In the first chapter of 1 Peter, 1
Peter 1, 22, 22nd verse, Peter continuing
his exhortation to the Christians, scattered abroad, says,
Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying
the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, see that ye love one
another with a pure heart, fervently.
That's as far as we'll go, because the
other, with the privilege an apostle claims for
himself, switches on the word being to something
else altogether.
So we'll stay by verse 22.
Those of you who preach or teach or
address groups of any sort will note that
there is one thing that you must be
able to do if you're going to address
an audience at all, and that is to
be able to order what you say.
The average Christian knows enough to preach all
night, but he couldn't do it because he
is not skilled in ordering what he has
to say.
So that sermon preparation, as far as the
homiletical angle of it is concerned, simply consists
of ordering what you're going to say so
that you won't talk in circles and meet
yourself constantly running around the circle.
Now, this 22nd verse, to my mind, is
one of the most perfect verses for a
sermon.
Not that there will be the most perfect
sermon, I promise you that.
But I mean a sermon outline here, something
that you could get in your head or
heart and be able to give it.
He says, you have purified your souls, point
one, by obeying the truth, point two, through
the Spirit, three, unto unfeigned love of brethren,
four.
See therefore that you love one another, five,
out of a pure heart, six, fervently, seven.
And it even has the good fundamentalist, seven.
One of my dear brothers won't preach at
all unless he can get seven points in
his sermon.
I never allow myself to be hemmed in
by mathematics.
If there aren't seven there, I'm not going
to put another one in.
If there are less than seven, I'm not
going to add one merely to make it
look good.
But there are seven here.
And starting out with this, we notice a
peculiar phrase, or two of them, seeing that,
see that.
Bible students might put a line under this.
Incidentally, in studying the Bible, never try to
spare your Bible.
The Bible that was given to you twenty
-five years ago was a wedding present and
is still in perfect shape.
It might just as well have given you
barkers all in the neck.
Because it's not doing you any good, wear
your Bible out.
Mark it up.
Thumb it.
And then when it's gone, get another one.
Retire it honorably and get yourself another one.
Work on your Bible.
And so I don't hesitate to say, if
you want to do it, mark it.
So that seeing that, see that.
Now there is the sweet logic of the
apostolic teaching.
The older I get, and the more familiar
I get with the scriptures, the more I'm
pleased with the logic of the Bible.
It moves along with beautiful precision, marches like
an army.
He was moved by the Holy Ghost.
He'll take the liberty of a digression.
Paul's full of them.
They call them ellipses.
The scholars call Paul's style elliptical.
He'll start to say one thing, and then
he'll look over and see something else, and
lose the thread that he's taught, and dash
over and say something better.
They call that elliptical.
But Peter did the same thing here, and
you'll find that in the Bible.
But you'll also find that wherever there's a
complete statement, it always follows beautiful logic.
So he says, seeing that, therefore see that.
Now seeing that ye have done this one
thing, or seeing that this one thing is
true of you, therefore see that this something
else is true of you, based upon this
other thing that is true of you.
Now that is clear as I'm afraid it
isn't.
So we have it here.
The Bible never breaks in, comes ripping through
to your heart with a command, but always
precedes it with a reason for it.
That is, the New Testament always gives biblical
reasons for what it demands.
There's never anything whimsical about the Holy Ghost.
There is imperious command, but that command always
grows out of some sound, plentiful reason why
it's perfectly natural and right that it should
be so.
So he says, seeing that you have purified
your heart, therefore love.
Now let's look at the seven divisions here.
And don't brace yourself for a long talk,
for I promise you it won't be.
He says, you have purified your souls, and
the man of God begins with the word
souls inside us.
Most of the great religions of the world
begin with externals.
In fact, I am at the moment unable
to think of any that do not or
does not begin with the external.
They begin with diet, or dress, or ascetic
practices, or the celebration of days.
And then they hope, and do hope indeed,
that somehow by the performance of external acts,
they will be able to work in on
themselves to their heart.
That by beginning in the fingers, you can
work through to their heart.
Beginning at the toes, you can work up
to their heart.
That's the religions of the world.
Buddhism begins externally, and the great religions that
make so much of dress, and of ascetic
practices.
