Listening & Growing in Gods Word

Alright, so we are going to look at verses starting in chapter 2. We are going to go back a little bit to chapter 1 for context. The first three verses of chapter 2 are very interesting about God's word. I like to use Macaulay's outline. He has this whole section, the first ten verses in chapter 2, the purpose of salvation. He divides it into, the first three verses are God's Purpose to Believer's Growth.

We're going to talk about the Word of God and the Believer's Growth. Negatively, putting aside some things. And positively, longing. Longing for the pure milk of the Word. And then in the coming weeks, we're going to talk about God's Purpose to Believer's Sacrifice. I like to find a little bit better word than sacrifice. It can be a little confusing.

And then God's purpose in the following weeks, God's purpose of believers witness. So I'll be teaching next week and then Andrew follows me, I believe, according to schedule. So I need to tell Andrew how I'm going to divide up the next section because it's a big section. So I'll decide that this week.

Alright, so here's our verses. Would someone like to read these three verses? Do we have points? You do. You do. You get a roll of toilet paper. Therefore, putting aside all malice and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. If you had tasted the kindness of the Lord, Okay, so if you look through here, you know, the focus, you know, we're going to see verse two is kind of the centerpiece of what Peter has for us here. And it's this phrase, the pure milk of the word. So, and then there's kind of interesting grow in respect to salvation. We kind of need to kind of sort through that, make sure we understand that. And then it's really some neat parts here. Okay, so let's look at the first part.

Therefore, So I think J. Vernon McGee says always, what's a therefore therefore? So it's always, I find it challenging sometimes, but in this case, I looked at the previous three verses and they talked, we had a lot of discussion last week about the word of God, quite a bit. So I'm going to look back at several verses from last week. So therefore is so then, sometimes is used in continuing a narrative, I think in this case it is.

So what precedes it? If I go back to verse 23, we see some discussion we had last week about the Word of God. In verse 23 it says, For you have been born again, not as seed which is perishable, but imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God. So just kind of made a little bit of review here. Living is to live or to be alive. Enduring is to remain or abide forever.

In this case, it's Logos, as we pointed out last week. You look up in Vine, and I think we all use Vine, most of the teachers use Vine. He has two definitions of Logos, which we talked about last week a little bit. His first definition is the expression of thought.

So you could say this is God's word, it's an expression of his thought, it's in the mind of God, and that goes very well with the Old Testament, how God created things, God spoke things, and we're going to see about the spoken word of God too. And both words, rhema and logos, are used in these passages in chapter 1.

And the other case, which was pointed out last week, is where it's talking about the Living Word, or talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see that in the first verse or so of the Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. And then later on it explains in verse 14 that that's the Lord Jesus Christ. So I think in this context it looks like I would say I would go with the first definition. It's the expression of thought here.

And it's all connected with being born again, right? He was pointing out, Peter was pointing out that we're born again of an imperishable nature. It's not going to, it'll be forever. And it's through something that will not go away either. It's through the living and enduring Word of God. Okay, so then another part, the remaining part, 24 and 25 especially 25 picks up on the God's Word again and it kind of this whole theme about things that are temporary for all flesh is like grass and its glory is like the flower of the grass the grass withers the flower falls off but in contrast to that the Word of the Lord endures forever And this is the word which was preached to you, this enduring word. So two things kind of repeat a little bit. The word of the Lord endures forever.

The word that was preached to you. And this time, Paul uses rhema, which is the spoken word, which is spoken, that which is uttered. And we see that in a couple of places. So let's look at a couple of those. John 3.34. So this is the Rhema. So we are going to look at passages that talk about the spoken word of God. For he whom God has sent speaks the word of God, and he gives the Spirit without measure. Okay, that's Rhema in that case. And then how about Romans, and this is a really very familiar passage, one that I just love. You probably can quote it. Once you see what it is, you'll know it.

Romans 10.17.

So faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. So what struck me in kind of thinking back through what we talked about last week and then moving on to this week, he starts off with in the last three verses of the chapter One, about the Word of God, how it endures forever. And how it, you know, in the previous verse, it's what you believed. That's how you came to faith in the Lord Jesus. You believed this Word of God.

He talks about both Logos and also Rhema, both the thoughts of God and the spoken Word of God. So both those are involved. And now we're going to move into Chapter 2. He's going to talk about this Word, how that Word You're to grow by that word. So you came to faith by believing that word. Now you're going to grow, grow in your Christian life by the same word. So, any additional thoughts on these from last week? So, the word not meaning Christ. Could another word mean like the written word of God?

Or is that two... Well, you know, in actually both cases, if you look back at... Let me just go back here for a second. Logos is the expression of thought. And actually, we see logos, I mean, we see statements about, you know, the word of God, you know, written down, right? Obviously. So I think both of them, and then we saw here...

How much was written at the time, though? at what time? It was written. And that's a good point. At that time, it was the spoken word. They were passing it down by mouth. We have it. Sure, but they didn't have it. They had the Old Testament, I believe. They had the Old Testament. That's true. That's correct. That's true. And that also gives you the character. They knew the character of God because he was consistent, even in the Old Testament.

But in the New Testament, at this time, there wasn't anything written. All the epistles have been written by then, but the question is how widely distributed. Well, and we see them passed around. And Peter is part of that ministry, obviously. I assume his letter was passed around, too. And we know it's all in Asia, to all those different places in Asia.

So he talks about the Word of God being both spoken and written, it seems like. And I like the fact that God's Word originates with God, right? And it flows out from Him. And He empowered men to write it down. And He empowered men to speak it. So it goes forth according to His will. And then we're going to move here as we get into the next part here in just a bit. We're going to see how that word is intended to allow you to grow and to know him better, to come to know him better.

Roger? Sure. Just one thing in looking at this use of Logos and Raymond, in the context of the environment where people was writing, there was an incipient mysticism associated with the use of the locals, the word, in that it was spiritism, it was something ethereal, it was something that only a few people could know. I'm not saying that Peter was that but the word but here is a very strong university but and the emphasis he's giving to it is the eternality of the communication compared to the secret knowledge thing that was at the time it was incipient, it was beginning during Peter's ministry.

Yeah, that's good. And that certainly comes across. Both verse 25 and 23 talk about the eternality. And that's the whole flavor of these last three verses that he talks about. So it's a strong contrast, I think, to this mysticism. No, that's good. That's good.

So now, rather than jump in to how the Word of God is going to help you to grow, He's going to tell you to do something first. Or actually, better we're going to find, He's going to tell you to remember something. And this is where we all, well, the three teachers that are here today and Andrew as well, verb tense is pretty important here. And the verb tense of putting aside is pretty important.

Because you can take that, well, I better get out there and stamp out malice, deceit. How about envy? Boy, that's a toughie, right? So anyway, you'll see where I'm going here in a second. So the second part of the verse is putting aside all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Five things he talks about putting aside.

And putting aside here, anyway I like to pronounce it. You know what I do? I usually listen. We're fortunate to have the little computer voice, and it tells you how to pronounce it. I just not that. Anyway, it actually, because it's an aorist chance, and I chose to use past completed action for that, It's having put aside. And it's in the middle voice for your benefit.

So I think this is communicating the fact that the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, because of his trust and faith in Christ, he is now in Christ. Christ is his life. Christ doesn't have a problem with malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, right?

So it's having put aside. So the focus is, and I tried to write a little paragraph here, So since every believer has positionally put aside the following list of issues, Peter must be talking about the Christian's walk or condition, right? Positionally those are taken care of because we're in Christ, but conditionally we still can go back to those things, we can still Interact with those five things and so so I think it's important once again the verb tense is pretty critical to if you don't do that then you're going to get out there and say and many groups of Believers will do that. Why did I get out and stamp out those things rather than realizing that in Christ?

