1 Corinthians 3:1-16 - Growing Mature Christians

Welcome to the City Covenant Podcast.

We are a warm, welcoming church located in downtown Spokane, dedicated to practicing the way of Jesus in the heart of the city.

Please join us as we dive into the Word of God together.

So great to see all of you guys today.

And so I honestly prepare much.

I didn't prepare much.

I'm going to wing it.

I can read the text.

We'll see what happens.

We're going to honestly, at this point, I really feel like I should have got some notes together.

But we're going to read the text.

We're going to do our best.

We're reading 1 Corinthians 3, 1 through 17.

We're in the middle of this series right now.

It's 16 weeks long from you know a couple weeks ago until right to Ash Wednesday.

We'll take a break during Advent and Christmas.

We're looking at 1 Corinthians for 16 weeks.

Today we're talking about this problem of spiritual maturity.

Paul says, Man, you guys, you're acting like babies.

And so, you know, and he says it in a nicer way.

He really cares about them.

But that's what he's saying.

And um, and he says, But it's time to grow up.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about this morning.

And so let's look at this together.

We're gonna, um, there's a if you brought a Bible from home, you can follow along.

If not, there's a pew Bible right in front of you.

We're gonna look at 1 Corinthians 3, 1 through 16, or 1 through, yeah, 1 through 16.

Um, we'll read it and then we'll pray.

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit, but as people who are who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ.

I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.

Indeed, you are still not ready.

You're still worldly.

For since there is jealousy and quarreling amongst you, are you not worldly?

Are you not acting like mere humans?

For one says, I follow Paul, and another I follow Apollos.

Are you not mere human beings?

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, but God has been making it grow.

So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow.

The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will and they will each be rewarded according to their labor.

For we are co-workers in God's service.

You are God's field, God's building.

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it.

But each one should build with care, for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light.

It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work.

If what he built has survived, the builder will receive a reward.

If it's burned up, the builder will suffer loss, but yet will be saved.

Even though only one escaping through those flames, don't you know that you are yourselves God's temple, and that God's spirit dwells in your midst.

If anyone destroys, oh, sorry, I'm gonna go one reverse, sorry.

If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person, for God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Friends, this is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for your word to us.

God, thank you that you inspired Paul to write this, Lord, so that it's really Paul's words, God, and you fully inspired it, Lord.

So we're hearing your voice behind Paul's voice, Lord.

Um point us back toward Jesus.

Help us know him in all things.

Um, God, we praise you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for your guidance to us, Lord, in our lives, in everything that we are as individuals and as this church, and we pray um that we would offer it all to you, Lord, so that we might grow from being um from being infants to to full grown adults in you, that we would not just get older, but we'd get more mature.

We love you, God.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Okay, so what we're looking at this morning is we're looking at this problem where Paul says, we have a maturity problem, right?

We have a maturity problem.

And then he says, the problem is the immaturity, but there's a solution.

The solution is that God is going to grow you, right?

He's gonna take you from here to here.

And how's he gonna do it?

The way the apostle Paul does this, in the way he describes it, he says he uses three constructs.

He says that God, you're God's field, that you're God's building, and you're God's temple.

And so we're gonna look at those three things of the way that God is growing us into uh into the people he wants us to be, right?

As and he uses these three illustrations of the field, the building, and the temple.

So let's look at this first problem, though, this problem of spiritual immaturity.

Um, I'll tell you that there's a problem with the word immaturity, and I say this as somebody who's the parent of three children.

If you tell somebody they're immature, um, it feels for a lot of folks, especially I'll tell you what, if your kids are my age, you know, you just throw that out and say you're immature.

So it almost feels like a social attack on somebody, right?

And and I'll tell you, as hard as that is, maybe for a child to hear, right?

Somebody who's uh uh, you know, under 18, at least they know that they're supposed to be growing.

The challenge I think is as difficult as it is for younger people to be told they're immature and how they might overrespond to something like that.

Guess what?

It's even harder for adults.

You know why?

