I would just like to steal a few
moments of my own time this morning to
bear witness to how wonderful the faithfulness of
God is in doing some remarkable things on
our behalf.
I mentioned the fact that out in the
entrance of the hall you'll find some literature
that I brought along that'll tell you a
little bit about Northeastern Bible College, which is
located, a lot of people ask me where
is it located, it's up in the northern
part of the state of New Jersey.
If you could draw a line right from
Times Square west for 20 miles or a
little bit more, you would be right on
the heart of our campus.
We're in a little town, it's a millionaire's
town, but I quickly add we live on
the other side of the tracks.
There is a railroad that runs through this
little town, but it is a very high
-class community, and for many years the school
was located there, I think since the beginning
of the century, when it was a very
high-class boys boarding school, and it's had
ups and downs fortunes until we inherited it
or brought it in as the campus of
Northeastern Bible College in 1951 or so.
I did want to tell you a very
wonderful thing that happened, though.
The other morning, I think it was, I
was telling you just a little bit about
the origin of the school and how it
began in my heart and mind, and so
when we had a few students who gathered
with us, and by the time we opened
the school, we had, I think, seven, seven
students, and we began in the buildings of
the Brookdale Baptist Church there in Bloomfield, and
my idea was just to farm these kids
out in the homes of the people, but
it never occurred to me that we might
have girls.
I wanted fellows.
Now, when you get fellows, you're going to
get girls, you know that, or vice versa,
and so it wasn't very long before young
ladies began to say, can we come to
school too?
Well, I didn't quite know what to do
with them.
We farmed them out for a little bit
in the homes around about, but soon discovered
that that doesn't work.
There are varying disciplines in homes.
Some homes are very easygoing, have no rules
at all.
Kids could go to bed when they wished,
get up when they liked, and so on.
Others were very, very strict, and so the
whole thing was a mishmash, and I realized
that pretty quickly, so we began to search
around and hunt for some place to settle
in.
Well, it was a futile search, and for
a whole year or so, I looked all
over the area, trying to find some big
mansion or some place that we could find
as our headquarters.
Then, one day, I looked across the street
from the church, and there out in the
middle of a field, really a little swamp,
was an old house, and the kids of
the neighborhood, whenever they have an old house
in a neighborhood, they always soon invest it
with a haunted quality.
You know, it's an old haunted house.
Nothing about it was haunted, but it was
an old place, and the thought occurred to
me that maybe we could get that house
and use it as a girl's dormitory, and
so one day, I plucked up enough courage
to walk up the path, and there was
an old gentleman sitting on the front porch
in a rocking chair, and I came up
to him, introduced myself, and I said, I
thought I might as well get right at
it, because he looked like a man of
few words, and it turned out that way.
I said, would you like to sell this
house?
He looked at me, he said, are you
crazy enough to want to buy it?
Well, that took the breath out of me
a bit, you know, and I said, well,
uh, uh, yeah, yeah, I think I am.
He said, how much?
I said, how much you want?
He said, how much you give me?
So, I thought, well, he's going to be
blunt.
I didn't have a dime in my pocket,
so I said, give you a thousand dollars.
Now, this is a big three-story house,
a nice big place.
He said, sold.
Now, I said, look, uh, just a minute.
That's awful fast.
I said, I don't have the money right
now.
Can you wait till I get it?
He said, you said you wanted to buy
it, didn't you?
I said, yep.
He said, take your time.
I said, do I have to sign any
papers?
He said, what for?
Well, I said, I got to sign something,
don't I?
He said, you said you want to buy
it?
I said, yep.
He said, I said I'd sell it.
He said, yep.
He said, you said you'd give me a
thousand dollars?
I said, yep.
He said, I said, sold, sold.
He said, that's all we need.
Your word's as good as your bond.
So, then I had to go out and
hunt for a thousand dollars.
Got a few men together, and just as
I walked away from this gentleman feeling, what
in the world have I done?
I bought a house for a thousand dollars.
I knew it needed fixing up.
It was old.
