The First Step Toward Maturity

Transcript

Why The Cross Redefines Power

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So we are gonna just jump kind of into our passage for today. Just for some context, we're in the book of 1 Corinthians, which is a book written by a guy named Paul to the church in Corinth. And the last couple of chapters, he's been talking a lot about a few things. He's been talking about divisions in the church. He's been talking about godly wisdom and power versus worldly wisdom and power. You know that one is rooted in human strength in the world, but the other is rooted in God's strength. And this godly power and wisdom to the world looks completely foolish because it's rooted in the cross and the crucifixion. And if you uh remember we've talked about this a couple times, for us, the cross is like this beautiful image, but back then it would have been a mark of shame, right? Like the electric chair or something today. It was not this like beautiful thing we kind of uh make look really pretty. It was like the fact that God's power lies in the cross was just ridiculous to the world around them. Um but when Paul talked about the cross, he's not just talking about the intellectual understanding of the gospel and believing in it, that like, hey, if you believe in Jesus, your sins are forgiven, you can be raised to eternal life. The cross is also the thing that is supposed to define and focus our life here on earth as well. And last week I spent some time talking about this godly wisdom that's worked out in everyday life. So, not again, not just a belief, although that's important, um, but just like how Paul says, we've been crucified with Christ, or how Jesus says, pick up your cross daily and follow me, that this type of godly wisdom uh can only be discerned through the Holy Spirit. So to the world, it looks ridiculous, it's counterintuitive, it's upside down of how things normally work. Um, but for those with the spirit, they can see the truth and the beauty and the power in it. And so Paul is challenging the Corinthians to live as people of the Spirit, which they are, as followers of Jesus, not as people of the world, which they are not supposed to be anymore. And he ended saying, We have the mind of Christ, so we can know God's very thoughts because of the spirit. And so then our passage today is a short one, just four verses. Uh, he starts off saying

Milk Versus Solid Food

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this. He says, Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the spirit, but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. So in this first little section, he's talking about how it was when he first visited them. Because Paul, if you remember in the book of Acts, he went and he spent like, I don't know, like a year and a half at Corinth, planting the church and leading and guiding them. So at that time, he talked to them like they were babies in the in following Jesus, right? Because that's what they were. It was appropriate at that time that they needed to hear the basic, simple message of the cross. That they needed to like the very bare bones, basic stuff, right? Because uh they didn't know a lot about how to live in the kingdom. They weren't spiritual people yet, because they're just hearing about all of this for the first time. There's a lot of worldly value still in them and still operating out of them. So at the time, four to five years ago, that was very normal. And the word for worldly here, which we're gonna see pop up a couple more times, in the Greek is actually like the word for flesh. So, like, you know, he's kind of contrasting uh life in the spirit versus life in the flesh, like in your body. So he's contrasting the life with like fleshy reality, which I know is a weird word to say, but I'm gonna say it like three or four more times, so buckle up. Um, but now Paul is writing to them four to five years later, and he says this you know, you weren't ready. Indeed, you're still not ready. You are still worldly or you're still fleshy. Now the problem isn't that they started off as babies, right? That's very appropriate. The problem for Paul is that four to five years later, they're no further along than they were before. You know, imagine if I got up here and instead of a water bottle, I had a baby bottle, right? Like that would be weird, or it should be weird. You should be kind of weirded out by something like that. Like, but if I was a baby, it'd be very appropriate, right? Um, my older girls, I have three girls, um, and our littlest one, when she was like a baby, the girls, my two older ones, thought it was so unfair that we would ask them to do things that we didn't ask the baby to do. Like, why doesn't she have to clean up her dishes? Like, because she's a baby and she can't even walk, right? Like, it's just ridiculous to expect the same thing out of a baby as someone who has been a little further along in life. And so Paul's saying that, like, it is not normal that I can't still talk, that I have to still talk to you as if you're babies, just drinking that milk four to five years later, right? It is normal after you start following Jesus to have kinks to work out in your life, in areas of your life that you haven't yet submitted to him, and things like that. But as the years go on, it's less and less normal just to stay in the same spot. Um, and again, this uh worldly word is fleshy, right? The Corinthians thought they were super spiritual, if you remember as we talked. We'll see it way later in the book, but we talked kind of at the beginning of the book. They thought they were very spiritual, um, but they're actually very fleshy, right? They thought because they spoke in tongues, because they could prophesy, because they had all these religious experiences that they were just like crushing it, that they were awesome. But Paul is telling them, hey, actually, you think you're doing great? You are actually living as if you don't even have the spirit. Now, there's an irony here. Another thing we'll see later in the letter is that the Corinthians even started to believe that at the resurrection, they might not even have physical bodies to be resurrected. Like they were so down on the physical world and so like like lifting up the spiritual world all the time, they thought, you know, I bet when we're like in heaven, like we won't even have physical bodies, we'll just be like spiritual. And so it's ironic that Paul is telling these people who intellectually believe in the spirit and the spiritual realm, who overly fixate on the spirit, probably to the detriment of actual true theology, and who are experientially living out their spiritual gifts, that there

