Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men? 5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.
(1 Corinthians 3:1-9 NIV)
Oh, if we could just get back to the New Testament church! If we could just get back to the early church then all of our problems would be solved. When I first came to know Christ, that was the real cry amongst many of us. We took a look at churches and saw the failings of those churches. We saw the traditions of men and what was going on in the name of God and we thought, "What we need is a New Testament church! What we need is to get rid of these denominations with their religiosity and get back to the pristine nature of the early church." After all, it was the time when God was really moving, the time when things were happening in the church. The church of the book of Acts is what we want.
We didn’t think about the church of the book of First Corinthians back then. But the church of First Corinthians is an early church! And they certainly had all kinds of problems. In fact, the whole book of First Corinthians is written to address one problem after another that existed in this early church.
But God was at work. God was moving there. God had given them great gifts of His Spirit and they were proficient in using those gifts. When you went to one of their church services, you wouldn’t really know what to expect next. Someone would have a word of prophecy. Someone would have a word of wisdom. Someone would discern something by the Spirit. Someone would have a word of teaching, a word of knowledge, a tongue, or an interpretation. God was at work.
But, the devil was at work as well. And should we be surprised? Where God is at work, you can be sure that the devil will also be at work. You see, as long as we are doing nothing, the devil is content to let us do that. It is when we begin to see God’s work being done that the devil takes notice and starts to bother us.
Those who have come to know Jesus Christ have been snatched from the power of darkness, from the jaws of death and hell, and have been translated into the kingdom of light. We are lost to the devil and found to God. And no man, no devil, not even the devil himself can do anything about that. He can oppress us and attack us, and he can tempt us, but he can’t get us back. We are forever secure in the hand of almighty God. We are safe for eternity because salvation is not our work; it’s God’s work. Thank God salvation is God’s work! He begins it. He continues it. And He will bring it to completion. The apostle Paul said, "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:6 NIV) God is at work in us. And He is going to take us to heaven.
Now the devil doesn’t mind us getting excited about that, but he would like for us to just be excited right here–– in our stained glass box. Its similar to the idea in America right now, that religion is a private thing. You can have your own religious beliefs–– just don’t share them with anybody. Keep it between your ears. Do not attempt to proselytize anyone. Certainly do not tell anyone that Jesus is the only way! That’s not good. And even though calling people names is not politically correct, they will make an exception for you Christians. They will call you bigoted and prejudiced and narrow-minded and a radical fundamentalist. We’re called those names to keep us in our place and to keep us from sharing Christ. We are to stay in our churches.
When we spill out of the salt shaker and the salt gets into the world and we start sharing Christ with our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and relatives, and when we start actually making a difference in the world, snatching people out of the kingdom of darkness and bringing them into the kingdom of light, then Satan gets upset and he tries to do everything in his power to destroy us. We should not be surprised, if we are a church trying to reach other people, that there is a presence of evil amidst the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The title of the sermon today is, "Are you ready?" Our problem today as Christians is that we sometimes aren’t ready. The church in Corinth was not ready because they had not done anything with what they had been given. They thought that they had come to a place of spiritual maturity, when they were far from mature. As Paul points out in this passage, "I could not address you as spiritual." Now these are saved people, he calls them brothers. These are people who have truly been born again. But they were far from spiritually mature. In fact, they were worldly. The word there could be translated, fleshly or "of the flesh." He says, "you’re babies and I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed you’re still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealously and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere men?"
The elementary teachings had been given and received. The teaching of Christ crucified, the teaching of salvation by faith, the teaching of the spiritual gifts–– all of that is milk. If you’ll turn to the book of Hebrews, you will an interesting description of what is milk and what is meat.
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so. (Hebrews 5:11-6:3 NIV)
Listen to what he mentions as the elementary things. He talks about repentance from acts that lead to death, faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Do you realize that all of this is elementary? And yet we have churches that major on all the elementary things all the time. All the time! I’m not saying we ought not talk about salvation. Certainly that’s a message that we need to proclaim. But there are some churches that never preach anything besides a salvation message. There are some churches that all they do is talk about some of these elementary truths. While we need to begin with the elementary things, we need to move on in our walk with God so that we are not only able to digest milk, but also able to eat solid food or meat.
Some people are babies in the faith, not because they ought to be, but because they haven’t done anything with what God has given them. Isn’t that a tragedy? I mean babies are wonderful. I love babies. But isn’t it a tragedy if they don’t grow up? While we love babies, we want them to grow up. If they are still the same size and shape and weight five years after they are born, we know we’ve got a serious, serious problem on our hands. If a baby is not growing, something is wrong. We are destined to mature, to grow up. So are Christians. We come into our relationship with Christ as babies, but God doesn’t want us to stay there.
What are some of the characteristics of babies? One characteristic is immaturity. Babies are immature because of one specific reason; they are ignorant. They are immature because they do not have knowledge. They have not accumulated the knowledge they will need and we don’t expect babies to be mature. We expect them to be immature. We expect them to cry a lot. We expect them to act like immature people act because they obviously don’t know any better. They don’t have the knowledge. As they grow up, they will study and learn and obtain the essential knowledge for living. But if they don’t, they will remain immature.