Little did I know how much fixing up
it needed, because it took 40 gallons of
white paint just to be outside.
It was so dry that when you put
the brush, it just sucked it right out.
You couldn't walk him down.
You just went, you know, from the bucket
to the shingles, and we finally got that
thing.
Well, anyway, he said on the way out,
he said, oh, by the way, mister, he
said, you just bought the house, but you
didn't buy the ground.
I said, what are you saying?
He said, I don't own the ground, you
know.
I just own the house.
Well, then I was in a pickle.
Here I got a house, and it's sitting
on somebody else's ground.
How dumb can you be?
And furthermore, Lord, how'd you let me?
I began to blame the Lord.
It's his fault, you know.
He let me stumble into this.
Well, there was a lot of detail in
between, but finally, we were able eventually to
get both the land and the house and
got it fixed up.
But the main thing I want to tell
you about it is this.
We were not in that house more than
three or four weeks with the girls deposited
there in a dormitory when we heard about
the campus in Essex Fells, and so we
moved up there.
And this house, then I turned it over
to the Brookdale Baptist Church, and it became
a missionary or a home, rather, for the
lady who was in charge of all of
our missionary apartments that we had for missionaries.
And still, we didn't own the land.
And I found out who owned it, and
it was owned by a Jewish man, a
developer, a very well-known developer in that
area who was noted for taking tracts of
land and really developing them very wonderfully.
I went to see him.
His name was Mr. Levine.
And in my dealings with this Jewish gentleman,
I want to say I've never met a
more honest, square, trustworthy man in my whole
life.
When I hear about Jewish connivery and how
Jews take advantage, I always say, but I
know one who never did.
He was more honest than a lot of
people I knew who were even Christians, to
tell you the truth.
Well, I went to see him, and he
said, no, I can't sell you that land.
He said, because there's a big highway going
to come up through here someday.
Well, it was a dream at that time.
People talked about the Garden State Parkway, which
was going to be a main drag all
the way from the southern part of the
state, connecting eventually with New York State Highway
up in New York State.
And he said, it's going to come right
straight through this area, and I'm going to
sell off this land to the state, and
I'm going to get every nickel I can
out of the state of New Jersey.
And, believe you me, they're going to pay
a lot for it, because they can't finish
this highway without going through my property.
And he said, it looks to me like
they're going to go right through that house.
So, he said, if you own it, you
better move it.
And where in the world am I going
to move it?
Well, there's a lot down at the end
of this plot.
If you want to move it, he said,
I'll, I promised the old lady who owned
it that if she ever had to move
this house, I would put a foundation under
it and a cellar.
I said, will you do it for me?
He said, sure, you move it, and I'll
put the cellar under it, and the foundation,
and so on.
Well, in between time, we put a lady,
one of those mothers-in-Israel type of
persons, an Irish lady with a warm heart,
who was the matron of our mission homes,
and we put her in that house, and
she was living there when that highway that
was a dream began to inch its way
northward, and people began to realize that pretty
soon it would be up in our neighborhood,
in our area.
And one bitter cold winter week, the surveyors
came up in that area, and they were
out right outside the house surveying the property,
and Mrs. Fleming, this lady with her, you
know, she always has the coffee pot on.
No matter what time of day you go
in, there's a hot cup of coffee waiting
for you, and she saw these fellows out
there, you know, doing this and blowing on
their hands, and she couldn't stand for that,
so she opened the window and hollered, boys,
you want a hot cup of coffee?
Come on in.
Boy, did they come in.
Four or five of them, they came in,
and they sat there, warmed up, got their
coffee, and then went back to work.
Little after lunch, same story, she called them
in again, so twice a day, they got
a good cup of coffee and some cookies
and stuff, and Mrs. Fleming, she took care
of them.
By about three days, they were soon calling
her mom, you know, Mom Fleming, and one
day, one of those men said, you got
a nice house here, Mom, very comfortable and
very nice.
Yeah, she says it is, but I'm going
to lose it.
He said, what do you mean you're going
to lose it?
