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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
This is a reading from first Peter 1:22
- 2:3.
Having
purified your souls
by your obedience to the truth,
for a sincere brotherly love, love one
another earnestly from a pure heart.
Since you have been born again,
not of perishable seed,
but of imperishable, through the living
and abiding Word of God.
For all flesh is like grass, and all
its glory, like the flower of grass,
the grass withers and the flower falls.
But the word of the Lord remains forever.
And this word is the good news
that was preached to you.
So put away
all malice, and all deceit and hypocrisy
and envy and all slander.
Like newborn infants
long for the pure spiritual milk,
that by it you may grow up into salvation.
If indeed you have
tasted that the Lord is good.
Well, good morning and
welcome to the weekend
gathering of Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm
so glad we get to be part of your weekend.
As we lean in now to our third
week of our ten week sermon series.
It's going to take us through the fall,
right up until Christmas.
We are looking at First Peter for those
ten weeks for a pretty simple reason.
The background of First Peter is
that Peter is writing to a growing church
in the midst of an antagonistic culture,
and we think there are a lot of parallels
between that church and this one,
between that culture and this one.
So we're looking at what God had to say
to this particular church
in this particular time
in order to see if perhaps, maybe
what he said to them
can help us move forward as a church.
If you have a Bible, would you open it up
to first Peter chapter one?
Totally okay to take out your phone
or tablet and use that.
And hey, if you're here this weekend
and maybe new to church, new to the Bible,
every time I reference a passage, it's
going to be on the screen behind me.
So don't feel any anxiety about that.
But if you want to hold a Bible
in your hands, there is one in the pew
in front of you
or in the back of his hall.
It's the same one I use just for you.
So we can tell you that today's reading
is on page 953.
Thanks for coming this weekend.
I bet it was a big step for you.
I'm glad you took it.
However you're getting
to first Peter chapter one,
let me hold out to you and outline.
I'm going to use the guide.
Our time together.
Three points.
Very simple.
They go like this
I want to talk about what we want, but
do not have what God has
and will share,
and how sharing changes everything.
Okay what we want but don't have
what God has
and we'll share
and how sharing changes everything.
All right, let's start with the first one.
What we want but do not have.
Two things are true of our world,
of our culture that I find fascinating.
I mean, on the one hand, there
probably has never been a culture
more infatuated
with the idea of love than ours.
I mean, we sing songs about it,
make movies about it,
write books about it, podcasts about it.
Think about how much of the media
you consume
is connected in some way to love.
I mean, I can make the argument
that most of the movies we watch,
most of the music
we listen to is aiming at love.
We love, love.
We're almost to the Christmas season,
which means at my house,
Hallmark Channel will be all that is on,
and all that they do
is make movies about love, love and snow
and small towns.
But love, love, it's love.
We love, love.
There has never been a culture
that loves love more than us.
And yet, here's
the second thing that is true.
Literally no one would
describe our culture as loving.
Think about that.
We are infatuated with love
and literally no one.
I mean no one.
There
wouldn't be a single person on the planet
who would look at American culture
in 2025 and say, you know what?
They are loving?
I mean, how many adjectives would
I have to give you
to describe our culture
before you even think about love?
We are not loving.
We love, love.
We're not any good at it.
We love love. But
we really don't know how to get it.
The the writer knows that that he's
going to talk about that in this passage.
There are two places I want you to see it.
Look first at verse 22.
The very first verse of our passage.
Here's what he says.
Having purified your souls
by your obedience to the truth
for a sincere brotherly love,
love one
another earnestly from a pure heart.
Now, one of the things
I'm trying to teach you as a Bible teacher
is that when the Bible tells you
to do something,
it's assuming I'm not doing it.
Now, do you understand that?
Like it's like telling your kids
to clean their room?
You don't say that
because you assume the room is clean.
You say that because you know it's not.
So when the writer says, hey,
I'm calling you to love from a sincere
heart to love with a sincere kind of love.
