Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, July 20th. Are you able to genuinely love those around you? Let's continue studying 1 Peter to discover the main barrier that hinders us from loving others when circumstances are difficult. When is it the easiest for you to love someone? Is it not usually when they love you, when they're treating you well, when they're sort of going along with what you want to do, but suppose they're not, and suppose they don't agree with you, and suppose they don't want to do what you want to do, suppose they object to your lifestyle, and suppose they get ugly and ornery and a little bit vicious and sometimes maybe even threaten you.
Then is it easy to love? Well, you'll recall that Peter wrote this first epistle to people who were beginning to undergo persecution and were going to undergo great persecution about a year later. And so we have been looking at this first chapter of the way he has reminded and assured and reassured them again and again and again of their position in Christ.
And then as he begins in this latter part of the chapter to remind them of their conduct and how they're to operate, and how they're to respond, and what they're to do when the difficult times come. And now we come to verse 22 through verse 25 and listen to what he says. 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. For you've been born again not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding Word of God. And then he quotes from Isaiah. For all the flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off or fades, but the Word of the Lord abides or stands forever.
And this is the Word which was preached to you. Now when you and I think about love, usually we think about it the way the world thinks about it, that you know, you love me, I love you, we love each other. But there's probably one vital area that we forget, and that is, what is it that enables us to love someone else?
What is it in the human heart that enables us to love someone else, and especially sometimes when that person is acting in a very unloving fashion? Well, Peter knew that they were going to face that kind of circumstance, and so what he says in these few verses here, he talks about loving through tough times. And notice how he begins verse 22. Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls. Now, when he talks about love here, it's interesting that he begins with these two words. Obedience to the truth purified your souls.
Now you think about this. First of all, it's not always easy to love because loving someone means you're willing to lay down your own desires and to give yourself over to someone else. Now it's easier to do that when that person is in harmony with you, but suppose that they're not. And so what happens is, even when they're in harmony with us, when we don't want to express love and we want to be selfish, what happens to us?
Well, a selfish spirit short circuits love, and a selfish self-centered spirit hinders the flow of love in our life. So isn't it interesting that he begins by saying, since you have in obedience to the truth purified your soul. So if we're going to be able to love through tough times, that begins, I believe, with a purifying of the heart. And he says that happens by obedience to the truth. Now, the only way for us to be pure in the eyes of God and to live a life that is obedient to Him, a life of righteousness and holiness, is for us to be purified, to be obedient through the truth of God's Word. Now, this is why I say to you oftentimes and open the Word of God each week, and that is, it is in this book that you and I discover what the truth is. It is in the Word of God that you and I discover the truth. That is, the Holy Spirit who sealed you the day you were redeemed is the one who now, dwelling in you and abiding in you, is the one who enlightens our mind. That is, when you open the Word of God to read a passage, it is the Holy Spirit who lives within you who opens the truth of the Word to you. Now, the more you meditate upon it, and the more you think upon it, and the more you pray over it, and most of all, the more you submit to it, the clearer the Word of God comes. Sometimes a person says, well, you know, I read the Bible, I don't get a thing out of that book. I know exactly why.
It isn't because they haven't been to school. It is as you and I obey the little we do understand that God does what? He enlarges our capacity to understand. It is interesting to me that those who refuse, refuse to believe this book, if you'll watch their life, they also refuse to yield to the requirements of this book. Now, you see, listen to what he said, since you have in obedience to the truth purified your soul. If I want to live selfishly, lustfully, if I want to live disobedient, and I just want to get my needs met my way, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to somehow finagle and manipulate myself in a position that I don't have much time to read this.
And therefore, if I don't have much time to read it, a lot of it, I just never will know. And so I'll just go on doing my thing and just sort of skipping around the periphery of the Christian life. Listen, when you get into the Word of God, one of the first things the Word of God does is to surface those things in your life that are not right. Listen, wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? How?
By what? By taking heed to the Word of God. The Bible says thy word is a what? A lamp unto my feet and a what?
A light unto my path. The Bible says it is by the Word of God that our understanding is made clear. Now, if you want to understand God's Word, the first thing you have to do is to submit to what it requires.