Well, she said, you know, you, that's what
you fellows are here for, aren't you?
You're, we're building a road up here, they
say, a big highway.
It's going to go right through my house,
and they're going to have to tear it
down or move it or do something, so
I'm going to lose it, and one of
the men who was the head of the
crew looked at the rest of them and
said, yeah, is that so?
Is that so?
Hey, Bill, get out those blueprints, and so
they spread them out on the kitchen floor,
and they studied them, and one of them
says, sure enough, you're right, Mrs. Fleming, that
road is scheduled to come right here, and
we're going to have to knock down your
house, I'm afraid, and one of the fellows
said, it doesn't have to, does it?
One of them said, no, why shouldn't it?
So, they took a pencil out, blue pencil,
and they moved the road over like this,
running around, and that's how they built that
Garden State Park where you go up there
today, and there's a curve in the highway
right there, went right on past, we still
got the house, we got the land, we
got the whole works, but they had to
move a highway to do it, and we
just feel the Lord did that for us.
Well, we could tell you many, many stories,
and I tell you that this morning just
to encourage you to still believe that our
God is in the miracle-working business, and
He does work miracles for us.
They're not always big miracles, you know, they
can be little ones, but anyhow, they're miracles,
and they are the revelation of the hand
of God.
Now, we better get talking about what Peter's
got to say to us this morning, and
I want you to get the flow, if
I can, of this first chapter.
That's about all we'll cover, but up to
this point, I'm trying to show you how
Peter has in mind an objective.
He wants to comfort and prepare, if you
please, and strengthen his readers for the conflict
that is yet ahead.
They're going to go through some hard and
harsh times of temptation, and struggle, and even
persecution, and they must be prepared for that.
They cannot come into it innocently and unaware,
and so he must get them prepared, and
in that process of preparation, before he begins
to speak directly on this subject, he identifies
them, and we've shown you up to now
how that he points out where that God
has put them where they are providentially, in
order that there they may be his mouthpiece,
his spokesman to spread the seed of the
word, and then he points out to them
that they are unique in every sense of
the word, because the entire divine trinity, God
the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son
of God, have all been active in their
salvation, and he reminds them now that they
are members of a entirely new family.
They have a new relationship to God, the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and having been born into that family, and
it's a birth relationship, they are also heirs.
Wonderful to know that they're heirs.
They have a great and a magnificent inheritance
which is reserved in heaven for them, and
they're kept for it, and they rejoice in
that fact, although he says, I'm not unmindful
that you're right now, for a little time,
you're suffering a lot of temptations, manifold temptations,
but I'd like to remind you that this
is the trial of your faith, and you
mustn't recoil from that, because the trial of
your faith will eventually purify it to the
point where, when you stand in the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ, your strengthened, purified
faith will be to his honor and praise
and glory.
This person whom now you don't see him
with the eye of sight, but with the
eye of faith, and you're in love with
him, and ultimately, you will receive the end
of your faith, the complete completion of the
salvation of your souls.
Now, having raised the subject of salvation, maybe
we could accuse Peter, or is it our
understanding, of doing what we preachers often do.
We find some detours here and there, and
take off once in a while, until our
audience wonders what in the world that's got
to do with the main subject, until we
get back on the main highway.
But, he has now raised the subject of
salvation.
That's the great subject of the bible.
We were talking the other evening with one
of the ladies at the table who said
she was reading at the moment the a
-biography of the great bible teacher Donald Gray
Barnhouse.
I knew Dr. Barnhouse personally, and had wonderful
times of fellowship with him, and I remember
that Dr. Barnhouse used to say that you
can summarize the story of the bible in
one single sentence.
He used to say that the bible is
the story of man's complete ruin in sin,
and God's perfect remedy in Christ, period.
And, that's a very good summarization of the
subject of the bible.
Its main subject is man's reconciliation to God,
man's redemption, and all of God's activity to
bring this creature whom he made in his
own image and likeness, but who, through the
disaster of sin, lost his relationship with God,
and now he must be won back.
