Born To Grow
Following Jesus • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
As Christians we were born again. We are not just once born but twice born.
Just like we have grown up in this first birth, we are to grow in our second as well.
We are here to do something. If Jesus had only saved us to spend eternity with Him alone, He would have taken us out as soon as we believed in Him and we would have been with Him.
But, this is not what Jesus did. No, we are here still and since we are, we have some growing to do.
Think about it like this.
Farmers, when you plant a seed into the ground you do that so it will grow into a mature plant you can harvest. That is your intention.
No, one sows a seed without the desire for it to grow to maturity and bring a great harvest. That is your intentions and desire. It is what you do and what you want.
The same is for anyone who has ever brought a doggie calf home.
You brought that calf in so you could bottle feed it and it grow into a full grown beef that you could either keep or sale.
You did not bring it home and spend all that money on it for it to stay a baby and never give you a return of some sort.
Or, maybe you have invested money into CD. You did this with a desire of a growth to maturity.
You placed that money into that CD with the desire for it to gain a certain amount so you could have more money.
You would not invest your money into a CD that does not give you some sort of growth.
This is us with Jesus.
He saved us but did not save us to just lay in the ground dormant.
He did not save us so we would just stand in the pen and eat but never grow.
He did not save us so we were invested in but have no growth.
No, He saved us so we would grow.
We were Born to Grow.
We see this in the text today. In 1 Pet. 1:22-2:3 we read,
22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. 1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
We see in this text an encouragement, a command , and a charge for growth and faithfulness.
With the encouragement we see that...
We Can Grow
We Can Grow
In the first four verses we see what this encouragement is. It is that we can grow because we have been born again and we know the Word which is what helps us grow.
We can love one another when we are obedient to the word of truth.
We have been born again from perishable items by the imperishable.
This word imperishable means that it is not capable of corruption. It cannot decay or falter. It is immortal.
The immortality of it is shown to us in verses twenty-four and twenty-five.
The Word of God is not capable of change or alteration. In the Word we find the truth of the gospel for salvation and for growth.
How is that so, we see in it that we are commanded to love one another in many Scriptures.
Jesus said we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are to love one another and by doing so we show the world we are His, and Paul told us to outdo one another in showing love and honor.
This imperishable truth will never fade or lose relevance.
It will always mean what it meant when written without change.
It is permanent and will not fade or fail.
As Isaiah, from where this text is quoted from (Isa. 40:6-8), but in another text says Isa. 55:11
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
His Word will not fail because it is powerful and never ending or never changing.
As Jesus said, “Scripture cannot be broken” in John 10:35.
Jesus also said, Matthew 24:35
35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
And since Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow and He is the Son of God the divine Son of God, and God does not lie, we know that this is true and authoritative.
So, since this text says we can grow because of our obedience to the truth, that will not fade or pass away, which gives us the ability to have a sincere brotherly love, we can trust that we can grow to maturity through what it says.
Also, since we have been born again through the love of Christ for us, we have encouragement and an example to follow.
He died for us because of His love for us, we can emulate that love towards others and continue to mature in our faith.
An example of this is found in a story of a Vietnam Vet.
This man spent every day on the Fox River in Illinois by the Judson College feeding ducks and breaking ice so they could get to water.
The story goes
He has just returned from the war in Vietnam. The story is that ducks saved his life. His unit had been ambushed. Many of his friends had been killed, and while he hadn’t been shot, he lay down to look like he had. He hoped they would go away. But they didn’t. The enemy kept coming. Through the fields they came. They’d put one more shot in every fallen man to ensure that he was dead. But suddenly a [flock] of ducks flew overhead, and the attention of the soldiers was diverted. In their excitement they began running after the ducks to shoot at them instead. In the end, they stopped checking the field for men and left. That’s how the man down by the river escaped. And now he has a special love for ducks. He loves because he lives. (David R. Helm, 1 & 2 Peter and Jude: Sharing Christ’s Sufferings, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 65.)
We can love others and the Lord because we live. We can faithfully seek to have grace and understanding amongst one another because of the life we have through Christ.