It would be amusing if it were not
too significant of a trend to see how
such groups as the Hollywood actors, and the
nightclub boys, and all the rest, are going
in big for yogi these days.
Everybody wants to be a yogi.
Well, the yogi, of course, is one who
begins outside.
And by certain body practices, by even body
postures, he manages to control his breathing, and
then after he's got his breathing under control,
he controls his thoughts, and slowly he works
it in through his inner man.
And the hope is that he'll change himself
and purify his soul by something he does
on the outside.
Now, that is exactly contrary to the scriptures.
To begin on the outside and work into
the center is unknown to the New Testament.
And that was the area of warfare between
our Lord Jesus Christ and the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were externalists.
Jesus Christ was and is an internist.
They believed that by practicing external things, they
could work into the center and change the
internal through the external.
Jesus knew better, and fought them as long
as he lived on earth, and died and
went to glory to prove them wrong, and
to prove that he alone knew that it
was their heart that mattered, it was the
internal that mattered, and when the internal is
right, the outside falls into line perfectly.
That is also the difference between modernistic doctrines
and liberalistic religions that begin by training and
make a much of religious education.
Now, religious education at best is the training
of the man to think right and act
right, and certainly it's not to be decried,
it's to be desired.
But without the secret and mysterious internal change,
all of this outside change will be found
to be wasted at last.
He says, you have purified your souls.
Now, I conclude from my study of the
Bible that the faith of Christ begins in
the center and works out to the external
conduct, and that we are safe in concluding
that if the heart has not been reached,
any religious profession is vain, completely vain.
If the heart has been reached, the religious
profession then takes on meaning, but if it
has not been reached, all religious profession is
vain.
Does it sound like an old bromide or
religious cliche for me to repeat what you
hear so much from the average evangelist, and
he's right in it, that you can join
all the churches in the city, be baptized
by every mode known, and celebrate every holy
day in the Christian calendar, and still be
lost if you are not changed on the
inside.
You have purified your hearts, your souls, he
says.
And so the soul is the inside of
a person, the essence of the person, that
which matters, that which makes you, that which
is you.
For the word soul here certainly can be
and is extended to mean the whole interior
man.
Synonyms would be the heart of the man,
or the reins of the man, but it's
the whole interior man.
And this man has been purified.
There is a purification of the deep inner
life that is required before we have any
right to believe that our religious profession is
valid.
Now that's one.
You have purified your souls, now the next
question is how.
Purification of the soul by bathing in the
river Ganges is the method practiced by the
Hindus.
But the catch is that all they ever
get is external bathing, and they tell me,
those who've seen the Mother Ganga, that it
isn't much because Mother Ganga's too dirty to
ever cleanse anybody.
But we do not smile at them, nor
do we look down our holy noses at
them, for the simple reason that they're trying
erroneously to do a right thing.
They're seeking a right in a wrong way.
And they'll never reach it, just as a
man might erroneously start to drive to Detroit
but turn his car in the direction of
Omaha.
Now we might be ever so honest, and
some of you may smile quietly inside remembering
the time you did that very thing.
You thought you were going the wrong direction.
A man told me once this.
He said he was a truck driver and
worked with two men, the systems they had,
two men were on the truck, and they
had a little bed up there, as they
have, and one would sleep while the other
one drove, and then they would spell themselves
that way.
So they always had a fresh driver.
I don't know if they always do that,
but they do that, some truck companies.
Well, this man told me that he was
driving once on a truck, and his co
-pilot was sleeping in the little bunk back
of the driver, and he said he came
down this way, say going east, saw a
filling station, swung completely around, made a U
-turn and parked.
Got some gasoline and woke up his friend.
He said, it's your turn, it's time for
you to drive a lot.
So he climbed up in the bunk and
went sound asleep.
Twenty-five miles later, the new driver found
that his friend had turned the truck around.
Now, he was perfectly honest, but completely erroneous.
It was a mistake, he had fifty miles
to make up because of an error.
You might say, but he's such a good
man, any difference, he's going the wrong way.
But he pays his debts and he just
loves his wife, it doesn't make any difference.