Because adults have suffer under the illusion that they are mature.

And here's the thing just because you got older doesn't mean you got more mature, right?

That's kind of the base level problem here in our lives, right?

You can be a Christian for a long time, but you might not actually be getting more mature in the faith, right?

And so we need to look at this.

We have to have an honest conversation, right?

Because when we talk about um what the apostle Paul is doing here and telling these Corinthians, hey, there's some spiritual immaturity in our in our church that we need to grow.

You know why?

Because God has an incredible plan, not just for your life, but for all of our lives together.

Because in the kingdom of God, God's goal is to um not only for you to know him and to grow in him and have a deep um intimate relationship with him, but that is one of his followers, is one of the disciples of Jesus, that God has incredible plans for what you're gonna do in your life and the fruit that God is gonna bear, and then the the fruit then that our church is gonna bear, right?

That's what Paul is saying to the Corinthians, right?

And so so then what happens then is the best response to something like this isn't defensiveness.

Instead, the best response is to say, I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna grow, right?

It's not an attack, it's to say, you're not quite there yet, right?

So I think that's the challenge is the way that we end up being able to have a non-defensive posture isn't to say, um, man, I'm spiritually mature.

I'm never gonna get there.

No, it's to say, I'm not there yet, right?

That God is actually growing you, right?

So you look and say, what are the signs?

What are the signs of spiritual immaturity?

Paul tells us, Paul tells us simply, right?

He says, um, he says, one, you know, you you just you can only have milk, not solid food, right?

That's how we know.

That's why he's talking to babies, right?

He says you're jealous, you're prone to strife.

Oh, okay, so a couple things.

One, are you actually like this whole milk thing, okay?

Um, milk rather than solid food.

I will tell you this.

If you want to be a grower in the Lord, I'm just gonna tell you this just right now.

You're probably, this isn't the problem for Corinth, but it is a problem for us.

You're probably gonna want to get mostly off of social media as your primary spiritual influence.

That is not gonna be helping you.

That social media, I'm just gonna say, at best is milk.

It's probably not milk, it's like vinegar, okay?

But maybe it's milk, right?

You if if your primary um food, spiritual food source is 30-second clips from whoever you're following, um, guess what?

Though that's clickbait.

That's stuff that they are doing to pull you in so they can profit off of you.

Okay, and so they just keep sending this stuff out, you know, into social media.

Why?

So that they can actually be profiting from you watching it, right?

And I'll tell you, I see folks like that, it's on the right, it's on the left, it's it's all over, okay?

That's not deep nutritional food.

That's not even fast food.

That's like going to whatever it's called, AM or what no, not AM.

What's AMPM?

You know, it's a gas station food.

It's like those incredible, man.

I'm sorry, this is extra right now.

But do you remember those little pizza pockets?

They fry them.

I used to eat these all the time.

And it was running cross-country, so I could.

Those things are amazing.

That's not even fast food.

Okay, that that is killing you very quickly.

That's like what you're eating when you are imbibing on social media for your spiritual sustenance.

You gotta go deeper than that, right?

Cut out the spiritual pizza pockets, move toward real food, right?

Okay, that's the thing.

So he says, What's a marker?

How do I know though, if I'm actually spiritually mature?

Two things jealousy, strife.

He says, infants are prone to this, spiritual infants and real infants.

And you look and say, babies aren't interested in jealousy and strife.

Really?

Hang out with some toddlers.

They are.

You can go upstairs, you can't go right now.

You have to be at City Cup for six months and pass a background check.

Then you can help with the nursery.

Okay, we would love your help.

There's always lots of little kids up there.

With that said, Levi used to have this little lawnmower.

He had a plastic lawnmower.

Do you guys remember those things?

You've seen these kids around.

Levi had this little plastic lawnmower, and he loved this plastic lawnmower.

And my my cousin Robbie and his family was up here.

Some of you guys have met them.

And Robbie's son, Charlie, Charlie wanted this little plastic lawnmower, and he wanted it so desperately.

