Well, I invite you to open up in your Bibles to 1 Peter 4. 1 Peter 4, we continue from last week. We're in verses 7 through 11. And we live in a world that is hostile to Christ. That's not news to you, I'm sure, which means that we also, though, live in a world that's hostile to us as Christians. It's a fact that the Bible has told us and a fact that we're starting to experience a little bit more in our own lives. Even though it may be still somewhat veiled, we know that we're promised as Christians to face persecution for living a godly life. Our country's experienced a lot of blessings for living according to biblical standards over the couple centuries we've been around, but we're quickly moving away from it. Honor of parents, murder, adultery, stealing, lying, coveting. Those are the Ten Commandments, and we're drifting in them all. Those things are not only practiced, but they're expected to be practiced. And in that sense, we live in a culture very similar to that which Peter was writing. If you look in 1 Peter 4, just a few verses before ours, in verse 3, Peter says, Then he says this, And in the same way, the world is surprised at us and the holiness that God calls us to. It stands out. It stood out for Peter's audience. It stands out in our world. And that godliness in a dark nation is a light, and it's critical for us as individuals to live it, but it's even more critical as a church to live a holy and a godly way. And that's what Peter is addressing here in our section. You'll notice if you just skim verses 1 through 6, it's a lot about suffering, it's a lot about persecution. And then down in verses 12 through 19, it's very similar. Suffering as a Christian and the trials that they face. And sandwiched there in between is verses 7 through 11, this little section on how to live as a church. Peter has three commands in there that are one another commands, how we interact with each other. And it's a profound summary of what church life should look like. So I'd like to read the text to put it back in front of us this morning as we revisit it. 1 Peter 4, verses 7-11. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks the oracles of God. Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies. In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. God's word to us and trust that he will bless it for us this morning. To remind you, last time we were looking at these four instructions that Peter gives to explain how to live as a church in a hostile world. Verse seven speaks to our minds and instructs us to think biblically in the instruction of self-control and sober-mindedness. Verse eight will instruct us to love earnestly Verse 9 teaches us to show hospitality to one another cheerfully. And then verses 10 through 11 instruct us to serve faithfully. So these four commands Peter is giving to us here is how to live as a church. And last week we looked at verse 7. We looked at it in two parts. The end of all things is at hand, the theology that undergirds these commands, and then his commands there to be self-controlled and sober-minded, a two-pronged instruction really intending to teach us to think biblically. Being self-controlled has the connotation of thinking biblically about yourself. Romans 12.3 talks about that some more as well. And then the command to be sober-minded is how we think about our circumstances. When we think of our lives, we should think through the lens of Scripture. And once we have the clarity of what the Bible says, then we can have clarity about our lives. And only then can we have clarity. When this is the case, Peter says, it's a blessing to our prayer lives. He says to do those things for the sake of your prayers. So when we're thinking rightly, we pray rightly. And these things, again, are grounded in the theology of the first half. The end of all things is at hand. This is referring to when Christ will come again, a reminder for us as Christians to look forward to the coming and the revelation of Christ, something Peter regularly and continually points out, that Christ will come. He will glorify our bodies. He will set up his kingdom. There's hope after hope after hope for us as believers. But then also the flip side of that, the sobering truth that Christ will come and bring judgment on the lost. These things ground our thinking because we also remember that these things are imminent. They can happen at any moment. Last week, we talked about how they could happen before the end of that sermon. It could have happened anytime this week. Again, it can happen before the end of this sermon, and we shouldn't take God's patience in His delay in coming as grounds for us to disregard the imminence. But instead, just a reminder that it is coming. We must always live with that at hand. Now, verse 7, those things are all really the foundation of verses 8 through 11. grammatically, to get a little bit technical, verses 8 through 11, well, really, verses 8 through 10 are all one sentence there, connected to verse 7, with three participles, which, to just make it simple then, is saying, Peter's saying, think biblically, and that will flow out into your life in three different ways. It will flow out into love for each other, and hospitality to one another, and in serving one another. Right thinking will manifest in right living, and Peter highlights three ways in which that happens. Biblical thinking and