That's already been accomplished for you So malice so actually so here's a list so we're going to go through the list and Malice yeah that which refers to any kind of evil or wickedness So I thought it's you know it's always good when you see these lists of things that you know have a verse or two to kind of connect it so Could someone read Acts 8.22? Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours and pray. Pray the Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you.

Okay. Alright, so that's one usage. I think the more interesting usage is in James. James 1.21.

Therefore put away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness. and receive with meekness the agraphic word which is able to save your souls. So it seems like that what Pierre is pointing out here is that these five issues, these five sins are going to impede your growth because he goes to that first. He doesn't actually say that. He says put them aside. So by deduction you say if I want to put them aside Then, by putting them aside, I walk by faith.

It's the same process that we see over and over in Galatians. You walk in the Spirit and you will not do the desires of the flesh. So, the same picture is here. He doesn't want you to interact with these things so that your focus will be on God's Word. Maybe a good parallel here would be in Romans 6, They haven't left entirely the capability of being slanderous and envious, etc. Well, I like that.

You reckon yourself, I'm dead to malice. I remember our brother Hal would always, he would say, I'm dead to, in his mind, he would verbalize that when he taught. I'm dead to malice. I'm dead to deceit. I'm dead to hypocrisy. And we are. We're separate. And we are. And that's the whole point of the verb tense here. We are. So we need to act in accordance with who we are. And that's the message that we see over and over. In Peter and Paul, that's the way the Christian life is lived.

But it's not. I got to try harder. I know. It's to put it aside. It's reckoned. I like the word reckoned because that's who you are. So except who you are. Right. And because that's who you are, those things will fall away. Right. Because. That's not your character. Right.

If you think about things that keep showing up in the old nature, I mean, the more you concentrate on trying to change this, the more difficult the battle becomes. Only the Lord can really give you a rest about these things. And we know from just our interaction with life, basically, that we, if we, like you say, if we try to, well, I'm going to expect like envy, of all those five, envy is the one that sticks out to me because it's so easy to fall into envy. I mean, go ahead, Gail.

I like what somebody said here what I mean is that my relationship is different in regard to sin I'm dead to it but what that means is that I no longer have the same relationship to that as I have I'm now alive I have a relationship to God which I didn't have before and the idea of the relationship I think has helped me understand that Just articulate that in more detail, Romans 6.11. Likewise, reckon yourself also dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, Gail, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Consider it true. Right, put it down as true. Amen.

So all this list will be the same, but I felt that We need to go over the list just to make sure we see if there's, you know, so we'll go through the list of things that we, you know, we don't want to be a deceit involved with. I was thinking about fishing here. Deceit is great. Tricking the fish is great. But in personal relationships, cheating, deceiving and beguile are not at the top of the list. That's not where you want to be. I know, isn't that mean? I know, they eat them, right? Yes, I know. I love to fish. The more you can trick them, the better. Tricking fish is okay. Tricking your brother and sister is not. There's a difference between fishing and catching. I know. This is a rabbit. It kind of is. But go ahead. It's a lot. So going back to what you're talking about, you guys are way ahead of us. I mean, but I'm sure. Sure.

When when you talk about. I mean, the way I kind of think of it, and tell me this is right, I mean, you know, if I'm focusing on, you know, that I'm envious of somebody, for example, you know, but if I, considering that I'm dead to sin, and then I'm keeping my mind on the things above, then it's like, well, it doesn't, In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. You know, as I look at God's picture, I mean, maybe this is another way to think about it. It's like, well, you know, if my brother has more money than me or whatever, if I keep my eyes up here, it doesn't matter. Go ahead. Well, this is a good discussion. Go ahead. Keep going. But I think, you know, intellectually, that's not where the victory is. I mean we can intellectualize all we want and that doesn't really create the victory. The victory is by faith. I mean in other words I can't create that in you or in myself.

