A Recipe For The New Year - [1 Peter 2:1-3]

How many people have a New Year's resolution? Good, because you'll never keep it anyway. How about a

New Year's commendation, looking backwards? Just for a minute this morning, I want to commend you as a congregation for loving the

Word of God. Hebrews chapter 13 says, You give your pastors joy, and you're not to give them grief, as you obey them.

We don't want you to obey us, we want you to obey the Lord. And for you to desire the Word like you have the last year, it is a treat to preach from this pulpit every week with people who long for the

Word of God. I want to commend you for that. Not everybody wants the Bible. And I would not know what to do if I was a pastor, preaching to people who wanted everything, felt needs, all warm and fuzzy, something relevant every week, somehow that the

Bible's not relevant. I wouldn't know what to do. I'd probably be fired, is what

I would be, because I don't know what else to give you. In 1928, Harry Emerson Fosdick, in the theological journal

Harper's Magazine, said this in response to what's wrong with preaching today.

Many preachers, Fosdick said, indulge habitually in what they call expository sermons.

They take a passage from Scripture and proceeding on the assumption that the people attending church that morning are deeply concerned about what the passage means, they spend their half hour or more on historical exposition of the verse or chapter, ending with some appended practical application to the auditors.

Could any procedure be more surely predestined to dullness and futility?

Fosdick said, who seriously supposes that, as a matter of fact, one in a hundred of the congregation cares to start with what

Moses, Isaiah, Paul, or John meant in those special verses, or came to church deeply concerned about it?

Nobody else who talks to the public so assumes that the vital interests of the people are located in the meaning of words spoken 2 ,000 years ago.

I have the privilege this morning of preaching to the troglodyte Bible church.

You are cave dwellers. You come from a different society. You actually want the Bible, and you know that it is not just inerrant without error.

You know that it is authoritative. God declares His word in it. You know it's sufficient for everything pertaining to life and godliness.

You know that it's clear it could be understood, and that you know it's relevant. And I'm so thankful and wanted to say on behalf of the elder board this morning that you give us joy because you desire the word of God and you want to live a holy life.

With that said, how do you encourage a congregation to keep doing that? If you'll turn your Bibles to 1 Peter 2, the best thing

I could do this morning as we go into the new year is to encourage you to keep doing what you have been doing.

Certainly there's room for improvement. Paul even writes to the great church at Thessalonica and says, You're doing well, but I'd like you to what?

Excel still more. Some of you have a long way to go to increase your appetite for the word of God.

Some of you are doing just well and excellently, and you just need to keep it up. So the thing I thought this morning that we would do is we would go to the

Bible and remind ourselves again the primacy of the word and how you grow through the word of God.

We'll finish Matthew when I get back next Saturday. I'll leave to India for a week, be gone for the next two weeks, and then we'll be back in the book of Matthew right after that.

So this morning we'll look at 1 Peter 2, verses 1 through 3, and I want to this morning give you kind of the diet of what you need to indulge in this year so that you can continue to grow, to say no to sin, to say yes to Christ and His righteousness, and that you would just keep doing what you've been doing as a church, and that is wanting the word of God.

1 Peter 2, verses 1 to 3 says, Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the

Lord. Bow with me, please, as we pray. Father, thank you this morning that you are a

God who is concerned about your people. Thank you that you have given us your word, and more than that, you've given us your spirit to illuminate our minds that we might rightly understand it.

Father, I pray that you'd protect me this morning from saying things that aren't true. I pray that you would have your spirit take the word and make it run into the hearts of the people.

Lord, we want to say no to sin and we want to say yes to obedience, and we would acknowledge this morning that apart from the grace that stems from Christ Jesus, we can't do it on our own.

We would ask this morning that you would cleanse us from our sins. We all come to the word not spotless, not clean, and yet,

Lord, we know that you're forgiving and that when we come to you and confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us.

So forgive us as we come to the word. Help us to be good stewards with our time, with the word in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, we can't just jump into the book of 1 Peter and then go to chapter 2 without understanding the background a little bit.

Peter was written to a church in 64, 65, 66 AD, and it was a church that was being persecuted.

Nero was in charge, and Christians were being burnt at the stake. They were being killed. They were running and fleeing, and they were being tracked down like animals sometimes.

And Peter was writing this book to encourage suffering Christians to submit to the mercies of God in their trials and follow the example of Christ Jesus.

After all, he was a good example of the suffering servant. And basically what

Peter's wanting is Peter's wanting his readers, and Peter would want this from you as well, to live a life that would reflect who you are in Christ.

