What are you sowing?

 June 26 2022

1 Peter 1:22-2:12

My wife, Jennifer, just recently got a new IPhone as her old one ended up having issues with the battery, surprise, surprise. It’s a great phone, and it probably has more features than she will ever know about but the weirdest part of the phone for me is that you can now change Siri’s voice. I am so used to Siri being a woman’s voice so it kind of freaks me out to hear an Australian male voice coming from the kitchen as if Crocodile Dundee himself is out there answering all of my wife’s questions.What is probably even more strange is that we think nothing at all about carrying on a conversation with our phones, I mean, we do it all the time. There is also Alexa, the voice activated device that you can speak to and it will do pretty much whatever you ask her to do. Through our voices we find the whole world at our fingertips. Who knew our common ordinary speech could have such power?!

This power of words, of ordinary common talking, this is what saturates this part of Peter’s first letter that we read today. God speaks a word and we when we hear that word and treasure that word we find that indeed that this word has power. Through this word that God speaks we discover that we are living life in a new place, a place of a very different existence, so very different that this existence can only be called new. This is the power of a word.

So, throughout this section of Peter’s first letter, we find a lot about words, words that we should put away, like malice and deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander and words we should pick up and most definitely say like the words which speak of the exalted wonder of Jesus. Peter also speaks of the evildoers who speak against us, those of us who have been made new through the word of God and how through the goodness brought about through the word of God living in us, the foolish people living in ignorance will end up finding themselves without words to speak. Thousands of years before Alexa ever came along, the notion that our words have power, power to create new worlds and bring down old ones was something Peter knew all so well.

Peter describes the living and abiding word that God speaks as being a seed that is imperishable, always abounding with life. It is not hard to imagine that Peter, in describing the word of God in this way that he is thinking back to the days when he walked with Jesus beside the Sea of Galilee. Peter would have remembered the story Jesus had told him and his friends about a farmer who went out to sow seed and some of the seed fell upon the path where the birds came and devoured these seeds before they even had a chance to grow. Some of the seed fell upon rocky ground and the seeds quickly sprouted but when the sun came out in full force the seeds were scorched because they had no root in them. Then some of the seed fell among the thorns which choked out the little seedlings. Yet all was not lost because some of the seed did fall upon good soil and produced grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty fold and some thirty fold. Now, the part of this story which we need to understand for today is this part which concerns the birds which snatch away the seeds before they can ever sprout. Jesus goes on to explain that the seed that is sown is the word of the kingdom. If the word of the kingdom is not understood, Jesus tells us, the evil one comes and snatches away this word which is sown in a person’s heart just as birds come and devour seed which lays upon a stony path.

So, this word that Peter speaks of as being an imperishable seed is the word of the kingdom, the kingdom of God which is at hand. This is the same word spoken of in the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah where God tells Isaiah, that “just as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater so also, God says, my word that goes out  from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty. My word shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed for the very thing for which I sent it.” Jesus tells us that this word that God speaks is the word of the kingdom, a word that God speaks forth from heaven to bring his rule and reign here upon earth. We know what this word speaks to us because Peter tells us that if we are obedient to this word then there will be a sincere love between us as brothers and sisters in Christ, a love that seeks the best for others above what is best for oneself without worrying about how much is too much. The word used for “obedience” here means to give authority to this word which is heard. Another way to look at this then is to say that we heed this word of God because we treasure what God has spoken to us. This is the very same sentiment that we find in the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm where the Psalmist tells us that “he has treasured God’s word in his heart so that he might not sin against God.” The reason why we treasure the word of God which speaks forth of the love of heaven is that God first treasured us. This is what Peter spoke about before he speaks of obeying the word of God, that God has, through the precious blood of Christ, set us free from our slavery of sin. When we were held captive, in possession of the power of sin, God paid the ultimate price so that we might be his possession, his treasure. So, as God treasured us in so great a measure that he sent his Son from his heart to come to earth to set us free so now we, in response to such an act of love, are to treasure the word of God in our hearts.

