People love a baby. You only have to watch when a new baby enters our auditorium how people flock around that baby. People love little children as well. We consider them so cute. And when they come up with the most interesting comments we just laugh at them. Kids have few if any inhibitions. For example.
My father would tell this story on himself. When he was a kid his parents invited a particular lady around to their house for dinner. During the meal my dad climbed up the back of the woman’s chair. She asked him what he was doing. He said, “I am looking to see if you have a mouth in the back of your neck.”
“Why would you want to do that?” the woman asked.
“Well,” said my dad, “my father says that you always talk out of the back of your neck.”
A kindergarten pupil told his teacher he’d found a cat, but it was dead. “How do you know that the cat was dead?” she asked her pupil. “Because I pissed in its ear and it didn’t move,” answered the child innocently.
“You did WHAT???” the teacher exclaimed in surprise. “You know,” explained the boy, “I leaned over and went ’Pssst!’ and it didn’t move.”
A mother tells a story about when she was six months pregnant with her third child. Her three-year-old came into the room when she was just getting ready to get into the shower.
She said, “Mommy, you are getting fat!” She replied, “Yes, honey, remember Mommy has a baby growing in her tummy.”
“I know,” she replied, but what’s growing in your butt?”
A certain little girl, when asked her name, would reply, “I’m Mr. Sugarbrown’s daughter.” Her mother told her this was wrong, she must say, “I’m Jane Sugarbrown.” The pastor spoke to her after the worship service and said, “Aren’t you Mr. Sugarbrown’s daughter?”
She replied, “I thought I was, but mother says I’m not.”
On the first day of school, the kindergarten teacher said, "If anyone has to go to the bathroom, hold up your hand." A little voice from the room asked, "How will that help?"
A three-year-old went with his dad to see a litter of kittens. Upon returning home, he breathlessly informed his mother that there were two boy kittens and two girl kittens. "How did you know?" his mother asked. "Daddy picked them up and looked underneath," he replied. "I think it’s printed on the bottom."
You may remember when you said things like that, when you embarrassed your parents to death. But most people take these things without being offended because they recognize that they come from children. We don’t expect them to be mature like adults.
Everyone in this room began life as a baby. It is a hard life being a baby and then a child. We are told what to do and when to do it. We seem to have very few rights. Most of us are quite happy when we leave childhood, adolescence, and reach adulthood, marked by leaving home and making our own decisions without someone leaning over us making decisions for us.
The problem is that some of us never really grow up. Some of us become adults and still act like children. And this has been true throughout all the ages. Paul wrote the following to the church in Corinth.
“Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world? When one of you says, “I am a follower of Paul,” and another says, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting just like people of the world?
“After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work. For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building. (1 Corinthians 3:1-9, New Living Translation).
Paul is saying that there is a maturity issue in the Corinthian church. He wants to treat them as adults but they are really still children, and not just children but babies. The particular issue he was addressing was pride and jealousy which was leading to divisions in the church. He says, in verses three and four “You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world? When one of you says, “I am a follower of Paul,” and another says, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting just like people of the world?”
What was causing this conflict, this division? On the surface it looks like they are arguing over the importance of certain people in the church, who had led them to Christ. But Paul says that is not the point. He says “I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger” (vs 1, 2).
Paul uses a great analogy to get his point across. They were Christians but they had not grown as Christians. He was very careful how he said what he said, “Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger” (vs. 1-2).
He said they still belonged to this world or at the very least they were “infants in the Christian life.”
In this series on Pure Joy we have been talking about how to grow in Jesus, how to deal with issues that can cause conflict, divisions, and ill feelings.
This is the fourth message in our series on Pure Joy. In the first message we focused on James 2:2-3, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”
We used a sieve as our visual illustration. We said that we should be joyful when trials and hardships come because God uses them to develop his character in us and make us more like him. Trials sift out the sins, the imperfections in our character.
Then in our second message we focused on Hebrews 12:4-6, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons and daughters: "My son, my daughter, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves.”
Our illustration that week was a bonsai tree, a miniature tree that has been shaped, cut, pruned, to make it the size it is.
In our third message we quoted John 5:44) “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44, NIV).
Our illustration was a plaque. And we said that recognition from others is sometimes more important that recognition from God.