He's saying, we don't tend to do that,
but the problem with our culture
and love is that it's insincere.
That's a hard thing to hear.
A hard thing to say.
I mean, when I was working on the sermon
this week, I was thinking, you know what?
I struggle with that because I do think
most people wake up in the morning
and they want to be loving.
When we wake up in the morning,
we think, man,
I want to be the best version of myself
and I want to be kind.
I want to be friendly. I want to be warm.
I want to be loving.
But what the writer is saying
is that we might wake up that way.
But more often than we'd like to
admit, we go to bed thinking,
I'll try again tomorrow
because I wasn't as kind
I wasn't as warm in, the writer says.
That's because it's
coming from an insincere place.
Now, if you're like me and you struggle
with that, maybe this will help.
Look at what he says in chapter two,
verse one,
what we're going to have to do
if we want to love.
Here's what he says.
So put away all malice
and all deceit
and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
Know those are some words
that describe American culture.
Here's what he says.
The way you know your love is insincere
is because it isn't strong enough
to love people that you don't
naturally like.
In other words,
there are some people in your life
that are kind of easy to love.
But what the writer says is one of
the ways, you know, our love is thin.
It's weak, it's insubstantial,
is that when we get angry,
our love can't shout down our malice.
It doesn't make us live with integrity.
We're hypocritical. We're deceitful.
It doesn't make us celebrate.
Other people were envious.
It doesn't make us speak
well of other people.
We slander them.
So the writer is saying
that the true test of sincerity
and love is that it's stronger
than your negative emotions.
The true test of sincerity and love
is that you can still give it to people
that are difficult, because when you
can't, what are you saying when you can't?
Here's the reality we have a hard time
loving people when they get difficult,
and that's a problem
because everybody gets difficult.
We have a hard time
loving people when they get difficult
because the writer is saying
is that fundamentally,
we love ourselves.
Think about this list malice.
Hypocrisy, deceit, envy, slander.
Every one of those is coming
from a place of self-love.
It's coming from either pride
you've offended me
and I'm angry,
or it's coming from insecurity.
I'm not sure you'll
like me, so I'll lie to you.
But pride
is thinking up too much about yourself.
Insecurity is thinking
too little about yourself.
You know what they have in common.
You thinking about yourself.
And the writer says the problem with love.
The reason we love it
but we can't have it.
The reason we celebrate it,
but we can't live it is because fun.
The mentally, we love ourselves.
And when you force us to choose,
we choose ourself over anyone else.
Let me put it this way.
I drive through my neighborhood
a different times, and I see that
some of my neighbors have yard signs
in their in their in their yard.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's like, oh, this is the
roofing company that's doing our roof.
And sometimes, like,
their kid plays soccer.
And then sometimes it's like a political
social message, hey, just fine.
If you're in the yard sign
game, less is more. Okay,
I don't have time to read a paragraph.
Okay. If I see a paragraph, I just.
I don't care what you believe.
But there's a sign that I see in
my neighborhood says a lot of things.
And one of the big things on there
is it says,
in this house we believe love is love.
But the writer says, is it?
But is it?
If you call it love?
But it's full of malice. It's a love.
Love.
You call it love,
but it's full of envy or hypocrisy.
Or to. See.
You see, we're so bad at love.
I'm not sure what we call love.
Is actually love.
So begs the question, well,
where do you go to get better at love?
Well, I told you, my first point
is what we want and what we don't have.
Here's my second point.
What God has and will share
in God knows how to love.
In fact, this is what the Bible says in
first John chapter four verse eight.
I'm going to read it to you. Here's
what it says.
Anyone who does not love
does not know God.
Listen because God is love.
Do you know what that means? God is love.
There's a danger
because what you might think he's saying
is that if you look up in the dictionary
and you find a definition
for the word love,
that then God does
whatever that definition
says, like God always has a high score
on the scoreboard.