When Growth Stalls Out

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is a pro that the problem is actually that they're living in the flesh too much, like mere human beings. Um, and his evidence for this is uh this about halfway through the paragraph here. For, because since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, I follow Paul, and another I follow Apollos, are you not mere human beings? So he's kind of referencing something he's already talked about, and he'll continue to talk about how the church was dividing over leaders and kind of coming up with factions and raising some people over others. And so for Paul, this is the evidence that they are still living in the world, but they aren't living in the spirit. It's not about a theology test they didn't pass. It's not about how much spiritual activity they were doing. The evidence that they were living in the flesh is not, and not in the spirit, is how they're living out their faith in practical, day-to-day ways in their relationships with the people around them. Uh, which for us shouldn't be anything new, right? We saw this, I feel like this has been a theme in these last couple chapters in Corinthians when we were looking at the Sermon on the Mount. It was like so much of like following Jesus, isn't just about believing the right things, but how we work it out with the people around us. The primary way we work out our faith is walking with the people around us in love. Now, so over the last uh, I don't know, month or two, couple months, we've talked about divisions, we've talked about things like worldly wisdom a lot. Um, and so as I was sitting with this passage, thinking, God, what do you want us to talk, like kind of focus in on? The thing that struck me most while reading this passage was that the Corinthians thought they were spiritual, right? They thought they were crushing it, they thought they were doing awesome. Now, we, of course, as we look back at them, we have the benefit of hindsight and say, like, hey, actually, there's a lot of jacked up stuff going on. We see what Paul was saying, but for them, they seem to genuinely think that they were like on the right track. And I think it's really easy to judge them, right? But for them, they were spiritually active, they're speaking in tongues, they're doing church, they're really wise by the world's standards, a lot of successful people by the world's standards, and yet they were completely missing the mark. Now, before we judge them too harshly, if we're not careful, the same exact thing can happen to us very easily. We can let the good things in our life and in our faith, the growth we've experienced, the spiritual activity we do, all of that stuff can blind us to the ways that we're still like sitting in diapers sucking on a bottle and not like growing up in our faith the way God wants us to. These things can blind us to the fact that we still have a lot of growing and maturing to do, both as a community and as individuals walking with Jesus. Now, no one likes finding out uh something is in a blind spot, right? Or getting confronted with a truth that you didn't really know about or you weren't prepared for. Like when you read scripture and all of a sudden it's like something jumps off the page, you're like, oh gosh, that's me. Like, I don't look like Jesus as I read this interaction, right? We don't like probably when we talk with other people and they uh hopefully gently uh present blind spots to us that we didn't realize were there.

