things in a minute. But the first idea I want you to recognize here is that this stuff is in you. Peter doesn't say, so because of that, if you think you've ever committed these sins, you've got to do this. Peter is saying, put it away. It is a normal thing in the New Testament that the authors assume are wickedness. It's presumed that if you're born again, you were born again from something.

If you're saved, you were saved out of something. And that something is the domain of darkness. Peter says, put away all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. These are common themes in the New Testament. I just want to prove that to you. So turn to Ephesians 4.

And after I prove to you that this putting away of something, this putting off what you had before, then we're going to talk about what they are in particular a little bit. And then I really want to get to the next part, what you're to put on. And that is exciting, and that is the solution. But who's going to take a cure if they don't believe they have the disease, right?

And so we do need to look at these things. And in some cases, we think too highly of ourselves. I'm not going to say in all cases. I think that would be too much. I think in some cases we think too highly of ourselves. And we don't realize, maybe because we were a good little Christian kid, or maybe because we're currently a good little kid in the house, or something like that, we don realize in some cases how deep the sin in our lives is And these words that Peter uses one thing that we note in a minute is none of these words are particularly the kinds of sins that we most annoyed about in society sometimes He didn't mention like gay pride parades.

There's different things that he's talking about. Some of it's a deeper level kind of thinking we have to have about our sin. In Ephesians 4.31, just another list. This is in the context of 20, which we'll read in a second, but Peter says in 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. You'll notice a few of the same words in that passage that we saw in 1 Peter 2, verse 1.

And not to get into them right now, I just wanted to show you that he's telling us, put them away. There's a sense that you have to do some work here. This is not completely passive. Although the Holy Spirit sanctifies, you are responsible for obeying the command. It's your responsibility. In Ephesians 4 22 and 23, which is the context before what we just read, Paul says, put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self and so the idea here is you are to put off your old self there is an old self, no matter who you once were no matter how good and what a goody two-shoe you may have been or how in maybe one or two areas you think you weren't as bad because maybe you were such a wretched sinner in some areas you don't even realize what a wretched sinner you were in others because some of them were outstanding, we'll say.

Standing out. I meant that in the sense of it's standing out, not that it's good outstanding, right? The idea is this, is some of us, we tend to, we'll start to notice our really big outward sins, and we'll say, yeah, that was terrible. Oh, I used to do this, and that was a really bad thing, and I'm so glad I don't do that anymore. And we don't even realize that we had other sins that weren't as prominent in our lives because the other one was so big.

And we think that we really weren't another way that we maybe are, keep John in our hearts. But Paul hints at the solution that Peter's going to give us as well, which is your former manner of life was corrupt through deceitful desires. So the root of your problem is your deceitful desires. It's the fact that deep down inside, you want something and you are, at least in some sense, deceived about it, just like Eve was in the garden.

We think we want pleasure. I would say pleasure is actually a good desire. To want to enjoy things and have pleasure and comfort. I'm going to have pleasure for all eternity with God. It's not a bad desire to want some pleasure. But when inside you've deceived yourself into thinking you get pleasure a different way than through the purity of God than through the way God has designed us to get pleasure.

And so we chase after things that bring us temporary pleasures that maybe often really aren't very pleasurable. Most sin people commit, they don't commit because it hurts them. They commit it because they think it's doing something that they want it to do. And so they're deceived. Now that deception is something we do to ourselves, and it's our own fault that we've deceived ourselves because we've not done what?

In verse 23 of Ephesians 4, we have not been renewed in the spirits of our minds. I've said this before, I think, in here, and I'll hopefully say it again. You're going to do what you think. If you think enough about something, you're going to do it. If you entertain sin in your mind enough, you're eventually going to do that sin. it's the song Be Careful Little Eyes but you see the Slow Fate song it's all about the fact that nobody is just like walking down the street in the purity of the gospel singing a hymn and then like falls into a room with their adulterous woman and cheats on their wife that's not how it works it starts with smaller things in your heart you start to think about things you're not supposed to think about it starts with glances it starts with all these different things and it builds up to the point that sin gives total control of you.

