Pursuing Maturity

But uh so what we've been looking at again is these spiritual gifts, and it kind of helped us work through Paul writing to the first uh to the church at Corinth, uh, what spiritual gifts are, why they should be used, what their purpose is for.

And uh, we talked last week how in 1 Corinthians 13 we came out of what is known as the great love chapter, and Paul's really setting up what does love look like, what are the characteristics and attributes of love for the church, for the Christian.

And then right out of that chapter, he starts to kind of focus in microscopically on two of this vast array of spiritual gifts: prophecy and the gift of tongues.

And he's focusing on this we talked about because this was an issue with the Corinthian church.

As a Greek church who had a lot of pride in knowledge, these two gifts, specifically these ones that seemed like they were receiving this kind of transcendent knowledge, this divine knowledge to themselves, even in such ways when it comes to the gift of tongues, even such a divine knowledge that they are transcendent that they themselves cannot utter it.

Right?

It's in this language, even unbeknownst to them, but yet they speak it, they declare it.

And so there was this idolatry.

And what happened was this kind of classism started to occur in the Corinthian church.

Those who had the gift and those who did not, and they were starting to lord over them, or I would even argue, spiritually oppress those who did not have the gift of tongues, as if they were not favored as highly or loved as intimately as they were by God.

And so Paul's going to kind of now work through what this really looks like and give a more clear, concrete example of the why behind the use of gifts of tongues and prophecy.

And this is what kind of is challenging for us as a church.

When we're trying to navigate spiritual gifts, there really isn't a manual for us to navigate.

There really isn't concrete, clear, uh uh prescriptive text that would be commands of God given to us clearly to be able to understand how to operate in these things.

How should they play out?

What are they actually in their nature?

Now, there's little tidbits here and there, and we have to try to start piecing those together to get a better understanding of the gifts and their usage within the church.

And so today we're going to kind of work through that in a little bit more clear uh clarity with the gift of prophecy in tongues.

But for some of us, as we've talked about throughout this series, some of us really try to understand the gifts of the Spirit through our theology.

And we might have different theological positions uh when it comes to these gifts.

We talked about the difference between cessationists, those who believe that the gifts have ceased, continuationists, which is what sacred mission are, those who believe that the gifts continue, but the Bible is sufficient for order and proper place and use within the church.

And then we have another group called Charismatic.

And charismatic, they are believers that the gifts of the Spirit still continue, like we do.

However, they tend to dismiss the sufficiency of the scriptures to create proper order and discipline of use around those gifts.

And so we want to be as faithful as we can, and we're gonna work through what that looks like and means this morning.

But I want to introduce us to a cessationist, a historical cessationist.

Many of you have probably heard of him.

His name is Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

So Charles Spurgeon, right?

If you if we love uh Spurgeon here at Sacred Mission Church, we're uh we do proclaim and uphold the 1689 London Baptist Confession, of which Charles Spurgeon himself said, of that document, there is not one word I could add, right?

So Spurgeon was a 1689 like us.

We love the work that he did.

And he was a preacher in London in the uh kind of mid to late 1800s.

And Spurgeon was a cessationist.

However, Spurgeon encountered these remarkable experiences that he prescribed to the Holy Spirit in his ministry.

In fact, he once described such a remarkable experience that he had while preaching in his autobiography, volume two, called The Full Harvest.

So this is Spurgeon's own words.

He wrote this autobiography called The Full Harvest, and this is an excerpt from his description of the experience.

He suddenly broke off from his sermon subject and pointing in a certain direction said, Young man, those gloves you are wearing have not been paid for.

You have stolen them from your employer.

At the close of the service, a young man looking very pale and greatly agitated came to the room which was used as a vestry and begged for a private interview with Spurgeon.

On being admitted, he placed a pair of gloves upon the table and tearfully said, It's the first time I have robbed my master, and I will never do it again.

You won't expose me, sir, will you?

It would kill my mother if she heard that I have become a thief.

You see, Spurgeon was a cessationist.

And he had a very gripping view of prophecy being equated to the scriptures.

This canonized text that was given to us divinely by God through man to be able to understand God's will for us and how we should live to glorify him.

This view of prophecy that he had, tethered to the infallible scripture, and his theology of being cessationist caused him to call these what I would say common occurrences, as many as a dozen that he could recall, impressions of the Holy Spirit.

He could not escape the working of the Spirit to reveal intimate knowledge of a complete stranger, yet he refused to acknowledge it as prophecy due to his theological understanding.