But the faith that we are who we are. I mean the more you intellectualize this I think the more you fail because you're thinking I can't think that way. But then it kind of ultimately multiplies within you. At least that's been my experience. I think it's an act of faith, believing that God has put all this aside, and by faith, goodness, we have a whole new view of this.

It's not that I have a victory over it so much, but every time I try to think through something, I shouldn't be thinking that way. Well, I think if you just take that, you know, wrecking yourself dead to sin, as we all say here at Holly Hills, what does death mean, right? Death means separation, right? So I'm separated. I'm separated from the source. What's the source of these five things? Is it Christ's life? It can't be. So it has to be Adam's life, the sin nature. That's the source of those.

So you say, what God has promised is that counting upon what he's accomplished, you are now separated from that sin nature, separated from the thing that would go after those. And that's what you remember. You remember that I'm separated. And that's taking that verse just for what it says. Wrecking yourself dead or separated from sin. Then you go forward with that. And that's why you remember that it's already happened. You already have been separated. And that's why I say, why go there?

Why should I go there to something that is not going to be, in the end, envy is not going to be helpful to your Christian life. Envy is going to be destructive to your Christian life. And destructive to probably you. Whoever you are, envy is not going to be something that helps you in life. It's going to destroy you actually, probably.

And sometimes, you know, I think, too, it just takes, you know, praying. I mean, you know, going to the Lord and saying, Lord, I know that I'm separated from this, but I still have this envy or malice, you know, whatever. And just take that from me because I know that that's not who I am. I mean, I think That's our problem is it's not who we are. Right, and that's what we're to remember. But that's who Adam is. That's exactly who he is. That's exactly who he is. Actually, I got Roy wants to ask a question. Go ahead. Roy was first, Gayle. I'm sorry. You should let ladies go first. I should.

I think it's so wonderful that the Holy Spirit to put in Peter's writing hand this word, putting aside, it is such a parallel to the text of death. That we are separated in death is the key meaning there. It's the key meaning here too. Isn't that wonderful? And we can trust God in His carefulness of communicating to us. not just our position but our condition as well. Exactly. It is. It is. My turn. Your turn. Okay.

In thinking about this Ken and how I'm separate from it. And yet I still have within me this ability to do these things and to be stuck right there. But when I think of the things above, the fact that I now belong to Christ, I need to remember, and like Margaret says, go to prayer about it, is that it doesn't have the sin nature doesn't have anymore the absolute power over me that it once had and so going to the Lord in prayer and saying Lord I still have this I'm so envious of this person I'm so grateful that you have taken that the power of that envy away and I can turn my mind to you and be at peace and have joy even over whatever it might be But I don't do that often enough. Then what happens for me anyway, there's then a peace that just can come over me and then I know, you know, the Lord has just It just doesn't matter anymore.

Whatever that was. Right. That's great. And the other thing is that you all are talking about verse 2. As newborn babes. I know, but this is the foundation. Oh, this is, this is. Isn't that something? It's like, here's the foundation of newborn babes. We're new creation in Christ.

Before we even get to the two, he wants us to say, remember we're separated from all these five things. You don't have to go there. Now you have a choice. You can choose to focus on the Lord by faith and trust Him and rest in Him. Not that you're going to not mess up occasionally. We all are. But you confess that and go on. But he wants you to start off with saying, I'm dead or separated. The Lord has put aside these things. That's huge. Have that in your mind. I put aside those five things. Well, it's the same thing in Romans as we talked about, where Paul says, why do I do these things I don't want to do? Why can't I do the things I should do? What is that? I mean, Paul was having that same issue over and over again.

Oh Lord, there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. That's where we are. To who we are. Good. Okay. So here's the... Let's go to the rest of the list here. I'm going to just put them all in there real quickly, otherwise we'll spend all our time on this. I want to get to the good stuff here. The meat. Okay, so we got the remaining three.

