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Life and Growth

1 Peter 2:1-5, 9

1 Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,

2 As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:

3 If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

4 To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,

5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;

Introduction

Somebody asked Billy Graham about the many converts who came to his revivals, “Will they last?” He replied, “You might as well go to the hospital in the maternity ward and ask that same question about the newborn babies you see behind the glass.” “Will they last?” The answer is “no” unless somebody loves them, feeds them, and cares for them over a long period of time.

The Bible teaches us that as God’s people, we need to grow. The book of 1 Peter chapter two talks about growing as a Christian in order to become all that God wants you to be. It also talks about growing as a church. The body of Christ must continue to grow to become all that God wants it to be. The key words in this passage of scripture are the words “grow” and “built up.”

In verse two, Peter writes, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” He is saying, “Christian people need to continue to grow in their spiritual life.” We are to grow individually, but the church is also to grow collectively. He adds in verse five that we are to be as lively stones, built up into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood. This suggests to us that as a group, and as a body, there is also to be growth, maturity, and progress. As we think together about these two different aspects of the one subject, I trust that God will speak to you about your own personal responsibility and about the responsibility that we have as a fellowship.

1. We must lay aside some things.

Peter begins by encouraging us to individual personal spiritual growth. He begins by saying, “Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisy, and envies, and evil speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. If so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”

In the preceding passage he has been talking to us about conversion that comes about by the new birth. We are born again by the word of God, by the incorruptible seed that never ever fades away. Having discussed how we have entered into the family of God by that conversion experience called the new birth, he admonishes us to move beyond that initial event to grow, and to become everything God wants us to be. Too many people think of conversion as the end of the Christian life. Well, it is the end of the Christian life, but it is the front end! Having come to God through faith in the Lord Jesus, we then enter into this life that ought to be characterized by continual growth and progress toward the goal of Christian maturity.

The apostle Paul said something like that in Philippians 2 when he said, “Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling.” That verse has been a problem verse to a lot of people down through the years because they have not understood it. They have thought that Paul was saying that you are to work “for” your salvation. He doesn’t say that. Others have thought Paul was saying that you need to work “toward” your salvation. He doesn’t say that either. He says, “Work out your own salvation.” In every instance, the Greek word that is translated work out means “to bring to completion or to develop to its full potential.”

God has given the gift of salvation. It was free of charge. It was an expression of his grace. He so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that you would believe and trust in him. Take that gift of salvation that God has given to you and bring it to its full potential; bring it to its completion. Make that salvation experience everything that God wants it to be. Become everything God wants you to become. Conversion is a germinal experience, not a terminal experience. It is not the end; it is the beginning.

From the initial experience of new birth, God wants us to grow. Before we can ever grow, there are some things that must be taken out of our lives and discarded. These are things that have a way of stunting our spiritual growth. Peter begins chapter two by saying we need to lay aside five different things.

First, we need to lay aside all malice. Malice is the hatred that comes from a vindictive spirit. There is nothing that can stifle and strangle your spiritual growth like bitterness and resentment and a vengeful spirit. If you are mad and continue to stay mad at someone else, it will stop your spiritual growth. It will stunt you spiritually, and you will never move forward in the Christian life. Friend, do not allow bitterness, malice, hatred, and resentment to build up in your heart. It will hurt only you.

Then Peter says that we need to lay aside guile, which means deceit. It means any form of dishonesty. The only way we can deal with God is with absolute honesty. We must come before him and make our lives as an open book where he can read every page. He knows everything there is about us. As long as we try to conceal the truth about ourselves and pretend to be something we aren’t, we are never able to go on in our Christian life to that full development. There is no place for guile, deceit, or dishonesty in our lives.

We are also to lay aside hypocrisy, which means insincerity. It refers to play-acting. Anybody who is insincere in their Christian life is play-acting at Christianity and is going to be stunted in their spiritual growth. We can never ever grow unless we are sincere and genuine in our commitment to Jesus Christ.

Then we are to lay aside envy, which is jealousy. That is a spirit in us that causes us to hang on to somebody or something. The tragedy about jealously is that it ends up destroying the very thing it is seeking to protect. The man who is jealous of his wife, or the wife who is jealous of her husband, clings to that person and is so suspicious about them that eventually it drives the mate away. Jealousy ends up being destructive rather than constructive. It is the same in our spiritual growth. We are also to lay aside evil speaking such as gossip, criticism, profanity, and any other kind that you may name.

Having discarded these things from our lives, if we are going to bring our salvation to its full potential and make it everything God wants it to be, Peter then says we must have the right spiritual diet.

2. We must have the right spiritual diet.

The word of God is the food that nourishes and strengthens the Christian so he can grow to maturity. Without the right spiritual diet we will never make the kind of progress we ought to make in our Christian lives.