And Levi, you know, as soon as he um saw that someone else wanted it, he's like racing around um with this lawnmower to make sure no one else got it from him.

You know how this is, and you know, Charlie's jealous.

And and they're having strife now.

And you know how it ended?

Charlie jumped on his back and bit him.

That's what little kids do.

It's jealousy and strife.

If you don't believe me, watch some kids.

That's what they do.

Guess what?

Some of us haven't moved on.

That's what the Apostle Paul is saying.

We're still prone to the same thing.

Unfortunately, the stakes are way higher now.

We're not dealing just with little plastic lawnmowers anymore.

Right?

We don't even have those guardrails that we used to have of our parents helping us or our parents watching us.

Now we're just out on our own, you know, maliciously being jealous of people around us and letting the relational fallout impact everything around us.

Right?

So we're prone to strife.

And it says, so we're in the flesh.

We're not thinking about the things of Christ, right?

You're not growing to become more and more like the Lord.

We're not becoming more mature.

Rick Warren defined, it's funny, I don't think I've ever quoted Rick Warren, but I was remembering this the other day because I think I heard it from some Cov person, and but they actually got it from Rick Warren.

They said, Christian maturity is defined by Rick Warren, is for us to think, feel, and act more and more like Jesus, right?

As we are becoming more mature in the Lord, what happens in our hearts, in our minds, in our very souls, is that we start thinking, feeling, and acting more like Jesus.

Right?

That's part of Christian maturity.

Right?

So the question is if we look and say, okay, here's what spiritual immaturity is.

What is it that God is doing in us to work in us, right?

Because the question we have to ask, partially we're asking this morning, but we're really asking this every day of the Christian life, is am I gonna be a person that actually experiences true spiritual transformation and growth, right?

Or am I gonna be somebody who just remains stagnant, right?

Um, or am I gonna be somebody who just keeps conforming to earthly patterns, right?

Maybe constantly doing what the culture around me would just do, right?

Whatever social media tells me to do, whatever my flesh tells me to do, right?

Maybe constantly striving for power the way the culture pursues it, right?

Whatever that might be.

So what's it gonna be, right?

Are we gonna become growers or are we gonna remain stagnant, right?

Because I will tell you, if we're gonna grow in the Lord, I will, this is what I know as a Christian is that real change never occurs in isolation, right?

And it doesn't happen just automatically on its own.

There has to be uh a movement and us allowing God to do it in our lives.

And so if we want change to occur, the apostle Paul uses these three images about the field, the building, right, and the temple.

And so this the first one is the field.

He says, I have I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave growth.

Okay, so here's the thing if just to remember background.

Paul actually planted the church in Corinth.

That's what he's saying.

When he says, I planted, right?

That's what he's he's using as an illustration of a field.

But when when he says growth, what I want you to think about is fruit, right?

And he's he's going back to his same argument where he's correcting this argument or this argument in the in the church there of where they're valuing certain gifts above others, right?

They're valuing certain people over others, and right, they want to be connected, all these popular pastors, right?

Now here's the thing at least if Paulus and Paul and Cephas, they're actually all doing a good job, right?

But good grief, he says, but good grief, can we knock it off, right?

Who's doing the ultimate work?

It's not these folks, right?

It's the Lord, right?

And here's what's incredible.

What's incredible is that what's incredible about the gospel, I just want you to think about this for a second.

This incredible balance.

The Bible says, unless the Lord builds a house, the workers labor in vain.

So it's this incredible gospel tension between these two poles, right?

One poll would just move us toward defeatism that says it doesn't matter what you do in your life, because God's gonna work it out all in the end anyway, and so don't bother anything.

Just go home, watch Netflix, you know, and and God's gonna do his thing.

It doesn't evolve you.

That'd be one way to look at life.

The other extreme would be to say, um, the only way God is possibly going to achieve his aim, his end, is if you do it.

And if you don't, the whole system's gonna fall down.

What's amazing is it's actually not on either of those.

Neither of those is actually true.

