Truth, Love & the Word 1 Peter 1:22-25
22Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.[a] 23For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24For,
"All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25but the word of the Lord stands forever."[b] And this is the word that was preached to you. (NIV)
Footnotes:
a. 1 Peter 1:22 Some early manuscripts from a pure heart
b. 1 Peter 1:25 Isaiah 40:6-8
1) Purified. What does it mean to be pure? How do I purify myself? To be purified means to be cleaned up, to remove any unwanted, undesirable, or foreign material. I found a little clip to help illustrate the removal of foreign contamination…(wall-e clip. 1:36). Wall-E is dirty, at least as far as the robots in this new world seem to think, and he needs some cleaning up, well a LOT of cleaning up. And poor MO spends most of this movie cleaning up after wall-e and his messy trail throughout the ship. For us here today, we need come cleaning up too. No, we’re not robots, we have a free will and the ability to choose the way we live our lives. But we can have some ‘foreign contaminants’ in our lives. Things that the bible calls ‘sin’. And just like the contaminants stick to the probes in that movie, sin sticks to us until we deal with it, or clean it up. In order for us to be acceptable to God, who is, as we discussed last week, the impartial judge of our lives, we must be clean, holy, purified. God cannot have any impurity in His presence, and so we must be clean. And we are cleaned, not by some robotic process, but by the blood of Christ, and by, as Peter states here, our OBEDIENCE of the truth.
2) OBEY. Some people don’t like that word. It makes us think of being under someone’s authority that perhaps we don’t want to be under. To obey someone means to surrender to their authority. We send dogs to obedience school so that they will obey our commands when we say, ‘heel, sit, stay, don’t jump on the couch, don’t jump on the couch, DON’T JUMP ON THE COUCH!’. We teach our children to obey, at least we try to, so that when there is danger they will listen and obey our instructions. I’ve said to our kids things like, ‘you need to obey me. If I were to say jump out of this moving car, I need to know that you would do it, in case your life depended on it.’ How silly is that, jump out of a moving car??? But hey, if it was a life or death situation, and jumping out of the car meant life, I hope that’s the choice we’d make! We may have even used the word ‘obey’ in our wedding vows. How’s that going? God asks us to obey, even when it seems crazy, or odd, or different than we would do something. He asks us to obey Him, His Word, His truth. And since He is God, our Father, shouldn’t we obey Him? My simple mind has to figure that He knows a lot more about what is right for me to do than I do, so I should listen to what He says is right, right? And by obeying the truth, we are purified. Obedience leads us to purity. Obedience makes us clean before God. So, are we going to obey Him and his truth?
3) And what is truth? These are the famous words of Pilate, just before he gave in to the accusations of the crowds and the chief priests to have Jesus crucified. But instead of asking ‘what’ is truth, perhaps he should have asked ‘who’ is truth? Who is the truth we are to obey? It is Jesus Christ. He is the Truth. Look back to the beginning of this very letter, in Peter’s greeting, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, 2who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance. (NIV) Jesus is the Truth. In John 14:6, Jesus says that He is the way and the truth and the life, and hat no one comes to the Father except through Him. In many of Jesus’ parables and teachings, He starts by saying, ‘I tell you the truth,’ and then He proceeds to teach us truth. Jesus brings truth, teaches truth, and is truth so why don’t people obey all that He says to do? Why do people choose to go through life without the truth? We tell our kids, don’t touch, it’s hot, you’ll get hurt, and yet they do it anyway? (see I told you…no we don’t say that, we love our kids) What is it about our human nature that wants to push the boundaries of truth? Perhaps it is it that we don’t want to accept that God is telling the truth ALL the time? So many people say that they are looking for truth, for something to believe in, but the last place they look is to God and the church, why is that? Why work so hard trying to find truth when it is right here in front of us? God’s not wanting to make it difficult to find truth. We don’t have to climb some mountain to ask some guru about the meaning of life, it’s all contained in God’s word. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. (Ephesians 2:10) That is our purpose. We are made by God, hand-crafted by the Creator of the universe; made to do good things for Him and for each other.
