Northside Church - Sydney
Elemental – Week 3: Growth
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. All right, another one of those classic movies of the 80s, 1988 to be specific. I don't know if you've seen it, but that clip was from obviously the Tom Hanks film Big, where young kid Josh bit down on his luck at a carnival and decides to go and put his coin into a Zoltar machine and make a wish that he was big. And so the next day wakes up and there he is, young child and an adult's body. And the concepts, nothing new, it's been remade. There was four in that year alone of that concept. More recently for the girls, 13 going on 30, Jennifer Garner, whatever her name is, same sort of concept, young woman stuck in a grown-ups body. And these movies have the whole comedic value sourced in this one concept of a kid stuck in an adult's body. And we see as they enter into this new world, this incredible awkwardness, weirdness, as they seek to deal with the world around them, what the passage that we're going to read from tonight from the apostle Peter says, we must come to realize regardless of our natural abilities, regardless of our natural talents and gifts at one stage or another where spiritual babies, spiritual kids, stuck in grown-up bodies. And there's always room for growth and that's an elemental part of the Christian life. So we're going to read from 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 22 through to chapter 2 verses 1 to 3. It says, now that you've purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers and sisters, love one another deeply from the heart, for you've been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and enduring Word of God, for all people are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord stands forever. And this is the Word that was preached to you, therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind, like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. Lots of different concepts in there, but tonight we want to focus purely on growth, like newborn babies, he says, chapter 2, verse 2, it's important for us to realize that when we come to the faith that we are like newborn babies, little ones. The first question we've got to ask ourselves when it comes to Christian life is, why have I got to grow? And one of the problems in the church is that we've had this teaching that being a Christian is simply coming and asking Jesus for forgiveness of your sins, and so therefore you just get to go to heaven when you die, it's almost like getting the golden ticket in Willy Wonka. You see, Peter's contribution to theology is teaching us that salvation is not a one-off thing. It can sound like a one-off thing, remember Romans, Paul says, call upon the name of the Lord and be saved, and Christians say, "I was saved eight years ago." It sounds like an event, like a one-off thing, of course it's like that, but Peter teaches us that it's a process. This passage teaches us that there are different stages of the Christian life. While we think of salvation as an event, it's a process. Look at the language here, verse 23, born again of imperishable seed. What's he talking about? Boring language straight from Jesus himself in John chapter 3, when Jesus says, "You must be born from above." A perishable seed spora literally means the process of being born by mortal parents. He's saying, "You've been born by an immortal parent," and so he's not talking about the flesh here, but he's talking about a spiritual birth. He's talking about the new birth, and what it shows us is that the Christian life then is not this self-improvement project. It's not this something that we take up, each new year, it's a whole new life in and of itself. Look at the language, seeds, babies, parents, what do you want to say is you're designed to grow? It means that Christian life's not static. It means it's a process, it's a journey, there's a maturing process in it all. It doesn't happen straight away, I always say it, I call it the Pantene Pro-V principle. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. The thing is when we first believe there's a gap, there's a gap between who we are and who we're meant to be. That's why the new birth's clunky. It's like the new birth that Josh Baskins received when his wish came true. You see, for all of us that understands that clankiness of when we jump out of bed the next morning after believing in Jesus and we look in the mirror and suddenly we realize that spiritually we're socially awkward, mentally awkward, we're relationally awkward, we're just awkward. As we saw in Josh, his radical new birth into adulthood meant that there was no alignment between who he was as his young boy and who he was meant to be in this world of grownups around him. Paul talks about this concept when he talks about this in a war of the flesh and the spirit in Romans 7 and 8 in the war that's going on in us and often we think, remember, Romans 70 says, "All the things that I want to do I don't do and all the things that I do, I hate, he's conflicted, he just can't get it right, it's in a war, he's relationally awkward, he's socially awkward, as far as the kingdom is concerned." You see, often when we read that we think, "Well, the Christian growth is always just a process of learning how to be good versus bad." It's not what he's getting out there. Paul is talking about that when we move into the new birth and this new life and before we begin this process of growth, that our natural state as humans is always in direct opposition to God's salvation. It's a Zoltar principle, our life's unfair. I wish I was big, I wish I was big, then my problems would be gone. If I was just a grownup, then I could make the decisions that I want. I wouldn't have to listen to my parents and their silly rules. You know, I could control my life. Big people get to live their way. You see, before we ever move into God's salvation, we want to live life our own way, we want to be our own Savior. Your