This word that God speaks is that we are to love as he first loved us. As Jesus has done everything necessary so that we might share in the love relationship he has always had with his Father, now we can know and love God as our Father and love each other as brothers and sisters. As God sought our welfare above the welfare of his own Son so we too love others seeking first their welfare over our own. We can love with such abandon knowing that the God who loves us is also the God who is also faithful, the one who guards our imperishable inheritance that awaits us beyond this life.  This is what the new birth is all about, living our life now in the certainty of our tomorrow. Even if we love to the point of death we know that God is faithful and he will not let his servants see corruption. As we know that the word of God abides forever so we know that the God who speaks with us will abide with us forever and we will abide with him. This is our living hope.

So, the word of the kingdom, in a nutshell, is love. Love is how the kingdom of heaven becomes a reality on earth and this just makes sense because if God is love and God dwells in heaven then his kingdom simply must be all about love. This Peter rightly understood I believe, and he also understood the meaning of the parable of the sower that he remembered Jesus had explained to him. We know this because after he speaks of the word of God being like an imperishable seed he goes on to speak of how we who are born again through this seed, we are to crave the right understanding of God’s word just as a newborn baby craves milk. The word translated often as being spiritual is better understood as being the reasoning of the word. In other words, we as those who are born again, living in the kingdom now that will come in full in the future, we are to long for and desire more than anything else the logic of love. It goes without saying that to love to the extremes required by God seems to be just the opposite of logical. Paul writes in the first chapter of First Corinthians that the cross was a stone that tripped up the Jews and utter foolishness to the Greeks. As we learn in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew, Peter himself, at one time, also did not understand the logic of love. We read how “when Jesus told him that he was going to Jerusalem to carry his cross, Peter got in the face of Jesus and  told him that there was no way that this was going to happen. Jesus responded to this outburst of Peter by telling him to, “ Get behind me Satan! You are a hindrance to me!” You see, at this point in his walk with Jesus, Peter simply did not understand the logic of love. I mean, who would bring about a kingdom without wars and division and fighting? Yet, this is exactly what God has done through his love for us and Peter tells us as people who are born again that we need to grasp just how this word of love does its work so that we remain pure. The word that we read here at the beginning of this second chapter of Peter’s letter as being pure is a word which means “without bait” which I believe is very appropriate. You see, when we understand the way that God’s love works in bringing his kingdom to fruition then we will be people who don’t take the bait, finding ourselves ensnared by the evil one. When we see just what Peter is trying to tell us here it isn’t hard to hear some very similar words that Paul speaks found in the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians where we read, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on those things which provoke you to anger; give no room for the devil to be in your life.” Yes, we can be angry but what we cannot do is to let those things which irritate us, those things which set us off, to fester and in doing so invite Satan himself to take up residence in our life. No, we have to crave a life free from taking the bait, a life that doesn’t focus on the things that irritate us but instead focuses on the one who loves us and gave his life for us. You see, we don’t want the bait anymore because now we have found that which used to tempt us as no longer very appetizing; now we have tasted the Lord and he is what is good to us. Peter here is quoting from the thirty-fourth Psalm. The writer of this Psalm experienced the goodness of God when in his poverty, he cried out to God and the Lord heard him and saved him out of his troubles. You see, as we grow in our salvation, as the reality of our salvation increases in us, that in our poverty, our weakness of our flesh, when we cried out to God, the Lord heard our words and he saved us out of his great mercy and love for us, this is when we know our God is good. When we taste the sweetness of our freedom, this is when we know the great goodness of our God, this is the goodness that we now crave.