prayerfulness drives it all. To put it another way, our theology there, that the end of all things is at hand, drives our thinking. And our thinking and praying then informs our interactions with each other. So that's where we were at last week in verse seven. And for the time today, we'll turn to the remaining three commands. We'll see how far we can get. You might have homework to look at some yourself. So how do we live faithfully as a church in a hostile world? This first thing was think biblically. The second there in verse eight, love earnestly. Love earnestly. Peter says, above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. We remember that the end is near, it could happen at any moment, and therefore we think clearly about what God says about ourselves and our circumstances. We prayerfully then channel that into love for our fellow Christians. That's Peter's flow of thought. And this is so important for the health of our church, as it is for the health of any local church, that we're going to camp on this point for a little bit to think through this command. So what is love? Our world has lots of definitions for it. Lots of them focus around love being a feeling. But the Bible teaches love is more than just a feeling. Love is self-sacrifice for the good of another. Self-sacrifice for the good of another. There's a cost, a goal, and a recipient. It costs you something to love one another. There's the goal of the good of the other person, and there's a recipient of another person. And I want to show you this definition by looking at a few passages in Scripture. Don't just take my word for it, but let's see what the Bible says about love, as Peter calls us to it. 1 Corinthians 13 is, of course, a key passage there defining what love is. In 1 Corinthians 13, verse 4, Paul says love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. This is a wonderful description of love, showing not only, it shows what love does by describing how love acts through that series of descriptions. A couple more verses, 1 John 3, verse 16. We all know John 3, 16, but here's 1 John 3, 16. John says, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. John argues, and especially in three and four there, that we know love by looking at Christ, and Christ's love is evidenced to us by his sacrificial death on the cross. That was something that cost him and something that was of benefit for us. Even his words there imply that apart from Christ, we wouldn't really know what love looks like, because this was such an epitome of love that Jesus would die for us. And then in chapter 4, there John writes in verse 9, In this His love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. He says that we see the love of God not only in Christ dying for us, but in God sending his Son. Very much like John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his Son. And John calls us to love the same way in verse 11. If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. So love is self-sacrifice, something that costs you something for the good of another person. And it's striking in the context of 1 Peter, I think. You remember that the church is suffering. This is the first great empire-wide persecution in the Roman Empire, spearheaded by Nero, is the context in which Peter is writing. These Christians are making huge sacrifices for Christ on a regular and repeated basis. Their faith could cost them their life at any moment. There's a huge act of self-sacrifice. But now Peter says, as you come together as a church, don't stop sacrificing. Don't take your foot off the pedal just because out in the world you might be facing persecution. When you come together, you still have that mindset of self-sacrifice for the good of the believers around you. Don't think that when you gather as a church, you can just suddenly make everything about you. You can't just switch gears from the two. We're supposed to love one another and sacrifice for their goods, their good. Is this your mindset towards church? Or maybe better, is this your mindset towards the people in this room? To give of yourself for their good. We all face many difficulties in life. For some of us, this was perhaps one of the harder years of our life. We have the normal effects of living in a followed world with the difficulty of work and strained relationships and sin and sickness and death. On top of that, some of you I know are facing opposition and suffering at work or at school for your faith. Life is hard out there in the world, but life, in a sense, is hard here at church because we're called to give of ourselves, even here in these walls. And despite all of this, we come to church looking to give more and more. So we must love one another. That's what Peter says. Keep loving one another. And the command is so important, and the verse, I think, is so rich that I want to draw out some more here about this command to love. I want to show you five aspects of biblical love here, drawing out from verse 8. Five aspects of what it looks like to love one another, and to help follow along, we'll start each of those with the letter P. The first aspect of biblical love we see that Peter is calling for here in verse eight is that love is the priority. Love is a priority of the Christian life. The first two words there, above all, keep loving one another. You can put it this way, to love one another is the most