FBC Morning Light – October 18, 2022

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. I hope your week got off to a good start yesterday and looking forward to what the Lord has in store for you today. I trust that the encouragement from his word will be a good start to your day.

We have the privilege at our church to have some very young children. I'm thinking of one in particular that is just a few weeks old. Mom and Dad brought the baby to church for the first time maybe three weeks ago.

The baby girl was all swaddled up in Mom's arms and had one of these things wrapped around her. It was just cuddly and all that, and nice and quiet, sound asleep. Same thing with a recent service. I noticed when I walked in and they were there.

Mom had the baby on her arm and she's just holding it. The baby is sound asleep and having a great old time. It was one of these chillier Sunday mornings, and I said, I know there's a lot of people in church today who are going to envy Josie, envy your baby, because she's so warm and cozy and comfortable and sleeping.

Hopefully a lot of people won't be doing that. About two-thirds of the way through the message, all of a sudden I hear this wail, this cry of the little infant. That happened the first time that they came to church as well.

The Hunger for the Word Like a Newborn Baby

About two-thirds of the way through the message, the baby woke up and started to let her mother know that she was hungry and she wanted to eat. Mom took the baby out and took care of her. What struck me about that is the parallel with what we read in the opening section of today's reading in chapter two of 1 Peter.

Peter writes in the first verse, he said, laying aside all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking. He says, put these things aside. He says, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious or the Lord is good.

That second verse, when Josie started crying out in the middle of the message of Sunday morning service, it reminded me of this verse. As newborn babes desire the milk of food for their nourishment, so we are to desire the pure milk of the word.

I wondered, in just a split second thing, right through the middle of a message, I wondered how many people in the congregation today have such a hunger and a longing for God's word as little Josie has for the nourishment of the milk that she is to receive.

How many have that kind of an attitude? I think we can apply that to any time we come to God's word, can't we? What is my attitude as I approach God's word? Do I have a hunger for the word, the pure, sincere milk of the word?

By the way, just by way of clarification, there are other places where, I think it's Paul talks about the milk of the word, or maybe the writer of Hebrews, you have need of strong meat, but all you can handle is the milk of the word.

In that context, it's not a very flattering thing, because he says it's like the only thing you can stand or handle are the basic elementary stuff of the Bible, and you need to be able to handle some of the meatier stuff.

The analogy is different here. Peter isn't saying that we need to desire the basic elementary stuff of the Bible and neglect the meat of the word. He's using the analogy, the picture of the longing that a baby has for food when they're hungry.

How do us know? Just like Josie let us know a couple weeks ago, she started crying out in the middle of the service. She was hungry, and she wanted to eat. That longing is unmistakable. Peter says this is the kind of longing that we should have for the word of God.

Verse 1 seems to indicate that there are some things that stand in the way of that longing, that end up distracting us and spoiling our appetite, if you will. What are those things? Things like malice, having malice in our heart toward other people, all deceit, all hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking, these kind of behavioral things that we have and attitudes that can sometimes have toward other people.

They end up getting in the way of us having a hunger for God's word. Think about that in your relationship to other people within the context of the church and beyond. Are there people in your local church that you have a malicious attitude toward them?

There's something between you. There's a wedge between you, and there's a conflict that has never been resolved. Maybe you have envy toward them in some way, some form, but you have a malicious attitude toward them.

You've spoken evil against them. Those kinds of things are the reasons why you really don't have a hunger for God's word as you ought to have. Neither on your own, so therefore you don't get into God's word, or even when you come to church, you're there, you're participating, you're attending, you're semi-listening to the message, but you don't really have a hunger for it.

You don't really long for it. Why? Because there's all this stuff going on inside that is keeping you from a healthy hunger. It's spoiling your appetite. I think Peter's exhorting us to make sure there's nothing in our hearts and our lives that's spoiling our appetite for God's word.

We need to develop this kind of hunger and a longing for it that he speaks of here. I hope that encourages us to think about our hunger for the word, and to question and wonder, is there something spoiling my appetite?

Our Father and our God speak to us through this passage today, because we need your word. We need the nourishment that your word can provide. I pray that you would work in our hearts that we would remove all those distractions, all those things that would spoil our appetite, and give us a sincere, earnest desire for the word, we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. All right, have a good rest of your Tuesday. May the Lord bless you in it.