It is interesting when you read the Bible to see the number of times that the word of God is compared to food. For example, in Psalm 19 and Psalm 119, the Bible says that God’s word is sweeter than honey. Jesus referred to the word of God as bread. He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” We cannot live without bread physically; we cannot live without bread spiritually. That bread is the word of God.

The writer of Hebrews likens the word of God unto meat. He is chiding the Hebrew Christians for having failed to grow in their Christian life. He said, “Many of you have been Christians a long time and you ought to be teaching others by now. But you still need to be taught. You are still on milk when you ought to be eating strong meat.”

There is a time for a person to have milk. When they are babies, they need that to live. Their digestive system has not developed sufficiently so that they can handle other kinds of food. When people grow older, they need solid food. They need bread, vegetables, and meat. Peter compares the word of God to the meat that is needed for grown men.

Honey in the Old Testament. Bread mentioned by Jesus. Meat by the writer of Hebrews, and now Peter mentions the sincere milk of the word. You put those all together and you have a well-rounded spiritual diet. That’s the spiritual food God serves up to us in the Bible. If we will eat that kind of spiritual food, we can grow and become everything God wants us to be.

There is an interesting verse that closes out this personal part of Christian growth. Peter says in verse three, “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” He is saying that conversion is just a taste of the Christian life. If you have been converted, you have just tasted of what God has to offer to you. There is so much more out there if you will continue to eat of God’s word and grow spiritually. Then you will discover a whole banquet table of riches and delights that God has prepared for his people. He is saying to us in short that conversion is like the appetizer. Before long God will bring a full course meal—a beautiful banquet of good things—and lay that before us. We shall find ourselves fully and completely satisfied with what God serves up.

You know the tragedy of many Christian lives is that they are converted, they take and taste of the appetizer and say, “That’s good.” Then they get up from the table and walk away. They never wait long enough to enjoy the wonderful feast that God has to offer, and they wonder why they are not satisfied. They wonder why they are not fulfilled in their Christian life, and the probability is that they didn’t move beyond the appetizer.

Don’t stop short in your Christian life. Don’t ever stop studying the word of God. Don’t ever stop fellowshipping with God’s people. Don’t ever stop worshipping. Keep doing those things that will cause you to grow and to develop as you ought to. The farther you go in the Christian life, the more joy and satisfaction you find. The greatest satisfaction and joy comes from growing to become all that God wants you to be. There is a challenge then for your heart and mine. The challenge is that we never stop short and miss out on life’s best by failing to grow.

3. We must grow as a church.

Not only does this passage say that we ought to grow as individuals, but it also says that we ought to grow as a church. We are to be built up into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood. If you continue to read in this passage, Peter enlarges upon the idea of a priesthood. In verse nine he says, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.” Underscore in your mind that phrase, “peculiar people.” It suggests something about the kind of growth that is to take place. He is talking about the church growing larger and the church growing stronger.

There is a difference you know. There is a difference between muscle and fat. There are some churches that are getting fatter, but they aren’t getting stronger. We need to have both kinds of growth. We need to grow larger. We need to keep reaching out to bring in new people. But as we bring in those new people, we need to develop and mature them so they become strong and stalwart in Jesus Christ.

I want to talk to you about growing this church to greater heights than we have ever been before. We’ll be doing some things that no church in this part of the country has ever done. I believe that there are things that we ought to do—and that we can do—as we as a church grow larger and stronger at the same time.

The idea of a spiritual house is the idea of a house made out of bricks that are piled one on top of another. It is because of the bricks being in right relationship, or right proximity to one another, that you can have a brick wall. But those bricks must have something to bind them together. Otherwise they would just topple over. That is why cement is placed between each brick. The cement bonds them together, and they cease to be separate bricks. They are bound together in one gigantic unit. That’s the idea we have here. We like bricks are bound together by the love of Jesus Christ, and by our common commitment to him. We have ceased to be individuals who are separate and apart from everyone else. Instead, we are bound together to become one—the people of God—a spiritual house of fellowship.

We need to grow in that fellowship. We need to grow in our commitment to one another and in our love for one another. We need to keep adding bricks to the wall—more people bound to our fellowship by the common bond of commitment to Jesus. In this way the wall becomes larger and larger and larger until we encompass this whole community.

But we are to also grow in our worship. You are a spiritual and holy priesthood. What’s the purpose of a priest? Essentially it is to worship God. The church is to perpetuate the worship of God. We are to provide an atmosphere and a spirit that is conducive to worship. We are to encourage people to worship. We are to bring people to worship and to magnify the name, the person, and the glory of God. That’s why we exist, and we must ever and always grow in our efforts to include others in the experience of worshipping God in spirit and in truth.

We are to grow as a peculiar people, which means we are to grow in holiness. That word peculiar literally means “to be above.” It doesn’t mean to be above in the sense of superiority so that we look down on other people. It means that our lives are to be a cut above the average. We are to rise above the level of society around us while society is at a low ebb and people are living in the gutters of life. The people of God are to live on the mountaintops of life. They are to give a demonstration to a lost and dying world of what Jesus Christ can do to lift people up. We are to grow inner strength spiritually, but at the same time we are to grow outwardly. We are to reach out beyond our walls and to try to win every last lost person that we can find.