If you evaluated God
on the definition of love,
he would always get a ten out of ten.
That's not what he means.
He's not saying
God does love or God achieves love.
What he says is God is love.
Meaning, if you want to know
what is loving, look at what God does.
If you want to know what is loving,
look at what God says.
If you want to know what is not loving,
look at what God doesn't do
and what God doesn't say.
God is literally the embodiment of love.
In fact, only Christianity can say this.
And the reason for that is because
the Christian understanding of God,
the biblical understanding of God,
the actual nature of God is that he's one.
And yet three.
I don't want to nerd out on this,
and if you're here
and you're not a Christian,
I don't want to confuse you.
But Christianity believes.
We believe, we teach.
The Bible tells us that God is one
and yet three
father, son, and spirit,
which means from eternity past.
Because God has always existed
before he even created the universe.
Do you know what there was?
Love.
The father loved the son.
The son loved the spirit.
The spirit loved the father.
Round and round
we go. In fact, the Christian author C.S.
Lewis called this the dance of God.
That was in himself.
He had love, he had relationship.
Now this is important
because it means that God
is not fundamentally
a God of power who created us.
He is fundamentally a God of love.
Everything he does comes out of that.
He is love.
But it isn't just
that God is love, it's that he loves you.
This is what the Bible says in
Romans chapter five verse eight.
Listen to this.
It says, But God shows his love for us
in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
But God shows his love for us
in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
God is love.
But that doesn't mean anything to me
unless he loves me.
Well, here's how God shows his love for
me while I was at my worst,
he loved me with his best.
Now, this verse teaches us
two things about God and about his love.
It teaches us two things about ourselves.
Here's the first thing you and I
are not actually lovable.
But God demonstrates
his love toward us
in this while we were yet sinners.
Now, you need to hear this because you've
grown up in a culture of affirmation.
You've grown up in a world that tells you
you're beautiful, you're wonderful,
you're smart.
You can be anything you want to be.
You can do anything you want to do that
our culture says the way you love someone
is you celebrate them.
The problem with that is it's a treadmill
you can never get off of.
Let me explain what I mean.
I met my wife, Amy,
when I was 18 years old,
and like most 18 year
old guys, I thought I was pretty great.
So if she had told me at the time, Zac,
you are the most handsome man
I have ever seen in my entire life.
And so I love you.
I would have said that makes total sense.
If she had said to me,
you are the smartest guy in the room
and therefore I love you,
I would have said we have a lot in common.
But here's the problem though.
I'm not 18 anymore. I'm 42
and I'm not.
The most handsome guy in the room,
and I'm not the smartest guy in the room.
And if that's the foundation of my wife's
love for me,
then I won't be able to sleep tonight.
I'll have to figure out
how to get more handsome
and how to keep her
from going into any rooms.
Do you see?
You think the idea that you're
lovable is a good one?
But it's a terrifying one.
Because if love is based on your
performance, you must keep performing.
God says, listen, I got to tell.
I got to break it to you.
In a culture of affirmation,
please hear me on this.
God is saying,
you're not as great as you think you are.
And here's the problem.
Our culture says, you're so great,
you're so special.
And what do we go to bed at night
thinking, I'm really not.
That's why even though we live
in a culture of affirmation,
when we're anxious and.
Depressed than we've ever been,
because people keep lying to us.
But God says, you're really not as great
as you think, and that resonates.
But here's the second thing
you're not lovable.
But here's the second thing.
But you can be completely.
Loved in Jesus.
But God demonstrates
his own love towards us in this.
While we were yet sinners,
we were not brave.
We were not smart.
We were not good looking.
We couldn't be anything.
We've made a mess of the world
while we were yet sinners.
Christ died for us.
The Bible says when we were at our worst,
God came through the person
Jesus, the God man.
And he lived among us,
and he lived a righteous, sinful life.
And he went to the cross,
and he became our sin.
And he came up under the anger
and judgment and wrath of God,
which I deserved.