He had to hold experience and theology in tension with one another.

Here's another quote from Spurgeon.

I could tell as many as a dozen similar cases in which I pointed at somebody in the hall without having the slightest knowledge of the person or any idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved by the Spirit to say it.

And so striking has been my description that the persons have gone away and said to their friends, Come see a man that told me all the things that I ever did.

Beyond a doubt, he must have been sent of God to my soul, or else he could not have described me so exactly.

So this is Spurgeon's own words.

He acknowledged the reality of these experiences that he had, that he called impressions of the Holy Spirit.

But because he was a cessationist and he held a very specific view of the gift of prophecy, he was unwilling to label it as such.

He held prophecy only for the infallible scripture.

And my goal this morning is not to try and correct Spurgeon.

That's not my goal this morning.

However, my goal is to help us understand that even he, this person that we look up to so greatly for theological accuracy and clarity in the preaching of the gospel, had this moving of the Spirit in his life that I would argue, because of his theology, was unable to articulate words around what was going on.

You see, our text this morning is leading us today and even next week to understand these impressions as the gift of prophecy that Paul is encouraging all of the church to desire and function in.

So as we go through this text, I want you to keep in focus that story that Spurgeon shared, the quote of these more than a dozen times that this happened, and see if this does not parallel identically what Paul describes the function of prophecy is for the church.

As we start to work into this text, I would try to summarize verses 20 through 22 in this way.

Maturity in mind comes through intimacy with the word.

Maturity in mind comes through intimacy with the word.

So what Paul does here is he says, brothers, do not be children in your thinking.

He's now for the second time referring to the Corinthians as children or immature.

Their conduct in the church, specifically with the use of gifts, has been childish.

It's not the only thing that Paul has been correcting in the Corinthian church.

He's corrected all kinds of things, marital issues, sex issues, issues with the Lord's Supper.

A lot of this letter is bringing correction to the church of Corinth.

However, this is the second time that he's called them childish or immature.

They have thought that their use of the gifts, specifically tongues, was a sign of spiritual maturity.

So they thought, oh, look how much the Spirit is moving among us.

Look at this gifting, this divine ability that we have been given.

Shouldn't this communicate maturity?

And so they used it often.

They used it, I would argue, wildly to demonstrate their maturity.

But Paul's correcting them.

No, this isn't maturity.

He's making it very clear that they are immature in acting as children.

And how does Paul bring this point home?

How does Paul really leverage this point to be able to help them understand the why behind their immaturity or how he knows it so correctly?

Well, it's through the word.

Paul brings this point home through the word.

He points them to the word of God to help them see where they were wrong.

It is a simple yet fully sufficient statement to seal his point.

It's as if Paul is saying, if only you knew the word of God, you would have not gotten yourself into this situation.

Because he says, You brothers, do not be children in your thinking, be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

In the law it is written.

And then he quotes Isaiah 28.

And so Paul, and he's trying to seal this point of their immaturity and their childhood, he's really kind of saying, Listen, if you just understood the word, if you knew the word of God, you would have never gotten yourself into this point.

But to help you see clearly and help bring the point home, I'm going to show you where in the word of God you would have found that the use of tongues is not beneficial for the church.

He quotes the prophet Isaiah to help them see why their use of tongue speech was inappropriate in the assembly.

Isaiah 28, 11 through 12 says this: For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue, the Lord will speak to this people, to whom he has said, This is rest.

Give rest to the weary, and this is repose.

Yet they would not hear.

You see, unknown tongues are not God's greetings to a believing congregation, but they are God's rebuke of an unbelieving and rebellious people.

That's what Isaiah, the thrust of that passage, is saying.

It's not this welcoming greeting of the Lord to his people, it's that the Lord is saying to them, I've tried to tell you my word in languages of which you would understand, and you failed to listen, and your rebellion you turned away from my word.

And therefore, I'm going to send people of foreign tongue as judgment upon you.

You will not understand them, and they will conquer and rule over you.

The thought is, very well, you have rejected Isaiah's messages from God, so I will speak to you with the words of a cruel invader.

You pretend not to understand what I say, but you will really not be able to understand the brutal language of your slave masters.

That's what Paul, that's what Isaiah is communicating to the people of God.

And this is the passage of which Paul's quoting to the Corinthians to help them understand why tongues is not appropriate, tongues uninterpreted is not appropriate in the assembly.

