Please turn to 1 Peter chapter 1. 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 22. Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit and sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart. This morning we looked at what is a Christian, one who is born again by the power of God. We looked at the nature of man, how corrupt and defiled and decaying, we really are, both in body and in soul. And we looked at our hope in that, that there is the power of God in regeneration, which as Peter says, comes through the word of God. We are born again through the word of God, that we listen and we hear, and the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man, planting the seed of the Word, where it germinates and grows and bears fruit. If we have any hope in this world, it starts with the glory of God in salvation and His almighty power in the soul of man. And when we are born again, we really are experiencing a new birth. We really are new creatures in Christ. Well, we have new loves, new minds to think, new hearts to contemplate, and new wills to obey. And when we are born again, the Word of God is real. We may be under it for decades, We may believe that the Bible is the Word of God, but when we're born again, we desire to love God. We desire to obey this Word, and we obey Him by the heart. And the effects of this is numerous. We believe, we repent, we trust, And as Peter says here, there are two things in which a Christian does when he has been born again. The first is that we purify ourselves in the obedience of truth. And the second effect of this is loving the brethren. This is how our soul is transformed. We love the brethren. and we obey the truth. These two are marks of a true Christian. These two are marks of regeneration. So this evening, let us look at these two marks and see two effects of regeneration. And the first mark that Peter gives us is obedience to the truth. Obedience to the truth. And when Peter tells us this is the mark of a Christian, it is something that the Christian does. It's something of his or her own volition, that we have wills. Everything we do comes from our will to do it. And when a Christian is born again, he or she uses his will to act, to speak, to do whatever it is, we do it from our wills. And whereas being born again is a passive act of God, he's active, we are passive, we cannot make ourselves born again, but we are completely passive in regeneration. But the effects of this is that there is an activity in the soul because our wills must respond to God. By denial or with confession, we must respond to what we're hearing and what we're seeing before our very eyes. And the action of a human soul or the action of a human will, Peter says, is to purify ourselves. And the word purify, it comes from the ceremonial law. If someone was defiled, if someone was unclean, they must be made clean. And yes it's true that ultimately in the soul of man this being made clean is the work of Christ's blood and is applied by the Holy Spirit. Hence Paul's use in Titus chapter 3 of being washed, the washing of regeneration. So that in the soul is the work of God. But when the Jews were to be purified, they were to do something themselves. We see this in John chapter 11, when certain people it seems are unclean and pure. And it says they came out of the country and went up to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. What it means there is they recognised maybe they touched a dead body, a sepulcher, dead bones and therefore they were unclean. So they had to make a trip somewhere and be cleansed. And in the ceremonial law that cleansing was with hyssop mixed with water and ashes of the red hypha. And someone would come and cleanse their body and their clothes. And after seven days, they can join the church once more. They were pure. And in the New Testament, this Old Testament law points forward to moral purification. As James gives the exhortation, clean yourselves, you sinners. Purify your hearts. It's something you are to do. You are to purify yourselves. And how do we do that? Well, Peter tells us. We purify ourselves in obeying the truth. We purify ourselves by obeying the truth. The truth here is the Bible. All that the Bible says and especially the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we are to obey this Bible. But the specific use of purifying ourselves is to submit to what the Bible teaches in the area of the Gospel. that the Lord Jesus Christ has done it all, and we must submit to him, and that action of submission is by we are purified. This is the terminology of the New Testament. For example, in Romans 16, verse 26, it speaks of God being made manifest in the flesh. It speaks of God coming in Jesus Christ, and it says that he came to be made known to the nations for the obedience of faith. Obedience of faith. Submission, acceptance of the faith. And then Peter, he uses the exact same language in the Council of Jerusalem, that first general assembly of the Church of Christ, where he speaks about the Gentiles. And in the area of salvation, they are the same, Jew and Gentile. We are saved by the same God, in the same manner, and the same way. And he says this is how they are saved, because they purified their hearts by faith. They purified their hearts by faith. And so what Peter is saying here is, when you are born again, you must exercise your own will, by God's grace, working behind the