We've seen it even in the last two months, haven't we? Someone says they're a Christian, and maybe they are. They have a horrible moral failure.

They sin in public, and what does all the news media do? They take that person, that celebrity, that large pastor, and they parade that pastor in front of everyone saying,

See? Here's what Christians are like. Here's what Christians do. You talk a big game, but you don't live like the

Savior. And what Peter's going to do is he's writing, and he's saying, I would like you to live a life that is so holy that if somebody grabs your life and puts it across the media, they would all be silenced because your life would be holy.

They couldn't say anything bad because God had so worked in your life. Now, chapter one is very interesting.

He starts telling these suffering Christians things they need to know. And if it was me, someone suffers,

I would never start off the book like Peter does. I would say God's in control, even as I prayed this morning for Sam.

But what Peter does is the first thing he does is he says, Christians, you are chosen of God.

You're elect. If you're a Christian, God has chosen you, and he's put his love on you.

And he explains this in chapter one, verse one. You see at the end, who are chosen.

And then he goes into this burst of praise in verse three. Blessed be the

God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And he just goes on verse after verse saying, God is to be praised. He's to be extolled.

We know you're suffering. We know life is hard, but God still can be praised. Almost Job -like, though he slay me, yet what?

Will I trust in him? No matter what God does, I will extol his praises. And then in verse 13, you see the therefore.

This is the way the Bible's always set up. Here's who God is, and it demands a reaction. There's no way you can be in the presence of God or understand what he's done for you without saying,

I'm going to do something. It's kind of like you meet the holy God, and all of a sudden it's like kind of tepid, lukewarm.

You meet God, and all of a sudden, Isaiah is on his face. Jesus is in the boat, and Peter goes on his face.

There is a response. And here the response to what God has done for us makes us want to live a holy life.

And that's what happens in the verse 13 and following. There's a therefore, and he kind of gives four reasons.

This isn't the outline yet. We're just getting there. As one man said, we're going to go downtown. 1

Peter 2, 1 -3 is downtown. But right now, I'm just out in the suburbs. We're going to start working our way downtown.

We're getting there. And he's saying because of who God is, it should make us change.

And first he says in verses 13 -16, Since God who is holy begot us, we should be holy too.

If we're children of God, and God is so holy, we too should be holy. And you can see it right there in verse 15 of 1

Peter 1. But be like the Holy One who called you. Be holy yourselves, also in all your behavior, because it is written,

You shall be holy, for I am holy. Then he moves down to verses 17 -21, and he says,

There's another reason we should do something. God is our judge, and He has so redeemed us, that we should respond with fear, with this reverential awe and fear.

And even when we pray, if you look at verse 17, Even if you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth.

He's not just Father, but He's judge, and that should make us live holy lives as well. Then he says something really neat in verses 22 -25.

He basically says, You've got the word of God that has made you His children.

Verse 22, Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.

And if you're a child of God, and your neighbor's a child of God, then those two children who have the same father should love one another.

God does something, and He wants us to respond. And then he says, Fourthly, when we come to our passage in chapter 2, verses 1 -3,

He is going to remind those people who are reading the passage, and I will remind you now, that you must long for the word.

You should be Bible zealots. And it comes right from verse 2.

Out of all the verses in 1 Peter 2, 1 -10, there's one command. There's one imperative.

This is the banner. This is everything. No other commands in the first ten verses of the second chapter.

This is it. Long for the word. Crave it. Desire it. Go after it.

Have a hankering for it. What other synonyms could you use? Be tenacious about it. Be pit bull -like.

Be lockjaw -like. This is the one imperative, and it means to crave.

It's an intense word in the original. It means to long for. To yearn for. To hunger for.

You can't get enough of it. And as your stomach, and my stomach is doing it right now, it is grinding away, gurgling a little bit.

I'm hungry. I want to eat. I'm looking forward to that long -winded pastor being done so I can go home and feed my stomach.

And it's almost like get those gastric juices desiring the word at full level.

You want to just go after the word of God. To long for something. And the word has got a, it has a nuance to say to yourself,

I need it. I know it's good for me, and I need to long for the word of God. David Livingston, you know, was a missionary in Africa, and he started his trek across Africa.

He had 73 books in all kinds of bags, and the porters were taking the bags, and they weighed 180 pounds.

So he's got all his equipment and all his books, and the longer that they would go into the heart of Africa, the more often he'd have to stop and throw books away.

After 300 miles, he had to dump a bunch of books, and more books, and more books, and more books, until they got so far into the heart of Africa, David Livingston had one book left.