What's actually true is that God is going to achieve his eventual purposes, with or without you.

But wouldn't you rather be a part of what God is currently doing in the world, right?

Because that's what he's calling you into to participate in something exceptionally meaningful, right?

Because God is moving the world from here to here.

And and God invites us to be a part of that, right?

And so, um, so on one hand, workers really are doing the work, but God is behind all of it, right?

So even when we like pray and we we ask God for all these prayers, how does God answer many of these prayers?

It's actually through you, right?

It's through me.

That's how life works, right?

It's not just that like God is constantly like dropping stuff onto the, you know, onto planet earth here because um, you know, out of nowhere, you know, it's like boom, manna, you know, doves, all this, like it's like the book of Exodus all the time.

That's a unique situation.

Most time God actually just tends to use his people to achieve his purposes, right?

God's working through you, right?

And and that's what happens for mature Christian people, right?

That the Lord is building this house, right?

We think about God's field.

Okay, so some of you guys go up to Green Bluff.

Uh, think about it this way for a second, as far as true Christian maturity, true Christian fruit, right?

In these fields.

We were up at Green Bluff several years ago.

We used to go up there a lot more because our kids were little.

So you, if your kids are little, you need to take cute pictures of them.

And Green Bluff's the spot for it.

So we're up at Green Bluff, we're picking a pumpkin, right?

These are desperately expensive pumpkins, right?

And you just the whole time, I'm just thinking to myself, man, I wish we were at Trader Joe's, right?

Because it's so much closer.

And those are dirt cheap pumpkins.

Okay, anyway.

So we're at Green Bluff, okay?

Sorry, I'm getting off here, but we're at Green Bluff, and we're gonna go out and pick a pumpkin.

They give us these little clippers, right, to cut through the gourd, um, you know, the and connect where it's connected to the vine.

And and what's fascinating though, as I'm up there, you realize there's so many people going to Green Bluff every single day picking these pumpkins.

The fields can't produce enough pumpkins.

And so um, some of the pumpkins are just mysteriously sitting right on the ground, they're not connected to any vines.

And then I notice there are these crates that say, like, California, like literally, there's these wooden crates.

These are Californian pumpkins.

They got them all ready for us, they ship them to Washington so all of us can spend disproportionate amounts buying pumpkins at Green Buff for the experience because your kid wants to cut off part of the you know the top where the pumpkin connects to the vine.

They're fake though.

It's not real fruit of this ground, right?

This ground has not produced that many pumpkins.

I'm just telling you that.

I watched it.

It can't produce enough fruit, it needs more.

Here's the thing, though, with fields and fruit.

The you know, it looks impressive to have this many pumpkins out there.

But here's what's truly impressive.

It's not just random companions.

Here's what's really impressive is that the way fields actually work, in real life, the way fields actually work is that somebody uh comes in, they plant a seed, right?

Someone else, you know, and they do all this work, you know, they they till the ground, they plant seeds, they water it, they they do all these things.

But ultimately, it's all for nothing if God Himself doesn't create the environment so that the seed can germinate, right?

So you you've you've done all this thing, you've done all of your work, but no, ultimately, outside of God doing the full work, it's never gonna grow.

Right?

That's what farmers know.

And here's what's really impressive to me, actually, about it.

It's that sometimes, some years, these fields they lay fallow.

Why?

So that they can be fruitful in the future.

And and here's what's amazing.

Sometimes, even in your own life, you look, and maybe you're discouraged, right?

Because you look and say, Man, I feel like my heart is a fallow field, right?

I feel like my heart hasn't produced the fruit that I would think it would, right?

Or maybe you think, man, you know, maybe it's those folks who who you see around and you say, man, it feels like there's not a lot of growth.

But knowing that, like, no, it's cycles, right?

Sometimes you see um a lot of fruit in one particular time.

Sometimes you don't, but you know what's happening is there's these this little bit of growth going on under the ground if you keep being open to what God's doing, right?

So that I say that because I don't want us just to be so completely, so completely discouraged so that we give up hope, right?