scenes, making you regenerate, giving you the power and the desires, yes, but nevertheless, you are to exercise your will and submit to the truth, purify your hearts by faith. by trusting and resting on Jesus Christ alone for salvation. Because you are unclean, you are impure, you are defiled by nature. But when you submit to the truth of God by having faith in Jesus Christ, justification comes with this exercise of faith. that a sinner, seeing no righteousness in himself, submits to the truth of the gospel by placing of his own will a faith in Jesus Christ and the declaration from heaven that we are righteous in Christ, that we are forgiven and we enter the family of God. This is the very first act or the effect of regeneration. And remember this morning, we cannot believe unless we're born again. But if we are born again, then we have the responsibility and the will to personally believe in Jesus Christ. Because no one's going to believe for you. God doesn't believe for you. A friend, a family member, an elder, a minister, they cannot believe on your behalf. But you, personally, must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you do, you are clean, you are purified by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. And this all starts with the truth. That the Bible tells us this is so. That there is a God, there is sin, there is holiness, justice and punishment. And there is to be repentance and faith. because God has made the way of salvation. And not only salvation in terms of the past, but our whole lives are to be surrounded by and built upon the truth of Almighty God in the Bible. And we should know that the only way we can obey the truth in terms of willing, desiring, and even loving the word, as Peter tells us, through the spirit. It doesn't matter how many evidences man has, 66 books, 40 authors, spanning thousands of generations, thousands of years, sorry, in different countries, different cultures, but one single message, one gospel, 2,000 years of church history, And in God, we have the exact same word as when Mark wrote his gospel. When Paul picked up the pen, so to speak, and he was writing Romans or Philemon or whatever epistle, when John was on Patmos, when he was copying down the revelation of Jesus Christ, the very words that they did write on their parchments, we have in this Bible today. Not one single word is missing. We have great and perfect transmission of the New Testament and the Bible. And though this is true, this still cannot convince a man one jot to truly believe and obey the Bible. It must be done by the illumination and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But once the Spirit has worked in a man's heart, when we're born again, we will desire to obey the truth of the Bible. Why? Because it is true. Every message, every man, every detail, every account, where it's geographical and place names, where it's figures of old like Adam, Abraham, David, cities like Ai and Jericho. Every single thing this Bible speaks about is absolute and objectively true. It's not true because we believe it's true. It doesn't matter if we believe it or not in that sense. It is still absolute truth. And this we have to emphasise and emphasise and emphasise. Even if we've been blessed by God to know these truths since we're young and growing up, that same old truth of the perfection, the inerrancy and the infallibility of the Word of God, we must remember and cherish it. And we must do so Because the world today in which we live does not believe in absolute objective truth. It denies it. You go around the streets, you ask people who are not Christians, and ask them, do you believe in truth? And so often the answer is no, in the objective sense. What's true for me is true for me, but what's true for you is true for you. I have my worldview, my morality, my belief, if you like, and you have yours, your truth, your worldview, but that's good for you, but don't put it on me. Who are you to say that you are right? In fact, how arrogant can you be, Christian, to say that your book is true and others are not? How can you say, Christian, that your religion is true but the others are not? Is that not what the world says? And the world also ties us to morality. What is good and what is evil? Because we obey the truth and we obey it in every area of life because it is true. When the Bible says, thou shalt not kill, we know it's wrong to unlawfully murder anyone. It's just wrong. Whether it's an argument in the family, whether it's at a concentration camp, on whether it's in the mother's womb in a hospital. It doesn't matter. Objectively, we can say each and every case is wrong. Murder in the womb? Wrong. Holocaust? Wrong. And a fight, say, out on the streets that ends in murder? Wrong. Why? Because I say so? Because you do? No. Because the objective truth says so. But this is not the attitude of the world. You go to Princeton, go to London, go to academia, go study the teachings of morality and philosophy and you'll get relativism. It's only moral in one culture but not necessarily so in another. That's why one atheist philosopher says that you cannot say the Holocaust was wrong. It wasn't helpful, it wasn't the best, but you can't say it was wrong. And that's a man taking the evolution and the worldview to its true consistent end. But the true morality starts with the truth of God. And because the Christian knows this in his soul, the