The one -minute Bible. No, he didn't have that. He had the Bible with him. That's all he had. He knew what it was like to desire the word of God.

Nothing else will do. And I like it because the text uses, if you see it in your own

Bibles there, the pure milk of the word. In chapter 123, the word was called seed, and here it's called milk.

And if you're a Jew and you start thinking about milk, what comes into your mind? It's a land flowing with what?

And honey. Milk and honey, the abundance of God. Next to bread, it was the staple. It was something good.

If you had a visitor come in Genesis chapter 18, where God came to visit and two angels,

Abraham got a special thing of milk there. Oh, it was good. It symbolized abundance and blessing.

It was just a real basic staple. And the kind of Bible that you're to desire is not a watered down, mixed somehow.

It is pure. It's unadulterated. The kind of word that says in Proverbs 30 that it is tested.

The kind of word that convicts. Hebrews 4 .12, it's living and active. The kind of word that's the offensive weapon we have as a

Christian in Ephesians, the sword of the spirit. But sadly, too many people in other churches, and again,

I'm commending you this morning. This is not some chiding or scolding. I'm commending you and saying you did a great job.

Now let's move forward. So many people want anything less than the Bible. Big, huge churches dilute sermons about sin, dilute sermons about the word.

I read of a woman who had a 200 -pound tumor removed in Chicago. She was 40 years old.

She received blood transfusions amounting to six times her body's blood volume during the 18 -hour procedure.

The tumor was first discovered in the spring when she was undergoing radiation therapy for another cancerous tumor.

She weighed 310 pounds before the surgery. Afterwards, she was down to 120 pounds.

And too often, that's a great picture of a church, bloated, stuffing their mouths full of all kinds of sugar and fluff, but not healthy at all.

By the way, I'm not really a gimmicky guy, but if we could get about 5 ,000 little bottles of fluff, you know, the little marshmallow spread from the

Fluff Corporation, I'd like to put a little slogan on there. It says, when you're tired of fluff, come to Bethlehem Bible Church for meat.

We could just hand that out. It would take me one week of preaching a fluffy sermon before you came up to me and said,

Pastor, what was that all about? We want to have the meat, because, you know, if you have a trial that's this kind of trial, how do you approach that when you have no theological basis of who you are in Christ, what

God has done, who He is, how He's chosen you, how sovereign He is? You approach the problems through small theology and you wither.

The flip side is true as well. And by the way, Peter's not saying, you drink a lot of milk, never go for meat.

He's not talking about something bad. He's just saying the Word of God helps people grow, mature ones and immature ones.

And if you'll flip over to Colossians chapter 2 with me, just for a moment, I want to show you a few things that Satan uses as a substitute.

These are kind of fake foods. These are just kind of dietary fiber that won't give you any growth that people latch on to too often.

And four traps, kind of fake things that Christians go for when they no longer desire the

Word of God. And you might ask yourself, you say, well, I do desire the Word of God, I think. All right, well, here are a quick four tests before we get back into the passage to see if you really love the

Word more than other things. Because there is competition for the Word. Satan is using all kinds of things trying to get you to go after everything else besides the

Word. And here's four quick ones in the book of Colossians that talks about the superiority of Christ and all its competition.

The first one is man's wisdom. Do you see it in Colossians 2, verse 8? These aren't pure.

These aren't milk. These aren't spiritual, to use Peter's terms. The first one is man's wisdom.

I could say psychology, philosophy. See to it, Paul writes, that no one takes you captive, that no one robs you and cheats you through philosophy and empty deception.

According to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

This love of wisdom, this kind of ology fetish, is contrary to the

Word of God. And we know that because Colossians 2, verse 9 says,

For in Him, Christ, all the fullness of deity, dwells in bodily form. You can't go for all the ologies.

Last decade, it was all the psychology. But Jesus is all we need. You want to grow in Christlikeness?

Then you will not study this year Freud, Adler, Skinner, Maslow, etc. Looking on the inside never works.

There's something else that gets us off base. Do you see it in verses 16 and 17? It's legalism, somehow getting

God to like us more if we do the right things. Therefore, Colossians 2, verse 16,

Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a

Sabbath day. These things which are merely shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

I'm going to go to India next Saturday and I'll be gone for eight days. And when I return, I can't wait to see Kim and the kids.

And it just is a great homecoming. It's good to go out of town and see another part of the world.

Yes, that's good. But it's great to come home. And I like it that it's just the big Ebendroth mash.

It's almost like the big Ebendroth mosh pit, just all smashing in, just kissing and hugging.