And, the whole story of the bible, no
matter what the subject material is, is related
to God's great plan of salvation.
And, Peter, now having spoken of the great
salvation in which these believers are rejoicing, waiting
for its final installment indeed, this great theme,
he says, was the object of prophetic search.
Even the prophets found some problems in this
subject.
It wasn't that they didn't understand the plan
of salvation, so much as it was that
there were some time elements involved here.
They saw a messiah, they saw a redeemer,
they saw the seed of the woman coming,
and he was suffering, and he would be
bruised as Isaiah the prophet depicts him, and
yet they saw him reigning in splendor, and
glory, and power, and they couldn't quite put
those two together, as indeed the very at
this very moment the Jewish reader of the
old testament has difficulty in bringing those two
together.
What these prophets did not see was that
there was a time span between the sufferings
of Christ and the glory that should follow,
and you and I are living in that
time span between those two great points.
We're living in the age of grace, in
this period, this church age in which God
is calling out of all peoples a people
for his name.
We are a unique people, let me remind
you.
The church is unique.
The church is a special group of people.
Old testament saints were not in the church,
and great tribulation saints won't be in the
church.
The church is a special, unique group of
redeemed people whose history is written between the
coming of the Holy Spirit at the day
of Pentecost, and that exciting moment which we
call the rapture, when the church will be
completed.
We are unique.
People often ask, do you think there will
be any class distinctions in heaven?
Of course there will be class distinctions in
heaven.
We will not all be like little sausages,
spiritual sausages, so long, so thick, and so
wide, exactly alike, stamped out.
I dare to believe that even in eternity,
the church will be a separate, distinct entity
in all of heaven, for through the church
will be displayed the manifold grace of God
to all beings, whoever they are, in heaven,
earth, and under the earth.
And, the church is not revealed in the
old testament.
These prophets wrestled with this.
As they dealt with the subject of salvation,
they were perplexed when they saw a suffering
savior or messiah, and a reigning, glorious one.
The sufferings of Christ, and the glory that
should follow, was a perplexity to them, and
so they searched as diligently as they could
to find the key to this, and that's
what Peter says.
They searched what, or what manner of time,
the spirit of Christ which was in them
did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings
of Christ, and the glory that should follow.
And to them it was revealed that not
to themselves, but unto us, they did minister
these things which are now reported unto you
by them that have preached the gospel unto
you with the holy ghost sent down from
heaven, which things the angels desire to look
into.
This subject of salvation was not only object
of prophetic search, it was the subject of
apostolic preaching.
It's what the apostles preached, God's great salvation.
That preaching was accompanied by the power, and
miracles, and signs of the holy spirit testifying
to the fact that this was a divinely
authenticated message which they brought.
And, in addition to all of this, this
whole subject of salvation was a matter of
angelic curiosity.
The angels were curious about this.
They couldn't quite understand what God was doing,
what God was about to accomplish, and so
you read, these are the things which the
angels desired to look into.
This great subject of salvation, there it is.
And, you know, it's still a great subject.
Are you not overwhelmed every once in a
while when you think that God has saved
you from your sins and brought you to
himself?
You may not understand many of the vagaries
of theology.
You may not be able to delve into
the deeper mysteries of the word, but if
you have been redeemed by the blood of
Christ, you can daily walk in the exciting,
exhilarating thrill of the fact that you are
the object of God's redeeming grace, and he
saved you.
That's great.
If you know nothing else, that's the most
important thing to know.
And so, Peter, having raised that subject, now,
at long last, he's about ready to make
some exhortations to them of a practical nature.
So, he says in verse 13, Wherefore, gird
up the loins of your mind, be sober,
and hope to the end for the grace
that's to be brought unto you at the
revelation of Jesus Christ.
So, here, and then he goes on, As
obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the
former lusts in your ignorance, but as he
which hath called you is holy, so be
ye holy in all manner of conversation, because
it is written, Be ye holy, for I
am holy.
What is his exhortation now?
That, as believers living here in the midst
of unconverted pagan people, your life is to
be characterized and marked by holiness.