And it was poured out on him, so that his
dying words were, it is finished.
And he died.
And three days later
he rose from the dead.
And he went on to ascend into heaven,
where he's the King of heaven.
And he says, Zach,
if you will realize you're not lovable,
then you can realize in
me you can be love forever.
And you see the.
Good news. Of that, friends.
Is it
untether me from the pride and insecurity
that are ruining me.
Because if your pride
and your anger are destroying your family.
Then you need to hear this.
You are not lovable.
But if you're insecurity
is making you disingenuous
and envious,
you need to hear this in Jesus.
You can be completely loved.
You see, the idea is that the experience
of the genuine love of God.
Changes us at our very course
with the writer.
Says in verse 23, look at this,
and if you're here
and you're not a Christian,
maybe you've heard this phrase
you never knew what it meant,
but now you do it with me.
At verse 23,
since you have been born again, there
it is not of perishable seed,
but of imperishable,
through the living and abiding
Word of God.
What he's saying
is that this idea that I'm not lovable,
but I don't have to be this untethered
from moral performance
and from it,
and from a disingenuous affirmation.
And this experience of the genuine
love of God in Jesus is a seed
that gets planted in my head
and in my heart,
and it begins
at my very core to change me.
Who would you be if you weren't so proud?
Who would
you be if you weren't so insecure?
What would your family look like?
What would our country look like?
What would social media look like?
It just be those videos of the little
fruit babies eating themselves,
because those are pretty cute.
Do you hear me?
The message of the Bible to you
is be born again in Jesus.
Stop believing your culture.
You're not that great.
But it's okay to say that.
Because God loves you in Jesus.
Have you had this experience?
Sometimes people say to me, well,
you know,
how do I know if I've become a Christian?
And it's pretty simple.
The seed is in your head
and in your heart.
I'm not lovable,
but in Jesus I'm completely loved.
We're going to baptize today.
Let me let me say this.
I mean, I confess something about
myself. It's kind of weird.
I'm a.
Compulsive shower.
Okay.
If you're a therapist,
you can send me an email.
Don't charge me.
But you can tell me why
I cannot abide the idea.
That I am not clean.
I hate it, I.
Hate the idea that I smell and no one's.
Tells me
I'm weird. I know.
And so when I get home from
just about anything, I need to shower.
And when I get out of the shower
for like 15 seconds, I feel clean.
The dirt of really all you people has
washed off of me.
You and I.
Are steeped in a culture of broken love,
of pride and insecurity.
And to meet Jesus
is to have all that be washed away.
I want you to say maybe you've come
with a friend or family member who's
being baptized this week, and we baptized
31 people across all our services.
Incredible.
But let me tell you this
you don't go in this tub to get clean.
This is a tub.
I don't know where we bought it.
This is Akron City water.
It doesn't make you clean.
You go in this tub
because you're saying I've been made clean
by what Jesus has done.
And if you're here
and you're a friend or family member,
the reason they wanted you here
this weekend is that you might see
this same thing is available to you.
All right. That's my second point.
Here's my third point.
Not just what.
We want,
but don't have not just what God. Has.
And we'll share.
But here's the third point
how sharing changes everything.
If you're here and you're your Christian,
lean in to this point, because here's
what the writer says in verse.
Two and verse three. It's
not just an experience.
Look at what he says. He says this
like newborn infants
long for the pure spiritual milk,
that by it you may grow up into salvation.
If indeed you have tasted that
the Lord is good.
You see, what he's saying
is, don't just have it one time.
If this kind of love is out there,
then drink it all the time
so that you grow up.
He compares this to babies.
Let me give you three steps.
As a Christian, you three things
you should be leaning into in God's love.
Here's the first one. Awareness.
He compares us to babies.
Babies cry when they want something
because they don't know how to say it.
Teenagers just complain.
Babies cry
when they cry.
We have to know, oh, you're hungry.
