Moving Toward Perfection
By Pastor Jim May
Have you developed a good set of spiritual teeth this morning so that you can handle the meat of God’s Word; or are you still trying to live on milk alone?
As I look at the church of today, much of what I see is just milk. It’s as though people are born again, as newborn babies in Christ, and that’s as far as they ever go. Of course newborn babies are exciting to be around. There’s never a dull moment.
We had a new grandson just a few months ago and that little fellow commands a lot of attention from everyone around him. Even when he is sleeping and the people around him can take a breath, you know that something is brewing. He might be quiet for the moment but you know that the quietness is only for a moment.
To me, raising little kids is kind of like being around an active volcano. Even when its quiet around you can still sense the rumbling in the air and when it gets really quiet that’s when you have to get worried. When the kids are around and you don’t hear them, you had better be checking on them. You might find them quietly sprinkling face powder all over the carpet, or drawing a mural on the wall with a permanent marker, or maybe you’ll find them digging in the cabinets, dumping everything on the floor. Maybe you might even discover that they’ve wandered off down the street. There’s nothing more unpredictable than a quiet toddler. You never know what they are going to get into.
Like that volcano, they can be quiet. Long periods of silence, low rumblings and then comes the eruption. Suddenly, without warning, the top blows off and that cute little kid becomes a Tasmanian devil, crying screaming, kicking, throwing things and just being a wild man.
When I think of those things I am not surprised that some animals decide to eat their young! But thank God for parents who take the time to discipline their kids.
Believe it or not, God’s Word hasn’t changed and it still says over in Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." And it also still says in Proverbs 22:15, "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him."
Little children often cannot handle meat and some foods until they have time to grow a little. You have to feed them food that has been ground up and made into a liquid.
Now it doesn’t bother me to watch someone feed a baby out of a jar of baby food, but when I sit down to lunch in a little while, I don’t want to see a jar of Gerber Sweet Peas and a bottle of Isomil or Enfamil sitting there. It better be something that I can sink my teeth into, even if they might be false teeth.
I was checking out the list for our Valentines dinner this week and I was glad to see that meat was on the list. The only problem is that nobody had signed up to bring any yet. But you’d better believe there will be some. I like salads, even though if I eat them too often I begin to feel like a rabbit. I like veggies – after all I didn’t get this wonderful physique by culling too much from my diet. But I really like meat. If it weren’t for chicken, we preachers couldn’t exist for long.
I think that we have a score to settle with chickens anyway. That rooster squealed on Peter and ever since then we preachers have been trying to get even with chickens and many a chicken has sacrificed his life for the gospel.
The fact is that when you mature you get past the place where you need baby food and now you are ready for some real meat, some real veggies and you want to exercise your power to chew and get the most you can from what God provides for you to eat.
If you are old enough to understand what I’m saying then you should be ready for some meat. If you’re a teenager, or even older, and you still like eating out of baby food jars and sucking milk out of a bottle, I would really be worried about you. I’d probably think that your elevator doesn’t go to the top, that you are a few bricks short of a full load, that your Happy Meal is a few French fries short, or just to put it in plain terminology – I’d believe that you were insane.
Now we can all understand that because it relates to the things of the flesh that we all experience. But today I’m not just going to talk about growing up and maturing in the flesh, or becoming an adult and a good citizen.
I want to talk about growing up in Christ. It’s time that some of us moved on in Jesus. We have been newborns long enough. Now it’s time to start searching out some real meat in God’s Word and practicing to digest it so that we can become spiritually mature in the Lord.
Hebrews 5:12-14, "For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."
Hebrews 6:1, "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,"
As I look around the church I see that most, if not all, of us have already been placed upon that firm foundation. We have learned of the very basics of Christianity. What are those basic?
Hebrews 6:2-3, "Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit."
There you see the very basics of your faith. You have learned about being baptized into Christ and you have learned of water baptism. You have been baptized into Christ through believing upon him as your Lord and Savior, and you have been washed, or baptized if you will, in His precious blood and his blood has washed your sins away. You have allowed the His Spirit to fill your hearts and lives and you are baptized, immersed fully into Christ.
Secondly, you have learned of the importance and meaning of water baptism. Though we do not believe that water baptism saves your soul or washes your sins away, we do know that water baptism is a symbolism of dying to this world of sin, being born again by the blood of Jesus, and then being raised again by the power of the Holy Spirit into a new man, to live the resurrected life before our Lord. It is a public confession of an inward change signifying that the old man is dead and you are a new creature in Christ. If you have never been baptized, or if you want to be baptized again, it would be my honor and privilege to do that for you anytime. We will find a place to baptize you in water. That’s one of the basic doctrines of the church.