Just hugging and so glad to see each other. How would I feel if all of a sudden the kids run up to me at Logan and instead of kissing me and cuddling me, they all just get down on the ground and begin trying to hug my shadow.

Oh, Dad! And kissing my shadow on the ground. All the law and all the

Sabbaths and all the food laws, they were a shadow pointing to Christ and now we have Christ. Why go backwards to the shadows?

We eat what we drink. It is way easier in people's minds to say, you know what?

God will like me more if I just eat the right kinds of food this week. It's hard to be holy, isn't it?

To say no to yourself and say yes to Christ. To say no to your passions and desires and yes to self -sacrificial service of others.

It's way easier if you just say, I only eat the right foods. Colossians is saying, don't let anybody act as some kind of umpire to you to tell you what's right or wrong when you are standing in Christ.

He's complete. He's the one who's done it all. There's another food substitute found in verses 18 and 19.

It's competition for the Word. And this is mysticism. Verse 18 and 19,

Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self -abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.

Probably what's going on here is the word humility and angels is kind of linked together and people are very mystical.

God talks to them on a regular basis outside His Word and they say, you know what, but we are so humble we don't even worship

God. We worship angels only. That's how humble we are. And whether it's that or anything else, whole charismatic experiences where the

Word is decreased so experience is exalted, we never want to do that. That's what pagans do.

And then lastly, do you see in verses 20 through 23 the final substitute that can get us off track?

If we eat too much of this we might be full and not want the Word. My father would always say to me,

I'd come in from running around 12 or 13 years old and I'd go straight to the thing of milk.

Those days the people still delivered milk to the front door. We'd get this milk from Goodrich Dairy and it was so cold and it was so good.

It was in those glass bottles. Do you know what I'm talking about? And I could drink a whole half gallon just sitting there.

I was so thirsty and my father would always say to me, Mike, what?

Don't drink your supper. That's right. Luke got that right because I think I say that to you, don't I? Don't drink your supper.

There's all this other competing stuff and mysticism and visions and rules and man -made things and if you eat all that there's going to be no desire for the

Word. And the last one is asceticism a bunch of do -nots. I hate it that people think

Christianity is a bunch of don'ts. You can't. Verses 20 -23

If you've died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world why, as if you were living in the world do you submit yourself to decrees such as don't handle, do not taste, do not touch all which refer to things destined to perish with using.

And if you look down in verse 23 but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

It makes you think you're doing good before God but you can't eat a certain kind of food or say no to alcohol or tobacco or to whatever you want to use.

I'm not saying alcohol and tobacco are intrinsically good or bad but they're not intrinsically good either or the other way around.

He's just saying when it comes to Christ you are in Christ because of the finished work of His Son confirmed by the resurrection and what you eat or drink doesn't make any difference.

My children, if Gracie says you know what, I'm going to eat 50 Twinkies I don't say well you know what you're no longer my kid because you ate the 50

Twinkies. Boy, that's...

Let's just put a period there in a paragraph. We don't want to go farther than that. There's no resistance for the legalist when it comes to sin because it's not a real relationship with the

Lord. Let's go back to 1 Peter. I just wanted to show you that there's competition and if you fill yourself up on all kinds of other things you're not going to hunger and long and crave for the

Word like you should. Like you have been in the last year. The last nine years that I've been here you have craved for the

Word of God and it shows by your maturation. Some of you now have ministries where you can disciple others duplicate yourself in the life of others as God gives you the increase.

And back here in 1 Peter 2 I'd like as our outline this morning to show you four helpers so that you can long for the

Word. So if you say, you know what, I struggle with the Bible and I don't study it like I should. Let me give you four ways to help you this year approach the

Word that you might honor the Lord. These are things that stimulate eating the

Word of God. And I'm going to use... I don't do this often but I'll do it this morning. The acronym is going to be LONG L -O -N -G because you're to long for the

Word. So the first one is going to start with L -O -N -G etc. The LONG acronym. Four helpers to long for the

Word. Helper number one. Lay aside sin before approaching God's Word.

This is preliminary. You should lay aside sin before you come to the Word. That will help your appetite.

Let's see it from the text. Chapter 2 verse 1. It says, Therefore putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander then we get to verse 2 where we long for the

Word. Before we come to the Word, in essence, we're to just have a time with the Lord and say, you know what,

I'm tired of the sin I'm committing. I repent. And God, I'm even going to take a quick time now to confess my sins before I approach the

Word. That's all he's saying. The Swedish proverb. I'm one quarter Swedish by the way.

The Swedish proverb is, Sin will keep you from this book and this book will keep you from sin.