Because sometimes think about this, right?

You have folks like um, you know, maybe some like teenager who doesn't seem super spiritually interested at this moment.

You know why you don't give up hope there?

Because you don't know what's happening and what type of roots are growing down deep.

Right?

So, parents, don't give up hope for a teenager who doesn't seem super spiritually interested, right?

Maybe it's somebody whose marriage just feels like it's not it, it's just pay the growth is painfully slow, right?

Maybe it's you fighting an old pattern of sin, right?

Maybe it's the person who keeps showing up to church, even though it feels like every time you show up to church, you still don't feel the things that you think you're supposed to feel, right?

Maybe it's that person who's still learning to forgive, right?

And the roots in that field of this person's heart are still growing deep and the growth is occurring slowly, and you might not see the fruit for a while.

I just want to encourage you as a pastor, like stick with it.

Right?

God's still doing a work.

Right?

Don't measure it just on year one.

Right?

Remember, who's giving the growth?

God's giving the growth.

And here's what he says, and here's what's amazing about this field illustration, is he looks and he says, You didn't do it all on your own.

I watered, Apollos did the work.

You know what brings incredible Christian humility is for us to know that the way you got here, just here today, you didn't do it all on your own.

Is that people poured into your life in the background, you know, all along the way.

You know, maybe it was your parents, right?

You had some teachers, you had some Sunday school teachers, maybe you had some youth group leaders, right?

You had these people who just helped get you step by step, little bit by little bit by little bit, and they and you got here.

Well, you you know what's incredible?

We have that same opportunity to be those people who pour into other people's lives now, right?

And again, you don't have to be like these.

Are not things that look like spiritual heroes.

This is just doing the normal Christian thing of just being present, of just being involved in people's lives, and saying, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep being involved.

You know, I think as we as we look at this, right, as we look at this growing, as we look at this maturity, right?

We realize that Paul isn't ultimately asking how long have you been a Christian?

He's saying, what is your Christianity producing in you?

Right?

We we looked and said, okay, Paul outlined what are these signs of immaturity?

Jealousy, strife, those are good ones.

There's more, but those are two good ones that Paul talks about.

Maybe you need to be able to look in your own life and say, okay, what are some signs of good fruit?

Right.

I think some of them are, am I becoming more teachable?

Right.

As a Christian person, right?

It's funny because if you're actually true Christian maturity, what it leads to is you saying, hey, there's a lot of stuff I don't know.

There's a lot of growth I need to have.

That's actually maturity, right?

Which actually what's funny is Christian immaturity is saying you have it all figured out, right?

So if you look and say, um, I know very, very little, I need to grow, mature.

Immature, I don't need to grow.

Okay, that that's the irony, right?

So another thing is, am I becoming less jealous, right?

Can someone else succeed without me needing to compete?

Right?

Am I becoming maybe more patient?

Right?

Can I let God grow something slowly in me?

And ultimately, you're asking, am I becoming more like Jesus?

Isn't that what we're all asking?

Right?

Not not like, oh, I have more Christian knowledge.

Am I not like, am I becoming more impressive?

If I'm doing more religious stuff, but is the fruit of the Spirit coming out, right?

Am I becoming more loving, humble, generous?

Am I becoming more surrendered to the Holy Spirit?

That's the type of stuff we're asking.

Okay, so that's this that's this foundational idea of the field.

The second one is the building, right?

And he says, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it, right?

Like he said, or like I said earlier, Paul planted the church.

But you know what's amazing?

Paul says immediately, it's not my church, right?

It's Christ's church.

You know what's amazing is City Covenant has been around for almost 10 years now.

We're gonna celebrate our 10th anniversary.

Stick around, you'll see it, um, in January.

We're gonna celebrate our 10th anniversary.

You know what's amazing about churches is that the the longer that they go on, is that they become more and more centered, not on, you know, like one person or one leader or one planter, but they become way more spread out to where it's all of our church, right?

Some churches, in some church cultures, they have this, I would say, very bad tendency to describe a church as a pastor's church, right?