Christian will desire to read this Bible and desire to obey it every single part of his life. Do you believe the Bible? Do you believe it is God-breathed? Do you believe it's truly profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness? Do you believe the Bible is true in terms of creation? How about the existence of Abraham and David? Is the Bible true on murder, coveting, adultery, fornication, any moral stream whatsoever, and if the Bible speaks on it, do you believe it's absolutely true? Well, if you do, it's one mark of being born again. That you see this word which is settled in the heavens. This word which Christ says, sanctify them by thy word. Thy word is truth. And you love it, and you cherish it. and you look upon the scriptures and you read them and you desire to obey it to the glory of God. If so, this is a mark of being born again. And if you do not believe the Bible as such, or you do not believe it, why not? What else is there? How can you say anything is right and wrong? By what standard? Is it because you personally are the judgment of six billion people in the world? Now that's arrogance. That's arrogance. Can you say the Holocaust was wrong? Like objectively? If you believe in simply relativity, that morals are simply passed from one generation to another, then you can't. The only truth in this world and its absolute form is the revealed Word of God and you have to deal with it now because if you don't, you'll deal with it on judgment day. This, my friends, is the truth of God and the first mark of a Christian is to purify ourselves in obeying the truth, faith and submission to Christ and obeying the whole Word of God. But there's a second mark of the Christian, and it's given and revealed in this truth, that we are to love our brethren. As Peter says, since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit and sincere love of the brethren, and he is the imperative, the command, love one another fervently with a pure heart. When someone is born again, they look at other people who are born again. They look at other men and women and children who profess the name of Jesus Christ. And the Bible tells them a truth, that when they are born again, they are born again into a family, a new family, a family of God. And when they see every Christian around the world, we may not know them for a while, but they're certainly not strangers. They're simply brothers and sisters we have not met yet. That's how wonderfully in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians in chapter three, he speaks of the Father, of whom the whole family in heaven and on earth are named. We have a new Father. A glorious, majestic, holy one. God is our Father. And because He is our Father, He has children. And His children are every believer on this planet who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. A wonderful truth. Wonderful. That when we meet together, we're not simply friends, We're not simply a community, we are brothers and sisters, a family of God. And in this family, there is a relationship that's often comes under the words communion. There is the communion of the saints. Communion and fellowship with other believers. And so often we get fellowship wrong in our understanding. You see, we think of fellowship as an activity, something that we do. Often it's, churches say they fellowship and they meet together and they do something. Speak about the Bible, share experiences. But that's not the very heart of fellowship. It's included, but it's not the heart of fellowship. Fellowship, firstly, is relationship. Relationship. That's the way the Bible uses the term. You remember the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2, after the Holy Spirit came in Pentecost? It says that they continued steadfast in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship. They spent their time together. It was a community of believers. They were in each other's lives. Fellowship starts with a relationship. When I have fellowship with God, it's because I have a relationship with Him. I have something in common with Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And because I'm in relationship with Him, I spend time with Him in fellowship. Praying to him, reading the word, I have a relationship with him and because I do so, that's where the activities come from, praying and reading. And Christians today, and I have to confess, in the true sense of fellowship, I've seen it in this congregation. It's always easy to preach sin and judgment, but it's also good to encourage that I have seen relationships in this congregation. But this is not the standard or the experience of so much of the Christian church. The world gets in the church, Fellowship becomes ice cream, barbecues, social nights. And it's not saying Christians can't socially meet together, but that's not fellowship. And the world comes in the church and the people don't know anything about their own brothers or sisters. You go to churches and they're simply Sunday churches or even Wednesday Sunday churches. Where people go out to the world, they go to work, they've got their own circle, their own lives, and then they'll come for an hour on the Wednesday or the Lord's Day, and then they'll go away. And the only interaction they ever have is on the Lord's Day or Wednesday in worship. And so they don't really get to know each other. And as we'll see in a moment, we are to love