And we said that lack of joy and peace comes because we too often prefer the approval of our friends to the approval of God and we become unhappy when we are not thanked or appreciated in the way we wish.
In our fourth and last message our title is: Feeling Joy When You Don’t Want To. When we are in conflict. When we are jealous. When we are having differences of opinion we are not feeling joy and in many cases the worst thing anyone can say is: “Count your blessings.” Or, “The Bible says to be thankful all the time.” We become even more unhappy if someone reminds us that we should be happy since we claim to be a Christian.
Paul is not saying it is wrong to be a baby. He is saying that it is wrong to remain a baby. We all love babies but if a baby does not mature what was funny at three is NOT funny at twenty-three.
When you feed babies milk is all you give them to begin with. That is natural and that is normal. But over time you wean them off the milk and give them solid food. I have here a glass of milk. As adults we will still drink milk but it is a very minor part of our diet. As a baby our diet is all milk. Here I have some solid food. If I gave this to a baby it would gag and choke. Milk is the only appropriate food for a baby.
But, for some reason the Christians in Corinth had remained babies. So Paul says I can still only feed you with milk. I cannot treat you as a mature Christian. You are really still like the world because you cannot get on with the people around you. So my illustration this week is milk or solid food.
What are you taking in spiritually? How can you tell if you are still a baby, a milk Christian, or a spiritually mature adult, a solid food Christian? You tell by how quickly you get your feelings hurt. You tell by how many people you don’t talk to. You tell by how many people you tell about the people you don’t get on with. This is what Paul is talking about in this passage.
And when we live that way Paul says we are really no different from the world.
A baby needs a lot of attention. A baby needs to be catered to. Are you needing a lot of attention?
A baby becomes a little child and little children can be so insensitive, so uncaring as we illustrated in the stories we shared at the beginning of this message.
The writer of the book to the Hebrews had similar challenges. He writes, “There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.” (Hebrews 5:11-14, New Living Translation).
So how do we grow beyond the baby stage as Christians? How do we become the people God wants us to be, mature and eating solid spiritual food?
Paul explains to the young pastor, Timothy, the way to spiritual maturity, “You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:15-16).
Children become stunted in their growth if they don’t get the right kind of food. Christians become stunted in their growth if they are not getting the right kind of food and the best food is right in this book, the Bible. It teaches us what is right and corrects our views and attitudes.
As we end 2007 and plan to enter 2008 I encourage all of you to take a look at your devotional life. How much time do you spend eating spiritual food? None of us would dream of going without eating at least once during the day but are we this particular when it comes to eating our spiritual food?
If you are do not have all the joy you wish. If you feel resentment toward some person. If you feel weak and helpless, then you need to assess your lack of spiritual food and if you are reading the right kind of material and how much time you spend in prayer each day.
One of the best ways to grow is to do what Jesus told the people, “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45).
This is very powerful. When we are in conflict we are not praying for that person we are telling our friends the unjust and unfair things that have happened to us. We are telling them how hurt we feel. We are not praying, “Lord, show me where I am making the wrong assumptions. Lord, show me how I can help that other person in a positive way. Lord, I pray for that person to be at peace even as I am at peace.”
As we read the Bible, pray to our loving Father, and be conscious of the fact that we need to move from milk to solid food. When we run into a problem of lack of maturity we simply say, “I guess I thought that that person was on solid food, spiritually mature, but maybe they went back to a milk diet for a while, so I will treat them as a baby, not getting upset over what the baby does because that is the nature of babies, of children.” In these kinds of ways we grow spiritually and be the salt and light that Jesus longs for His followers to be.
At the end of this service as you leave I am giving every family a copy of Discipleship magazine. This is full of articles and resources on the Bible that will help you grow from depending on milk to eating solid spiritual food. I encourage you to fill out the card inside and subscribe. This will be one of the best decisions you will ever make. In addition we are planning a new discipleship track at New Hope that will help you grow in your spiritual journey. Jose Hernandez is our discipleship leader and he will come to the platform and explain some of which will take place next year. So that 2008 will be the best year yet as we grow together, the New Hope Community, to rely more and more on solid food and where the world marvels at us because that maturity is shown by the fulfillment of the words of Jesus, “Look at those, people, how they love each other. They must be followers of Jesus Christ.”