Now, everybody in our world is more concerned
about happiness than they are holiness.
Do you notice that?
Everybody wants to be happy.
They want to be happy.
I wonder sometimes when I hear interviews on
television and radio, and they ask, What's the
most important thing to you in your life?
Well, to be happy.
We're going to get shocked someday when somebody
says, Oh, I long to be holy.
Our culture doesn't understand that.
Holiness.
And, Peter now says that what you're to
do as obedient children is this.
Gird up the loins of your mind.
Be sober.
Now, he calls the Christian to a neatly
girded mind.
You know, the Bible says, As a man
thinketh in his heart, so is he.
A lot of the Lord's children are characterized
by loose and flabby thinking about divine things.
I'm a great believer in the importance of
Bible doctrine.
I think that a church, a congregation of
people, ought to be indoctrinated.
They ought to understand the great basic truths
of our Christian faith.
There's too much preaching, I fear, today on
contemporary subjects.
I think I don't get invited to certain
circles to speak, because I don't have a
series on how to do things, like how
to get along with a homely wife.
Four ways of being victorious, even though you
drive an old, broken-down Chevy.
How to curb your temper.
Five keys to self-control.
That's the kind of stuff that's being dished
out today from our pulpits.
Frothy, light stuff.
Sometimes it's clothed in what we call seminars.
You know, my mother and father never knew
how to spell that word, or my grandparents.
They never had a seminar in parenting, how
to raise kids.
They raised us on some good old-fashioned
oatmeal and a razor strap.
My father had an old-fashioned razor strap.
He used to strap his razor, you know,
and boy, I tasted that lots of times.
I used to hide it, bury it in
the yard, but I had a squealer of
a sister, and she saw where I hid
it, and she blackmailed me to death.
Threatened to tell my mother and father where
the old razor strap was.
Well, now today, I suppose my parents would
be arrested for child abuse, but so it
is.
Now, Peter is calling to gird up the
loins of your mind, bring into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ.
He uses a picture, you know, of the
people in those days wore loose, flowing garments,
the gentlemen as well, but if a man
wanted to run or run a race, what
did he do with these long, flowing garments?
Well, he had a girdle that held his
garments to his waist, so he would tuck
these garments up under the girdle, nice and
tight, so that his legs were free.
He wasn't hampered or hindered in movement.
So, Peter says it's like that with your
mind.
Gird up the loins of your mind, so
that you're not flabby and loose in your
thinking, and it's interesting to notice that in
the Greek, it's the aorist tense that means
a once-for-all completed action, so you
could translate this verse, wherefore having put out
of the way once for all everything that
would impede the free action of your mind,
then he says, obey and hope for the
to the end for the grace that's to
be brought to you with the revelation of
Jesus Christ.
But the main thrust here is a call
to holiness, to be like him who has
called us and redeemed us, and to be
holy.
Oh, what a need there is in our
day for holiness, eh?
We've been disappointed, we've been shocked by what
we read and hear and see of great,
or at least outstanding Christian leaders who've been
marked by unholiness of life, and our world
holds many Christian leaders, nearly all of them
now, in suspect.
They think we're all alike, but you know,
friends, there's no substitute for a holy life,
none, and when a man or woman displays
holiness in his life, he is being a
real witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, I hasten on to say as we
come to the end of this chapter, toward
the end of it, that the other thing
that ought to mark the Christian, and that
Peter calls him to, is this, verse 22,
seeing you have purified, seeing you purified your
souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit
unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that
you love one another with a pure heart
fervently.
Now, if you know there were many words,
several words, I should say, for love in
the Greek language, just, and we often say
the Greeks had a word for it, so
they did.
They wanted to speak about a particular kind
or brand of love, affection, they had a
specific word to cover that.
We don't have that in our mother tongue.
We are very poor in our expression.
We have one word, L-O-V-E,
now we even reduce that to a heart,
and so on your bumper you see, I
heart my dog, red heart, you know, I
love my dog.
We even reduce it to L-U-V,
I love something.