You say, oh, that's Joe's church, that's Grant's church, right?

That's Leon's church.

I think that's actually really, really unhelpful and unhealthy.

The reality is, for any church, that pastor is gonna leave at some point.

And it's God's church, it's Christ's church.

The healthier it the church becomes, the more and more that church becomes Christ's church, right?

Well, we all know here at City Covenant, um, I helped plant this church.

One day, me and I and our kids will move on, we'll leave, right?

And and here's the thing, and that's okay, right?

Because this is the natural succession of how churches work in a healthy way, right?

Why?

Because they're ultimately Christ's church, right?

And so that's what Paul says.

Paul says he helped plant it, but ultimately it has to be on the foundation of Christ himself, right?

That's the that's the foundation.

And and you look and you, you know, you can build your life.

It was awesome that Ray and Michael loved that song, Build Your Life.

Because, you know, you can build your life on lots of things.

Right?

Yeah, and he even goes through this thing, you know, about how it could be hay or, you know, it could be these natural, easy products.

And then he talks about how it could be like precious gemstones, and he's basically ultimately saying all of them will ultimately fail if it's not built on Christ.

All Christian, you know, all Christian lives ultimately, if they're not deeply rooted in Christ, this is like what God built us for, right?

Now you might look and say, but no, you know, listen, either, you know, maybe you're here and you're just exploring Christian faith, and you look and say, you know, I feel like my life is working just fine.

I I haven't built it on Christ.

And it it looks like it's working all right.

Maybe some of your friends would say that, right?

You know what's fascinating?

Think about this.

Do you guys remember that old Adams family movie where Wednesday is at camp and this girl says to her, Hey, why are you dressed up like a funeral?

Why are you waiting?

You know, we're at camp, why are you dressed up like it's a funeral?

And Wednesday says, just wait.

Give it enough time, the funeral's coming eventually.

Wednesday's ready for it, right?

Just wait.

You you're you're not gonna be able to delay the inevitable forever, right?

Um, I you guys know, for a lot of you guys, you know, I love architecture.

So there's this beautiful house that was designed and built by Frank Ludwright called Falling Water, right?

And it's this amazing house with all these huge cantilevers and um defying, honestly, it seems like it defies gravity.

And you know, you have these super slender pieces of concrete that will jut out like literally over waterfall, and you look at it and you're amazed, and you said, How did he do it?

How'd they build it?

Well, you know the answer is they built it wrong.

That's how they did it.

They Frank Lloyd Wright did it ignoring actually engineer's advice.

He was convinced that like he knew something no one else knew, and that if he built it this way, it would work.

And then ever since they built it, they've been fixing it.

You know why?

Because they at one point, I think there was this one massive cantilever of the house that had sank down seven inches, right?

So we're not like we're not dealing with like eighths of an inch here, right?

You know why?

Because Wednesday was right, just wait, right?

You eventually gravity caught up to Frank Lloyd's rights building, right?

In the same way that eventually building your life on anything but Jesus, just wait.

The the law, the supernatural laws apply just like the natural laws apply.

If we build our life on anything other than Jesus, it's not gonna work, right?

What happens?

What happens if we just look and say, I built my life on something else that looks like it works at first?

I built my life on my career, okay?

What happens when you lose your job?

Because it's gonna happen even if it doesn't happen until you retire.

Right?

Oh, you build your life on your children.

What happens when they grow up and leave?

Marriage.

What happens when your spouse disappoints you or you disappoint them?

Reputation.

You're not in charge of that, you can't control that.

What happens when someone thinks poorly of you?

Because they will.

You're if you you build it on your political hopes, you know, and your candidate loses.

What happens then?

Money, health.

I mean, you can see the list would go on and on and on.

All of them will end up failing you.

None of these are strong enough foundations.

And what Paul says is there is one sure foundation Jesus himself.

And so what this is all leading to is saying, as you give your life over to God, what he's doing is he's actually turning you into a temple of the Holy Spirit.