important thing that God commands of you in relationship to other people. Some of you, like myself, are into productivity systems and writing lists and ranking your to-do lists. Well, if God were to write a list, a ranked list of commands for you to obey as a Christian, to love one another would be that first item on the list. It would be the one with the A or the number one next to it. This is the command, Peter says, that is above all the other commands. It's the uniform testimony of Scripture too. And I want to show you that. Matthew 22. Matthew 22, the Pharisees come together to test Jesus and ask Him a question. In verse 36, they say, "'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?' And in verse 37, Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, these are the most important things in the law. And then he says this in verse 40, on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. If you're loving God and if you're loving your neighbor, you're obeying everything God would require of you. And so when it comes to our relations to other people, loving one another is the command above all, because in obeying that, we fill out all the other commands. In Romans chapter 13, we see something similar. Paul writes lots about love in chapter 12, and then in chapter 13, there's the section about the government that we know, but then in verse 8, he says this, And any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." This is what Jesus said. It's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13. Paul says it again there. John says it. Now Peter says, above all, I'm sure you can think of many other verses. There's more we can go through, but I think that makes the point. Love is the top commandment that we are called to. It is the priority. And in that sense, it should affect how you think about your progress in the faith. We're all prone to being very superficial people, I think, and we can easily bring that into our faith. And so when we stop to evaluate, how am I doing with the Lord? It can be easy to think through it on a superficial level, to think, well, I'm going to church, I'm reading the Bible, I'm praying, I'm listening to sermons. Maybe I even hate sin and want to grow in godliness. But if you have all of these things and you do not have love, it doesn't matter. If you're not sacrificing of yourself, your time, your money, your energy for the good of others, then I can tell you based on Scripture how you're doing spiritually, and that's not well. You're doing very poorly if you're neglecting the most important thing, which is to love one another. Love is a priority in part because love is a litmus test of a Christian. Love is a litmus test of a Christian. 1 John 3, verse 10, John says, And then verse 14, he says basically the same thing. To summarize these things plainly, if you do not love other Christians, you are not a Christian. If you're not making sacrifices in your life for other Christians, you show no evidence then of being, in fact, a Christian. So love is a priority, and Peter's calling for that to be part of your life, in part because it defines us, who we are as God's people. The second aspect of love there in 1 Peter 4 is that love is perpetual. We'll put it that way. Love is perpetual. It continues. And you can see that in your Bibles. It says, keep loving. Keep loving one another earnestly. And it's a great translation of a present tense verb, and a reminder even that those details matter. It's a command to love, not just once, but continually. 1 Corinthians 13, 8 says, love never ends. It really is much harder to show repeated acts of love than it is to show one big act of love, isn't it? It's a lot easier just to get a large sum of money and give it to a brother in Christ and not think of him again than it is to daily or weekly be there to support and encourage and help and sacrifice for him. It's a lot easier to go out of your way to serve a brother once, sacrificing time and energy, than it is to repeatedly and regularly be there to sacrifice. But if our love ends at one-time events, we're disobeying Peter's command. He says to keep loving one another. It's not just a box to be checked, but a lifestyle to be lived. Maybe you're here this morning and for one reason or another you feel that your love towards other Christians is weak or growing cold. Perhaps at one point it was strong and you are struggling in it. And here Peter's command to you to keep loving. To keep loving. Even if you're burnt out, you've been loving and loving and loving and you're out of steam, Peter calls you to keep loving and he gives you the motivation in verse 7. The end of all things is at hand. You're just loving a little while longer. Just a little while longer. The end of all things is near. Finish strong. Keep loving one another. Love is the priority. Love is perpetual. And then third, we can put it this way, love is pervasive. Love is pervasive. He says, keep loving one another. which is really an all-inclusive term to say that no one is exempt from our love. One another would be everyone in this room. These are the people here that you're commanded to love, as well as the others who are a part of our church who are not here. We're not commanded simply to love on Sundays, but through the week. But the point of Peter's making is to love one another, to love everyone, and to keep doing so. I think it's