And you watch this, and I believe if you'll try it, it'll happen. You'd say, well, you know, I read so many passages and I somehow don't get much out of them. If you say to God, now, Lord, I don't understand much of this, but I am going to obey what I do understand, and I'm going to trust you to open my understanding in order that I may be obedient to more of it. I guarantee you, your understanding of the Word of God is going to begin to grow. Listen, if you want your meditation to get exciting, when you read something, you say yes to God. And when you say yes to God, the Spirit of God begins to open your understanding.
Now, listen to what He says is the product of this. Since you have an obedience to the truth, now, you can't obey the truth if you don't know it, and if you don't read and say the Word of God, you're not going to know it. Now, I wouldn't want you to raise your hand, but I wonder how many folks tuck their Bible under their arm and come to church on Sunday morning, and we say, turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, man. They turn the Bible there, and everybody sees them doing it.
And I wonder how many, when they leave here, go home and lay it down until next Sunday morning. Now, listen, it doesn't make any difference who the pastor is. God is only going to teach you so much through somebody else. God expects you to get in the Word.
And listen, do you know what? If you would go home and just ponder the things, if you take a few notes on the sermons, and you'd go home and get back into that passage yourself, do you know what would happen? You would begin to read that and feast upon it from your perspective where you are, where you're hurting, what you're facing, what you're going through. You know what God would do? You'd say, man, you know, look at it, the preacher didn't even mention that. Nor that, nor that, nor that. Listen, when you and I obey the truth, God purifies the heart.
So there's so much there for you if you would just get into it. And I want to tell you, my friend, God never sent pastors to be the teachers of the flock to teach them all that they'll learn to learn about the Word of God. It's what you do in your private reading as God helps you to meditate upon His Word and submit. Now, listen, when you come across any principle in the Word of God and you say, oh, no way can I do that. Listen, the last time you turned away from some principle of Scripture, you can mark it down. You are not going to learn much till you get back there and obey the last thing He taught you. That's the way God operates. You think God is going to let you detour around some principle He brought to your mind and go on teaching you these great, tremendous things in the Word of God, and He's got you back there where He intended for you to deal with something in your life?
He's not going to do it. And that's why, listen, that's why people can sit in Sunday School for years and years and years and years and sit in church listening to preachers for years and years and years and listen, know very little about the Word of God. Listen, the pastor's responsibility is, listen, is to get you churned up about it.
It's your responsibility to get in there and find out, now, God, what are you saying to me? If you'll turn to the hundred and nineteenth Psalm, and I don't have time to go through all this, but if you'll turn to the hundred and nineteenth Psalm, you'll be amazed at what he says in the hundred and nineteenth Psalm about the Word of God because it's all about His Word. But look at two or three verses. Let's start with, in fact, we could just start right here, verse one, just go all the rest of our time.
We could just read this and get excited. Listen to this. Let's start with verse one. How blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
Listen, how blessed are those who observe His testimonies, who seek Him with all their heart. Verse nine, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy word. With all my heart I've sought Thee. Do not let me wander from Thy commandments. Thy word I have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against Thee. Verse fifteen, I will meditate on Thy precepts and regard Thy ways. Verse eighteen, open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law. Verse thirty-four, give me understanding that I may observe Thy law and keep it with all of my heart.
Now, you could just go right on through, right on through that. Listen, he says, verse one sixty-five, those who love Thy law have great peace and nothing causes them to stumble. The whole hundred and nineteenth Psalm has to do with inspiring and motivating us to get into the Word. And so what he says here in verse twenty-two, since you have an obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love. Now listen, when you and I are living a pure life, that is, the Word of God has surfaced those issues and those attitudes, we deal with them in repentance, what happens? God purifies the heart.
Now when the heart is pure, you and I are able to love anybody. Now let me show you why. For example, if God brings to your mind that your attitude towards somebody else is really nasty, I mean you don't like them. There's nothing about them. They've wronged you and you don't even want to get, when they, you see them on one side of the streets, you want to cross on the other. You just don't like, you see them on one side of the church sanctuary, you want to go on the other. You just avoid them, you don't like them.
There's something, you're sort of hostile about them. Now, the only way you're going to love them is have the animosity, the anger, the hostility or the self-centeredness or the selfishness or the pride in your heart cleansed out. That's why he says in this passage, he says, since you've been obedient to the truth, you have purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren. Now, when he says sincere love, he uses the word hypocritical, but he puts a little A on it in the Greek, which would mean, it's the opposite. That is, an un-hypocritical kind of love. That is, having obeyed the truth of the word of God. Our souls have been purified and now we're able to love with what? Listen to what he says. For a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. It's interesting that word fervent.