one another. How can you love someone you do not know? And so the church today should understand relationship firstly, firstly, as knowing each other, having a common bond. Because how can I pray for you if I just don't know anything about you or your life? How can you pray for me? And I know you have been praying for me, but how could you? Because you got to know me. I was in your homes. My life was opened up. We had fellowship, and that relationship strengthened. You knew things about me, and so you could pray and love for me. And that's to be the design of fellowship in the church. And I say these things because it seems to be going in the church of Christ. We should know each other, be in each other's lives, and through that, spiritual fellowship with one another. And that's when we can truly love one another. we can truly love, because our whole lives as Christian is to be in love. Our Lord Jesus Christ in John 13, in the upper room discourse, he says he gives to us a new commandment, that we love one another. And John, the apostle, he experienced that command. He looked at it, and that was his motive the whole of his life, love. And he says in 1 John 3, 14, how do you know if you're born again? How do you know you're regenerated? He says, we know we have passed from death to life. How do you know, John? Because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in darkness and death. That's how you know. You see something in someone, faith. repentance. I walk with God, a professed believer, and you love that person because they're of the same family as you are. You look at the work of the atonement, the propitiation for our sins, and you see the love of God towards us in Jesus Christ. And you say with John in response in 1 John 4, beloved, if God so loved us like this, ought we to love one another? And the truth and one of the marks of a Christian is that we do love one another. But what is love? What is love? Love today in the church and in the world is such a sentimental thing. It's an indescribable feeling that you simply love someone. You ask someone to defy love and they'll just use the word back at you. Well, you know, you love them. You care about them. You love them. But that's not biblical love. Biblical love is based upon truth. The Bible. What does the Bible tell us about these things? For an illustration, if you love someone you know and say they're not a believer, and you look at them, it's the most unloving thing in the world that they never know they're sinners and they need to repent in terms of Christ. It's the most unloving thing. Now the very act is hard, offensive. It's hard to tell someone you care about that they are sinners. But love is based on truth. And you do it because love means to desire the good of someone. To desire the good of someone. You know what it is when you have a father, a husband, wife, daughter, friends. You desire their good. You want them for all their best. Parents put certain pressure, might not be the right word, but you understand what I mean. Pressure the children, exhortation, encouragement, to do well at school. Sometimes a parent may take away things, away from the child, and the child cries. It's for their good. So they'll have an education and grow up. And a Christian loves a brother by desiring their good. A Christian may say some hard things at times. A Christian may have to correct another Christian, but it's done in love because they desire the good of another. And this goodness turns into an action where we sacrifice ourselves. Love means to give up your own life for someone else, to give up your own time to help others by giving up your life. And that's what John says. He says, hereby we perceive love. What is love, John? He says he laid down his life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. How often do we teach our children, John 3, 16, Should we not also teach them 1 John 3, 16? Hereby we perceive the love of God, that He laid down His life for us, and we also should lay down our lives for the brethren. Would that not help us the next time we struggle? The next time we have harsh thoughts about a brother or a sister? The next time we dare to gossip about them? He laid his life down for me. I should lay down my life for my brother or my sister. And Peter helps us to understand how we are to love the brethren. He gives us three words, in sincerity, fervently, and with a pure heart. He says we are to love them in sincerity. Literally, the word is without hypocrisy. We are to love the brethren without hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, in the time of our Lord, was a word used of actors. When they were acting, they would have a face mask, and it would give maybe the male or the female, or the moods or the attitudes, you know, a smile if someone's happy, a frown if someone's sad. They would wear the mask. And so often, how can we be this? We go to someone to their face, a brother and a sister I'm speaking about, and we say something nice and pleasant to them. We have the mask on, and then five minutes later, oh, that's when the tongue goes. It was a real love. It was a real care. You weren't genuinely interested in the person. At that time, you put on the mask. It was a hypocritical show of love. And Peter says we are not to have this attitude. It is to be without hypocrisy, which means it should be genuine. A genuine love from our hearts, deep affection, and a deep attitude to lay down our lives for them. And if we think of how we are to treat enemies, then think how we should treat brothers and sisters. Because our Lord Jesus Christ did teach us how to love our enemies. Matthew 5, 44. He says, love your enemies. How? Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. Pray for them that persecute you. Look at that, love. To someone who hates you, persecutes you, and accurses you, how do you respond to an enemy? You bless them, you do good to them, and you pray for them. That's our attitude to the enemy. And if that's an enemy, what about the genuineness of a love to a brother and sister in Christ? Pray to God that you do have a genuine love for them. If you don't, hereby we know we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. Be warned, be warned. And if you are a Christian who maybe this is cutting to you right now, you've forgotten the gospel. You've forgotten your own relationship, fellowship with God. You and I, we are all the ultimate hypocrites and sinners. We have offended God like anything. We've been evil and sinful and yet there's a love of God to forgive us our debts, to love us throughout our whole lives and we should have a sincere love for the brethren. And then Peter tells us this love to the Brethren is to be done fervently, fervently. And the word fervent, it has two ideas. The first, intensity, and the second, in terms of constantly. Fervently is a deep, intense affection. It's a word used of Jesus Christ. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane, When he comes to the Lord and he prays for the first time, then he comes to the second time, and it says in Luke 22 that being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. And that word earnestly is the same word here as fervently. When our Lord was in the garden in agony, it was a deep, intense affection. He was in pain. It was gut-wrenching. It was deep inside of him. And so he prayed with every strength that he had, every ounce of his being, more earnestly. He prayed in an agony. And that's to be our love for the brethren. A deep, intense love for them. That can only come if we truly know our sin and the power of love in our lives by God. It's the only way. A Christian who is deeply close to God, who's reading his Bible every day and praying, and every time the scripture comes up about sin and forgiveness, sin and forgiveness, it permeates the soul. And when you look upon someone you say, that is my brother or my sister, and I love them, and I care for them, and my heart pounds with intense affection for them. We are to fervently love the brethren. But the second use of this word fervency is often used when the apostles taught prayer, And they said, pray without ceasing. That word without ceasing, or especially ceasing there, is the same word from fervently and means longevity. Continually pray, continually be in the spirit of prayer. When there's something wrong in life, what do you do? You pray. When you're looking for guidance from the Lord, what do you do? You pray. When there's a fellow brother or sister in need of help, what do you do? You should pray. You should always have the spirit of prayer. And so you are to pray consistently, earnestly, and without ceasing, in life in general, yes, but here, of course, for the brethren. How often does a love grow cold so quickly? In one moment, we do love the Brethren. We love the Church of Christ. And the next minute, you know, we don't. We're cold. We hardly pray for the Church. In one minute, you hear the news of a brother or sister who's ill and sick. And immediately, you do, you pray. That night in family worship or when you get the time or whatever, you pray for them. It's a genuine fervent heart. But the next day, you forget. And the next day, can you imagine having your own wife, your own husband, your own child sick? Would you forget their sickness the day afterwards? No. You're in their life. There's a relationship, a daily relationship. And so as you go about your day and you have that relationship with your loved one, you're concerned about their needs. And this is the only solution to our lack of ceasingness. We forget to be without ceasing. We cease too often. Why? Because we're not in other people's lives. We should know each other. And if we know each other, we will pray and we will love without ceasing. And thirdly, he says it's to be done with a pure heart. A pure heart. A clean heart. It's done with a heart that's of grace. It's of the Holy Spirit. And it just looks upon someone and loves them. Loves them. It's real. And real love is not so much in what you say to someone. But what you do? Our Lord Jesus Christ loved like none of us here. In John 13, he says, having loved them who were in the world, he loved them to the end. How do we know he loved? He revealed it. He displayed it. He took himself, wrapped a towel around him, went on his knees, and he served the brethren. the Lord of heaven and earth, the Lord of glory in human flesh, serving sinful dust-based creatures. And that's why 1 John 3.18 says, brothers, little children, let us not love n-word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. It's easy to say I love you. Cheap words. Cheap. And it's easy to say I love the church and I love the brethren. We should say that, and I hope it's on the tip of your tongue, but it's easy to say that. Because what if we don't actually ever love them