There was a time when I thought that all churches wanted to grow. In fact, I had grown up in a church that was progressive and dynamic. I thought that my church was typical of all churches. Then I went to be the pastor of a church. I was meeting one night with the long-range planning committee, and we were discussing a new building. I said to that committee, “Men, if we are going to grow, we must build this building.” The chairman looked at me in a matter of fact way and said, “Preacher, who said we wanted to grow?”

That was the first time it dawned on me that some people do not want to grow. That’s not a real option. We must either evangelize or fossilize. A church that is in a growing community and does not grow is sick. There is something wrong with it. It needs to have a spiritual checkup. A church that does not plan to grow plans to fail. We are not here to sit around and twiddle our thumbs like some old lady sitting in a rocking chair knitting socks for a cold winter day. We are here as an army on the march for God, and we can never consider the possibility of not growing.

Why don’t churches want to grow? Sometimes it is because they don’t have enough faith. You know growth is risky. Growth usually involves new programs, new staff members, new ideas, and new buildings, and that scares us. There is always an element of risk. Every place I’ve ever been, we’ve either built a building or started building one while I was there. Never once have we launched out on a building program where someone doesn’t say, “Pastor, the economy is so unstable. We don’t know what is going to happen.” Friend, has it ever been stable? It’s always stable as we look back. Because we don’t know what’s out there, we sometimes lose our nerve and we are afraid to try. You don’t know what is out there; you only know who is out there—the heavenly Father. Yet we decide that we prefer the safety and the security of stagnation over the risk of growth. That’s what happens to a lot of churches.

William G. T. Shedd said, “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” There is more than one way to destroy a ship. A ship is safe in the harbor from the storm, but it is not safe from dry rot. There are a lot of churches that are rotting because they have lost their spirit of adventure and their faith in God to guide them into the future.

James Byrnes, former Secretary of State, said, “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.” They seem to be more afraid of life than they are of death. The death of a faithless life settles down upon them, and they prefer that to the life of risk and adventure. The Bible says that without faith, it is impossible to please God, and faith always involves an element of risk. It has to do with things out in the future—things that we cannot see. If we lose that spirit of adventure, we have lost something vital.

Some churches do not grow because they do not have faith. Sometimes churches do not grow because of false ideas about growth. They come to the idea of the belief that littleness and spirituality are synonymous. They believe you can’t have something big and it be spiritual. It is not the size of the church; it is the spirit of a church that counts.

It’s not how big or how small it is, it is whether or not the Spirit of God is there. That’s what counts. I can show you some big churches that are vibrant and dynamic, and they are filled with the Spirit of God. I can show you some small churches, and one reason why they are empty is because they are dull, drab, and dead. Size doesn’t have anything to do with it. It is the Spirit of God that makes a church alive. If God’s Spirit is in that church, and the potential and the possibility for growth is around it, that church will not remain a small church for long. It will reach out and it will grow.

When the crowds that gathered around Jesus grew too large for him to preach to them on the shore, he got on the bow of the ship. He pushed out from the shore so he could better be seen and heard by the crowds. He improvised for a large crowd. He didn’t tell half of them to go home or find some other place or preacher. Jesus was once in a house filled to capacity with people standing outside so that no one else could get in. Did Jesus tell half of them to go back home or to go find some other house? No, he stood right there while some friends ripped off the roof of the house and dropped one more inside. When three thousand people were saved at Pentecost, Peter didn’t say it was too many. You read the New Testament and it is all in favor of growth.

The book of Acts is sprinkled with words like, “a great number was added to their group.” The Lord “multiplied the number of the disciples.” The Lord “added to the church daily.” Addition, multiplication, growth, and greatness—it’s everywhere in the book of Acts. Our Savior is not only on the go, but on the grow. We must never be saddled with that false idea that smallness leads to spirituality.

Some churches don’t grow because they have become cold and indifferent. They just don’t care any more. An indifferent church can never make a different world, and those who become indifferent court the wrath of God. Jesus said to the church at Laodicea, “I know your works that they are neither hot nor cold. You are lukewarm. I wish that you were one or the other—either hot or cold. Not lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth.” For us to settle down into the coldness of indifference is to court the wrath of God.

We really have no choice. We are people with a mission and a purpose. We are here to grow and to reach our world for Jesus Christ, and we dare not quit until Jesus Christ comes again. The Bible says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” We must have a vision of growing individually to be all that God wants us to be. We must also look at our church and see what God wants it to be. The church must continue to reach out, to bring every last lost person it can into the kingdom of God. It must provide the space and the programs to help those new people grow to become everything that God wants them to be. With God’s help and by his grace, that is what we are going to do together.

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Paul W. Powell - www.PaulPowellLibrary.com

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