religious people do that as much as religious people do that. Religious people want to be their own Savior by following all God's rules as best that they can. Therefore, God, you have to bless me and you have to accept me. Even though we intellectually think it, we're still wanting to be our own Savior. We want to run away from God doing the other way in terms of the way of life, living their own way. Either way, before we come to know God, before this new birth, we want to be our own Savior. So, on the flip side, our spiritual awkwardness in the kingdom life comes through this constant struggle to live as spiritual grownups, and it's not easy. It's asking anyone that knows me, patience and humility. We know peace, the whole lot. We're awkward. It's not how we naturally are. The process of salvation shows us when we first believe there's a gap, a gap between who we are and what we're meant to be, who we're meant to be, Romans 8, verse 29 says, and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who've been called according to His purpose, for those God for knew, He also predestined to be conformed, to be shaped into, chipped into the likeness of His Son. All terms, God destends us to be like Jesus. That is the goal of our growth, is that the character and the deeds of Jesus would naturally flow from who we are. And if we dare to look at our own lives, then we don't always look exactly like Jesus should. The question is, why should I grow? We should grow because it's possible. It can happen. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. However, we know that we can't live that kind of life straight away. We're clanky and we're awkward. We haven't fit into the kingdom rules where spiritual kids in grown-up bodies, when you born babies, Peter says, we need to grow because as we enter the new birth, we're inherently in opposition to how God meant it to be. So the question is, how do we grow? It then goes on to say, craves pure spiritual milk, and so what this passage shows us is that they're, firstly, are different stages to growth. The Bible talks about this in lots of different areas, Hebrews talks about the same sort of concept with milk and meat, there's passages in First John that are talks about different stages of life, children, teens, fathers and mothers. You see, there are different stages of our spiritual growth, like newborn babies, that's an obvious one to begin with, and what a baby is like. But baby's life is always an emotional experience. I saw that in my friend's young child that we had the other day and she just wouldn't stop crying, and then once she got an iPad, then she started laughing again and you just had to keep playing her a song. And so the whole emotion of her life was dependent on the presence of dad. Her life as a baby was an emotional experience. Now it can be like that for us as well as Christians. When you're a newborn Christian, Christianity can be dominated by an emotional experience. We constantly have to feel the presence of dad. And that's good. That can be a good thing as well, that babies, you want babies to have a desire to constantly want to be with their parents. But life is dominated by emotion. And then you get to the teenage years. We've all been there. I think back to when you're a teenager, that weirdness between childhood and adulthood, that season of life where I want to be an individual. I don't want to listen to my mom and dad's rules. We're yearning for that independence, but we're still not quite an adult. Now from the parents' perspective, and being a youth pastor, I've chatted to many parents that just ache over the concept and having to deal with the fact that eventually they're going to have to let their young little treasure go, that generally begins to happen in their teenage years. So what we find from the parents' perspective is that your hope is apparent that the principles and the teachings and the ethics and everything you've instilled into this precious baby as they've grown up, eventually when they go and move off into their own world and you let go with their hand that they begin to choose to live that out. Out of lessons, as it means, as one commentator says, it's the stage, when God calls you into those situations without a sense of his presence and love. I wonder if some of you know what that feels like. In other words, the time when you begin to step out on the basis of God's instructional own, that's when you know you're moving into spiritual out of lessons. And our lessons is a place where we face a choice to find the ways to trust in and access our parents' instruction, based purely on the instruction. So what's it saying here, God? God says in spiritual out of lessons, even though we might not feel his presence, even though we might not come into a worship setting and be brought to tears, even though our life, our Christian life may not be dominated by this incredible highs and lows and this emotion and this dependency on the Father and this desire and the need to just always feel his physical presence. Maybe I might encourage you tonight, if you're not feeling his physical presence with you, the spiritual presence with you, that God is telling you, "Hey, it's time to grow up, it's time to move out and take steps of faith. It's time to move into spiritual out of lessons, move out of babyhood again. Adults, adults is the stage that some, particularly my wife would argue, maybe I haven't quite reached yet. But adulthood, look, if you're a young adult, you begin hopefully to have the sort of relationship that I have with my parents, the sort of relationship where first of all you are so grateful for the grace that they've extended you as a teenager, but then you move in a whole new type of conversation and relationship where there are shared life experiences where you're thankful that you've moved beyond those crazy years. You appreciate them far more. You enjoy just sitting in their presence and talking with them. You want to know more and more of