Hypocrisy. which is basically to pretend, play acting. And that verse in Matthew talks about the fact that the Lord talks about the... He says, you hypocrites, honor me with your lips, but their hearts are far from me. People pretending. And we see that all the time. People pretending to be something they're not.

So that's one of the issues. Envy, we just talk about a lot. The feeling of displeasure. produced by witnessing or hearing of other people and basically one of the verses in there the Matthew verses about why was Christ crucified they were envious of him they envied him because the people were coming to him so we got to get rid of this guy boy do we see envy boy in this world today envy just rules I mean my goodness Politics is all about envy, it seems like. This guy's an enemy, I'm envious of him. Boy, we're going to take him out.

So anyway. And slander, and to speak down, to run down. So those five things. So he tells us to put aside, we're dead to those, we're separated from those. So now the wonderful news is, and this is cool, he starts off with a simile. Does anybody remember what a simile is? I went and looked it up. I have a total advantage here. I went and looked it up. What's a simile? I have an example of a simile. It's a definition according to someone, Webster or somebody. It's a figure of speech involving comparison of one thing with another thing used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.

The examples they give are crazy like a fox, brave as a lion, So here he starts off with this phrase, like newborn babes. So newborn is basically recently born. And babies is, it's interesting how the word is actually babies. Sometimes we have babes, but it's babies. It's an infant, basically. So actually, we've had the pleasure with four grandkids now. We've seen lots of babies. And it's really cool. So what do babies do? They cry. I actually didn't put the diaper thing on here, which is a big E. They want to be fed. And the important thing, babies, the best food for babies is mother's milk. And I'm old enough to remember, I think, Bonnie, we talk about this, we weren't necessarily fed on mother's milk. Because at that time, somebody convinced somebody that formula was better. And actually, some of the formula was terrible. What was it? Tell me. Tell about the four. I think I remember my younger excuses, excuses. OK, but I think we've had condensed milk and then carol syrup. That was the formula. How we survive. Somehow we survive that.

The Lord is gracious. It did taste better. Mother's milk is a perfect food for a baby. Just like God's word is a perfect food for us. It's just a cool simile here. So Macaulay says, here a believer is to bear a resemblance to a newborn babe. The point of comparison is the baby's appetite. We're to have an appetite for God's Word. So let's go on here. Long for the pure milk of the Word.

And actually we're going to find out, and I struggled a little bit with this, I didn't actually come, I don't have a final thing here. Of the Word is not really in the original Greek text. It's been put in there because of the other words. What it really says is, and I'll show you in a second here. So right here, let's just start with long. You long for milk gala. And long here is a verb in the imperative mood. It's a command. It's used as an intense desire.

And let's look at Philippians 1.8.

Has someone read Philippians 1.8?

And this doesn't bring it across real strongly, but it is the use of that word, the Greek word for long, or intense desire. For God is my witness, how I long for you, all with the affection of Christ Jesus. So it's an intense desire, where to long with an intense desire, Weiss kind of says the Greek word speaks here of an intense yearning that which are exhorted to have an intense yearning for milk.

The pure milk of the word and actually Weiss kind of brings it across he doesn't if I look at my interlinear Bible and I look at his translation he brings across all the words one of the words that's not in most translations is the word spiritual it comes across as or long for the unadulterated spiritual milk.

Which I think adds a little bit more understanding possibly. So milk is described by two adjectives. It's actually the milk. It's described by this, the first adjective is pure. unadulterated, unmixed, has nothing added. This is what I thought about with myself, Vani, and I'm sure many others here. They're older. Whatever reason, we got not the best formula.

