Your Dad Wants You to Grow Up • 1 Peter 1:22-2:3
37:55 Teaching begins
Notes
A very common mistake that Christians make is to depend on themselves to follow Jesus. “Jesus saved me, now I have to follow Him. I have to prove myself worthy. I’m on probation.”
Our focus shifts from Jesus to ourselves and we put the pressure on us. I depend on me. We’ve done that all our lives. We take that with us into our relationship with Jesus.
When we depend on ourselves we fail to follow Jesus. That’s why the Apostle Paul asked the Galatians, Galatians 3:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
We began our lives in Christ by receiving the word of God. And we will grow and be perfected only by continuing to receive the word of God.
Only the word of God is able to change our essential nature until we are glorified like Jesus.
I’m reading in 1 Peter 1 from verse 22 (to 2:3)
1. Peter is making the point that you have become different, changed, you’ve passed from death to life.
A. You used to be polluted, thinking only of yourselves, dead in your sins.
B. You purified your souls. The proof of this is you lay down your lives for one another. You esteem one another better than yourselves. You love one another.
C. 1 John 3:14-15 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
D. That fact that you love proves that you have changed your nature.
2. Being born again is the most important change you can ever experience, because you change your essential nature.
A. In John 3 Jesus told a religious leader: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” John 3:6
B. The flesh is the natural man, born without the spirit, separated from God, dead in sins. Peter shows us what the flesh is like.
1. All flesh is grass. Temporary, corruptible, weak. Not enduring. Dying.
2. In chapter two the flesh is all malice, all guile and hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Paul talks about this in Titus 3:3 For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.
3. The flesh is not about love and benefitting others, it’s about selfishness, resenting others doing better than me, deceiving myself and others, trying to look good and doing wickedness.
C. And the flesh is not something we can change, ever. Israel is the historical proof that changing one’s nature is impossible.
1. Jeremiah 17:1-2 The sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus; with a diamond point it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars, as they remember their children, so they remember their altars and their Asherim by green trees on the high hills. You can’t erase inscriptions cut into stone. They last for millenia.
2. Jeremiah 13:23 “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.
3. Hebrews 8:7-12 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
D. God’s solution is not to reform the flesh and teach and correct the flesh. He is starting over again with a new covenant that brings new life and a new nature.
E. Being born again is the only thing that matters.
1. Not, “Are you religious, are you good, do you do more good things than bad things?”
2. John 3:3 Jesus told a religious leader, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
F. Have you been born again of the Holy Spirit, by the word of God?
3. You are born again when you receive the word of God like a seed.
A. A seed is alive and has everything required to reproduce another plant like the plant it came from.
B. The seed is put into the ground, into the dirt. Then it germinates and grows. The dirt hasn’t changed. There is a new life growing in the dirt.
C. That’s how we were born again. We are made of dust, dirt, essentially. Flesh. We received the word of God about Jesus planted into our dirt. That word of God broke up the hardness of our heart, like the hard soil of a path that is walked on until it is hard. Rocks had to be taken away, weeds and thorns had to be pulled. The word of God took root and is growing in our hearts.
4. In order to grow up and be transformed you need to drink the word of God like milk.
A. Peter changes the metaphor from plants to babies. Instead of a seedling, think about the needs of a baby. The baby is alive, it has been born, it’s on its own, now it needs to grow and develop.
B. What do you give a baby? Mother’s milk. It’s perfect and complete. It has all the nutrients a baby needs, plus things to keep the baby healthy. It’s a complete food for this stage of the baby’s development.
C. At a certain point you wean the baby off mother’s milk onto solid food so the toddler can develop to maturity.
D. This is a perfect metaphor for the development of a Christian to maturity. It is all based on the word of God.
1. You start by receiving the word of God into your heart. You are born again with a new nature, the nature of Christ. He is living, imperishable, enduring. He is your life.
2. You feed that new nature with that which is living, imperishable, enduring. Everything else is dead, perishable, temporary. No other book, teaching, or philosophy can cause you to grow in your life with Jesus. There is no substitute for the word of God.
3. The word of God is like milk in that it is easily digestible and sweet. The grace of God, the love of God, the forgiveness of my sins. I need to know these things and keep drinking that in.
4. The word of God is also solid food. In order to eat solid food you have to have teeth to chew and a developed digestive system that can handle the demands solid food will make. The word of God also makes demands on me to grow up and deny myself, put away childish things, stop thinking about myself and think about others. Think significant thoughts, do significant things.
5. You begin with receiving the word of God, and you continue with receiving the word of God. This gives life, it sustains life, it develops life, it matures and brings fruit.
5. What do we do with this?
A. Realise your Heavenly Father wants you to grow up. Why does your Father want you to grow up?
1. You are created immature and undeveloped. So it’s part of God’s plan for you to grow, become strong, develop skills and be mature, giving life to others. That’s what fruit trees do. That’s what families do: They grow up and then have families of their own. They give life to others. That’s what we do in this family of God.
2. You grow in order to do significant things that are worthy of honour and praise. You take care of yourself and you take care of others. Love is always significant, love is worthy.
3. If you don’t grow up there’s something wrong, and you won’t live a normal life.
4. Realise that your Father in heaven wants you to live life well.
B. Realise that in order to grow to maturity you need help.
1. No cultivated plant grows on its own. No baby grows to maturity on its own. God gives farmer to the plant, He gives parents to the baby. He is the Father in heaven, the best parent.
2. So God gives Himself, His Spirit, to be with us. He is our Teacher. He will make sure we learn.
3. God also gives us His word. His Spirit caused that word to be written, and its purpose is to give you new life and transform you into the image of Christ.
4. The Holy Spirit uses His word to change our natures from being childish to mature. From being self-centred and hateful to thinking about God and others and loving everybody.
C. Growing up is difficult. Did you know that? It is difficult to put away childish things and think like an adult. It can be painful, agonising. We might think, I don’t want to grow up. It’s too much. I can’t do this.
D. The answer to that is, you’re right. You can’t do this alone. You must have help. God gives parents, He gives His Spirit, and He gives His word.
E. Peter says, long for that pure milk of the word. Desire it.
1. You have tasted the goodness of the Lord. You have chewed and swallowed and said, wow, that’s good. You remember the goodness of realising that God loves you, that He wants you, He cleanses you, He takes away your sins. It’s so good.
2. You should want more of that goodness, and there is more where that came from.
3. Ask God to give you a desire for His word, that you would eat it, chew it, swallow it, digest it, make it part of you, written on your heart, circulating through your body.
F. You can avoid the word of God and you don’t have to grow up. But then you won’t be free from sin. You are not going to have peace and joy. You won’t do anything useful, because you can’t be used by God. You won’t resist the devil. You won’t overcome the world. You won’t really know God. It’s immature to think, “Me,” and to depend on me.
G. It’s mature to think, “God,” and to depend upon Him and what He says. And where we learn to think like that is the Bible. Keep receiving and eating and enjoying the word of God.
Let’s pray.