their wisdom. You want to commune with them on a regular basis. You see, spiritual adults have learnt the disciplines and the grinders we've been hearing tonight of just learning to interact and be with the ultimate parent with their Father. There are stages of our growth and then what we also see in the passage is the source of growth. How do we move? How do you move out of babyhood into teenagehood and into adulthood? Well, you go to school, of course. It's what you have to do. It's part of the laws here in our society. Peter refers to it as spiritual milk, the word of God. When you go to school, you pull out the textbook, you learn, you read, you interact. This is God's textbook in the spiritual school. What this passage is saying to us is this is the source of growth. Peter refers to it as spiritual milk. You see, one of the myths is that if we just go to church and we just read our Bible, then this growth is mysteriously just going to happen. But the reality is that maturity in Jesus occurs through a personal plan. It's intentional. It's got to be intentional and it requires our effort and dependence on God's grace. What I'm saying is you need a plan for growth. Kids go from year one to two to three to four through syllabi. There is a plan for their growth. You see, I guess it's this way. People don't become mature Christians and grow as mature Christians by simply coming into church and sitting in the pews any more than a corolla becomes a Ferrari just by sitting in the garage. There's going to be a process of deconstruction and reconstruction according to a plan, the plan of God, the source of this growth, this spiritual milk. So you've got to go to school. You've got to learn the theory and preparation for the experience. You've got to deconstruct, reconstruct on a daily, weekly basis. This means you're not only going to recognize what stage you're in in your growth, but you've also got to be sourced in the Word of God. Have you got a plan and an intentionality for your spiritual growth this year in 2011? What's your spiritual syllabi for 2011? Finally, where do we grow? Chapter two, verse two says that so buy it, the Word of God, that you might grow up. What does it mean? Graping is salvation. He's talking, he's saying, when you're born baby, spiritual teenagers, one of the things I loved about big was the way that Josh in the movie you see him there, puts the tie on. He moves into the corporate world, realizes that he's got to get a job, and it's this process of discovery of who he's meant to be and what he's meant to do purely by the relationships that he had around him. Going back to verse 22 of this passage, it says, "Now that you've been purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers and sisters, love one and another deeply from the heart," what it's saying is that growth is meant to happen in community. Growth is meant to happen in community. Brothers and sisters, look at the family imagery, either concept of brothers and sisters, what do brothers and sisters do? Brothers and sisters means when you're in community, you've got to live close enough to feel comfortable with each other's dirty laundry. That's what brothers and sisters do when they grow up, and that's what we see in Josh's example. He's in close proximity with other people, he's in relationship with other people, but the thing is he gets his little redhead friend to come along and help him out. Part of the problem is he's in an adult world in close proximity with another kid. You see, when you're in community, you're around people that have already done life with you before. You're in close proximity with those that have got wiser heads than you. You've got to be comfortable being in close proximity to one another. The other thing you've got to do when you're in community, the reason why it's so important, I call it the proactive approach. You know, the funny face care stuff that you see on television and it's all sorts of hours in the night. Proactive has always got these superstars like Avril Lavigne at the moment or Jessica Simpson or any of those sorts of gorgeous superstars, and they're talking about how proactive has just done wonders for them, and they show you these close-ups of their face, and suddenly you get to see all these blemishes underneath all the makeup they have. You see, you don't get to see that in the magazines and the concerts and all those shots on the television. You see, being in close community gives you the opportunity to see the blemishes and witness the changes. See if you don't get close enough to other people, then you don't get close enough to see beneath the surface, you don't get close enough to see the blemishes, not just on other people but more importantly on yourself and witness the changes in you. See if the goal of this growth is that the character and the deeds of Jesus would naturally flow from who we are, then there's no better place in its accountability and the close proximity to one another than in God's community, the church. What do you think we'll harp on about connection groups so much? Just because we want to add another night to your diary, just because we look up in the Bible and there's the church menu and says, "They all must have a connection group." No. It's because it's where you have that process of accountability and proximity to one another. Let me ask you, what are you doing to ensure that you are committing to a process of discipleship and accountability and transparency in your life? You see, it's not going to happen if you just turn up on a Sunday, it's the product of a product. Turn up on a Sunday, we can put the layers of the make up on, we can keep it a far enough distance so no one can see the blemishes and we don't get to see the blemishes in other people. So if you just turn it up for a Sunday worship experience and not making yourself available to discipleship and study and growth, you run the risk of just always being in the petrol state of being a spiritual teenager. And