necessary to point that out because we are so prone to partiality. James 2 speaks so much of that. Partiality is the stock and trade of the world, and we so easily bring it in to our Christianity. James chapter 2. James has strong words to showing partiality. He says, my brothers, show no partiality as you hold faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place, or you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? And James is pointing out that we're so quick and so prone to make distinctions on very superficial levels. Maybe how someone looks, maybe what they like, maybe how important they are to other people. Well, we have plenty of seats and we're not telling anyone to sit at our feet. We could so easily make those same distinctions between each other. But Peter says that's not loving one another. We're called to have a pervasive love in the church. Love is a priority. Love is perpetual. Love is pervasive. And love, fourthly, is passionate. Love is passionate. And you can see that, Peter says, keep loving one another earnestly. I've been really struck by this this week. The Greek word is ektenes, ektenes, and literally means to stretch out or to strain yourself, which implies earnestness and fervency and intensity in your love. It implies an unwavering commitment in your love. And this has really intrigued me because love itself is self-sacrificing. But here Peter says to strain yourself in the self-sacrificing. It's as if love is almost as far as you can go to begin with, and Peter says to go even further in your love. To be unwaveringly committed to giving of yourself for the good of fellow Christians. Like Paul says, to excel still more in your love. You might be loving one another well. Peter says to keep doing so, to expend yourself in that. If you've ever been in a sports game or a competition, you know the adrenaline that comes at the end of the game. You've given everything you have up until that point, but the end comes and there's a new surge of energy that you have to finish well, to leave it all on the field. Even though you're exhausted, you find the will to finish strong. Well, that's where we're at. The end of all things is at hand. We're in the fourth quarter. We're in the final two minutes. And so that ought to motivate us and compel us to love, not just love, but to love earnestly, to stretch out and strain in that love and to finish the race well. We have an eternity of rest and reward that awaits us. So don't try to cut into that early, but finish well and finish strong. And don't make it to heaven just to wish that you had sacrificed more for Christ. Love one another earnestly, Peter says. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly. Then he says this, since love covers a multitude of sins. Love is a priority. Love is perpetual. Love is pervasive. Love is passionate. And we might well be asking, Peter, is there a particular area in which you would call us to love one another? Based on the end of verse 8, I think we could say, yes. Peter would say, forgive each other. Forgive each other. That's the fifth and final aspect of love here. To use a P, we'll say love is pardoning. Love is pardoning. It forgives. This is really the crown gem, the highlight, the climax of love, is to forgive one another. Peter says love covers a multitude of sins. The idea there is to forgive, and just a couple verses to illustrate that. Psalm 32, verse 1, speaks of God's forgiveness to us. Psalm 32, verse 1, Says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit is no deceit. And so here David is using three words for sin, transgression, sin, and iniquity, and then he uses three words for forgiveness. He says transgression is forgiven, and sin is covered, and the Lord counts no iniquity. All of those are in parallel there in the poetry. And so to cover sin is the same as forgiving sin, or to not count sin against another one. The same is there in Psalm 85 verse 2 and many other texts, especially the Old Testament, that talk about covering sin. Psalm 85 verse 2, Again, those two ideas are in parallel. So it's clear Peter's saying love covers a multitude of sins, or love forgives a multitude of sins. It's as if it's out of your sight. You don't see it anymore. But it also implies that once you forgive, you don't just go around telling everybody about that sin that you've forgiven. And Proverbs speaks to that in a couple places. Proverbs 11 verse 13, listen to this, says, He doesn't go around telling everybody about it. And listen to Proverbs 17, verse 9, very similar. So to cover sin is to forgive sin, is to put it out of your sight, and to not go around telling everybody about what so-and-so did. You're not holding on to any bitterness, any anger towards those people because of their sins. And you do this, notice back in 1 Peter, for a multitude of sins. A multitude of sins. Essentially, Peter's saying you do this for every sin. There's no limit to the number of sins that you forgive. Hebrews 11 verse 12 uses the same word to refer to the number of stars in the sky. And I know for most nights, the number of stars is a very small number for us. Maybe a dozen or so at best. But back then with no light pollution or anything, that would be a countless multitude of number of stars. You forgive a multitude of sins. Scripture is telling us that a loving person will forgive any and every sin. Love holds no bitterness