And so we're to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. If we're thinking about pure things and good things, we're still going to battle our flesh. If there were no external temptations in the world, you're still a sinner. And you're a sinner saved by grace, praise the Lord, but you're still a sinner. And you're still going to find ways to sin without temptation.

That's our sin nature that we are fighting. but you're going to do better at it if you get renewed in your mind by the Holy Spirit. If your mind is captured by Jesus Christ and then you're taking every thought captive to obedience to Him, you're going to be far less likely to open your mouth and say the thing you shouldn't say. You're going to be far less likely to do the thing you shouldn't do if you're being renewed in your mind.

And we're going to talk about how you get renewed. But James 1.21 hints at the same thing. So now this is the third author that we're going to look at. So this is not just Peter. It's not just Paul. James, Jesus Christ's brother, grew up with him.

If I could find it. This Bible, the pages are very hard to turn. This is Jesus' brother speaking, his half-brother. He says in verse 21, after verse 18, where he basically explains that you're born again by God's power. He says in 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls So because you been born again not of perishable seed but of imperishable put away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

James is saying the same exact thing, almost. Different words. James is focusing a lot on anger and the way we use our mouths right now. Well, isn't that what malice and envy and slander are? deceit? James is saying the same thing as Peter. I just want you to see it.

Romans 13. The most abused chapter in the world right now. If anyone's listening to this in the future, it's 2020 and we're in the middle of some weird pandemic thing because of COVID-19 in the United States. And the entire last six months has been spent with different people and different churches standing up and saying what they think Romans 13 means.

There's been different people saying Romans 13 means this, Romans 13 means this, Romans 13 means this. And it's all about whether we're submitting to government authorities and how we submit to them and why we submit to them and exactly what does that look like in a church context. And nobody's going all the way to the end of the chapter. And in the end of the chapter, in verse 9, Paul says, For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. He's saying, wake up. You want to get woke? Get woke according to the Bible. Wake up from your sleep and your slumber and start seeing what God is doing and what He's saying you ought to do.

Love your neighbor as yourself. he says salvation is near to us now than when we first believed he's talking about glorification he's talking about when Jesus returns and takes us home he says the night is far gone, the day is at hand, live in the light he says so then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light it's the same word he's telling you put off the old man, put off the old things put off the old self and put on the new one you have a different life now because of what Jesus Christ has done and then he says let us walk properly as in the daytime not in orgies and drunkenness not in sexual morality and sensuality not in quarreling and jealousy so all these things we think are so terrible orgies and drunkenness and these things that are going on out there that we oppose and we wish that they would stop in our culture but Paul lumps that together with sensuality, quarreling, and jealousy. Jealousy is the sin of the heart. You don't even really see jealousy.

You see the outworking of jealousy sometimes in other ways. Jealousy starts big time in your heart. And then he tells us, instead of the works of darkness, which you've now cast off, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. Remember that song we sang about the soldier? That third verse. He says, leave no unguarded place, no weakness of the soul.

Take every virtue, every grace, and fortify the whole. Saying the same thing in Ephesians 6, as Paul is saying in Romans 13, 14 here. Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires, put on the armor of light he said in verse 12 so Paul, Peter, James they're all in accord here that you're putting something off of you and then you're putting on something new it's as if you were wearing a garment and this is the way it's portrayed it's as if you were wearing this garment and let's say it's a coat it could be a shirt but it's as if it was all filthy and every time you thought I'm going to clean it you actually kind of just smeared it a little well, maybe you made it dirtier.

Because you're dirty. You can't clean something that's filthy with something else that's filthy. How many of you have a sink full of dirty dishes and you grab a dirty rag and clean them? And maybe you don't do it on purpose. Have you ever tried? And then you realize, oh, I need a new rag.

