Fellowship With God Part Four
Fellowship with God Part Four
1 Corinthians 3:1-3: And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; 3 for you are still carnal.
· One of the big problems of the church is immature Christians. They are Christians that never grow up.
· They’ve stopped growing soon after the beginning of their new life.
· It’s like the little boy who fell out of bed, and his mother asked him, “What happened?” He said, “I guess I fell asleep to close to where I got in!”
· New babes in Christ are not the problem; it’s the ones who are still babies after ten, twenty, or even thirty years.
· If your child stayed immature and refused to grow up, you would know there’s a problem in your house!
· The Apostle John brings us face to face with this problem and describes the three phases of spiritual life:
1 John 2:12-13: I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake. 13 I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one.
· If you are a Christian… you are in one of these three phases. He begins with the “little children.” These are freshly born again. These are new members of the family of God.
· You cannot get into the family of God without a new birth. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again!”
· The first thing a new Christian is aware of is that his/her sins are forgiven.
· There is a great sense of release and freedom as we experience the forgiveness of sins.
· This is true of every Christian.
· There must be a beginning in this life, but it is not an end.
· We are not to get stuck there; we are to move on to maturity in our growth process.
1 John 2:13a: I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
· John then describes the fully mature Christian; he calls them “fathers.”
· The chief characteristic of a father is that he has “known Him who is from the beginning.” He has come to know Jesus Christ.
· This word “know” means that he has come to “know Jesus” through experience.
· There are different kinds of knowing someone. The first is through casual acquaintance.
· No one can become a father through a casual acquaintance with Jesus.
· The only way someone can become a “father” is through years of “fellowship together” with Jesus.
· Just as with a married couple over many years they become more like each other and a mutual identity begins to grow because they are communicating and grow to be like one another.
· Fathers are no longer unstable in their ways or juvenile in their attitudes.
1 John 2:13b: I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one.
· Young men are the third stage that John describes in our spiritual development. These are no longer children, but they are not yet fathers.
· These are growing… and they have overcome the wicked one.
· Their eyes have been opened to the struggle of life. And they no longer make the same mistakes over and over again.
· As Paul said, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.”
· Our problem is not people. The immature person always blames someone else for their problems.
· But anyone who is learning to overcome the devil knows differently.
· He knows our real enemies are principalities, powers, and wickedness in high places. Their eyes are opened.
· Therefore they have learned that the only way to overcome the evil one is to live in fellowship with the Son of God. They know they cannot live in the strength of their own might or they will be beaten every time.
· James 4:7-8: Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
· Yet they are still not fully mature. Let’s see this on a physical level.
· If you child comes up to you and says, “Daddy, I want to grow up big and strong just like you.” Would you say, “Go and try hard to grow.”?
· Growth is automatic when you give yourself the conditions that are right for growth. So you should say, “If you eat well, exercise, and sleep, you can’t help but grow.”
· This is also true when you apply it to the Christian life. You cannot help but grow in “fellowship” with Jesus. We see these three stages of growth throughout the Bible. Other scriptures verify this truth.
Mark 4:8: Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
· These are the three stages of spiritual maturity; little children, young men, and fathers.
Romans 12:2: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
· To the children… God’s will is good, to the young men, God’s will is pleasing, and to the fathers it’s perfect.
1 Peter 1:7: That the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
· Praise, honor, and glory. Paul tells us every Christian receives praise from God. But that is a starting point for a new Christian. The next step is to honor God in all things, and the mature Christian gives God all the glory all the time.
1 Corinthians 13:11-13: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
· Faith, hope, and love. Faith is the basic requirement of the Christian life; believing God. Then we move on to see all the possibilities of the hope of the promises of God. Finally we reach the stage of pouring out our love.
1 John 2:13-14: I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father. 14 I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
· John comes back to the same three stages of maturity, first with the little children. Why do the children know their sins are forgiven? Because they know the Father. They have joined the family of God. And the only way they can do that is through Jesus Christ the Son.
· Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me.” And we can only come to know the Father is by the Holy Spirit.
· Galatians 4:6: And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”
· Even baby lips can say, “Abba!”
· When my sons were babies, they messed their pants, they screamed and cried, woke us up in the middle of the night, but I loved it when they learned to say, “Daddy!” We all looked forward to the day when they grew out of infancy, and I’m sure our heavenly Abba feels the same way!
Hebrews 5:12-14: For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
· The immature Christian still lacks the knowledge to discern good from evil and ends up in trouble. He charges ahead without knowing the difference.
· He often thinks things look good when they are actually evil… and evil when they are actually good.
· Because he is unskilled in the word of righteousness—learning to act righteously.
· And he cannot teach others because he is still not taught correctly—still in infancy.
· And most of all, he still looks at life through the eyes of the world, therefore, he has not begun to renew his mind. He’s still worldly.
· He looks at cult religions as being good things.
· He still wants to trust the government instead of God. He thinks a presidential candidate is going fix everything. He still plans his life based on his own perceptions. He has not learned to trust God.
1 John 2:14: I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
· This is exactly the same thing John said before about maturity, you have known Him who is from the beginning.
· It is not only the way to maturity, but it is the evidence of maturity.
· Only someone who has walked with God for years, and has seen the faithfulness of God really knows Him. What else can you say about such a man?
1 John 2:14: I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
· John reveals the key to spiritual growth, that which brings a child into becoming a young man. It’s the word of God abiding in him.
· That is also what will bring a young man into becoming a father, able to reproduce himself in others.
· The perfect instrument for bringing us into maturity is the word of God.
· This is why the devil does everything he can to keep us from going to Bible study, and reading the scriptures on our own.
· The devil cannot keep us from being Christians, so he tries to keep us from becoming strong Christians.
· He will even try to get us to use shortcuts to grow in an instant.
· Often the devil will try to get us to move in the gifts of the Spirit without developing the fruits of the Spirit. These people often crash and burn. There are no shortcuts to the word of God “abiding” in you.
· This word of God abiding in you is not just talking about the Bible, it means the Bible plus the Holy Spirit together.
· It is the word of God illuminated by the Spirit, and with the power of the Spirit; abiding.
Hebrews 4:12: For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
· This is the word of God with the power of the Spirit. It reveals the thoughts and intents of the heart.
· It separates us the flesh from the spirit of a man. The word must be more than a hobby with us because it is what produces maturity in us.
2 Timothy 3:16-17: All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
· This is requires our diligence. You got to dig into it, not just get some tidbits on Sundays.
Matthew 5:13: “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
· The culture today wants us to shut up and sit down. But the word of God illuminated by the Spirit is to govern our actions and attitudes in the normal encounters of life.
· We have allowed the culture to invade the church when we are supposed to be invading the culture.
· The “worldlings” think that what is wrong in the Bible is right in our culture, and what is right in the Bible is determined to be wrong in the culture.
· We are to be salt to our society.
· But instead the message of the church is regarded as useless, irrelevant, meaningless, worthless and trodden under the feet of men.
· Why? Because the word of God is not abiding in our hearts with the power of the Spirit.
· We point our fingers at the society and say, “Oh, what a shame, we are going downhill so fast!”
· But the only thing that is going to change that is not our denouncing them, but loving them with the love of Jesus Christ!
· If we remain immature Christians all of our lives, the word of God is not getting into our hearts where the Spirit truly has something to use in us to change our world.
· We will never fulfill our calling until we move into maturity and speak the word of God with love and power!