Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas
Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday evening service, August 16, 2026 The Staircase · A3 D13 · 2 Peter 1:5-7
► Watch this lesson on video (45:16)
The One Point
Brotherly kindness is family love that climbs one step past our own front door.
The Thread
Last Sunday night we set the last stone on the hundred and seventh Psalm — His lovingkindness, and how His lovingkindness is one of the LAST things we ever connect the dots to . . . after the wanderers and the prisoners and the fools and the storm-tossed.
This morning we took up the seventh step — philadelphia, brotherly kindness, the family love of God’s house — and we talked about the handshake and the hug, and the porch light, and the lamp that has to be kept supplied with oil.
This morning we lit that lamp INSIDE the house . . . tonight we pick it up and carry it to the front door.
We all know how to love our own . . . that part is easy. But does our love ever make it PAST the front door?
The Text
“And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity” (2 Peter 1:5–7).
ONE step from the top . . . one step from charity, which is the God-kind of love.
When we think about climbing this staircase — faith, knowledge, temperance — those live mostly on the INSIDE . . . brotherly kindness is where the climb finally begins to show on the OUTSIDE, where somebody else can see it.
The Word, and the One Thing Peter Says About It
Philadelphia — phileo and adelphos (love, and brother). Family-table love.
And when I say family table I mean the table in our homes where the family gathers to eat. I understand our culture is scattering so that — the husband grabs a snack here, the kids grab something there or eat in front of the television, and the whole business of gathering at mealtime is disappearing . . . and it should not be. I could go all day bragging on things Summer has done since we married, but this is one of them: when the kids were little she insisted that at mealtime we sit down at that table TOGETHER and eat. That is a special time of fellowship.
The word Philadelphia means the love and the tenderness between those from the same womb. It is a mother sitting up all night with a sick child . . . It is the kind of love that does not have to be ASKED for — when Wyatt gets sick, when Claire gets sick, they do not have to go to their mother and put in a request that she tend to them.
But NOTICE what Peter says about it. He says ADD it.
And if a thing has to be added, then something about it does not come to us naturally. The family part is natural. The CLIMBING part is not.
Kindness Is Clothing
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering” (Colossians 3:12).
The words that carry the weight are PUT ON. Kindness there is chrestotes (sweetness of disposition), and Paul says kindness is like a set of clothes.
Nobody I know of wakes up fully DRESSED — we put our clothes on after we wake up. Family love is something that wakes up already dressed and ready to go . . . but kindness past the family is a set of clothes we have to put on DELIBERATELY, the way a man gets out of bed and puts on a work shirt and work boots.
And look at WHO is doing the dressing — the ELECT of God.
God has a family table too, and there are qualifications He has set for it. We took the Lord’s supper Wednesday night, and that is His family table — we are not going to preach that lesson again tonight, but that is what is being referred to.
No Climb At All
“For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same” (Luke 6:32–33).
Loving those who love us back is no climb at ALL — it comes naturally, and the Scripture says right here that even lost people manage it.
Family love is a gift of God and it is nothing to be ashamed of — but if it never goes one inch past the people who loved us FIRST, if it never gets past Mama, never past Daddy, never past a brother or a sister . . . then as far as this staircase is concerned we are still flat-footed on the ground floor. We have not really done anything.
One Another
“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32).
The words that carry the weight here are ONE ANOTHER . . . Paul is not writing to a household — he is writing to a CHURCH house.
Kind here is chrestos, out of the same ‘word family’ as the work shirt we just put on . . . and tenderhearted is close kin to ‘the lovingkindness’ that we studied in Psalm 107, the sweetness we keep for our blood kin. That is what God expects us to carry into the pews.
Brotherly kindness in our own households is natural. It gets a good deal LESS natural when we take that same attitude out of our immediate families and carry it into the church, one with another — and that step, where the church family begins to be treated like family, is the other side of brotherly kindness.
Never Finished
“But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you . . . But we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4:9–10).
Same word — philadelphia . . . and NOTICE that a church already doing it is told to climb HIGHER.
Brotherly kindness is never FINISHED. Do you ever finish loving your mother or your father? Do you ever finish loving your children or your grandparents? Do you reach some point where that is ENOUGH — where you do not have to do any more?
And even where it is present in a local New Testament church, it does not run on autopilot . . . I said this morning that a church can be warm four or five years ago - and not be warm now. You never put anything in the Christian world on AUTOPILOT and assume it will take care of itself. The love we have for our families does not work that way either.
We do not simply assume Mama and Daddy will keep loving us. I do not know about the rest of you, but growing up I loved hearing my mother and my father say, I love you, son. I am proud of you. It still tickles me to death when Summer whispers something sweet, and there is nothing more special in this world than one of the grandkids saying Grandpa, I love you — and today, two or three times right out of the blue I heard a, Mama, I love you. Granny, I love you.
When we simply ASSUME that love is present in the church between one another, that is exactly when we begin to let it wax cold. There is nothing wrong with making sure the lamp stays full of oil. That is exactly what God expects.
So in those three passages — Luke 6, Ephesians 4, 1 Thessalonians 4 — we have the whole of it. Family love is the pattern . . . putting it on is the effort . . . and ONE ANOTHER is the direction.
What It Looks Like in Real Life
I like to bring spiritual things down into real-world examples — so what does this love look like, not in a sermon, but in a LIFE?
Suppose we have been looking forward to something for weeks — it is circled on the calendar, we have planned everything around it, we have talked about it at the supper table.
And then a family member starts feeling bad. They would NEVER ask — but we know they need to go to the doctor, and the timing could not possibly be worse. So we take them, and we miss the thing we have been waiting weeks for . . . and we never say one word about it.