A soiled rag is going to make the stuff that's already soiled just as soiled. You need something pure to clean it. And so what God says is, rather than, in a sense, wash you up, God says, just throw it away. Throw away your old life, your old habits, your old way of thinking. Everything about who you thought you were, all the goodness you thought you had, He doesn't want any of it.

You understand that? You weren't some person who was 97% cool with God, or 96% good, or even 1% good, and God thought, well, I can work with them, and I'll just add 99% Jesus to them and make them useful. We are 100% totally depraved in our sin and we need to put it all off and Jesus Christ needs to give us a new garment that we can wear. Do you understand that?

It sounds depressing almost that we're that bad, but that's the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus is that good. And if you had anything in your former life that was worth anything, any goodness, any kindness, any grace, it was because Jesus Christ is so good that he's even kind to unworthy sinners while they're in their sin to make them not as wicked as they possibly could be in practicality. This is why you have loved ones who maybe have passed away who you look back upon their lives and they were very good people, they were very loving people, they were kind, they had all sorts of wonderful qualities, and now you know that that person is most likely in hell for their sin And it hurts you because they were such a good person at times What you have to remember is any goodness that they exuded was the goodness of Jesus Christ.

It was God being merciful to them and the people around them by not allowing them to be as bad as they could possibly be. And that's one of the tragedies right now in our country, in the United States where we live, is that we're starting to see God remove his restraining hand from evildoers. And now people are actually living out the evil that 50 years ago they just stored in their hearts and they just did it in their own home.

And now we're starting to see it on a grander scale. That and with the advances of technology, we're just starting to see more people actually just be able to proclaim what they want to proclaim. A lot of these people would have been too afraid to go stand in a public square and shout the things that they're willing to say online. and they would have been shut down quickly because they're cowards but cowards can sit behind a keyboard and say whatever they want and they can actually claim oh it's the power of the sword and the tongue or whatever what it is is it's cowardliness for most of them but let's move along Colossians 3 and just a little more Paul I love Paul you should love Paul Paul's a dear older brother to us a better man than any of us will ever be, and he confessed sin like crazy and weakness.

Maybe that's an example for us. In Colossians 3, 5, Paul's saying the same thing. He says, put to death therefore, so because you've been born again and raised with Christ, he says, put to death therefore what is earthly in you. He lists the things, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. so Paul is telling you put it to death get rid of it there's no sense in even feeding it there's no sense in nourishing it or keeping it alive whatsoever it's worthless to you and I hope that people in this room will repent of this behavior and I hope that all of us whatever vestige of this that we hold we repent of it I'm not speaking to anyone in particular here I feel like I'm speaking to a room of people right now who this isn't the prevailing issue I don't see anybody in here where you're clinging so hard to something in the world that you won't let go of that I would need to reprimand you or rebuke you for it but I'm sure we all know people like this who you just wish they'd just give up that thing that thing that you know is hurting them the thing you know is devastating their life or could devastate their family or their work life and yet they just cling to it because they just won't cling to the purity of Christ.

In 3.8-10 then, in Colossians, Paul says, But now you must put them all away. So he's got another list. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. So it's the same kind of list again. That's what I was trying to show you. So it took me 20 minutes to show you four passages to tell you they say the same thing.

I don't know what that means. But he says, Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices. Paul assumes that we're doing this. He assumes we've done it. He assumes that Colossians in the first century over in Asia Minor have done it. I think those of us who have benefited from 2,000 years of Christianity, from great documents like the 1689 being written for us, from all the books that have been written that tell us how to live a Christian life, I think we ought to be able to do it.

And I'll tell you what, it's not psychotherapy and psychology and all these things that the world's come up with in the last hundred years that's created a higher population of depressed people and people with clinical issues than ever before. I don't think that's the answer. But Paul says you've put on the new self in verse 10, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

So here's where we get to the key that I want everyone to understand. and this is throughout the New Testament, it's throughout the Old Testament. But it's something that people don't understand. And you'll notice there was a word I just used, knowledge. And there was another word that came up a few times in the passages that I quoted, and that word was sensuality.