Jealousy As A Spiritual Warning

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Um, or when you go to God in prayer and you know, maybe as you're reviewing your day or whatever, and then interaction comes back, and you're like, oh man, maybe I'm not as loving as I thought I was. Right? These are not fun experiences. Um, and when we're brought to that point of conviction of how we're not measuring up, how we failed, how we've dropped the ball, we have a choice of what we're gonna do with it. And one of the options uh that the Corinthians seem to choose is just to resist it and kind of put it back in our blind spot and keep going, business as usual. Uh but when we resist, we're actually missing out on the good things God wants to do in our heart and in our soul and in our life. So our bottom line for today is the first step towards maturity is reckoning with your immaturity, right? Reckoning with reality, being okay with where you really are so that God can take you somewhere else. Right? Something the Corinthians didn't seem to be willing to do up until this point. Now, as I sat and thought about it, I think there's four, I thought of four reasons, I'm sure there's more, that we avoid conviction. Like that we kind of like when that uncomfortable feeling happens, why we push it away and avoid it. Um and some of these are from my own life, some as I talk to lots of other people about their own spiritual life. But the first one is just simply that conviction is uncomfortable, right? We don't like that feeling. It's uncomfortable seeing yourself for who you really are. Um, like if you've ever been at a hospital and you go to the bathroom and they have like these really bright lights, and you're like, whoa, that's what my face looks like under like real bright light. Like, I don't know if I like this, right? We don't like that feeling of seeing who we really are. You know, it's kind of like I know a lot of people uh really don't like to watch the show The Office because it makes them like cringy and uncomfortable to watch someone stupid doing something stupid. It's even worse when it's yourself and you see yourself doing something stupid. You're like, why did I do that? Like, why am I this way? Why am I the way that I am? Right? It's uncomfortable. Um even when we uh try to be ready for it. Like I remember uh this is a long time ago back when we lived in Oregon. Um in school, I had some sort of in my uh pastoral ministry program, like some sort of homework about asking people you lead for feedback. And I sent this email to like, I don't know, three or four people that were part of my youth ministry team, and I'm like, hey, I'd love some feedback, you know, some positive, some things you think I could work on, right? And so I'm like already, like, okay, yeah, hopefully I'll learn some really good stuff about myself. So I get a couple of them back and they're like, oh, that was super helpful. I get one back and it's like, scroll,

Reckoning With Immaturity

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scroll, scroll. Oh man, she has a lot of feedback for me, right? And even though I asked for it, it was really uncomfortable to take that and to read it and listen to it, not be like, all right, well, let me tell you why you're wrong about what you said about me, even when I asked you, right? It was difficult to hear that in the moment, but it was also so good. Um, a second reason is we allow the good in our life to mask the bad. This is kind of what the Corinthians were doing, letting their gifting and their spiritual experiences cover up the things that maybe God wanted to convict them about and to lead them into greater faithfulness and to help them lead into maturity. Uh, one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament is from Amos chapter five, and it's just because it's so like such a striking verse. Um, you know, in this uh verse, uh God is speaking to the Israelite people. Um, they had been neglecting the poor, neglecting justice, but they're crushing it with all their temple and religious stuff and spiritual stuff. And here's what God says to them I hate, I despise your religious festivals, right? The thing that for them was one of the most important things in the world. Your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the music of your harps, but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream. Right? God hated those things because they were using them as like a shield for neglecting what God was actually inviting them into,

Why We Avoid Conviction

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which was caring for the poor and doing like doing life justly so that everyone around them could have like what they need to survive. Right? And God had been trying to get their attention about this, but they were using spiritual activity to mask what God wanted to do in them and how he wanted to grow them. You can be involved in Bible studies, you could be praying daily, you could be coming to church every week and fooling yourselves into thinking you're spiritually mature. It's kind of filling your life with a lot of spiritual activity and thinking, man, I am crushing it, I'm doing awesome. I do all my quiet times, I do all the right things, but if your heart is not submitted to God, you are fooling yourself. Because we all have areas of growth, right? Transformation is a lifelong process, right? The older I get, and the more I talk to people who are way further along on the journey than I am, it's like, man, there's never a point where you arrive and you've made it. Um, I was reading in Luke this week, and this passage just really jumped out to me. It's from Luke chapter 18, uh, verses 9 through 14. He says, uh, it's, or Luke writes, to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, right? Because that's also the easy thing to do. Be like, well, at least I'm not like that person, right? Uh look down on everyone else. Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, so one of the religious leaders, kind of doing all the right things, and the other a tax collector, someone who was looked down on and like an enemy of Israel. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I'm not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, sort of better than me, and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you, this is Jesus talking, that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Right? When you think you've arrived, that actually might be a sign that you're farther from God than you realize. I'm not saying any of those good things don't matter, right? Like I think Jesus wants us to be doing all sorts of spiritual activities. And those steps are awesome that you've already taken, but they're meant to be a foundation from which to continue taking the next step and the next step and the next step, not a place to just stop and rest and be like, hey, I think I'm good enough. I'm already better than like half the people in this church, right? I'm sure none of you think that though, right? Um a third reason, we try to, we've already tried to fix our problems on our own, but can't. Right? Many people I think ignore conviction or they kind of stiff arm God's conviction in their life because they've tried to fix it on their own in the past and just can't seem to do it. So, like, what's the point? Right? People who've struggled with alcohol or anger, anger, or lack of prayer or other sin for years and have not been able to fix it so far. What's the point of feeling convicted if it's just gonna be another round of me feeling bad? I'm gonna try really hard and nothing is going to change. All right, the problem with this is this is a very fleshy way of viewing the world. Because when God convicts, he's not just giving you a like a report card and saying, hey, good luck. Hope you do better this time, right? He is actually wanting to empower us and lead us and guide us to go about the change that he's inviting us into. And so when you think it's all on you, you're acting like a worldly or fleshy being instead of a spiritual being.