That means with intensity, straining, stretching, strenuous. That is, man, listen, when you love somebody, he says, love them with all of your heart. Now, what Peter's doing, he's equipping them to go through difficult times because he knows if you and I can learn how to love in difficult times, we're going to be able to suffer all kinds of problems and heartaches and burdens and hurts and somehow come through it. And listen, God will enrich us. If he can teach us how to love him when times are tough, he's going to enrich us in a very deep fashion.
So he said to them, since you have an obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere, that is a non-hypocritical love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. Let me ask you a question. Do you love anybody fervently? I mean, when you see them, do you get excited? Well, to answer this question publicly, do you fervently love your son or your daughter? Do you fervently love your mom or your dad? Do you fervently love your husband or your wife? Do you fervently love anybody who's not a member of your family?
I mean, you're just comfortable with them and you just like being with them or with her and I mean, you just genuinely love them. Did you know that most folks in the world probably can't name anybody that they really and truly genuinely love? And you know why most folks can't love? Because their hearts are impure. You say, what in the world's that got to do with love?
I'll tell you why. You know, if a person's living in sin, first of all, they feel the guilt of their sin. Guilt does something to your ability to love someone else. If a person's living in sin and they know that they're self-centered, they want their way, they don't even have the capacity to love. He says, listen, he says, having purified your heart through the truth, fervently love each other. Listen, the purer our heart and the greater our capacity to reach out and love other people. If you're a child of God, your heart ought to be overflowing with fervent love. That is, there ought to be two levels of love.
First of all, just that general love that you're just always reaching out to other people. You see, if you have to evaluate everybody you meet, you don't love them. Genuine true love just accepts the other person just the way they are.
They don't have to go through the test. Well, are you a Christian? Should that be a criteria for loving somebody?
Not really. But I want to tell you there are lots of folks who have a little criteria and if you don't meet it, friend, they don't love you. The truth is, they don't love anybody, they love themselves. And their heart needs to be purified by getting in the Word of God and recognizing that every single one of us has been saved by the same grace of God. Not one single one of us is any better than the other person, not a one of us.
Doesn't make any difference where you came from, what's your background, what you wear, where you live, what you drive. None of that has anything to do, God loves every single one of us perfectly because He loves us out of a pure heart. Now what Peter is saying is this, listen, when times get tough, you're going to need some friends. And when you learn to love out of a pure heart, what happens? It's easier to love somebody who loves you and you'll meet somebody that you genuinely want to love who will say, please love me. Oh, I need to be loved.
And they don't realize that they're driving you off at the same time. You know why he says out of a pure heart, listen, if I feel guilty, if I feel unworthy, if I feel I don't belong, if I feel incompetent, if my mind is all confused about who I am and what's going on in my life or where I've been or how unworthy I am, it's very difficult to love somebody like that. It is not an accident that Peter said out of a pure heart that we're to love fervently. Listen, there's some folks you ought to be excited about.
Now I want to ask you again, is there anybody you are excited about loving? Well, listen to what he said. He said, now, since you have an obedience to the truth purified your heart, your soul for a sincere, non-hypocritical love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart for, he says, you are equipped to do it.
How was I equipped? You've been born again, not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable that is through the living and abiding word of God. It was in the, by the word of God, you and I have been born again. We have become new creatures in Christ Jesus and dwelt by the Holy Spirit. Now have a teacher to teach us the word of God. And then I want you to go back to Isaiah chapter 40 verse 7. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.
Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands how long? Forever. The word of our God stands firm. That's what he's quoting in. So he says, and this is the word which was preached to you. Now here's what he's saying in this passage. Look, times are going to get tough and it's going to be very difficult to love some folks.
So what you want to do is to get in the word, obey the word of God. Obedience purifies the heart. It is the pure heart that is able to love the lovely and the unlovely. And when you love them, go out of your way. Go the second mile, be forgiving, accept them just the way they are. He says strenuously reach out to love the other person. Fervently love each other because you've been equipped to do it. You were born again with the grace of God and the word of God has made you rich and the word of God has equipped you with truth, purifying your heart.
Therefore you have the capacity to love other folks. Thank you for listening to Loving Through the Tough Times. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
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