And when we say the word sensuality, here in the 21st century of the United States, we think to ourselves of the model, the girl that's in a compromising position. She may be as clothed, but she's positioned in a way that's supposed to make you think of things. So she can say, well, I wasn't really immodest, but we know that she was doing something sensual.

And that's not what the Bible's necessarily talking about when it mentions sensuality. The Bible, when it talks about sensuality, does include those types of things. That's one of the reasons we don't have music that causes us to gyrate our hips while we're worshiping, because we don't want to appeal to those types of things necessarily. But sensuality is just like its root word tells you.

It's about the senses. It's not necessarily in contradiction to all the time, but it is sometimes in contradiction to our rational mind, our logical thinking and so you can have senses that tell you something that actually defy what you know to be true or what you can logically deduce to be true so we're warned against sensuality because sensuality when it becomes the arbiter of our decision making is a horrible guide when sensuality is your governor, your navigator it's not helpful. You don't turn on your GPS and the little lady in the GPS says well I feel like you should go left.

You'd shut it off and you'd say well I might as well follow my own feelings. I've been driving longer than she has, right? You go left because she needs you. You're supposed to go left, and I'm using personification here, obviously, but you know what I mean. The computer knows facts, and it tells you facts. Go left.

Go right. We have feelings, though, that deceive us. Our senses deceive us. Our eyes deceive us. Sometimes, have you ever seen something, and you were sure what you saw of, and yet other people who saw the same thing couldn't corroborate what you saw? Have you ever heard something?

And the other person makes it clear, that's not what I said, right? I'm looking at husbands and wives here. That's like our major difficulty with Aaron and me, is sometimes just hearing each other. It's because we both have a bit of a tendency to mumble. And so when we do that, and I know it's hard to believe while I'm here, but yeah, I mumble sometimes at home. but that's very difficult, but your sense is deceived.

But you're sure what you heard, and you're sure you remember what you said two weeks ago when you told the person, hey, this is what needs to happen, or you're sure that you know what they said. It happens. Our senses deceive us. We have some good senses sometimes. Sometimes we can smell that smell that they put in your gas line so you know to get out of your house.

So senses aren't bad. I don't want to contradict senses with facts. What I want to tell you is that you are to take every thought captive to obey Christ. And what you sense is a fact in a sense. Not that it's necessarily true, but when you sense something, it is a fact that you sensed it. Let me put it that way.

So we're going to get into a little bit of logical thinking here. I want people to be able to do this. This is what Peter wants us to do. it's a fact that you felt a certain way about something. It may not be good, but it's a fact. It's a fact that you heard what you heard, you saw what you saw, you thought what you thought, you feel the way you feel, you smelled what you smelled, you touched what you touched, you felt what you felt.

These are all facts. You have to take facts captive to God. So it may be a fact that you were drawn to want something that's not yours. You may have a feeling, I really want that. Or maybe you're thinking, I really need it. That's what you're feeling and thinking.

You have to take facts of describing your senses captive to obey Christ to find out, is this something that objectively I ought to do? You may want the thing that's not yours, but that is not powerful enough to decide that you should go take it. You understand? So you are to be obedient to God. So I know when I want something that's not mine, the correct response is to repent.

To ask God to forgive me for wanting what he hasn't provided, and in particular something he's given to someone else. Peter said, put away envy, right? I shouldn't envy what you have. I shouldn't want to lie to get the thing that I don't have right now. And so Peter says to us, in verse 2 of chapter 2 he says in a very interesting phrase he says like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation and he says if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good quoting Psalm 34 verse 8 the words that Peter used in the original Greek are extremely interesting There's a bunch of neat articles about this and thoughts about it.

If you look at the King James or the NASB, there's different translations of this verse. In the King James, it says something like, long for the pure milk of the word. Because the word used in Greek is interesting. And you'll realize why I said what I just said when I say it. It's logikon. That's where we get the word logic.