Well, that word love is a fascinating word
in English, can mean a lot of things,
but we only got one word to explain
it.
Sometimes we see two kids sit in the
back of church behind a pillar somewhere, they're
teenagers, and they titter, and they laugh, and
they pass notes and pictures, and they sit
so close that you can't even get a
piece of paper between them, and we say,
ha ha ha, it's puppy love.
They're in love, those two kids, L-O
-V-E, or later on when they mature,
or another couple comes down the aisle for
a wedding, a Christian wedding, the preacher sees
something that oftentimes the congregation never sees.
He sees the expression on the faces of
two people, born-again Christians who are now
being united in the bonds of holy marriage,
and there's an expression on their faces that
ought to be captured by some artist or
photographer.
I remember one wedding we had where the
guy, we rehearsed everything perfectly, smooth as silk,
and we came up to the part where
he was to say, I, Albert, take thee,
Patricia, to be my wedded wife, and he
got started, and he stopped, and I thought,
oh no, he's forgotten what he's supposed to
say, but he looked at her, and right
out loud, he said, boy, do I love
you.
Man, that just blew that thing into smithereens.
Everybody starts sniffling, and blowing, and coughing all
over the place, you know, but it was
great, and how do you explain that, that
attitude, and that, you see, that's love.
What, you mean the same thing as those
kids back there?
No, no, not quite, same word though, L
-O-V-E.
Then, I pick up the newspaper, and I
find that some Hollywood harlot who's been married
three times, or four times, she's going to
marry another guy, or a guy who's been
married also two or three times, and when
they interview her, she says, for the first
time in my life, I'm in love.
L-O-V-E, same word.
Gosh, it must, there ought to be some
other word, don't you think, to explain whatever
that is that she's talking about?
Or, look at the face of that lady
bending over the crib of a fever-stricken
child's mother.
She hasn't slept herself for nearly 48 hours,
and they're urging her to sleep, and to
eat, but no, she can't.
Why?
Because she's so desperately in love with that
child of hers.
We call it mother love.
Then, we open the book of God, and
we read, for God so loved the world.
L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E,
L-O-V-E, same word.
There ought to be some other words.
Then, I walk outside, and I see two
people banging around with some catgut over a
net, and one of them yells, 40 love!
L-O-V-E, same word.
Man, there's got to be something.
So, the Greeks had it.
They had different words, and if there's any
man who would understand the distinction in the
words that the Greeks used, this man, Peter,
did, and it's rather interesting to notice what
he does in this passage.
You see, there are, among the words that
the Greeks had in their vocabulary, were two
that you're familiar with, I know.
One is the word phileo, which means love,
of course, and, like, for instance, we have
the city of Philadelphia.
Adolphos is the Greek word for brother, and
phileo is to love.
So, Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love.
I mean, it's supposed to be.
See, that's it.
Phileo, to love.
Then, there's another word, agapapo.
Now, that word was not used very much,
even in classical Greek.
So, whenever they wanted to talk, when the
writers of the New Testament wanted to talk
about the affection of God, this characteristic of
God which we call the love of God,
they either had to coin another word, or
borrow a word from the existing language, and
infuse it with a different and fuller meaning,
which they did.
They borrowed the word agapapo, and it is
always used of God and his love.
Never do you read that phileo is used
of God.
Always agapapo.
Now, at the risk of knowing that I'm,
one of the dear brothers prayed here the
other day, and I said, amen to that
very much.
He said, bless our brother who will be
bringing things both new and old, and I
thought that'd be a lot old, but what
I'm saying to you now, I'm sure you
know.
You remember the 21st chapter of the Gospel
of John.
You'd think the Gospel of John ended at
the end of the 20th chapter.
Looks like it ought to end right there.
These things are written that you might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the son of
the living God, and believing you might have
life through his name.
Amen.
That's the end of the gospel, for John
has proven his case.
But, there's a whole chapter that follows.
The next chapter, after these things, after what
thing?
After the resurrection, after the crucifixion, Peter was
the instigator of it.