When you're in sin, you don't really want to read the book because you know the book is going to put a spotlight on your sin.

So if you confess your sin, there's no more spotlight to be directed your way and you can easily approach the Word.

And when you know you don't want to read the Bible the most is when you need it the most. Yes? That's right.

Thank you. And do you notice the terminology here?

I just love the Bible terminology. Putting aside. Lay it aside.

It means strip off the garments. I went for a walk one day and I looked down and I had about five ticks on my leg.

My pant leg. I hate ticks. I don't know about you. Next to leeches, I just can't stand them. How fast did

I want to get those things off? I mean, can you imagine? You're walking through the woods and your whole jacket's full of poison ivy and you get home and you're like,

I'll sit on the couch for a while and I'll take it off a little bit later. This is quickly. This is stripping them down.

This is get them off as fast as you can. Same language in Acts 7. They began stoning

Stephen and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named

Saul. Get rid of the sin quickly. Entirely. And if you look at the text, all malice, all guile, all slander.

These comprehensive terms. Paul talks like this too. Romans 13.

Let us lay aside the deeds of darkness. Colossians 3. Put them all aside, anger, wrath, and malice.

Ephesians chapter 4. Lay aside the old self. And so he is saying basically when you come to the word, have a short time of confession and prayer and repentance before you open up the word and you'll get more out of it.

You'll want to read more of it. Some scholars think that the early Christian baptism, you would have immersion.

But one thing they would do differently than we do today and you can praise God for it once you find out what it is. They would be completely naked when they were baptized.

They would come up and they'd be completely naked, baptized underwater and out. And so almost maybe with some baptismal overtones, when you are going to get baptized and you strip off all your clothes to then show you're dead with Christ and risen in newness of life with Him, get rid of all this sin before you come to the word.

Are you glad it's 2006? Amen. It's abandonment.

It's a turning away from this kind of horrible sin. And He shows five of them.

There could be 5 ,000 but He just gives five and He doesn't give the very obvious ones.

Adultery, paganism, idolatry. He gives the ones that are very subtle that can creep into Christian fellowship that even a person like you could commit.

The first one is all malice. It is hard to come read the Bible when you have a deep -seated hatred for someone.

How can you do that? When you study this word and this word talks about God loving His enemies and you have this harboring, deep -seated hatred towards your boss who got you, your friend, your ex -wife and you just can't hardly get over it.

Matthew Henry said, Malice is anger resting in the bosom of fools.

So you come to the Word and you say, Lord, I do hate that person. I know it's not right. God, forgive me.

Cleanse me. Wash me. Read Psalm 51 and then you just enjoy the Word. He says,

Get rid of the second thing too. All deceit. All dishonesty. The word means to catch with bait.

You're trying to manipulate other people so you get something out of it. He said, Just get rid of all that. Impure motives.

Be more like Christ. Peter had a lot to say about Jesus. 1 Peter 2 .22 No deceit was found in Christ's mouth.

1 Peter 3 .10 It says, Let him who means to love life and see days, good days, refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

He says, Also when you come to the Word of God, if you really want to have an appetite, get rid of this thing.

Hypocrisy. Acting one way and being another. Some kind of pretentious piety in front of everyone else.

Different at home and school and church. I like what the country preacher said. I've quoted it often here.

Regarding hypocrisy. Be what you are and not what you ain't. Because if you ain't what you are, then you are what you think you ain't.

Feigning to be one thing but not being that. Get rid of it. The next one is, it's even a gross sounding word.

The English word is envy but the Greek word is phanathanus. It just sounds just,

I don't want that. It's like something that, I don't want to get that in India or something. It just would be bad.

I took, by the way, my first anti -malaria pill yesterday and it said, could cause dizziness or depression.

So if I begin to sway back and forth and begin to cry up here, it's only the mefloquine.

Jealous, envy, somebody else that you know has something really good to happen to them and you're mad about it.

How could God bless them? I study more, I read more, I serve more. How could God do that for them?

Instead of saying, God is so generous, God is so good, I rejoice when they have something good happen to them.

That's wonderful. Proverbs says about envy, a tranquil heart is life to the body but passion or envy is rottenness to the bones.

How can we come to the Word of God and really get what we should out of it when we're bugged that God's blessing other people?

And then lastly, here's a big one we all can learn from. Something to get rid of before we approach the

Word of God and that's slander. And another one of those onomatopoetic words, katalelios, kata, kata is down, you speak down about someone.

And this is the last kind of spider web of sins that he says just to get rid of. Get rid of slander.

Psalm 64 talks about slander their tongues are like arrows shot out.