4) And THAT is what Peter leads up to. The best way we can serve one another is to love each other, and not with a simple love, but a deep, true, unwavering, ever-pursuing, pure and holy love. Love that is sincere, love that comes from a pure, clean, and holy heart. When I read this passage this last week, I was struck buy the way Peter emphasized love here. He used three references to it. Sincere love, deep love, and love from the heart. Why such a strong picture? I think it is because Peter knows what true love is all about. Go back to the time of Jesus’ arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, all the disciples fled when the soldiers seized Jesus. He was taken to the home of Annas, the High priest’s father-in-law. It was in the courtyard that Peter was asked if He knew Jesus, or was one of his disciples. Three times he was asked, and three time Peter denied that he knew Jesus at all. A rooster crows, just as Jesus had foretold to Peter. At that very moment, Jesus looks straight at Peter, I’m sure with tears in His eyes, as Jesus hears those words of denial from his close friend. Peter’s eyes well up with tears as he realizes that he has disowned the Lord. He runs out of the courtyard weeping bitterly. Jesus is tried, scourged, and crucified. He suffers greatly. Peter suffers in his heart with all the emotions of denying the One he loves. Then, just a few days later, the report comes from the women who went to visit the tomb, Jesus is alive again! Peter jumps from the table and runs to see the empty tomb for himself. Jesus appears to the disciples a few times, but on one special occasion, Jesus has a private chat with Peter. He asks Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ not once, not twice, but three times. Peter answers, ‘You know that I love you!’ every time, but he’s a little surprised at Jesus’ asking him over and over and over. But it was for each denial, that Jesus asked Peter, do you love me. Do you love me more than the people around you? Do you love truly love me, like a brother. And do you love me for who I am, God. Would you give up everything just to love Me? Yes, Lord, I love you. And with that commitment of love, Peter was reinstated, made complete, and I believe, fully understood what love was all about. Even though Peter turned His back on Jesus when He perhaps needed him most, Jesus still loved Peter, in spite of the pain that Peter caused Him. God loves us, all of us, in spite of the pain we cause him. In spite of the times we have broken his laws, or broken his heart. He loves us unconditionally, and will always forgive us, always, always, always. That is the kind of love we should have for each other. Unconditional, always forgiving, pure love. No matter what the hurt, no matter what the history, no matter what we think ought to happen to those who hurt us, we must love, we must forgive, we must seek to restore relationships. After all, that is what God did when He sent His Son to come and restore us to a right relationship with God. Even though we rebelled, and disobeyed, and even denied that God exists, God came, God loved, God died…for us. That’s the example He gave us to follow…wow!
5) And finally, Peter gives us something to focus our thoughts on, the word of God. He reminds us that we are born again, born through the living and enduring word of God. Do you think of the Bible as being ‘alive’? Do you or have you had the word seem as is it is speaking directly to you? Has it ever happened that you’ve heard a particular passage several time, but when you READ it for yourself, suddenly it has new meaning, relevant, and applicable to a situation you happen to find yourself in? THAT is the living word of God. It is by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God that this book was written by 40 different authors over 1500 years of time, yet without error or contradiction. All pointing to the one true God who created the world, loves the world, and wants to have us with Him for all eternity. And to that end, He gave us His word, and His word will never fall, it stands forever! Peter quotes from the prophet Isaiah, who penned these words 712 years before Christ was born, "All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord stands forever."
Our lives are but a fleeting moment in time. Like blades of grass we sprout up, get a little peek at the world, blossom perhaps like a flower for just a little, and then we wither up and we’re gone. Our existence on this earth is short, limited, and finite. Yet there is more to this life. More than we see around us amongst the other blades of grass. We each play a little part in making a beautiful lawn and garden in God’s eyes. We all have different roles, we are not all the same…thank goodness! Some people will stand out and bloom like great flowers while others may be content as a simple part of the lawn, but in the end, we all dry up and wither away. Life, folks, is terminal, this life anyway. The life to come afterward, that is eternal. What we do with the time we have here, that is up to us. How we choose to spend eternity is also up to us. We have to make a choice, to believe God’s truth, accept His love, and know His Word, or we can choose to ignore Him, call Him a liar, even hate Him, and never open up a Bible and get to know who He is…the question is, what is your choice. I’ll tell you this, better is one day in His presence, than a thousand anywhere else. Where do you want to be?