He said to the other disciples, I go
fishing.
Well, you'd expect that.
He's a fisherman.
If you're a natural born fisherman, you get
where you think there's fish drives you nuts,
unless you get a fishing rod in your
hand to go after, and he's a born
fisherman.
But, you see, the point is that that
wasn't just a mere little fishing expedition to
get out of his system, something he hadn't
been able to do for two or three
years since he was accompanying Jesus on his
preaching tours.
That would have been a simple thing, and
it would be strange that John should even
record this.
Why bother recording, in the inspired word of
God, a little fishing expedition?
No, there's more implied.
Back in the original language, it's as if
Peter is actually saying something like this, I
have had it with this outfit.
I'm through.
I once was a fisherman.
I'm going back to fishing, and I'm going
to stay with it.
I'm going to fish for fish.
I'm done.
And several of them said, we go with
you.
That was a dangerous moment for the cause
of Christ.
Our Lord was depending upon them to spread
the news of Calvary, that God was in
Christ there, reconciling the world unto himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them, because there he
made him to be sin for us.
He knew no sin that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him.
What a message to preach!
And the resurrection, he's depending upon them to
bear that testimony, and Peter's saying, I'm shutting
it off.
I'm not going to be bothered with it.
I'm going back to fishing for fish.
And you know the story.
They went out, and it was a mess.
It was a failure.
They didn't catch anything until the Lord came
along, and he performed the miracle.
He revealed himself to them.
But then the whole purpose, I think, of
that chapter begins to show itself when the
Lord Jesus singled out this man, Peter, and
probed his soul.
And in that conversation, and it does not
come out in our English, you just keep
using that word love.
Peter, lovest thou me?
Yea, Lord, thou knowest I love thee.
Peter, second time, do you really love me?
Yea, Lord, you know I love you.
L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E.
No, it is not that at all.
He is using these two words that we
referred to a moment ago, phileo and agapao.
Two times over, Jesus uses that higher word.
Agapao is the higher word.
Phileo is the lesser word.
Now, you have to understand what's involved in
these words.
You see, this higher word, agapao, means the
love that is to be expressed as agapao
love is a love that's called out of
one's heart by an awakened sense of value
in an object which causes one to prize
it.
Neither of these words have in them a
maximum of emotion.
They have a minimum of emotion, and a
maximum of evaluation.
And what Jesus is saying to Peter is
this.
Peter, do I call out of your heart
such emotion for me that you prize me
above all else and everyone else, and therefore
I have awakened in you, have I awakened
in you a sense of my value so
that you prize me above all others?
And it was that that Peter was honest
about, you remember, and he said, Lord, you
know everything, and you know my heart.
You know that I phileo thee, just to
be clumsy in the use of that word.
Now, this is a different kind of love
than Jesus is talking about.
It's an unimpassioned love, a friendly love.
What it really means is it's a love
called out of one's heart as a response
to the pleasure one takes in a person
or an object.
Lord, I'm always happy to be with you.
I feel good when I'm with you, and
with these others, your followers.
I take pleasure in being with them and
with you.
That's how I feel.
That's not what the Lord is asking for.
Have I awakened in you, Peter, such a
sense of my value that you prize me
above everyone and everything else?
When our Lord said, lovest thou me more
than these, I don't think he was saying
more than these fish.
I don't think he was saying more than
these disciples.
I don't believe that Jesus ever sets you
against me, and we against they, in our
love for for him.
Never.
It's not a competitive thing at all, but
he's asking, do you love me more than
anything, anybody, anything at all?
Have I awakened in you that kind of
love, Peter?
You prize me above everything else?
Lord, you know everything.
You know, I can't, I can't say that,
and so the thing goes on down.
Now, Peter, remembering that, writes, seeing you have
purified your souls and obeying the truth through
the spirit unto unsaned love of the brethren,
what word is that?
Agapapo.
Then, see that you, now he changes the
word, phileo, see that you love one another
with a pure heart, fervently.
Strange that he should play with those two
words, but he's very practical, this Peter.
