Don’t Stunt Your Spiritual Growth

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If you leave our building today, I’m not trying to get you to leave, but if you leave building today and you drive west out of here and you keep driving long enough, eventually you’re going to notice that over time the environment around you starts to get drier and drier, right? As eventually you approach desert if you go far enough. The last couple of falls, my dad and my kids and I have taken hiking trips out in that area, the Texas panhandle, the Oklahoma panhandle, And I enjoy the scenery, even though they say it’s so flat.

If you stand on a milk crate, you can see New Mexico. There’s some truth to that. I enjoy that scenery, but I’ve noticed there’s some odd things that you find in places like that where there used to be people and then it got too dry and they moved away.

And one thing I noticed is we would see these, well, I’m assuming they’re abandoned farmhouses. They look abandoned, but, you know, maybe they’re not. but you would see these abandoned looking farmhouses and and you’d see trees planted near the house somewhere and some of them are the kinds of trees that we have over here where it’s we get a little more rain only they’re smaller versions of those trees you might see a maple tree you might see an oak tree you might see a cottonwood tree but it’s tiny it’s it’s what we call stunted because it’s in a place that it’s not meant to be.

Even sometimes you’ll go down in a dry creek bed and you’ll see a tree that is not native to that area. Somehow it got there. I don’t know who put it there, but it’s not necessarily native to that area.

And it’s growing, but it’s a lot smaller than it should be for as old as it apparently is. It’s because it’s not suited to its environment. It’s not in a good place to grow.

And so it’s ended up stunted. My grandfather used to warned me that if I drank his coffee, it would stunt my growth. I don’t know if that’s true because I was already short before I started drinking coffee as an adult.

Maybe he just wanted to keep me out of his coffee. But I was told all sorts of things would stunt your growth. But I know it’s true of certain plants.

If you put them in conditions that are not right for them, it’ll stunt their growth. It’ll make them smaller and less healthy than they ought to be. And the Apostle Paul talks about this idea of being stunted in our spiritual growth.

as we come into chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians. That’s where we finished chapter 2 last week, and we’re going to start chapter 3 this week. As Paul begins to talk about the Corinthians not being as healthy or as strong or as grown as they ought to be.

And he addresses some of the causes of that, and from that we see some of what we can do to avoid being stunted in our own spiritual growth. We don’t want to be like the dinky little cottonwood tree that after 50 years is still that tall. We want to be like my neighbor’s cottonwood tree that is 150 feet tall and leaves its saplings all over my property.

That’s the sign of a healthy tree. Spiritually, we want to be that big strong tree, and Paul deals with how we get there. And so 1 Corinthians 3, if you would turn there with me in your Bibles this morning.

If you don’t have a Bible with you or can’t find 1 Corinthians, that’s all right, it’ll be on the screen for you. But once you find it or have it on the screen, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. 1 Corinthians 3, starting in verse 1.

It says that I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly?

And are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not mere men? What then is Apollos?

And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.

So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers, you are God’s field, God’s building.

And you may be seated. We’ll pick up at verse 10 next time. Paul brings up this idea of factions again.

We saw this back in chapter 1 where he uses some of the same language that there were people saying, I’m of Paul, I’m a follower of Paul, I’m a follower of Apollos. There were factions, there were cliques in the church, and he deals with that concept. He brings it up again because evidently it was a big problem.

It wasn’t just something that they dealt with from time to time. It was one of the noticeable features of that church. It would be one of the things that you very quickly picked up on.

And I’ve told you before, I’ve even mentioned in this series, the first church I ever pastored where they warned me when I came in that it was split between the Northern and Southern Baptist, and that was not denominations. That was which side of the auditorium you sat on and which side of the group you aligned with. It was basically two different churches feuding with each other in the same building.

That was one of the first things you noticed when you walked into the church, because we got a lot of first-time visitors, not very many second-time visitors. I think they’re amazed I came back the second Sunday. But the first-time visitors, you’d sit down on one side or the other.

People would come to you tell you the history of all the things that had gone wrong and why that side was evil. By the way, don’t do that. I’ve not heard of that happening in this church, but that’s what we don’t want to do, to be a welcoming church.

But they made it clear that there were factions. That was one of the distinguishing characteristics that people picked up on at that church. That’s one of the distinguishing factors that people picked up on at Corinth that Paul is even hearing about it.

