1Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking, 2as newborn babies, long for the pure spiritual milk, that with it you may grow, 3if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. 4Come to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious. 5You also as living stones are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6Because it is contained in Scripture,
“Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, chosen and precious.
He who believes in him will not be disappointed.”
7For you who believe therefore is the honor, but for those who are disobedient,
“The stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone,”
8and,
“a stumbling stone and a rock of offense.”
For they stumble at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were appointed. 9But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10In the past, you were not a people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
11Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, 12having good behavior among the nations, so in that of which they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good works and glorify God in the day of visitation.
13Therefore subject yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether to the king, as supreme, 14or to governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evildoers and for praise to those who do well. 15For this is the will of God, that by well-doing you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. 16Live as free people, yet not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God.
17Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
18Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked. 19For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly, because of conscience toward God. 20For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God. 21For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps, 22who didn’t sin, “neither was deceit found in his mouth.” 23When he was cursed, he didn’t curse back. When he suffered, he didn’t threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds. 25For you were going astray like sheep; but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Get to the Milk and Drink It!
2 Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babies, long for the pure spiritual milk, that with it you may grow, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
Peter then tells us to long for the word as spiritual milk. He’s not saying that his audience is young and immature in the Lord. He is not talking about the basic ideas of Christianity versus its deeper truths. This isn’t even a comparison of the “milk and the meat of the Word”. Peter’s talking about how we should long for God’s word like a baby longs for its mother’s milk. Last week, I weaned a calf. I took it off of its mother, and it was desperately looking for a way out of the corral to get back to that milk. THAT’S what our pursuit of God’s Word should look like. You might be thinking, “Well, I don’t really desire the Bible like that”. One way to gain an appetite for the Word is to just begin studying it. It’s like that little calf that first started nursing on its mother minutes after it was born. The calf develops a taste for that milk and prefers it over any other food. When you study the Bible, it creates a hunger within you for God’s word.
The more you study the Word, the more you’ll desire out of God’s Word. I’ve never felt as hungry for the Word of God as I have since I became a pastor. I gain such satisfaction each week as I make two deep dives into portions of scripture. If you ask God to put a desire within you, He’ll do that. We all get our dose of the Word in different ways. I take a few verses each time I teach, and I think on them, and pray on them. My wife, Sandy, is also a Bible teacher. She takes huge sections of the Bible and works her way through them verse by verse over weeks or months. I take what I’m going to talk about on Wednesday night or Sunday morning, read it first, and pull it apart sentence by sentence, trying to understand what God is saying to us and why it was preserved in His word. I then think about it as I mow the lawn or drive somewhere. I pray for God to give me inspiration and illustration. As I do some mindless, unrelated task, often clarity comes to the passage upon which I have been meditating. I think of the perfect insight or illustration of something I believe the Word is saying.
You will have to find the way that works best for you to take in God’s Word. Just find a way to let it become part of you and part of your life. Some learn by reading, but others stumble over words or struggle to understand what the text is saying. Some learn by listening. And some can’t learn from reading or listening; they need a teacher to guide them through a passage. That’s okay. That’s why God gives us pastors and teachers. The Bible says that they are a gift to the Church. You can now read the Bible in dozens of translations, on your smartphone, and have it read to you in different voices. Many Sundays after I come home and have a nap, I get up and watch or listen to a sermon on my computer. That’s how I feed on God’s Word. The main thing is to find a way to consume the Word of God regularly, even daily. Read it. Listen to it. Be taught by teachers. Just get it however you can. It is milk that you should be desperate to take in. Find the best way for you to get to the milk and drink it! In doing so, it will become a part of you.