When we understand that it is the goodness of God which now is what we seek it isn’t hard to understand that we are to take off all evil speech like an old, filthy coat. Peter writes that we are to be done with all outward expressions of evil; we are to be finished with defrauding others and deceit; we are to no longer be seeking the ill-will of another person, or to be upset at another person’s good fortune or to find pleasure in another’s pain; we are to put behind us all evil speaking, backbiting, mocking others, reviling others, or seeking to ruin the reputation of another person. Peter here seems to be taking us over to the sink and giving our mouths a good scrubbing with some soap. To understand the logic of love we have to know just why all these wrong and evil ways that we speak to one another need to be left behind us as we grow up in our salvation. The answer that Peter gives us is that what the word of God is doing is building a spiritual house. Jesus, is the first living stone, the precious, chosen, cornerstone of God, the one who is our foundation that sets the course for all those who are built upon him. If God’s word is building up this new spiritual dwelling place, his great and glorious Temple, then if we were to come along and speak malice, deceit, hypocritical words, and if we were envious of others, casually slandering others then we would be tearing apart what God is putting together. Where the word of God, his imperishable seed is sowing unity, our words would be sowing discord. You see, to believe in Jesus Christ is to have faith that his word of love, this is the foundation for our lives, the very rock on which our life is built. When we don’t see this, when we look to some other means to live our life we will stumble over this cornerstone called Christ. When we seek to tear down others through our words, then instead of finding a foundation for our life we will find a rock which makes us fall. This is why Peter once again insists that we must be thoroughly persuaded that God’s word of love is the way of Christ, the rock upon which to build our lives. When we understand that it is on Christ that we build our lives we then become people who turn and build up one another, never tearing them down through the words we speak.

As Peter writes about how Christ is our foundation, the very bedrock of the house that God is speaking into existence, he motivates us to be God’s living stones by reminding us just who we now are. Peter harkens back to the exodus story, when God rescued the people of Israel from slavery down in Egypt. When these people arrived at Mt. Sinai to enter into a covenant relationship with the God who  had saved them, God first spoke to his people declaring to them their true identity. In the 19th chapter of Exodus we read how God told Moses to tell the people that if now they obeyed his voice and kept his covenant they would be his treasured possession among all peoples for all the earth is God’s; and they would be to him a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. You see, what God was doing with his people is that now that they had been sent free from slavery they were no longer to think of themselves as being slaves. No longer were they to cower in fear never certain of their fate or their future; no, they were now a treasured possession of God. No longer was their worth to be determined by how hard they could work, or how what it is is that they could do; no, their worth was determined by the God who had rescued them. No longer were they to work for the glory of their masters but instead they would be holy as God is holy, serving him by being his priests who bore his name out into the world. As God has once declared this identity upon the people of Israel, now, Peter states, God is declaring this same identity on all of those that God called out of the darkness of the slavery of sin into the awesome, marvelous, amazing light of the love of God through his word. No more, Peter tells us, are we to think of ourselves as being a bunch of nobodies because we now know ourselves as being somebody to God because of his steadfast love and mercy. Now we can know that God has chosen us, elected us to be his people. Now, we can know ourselves as priests to God, servants set aside for the holy work of bearing the name, the very reputation of God to the world. Now, we are part of a new nation, the holy nation of God, the people who know themselves as the most treasured possession of God. Our worth has been forever determined by our Heavenly Father giving his Son in exchange for us so that we might at last be free therefore we must live as those who are free no longer bound by the power of sin. Now, the Holy Spirit dwells within us as we are now the new Temple of God where the presence of God can be known. Once we are aware of our new identity then once again come new words for us to speak for now, Peter tells us, we are to proclaim and declare how excellent and wonderful is the our Savior, Jesus, whose word has called us into his light. Our desire should now be as the song, “I Speak Jesus” sings to us so wonderfully, “I just want to speak the name of Jesus, over every heart and mind. Cause I know there is peace in your presence! I speak Jesus. I just want to speak the name of Jesus, till every dark addiction starts to break. Declaring hope and freedom! I speak Jesus. I just want to speak the name of Jesus, over fear and anxiety. To every soul held captive by depression, I speak Jesus!

You see, when we live out in the world we need to speak Jesus, living a life which resounds of his goodness because as Peter tells us it is the goodness that we speak and do which will bring those who speak evil of us to come to glorify Jesus when he returns. You see our words matter. By doing good and speaking Jesus we take the words right out of the mouths who do not yet understand the logic of the love of God. We must not forget that words are like seeds. So, just what is it that you are sowing, discord or unity in love? May we keep on speaking Jesus to his honor and glory! Amen!