He was traveling the wrong way, and he'll
never get to the terminal going the wrong
direction.
But he's so handsome, and a man with
hair like that couldn't make a mistake, he
did.
He made the mistake nevertheless, but he belongs
to the Masons and he's a church member,
but he's going the wrong way.
And no matter who is going, no matter
how nice he is, no matter how bushy
his hair, if he's going the wrong way,
his personality won't get him going the right
way.
Now, there are thousands of people, the devil
has turned their vehicle around and they don't
know it.
And they're pushing it right down to the
floor, and they're going along beautifully, and they
imagine they're going where they want to go
because they're making a good bracket and getting
up some speed.
But they're not going the right direction.
The yogi who gets his breathing under control
and can properly manipulate his abdominal muscles, and
who can hypnotize himself and draw in his
thoughts and all that, he is making progress
all right, but he's traveling the wrong direction.
For he's assuming the validity of an erroneous
doctrine, that the heart is made pure beginning
from without.
Whereas the scripture says the heart is made
pure first, and then everything else comes of
itself.
He hath purified your heart.
Now how he hath purified your heart?
It says by obeying the truth.
Now by obeying the truth.
I don't want you to be shocked by
that word obey, it's not popular in the
day in which we live, but it's a
good word, obeying the truth.
Now there are two sides, obeying and believing.
In Acts 15.9 the Holy Ghost says,
God terrifying their hearts by faith.
And in our text the Holy Ghost says,
purified your souls by obeying the truth.
So we have faith and works, one by
Peter and the other by the spirit in
the apostles in the book of Acts.
Now is there any contradiction here?
No, here is where our critics come along
and say there's a contradiction here.
No contradiction whatever.
Suppose that I was talking about a seagull,
and I was making a great deal over
the seagull's beautiful right wing.
And I said that seagull has one of
the most graceful right wings you ever saw.
Now watch him.
And he extended that right wing and pushed
it out there and shoved it, and it
was so graceful an artist would run for
his pencil.
Just to outline the symmetry and beauty of
that wing.
So we teach the validity of flight by
the right wing of the seagull.
But another man comes along and says, have
you ever noticed the left wing of the
seagull?
It's simply beautiful.
But the first man says, heretic and legalist,
that you would dare mention that a seagull
has a left wing while our whole church
is built on the doctrine that it has
a right wing.
And the critic stands up and says, listen
to that argument, they're contradicting each other.
Well anybody ought to know that a seagull
can't fly with one wing.
He'd only flap in a circle.
He'd never get off the ground.
And also anyone should know that a seagull
can't fly with a left wing.
He would fly in a circle only he'd
be spinning the other direction.
If he tried to fly with his right
wing, he'd go counterclockwise.
And if he tried to fly with his
left wing, he'd go clockwise, but he'd be
where he was after he'd done flapping.
Now there is the trouble in our churches.
Some go out and get busy.
Just as soon as you join the church,
they give you five jobs and the chairmanship
of a committee.
And away you go.
And people just wear themselves out flapping their
left wing.
But talk to them about the new birth,
talk to them about cleansing on the inside,
talk to them about the renewal of the
soul, and tell them what you mean.
But our crowd, we specialize on right wings.
And we don't believe much in activity, we
just believe in believing.
And we're both wrong, and we're both half
right.
But if you will believe the Bible instead
of believing half-truth, and see that when
one man says, you are purified by faith,
and another man says you are purified by
obeying, they're not contradicting, they're simply giving you
both wings of the bird.
That's all.
Faith has to have works or it flaps
in a circle.
And works have to have faith or they're
dead.
So by works and faith we go along.
Have you ever noticed that eleventh chapter of
the book of Hebrews?
I was just looking at it here this
morning.
Have you ever noticed, now that's called the
faith chapter, isn't it?
It says, by faith, by faith, by faith,
by faith.
But have you ever noticed it's also a
works chapter?
By faith Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain.
He offered it by faith, but he did
offer it.
And he offered it in obedience to some
revelation God had given him.
By faith in it was translated, but also
in it by works walked with God until
he was no longer.
By faith Noah built an ark.
And by faith and works he built an
ark.
So that it took works to build the
ark.