Spiritual, in this context, is They think it literally comes across, and this is from Vine, logical milk refers to the spiritual nourishment of the Word. So what Macaulay points out here, he says, long for the pure milk of the Word. So it kind of introduces the fact that you might not get the pure milk of the Word, just like with the formulas that we had when we were children. You might get a mixed or altered Word of God. So, what are some things that might be mixed in? For our group this would be pretty easy. Law, for one. Okay, excellent. Law, what else? Superstition. Okay. Anything else? What occurs to you that might impede you from the pure milk of God's Word? We have the pure milk of God's Word right here. You could argue that maybe...

All of those things that come in, like these whole denominations that have this, you know, whether it's, I don't know, dancing in the spirit, yelling in the spirit, all these things that have been added to the word, that there's nowhere in there that Handling snakes.

I mean, remember all that. I mean, you know all that that's talked about. It's not the pure... Sometimes it's basing it all on somebody else's application. Right, right. A lot of it is, you know, people like to follow after a man or a woman. They'll follow that person and, you know, and so what that person says about the word, they won't even check it out. They'll just say, well, so-and-so said that and, you know. And God tells us not to do that, to check it out. Peter is saying here, long for the unadulterated, unmixed, logical milk.

Which is a little hard to say. I decided not to go down the rabbit trail where I tried to justify how they got of the word. Maybe some people, maybe Roy knows it. I couldn't, I found some reference to how they derived that but I didn't, it wasn't easy when I first looked at it. If you're interested I could try to study that for next week and maybe Roy knows something.

There's a parallel here to Hebrews 5 where they were returning and going back to sacrifices. to be accepted among the Jewish community without the persecution that came as a believer in Christ leaving those sacrifices. That's part of the parable here. Because he's writing to Jews dominantly but also of course Gentiles. Gentiles would go back to their own kind of traditions like This is home to me.

We've got a Christmas, right? Where'd Christmas come from? I know. It's a pagan holiday. It is a pagan holiday. I know. But we've turned it into of Christ. I know. That's not in the Word of God. I agree with you. Anyway, that's OK. All right. OK, so let's go on here.

So now, remember, I told in the past, you know, whenever you say so that, little flag ought to go up in your minds. Here comes the purpose, right? He's going to give us a purpose for longing for the pure milk of the word. So that, with a purpose that, by it, the word, you may grow. And it's interesting How are you going to grow? Are you going to go out and just really work hard? No! No, this is what's so cool.

A lot of times here when we see your interaction with God, the Holy Spirit, God has to do it. And you think, wow, that's, how does that happen? You know, and it's back to, you know, if you had one word to remember, you come back to faith. It has to be your interaction with God by faith that allows Him to grow you up. And He's the one that's going to grow you, that you may grow.

And a couple of cool verses, 2 Peter, we're going to get to it here in six months or so. No, not quite six months. 2 Peter 3.18a, But grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up into all aspects of him who is the head, even Christ Jesus, even Christ. So his focus here is our growth, growth in him. Just go ahead and go Roger.

I mean, second year, 318. This again, we brought this up several times. This is a different theater, isn't it? It is. Oh, it's wonderful. It's amazing how much he's grown by grace and knowledge of the ones he's filling up with. And actually, I had a little quote that I got. I'm not sure where I got it from. Anyway, it was it's one of the people I said it basically helped. This is kind of back to the baby analogy.

A healthy infant is a hungry infant. A spiritually healthy Christian is a hungry Christian. That was good. A healthy infant is a hungry infant. And that's right. People count how many wet diapers, right? I think I'm on the right track here. If you don't have wet diapers, then the baby's not taking in enough liquid.

And a spiritually healthy Christian is a hungry Christian. So that's what it's about. Being hungry to know who our Savior is. And to grow and understand Him better. You know, that's so simple, isn't it? That the Holy Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them unto us. Exactly. And that's the only thing that really satisfies us. I know.

It's interesting that the baby analogy in milk is just such a good thing as we all, you know, either is so. parents or maybe if we haven't had children as we've been in a family and we know about babies and what happens with babies. Babies aren't too happy. You don't feed them. They aren't too happy. So you could argue, okay, if we don't ingest God's Word on some kind of basis, we're going to be unhappy. We may not realize why we're unhappy, but we need to take it in. Whether we take it in in this context or other places or whatever.