Peter is saying, quite literally, long for rational milk, which sounds kind of strange. And many people have debated whether a good translation is to say long for the milk of the Word or not, because Peter just talked about the Word of God and how the Word of God is through which you got your imperishable seed. And so a lot of people have thought that's a really good translation.

And I don't want to debate whether that's the right translation or not, but the point is this. Peter is telling us that we should long for rational thinking. That we should long for that which is reasonable and logical, which is what Christianity always is. Now, it may not seem that way to us because of our fallenness, and because we have not been renewed in our mind.

So there's times that what seems logical to us contradicts God's word, and in our mind it's like, no, in this moment, I need to follow the logic I have in my head. And what we need to realize at those times is that God's logic is always better than our logic. It not that God got some different logic that illogical to us It that we illogical because we have wrong premises And we very often have very good logic.

We can make cogent arguments for that which we want to do. The problem is the premise at the very beginning is off. Our premise is that we need, we want, we should have, whatever it happens to be, somewhere deep down inside. This is what is good, is what we decide. And then we can connect the dots, and we can deduce an action that is completely contradictory to what God would have us do.

And it's because we're captive sometimes to our own feelings. So Peter's saying, put this stuff off. Malice, thinking wicked thoughts, put it away. Hypocrisy, this pretending you're something you're not. slander, backbiting, speaking of others in an ill way, even if somebody does something wrong. See, in our society, slander has a definition. It's when you lie about somebody, when you speak, and you lie about them.

That's a legal definition. And then libel is written slander. That's how I remember it. Slander starts with an S, so it's when you speak a lie about someone, and then libel is a lie that you write. And those are legal terms. But in the Bible, slander refers to far more than if you just happen to be lying.

You may say a truthful thing about somebody that is really unnecessary that you say. It's malicious in its intent. It's not because you're trying to help the person. It's because you're either a gossip in your heart, and it makes you feel self-important, or it makes you feel superior because you're pointing out their defects. It's very rare that the reason why we speak evil of one another is because we're actually trying to protect the flock.

So we need to be careful of that. One of the reasons why some of us stand up and we'll name names of false teachers and we'll say the bad things they've done and said is to protect you. I don't want you to go listen to someone who's going to lead you to hell, and so I'm going to sometimes name names of people, but it's a very careful thing that you decide to finally do.

And we may be able to criticize something someone said, but they're very different than what the Bible calls slander. And so we're to long for this pure spiritual milk, this rational Christian life, that I do agree with most of the people I read, that Peter is referring, again, still to the Word of God. Peter is saying that the way that we grow and are nourished in Christ is the same way that we came to know Christ, and that is through the Word of God.

It's by faith that you came to know Christ in the first place. Faith is believing. Faith isn't feeling. Nobody got saved because they felt saved one day. People get saved because they cognitively believe that Jesus Christ died for their sins and rose from the grave. What did they believe?

They believed God's revelation. They believed God's word. They believed what God has said about salvation. and when they believed it, when they learned the facts they then applied those facts, they believed them and then they're given salvation as a result your growth in Christ happens the same way you hear God's word preached you hear God's word spoken to you you're admonished by other people with God's word you're addressed in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs by one another making melody of the Lord in your heart you hear these things that God has revealed and you have to first cognitively understand them and believe them, secondly.

And then that is how you grow in Christ. This is why we sing songs in English. It's why we read the Bible in English. It's why I preach in English. It's why if somebody walked in here who was deaf, we'd have Aaron come up and do ASL. It's why if somebody came in and they didn't know English, we'd have somebody who knows their language come and help them.

Or we'd have to learn it because we love them. Or we'd have to find them a place they could go because we don't actually believe that people get saved magically. It's mystical and it's mysterious to us and it's supernatural, but it's not magic. It's not magic words that somebody says and then the other people just by some weird osmosis can believe it.

If that was true, I'd go stand in the public square of Columbus every day and I would shout nothing but the Greek New Testament at people. And I would get credit for being the longest lasting preacher in the history of the world and nobody would ever persecute me because they'd walk by, they wouldn't know what I was saying, and they probably wouldn't care, and they'd ignore me. Also, nobody would get saved.