If Noah had sat down on a wooden
horse and piled his tools beside him and
said I'm a just a believing, he'd never
have gotten the ark built.
But he called in his carpenters, laid down
the blueprints and went to work.
Somebody came along and said you hope to
save yourself by building an ark.
You are not a New Testament Christian, you
are a legalist, you are mixing works with
faith.
No.
Noah might have replied I am obeying my
faith by doing what I am told.
So he built himself an ark.
By faith Abraham went out, but he did
go out.
And by faith Gideon did things by faith,
but he also did them by works.
He actually girded on his sword and went
out.
And there was Barak and Samson.
Samson could have sat sublimely by and gazed
at the heavens and said I am believing.
And the Philistines would have swarmed around him.
But he grabbed a jawbone of an ass
and slew about a thousand Philistines.
And then there was Jephthah and David and
Samuel.
And you can go right on down the
line.
So the 11th chapter of Hebrews is not
only a faith chapter, it is a works
chapter too.
God never makes a whole chapter of one
wing.
He puts the other wing in even if
it isn't so visible.
So they are both there.
Now again, through the Spirit.
But you say that is teaching the power
of the human character to do good.
No it isn't because he says through the
Spirit.
God never commands righteousness without giving the power
to be righteous.
So it is through the Holy Ghost.
The real Christian who has been renewed inside
and purified in his soul, he has got
no confidence in the flesh.
He knows the flesh will never get him
anywhere.
But in Romans 8 we have that the
works of the law might be fulfilled in
us who walk in the Spirit and not
in the flesh.
Now, the 4th point is, unto unfeigned love
of the brethren.
What does this all lead to?
Unfeigned love of the brethren.
You see that word unfeigned here?
Unregenerate society feigns its love, mostly.
Politicians feign their love.
They'll kiss your baby, they'll even kiss your
hand.
They used to send garden seed.
I haven't got a package of garden seed
in years.
Anybody around here got a package of garden
seed?
The Senators used to send out garden seed,
hoping that you would plant their garden seed
and vote for them the next senatorial election.
But they smile, they visit, they travel around,
they make whistle stops, they wave the flag,
they quote Lincoln, and all doing it to
get your vote.
They love you so much.
When they make their speeches, they refer to
you in drooling affection.
But the reason they refer to you is
that you have the sovereign power to put
an X after their name.
And I suppose I shouldn't say it here,
but I often think how some of these
lugubrious tears that Union leaders shed over the
poor, exploited, downtrodden proletariat, I think they're crocodile
tears made out of plastic.
Because those boys call them in, call them
out, call them in, call them out, make
fools out of them, treat them like prophets,
and they're writing in Cadillacs.
Well, unions are good things in a way,
if they're carefully run, I've always believed that.
I also believe that they can become curses
when they get into the hands of men
who only claim to love the public, but
love only their own pocketbook and their own
power.
And then there's that salesman.
He comes in, bless him, I used to
sell books myself.
That is, I went around trying it, I
never sold much, because too honest, too timid.
But a salesman comes in and he finds
your name next door, and it's Mrs. Jones,
he says, how nice to see you.
He found out next door who you are.
Also, he's inquired about your family.
Did Jim get back from the warrior?
He wants to sell you something.
The unregenerate world feigns its love for the
most part, except for its own tiny circles.
But the spirit implants real love, unto unfeigned
love of the brethren.
And the love of a Christian is not
a feigned love.
I've had it said of this church that
it's very friendly, and I've also heard it
said of this church that it's quite unfriendly.
I think perhaps a happy medium would be
the truth.
You'll find friendliness here if you smile and
look friendly.
You'll probably be passed up if you look
as if you didn't want to be a
friend.
But I have been in churches where they
just fawned over you, haven't you?
I remember years ago visiting a church.
I just sat back there, looked straight ahead,
and pretty soon the pastor came around.
And he fawned over me, and you'd think
I was Eisenhower's twin brother.
They didn't know he had.
And he didn't know who I was.
To me it would have been anybody else
the same.
But I didn't quite accept that.
It was a little too much.
When you love me too much, brother, I'm
worried about you.
Love me enough and it's all right.