If our love is genuine — not fake, not feigned — here is the really good part: we never feel one ounce of REGRET. Have you ever been aggravated because you did something good and right?
Now, I can see this happening in a family where on the outside it is no problem — and then we complain about it the whole way home from the doctor, or we bite our tongue and bring it up two weeks later . . . you know, I had to give up such-and-such to take you to the doctor.
To be GLAD to do it . . . to be glad we were ABLE to do it . . . to be glad we were part of that person’s life so that we could help them. THAT is what brotherly love is.
And if we are resentful — what would it be like NOT to be part of their life? What would it be like to have a bellyache and nobody love you enough to take care of you?
Or the classic example. One piece of chicken left on the plate, and we suddenly discover that we are not hungry at all . . . never mind that we are about to starve. We put on a good act, because this love runs BOTH ways — if they suspect for one second that we really are hungry, they will pull the same trick and we will end up with that last piece.
Somebody said once, and I think it was someone here in this congregation, I was grown and had kids of my own before I realized that Mama really did not dislike chicken wings. She took the smaller, yuckier pieces so the children could have the good ones — that is what MOTHERS do.
At first glance you might think that is DECEPTION . . . it is not — that is love keeping its own secret. Yes, I would like to have that. But I want Kenneth to have it more.
And Here Is the Problem
Both of those examples happened INSIDE the house.
And that is exactly the problem I want to put in front of you tonight . . . nobody in this room needed to be TAUGHT what to do about the doctor trip or the chicken plate — we did not have to be taught the proper thing.
Peter is not asking whether we love our families . . . he is not asking whether we love the people who sit down at our table . . . he is asking whether our love can CLIMB.
Left to itself, brotherly kindness is affection for the people who return it — and we have just read what the Lord thinks of love that stops there. What thank have ye? Sinners do the same. So we cannot pat ourselves on the back for being good Christians because we love the people who love us back . . . that love is EASY, and that is exactly why Peter put it on a staircase.
It is natural to love our parents, and it is natural to love our children and our grandchildren — the STRAIN comes when love has to travel past the ones who share our table.
Godliness aimed our worship at God . . . brotherly kindness aims that same heart at God’s FAMILY.
One Layer Deeper
Now let us go one layer of the onion further.
Summer feels bad, and I forget the thing I had been looking forward to and I take her to the doctor — any husband in this room would do the same without one reservation, and be glad he was in a position to do it.
But what if it is the NEIGHBOR who is sick? You are on the verge of leaving for something you have looked forward to for - forever . . . it is not your wife . . . it is not a relative . . . it is your NEIGHBOR . . . you know they are in need, you know their children live out of state, you know they would never ask — and they know how much you have been looking forward to this.
Now what do we DO? Do we treat them like close family . . . or do we tell them be ye warmed and filled and head out the door?
I will tell you a story on myself. We have a neighbor behind us whose yard needed mowing, and he got about a third of the way through it and his mower broke down, and it was pretty obvious . . . a week went by . . . two weeks. Now, I do not care whether anybody mows his yard or not, it is not important to me — but I got to thinking, I have an extra mower over here that works fine. So I went over and knocked on the door and told him he was welcome to use it until he got his fixed.
He got MAD at me . . . I do not need your charity.
My point in bringing that up is this: an act of kindness is not always going to be received in the spirit in which it was intended . . . so be prepared to have something thrown back at you that you did not expect.
But WHO lives one step past our front door tonight? And when was the last time our kindness reached past it?
Homework
First, pick ONE person who is not blood kin — a church member, or a neighbor like the man with the broken mower — and do for them exactly what we would do for a family member. I would certainly have offered my mower to a family member . . . my neighbor was having trouble, why would I not offer it to him? I did. He took it wrong, but that is beside the point.
Second, on Sunday morning we ought to treat this church house like the family table. It would be good this coming Sunday to turn it up a notch ‘with the one’ that we usually do not ask about — not just a nod, hey, Caleb, you doing okay? Good. Bye. Spend a little quality time with the ones we do not know as well as some others.
And for anybody whose family table is small, or empty — I remind you that in the family of God NOBODY is short of brothers.
That is one of the things the children of God take for granted and go through life thinking is not really that important — the fellowship we have with one another in church. And there is a REASON God said, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).
I do not think God’s point in that was - that when we get to heaven somebody will look at a score sheet and say, Kenneth, I am so proud of you, you assembled thirty or forty years running without missing a week. The point is that when we fellowship with one another it does US good and it does THEM good . . . when we put our feet under the table at home, it does us good to fellowship with the people for whom that meal was cooked.
The Invitation
‘Brotherly kindness’ is family love that climbs one step past our own front door.
Before next Sunday, practice ONE act of family kindness — and when I say ACT, I do not mean pretend — for somebody outside your own front door.
Love is something we talk about and toss back and forth — but there is nothing wrong with expressing family affection for one another. Somebody says that ‘a man’ should not wear pink . . . well, I do not know about that. But it should not threaten any man’s ‘manhood’ to show affection for the people in this church, and to move a little of that affection from our immediate family out past the front door and begin to SHARE it.
If we do not love our OWN, we cannot love God.
Next lesson we begin on charity . . . which is over the top of everything else on this staircase.
Scripture Used
2 Peter 1:5–7 · Colossians 3:12 · Luke 6:32–33 · Ephesians 4:32 · 1 Thessalonians 4:9–10 · Hebrews 10:25 · James 2:16 (alluded) · 1 Peter 1:22 (alluded, “unfeigned”) (all KJV)
No comments:
Post a Comment