unknown 18:33

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

This is why a very essential part of like a 12-step program is to recognize your own powerlessness that I can't do this on my own anymore, and maybe me trying to fix it isn't gonna get me anywhere, but giving yourself over to God who can do the impossible. And then, fourth, uh fourth reason I think why we avoid conviction is uh for many people, the reason they don't like to sit in this is because it leads to like a shame spiral. So if you don't know, like a shame spiral is kind of like a uh whirlpool that just sucks you down and makes you feel worse and worse and worse about yourself, right? This is a lot of people who have really high standards for themselves and expect perfection out of themselves or already feel like they're failing all the time. Something comes and like knocks them a little bit off course or brings them a conviction of, hey, this is what's happening, or this is what you did, or whatever it might be. And instead of tending to it, it just ends up pushing you off the deep end, and you feel really bad about all the ways you've messed up, and all of that feeling bad makes you feel even worse about yourself, and it just goes down and down and down and down. Right? Blow things out of proportion. Something that should be small becomes really big or shakes us to the core. It's kind of like, again, I'll use the example of my daughters when I say, like, hey, you need to do this, and then they yell, like, why do you hate me? And I'm like, I just told you to pick up your dirty underwear. I don't think that means I hate you, right? It becomes this like bit, and then they're crying and running away upstairs. I'm like, I don't know what just happened, right? Um, but we can do the same thing when we're face to face with our real selves, with the ugliest part of ourselves, is we just kind of like, nope, I don't want to deal with it. Turn around, go away because we don't want it. We don't like sitting in that feeling, and that negative self-talk can lead us down and down and down to feel even worse. Now, God's conviction is never meant to make us feel hopeless or make us feel like we need to just throw in the towel and be done, or we're worthless and we're terrible

Grace That Breaks Shame Spirals

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people. And I think this is why all throughout this whole section, Paul has been hammering home that what we need is a deeper understanding of the cross and the gospel. Because when we're rooted in the gospel, in the good news of Jesus, that is essential for our growth and development into maturity. Because the gospel invites us into a better way of living, right? The way of Jesus is like this better way, but also a really high bar. And so when we're invited into that, uh it also convicts us of all the ways we fall short. But the gospel is not just like a really high bar that we have to like measure up to. The gospel and the cross also is the message of forgiveness for our sin. So that when we're being faced with the ugliest part of ourselves, it's not something we have to be afraid of. It's not something we have to feel shame around or pretend it isn't there, but something we can sit in, like in God's grace, and experience God's transformation. See, the world tries to make us feel better about our failings. It's like when you've messed up or you're a bad parent or a bad spouse or a bad friend, or you come face to face with your own failure. It's the world wants to make us feel better about that. I even notice it when I'm in groups with people. If someone says something like, Man, I really blew it, like I'm feeling really down, like it's so easy. We all want to jump in and rescue and be like, no. You're awesome, you're great, don't be so hard on yourself. And it's a good impulse in the moment to want to like help someone feel better. Because, but the problem is, is while it's a good impulse, it's also kind of a lie. Because sometimes I am a really bad spouse or a bad parent. Sometimes I don't measure up. Sometimes I do fail. And so those like nice things in the moment might make me feel better in the moment, but later I know, like, yeah, that's not really true though. So the world tries to make you feel better about your sin, but Jesus wants to set you free from your sin. Right? The gospel says, yeah, sometimes you are a really bad parent, but that's okay. I've covered that. I've forgiven it. I'm redeeming that. I am doing something beyond your own power. It's not something you have to like squirm out of or avoid facing because Jesus is right there dealing with it. Like He's covered it, He's taking care of it, and He is leading us in a better way. And so when we can live into that freedom, what I have found, when I can like be grounded in God's grace and be able to face the dark parts of myself that I'd rather ignore, but it's actually when I'm facing them with God, it's not nearly as scary or overwhelming as I think it is going to be. And when we can do that and bring it out into the light, we can experience the power of God's healing. First John, one of my favorite books in the Bible, says this. Right. So if we're avoiding our sin, we're actually like liars. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. So the cross gives us the freedom, it calls us to something higher, but also gives us the freedom and security to hear God's conviction without fear or shame or having to worry about what this means for who I am as a person, so that we can receive his help as we grow into maturity. And the good news is that God is actually better at restoring us to wholeness than we are at fixing ourselves. And so when we can let go of the reins and allow God to lead the process, God knows more than we do, and he will lead us further than we could ever go ourselves. And it requires courage to go there with Jesus to face those things that you might want to avoid. But if we stay in step with the Spirit, we'll experience more growth than we can imagine.