And this is cool. So we're to grow in grace in respect to salvation. So I'm going to defer this to a couple of charts down. But anyway, Bob did this last week. I'm just going to go back and review the tenses of salvation, which I think is important. So this is talking about the present tense of salvation. And we'll get to that in a second here. Roger said that's left out of a lot of translations. Well, yeah. Actually, what they do is... Is it really? Respect to salvation? Yeah, it is.

Wow, I didn't believe it. I was so focused on the other word, because I was off on that, I didn't realize that... I like it actually, but it's not what I thought it was. Oh, that's interesting. Well, it's in the Greek. It's just the best translations according to some of the commentators. I don't know what, you know, I'm not an authority. That's what they say.

Well, that was my problem with of the word. I looked at what somebody said about how they got of the word from spiritual milk. And I said, I don't know how, I mean, I don't understand it that well to be able to say much about how they go from spiritual milk to milk of the word. I don't know how they did that.

But anyway. But I found it instructive to say it's a pure spiritual milk. That was kind of cool. Because we're talking about a spiritual thing here. And that really brings it home. About the pure spiritual milk. Okay. Okay. And then the last verse is kind of interesting.

And it's one of the if statements here. And this is the one that's assumed to be true. Did we sidetrack you on salvation there? Were you going to assume that? No, no, actually it's coming. It's coming. It's the last three charts. It's coming. I just said respect to salvation. We're going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about all three aspects. I have three charts from future presentations. In view of the fact, assumed to be true. So this is another cool thing.

He wants you to count upon what you... These are believers, right? He says, hey, don't forget. The kindness of the Lord. That's what this is about. You, a believer, have tasted, metaphorically, to experience, to prove, to partake of. And what does Hebrews 6, 5 say? I forgot. Would someone like to read that? Hebrews 6, 5.

And then I've tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. Okay, kind of a parallel. You've tasted, you've experienced, you've proven the good word of God. So what he's saying is that you've experienced salvation. The kindness of the Lord, or actually literally in the original language, there is a supply, but it's the Lord is good, or the Lord is, you know, He is good, He is gracious. And good is this word for kindly, gracious, and it is rendered in those couple of verses there. So this verse gives us an additional reason for desiring the pure milk of the word. The reason is that the believer has already received the In Spico gift of salvation. They already have that.

But what Peter is saying is It doesn't stop there. We're to grow in that. We're to spend time with it. It moves on from our salvation experience. It moves on to the growth phase. Okay, so now let's talk about the three tenses of salvation. So there's a past tense, a present tense, and a future tense. Okay, so I'm going to cover them out of order. I want to do past first, which is coming to faith in Christ. I'm going to jump to the future tense, and then I'm going to come back to the present tense.

Because the present tense is, that's where we're at. That's what we do 24-7 here. We've already got the past tense. We're looking forward to the future tense. We're right there at the present tense. Okay, so let's look at the The past. A good part of this is from HAL, different time periods. I put this together. It's been so long.

Salvation. Past tense. Salvation from the penalty of sin. Reference to salvation being holy past. Completed unchanging for one who has believed. From eternal death to eternal life. I have about four verses here. For by grace you have been saved through faith He who believes has eternal life and is passed out of death into life. So we own eternal life. We have it.

And then John 10, 28. Shall never perish. No one shall snatch me out of my hand. And then Romans 8, 1. No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have eternal life. We have it right then. How can people teach that you can lose your salvation? It's so clear. It's Satan's decision. It really is. How many churches teach that you can lose your salvation? So you better be good and you better work hard. We have people in our family, our ascended family that you may be due to. And that's where they come from.

And I don't understand the free gift. No, no, no. I mean, in a sense, I see where you're coming from. Past the future. Right. But I would claim that that. here. Salvation from the penalty is said. I would suggest that many people are not well granted in that regard. No, I would agree.