I think he knows what we're like.
Now, let me conclude this.
We say we love one another.
I can say I love you this morning.
I hope you can say you love me.
That's asking a lot, you know it?
I don't know you from Adam.
I don't know your name.
I know your faces.
I have a terrible time getting your name
and your face together, and I have to
say, you know who I mean.
What's his face?
Eh, not what's his name, but what's his
face?
And I don't know you.
I don't know much about you.
I don't know whether you're generous or stingy.
I don't know whether you're miserable to get
along with, or nice and pleasant.
I don't know whether you're a happy person,
or you're a gloomy gus.
Makes no difference what the weather looks like.
It's going to be foul weather before the
day's out.
Maybe that's your attitude, or maybe you're just
an up kind of a, I don't know
a thing about you.
So how can I honestly say I love
you?
I'll tell you why.
The reason why I love you is this.
God thought so much of you that he
chose you in his sovereign grace to be
his child, and if God thinks you're that
worth that much, then I can do no
less than feel toward you as he must
feel toward you.
He loves you, and I love you because
he loved you, and you love me for
the same reason.
It's got nothing to do with our friendship
or continued fellowship.
It's primarily a matter of evaluation.
God, you are God's child.
You're valuable.
God prized you so much that he gave
his son as the price of your redemption.
If God thinks that much of you, how
can I think anything less of you as
a child of God?
But it has some practical expressions, too.
Up in the mountains of North Carolina, a
little few miles from Asheville, we have a
little cottage.
We go up there all too infrequently, and
you know that's Baptist country up there.
You take any Saturday newspaper, and I can
draw a line from the little town where
we live, five miles, and in that circle
I counted 64 Baptist churches.
They got every kind of name you can
name.
You know, Three Peas in a Pod Baptist
Church, the No-Hell Baptist, the All-Hell
Baptist.
They got them all, and there's a little
Baptist church right near us called Cars Hill
Baptist Church.
Now it's a little country church, and we
go there, usually on a Sunday night when
I'm up there and not preaching anywhere, and
these are simple folks.
I mean, just plain simple folks, and the
preacher is a good man.
He preaches the Bible, but he has a
tendency to kind of play loose with and
downright murder the King's English, and he has
some odd expressions, and I enjoy every one
of them.
They're really funny, but they bring pleasure.
I love to hear it.
Well, one time, not long ago, we were
there, and he was making some announcements, and
the announcements are as fascinating almost as the
sermon, covering the various phases of life, but
this one thing struck me, and it was
merely an illustration of what we found in
that little church.
There is a love for one another that
is so unique that I haven't run across
it almost anywhere else, but he got up
this night, and he said, this is a
Wednesday evening prayer meeting, he said, now folks,
Brother Johnson, you know he hurt his leg,
and he ain't able to cut no wood
for the wintertime, and the winter's going to
come on, and he's going to need wood,
and I'm asking tonight how many of you
men will be out Saturday morning, bring your
own axe, and we're going to cut some
wood for Brother Johnson.
How many of you fellers will come?
I'll bet 25 men put their hands up,
just like that, and all those guys would
be out Saturday morning helping to cut wood
for Brother Johnson, stack it up for the
wintertime.
Simple, yeah, but an expression of love, very
practical, one for the other.
There's a terrible dearth of this, isn't there,
among believers?
We get so centered in ourselves that we
forget that we're enjoined by Peter.
See that you love one another with a
pure heart, fervently, as born-again children of
God.
Be marked by holiness of life and fervency
of love in your witness for others.
Now, Lord, we thank Thee for Thy sweet
and great grace toward us.
We're nothing without Thee.
We were nothing.
We could never be anything if it were
not for that sovereign grace of God, and
for the love that Thou didst display on
the cross of Calvary that often mystifies us
and baffles us, we do nonetheless thank Thee,
and we pray, Lord, that Thou would grant
to us a heart full of love for
one another, not only for Thee, but for
those who belong to Thee, just because we
are of value to Thee.
We ask this in Christ Jesus' dear name.
Amen.