Now, this Isaiah 28 passage tethers itself to a passage out of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 28, 49, to help us understand even more context.

It says this the Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand.

The premise of these passages is to say, because you fail to listen to the intelligible, salvific word of the Lord, you will hear the unintelligible language of your enemies as they destroy you.

So this is what the passage out of Isaiah and the passage out of Deuteronomy is working to help communicate.

And this is what Paul is bringing up before the Corinthian church.

Listen, you the this this gift used this way is a sign for unbelievers.

This is a sign for unbelievers.

And this is what happens as we just kind of read this text at face value.

Here's probably the common uh default that we're gonna have as we approach it.

And it's this if you've read this on your own, this is probably a thought framework that you've had as well.

When you read the word sign, you automatically attribute to it positive connotations.

This is a sign to the unbelieving.

This is a sign to the believing.

We think of signs as something good.

If we look at uh maybe the miracles and healings of Jesus, if we look at the miracles of the apostles, if we look at different things throughout the New Testament, right, we would be very naturally to attribute positivity to this word sign.

We're led to assume sign means a positive thing when we read it in the scripture.

Signs are both, though, positive and negative, depending on what the sign is for.

Some signs in the scriptures are positive, but some signs are negative.

It all depends on what the sign is for and who the sign is supposed to be communicated to.

Here in this text, in Isaiah and in Deuteronomy, the sign of foreign tongues is a negative sign of judgment.

The intelligible sign of prophecy is a positive sign that produces the believing.

And so as we walk through this, and he says, Look, don't be children in your thinking.

Be children in evil in the way that you conduct your life, be innocent, but in your thinking be mature, for in the law it is written.

So he's trying to seal the deal, and he quotes Isaiah 28, part of Deuteronomy 28, to them there, to help them understand why the gift of tongues, uninterpreted in the midst of the assembly, is not healthy or good for the church.

He says it's a sign to the unbelieving because it keeps them in their unbelief.

It is a sign to the unbelieving because it keeps them in unbelief.

It's a sign of judgment.

Why is tongues a sign for unbelievers?

Because it can only keep them in their unbelief.

It's a sign of unintelligibility that cannot produce salvation.

It shows that the unbelieving heart will remain in unbelief and is therefore a sign of judgment.

So we have to try to understand this.

This is what Paul is helping them understand.

If you're going to demonstrate gifts of the Spirit in the midst of the congregation, tongues uninterpreted is inappropriate because it does not benefit the church for building up, it does not benefit the unbelieving for producing faith.

Verses 23 through 25, he I would summarize this passage by this uninterpreted tongue speech causes worry while prophecy causes worship.

Uninterpreted tongue speech causes worry while prophecy causes worship.

He says, if all speak in tongues, now let me kind of paint this scene for you.

How many of you have ever been to a charismatic or Pentecostal church?

Yeah, some of us?

Awesome.

I got saved in a charismatic Pentecostal church.

And I've been in services, engulfed in services before I was saved, where everyone was speaking in tongues.

And it's a scene to behold, right?

And you kind of look out on the congregation and you're wondering what's going on and who's saying what?

Do they understand what they're saying to one another?

Is this some kind of code that I don't know and haven't been privy to because I'm not a part of the church officially yet?

Like, what is happening here?

And you can sense a sort of chaos that's going on.

However, they are fully committed to the belief that they are exhibiting spiritual maturity.

They're fully committed to the belief that they are demonstrating a radical move of the Holy Spirit that will produce fruit.

Fruit that is righteous, fruit that is glorifying to God.

But that's not what Paul tells the church at Corinth.

He says that if an unbeliever comes in to a congregation and all are speaking in tongues, will he not say that you are out of your minds?

Now, this doesn't just mean crazy.

This doesn't just mean, oh, these guys are wild and crazy.

What this means in the original language is that they will believe that you are possessed by evil spirits.

And so as an unbeliever, an outsider comes into the congregation, and they witness the congregation all speaking in uninterpreted tongues, he will literally confess that they are possessed by an evil spirit, and the unbeliever remains an unbeliever.

That's the thrust of this.

That's what we have to really hone in on as we're trying to understand this well.

Why is it that the gift of tongues is inappropriate, uninterpreted, inappropriate in the midst of the assembly?

Because it causes the unbeliever to remain an unbeliever.

You see, we believe that it takes the proclamation of the gospel to bring salvation unto people.