towards anyone about anything. This is a lesson Peter learned from the Lord himself in Matthew 18. We know Matthew 18 because of the text there about church discipline, church restoration. But as soon as Jesus has gone through that, Peter comes and says to Jesus in verse 21, as many as seven times. Peter likely thought he was being very generous in offering seven times to forgive, but Jesus responds to him and said, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times, or some texts say 70 times seven. Essentially, Jesus is saying you forgive an unlimited amount. You're not going to sit there and tally the number of times you've forgiven someone. That would very likely show you haven't forgiven them if you're keeping track of everything they're doing. So Peter learned this lesson from the Lord himself, and Jesus says, you forgive a multitude of sins, but then he tells this parable of the unforgiving servant there in Matthew 18, which is very powerful, and it shows us the source of how and why we can forgive. He says, therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents, essentially an unpayable amount. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had in payment to be made. And this was such a great amount that the man would be in slavery for the rest of his life. So verse 26, a servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. He wiped it clean. But when that same servant went out and he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him saying, pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. But he refused and went out and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. And here's a lesson, verse 35. As believers, we've each been forgiven an infinite amount by the Lord. And we're like this servant who owed the 10,000 talents to his master and God has shown mercy on us and wiped that debt clean. But how often do we turn around and try to extract the debt from our brothers and sisters in Christ? They've done a fraction to us of what we've done to the Lord and we turn around and require them to pay us back as it were. But the mercy of God is the basis of our own forgiveness. We have been shown mercy and therefore we can show mercy. Because love and forgiveness is an act of self-sacrifice. Peter says love covers a multitude of sins. Well, if love is self-sacrifice, how does that work? Well, it's because it's so hard to forgive. People will hurt you. Even Christians will hurt you. Even Christians in this room will hurt you. And it will leave deep marks and wounds and grief. But as a Christian, you're called to love and to forgive all of those sins for their sake. And that's a priority that Peter is calling us to. That forgiveness ought to be considered an urgent matter in your mind, something that is above everything else. And not only because it's a sin to neglect it, but also because unforgiveness will devastate your relationship to God. You saw that in that parable in Matthew 18. Jesus says it as well several other times, one of them in Matthew 6 at the end of the Lord's Prayer. He says this, So you have to ask yourself, is it worth holding on to bitterness towards other people? Is it worth having unforgiveness towards them at the cost of having unforgiveness from God towards you? If you have bitterness in your heart towards another, you're sinning and God is withholding forgiveness from you. If you have bitterness in your heart, it's something that you need to take care of now. It's an urgent matter because it is devastating your relationship to the Lord and it is sinning towards your brothers as well. Because our temptation is to hold on to that offense. It gives us a sense of power and control. It feeds our pride or our victim mentality. God says, cover it up in love. It's something you can do right now. It doesn't require a conversation with that person or a certain amount of time to pass. It doesn't even require you to pray about it to determine if it's the right thing to do. Scripture is very clear that you must cover every sin. Jesus even says in Mark 11, 25, It's something that could be taken care of right there in the act of praying to the Lord. As you recall it to mind, you forgive them. It's what love does, Peter says. Now there are many questions that arise from this. Lots of questions relating to forgiveness. I want to answer one of them in particular. And that's this. When do you confront and when do you cover? When do you admonish and when do you forgive? Because we probably feel these two things are at odds with each other. They're at tension with each other. But I believe scripture teaches that's not actually the case. They're actually complementary things. We're always called to forgive. It's a unilateral act on our behalf. We saw that there in Mark 11, 25. When you stand praying, forgive. So we're always called to forgive a multitude of sins, any sin. The question really isn't when to forgive and when to admonish, because we're always called to forgive. So the question really is then, which sins do I admonish? How much does love cover that sin? And I'll put it this way, we're to forgive all sins and to admonish some sins. Part of our problem, though, is that we tend to think that it is more loving to let something go than it is to address it. Even 1 Peter 4, verse 8 is often cited in that way. Love covers a multitude of sins, therefore let it go, implying that love doesn't also confront sins. It almost treats admonishment like a necessary evil. But that's not at all how the Bible talks about it. And I want to show you some Proverbs. You can either listen or try to follow. We're going to go quickly through them. Proverbs 13, verse 8. Listen to how it describes the value of admonishment or rebuke or confrontation. Proverbs 13, and I think I wrote the wrong one down. Sorry about that. Proverbs 15, we'll go on to that one. 15 verse 32. Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence. If you want to gain intelligence, then reproof is a good thing. Proverbs 19. Verse 25, strike a scoffer in the simple will learn prudence, reprove a man of understanding and he will gain knowledge. And Proverbs 27 verse five, better is open rebuke than hidden love. The Proverbs say, if you want to be wise and intelligent and knowledgeable, if you want to grow in godliness, then to be admonished is a helpful thing because we all have areas that we just don't see. And so to have a brother come and be willing to bring it up is such a gain. In fact, there in Proverbs 28, verse 23, it says, whoever rebukes a wise man will afterward find more favor than he who flatters with his tongue. It really builds up the relationship to do that. Proverbs 9 verse 8 says, And so the Proverbs testimony to rebuke and admonition is, it's a good thing for you, and it's also a good thing to give, and assuming you do it in a gentle and humble way. But I want you to listen to this as well, because the Proverbs has very strong language for those who refuse admonishment. Proverbs 12, verse 1. Proverbs 15, verse 10. There is severe discipline for him who forsakes the way. Whoever hates reproof will die." And then Proverbs 29, verse 1. He who is often reproved yet stiffens his neck will suddenly be broken beyond healing. So according to Proverbs, is admonishment good? Is it loving? I think the testimony of Scripture is clear, and it is a yes to both of those questions. And it was such a frequent part of Paul's ministry. In Acts 20, verse 31, he says, day and night, he was admonishing every man. Colossians 1, verse 28, he says, his goal is to present every man mature in Christ, and he does that by admonishing every man and teaching every man. And therefore, it's not a huge surprise to see it commanded of us in verses like Colossians 3, 16, to be admonishing one another. You go through all this and you almost feel like the question really isn't, which sins should I admonish? It's almost, which sins shouldn't I admonish? But we have to be careful of not over-correcting and becoming trigger-happy admonishers, talking about every little thing in everybody's life. So how do we know the balance? I think Matthew 18 is very helpful. We saw that parable of forgiveness earlier, and now in the classic section on restoration and discipline, Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And what's fascinating is that there's one verb that says, tell him his fault. It's to show him his sin, to make it clear to him. And it's the same root that's used throughout Proverbs. So it's almost as if Proverbs is saying Matthew 18 is a good thing. Matthew 18 helps you gain intelligence and wisdom and favor with each other. And Jesus sees it as a good thing too. The section before that, he talks about the parable of the lost sheep and the one sheep that wanders and how the shepherd goes and will find that one sheep who went astray and bring him back into the fold. It's a beautiful and loving thing. And so Jesus in Matthew 18 lays out four steps to go to the person privately who sinned and then to take one or two with you. If they continue to not repent, you would tell it to the church and ultimately you would have them removed from the church to show to them the severity of their sin. But the second step there I think is very instructive as to what kind of sins Jesus has in mind. You go to your brother privately, you confront him, and he doesn't repent, and so then you take one or two others with you. He says that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Jesus is talking about observable sins, something that there could be evidence for. We might think at times that someone has sinned in their hearts, and they very well could have. And maybe that's the time to ask diagnostic questions. The Proverbs says, a wise man draws out what is in the heart. But we don't go around as the heart police admonishing for things that there is no evidence for. So we're called to forgive all sins, obtain no bitterness. And then if there is an observable sin in a brother's life, you go to that person and it is a loving thing for their benefit. And it doesn't contradict, love covers a multitude of sins. Sort of like in Matthew 7, Jesus speaks of taking the log out of your eye before you go. You forgive that person and then you talk to them. And so you cannot disconnect forgiveness from admonishment. Jesus doesn't there in Matthew 18. Like I pointed out, he speaks about how to confront a person and then immediately he goes into forgiveness of the person. And really, admonishment can never come from a place of personal offense, only a place of forgiveness and love. So you can be sure Peter has these things in mind that he learned from Jesus. So to summarize, trying to address the question of when do you confront and when do you cover, when do you admonish, when do you