Then what about the laying on of hands? We all believe in the laying on of hands. Some of you might say, “Yeah, I’d like to lay my hands on my rebellious kids all right! Or you might say, “Boy I’d like to lay my hands on a million dollars!” Well, that’s not the kind of laying on of hands we are talking about.
We are talking about the laying on of hands as a symbol of the prayer of faith and the impartation of an anointing for healing, deliverance, salvation or blessing that can only be given by God. Our hands are place on your head, not that we can give you anything but our blessing, but because we believe that God’s Spirit and anointing can pass from one to another through the laying on of hands. It is our way of agreeing with you in faith for your need, asking God to move and touch you even as we do.
That doctrine is pretty simple and easy to understand. Let’s just accept it and move on. The foundation is laid. Now its time to start building the spiritual building that our lives will become in Christ.
The doctrine of the resurrection from the dead is a very fundamental belief of the Christian faith. After all, isn’t that what we all believe in and hope for? Isn’t that the number one reason for becoming a Christian? We want to have eternal life. We want to spend eternity with Jesus in Heaven and escape the flames of Hell. We believe that Heaven and Hell are very real places and that eternity is forever. Therefore, our life is Christ is founded upon the fact that Jesus gives us eternal life by resurrecting us from the dead. If you don’t believe or understand that there will be a resurrection of the dead, then you really don’t understand anything. I don’t have to keep repeating that lesson over and again. I believe that all of us accept that as a fact.
Then, another foundational doctrine is that we believe and we know that there is a judgment day coming when all the saints of God shall be judged as they stand before the Judgment Seat or “Bema” of Christ and there we shall receive our reward and be welcomed into Heaven. Our works that have given glory to God and been done as a faithful servant will be rewarded. Those works that we did that were done otherwise will be burned away.
Then we also know that there will be a judgment day for all those who died in sin without Christ. They too will stand before God at the Great White Throne Judgment where the Righteous King of the Universe, Almighty God himself, will judge sin and condemn every sinner to spend eternity in Hell. That judgment alone is enough to shake us into realizing that we need Jesus as our Savior for He is our only hope of escaping this horrible scene.
We know these basic doctrines and we don’t have to keep teaching them over and over except to those newborn babes in Christ that are born as time goes on. Those who have been saved for even a little while must move on into deeper truths in God’s Word.
Hebrews 6:4-6, "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame."
Once you have learned these basic principles of Bible Doctrine and you have experienced them for yourself, you can never, ever, ever forget what you have learned. Though you may stray from God, backslide into sin, you will never forget these doctrines. They will be like a bloodhound on your trail everywhere you go. You won’t be able to enjoy being a sinner as much as you once did because now you know and understand the real consequences of that sin. You will never be able to forget because the Holy Spirit will be ever there reminding you of what you know and what you will face if you continue on in your sin. It is literally impossible to forget that hell is waiting for the sinner and Heaven is waiting for the saint. You will always know where you can find the answer to your troubles if you really want to find them. You’ll always remember how real it was to know the Lord as your Savior and you will never be able to erase from your memory the fact that if you don’t turn back to Christ, you have no other hope for eternal life.
God’s grace, love and mercy will ever be reaching out to you, trying to draw you back to God, but only so gently. He will not force you to turn around and instead, will still be tugging gently at your heart and spirit, until you draw your last breath. God will simply stand by, with tears of sadness in his eyes, watching his beloved child, die in their sin, against all that he could do. At that moment, he ceases to be their hope of deliverance and now becomes the Judge of their sin of rebellion against all that God could do.
God has a three point hold on those that love him. He gives you salvation through the blood of Jesus. He gives you eternal life as a gift of the Father in Heaven. Then the Holy Ghost dwells in you to lead into the path of life that God has chosen for you. The only thing that can break those holds is your own free will. No devil can break them. No man can break them. You are the only one who can and you will do so only by making the choice to cast them aside.
Those words, “fall away” are little misleading if you don’t interpret them right. If you aren’t careful you might begin to believe that you can’t really fall away, or backslide. Some people have convinced themselves that once you are saved, you can never lose that salvation, no matter what you do. Plain common sense tells me otherwise and so does the Word of God.
If something falls away you might picture it as an accidental release. It’s like a knot that was tied came loose and the rope just slipped away. My friend, you don’t just slip away from God; you choose to untie the knot yourself and then allow yourself to fall away.
As a once true believer you can never really “fall away”, or go back to where you were before you were saved. Sin won’t be the same anymore. The Bible says that sin will become worse, as much as seven times worse, than it was before you knew Jesus as your Lord. Why is that so? I believe its because you will be trying so much harder to forget Jesus and to “enjoy” that life of sin but it will take seven times as much evil to push the thoughts of what you left behind out of your mind. If you had a drug or alcohol habit, it will take much more of those to get your mind off of the judgment that will be facing you. If you were into gambling or any other sin, you will have to do a lot more of it than before to enjoy it because the Holy Spirit won’t let you enjoy it without an ever present reminder of what you are leaving behind.