Nobody would learn Christ that way. Because the reason why Christians get persecuted is they make clear statements of fact, propositional truths they've been given by God, that God has revealed, that they have by faith come to believe. They make those statements to others, others understand those statements, and then they rebel against it because they don't have faith.

It's because they understand the words, though. It's one of the problems with Christianity today, and I'm not referring to the site, but that's one of their problems too, is we've just become unclear about language. We've become so unclear that nobody can even disagree with us. And it why we have things like a confession that make a bunch of things rock clear And a lot of people don like conviction and they don like men who stand up and say what they believe and have conviction But that's not our problem.

Our problem is that we need to obey God, and we need to give the message He's given us. So, Peter says, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk. Anybody in here have an infant ever? I see children from a family integrated church if you've had an infant you know that they love feeding time that there is no stopping that baby from letting you know when it's time to eat is there? it's like God has designed it into children that they will survive right? and whether you breastfed or whether you did the formula thing with the bottle however it happened there wasn't as many options when Peter wrote this, but however it happened, the idea is this, that that child was not going to live without that nourishment.

That child was not going to grow without that nourishment. In fact, the child would have died without it. And even though the child maybe didn't even understand this cognitively, the child knew they needed it. And they would fight for it. They would, little children learn deceit early, right? They fake cough to get your attention, you know?

There's things that kids do that try to get your attention. They know they need these things. Peter is saying, like newborn infants, long for this pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow up into salvation. You should be longing for this. If you can go a day without opening your Bible, you should wonder why. It should bother you.

And it should bother you far more than if you went a whole day without eating, how much you'd probably think, oh, none of you go three, four hours probably without eating. Or at least your body calling out to you, it's time to eat. You might tell it no and we'll wait. Maybe you've intentionally fasted. But for the most part, our bodies are like, boom, on a cycle, you've got to eat.

There's no stopping. It's just a normal thing. And yet, we as Christians should have the same level of hunger and thirst for righteousness and for God's Word. and if you don't feel that hunger, if you starve yourself from God's means of grace, the preaching of His Word, the reading of His Word, the study of His Word, prayer, singing, worship, taking communion, if you deprive yourself from these things and you don't hunger for them, you need to ask yourself, am I alive or am I dead?

Am I growing or dying? Because if I don't nourish a little baby with formula or breast milk or whatever it happens to be, they die. but they fight to live because they are alive and they fight for the nourishment they know they need and then they'll grow and although with little children there will come a time that they no longer drink milk and they get on to other foods and the Hebrews writer says you're still on milk but solid food is for the mature and he makes a contrast between milk and meat and that's not what Peter does here what Peter says is like newborn infants long for it. He never says until you're eating meat.

That's not the point of this passage. The point of this passage is not that milk is the basic teaching and then someday you should be moving on and being a better person able to teach yourself like in Hebrews example. Peter is saying long for it. Till the day that Jesus Christ glorifies you, you should be longing for it because you still need nourishment.

And in some sense you're like an infant every day of your life longing for the only nourishment that can actually bring you to glory, which is God's word, God's revelation. So you should long for it. In the Geneva Bible translation, they have notes. So the Geneva Bible, I'm pretty sure that's the one the pilgrims would have used and some of the Puritan guys.

So these guys translated the Bible. And one of the notes on 1 Peter 2, it's called the sincere milk of the word in the old translation. The sincere milk of the word. They said, he calls it sincere, listen, not only because it is a most pure thing. So God's word is pure. He says, but also that we should take heed of them which corrupt it. so I know some people will criticize me ironically because I'm so critical of others who pervert God's word sometimes and I think of this, if somebody was poisoning baby formula would there be an outrage in this country right now it wouldn't matter who it was, what color they were if somebody was found out that they were poisoning baby formula or if a company was intentionally poisoning it it was clear and everybody knew, there'd be an outrage.