forgive? Because we do feel the tension there between those things. I think we first recognize that both are loving. Forgiving and admonishing are loving things, if done out of the right heart. That's the first point of summary. The second point in summarizing is that we're called to forgive every sin. Every sin. And we do that out of recognizing God's forgiveness to us. And then thirdly, we admonish the observable sins, according to Jesus there in Matthew 18. So returning back to 1 Peter. He's called us to habitually and strenuously love each other, to give ourselves for the good of others. The high point of that is in forgiveness. You hold nothing against anybody. You forgive any and every sin. And that will take self-denial and sacrifice as an act of love, because we want so much sometimes to hold on to that bitterness. Peter's really calling for the love that we've been shown by the Lord, isn't he? It's a thought that I have to dwell on because really we've been describing God's love. Yes, we're commanded to do this. Peter's very clear about that. But undoubtedly, you can see as I do for myself, your deficiency in love. It's an incredibly high bar that Peter calls us to. But if we're deficient in love, we've broken a whole host of commandments because all of the commandments hinge on love. And that means if we're deficient in love, we're sinners who need God's love. 1 John 4 says God is love. We see that love like we saw through the sending of the Son, through the Son giving up His life for us. And we think of God's love in the past tense, but I want you to think about God's love for you now in the present tense as a Christian. Because perhaps the greatest and most prominent aspect of His love for us right now is that His love covers a multitude of our sins. We trust that when we are saved that He did that for every sin up until that point, but it's true on a daily basis. We sin against the Lord and grieve Him in our thoughts and our affections and in everything we do, and He covers those sins. He puts them out of His sight and forgives us. And so we ought to praise God that His love is perpetually active towards us. But friends, if you do not know Christ, your sins are not covered. Your sins are always in the sight of God. Every action, every word, every thought, every deed, every desire contrary to the holiness of God is set before His holy eyes. You will be held accountable to them all. But if you repent and trust Christ, those sins are covered. He doesn't retain some of them offset to the side to hold against you. to have leverage over you. The gospel says you repent and believe Christ for the forgiveness of sins. He covers those transgressions, he puts them out of sight, and he pours his love into your heart. That's the gospel, that's the love of God, and that is the quality of love that God calls us to here in 1 Peter 4.8. We're commanded to have that same gospel love. So how do we live faithfully as a church in a hostile world? We think biblically, we love earnestly, and quickly we'll cover the third one, show hospitality cheerfully. We'll leave verses 10 and 11 for you to look at for yourself. In some ways, verse 9 is a continuation of verse 8 of the previous command, because hospitality is a function of love. In Romans 12, Paul commands hospitality in the context of love. In Romans 12, verse 9, he says, let love be genuine. And then he really goes from there and describes a whole host of things that are loving. In verse 13, he says, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. So hospitality is really a continuation of this command to love. But because of its importance, Peter draws it out and sets it by itself for us to consider. It's a word that literally means a love of strangers. A love of strangers. In Hebrews 13, 2, the author of Hebrews says there that you've shown hospitality, and some of them had shown hospitality even to angels, he said. They were strangers. They didn't know who they were. And evidently there were angels that had visited them. And to show hospitality was so critical, especially in the time that the Bible was written, and as the gospel was going out, preachers and apostles and disciples were going out preaching, and they would need a place to stay for food and shelter. And so in that sense, there could perhaps be strangers that they would host and show hospitality to. But the command isn't just to show hospitality to strangers. That's where we have to be a little bit careful with the etymology of a word, though it is a word that has the word of stranger and love connected together. It doesn't only apply to strangers. Paul speaks of asking for a guest house, which is related to this word of hospitality in Philemon verse 22. They knew Paul, but they were still showing hospitality to him. He had churches held in houses. That would be an act of hospitality. There's a whole number of verses that speak of churches that would meet in particular houses. That was showing hospitality to the church. But the key reason we know that hospitality is not just to strangers is because the verse itself says, show hospitality to one another. Peter's writing to these local churches and so they would look around and those are the people to whom they ought to show hospitality. It was a practical way to love people, to build relationships, to bring others into their home and serve them. And it's an area of obedience. It's