I read this week for the first time, Valentinian the emperor said that if you are openly convicted of slander you will be executed for it.

Pope Gregory decreed that a person should be excommunicated and have no communion for committing slander.

Not just committing slander but how about receiving slander? I like Augustine, he couldn't take it if people came to his dinner table.

So he wrote these two verses on the table. Have you ever been to the macaroni grill? Some of these other Italian kind of restaurants and they come and they write the specials on your tablecloth, paper tablecloth.

I go to the fancy restaurants and they're writing the specials of the day. My name is Nicky, they know how to write backwards and everything on there.

Well, here's what Augustine wrote on his table. Whoever loves another's name to blast, this table's not for him, so let him fast.

And if we have these things in our heart, we will think we're fasting from the Word because we won't have the appetite for God's Word.

So God says, just get rid of it all. The first way to help your longing for the

Word is to lay aside sin before approaching. Secondly, the second helper, be overzealous, that's the

O, overzealous when it comes to intaking God's Word. It's the second how. Lay aside is the negative, now here comes the positive.

Be overzealous when it comes to intaking God's Word. You see it in verse 2.

How do you preach? How do you get the outline? It's just in the text. 1 Peter 2 .2 Like newborn babes.

That tells us the manner, that tells us how. And again, he's not saying because you're new

Christians, he's saying like new Christians. The Greek word is very clear. Like a newborn baby.

How do babies act? We have four children, I've loved to hold those kids, and sometimes mommy's gone, or I'm too lazy to get up and get a bottle, or they don't want formula, and so I have had my try, and my experience of trying to pacify a kid when they're hungry.

First, you know, burp them, make sure there's no gas. Secondly, change their diaper, everything's fine.

Play with them a little bit, get a toy, you know, a little goo. Sometimes I like to just do this kind of motion like this, just enough so they think they're falling, so they're more concerned about, you know, falling.

Gently, sing, rock.

If I get desperate, in goes the pinky. You ever done that?

For about 15 seconds, they're styling. You think, oh great, then no milk comes out of the pinky.

Babies will not settle for anything else. I've tried it.

Doesn't work. No substitutes.

They're marked by tenacity, single -mindedness, narrow focus, they are resolute, they are rabid, they are enthusiastic, they are wild, and they don't care what happens.

Matter of fact, if babies don't desire it, what's going on? Something's wrong with the baby. You should take the baby in.

I used to love Maddie especially. Maddie would have the bottle. Somehow I'd pick up the bottle and get ready to put it in her mouth, but she'd take her hands and just kind of grab her hands and just try to yank that thing into her mouth, and the nipple would push down and spray baby formula all over her face.

But once that thing got in her mouth, she didn't care at all. She was baptized with Ensure, whatever we didn't use

Ensure, whatever it was. What is that stuff? Infamil, that's right. We just use goat milk at our house.

That's all we use. But she didn't care. As a little baby, and it's not, you know, morning devotions and that's it.

How many times does a baby long for that word? That's why

I love the Psalms. Psalm 119, The law of thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.

Better than all that. Psalm 119, 103, How sweet are thy words to my taste.

By the way, I often, when I struggle reading the

Word, I often go to Psalm 119 and just read it again and it reminds me of how delightful God's Word is.

And why don't we just go there right now and let me just give you a little jet tour of how many great things there are in Psalm 119.

That spur you on, that gets you going with your taste buds to just love to study the

Word. If you have a hard time with sin, I'd suggest reading Psalm 51 before you open your Bibles.

And then you could read Psalm 119. It is so good. And as newborn babies delight just in milk, here you'll see the delight happens to be in the

Word of God. And as Pastor Dave always says, let a child on their own and they'll just put anything in their mouth.

They don't know what's good for them. They'll put super balls in, marbles, dog food, hubcaps.

I mean, they will put anything in their mouth that they can get in there. They don't know. And the focus of the

Word is there's one thing that's healthy and it's the Word of God. And Psalm 119 so excellently shows that.

Psalm 119, verse 16, I shall delight in thy statutes, I shall not forget thy

Word. Go to verse 24 of Psalm 119. Thy testimonies also are my what?

Delight. They are my counselors. Psalm 119, verse 35,

I'm just showing you the word delight that's common here. Make me walk in the path of thy commandments, verse 35, for I delight in them.

Do you see it in verse 47? And I shall delight in thy commandments, which I love.

There it is again in verse 92. If thy law had not been my delight, then

I would have perished in my afflictions. Verse 111, a derivative of the word delight,

I have inherited thy testimonies forever, for they are the joy of my heart.