in action, in deed and truth? That's what we are to do. We are to show our love by doing it. Love so often is a verb, a doing word. And we love our brethren by serving them, putting them before ourselves. We love them by coming to them and sympathising with them, giving them a tender ear when they need it. We love them by rejoicing when they're rejoicing. You hear good news of someone's life. You rejoice how wonderful it was to hear such and such do this. My heart, I'm so happy for them. You love them in action by being sorrowful with them, by bearing their burdens. by finding out something's wrong in the family and you take, just for example, take a hot cooked meal to them so they don't have to cook that night. You do something in your life to help them, to let them know they do not carry the weight themselves, that you take a hand and you take that weight with you and say you are not alone. And you do it not also in deed, but in truth. And this is the hardest thing of all, I think, To say something to someone, you know they may be offended, but you have to say it. If you think individually, you see a Christian who's saying things or doing things or believe in certain things they should not. You come in deed and in truth. And you say, brother, sister, this is wrong. What you're saying is wrong. How you're behaving is wrong. And it's hard, and it should be hard, because we know our own sins. But if it's out of love, by God's grace, we will do it. And that's why we, me, do it to other Christians in churches. Often we preach the errors of evangelicalism. We don't do it because we're hateful, and I pray we don't do it because we're reformed, arrogant theologians. We do it because we love the truth. We believe it with all our soul, and we love the Church of Christ worldwide, all denominations, from any nation. And when we see anything in life against this word, oh, our heart bleeds. It takes that thing and says, oh, how I wish it was not so. And you pray out of error for truth. And so in this life, we are to obey the truth, and we are to love the brethren. indeed and in truth. But we cannot do these things truly without being born again. And I must ask again and again, are you born again? Because love cares about the good for that person, even if he or she doesn't see it. If a blind man's walking to a cave, And in the cave there's a pit where they will fall. And I shout and I scream and say, I don't want to listen, I don't care, I'm going this way. It would be the most unloving thing for me simply to give up. And you are that blind man, no woman. And you are heading towards a pit. The bottomless pit. And the truth is on judgment, there will be a judgment on this. Matthew 25, that when someone was hungry, did you feed them? When they were in prison, did you visit them? And it's not because works save us, absolutely not. But the evidence of being born again is obeying the truth and loving the brethren. Do you love the brethren because they are brethren? Brothers and sisters because you know the grace of God in your life? You know Jesus Christ personally as your own volitional faith looks forward as Lord and Saviour? I plead, friend, I can't call you brother or sister. I cannot, unless you profess and know Jesus Christ. I cannot, you are a friend. But I pray that you submit to the truth. to the obedience of faith, that you purify your heart by faith and you look around you and the men and the women in the pews, you think of the church worldwide and you say, they are my brothers and sisters because I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then I and everyone else can call you brother and sister. But I plead, first and foremost you must start nor with righteousness of your own, nor of works of your own, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and through him love the brethren. Amen, and may God bless his holy word. Let us sing that well-known psalm to our lovely brethren. Psalm 133. Psalm 133, a song of the grace of David. Behold, How good a thing it is, and how becoming well, Together such as brethren are, in unity to dwell. Like precious ointment on the head, That down the beard did flow, even Aaron's beard, And to the skirts did of his garments go, And now speaks of this Jew, which is the Holy Spirit blessing the church, Hermon being the church, Zion, sorry. As Hermon's Jew, the Jew that doth on Zion's hills descend. For there, the blessing God commands, life that shall never end, eternal life, the blessing of God in Jesus Christ, and saved, not to ourselves, but the family of God. Standing then, Psalm 133. Behold how good the living is, How good it cometh well, Together such as brethren are. in unity to dwell. Like precious ointment on the head, and the drifted floe, he made on spear and to the skirt did all his garments go. A serpent's youth and youth are dying on Zion's hills in centaur land. O Lord our God, what a beautiful sight it is of brethren dwelling in unity, praising and worshipping thy name, and to receive the life that shall never end. O Lord, we give thanks for the assurance of salvation and the great blessedness of knowing Thee. Lord, impart life, impart new life into the souls of them that have not yet been born again, and bring them to the obedience of truth, to saving faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. And bring us, O Lord, new brothers and sisters in Christ. In the Lord's precious name we ask, Amen.