There’s this division between those who are followers of Paul, those who are followers of Apollos, those who are followers of Peter. And he’s telling them that it’s wrong. And he really makes the case that the fact that there were these factions, there were these divisions in the church, it showed the worldliness of the church.

Now, a lot of times we will read this passage and we’ll think that the factions are the main thing he’s talking about here. Or our role in evangelism, our role in bringing somebody to Christ is what he’s talking about here. And he does address both of those things, but the deeper issue here is the worldliness of the church, which is why he had to address those things.

So he brings up the factions again, and some of these people were drawn to various teachers for different reasons. We know it wasn’t doctrinal differences between Paul and Apollos and Peter, and certainly not between them and Christ. One of the factions mentioned in chapter 1 is, well, we’re of Christ, because Paul even says that he who plants and he who waters are one. He talking specifically about himself and Apollos.

He’s saying we’re in agreement. And it’s not that anybody’s going to ever agree 100% on everything, but on the major things, we’re in agreement. We’re teaching the same thing.

We’re promoting the same message here. So it wasn’t a doctrinal disagreement. I could see that if the church were divided because somebody’s teaching something wrong and somebody’s trying to correct it and factions break out over that.

Truth does give us a cause to divide. But this wasn’t about that. This was about the people they were listening to.

And we know from the descriptions elsewhere in the New Testament that there were some distinguishing characteristics of these guys. Apollos was well known for being an eloquent speaker. He’s the guy that you would want to listen to that could hold a crowd right in the palm of his hand.

I am not that guy. Okay, Apollos, Apollos didn’t stumble all over his words. Apollos didn’t forget his place.

Apollos was somebody who could captivate an audience. He was pretty well known for his speaking style. He was also fairly aggressive in his willingness to go after the Jews who disputed the resurrection.

He would argue with them in public. And so he was a charismatic individual. Paul was not as charismatic because as soon as Paul left, these factions within the churches would say, well, who’s that guy to tell us what to do? But Paul developed a following because he was so wise.

He was so learned and so educated. And there was a faction of the church that said, that style really speaks to us. That style really gets us and we want to hear from him.

And it’s not bad to favor different styles of learning and different styles of teaching. There are, well, I was going to say, there are preachers on the radio and TV that I like to listen to. There are many that I do not and would not recommend for doctrinal reasons.

But those that I think are teaching the truth, I’ll be honest, there are some guys I’d rather listen to than others. And it’s probably the same thing for you. But the problem comes where I say, now I’m not going to listen to that message because it came from that guy and I don’t like his preaching style.

They were rejecting truth, they were rejecting teaching because of the style and the personality behind it. And that’s what made it a problem. The fact that they were dividing in loyalty in Corinth between Paul and Apollos had nothing to do with what they were teaching and everything to do with how they taught it.

And so it became a problem. When they chose up sides over these men based on these considerations, they’re looking at the message they’re teaching, they’re looking at the spiritual truth, but they’re evaluating it in fleshly ways. They’re saying, well, that’s not really my taste.

That guy’s not really my cup of tea. That guy, we ran across this at the convention, I’d hear things, I’d go, I agree with what that guy says, but I really don’t like him. And in a group of any size, you’re going to run across that.

But they let it divide them. And the church suddenly is morphing into multiple churches, whether we’re going to listen to Paul and who cares what Apollos says, or we’re going to listen to Apollos and who cares what Paul says. And they’re ignoring the teaching of the Word of God based on who it came from.

Paul said when they were doing this, they were evaluating spiritual matters in fleshly ways because what they’re doing is they’re emphasizing their preferences and they’re elevating men instead of focusing on Jesus and the message that they taught about him. And he said that these things showed that they were worldly because they were acting just like the world around them. He says, excuse me, I mentioned getting tongue-tied and how Apollos didn’t do that, and so I guess that’s what I’m going to do the rest of the morning.

Bear with me. Verse 3, he says, for since there is jealousy and strife among you, Are you not fleshly and are you not walking like mere men? He said, you’re acting just like the Corinthians around you.

You’re acting just like what you came out of because you’ve divided over such silly reasons. And now there’s this power struggle in the church over which side gets, you know, they’re arguing over things they never should have argued about. And so he calls them to look at what they’re doing.

Just take a look at yourselves. We go to verse 5. Look at what you’re doing.