Romans 10, if we understand that and walk through it, it says, How will they be saved if they do not hear?

I'm kind of paraphrasing it.

How will they hear if we do not preach?

And how will we preach if we are not sent?

And so it dictates, God has sovereignly and mysteriously dictated that it takes the proclamation of the gospel to produce faith in the heart of a person.

And that proclamation has to be intelligible.

We talked about this.

We don't put our faith into things of which we don't know.

We put our faith into what is intelligible, to what we understand.

Now, faith does dictate at times that we place it even beyond our full ability to comprehend and understand, but we do not exhibit blind faith in what we call Christianity.

We don't just put faith under things of which cannot be shown or demonstrated or understood.

We are not like some other sex of Christianity that their entire book have never been proven historically true in one area or another.

No person group, no civilization, no anything.

But yet blindly they put their faith behind it.

We're not that way.

We don't put our faith blindly into the personal work of Jesus.

We put our faith into what we can understand.

And so if all speak in tongues, the result is that the unbeliever remains an unbeliever.

But if all prophesy, now this is the most detailed understanding of what New Testament prophecy is and the effects that it should produce.

So we have to walk through this carefully because he's really going to lay out for us not only what it is, but the fruit of which it should produce.

I want to make something clear here.

I don't believe that what Paul is encouraging the church at Corinth to do is to all gather and begin declaring what I would call apostolic canonical revelation.

Apostolic canonical revelation.

This is what I mean by that.

We believe that prophecy was given to us as the authoritative word of God, which we canonized, we put in the Bible.

So the 66 books of the Bible, that's called our canon.

That makes up our holy scripture.

And we believe that when prophets and apostles spoke through the authority of God, that that was infallible scripture given to us and then sealed and collected within the canon.

I don't believe that what Paul is Is talking about or describing here is that the whole church is gathered together, exhibiting the gift of prophecy, which equates to apostolic canonical revelation.

Does that make sense?

I don't believe that Paul's saying, All right now, Corinth, you're all gonna stand up and you're all gonna prophesy, and it's going to be the infallible scripture that we're gonna hand down through the ages, collected in the Holy Bible.

I don't believe that that was the practice.

I don't believe that that was the thought process about what Paul was encouraging them to do.

We talked last week how we believe that prophecy kind of fits on this spectrum of forth telling versus foretelling.

Forthelling that in its most simplistic form would be to read the scriptures.

When Jesus stood up in the midst of the congregation in the synagogue, he opened the scroll of Isaiah and he read, that was Jesus prophetically declaring God's word.

In its simplest form, he stood there and he read the text.

However, Jesus also prophesied on the foretelling spectrum where he revealed what was yet to be revealed to us, to others.

And so what I don't believe was happening here in the congregation, or what Paul's encouraging, is that everybody's getting up and prophesying, and that was supposed to be taken as authoritative, infallible scripture.

One, we don't have any written-down understanding of what they said.

If this was a common practice in the Church of Corinth, then why don't we have the written testimony of the prophecies that were declared?

If it was supposed to be infallible scripture for them and for us, we don't see that anywhere in the text.

That's not the only place.

We also see other places where prophecy is mentioned, but the record of what was actually said is not there.

However, and this is the clear example, Paul tells Timothy, Timothy, remember the prophecy that was spoken to you.

Right?

What Paul is saying is, Timothy, this prophecy should have weight on your life.

It should inform the way that you lived.

It's important to spur you on to remain faithful to the calling of preaching and being a pastor to the church of Ephesus of which you've been called to, but it's never recorded.

It's never given to us in the scriptures.

Does that mean that it doesn't matter?

That it means nothing?

No, to Timothy, it meant a lot.

Paul told him, Remember it.

Remember it often.

Let it encourage you in your ministry.

And even here, when we see this typical practice of the church, we don't see it equivalent as a one-for-one to the revealed word of God.

The legitimacy of the prophecy was not based on its canonization, but on its effects on the individual.

Let me say that again.

The legitimacy of the prophecy, according to Paul, was never based on its canonization.

It was never based on is this the infallible scripture that is supposed to be handed down to the church throughout all generations?

No.

Its legitimacy was based on its effect on the individual.

The unbeliever becomes a believer through the gift being exercised in the assembly.

You see, through intelligibility, through the proclaiming of God's word in intelligible ways, what does Paul say happens to the unbeliever?

He is convicted, he is called to account, the secrets of his heart are revealed.