When we live like this then we can...
Lay Aside Childlike Foolish Motives
Lay Aside Childlike Foolish Motives
While Andrew Jackson was commanding the Tennessee militia during the War of 1812, his men had descended into an all-time low of morale. These men argued, bickered, and fought amongst themselves. Jackson finally called them all together when tensions had reached a breaking point and told them this simple statement. “Gentlemen! Let’s remember, the enemy is over there!”
This statement is quite relevant to the church today.
Too many people in the church have forgotten the first four verses we just examined and have begun to have it in for another.
Part of our growing up is to lay aside any childlike and foolish motives or thoughts.
Peter calls each of these:
Malice: Wickedness, depravity. Simply this characterizes those who are entrenched in the world system and have a malicious spirit of the world.
Deceit: Cunning, treachery. More than just lying is insinuated. This involves acting in disingenuous or two-faced ways.
Hypocrisy: A hypocrite. One who acts a part being one thing inside but totally different on the outside. A phony, fake, fraud.
Envy: Jealousy, coveting others. We have an unhealthy desire for what another has. We have an ill will of others because of a presumed advantage they have or because of something they have. This eventually leads to bitterness.
Slander: Evil speech. We speak ill of another and defame their name or character. Spreading rumors, gossiping about things we know nothing about all with a desire to cause harm. This is also done to destroy confidence in another person.
Slander can be anything that is false about another that causes people to begin to doubt them. Many pastors have had this happen to them by members of the congregation just because they get offended by something he has preached.
All of these desires and actions are part of the perishable seed we are of that still clings to us even after we are born again of the imperishable seed.
We all struggle with these sinful desires and anger.
We naturally want to attack if something frustrates us.
Which is why we all need to follow the twenty-four hour rule.
This rule states that we should wait twenty-four hours before we make remarks about something that has irritated us, offended us, or caused us any form of grief.
If we do this and genuinely reflect upon whatever has caused us this struggle, even if it is envy, we will have a clearer focus over what our emotions do.
Too often we act on emotions over facts. We allow our emotions to get the better of us.
Like this high school wrestling coach who did not like the call on the mat and felt the ref was letting things go too far went on emotion onto the mat and put his hands on the other schools wrestler. He smacked that boy off of his wrestler.
That was all led by emotion over facts. Too many in the church act this way to each other.
We are not enemies. We are not against one another, granted there are some churches that actively seek to take members from other churches, but this is not how we should be.
We are one together and as such we should not be jealous of the church down the street.
We should never spread lies or rumors about them.
We should not critique them if they are reaching people.
We should not do that to them, nor should we do this to one another.
But to maintain this attitude, we must seek facts and truth.
When we behave in these manners we are acting on emotion over facts, which the facts are in Scripture and we must adhere to what that says.
When we allow the Word of God to work in us we will not behave that way.
The flesh is weak. It is nothing compared to the powerful Word of God.
This is part of the point from the statements before about the flesh failing and withering like grass but the word hanging on forever.
We are powerless and will fail trying to do this on our own, but with the Word and the Lord we can move beyond these childlike and foolish motives and actions.
We can when we begin to see the word as our well of water. It will become our nourishment.
It will become that bottle that the bottle calf will knock you down to get to.
It will become the item that makes us refocus and see that we together in the church, and other churches around, are one in Christ and fighting the same enemy.
With this command now given we see the charge that we are to...
Desire the Pure and Perfect
Desire the Pure and Perfect
Now Peter gives us a charge for our growth.
Like a newborn infant longs for milk, we should long for the nourishment from the spiritual milk that is the Word of God.
He rhetorically asks if indeed you have tasted this nourishment.
He does this because he knows they have but some are acting like they had not.
Many times we as believers fall into old fleshly ways and act like we have no idea what pure spiritual nourishment is.
But as Peter tells us in verse two, we need to long for this nourishment.
The word long means “to have a strong desire for something, with the implication of a need.”
We not only desire this nourishment but we need it.
We must have it.
We become like the people who used to be on the Klondike Bar commercials.
Remember those?
They would go up to people and ask them what they would do for a Klondike Bar.