not an area that you're just gifted in and so you do hospitality and no one else has to. It's an area of Peter's commanding all believers that you must show hospitality to. It's even a mark of maturity. Paul says that the elders must be those who are characterized as showing hospitality in 1 Timothy 3, verse 2, Titus 1, verse 7. So to neglect hospitality is a sin. It's not just something we can write off for other people to do. And we must recognize a common temptation that comes with it. Peter says there in verse 9, It's a powerful word he uses there, the word grumbling. It was a word that would have been repugnant to the Greeks themselves in that culture. To be a grumbler was a culturally bad thing. And then of course, it's repugnant to God. Listen to this definition or describing of the word. It says it, it carries with it the thought of a legal claim and the view that no satisfaction has been or is being done to this claim. To grumble is to think you have a right for something and then to complain when you don't get that right. It's the word used of Israel in the wilderness. We remember the stories where they grumbled because they were thirsty, they grumbled because they were hungry. They grumbled because they got so close to the promised land, and yet it was filled with giants, and they felt that they couldn't get in. That's in Exodus 15 and 16, Numbers 14. But I want to show you how God responds in Numbers chapter 14, so you can see what God thinks of grumbling. Numbers chapter 14, Israel has grumbled and complained against them, and God says this to Moses in response to their grumbling. He says, God equates grumbling against his providence as despising him and not believing in him. I have an extended quote that kind of goes through some of this that I think is really helpful that I'd like to read, because it draws out some very helpful things about how Israel grumbled. It says this, There is, of course, a certain justification for it. The presupposition of the whole attitude is the election of the people in the Exodus. This is grace no less than the promise of the land, but the people make of it a claim, a claim to be cared for in every respect and to be brought to the goal without effort. When the people murmur, it's always because they think that justice has not been done or is not being done to its claim. But the text leaves us in no doubt that in such an attitude, God is reduced to human standards and is robbed or is in the process of being robbed of his sovereignty in relation to his people. This helps us to see why the right attitude, in contrast to murmuring, is unconditional acceptance or obedience, hearkening to the voice of God." End quote. To summarize that, he's saying, look, Israel had perhaps legitimate needs. They were hungry and thirsty. Those are needs that need to be met. But they took what they thought was a right for a certain response to those needs, and they turned it into complaining. We have many supposed rights that we might think about in life in general, but especially with hospitality. You might think you have the right for your guests to care for your possessions in a particular way, to take off their shoes, to not break the dishes, maybe to be reasonable in the time that they arrive or time they leave, or maybe just you think the right that they show you some gratitude for you being in their house. Maybe you think it's the right to your own time and money that it costs you too much to show hospitality, so you grumble against the thought of having to do that. Ultimately, these are not rights that we have with God, and by grumbling about them, we complain against God himself. He's commanded us to this, and so we ought to obey that command to have people in our homes and to provide for their needs and serve them. Well, just as forgiveness is a picture of the gospel, so too is hospitality. We don't have time to look at it. Ephesians 2, verses 11 to 22 speak of us at once being strangers to God, but then He brings us in. And so it's a wonderful thing that in loving each other, we can show the gospel to each other. In showing hospitality to each other, we show the gospel that once we were strangers to God's people, he welcomed us in and provided for us. And in doing that to one another, we not only obey scripture and serve each other, but we also demonstrate the gospel for everybody to see. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, we should think biblically about these things, pray biblically, and through that, channel those things into loving each other, showing hospitality to each other, ultimately also serving each other with your spiritual gifts. These are the things that Peter has called us to, remembering that Jesus could come today. So finish the race well. Don't regret withholding sacrifice for Christ's sake, because you will regret it in heaven if you are doing that. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for the gospel and how you command us to things that are so gospel-based. We have the privilege of not only being loved and being shown, in a sense, hospitality by you, but then turning around and distributing that to others. What a blessing, Lord. We pray that you would grant us obedience in these things and repentance if necessary. Help us to remember the coming of Christ and to have our hopes set fully on him. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.