“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?”
2. Spiritual growth requires hunger for spiritual food
Is it not a miracle that from the moment of birth, every baby has an instinctive sucking motion, and an urge to find a source of milk? Watch it in a batch of puppies without their eyes open still finding their mother’s milk. Watch it in a newborn calf or colt, whose legs are almost too wobbly to stand on, finding its mother’s udder. And watch the tail begin to twitch in delight when that milk begins to flow. Listen to a baby cry when its hunger can not be satisfied, and you get a picture of what ought to be true of every newborn spiritual Christian.
Listen to what this passage says: 2:2 “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,”
I was talking to Pastor Joe Russell this week. Joe is the senior Pastor of “New Beginnings Baptist Church” in Vancouver, B.C., which has been reaching people for Christ for the last 12 years off the streets of East Vancouver. That’s right, Joe and a team of workers are working the streets of that area known everywhere for its prostitutes and its drug dealers, its pimps and its pan-handlers.
Joe and his fellow workers are out on those streets where most of us would even be afraid to walk, especially at night, telling people about Jesus, loving them, serving them, providing food for them, and clothing and furniture. Joe says that every Friday night their two vans crisscross Vancouver bringing 60 or 80 teens from their homes to the youth meeting, and taking them safely home again afterward. Those vans are out on Sunday nights picking up mothers and their children from their homes, bringing them to service and taking them home again. Every week about 40 students from Trinity Western University come into the inner city to be trained to work the streets and to follow up on those reached.
Jennie Shantz, the young woman who has recruited and trained and supervised these 40 people every week for 7 or 8 years, the young woman who has loved and cared for the girls brought in out of prostitution, out of drug abuse and out of sexual abuse and who knows what else, has received $30.00 per month from Beaver Road Baptist Church in Lake Cowichan, so you have had a small part in this outreach. This year, she has decided to leave that ministry and finish her university degree, and so someone else is taking over that leadership.
Now why am I taking time to tell you about this? I’m taking this time, because Joe says that lots of people pray the sinner’s prayer to receive Christ, but he says they don’t count these people as Christians until they begin to see God at work in their lives, until they begin to see change, and growth and evidence of real life.
And what is the evidence of this change? They see these people beginning to dig into the Word of God, learning about Jesus and faith and freedom from sin. And Joe says that without that hunger for the Word of God, there will be no change in their lives. And regardless of their praying the sinner’s prayer, without that hunger for the Word of God, they are as a stillborn child, without life.
The evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in a person’s life is a desire to understand spiritual truth and grow in spiritual life, changing from the old self centred individuals into Christ centred Christians.
And what is true on the streets of East Vancouver is true in the streets of Lake Cowichan. Dear ones, do you have a hunger for the Word of God?
3. A lack of spiritual hunger and spiritual growth should cause alarm
For the first week or so, Jocelyn was slow in nursing and in beginning to gain weight and there was just the twinges of concern about her overall health. You know well that if a baby doesn’t grow, it causes alarm and leads a parent to get that baby to a doctor to find out what’s wrong.
Have you considered the spiritual parallel? If a person professing faith in Christ has no desire for God’s Word and shows little or no evidence of spiritual growth, it should set off the alarm bells to find out what’s wrong.
As a baby will stop nursing and begin to fuss when gas is present, so it is true that a Christian will not feed on God’s Word, and will become fussy and irritable when sin gets in the road. Listen to what the Word says: 2: 1 “ Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,”
Peter here warns that in the Christian life, it is essential that sin be laid aside in order for growth to continue. Here are some examples: the word for malice refers to wickedness of all types, moral evil; deceit refers to all attempts to deceive, all fraudulent means to gain one’s end; hypocrisy refers to all forms of acting out a part, and pretending to be something we are not; envy and jealousy is a looking at others selfishly, all desiring what others have; evil speaking refers to all slanderous talk, all attempts to pull others down.
Now these are merely examples of sins that can short circuit spiritual growth, and lead people to spiritual stagnation. Sin of any form can bring a Christian to a screeching halt, and result in that person’s being set on the shelf, unable to be used of God.
Dear ones, we must watch over our own hearts diligently. We must root out every sin which so easily besets us; we must seek to keep our hearts open and free to love God and His Word and His people or else we run a serious risk to our spiritual health. Oh, dear ones, keep your hearts open to the Lord and His leading. Let nothing diminish your spiritual growth and usefulness.
4. Spiritual growth is a joy to others and to the Lord
I want you to go back with me now to the beginning of the passage which we read - back to 1:22 “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, 23 having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,”
Here is the goal we seek: spiritual maturity. Having purified our souls: this is a constant process. Day by day, every day, we seek to grow in the Word; we seek spiritual cleansing through the Word; we respond by confessing sin revealed by the Word. Spiritual growth takes place through obeying the Word, and it results in love for your fellow Christians.
Who are your fellow Christians? We can start with all those who truly confess Christ as Saviour and Lord, of every colour, every race, and every denomination. But we have to bring it closer than that; we bring it back to all the true Christians we know; to all the fellow believers in our own church. Dear ones, another of the hindrances to growth and progress in the Christian life is a lack of love to those believers we know. We have to watch over our hearts. “To be above, with saints we love, oh, that will be glory; to be below, with saints we know, now that’s a different story!”
Here is God’s Word: “love one another with a pure heart fervently.”
Here is the challenge for every Christian. Here is a challenge for every church. Is the love of Christ being reflected in love within the body?
If it is it brings joy and victory within the church family which can be felt. It sets the Holy Spirit free to carry forward His plan through this church in this community.
Conclusion: Spiritual Growth comes through hunger for the Word of God, and for true obedience to His Word.
“I’m hungry, Lord”. Are you? May it be so.