Many times the people would say, “Anything.”
Then they would get them to strut, cluck, and flap like a chicken or many other things.
These people would make fools of themselves for an ice cream bar because they “needed” a Klondike Bar.
This was not a need but a desire. Too many Christians are this way with many worldly things but not the most necessary thing: the Lord and His Word.
Many believers would never make a step to make the reading and study of Scripture as important as that ice cream or many other things.
Too often the church makes statements that they just do not have time for the reading and study of the Word.
They say it is too hard to understand, takes too long to read, gets boring in places, or that they can get what they need from a sermon.
Which is again why Peter said, “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
When we have tasted this we must continue to taste of it lest we forget the taste.
We must long for, desire, need to stay connected and taste of the Lord’s goodness all the time.
Look at this Missionary and what he said,
Allen Gardiner, one of God's faithful missionaries, experienced many physical difficulties and hardships throughout his service to the Savior. Despite his troubles, he said, "While God gives me strength, failure will not daunt me." In 1851, at the age of 57, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found, his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of hunger, thirst, wounds, and loneliness. The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his shaking hand as he tried to write legibly. It read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God."
That is a man who had tasted and continued to taste of the goodness of God.
We only get to that point by a continual study of God’s Word and constant communion with the Lord through prayer.
We only get past the petty motives and actions of the previous verse when we are fully consumed with the study and reading of the Word.
Long for, desire, need, never stop until you have devoured and devoured the Word of God.
Let that lead you from pure spiritual milk to eating T-Bones, brisket, Prime Rib, Rib Eye, and other meaty filling spiritual foods.
When we do this we will stand firm in all battles.
We will not become malicious, deceitful, hypocritical, envious, or slanderous.
We will love one another with a brotherly affection.
We will love the Lord above all things and seek to honor Him.
We will Grow to maturity and help others come to maturity so when the Lord harvests the earth, He will have a bountiful harvest.
Remember in John 4:35 where Jesus said
35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
There is a harvest to be had out there. Will we grow o maturity and see this and act, or will we hang back and mumble and grumble like small children who want what others have?
I say let us grow to maturity and strive to make the harvest full.
Conclusion
God’s goodness is for all. He offers it to all who want it. He will give you what you need but you need to seek Him and what He has said about life for it. Desire Him and He will give you all you need and much more.
Corrie Ten Boom once said,
Often I have heard people say, "How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!'" Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp. I remember one occasion when I was very discouraged there. Everything around us was dark, and there was darkness in my heart. I remember telling Betsie that I thought God had forgotten us. "No, Corrie," said Betsie, "He has not forgotten us. Remember His Word: 'For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him.'" Corrie concludes, "There is an ocean of God's love available--there is plenty for everyone. May God grant you never to doubt that victorious love--whatever the circumstances."
You can have this same affection in your life. Rather than become bitter and mad at all things, turn to Him and seek His love and nourishment and you too can become a strong mature faithful follower who knows the true goodness of God.
His word contains it all and will guide you.
So, first actively seek to implant His Word in your heart. It will come up in all situations and guide you through.
Implant His Word in Your Heart
Implant His Word in Your Heart
Second, treat your fellow believers as fellow children of the Father. Love them as you see Him loving them.
Treat Fellow Believers as Fellow Children of God
Treat Fellow Believers as Fellow Children of God
Third, find out the struggles you have that affect your relationship with others. Find them out and actively work to suppress them by giving them over to the Lord and letting His word cover them.
Find out what Struggles you Have Affecting your Relationships
Find out what Struggles you Have Affecting your Relationships
And finally, confirm in your heart that Christlike spiritual maturity is your ultimate goal in life. We do this by looking deep inside and seeing what is the thing we currently devote our lives to. Is it work, sports, fun, family, or is it the Lord?
Confirm you are Seeking Christlike Spiritual Maturity
Confirm you are Seeking Christlike Spiritual Maturity
When we do this we will not become legalists but realize how bad we are and how much we need grace.
When we realize this and see how much God has blessed us in spite of our failings, we will truly begin to see just how good God is.