People would be screaming for the guy to maybe get the death penalty. Except some of those people that would never... Some people only think the death penalty applies to the unborn. But ignoring the completely irrational people out there, if somebody was poisoning the water supply, it'd be a national outrage. And yet people poison the purity of God Word and they stand up and they preach perversions and lies about it all the time every Sunday They do it all week long on their blogs and their podcasts and on their little money schemes and in their little empires they build where they can molest people and do all the bad things they want.

And some of them don't even care probably about the money and the sex. They just like the prestige of being the guy in front. And they pervert God's Word. And you know what? They're killing people with it. They're sending some people to hell who are imbibing it, and they're never getting the nourishment that they really need to even believe the gospel.

And then other people who are maybe baby Christians, who like infants are actually maybe longing for pure spiritual milk, these people are getting fed garbage. They're getting fed junk food, spiritual junk food. And so Peter's telling you, crave the good stuff. Everybody here likes a little junk food once in a while, I'm sure of it. But those of us who are somewhat mature, I think, understand, okay, I have to limit that.

And I'll admit, I've had some good days, bad days, good months even on that thing. But with your children, aren't you even a little more weary of the junk food than you even are with yourself sometimes? Because you know it's bad for them. It's not going to help them grow. But when your kid craves junk food, you understand why. It's not because there's something in them that's rational. it's because there's something irrational.

It's the sensuality again, right? They don't have the knowledge to know, hey, I should eat the salad. And their cravings tell them, eat the candy, right? I mean, that's just how it is. I have cravings for junk food as an adult. And I at least have knowledge to say no to that and say yes to this other thing.

But when a kid craves the junk food, we protect them from it by giving them what's good. and what we want to do is we want to be able to find the junk food that's out there and to warn people about it and I'm talking about the spiritual junk food I'm talking about the people that are perverting the gospel they're perverting the deity of Christ they're perverting the humanity of Christ they're perverting the Trinity I'm talking about the people that are doing all sorts of things that are changing what God has clearly stated in His Word and even sometimes changing what is a little bit less clear from what he's really said. And so we refuse to practice cunning. 2 Corinthians 4.2 We refuse to tamper with God's word.

We want to tell people this is what it says. And we leave the results up to God. And we trust God to be able to take care of us and the person who just heard the truth that maybe they don't like. So Peter says, put away all these things. He says, crave the sincere milk of the Word. Crave the pure spiritual milk.

Put off the old self, put on the new self. And he says, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. The implication here is, first of all, it's a reference to Psalm 34, which I'm going to tell you Peter loves. And he loves it in this letter. And if you review Psalm 34 regularly, you'll see the suffering of the righteous. You'll see the deliverance that God gives to his people.

You'll see the exhortations to believe in Yahweh or Jesus Christ, who is what we see in the New Testament, and to turn away from evil. You'll see the condemnation of the wicked and the deliverance of the righteous. You'll see all that right in Psalm 34. You can see your own life. You can see the life of Jesus in it. But what Peter says is, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

And what Peter is telling you is, you've tasted this. you know what it tastes like you know what good doctrine tastes like because you had enough to believe in the first place and Peter's telling us that we should be mindful of that and we should crave more of it and it's half a warning but it's half an encouragement you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good you can look back on your life and no matter how difficult some of your circumstances are you can remember the times he's delivered you some of you have had near death experiences some of you have had children that were very sick or maybe shouldn't have made it or whatever things have happened in your life you've had something bad happen to you and God helped you through it and so you remember those good things that he's done and as Jesus said in John 21 12 come and dine, come and eat take nourishment from God's word and from the Lord Jesus Christ let me pray for us Father thank you for your word we thank you that you provide to us through the apostles the foundations of the New Testament church that you have provided for us writings that reveal your will and your truth to us and we pray that we would be mindful Lord that you mean for us to ingest them to digest them to consider them and let our minds be renewed by them. Grant us repentance from self-reliance and help us to be people of your spirit. Amen.