Let me feed you friends.
Can I tell you something?
Your your anxiety and depression.
I'm not talking about clinical stuff.
I'm not a psychologist.
But your every day
kind of anxiety, depression,
your autopilot, your malaise.
You know what that is?
You're Netflix binging,
you're overeating, you're over drinking.
Do you know what that is?
That is simply the cry.
You don't know the words. Well,
now you do.
You're not hungry for more television.
You're not hungry for more food.
You're not hungry for more beard.
You know what you're hungry for?
To know that you are loved.
That's why we read the Bible every day.
It's not to check something off a list.
We're like babies.
We need the milk.
I'm so proud. I'm so insecure.
I'm in a culture of pride
and a culture of insecurity.
I don't even know what love is.
So I have to drink,
become aware.
Here's the second one.
Mature.
Mature.
He compares it to newborn babies. But.
But you don't want your 12 year old
walk around with a bottle of milk.
You start
with the milk, but you grow friends.
Can I tell you something true?
Christian maturity is growth in love
is the ability to love people
free of pride,
free of insecurities, the ability
to love people who are difficult to love.
I've grown up in the church.
I've been in ministry for 20 years.
I don't know when we bought into the
I this idea, but it's pervasive
in the church.
We think Christian maturity
is intellectual knowledge.
We are not a college.
That is not Christian maturity.
In fact, you doubt me? Stick around
church for a while.
You'll find some of the earliest, meanest,
nastiest
people are in Bible study
three times a week.
Oh, that's not a joke.
Jesus said the entire Bible.
Comes down to this love God with all your
love your neighbor as yourself.
If you're studying the Bible
and you're not becoming.
More loving, you're doing it wrong.
Period.
Paul says in first Corinthians 13,
if you grow in knowledge
but you don't have love, you're a problem.
Maturity is being set free from my pride.
Set free from my insecurity to love,
especially those
I struggle to love.
Here's the third thing contrast.
Let me let me tell you this quick story.
I'll end with this
I spent the summer between my sophomore
and junior year of high school
in Southern Africa.
We were backpacking from village
to village telling people about Jesus,
and for like a month and a half,
I did not take a shower or a bath.
You know what?
If your therapist don't send me that
email, I now know
where my complex comes from.
And I remember there being this day
where we're walking.
It's just like four of us
and we pass this body of water
and and a guy he points to and he goes,
I have a bottle of soap in my backpack.
You guys want to go in there
and get clean?
And we thought
that sounded like a great idea.
And it was after
we did it, until we made it back to camp,
because we got back to
camp and it was full of people who hadn't
been bathed for a month and a half,
and they smelled awful,
and they always had smelled awful.
I just couldn't smell them because.
I also smelled awful.
And all of a sudden it was like sensory
overload and I could not
get dirty fast enough
with the Bible pictures.
Is that is that picture in reverse?
Meaning this
that has we
through the spiritual disciplines
began to be made clean from the dirty
love of our culture.
People will be saying to us,
where is the body of water you found
and how do I get made clean?
Listen, I love this church.
I don't want to be known for great music,
or great preaching,
or great kids programs or fun.
I want to have those things.
I don't want to be known.
You know what we want to be known for?
A place of genuine love.
And can I tell you something?
I have work to do.
You have work to do
for us to get there.
But God has it.
And through Jesus and the power
of His Holy Spirit and the scriptures,
he is willing to share,
let me pray for us.
Father God,
thank you so much for your incredible love
that doesn't have a scoreboard.
Isn't looking for the best
and the brightest, isn't telling us
the things we know aren't true.
I mean, if we're honest, we're so tired of
people telling us how special we are.
I'm a lot of things.
Special is not one of them.
Thank you that even though you're the one
voice out there telling us we're not.
Lovable, we're rebels were broken.
We're flawed.
You are also the one telling us
we are completely loved in Jesus.
May that love become real to us
or stronger to us,
depending on where we are in our story.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.