"I'm Hungry, Lord" Series

“I’m Hungry, Lord”

BREBC September 8, 2002 a.m.

Subject: Spiritual Growth

Theme: The Means of Spiritual Growth

Passage: 1 Peter 1: 22 - 2:3

Jocelyn fell off the couch the other day. You remember Jocelyn, our newest granddaughter who was here in July? She was born 3 weeks early so took a little while to get going, but is she ever growing now.

Now I am not telling you that just because I’m proud of my granddaughter, but because this passage of scripture shows that spiritual growth in a Christian bears a remarkable similarity to the physical growth of a child.

We have been reminded during the last five weeks of the Glory of our salvation, the Search for our salvation, the Purpose of our salvation, and the Cost of our salvation, and now Peter addresses the Growth of our salvation. The secret of growth in our salvation is found in the title of this message “I’m hungry, Lord”.

And I’m going to suggest to you, this morning that just as in physical life, so in spiritual life,

1. Spiritual life requires a point of spiritual birth

2. Spiritual growth requires hunger for spiritual food

3. A lack of spiritual hunger and spiritual growth should cause alarm

4. Spiritual growth is a joy to others and to the Lord

1. Spiritual life requires a point of spiritual birth

a. As in physical life so also spiritual life requires a moment of birth.

When I was 12 years old, I joined the church. I don’t remember anyone asking me any questions about whether I really knew the Lord Jesus as my Saviour or whether there was evidence in my life of real Christianity. It was just assumed that because I grew up in a church going family, and because I had come to church for 12 years that I was a Christian. I remember the preacher that told how thrilled he was when he got my dad and a bunch of other farmers to join the church. No one ever asked them if they really knew the Lord Jesus either. No one ever told that preacher what a disservice he did to all of us in leading us to assume that we were all Christians because we went to church on Sunday.

No, dear ones, that preacher should have learned a lesson from watching the birth and growth of his children. There is no physical life without a physical birth, and there is no spiritual life without a spiritual birth.

As Nicodemus learned from the Lord Jesus, no matter how religious one is, it matters not one bit if one has never been “born again”. Sin and iniquity have separated every human being from God. As we saw last week, providing for our salvation had an infinite cost, for God’s Son had to give His blood and His life to buy us back out of the slave market of sin and therefore we must be born again by believing the gospel and entrusting our lives and our souls into the hands of Jesus.

Listen to what this passage says: 23 “having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, 24 ¶ because "All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away, 25 But the word of the LORD endures forever." Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.”

You know it is true. Jocelyn could not have been born if there had been no planting of physical seed, but that seed produced a physical body and physical life, subject to the laws of decay and death. The grass and flowers give us a short term picture of the brevity of physical life. But spiritual life is produced by the imperishable seed of the Word of God. The Word of God tells us about our God; it tells us about His creation of mankind. It tells us of our fall into sin. It tells us of the coming of our Saviour to die for us. It tells us of our need to trust Him for salvation., and it tells us of eternal life and of living forever with Him in glory, and as we hear these great truths, the Spirit of God so works in our heart that we repent of our sin, and turn to Christ in faith, and are born again into a new life which will not end at death, but gives us “eternal” life. This is the gospel. This is the incorruptible seed. This is the Word of God which endures forever.

Dear ones, there is no spiritual life without a spiritual birth. I ask you now in Christ’s love, “Have you ever trusted Christ as your saviour? Are you born again?”