You can never be the “ignorant sinner, blind to sin and blind to the truth of God’s love” ever again. You can come back to Jesus at any time and he will forgive you, but you’ll never not know the truth again. You won’t die in your ignorance, you’ll die in your rebellion. Christ cannot be crucified a second time for you. He has already raised you and the eternal life is yours if you will only come back and renew your first works in Jesus.
As a backslidden sinner your coming back to Jesus isn’t like it was the first time. You can’t come with the same attitude, same knowledge and same understanding that you had before. It’s not as “new” as it was the first time.
Now you must come back under a different set of rules. Now you must come back to Jesus knowing that you have already been unfaithful once, twice or more. You must come back, fighting against every lie of the devil that keeps telling you that you can’t come back and that God has already rejected you. You can’t come to Christ as easily as you did the first time because now your own heart condemns you and it’s harder to accept the fact that God can still love you and forgive you for what you’ve done.
But thank God you can come back. God is just waiting for you to make that choice. If you choose to leave, then you must also choose to turn back to Christ. God won’t make that choice for you. He brought you to repentance the first time, now you must bring yourself to repentance the second time and that’s harder to do. Jesus will help you, but this time, you have to make the first move before God will move on your behalf.
It’s not a renewal of your first time to Christ, but a new kind of approach to the Cross. This time you don’t come as a sinner who has lived in blindness and darkness, but as a disobedient child, who has rebelled willingly against a loving Father. You must come back, knowing that you have crucified Christ in your own heart and that your life has put Jesus into an open shame before the world. Your testimony has been shattered and your life has been a reproach upon the very God that you want to serve. It’s so much harder to come back after you backslide. There is a big difference between being saved for the first time and coming back the second time.
Hebrews 6:7-8, "For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned."
Here’s the analogy: Paul compares the bare earth, void of life, to mankind in general. Unregenerate men are carnal minded , or earthly minded people. They are like the earth when it was bare and without form, during the creation, not yet filled with all the wonders of God’s blessings. Carnal men then receive the seed of God’s Word as it is preached around the world, and that seed of God’s Word and the gospel becomes the seed from which all of God’s blessings can grow in the hearts of men. Some men allow the seed to take root and grow and their lives produce the blessings of that seed, giving glory to God and allowing God to be their Lord and Savior. Others may take the seed, but then allow it to die by not serving God. That seed then becomes a thorn in their spirit, never giving them rest like we said a while ago, but then their lives produce thorns and briers of sin wherein they are miserably tangled. Those who reject the gospel and refuse to serve the Lord are drawing ever nearer to the day when God will place a curse upon them eternally and cast them into the Lake of Fire. We all start out as dead ground where the seed falls, but then what we do with that seed determines our eternal destiny.
Hebrews 6:9-12, "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises."
I believe that all of us want to get a little closer to perfection in Jesus Christ every day that we live. None of us really want to backslide. We all want to make Heaven our eternal home. Nobody wants to spend eternity in the flames.
But sometimes we just let things slip away and then we discover how far we have gone from God.
I am persuaded that all of us want to grow and mature in the Lord. Some of you have come a mighty long ways from that first moment of salvation and you have learned to really get down into the Word of God, study and chew on that Word and allow it to get down into your Spirit. Don’t give up now. Keep on growing and learning. You are a lot closer to perfection today than you were yesterday, but there are still some things to learn and more growing to do.
Others of us need to learn to grow a little more. Get past the basics and learn to dig deep into the Word of God. Learn to study, use some helps if you need to; seek the help of others whenever you need to; ask for special Bible studies on certain subjects, books or passages of scripture that you are having a hard time understanding. Most of all, and first of all, ask God to open your understanding so that you may learn of him more.
God is not some ogre who is standing over you with a whip in his hand to hit you when you do something wrong. He is a loving Father, just waiting for you to look for him and to know him more, and he wants to help you. He knows your heart and he understands you more than you understand yourself, so don’t be afraid to go to Him in prayer asking him to make you a little bit better every day.
Don’t be lazy in your search for perfection. Work, pray and study to be more like Jesus. Through faith, patience and endurance, you will inherit the promise of eternal life.
If you are slipping away from the Lord, turn back to him today before it gets harder to do so. If you aren’t closer to Jesus today than you were 6 months ago, then you aren’t trying hard enough. It means hard work, time and effort, but it’s worth the price.
If you have never allowed Jesus into your heart and repented of your sins, today could be the first day that you ever felt really free. Jesus is standing here today, waiting for you to make the next move. Will you come to him?