And lastly, Psalm 119, verse 174, I long for thy salvation,

O Lord, and thy law is my delight. Friends, is that how you approach the

Word? Is that what you think? The Word is good for you, so you approach it that way? I think as a congregation, the answer is yes.

And I commend you for that. Well, I have two more to go, and I think we're going to try.

Number three, the third helper. So far we've seen that we're to long for the Word. How? Lay aside sin before we approach the

Word. Two, be overzealous like a baby when it comes to taking it in. And number three, the third helper, remember that nourishment only comes from the

Scriptures. That is to say that you can only grow in Christlikeness through the Word.

That's how you grow. That is the ordained way. God wants you to be like Christ, and He has ordained that the

Spirit use the Word in a local church context for you to grow. That's it. That's the way God designed it.

And in my notes I wrote, accept it or try to change. No, you can't change it. You see it? It's right there in verse 2, that by it and only it, you may grow in respect to salvation.

He's not saying that you might grow so you can be more pleasing to God, ultimate salvation, glorification.

He's not saying so that you can be right in God's eyes. He's saying as a sanctifying process, growing like Christ, it's the only way you can go about it is the

Word. That's why I'm sure Peter never forgot when Jesus let him say He loved him three times and then

Jesus responds to Peter with what? Feed my sheep.

I read an article this week. It said breastfeeding for kids makes them smarter and slimmer.

I have no idea. It goes on to say fatty acids, DHA, AA, etc., etc.,

increase your child's IQ by an average of 3 .2 points, etc., etc. I have no idea if that's true.

But I do know this. If you, the one shaking your head no, you weren't breastfed.

I have no idea if it's true or not. But I do know that if you want to grow in Christ and you cut corners and say, but I don't need the

Word to do it, I just need to be zapped, I need to be slain in the Spirit, I need to have this, I need to have that, and I'll get my room cleaned by osmosis, it isn't going to happen.

You look around you and you see people who are growing, both men and women, and there's one common factor.

And what's that factor? God has given them an insatiable thirst for the Word and they read the

Word and try, by the grace of God, to live it out. The people who grow, they grow in knowledge of the grace of God through the

Word. That's just the way it is. That's why

Philippians 2 says it's called the Word of Life. And if you want to grow, as a congregation, if you want to continue to grow, then it's the

Book. And fourthly and lastly, the fourth helper is the goodness of God at salvation should spur you on to study

Him more. The goodness, that's the G, of God at salvation should spur you on to study more.

That is to say, remembering how great you felt when you first knew you were right with God. Helper one, lay aside sin.

Helper two, be overzealous. Helper three, remember that nourishment, that's the N, nourishment only comes from the

Scriptures. And number four, the goodness of God at salvation should spur you on to study more. It's right there in the text, verse 3.

Observe it. If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. The argument there is not, you know, maybe you haven't, maybe you haven't, if.

He's using this kind of speech to say, you have tasted it. Remember when you tasted the Word the first time, and God cleansed you and made you whole, and you knew that you were

God's child? How good God was to you, gracious and merciful, and you experienced firsthand the salvation of God.

He says, hearken back to that. If you hearken back to that, you'll remember something, that God saved you through the

Word. He saved you through the preached Word. And if the preached Word gave you salvation, and gave you so much joy, shouldn't it do the same thing now?

That's his idea. If you have tasted. He's not talking about sipping something, having just a little bit.

He's saying, you perceive something by your experience, or by your mouth, and you chewed on it, and you realized it was good.

It was great. When I first got saved, I couldn't believe how my mind was working.

I mean, I could believe it. I just kept thinking about all the stupid things I did before I was saved, yet God kept me alive.

And I'm not talking about skydiving, and whitewater rafting, and scuba diving. I'm talking about things like getting in my car and driving around.

That God would preserve me. How he takes the elect who aren't saved yet, and he preserves, and keeps, and guides.

And I just kept thinking, the whole time, I could be going straight to hell. I mean, when Saddam Hussein was hung the other night, one report says he told them to go to hell.

Another report said that he talked about there's only one God and one prophet. And I prayed for his salvation before he was hung, and I don't know what happened, but if he believed in Muhammad on his deathbed, he will not be waking up and seeing the glory of God and his kindness.

But just think, one day you're going to be hung, and he's going straight to hell. I thought, boy, that's what

I deserve. That's what I deserved. For 29 years, blasphemy in the name of God, and it was sophisticated blasphemy.

I had a suit and tie on, and I'd go to Christmas and Easter and stuff, and say, I believe in Jesus and everything else.