Don't love me at all, I'll pray for
you.
But when it gets to be fawning love,
it's feigned love.
Now, the Holy Ghost gives us love that
is real.
It's real love.
You know that real love isn't always fawning
over its object.
Real love sometimes rebukes.
The sharpest book in the New Testament, do
you know what it is?
The sharpest book in the New Testament, 1
John.
The apostle of love also could wield the
paddle more vigorously than any other apostle.
So the loving John could lay it on
when he needed to.
He that loveth his son whippeth him betimes,
scripture says.
And God loves us and whippeth us betimes.
And if we love each other, it doesn't
necessarily mean that we love them with a
meek, harmless, fawning love.
But we love them for their soul's sake,
and we love them in God.
Unto one thing, love of the brethren.
Then he says, see now that ye love
one another.
Obviously then, this love is not a wild
plant that will grow of itself.
It is there in the heart by divine
planting, but it must be cultivated.
Dandelions will grow without cultivation.
Love must be cultivated.
The human heart must be cultivated.
We must work on it.
We must pray, search the word, and obey,
and believe, and humble ourselves, and open our
minds to the incoming Holy Ghost, so that
we may cultivate and see that we love
one another.
Then he says, out of a pure heart,
and I can only pass that by for
time's sake, and say that no other kind
of heart can really love truly, because the
heart to love truly must love unselfishly.
Unselfish love does not exploit its object, and
it doesn't ask anything in return.
That is so lofty that the modern world
knows little or nothing about it.
But it's out of a pure heart.
Then he says, fervently, and I close by
reminding you that God hates everything that is
half way.
He hates half-minded people.
You are double-minded, he said.
Now, a double mind is a mind that
is half one way and half the other.
And God hates the double mind.
He says, no man who prays with a
double mind, he'd expect to get anything.
Have some kind of mind.
Settle for one, but let it be all
one thing.
Don't let it be a divided mind, for
that's what a double mind is.
They used to call them Sunday Christians in
the country.
They said they had Sunday religion.
And they used to say, quaintly, that they
hung their religion up with their new tune
in the closet when they got home Sunday
night, and never put it on again until
the next Sunday morning.
Now, that's being double-minded.
And God hates all double-mindedness because it
isn't real.
He says we are to love fervently out
of a pure heart.
Fervent love.
Fiery love.
Fervid love.
And God says that Ephraim was a cake
not turned, and you know what that is.
I might ask for a show of hands
how many had cakes for breakfast this morning.
I was brought up on buckwheat cakes.
And I know what a half-turned cake
is.
It's a half-baked one.
And the Lord hates half-baked things.
He wants it to be baked all the
way through.
And then he talks about lukewarm.
Now, I want to ask you this question,
and send you home with this metaphysical problem
on your mind.
Is a bottle half-full of something, half
-full or half-empty?
I don't know myself.
And is lukewarm water half-warm or half
-cold?
Tell me, Tom, after church.
Incidentally, I got a long five-page letter
from a brother in California, vigorously taking me
to task for saying that Tom here was
Irish.
He declared he was nothing of the sort.
But I'll talk about that later.
But what I wanted to say was that
what God wants here is not a half
-anything.
What I start to say is, is a
half-Christian, a half-sinner, a half-Christian.
I don't know, but I do know this.
God will sweep the whole business out together.
It will have nothing to do with half
-stuff.
He says that we are to be filled
unto the half-fullness of God.
Never.
For God to say a thing like that,
he wouldn't be God.
Filled unto the fullness of God, he says.
Not unto the half-fullness.
God has nothing to do with half-full
things.
He gives us a whole day, not a
half-day.
He gives us a whole personality, not a
half-personality.
A whole mind, not a half-mind.
A whole salvation, not a half-salvation.
And he expects our love to be a
whole love, fervent, and not half-cold.
Well, that's a little outline.
You're welcome to it.
Think it over.
See now that you have purified your soul
by being the truth through the spirit unto
one thing, love of the brethren.
Now see to it that that love goes
to work, and you really do love each
other out of a pure heart, fervent.
That's Peter's exhortation.
I pray that it may be taken to
our hearts and may do us good.