So you guys remember what happened with um when Jesus was on the cross, at the moment that Jesus died on the cross, actually the veil in the temple was actually physically ripped in half.

And what happened was this symbolically showed us that the Spirit of God, we always understood like the Spirit of God dwelt in the temple behind that veil.

And now it would actually dwell in the hearts of God's people.

Right?

And so we look and say that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

I grew up probably thinking a little bit, and and I think this was an error.

I grew up hearing like your body's a vessel of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, don't drink, right?

Watch out for, don't, you know, watch out for zin.

Don't have cigarettes, right?

That that's what it's all about.

And for some of you guys, that's still good stuff to hear, okay?

You're probably drinking too much, too much zen.

With that said, I don't think that's what Paul's talking about.

You know what I think Paul is talking about here is actually, no, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit because God wants to dwell in it.

God wants not just to give you a portion of the Holy Spirit, right?

That the question is not how much of the Holy Spirit do do you have, right?

The question is how much of you does the Holy Spirit have, right?

Are we giving over more and more of ourselves to God's leading?

Are we giving ourselves more and more over to the Holy Spirit?

That's the sign of Christian maturity, right?

That's where we're going, right?

That's how we're growing because that's what God built us for, right?

The the Westminster Catechism says that the the chief aim of humankind, what is it?

To glorify God and to enjoy him forever, right?

It's to know him and to be fully known by him.

Right?

For your heart to be caught up in his heart, right?

The chief aim of man is not to get a certain political party in power, right?

It's not to get a certain house or to be in a certain city or in a certain neighborhood, right?

It's not to climb the corporate ladder.

It's not to have the perfect family that you can like live on your own planet with, right?

These this is not the chief aim of man.

The chief aim of man is to know God and to be known by him, to glorify him, right?

To live in communion with him, right?

The point of humanity is for the Spirit of God to inhabit us.

That's how we were built.

Like that's actually like back in the garden, that's the natural situation.

Is it the Shekinah glory of God, the one that would fill the temple, right?

The one that would fill the tabernacle in the Hebrew scriptures, the Shekinah glory of God would now fill the temple that is you.

That's what Paul says it's all about.

That's the Christian life is walking in step with the Holy Spirit, right?

That the veil tore so that the Spirit of God would come into you.

And you have to ask then, what does the Spirit have access to in my life?

What does the Spirit of God have access to in your life, right?

Your Sunday morning, your sexuality, your money, your ambitions, right?

Your politics, your parenting, your friendships, your anger, your calendar, your reputation, right?

It's all of it.

Right?

Spiritual maturity is not simply knowing more about God.

It's increasingly giving God more and more and more access to ourselves.

Right?

This immaturity is asking, in the midst of jealousy, in the midst of strife, it's it's always asking, Am I enough?

How can I become more impressive?

Christian maturity instead is asking, how can I become more and more like Jesus?

And friends, I will tell you this as we finish.

The gospel says you don't have to make yourself into something.

You know why?

Because Jesus has already made you into something.

Jesus has already put his mark on you.

When we come and we we do baptisms of folks, we're reminded what happened when Jesus was baptized, that the heavens open.

We see the Spirit of God descend on Jesus as a dove, and the Father saying over Jesus, you are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Guys, if that is true, not just for Jesus, but because of Jesus, it's true for you, then the big goal of the Christian life is not to make a name for yourself.

It is not to somehow figure out how you could be something.

If it's true that the Father has said, you are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved son, then friends, you already have everything you need to be somebody because God says you are.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much.

We come to you because we admit we are immature people.

But God, rather than just saying that that's a static reality, God, instead we want to live in your presence, live with giving our hearts over to you, live in a way that would allow you to change us and transform us, not just today, not just tomorrow, not just this week, but for all the years of our lives.

And God, we we want to covenant this morning with you to lean into you for that.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for listening.

Please join us in person for community worship, the breaking of bread, and prayer.

We are located at 512 South Bernard Street, Spokane, Washington, 99204.