And so, because these things happened, because he was convicted, because he was called to account, because the secrets of his heart were revealed, he falls on his face, worships God, and declares that God is really among you.

You see, what the Corinthians believed was that using the gift of tongues was an evidence, a sign that God was really among them.

And Paul helps correct them and says, that's not a sign that God is among you.

That's a sign that God's judgment is being communicated to the people around you.

If you want a sign that God is truly among you, then the fruit will be repentance and faith.

That is the fruit of prophecy.

That is the fruit of intelligible proclamation.

So what's the main idea for us this morning?

We must be a church that pursues maturity.

That's what Paul calls them to do.

Be mature in your thinking.

We must be a church that pursues maturity.

It is only through intimacy with the word that we'll be able to mature.

See, when Paul really calls them to maturity, when he really tries to seal the deal, what's he do?

He points them back to the scripture.

If only the Corinthians had such intimacy of the Word of God, they would have avoided such reckless behavior.

And so it's only through this intimacy that we will be able to foster the gifts of the Spirit properly and for their end purpose.

When we look at the gifts, we have to be radically committed to seeing them used for the building up of the church.

Even in our desire to see the gifts manifested, if they are not producing these results, we need to go to the word and practice biblical discernment.

And so it's only through intimacy with the word will we be able to mature.

You see, our mind needs renewed.

Our mind needs washed, it needs to be kind of deprogrammed from the former life of which we once lived.

And it is by the word that our mind is renewed.

It is by the word that we're equipped to discern truth from air.

It is by intimacy of the word that we will be able to judge prophecy properly.

You see, that's next week.

What happens when someone prophesies?

Well, you judge it.

We'll work through the details of that next week.

But how will we be able to judge if all prophetic utterance is subject to the authority of the revealed scripture?

How will we be able to judge properly if we have no intimate awareness of what the Bible says?

That's where you get into foolishness.

You get into foolishness when you allow people to exercise gifts of the Spirit like prophecy, but you have no real reality or awareness of the scriptures, and therefore your ability to judge is null and void, so you let anything go.

Maybe.

Maybe we should have a better intimacy with the scriptures that we can know if this is God or if this is not.

Maturity will not mean less of the spirit.

It will mean more effectiveness of the spirit in and among us.

Let me say that again.

Maturity will not mean less of the spirit.

It will mean more effectiveness of the spirit in and among us.

But we fail to believe this.

We fail to believe this, and it demonstrates itself in our life in one of two ways.

The first way is we believe maturity comes through recklessly demonstrating spirit gifts.

We're like the Corinthians.

We believe that maturity comes through recklessly demonstrating spirit gifts.

We dismiss biblical instruction where the Bible is clear about, it even gets into the details of if you're in the midst of the congregation, only allow two or three to prophesy at most.

Paul's very clear: do not allow uninterpreted tongues in the assembly.

It is God's language of judgment to the unbelieving.

We dismiss biblical instruction even when it's clear.

We dismiss biblical order.

We're more focused on the demonstration than on the fruit of it.

And this is something that we can see in the charismatic movement, of which I was a part of.

I was saved in that and raised up spiritually in that movement.

But what happened is when we were more focused on the demonstration, the reckless demonstration of the gifts of the Spirit, we became very unfocused on the fruit that it was producing.

And no one really asked, well, what fruit is this producing?

Because we simply saw that the demonstration of it equaled maturity.

But it's interesting to note that as I look back through the revivalist movement, it seemed like the more recklessly the gift of the Spirit was demonstrated, the more immature its outcome would look.

But we thought it was maturity.

We believed that it was.

Others of us, though, we believe maturity comes through putting away spirit gifts.

This is our cessationist brothers and sisters.

We believe maturity comes through putting away spirit gifts.

Putting away childish things has nothing to do with the gift itself, but everything to do with the mentality that was behind the use of it.

We limit what God desires to do through us due to an unbelief that He would use that specific gift to do it.

We place unbiblical restrictions around the gifts and their purpose, and as a product, we throw them out.

We become these maturity, right?

How many of you have ever in your adulthood, in your process of maturing, look at something that you once enjoyed and found excitement around and you chucked it out into the garbage, right?

Maybe it was a video game system or some type of toy that you once treasured, a collection of Hot Wheels, or maybe some uh dolls or Barbies or whatever, right?

Whatever it was, at some point in your process of maturity, you kind of looked at this gift, this thing, and you said, that doesn't equal maturity.