Questions And Next Steps

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Now, as we wrap up here, uh there's some action steps. You know, as we've seen, most of this stuff comes out in relationships. It's not just about what I do in my quiet time, but about how I relate to the people around me is like a mark of spiritual maturity. So these are meant to help uh identify blind spots and relationships. Uh so there's some questions here you can uh spend some time thinking through. These are all on the website you can find later. But then the practice is the next one, is there's kind of two steps. One is to just help identify some blind spots, spend some time praying through some of your closest relationships. Here's some questions to think about. Am I becoming more patient? Yeah, that's probably where, I don't know, that's probably gonna be a little convicting, at least it is for me. Um, and then step two, after you kind of spend some time with that, um, based on that, take whatever that next step is you feel like God might be inviting you to take to move towards people, right? Because you might know, like, hey, I'm not becoming more patient. Cool, thanks, God, and walk away. But the goal is that we can move towards others in love as Jesus transforms us.

Updates And Practical Care For Mac

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All right. So before I pray, a couple little things about everything going on with Mac. Uh, just a reminder, or if you came in late after what Katie talked about, we'll be posting updates on our Facebook group, um, prayer emails as they come, give updates on Sunday, kind of as we hear more. Uh, you know, again, he seems to be uh doing way better, right? Thursday was a pretty scary day of like, whoa, what is gonna happen here? I got to see him Friday and we were joking around a little bit, which felt good. He was uh aware. Um if you know Mac, you know he loves uh funny cards and things. So we had uh Zoe Sherick. Is she here? There's Zoe way in the back. She helped make a card. Um it says, sorry you feel like, and then a poop emoji on the front. He'll love it. Uh but then the inside is opened up. There's a bunch of markers. So if you want to write him a card or write him a little note, you can do that, and we'll get that delivered to them at the uh high top table over there. You know, it's just we don't know like how long the road to recovery will be. Um, but thankfully, you know, one of the things I was thankful for this weekend is just at CrossPoint that we've moved towards such a team model of leadership and preaching so that he can take just as long as he needs without feeling like he needs to rush back because the church is gonna fall apart without him. So, again, lots of people asking, what can I do? Right now, the thing to do is to pray. As more needs come up, we'll make sure that people know about them. Um, but just let this be a catalyst for deeper connection with Jesus, right? As you think about Mac, um, as maybe you're fearful or anxious, like let that be a catalyst to pray and to connect with God. And if you feel like you need someone to pray with, um, our leadership team, after I pray right now, is gonna be up at the front. So if you've seen someone to talk to, someone to pray with, whether about this or something else, please uh come up. They'd love to pray with you and talk with you. So let me pray for us as we wrap up.

Prayer And Closing Blessing

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God, again, we thank you so much for your provision for taking care of Mac thus far, and we ask for healing. God, we thank you for the work that you want to do in our lives. God, I just ask that you would help us to be open to the conviction you might want to bring in us this week. That we wouldn't stiff arm it, we wouldn't turn away from it, but we would face it, and in doing so, face the grace and the love and the transformation you have waiting for us on the other side of that. So we thank you for your love and your grace. God, that you love us enough to convict us. You don't let us just kind of sit in our sin, but you try to call us out of that into something better. So we thank you for that. And God, we thank you that for no matter how many of those sins have piled up, that you have washed them away and cleaned them because of your sacrifice on the cross. So we thank you for that as well. In your name we pray. Amen. Thanks, guys.