Rev. Brent L. White

"Long for the pure spiritual milk," Peter writes—by which he means the "milk of the word," as the King James puts it. In other words, as God's children, we should long for the gospel, for God's Word, and for God's kingdom. As I discuss in this sermon, we can't fake "longing for" something. Either we do or we don't. And if we don't, then that's a symptom of a spiritual problem. See, when Peter tells us to "put away" these various sins in verse 1, my temptation is to preach a "try harder"-type sermon: "Try harder to be a better Christian. Work harder on the 'spiritual disciplines.' Pray more. Study the Bible more." But as I make clear in this sermon, our problem isn't that we're not trying hard enough; our problem is that we're not believing the gospel wholeheartedly enough. We need to learn to apply the gospel to the problems in our lives. This sermon talks about how to do that.