But with my life, it never reflected the goodness, and praise, and admiration, and thanksgiving to God for his salvation.

It didn't include any of that, and that should have been me. It could have been me. It would have been me, except for what?

The grace of God. As God used servants to preach the Word to me, and God gave me the response,

I believed, and I said, God, your Word is so good. That's why, you know what, I never go around trying to tell unbelievers, this

Bible's true. Because I don't think they're going to believe it's true, even if I can convince them. Read the book on inerrancy.

Read the book on bibliology. Read Geisler. Read Nix. Read all these guys. Beloved, if you get saved through the preaching of the

Word that you used to think was stupid, and God saves you, you will no longer say, I can't stand this. You will kiss this book.

When the kids were really little, I would say, you already think

I'm crazy, so I can't make you think any of them. It's Him. And when you first got saved, and you tasted how good the

Lord is, why would you not guzzle now the goodness of God down in His Word? And you've done that as a congregation.

I see people, men and women and children, growing in the grace and knowledge, and I'm pointing back to say, it was a good year.

Way to go. Way to grow. And you've got to continue. We can't just sit back and say, well, we've learned all this now.

We've got the Bible Institute, James White's coming, Dr. Aiken's been here, and everything's fine, all that good. Now we can take care of everything we need, and we need to focus on political things.

Got to focus on the next governor, the next president. I read to you Psalm 2 today for a reason.

Because only one vote counts. God's vote. And He will give us the president either we deserve, or He will be merciful to us.

And it doesn't matter either way, because Peter's writing to Christians, who in between Bible readings, are having themselves tied by the hands and the legs, stuffed into the innards of an animal, and then thrown to other animals to devour them whole.

You say, well, I just don't have time. Well, people make time for things they love, don't they?

You make time. And if you want to grow, you're having troubles and trials, then why don't you grab somebody else here at the church, who you see their life is not perfect, but a good example of somebody who is rabid about intaking the

Word of God. And just say, how do you study? Would you hold me accountable? Could we get together? Peter uses

Psalm 38 here about tasting. Psalm 34 .8, rather. Oh, taste and see that the

Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. I think the

Lord is going to use this church for all kinds of things. Maybe I won't see it in my lifetime. Maybe I will. Maybe our whole church is just to prepare our young kids for faithful ministry.

But I think we're going to have pastors here, pastors' wives here, missionaries here, missionary wives here, teachers.

And it is going to be because the Word of God has so gripped you that you want to study it. And you would acknowledge that it's the grace of God that does that.

And you want to keep going? You want to keep longing for the Word? And we've seen four ways to do that today.

One, lay aside sin before approaching the Word. Two, like children, be overzealous. Three, remember that nourishment comes only through the

Word. That's the only way to grow. And four, remember or study the goodness of God at salvation, and you'll want to read the

Bible again. James Hamilton said there are two kinds of Bible readers.

And he was talking about those who skim and those that go deeply. And he used two insects for an illustration.

I think it's apropos for closing. James said, One is remarkable for its imposing plumage, which shows its sunbeams like the dust of gems.

As you watch its jaunty gyrations over the fields and its minuet dance from flower to flower, you cannot help admiring its graceful activity, for it is plainly getting over a great deal of ground.

But in the same field there's another worker whose brown vest and business -like, straightforward flight may not have arrested your eye.

His fluttering neighbor darts down here and there, sips elegantly wherever he can find a drop of ready nectar, but this dingy plotter makes a point of alighting everywhere, and wherever he alights, he either finds honey or he makes it.

If the flower cup be deep, he goes down to the bottom. If its dragon mouth be shut, he thrusts its lips asunder.

And if the necular be peculiar, he explores all about it till he discovers it.

His rival of the painted velvet wing has no patience for dull and long -winded details.

The one died last October. The other is warm in his hive amidst the fragrant stores he has gathered.

And I think this church is full of bees and not butterflies. And may that be so next year.

Let's pray. Lord, all glory, praise, and honor goes to you who has given this church a solid foundation.

You have given the church and her leadership here firm belief in inerrancy, infallibility, authority, sufficiency, relevancy, the comprehensiveness of Scripture, its clarity.

And Lord, those are all gifts from you. Father, we pray for other churches that they would have such a gift from your hand.

And Lord, with that good gift, would you help us to be stewards? We would acknowledge all the growth and all the seminary students and their wives and all the new ministries.

All are from your good hand this year. We would ask that you would increase our desire for the Word and that we might not just be a group of people studying some old book because we want to know all the figures.

But Lord, may you show us your Son in the pages of Scripture for that is your intention. In Christ's name, amen.