I'm gonna throw it out.

And then what happens?

Maybe 10 years, 15 years down the road, you find yourself at a buddy's house or somebody else's house, and they're you've got one of those.

That's amazing.

And you jump in, you become this child again, right?

You start playing with it, you start remembering all the nostalgia that it brought you and the joy that it brought you, right?

We equate, oftentimes, we equate maturity with the throwing out of these so-called childish things.

And it's unfair and unbiblical that we categorize spirit gifts as childish things.

That's not what Paul's talking about in one aspect of this whole text.

He's not talking about the gift itself being childish, he's talking about the motive of which we use it, the mentality we have behind the use of it that actually is childish.

So Paul never calls us to throw out the gift with tongues, with prophecy.

He doubles down on their use of it, on the desire that should be in our hearts to see it actually expressed within the congregation.

He never says, put the gift out at the at the at the yard sale, right?

That's not what Paul does.

He says, keep the gift, change the heart.

And so we have to work to do that.

It's it's not right for us to either understand maturity through reckless demonstration or understand maturity through the putting away.

What it is, maturity comes through intimacy with the word, where our mind and heart is transformed and renewed.

And when we have these gifts in our possession, we use them for their proper outcomes.

The beauty of the gospel for us this morning is this that Jesus matures us through the nourishing of his word.

Jesus matures us through the nourishing of his word.

This is a promise that he has given to us.

That he would mature us through the nourishing of his word.

You see, we are infants.

When we are born again, because Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection has provided for us new life.

And when we put faith in that, in his finished work, we are caused to be born again.

And we're born into this infantile state, infantile spiritual spirituality, infantile mentality, thinking, and we have to be matured.

And what Jesus says is that he will nourish us through his word.

Look at Hebrews 5, 12 through 13.

It says this for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

You need milk, not solid food.

For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child.

Unskilled, everyone who needs milk is unskilled in what?

In the word of righteousness, since he is a child.

You see, the writer of Hebrews equivalates immaturity, childishness directly to an unskilled state of the word of God.

Many of us think that we're gonna mature spiritually without reading our Bibles.

We're gonna live a spiritual life because we are more conscious about God, or we think or ponder about God, or we study theological concepts, but we don't study the word of God itself, right?

We think that we are mature because we've labored in the church for X amount of years or whatever, but that's not where maturity comes from.

You see, that's actually a false sense of maturity that many of us have.

It's kind of like boys who can shave.

There's many men in our culture that have a very false sense of maturity just because they have a job and have to shave for it every morning.

That doesn't make us mature, that doesn't make them mature.

And for us, we think that because we can study theological concepts or understand theological intercies of different categories, or because we've served in the church for X amount of years that we are mature.

And honestly, there's a lot of times where that just creates a false sense of maturity, where we're still trying to nourish ourselves on milk because we're unskilled in the word of righteousness.

If we are going to mature into what Christ has called us to be, we have to become skilled in the word of righteousness.

We have to be nourished by his word.

You see, Jesus is the word.

It's what John reveals to us that in the beginning was the word Jesus, and the word was with God, right?

Jesus is the word of God.

If we want to intimately know Jesus, we don't know it through these vague and ambiguous spiritual practices.

We don't know it, know him through uh reading books about him, but not reading the scripture itself, right?

We we don't understand him.

The way that we most clearly understand the person and work of Jesus is through being skilled in the reading and study of his word, because this is how he has revealed himself to be.

So Jesus matures us, he's promised us that if we come feasting on his word, feasting on him, then we will grow up to the maturity of which he's called us to.

So for us as Christians, we should pursue how would we live our lives differently if we believe this?

Number one is that we would pursue maturity.

We would pursue maturity.

This is something that we have to do as the church, we have to define what that pursuit is, right?

Because I can just stand up here and say, oh, pursue maturity, and you have your own understanding of what maturity is and how you get there.

Let me be clear if I haven't yet.

We need to pursue maturity through the word of God, skilled in the word of righteousness, and we will produce maturity in our lives.

You see, these are the promises of God.

We were talking about this this morning before the service.

How the promises of God are yes and amen.

The promises of God will not return void to his people.

The promises of God are the rock on which we stand upon.

And here's what's happening.

And this is crazy that we do this, and I function in this behavior as well.

But we live in a society and culture where it is full of empty promises.

Your Facebook feed is full of empty promises, false information, lies that people are promulgating, right?