how are teenagers? I was a teenager once, teenagers, they just always want to be entertained. Start judging churches based on how big the whiz bang is and how slick it all looks and look, don't get me wrong. We're a church that does things tight, but it's over our desire and our passion to want to give our very best for God. But if you judge a church purely based on what you're seeing from out the front, you run the risk of being a spiritual teenager, spiritual teenagers, it's always about them. Always some big commotion going on in their life. And so you come into the communal setting, always worried about yourself and you forget to ask the other person what's going on. Have you ever had one of those friends in your life or in your teenager? The spiritual teenagers are always worried about whether they're in the cool group. And so the whole process and the communal process gets broken down into who's in what group and are they in the cool group, they're in the ins and the outs. Most of all teenagers are non-committal. They just float from one thing to another. They go, spiritual teenagers use churches like a spiritual scissor. I just want to go and get a little bit from the buffet over here and a little bit here and a little bit here. And I encourage you, growth is meant to occur in deep commitment to community. It's absolutely clear about that. And Fran, if you want to grow, you need to decide to do community and look, we would love it to be here, but I'm saying look, it could be anyone of God's amazing churches in this area. I don't care, but the principle is you've got to be committed to deep community. That's where it happens. So in the world of grownups, there's no point in relying on the instructions of other kids. If you don't want to plug into those that are wiser and older and a few steps down the track, then you set yourself up for value. And so I'll put it to you, the groups are right there tonight. There's stuff out in the foyer. Some of you need to make a decision as to whether you're going to commit to deep community this year. You see, it's like having all the ingredients ready in a cake pan. You see, our connection groups, they're just, they're many ovens. We're just getting all the spiritual ingredients together here. But you see, if you don't commit to these spiritual ovens, you're just going to be doing church half baked. Guys, commit to a group this year, deep community. So finally, guys, is it time to grow up? Some of you have got to ask that question. Is it time to grow up? It sounds harsh. I mean, here it is like newborn babies and you think, oh, it's so cute. So soft babies, beautiful. It's not being cute, almost a slap in the face. She's not, Peter's not being cute here. In this, we find an incredible call to humility here, but an incredible encouragement. Incredible call to humility that we all want to be big, wish I was big. But we're clunky and we're awkward and we're spiritual newborns. You need to recognize that you potentially could be a spiritual baby or a spiritual teenager or not. You need to grow up into who you're meant to be and the encouragement that comes out of it is that you can grow and that it is possible and that it happens through maturity by intentionality in community. So for those that haven't experienced this new birth, this miraculous process where one day you walked into a church and then the next day you walked as a spiritual baby in a grown-ups body, let me ask you to know if, do you wish that you're a big, do you wish that you had that life of excitement, do you wish that you entered into that other world, the other world of grown-ups, the other world of fairness, the other world of adventure. Look, what I want to plead with you tonight is don't go walking up and wishing to a Zolta but you've got to come running to the altar. But I mean it seriously, the irony of the kingdom is if you want to be big, you've got to start small, you're going to get over the barriers of your own pride. If you haven't entered into this exciting world the way that Josh Baskins did, you need to give your life to Jesus Christ tonight. Not for Christians, for the rest of us, you need to grow up, you need to, you can do, the church is here to, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that there are plans and purposes far greater than we can ever imagine. Lord, tonight it's an humbling message, it's one that's right in the face of many of us that have been doing this for years. Father, I praise you and I thank you that this is an intergenerational church, Father God. I thank you that there are so many wonderful and amazing mature men and women of the faith that sit shoulder to shoulder with us tonight and so for us youngens and not just talking age wise, whether you're 15 or 50, for our spiritual youngens, Father God, I pray through the power of your Holy Spirit that you might bring the right relationships into our lives, that you might birth in us youngens a sense of humility that brings down those barriers of pride to say my life is okay, my life is in order, I don't need any help, they might seek those that they see exhibiting the wonderful fruits of your spirit through Christian maturity around them and put their hand up and ask for a bit of help. Father, I pray for anyone tonight who's been stirred by your spirit, someone who feels like young Josh who was rejected and wishing for something bigger. Father God, I pray that they're coming to the right place tonight, that they're no longer wishing but they're believing through faith in Jesus Christ is an opportunity to do that tonight right now Father God as we come to the altar and communion here. So Lord as a church, may we be unequivocal in what we're about, all the wonderful things that happen in here Father come down to our desire to be a church that is growing, individuals who are deeply committed to deep community. Father help us to do that through the power of your spirit and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.