Some Christians are like that. They’re immature because they simply haven’t gotten into the word of God. They expect the Pastor to give them everything that they need to need and they never learn to feed themselves. It’s incredible to me to listen to people talk about not being fed in churches. I’ve heard people explain why they left a church by saying, "I wasn’t being fed." What does that mean? There are some churches, I will grant you, where preachers do not preach the word of God. But whose responsibility is it to feed you? When you’re an infant, it’s your parents’ responsibility. And when you’re an infant in Christ, the pastors and leaders of the church will take a major responsibility in your care. But there should come a time when you’re able to feed yourself. There should come a time when you don’t need someone to spoon-feed you. Listen, you can starve to death in a grocery store. Food can be all around you and if you don’t take the time and effort to get it and eat it, you will die. As a matter of fact, I can prepare you the nicest meal, set it before you, but if you don’t show up to eat it, you will go hungry? And there are pastors who do that week in and week out. They spend hours in the word, studying, seeking God, praying, developing a message, preparing just the right meal for God’s people, and the very people who need to hear it don’t show up to eat it. Some show up and don’t pay enough attention to eat it. These are characteristics of spiritual infancy.
Another characteristic of babies is that they are irresponsible. They lack self-control. Now again, you don’t expect babies to have self-control. As a matter of fact, little babies have no control at all. But if you’re still irresponsible and undisciplined when you’re in your teenage years something is wrong. And when you’re an adult and you’re undisciplined, uncontrolled, irresponsible, something is terribly wrong. Our task as parents should be to make our children responsible. We do that by giving them more responsibilities as you grow up so that one day they can bear all of the responsibility for their lives and, hopefully, leave the nest. In society, it’s tragic whenever people don’t make it to that level of responsibility. That’s a characteristic of immaturity.
Another characteristic of immaturity is that babies are extremely dependent. If you don’t care for babies, they will die! They are unable to care for themselves. And there are a lot of Christians who’ve never gotten beyond the stage of spiritual infancy. They don’t know how to feed themselves or care for themselves. They don’t know how to take on any responsibility and they’re still extremely dependent. It should be the job of the leadership of the church to help them grow in their faith and to be able to start doing for themselves, so that they don’t have to have someone do everything for them.
And finally, the last characteristic I would like to mention is selfishness. Babies are selfish. "Gimme, gimme, gimme!!" There are a lot of Christians like that. "What have you done for me lately? I’m in this church for what the church can do for me. The church ought to be about satisfying the needs and desires of its members." I want you to know that that’s an extremely selfish view of things. And babies are like that. The whole world revolves around them, as far as they know. They have to learn otherwise by growing up. And they will, as they grow older. They will learn that everything is not just about them through the process of socialization. They will discover that there are other individuals who think that they’re just as important. In fact, there are some people who think they’re more important. Not all of this learning comes easy, does it? But we do learn these things. And they help us learn to be less self-centered and selfish.
If you are a selfish Christian, you are still a baby. You’re still fleshly, worldly. This is the characteristic of our world. If you don’t believe me just turn on the television, it’s all about me, my rights, what I want. There’s something about spiritual pride that keeps you from being able to receive the deeper truths of God. One of the main characteristics of maturity is understanding that we are not the center of everything, God is. He gives us an example of this in the verses that follow:
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. (1 Corinthians 3:5-7 NIV)
One of the reasons why they were immature was because they were aligning themselves with various teachers. People were dividing up into various camps, the haves and the have nots, the Apollos followers and the Paul followers. He says that all of that stuff is of the world. That is how the world looks at things. The world divides us all up in status and rank and order. The world does that in many different ways–– racially, or educationally, or socio-economically. But the church doesn’t operate like the world. When you’re involved in jealousy, quarrels, and division, you give evidence that you are still an infant, a baby spiritually.
What characterizes someone who has grown up, someone who is mature? Look at the last verses of our text.
The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Corinthians 3:8-9 NIV)
There are three characteristics of the mature believer found here: cooperation, humility, and a focus on God.
While they were choosing sides and dividing over the teachers of the word, those teachers were cooperating together in the work of building God’s kingdom. They were not fighting like the carnal Corinthians. They were cooperating. And they could because they had the necessary humility to do so. They did not think that everything centered on them. They had a servant’s heart. That is a mark of maturity.
And they had also developed a focus on God. They had grown to see that God’s purposes were so much larger than any petty differences they could have. God was their priority. A focus on God is a mark of maturity.
The question for us is this. Where are we? Are we ready for what God has for us because we have moved past infancy? Are we ready to take on the responsibility that comes with spiritual maturity? Have we come to the place where we can put our selfish desires on the back burner and put the work of the Kingdom as our number one priority? Are we willing to work in a spirit of cooperation and humility, esteeming others as more important than ourselves? The answers to these questions will determine whether we are carnal or spiritual. The answers will also determine whether we can be used of God. I don’t know about you, but I want to be usable. I want to be blessable. I think you do too.
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