The thing is that we are so blessed here. We have so many wonderful truths that we go over many times, but the understanding of that and how we got there, that's why I wanted to do this, just kind of go back and kind of redo it again. I was hoping that our sister Megan would be here.

I can remember how people would never show up for me to explain. I have an explanation for that person. They never were there. Anyway, I'm getting off the track here. No, this is wonderful. This should be the established believer should realize He's salvation from the penalty of sin. That's foundational to who you are in Christ. It's foundational to being saved. Now we're going to jump to the future. In the future, we'll be saved from the presence of sin. We'll no longer have a sin nature. We'll be with the Lord. Saved into full conformity to Christ. Yet to be revealed in the last time. from the presence of the sin nature to the absence of the sin nature.

1 John 3.2 It is not yet appeared what we shall be, when he appears we shall be like him. 1 Peter, well actually this is backtracking a little bit, protected for a salvation, ready to be revealed in the last times. We talked about that earlier.

Philippians 1.6 We'll perfect it a good work for you until the day of Christ Jesus. Okay, so now let's go to the one where we are right now. Salvation from the power of sin. That's what we've been talking about, right? A good part of that today. Salvation from the power of sin.

We're to walk by faith, wrecking ourselves dead. When you guys started talking, I said, this is great, because I knew where we were going here. Wrecking ourselves dead to sin. from the power of the sin nature to being alive to God. And this is just, if you look at the verses I have, Romans 6, 6, knowing that our old self was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done away with, and the better translation is put in idle, taken offline, is still around, but we've been separated from it. Verse 611, even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And then I just point out at the last that the present tense of salvation is what we call the identification truths. Just a thought about why people do not believe in eternal security and the essence of who we are in Christ and things like that. I think that's the cloud that comes upon humanity when they don't base what they believe on the scriptures that are given to us by the Holy Spirit, by God himself, to show us Christ. If our authority is a human interpreting the scriptures, then we're not looking at the Holy Spirit taking the words themselves to teach us about source of the error. I would agree with you. We're too man-focused.

Yeah, and the teaching of the Word of God versus the Word of God itself. Right, exactly. And what's wonderful is, I think it's great to have, when we have a body of believers, we have many brothers and sisters that have, the Lord has given them the understanding of the Word to be able to explain it, to teach it. So it's not just It's not just the pastor or the elder or whatever. It is the body that understands the word. It's like every word you say and every word I say, every word Bob says, we're all dependent on the Holy Spirit. Absolutely. To translate that into our truth. That's the truth. Right. And what are we seeking? Truth. We're seeking truth. Exactly. Truth is what we want. Right. But you know what people forget is how long it took us to start understanding of these truths. This didn't happen overnight. This was many years ago.

This should be the pattern in many many bodies of believers. The Lord leads men in that body to study God's Word and to share that truth. And over time, the body gets educated more and more. And they pretty soon, it's the body that understands. It's not just the pastor or elder. It's the body that understands. So we collectively understand it. And so that's what we've seen here at Holly Hills. So anyway, I kind of pinch myself and say, wow, I look at it and I actually understand some of this.

I'm scary. It makes sense. I think you might want to comfort and joy your lives as believers when you live under the Old Testament covenants. Always. But the joy we have in growing in grace and truth is really spirit-led and so spectacular. It is. It is. We all fall short, but we get back in fellowship and move on. Right. So next week we're going to carry on with this.

There's more cool verses to do. Thanks for all your interaction today. It was great. It was fabulous. Okay, let's close. We thank you, Father. Thank you for our time today, Lord. Thank you for your marvelous Word, Lord. We thank you that we've been able to understand your Word, Lord. Thank you for the many people that have have been involved in our body of believers here. We thank you for your faithfulness to this body and faithfulness to us individually, Lord. In Christ's name, Amen.