And we don't know who to trust.

We don't know who to trust.

And guess what?

We're cultivating in our minds and hearts that distrust.

I don't know who to believe, I don't know who I can look to for accurate information.

And so, what do you do?

You scroll through hours of misinformation, empty promises, false information.

And you know what we do?

We're cultivating a posture in our own lives to project that onto God.

God, I don't know if your promises are true.

I can't uh and you might not consciously say that.

God, I don't know if I can believe in your word.

God, I don't know if I can stand on your promises, God, but but subconsciously, that's what's being cultivated in your mind and heart.

That's what's being projected on God.

And the more we feed ourselves with those who cannot fulfill the promises that they make, the more we're gonna project that onto God the Father, who says that every promise of his is yes and amen.

And so this might sound all uh simplistic, or here's another uh uh uh uh sermon about reading your Bible, but genuinely, if you took the amount of time you used to scroll through Facebook or the amount of time you choose to scroll through uh newsfeeds of misinformation or empty promises, and you became skilled in the word of God, that when economies fail, when plagues hit, when politicians go corrupt, you can stand on the rock.

Because here's what you did you had your footing on what?

You had your footing on a political party, you had your footing on an economy system, you had your uh footing on a system of government, you had your footing on your health or whatever it is.

And when that came toppling down, anxiety sparked, fear sparked.

Because it's a sandy foundation.

But if we said, hey, no, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fill my mind and heart and pursue maturity through the skilled workmanship of the word of God, of the word of righteousness, as the world crumbles around you, you're standing on the foundation of the rock which is his word.

You see, that's how Christians throughout all of history, we are not unique, we are not special.

Christians for the last two millennia have stood on the promises of God when everything around them and society and culture had crumbled.

And that's how they persevered.

That's how they didn't give up.

So we should pursue maturity by becoming skilled, not devotional reading, not a calendar on your desk that has a verse of the day, becoming skilled in the word of righteousness.

Number two, we should work to mature others.

Work to mature others.

So in community, in mission groups, as we are laboring with one another, when people are coming to us with their anxiety, with their fear, are we just giving them some it'll be okay, words of affirmation and pats on the back?

It's all gonna be alright.

Are we working to mature them in their faith by pointing them to the Word of God and the promises?

Are we gospeling their issues that they are facing by showing them the risen, resurrected Christ who has conquered overall?

Are we working to mature others?

Are we just creating spaces where we have mediocre meals and good times?

No, if we work to mature others, we would work to build them up in the word of God.

This is something that I get is uncomfortable, it's foreign to us, it's hard to do, and there's plenty of times I have failed to do this and will fail to do this, but we have to work to mature others, and the way that we're gonna work to mature others is by helping them, pointing them back to this, pointing them back to the word of God, so that they become skilled in his word of righteousness, and so that they build a foundation of which all the weathers of life will withstand.

Lastly, we have to cause our maturity to bring in the outsider, cause our maturity to bring in the outsider.

This is the fruit of prophecy in the text that we just studied.

When they prophesy, when they exercise mature at maturity in their spirit gifts, the unbelieving is convicted, is called to account, his heart is exposed, and he falls on his face in worship.

That sounds like what Spurgeon was talking about in his impressions of the Holy Spirit that he had.

When they were called out, when he stepped out in faith and proclaimed it, they were convicted, they were called out, held accountable, secrets revealed, and the Spirit moved in them.

You see, our maturity should not create, uh should not keep outsiders on the outside.

That's immaturity.

And we can we can do this in several different ways.

It's not just through the gift of tongues.

I mean, think about how many churches where you come in and it just feels foreign.

You feel like an outsider.

Everybody's dressed in like a uniform, right?

They have uh, you know, every everybody has the same skirt, denim skirt, or hair up, or what, you know, and all the men have the white button, whatever it is, right?

Or or or the songs that they sing, or maybe the uh the ancient Bible version that they use, right?

1611 only.

No one under the butt the dude reading that doesn't understand that most of the time.

We we right we kind of can create these spaces where the outsider comes in and they just feel like an outsider.

It's not just in the gift of the Spirit, but if we are mature and we're pursuing maturity, it'll be not just the way of which we conduct ourselves within the church, but it will be the demonstration of the gifts themselves that will warmly and intimately welcome the outsider in.

And through intelligible proclamation of the word of God, their hearts will be cut and they will repent and believe in the gospel of Jesus.

Amen.