Look at who you’re elevating. You’re spending all this time focused on elevating Paul over Apollos or Apollos over Paul. And he says in verse 5, what then is Apollos and what is Paul?

And he’s asking there, what do we matter? What importance does Paul have? What importance does Apollos have?

He says, we’re servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. He says, we are servants. You’re doing what the Corinthians do with their pagan priests, and you’re putting us on a pedestal, and all we are is servants, servants of God.

We work for Him, and we’re just lowly servants who have the privilege of helping you believe as He gives us the opportunity. But in everything we’re doing here, He says we’re dependent on the Lord. If your hope is in Paul, your hope is in the wrong place.

If your hope is in Apollos, your hope is in the wrong place. He says we’re merely servants. And so he points out that it’s foolish here to focus on the servant instead of the master.

And when their preferences led them to do so, when there were people who said, I’m not going to listen to a thing Paul says because Apollos is such a better speaker, he’s telling him to stop it and grow up. And when there are people in the church who say, I’m not going to listen to a word Apollos says because Paul is so much deeper. Paul’s telling them, stop it and grow up.

You’re acting like pagans, you’re acting like little kids. And as I mentioned earlier, factionalism, the way that they divide it is the specific issue here, but it’s really a symptom of worldliness because he tells them this is happening because you’re still fleshly. That’s the major underlying problem in the church throughout this letter.

As we read it, I told you in the first message on this that we’re going to come around to some things that are going to be uncomfortable for you to hear and some things that are going to be uncomfortable for me to talk about. And the reason for that is Paul was writing to a church that was still acting like the world around it, and he’s having to correct these problems that should not have been problems. Well, here that worldliness shows up in the way that they are choosing sides, but it can show up, worldliness in the church can show up in a lot of different forms. Now, if we focus in on verses one and two in particular, we can see that worldliness stunts our spiritual growth.

So if you think back to where we were last week in chapter two, Paul was talking about the deep spiritual truths that are available to us when we’re mature in Christ. As we’ve grown, we get access to more knowledge and more wisdom, more understanding. But we come to verse one and Paul says he couldn’t even get that far with the Corinthians. He says, I brethren could not speak to you as spiritual men.

He says in chapter two, there’s all this spiritual truth and all this spiritual depth to the gospel, and I can’t even get there with you. I haven’t even been able to scratch the surface of what’s out there for you, because I can’t speak to you like your spiritual grown-ups. Chapter two, as I mentioned last week, also described two kinds of people.

There are natural people, and there are spiritual people. The natural people, that’s where we start out, that’s where all of us start out, where we are separated from God because of our sin. We have not yet accepted Jesus Christ. We’re basically rejecting Jesus Christ and we’re rejecting what the Spirit tells us.

Until that moment of faith where we come to believe and we’re born again, we are in the natural state. And then there’s those who are spiritual, meaning that they’ve trusted Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit has begun to live inside of them and do a work inside of them and begun to grow them. And that doesn’t mean that those who are spiritual are better than those who are natural because we didn’t make the change.

God made the change in us. Any growth that’s there, he’s responsible for. So he addresses that there are two different kinds of people, the natural and the spiritual, and the deeper truths of God’s word are not going to make sense to the natural man.

But here we see that this group of people, even though they have been made spiritual, they have the Holy Spirit, they’re still acting like natural people. They’re still acting like the pagans that they were before Christ in many regards. And that’s why he says that he has to speak to them as to men of the flesh.

And that’s quite an accusation there to make against him, to say, you have the Holy Spirit and you are believers, but you act like you don’t and are not. And so the things that I’m supposed to be able to talk to you about, I can’t. And he says even in verse 1 that this has made them infants in Christ. Now he may be saying here, he may just be stating a fact that you have not grown past where you’re supposed to grow.

He may also be telling them you’re acting like a bunch of babies. Both of those things may be true at the same time. They’re infants in Christ. Folks, it’s expected as Christians that we’re going to grow.

And the growth comes at different stages. It comes at different speeds at different stages. But there should be growth.

Just like a child. They start growing from the time they’re born. People see my kids and they say, oh, they’re getting so big.

Yeah, we keep feeding them and it keeps happening, right? And sometimes it’s so slow as to be imperceptible, especially when you’re with them every day. They just look the same to you every day for a long period of time because the growth is slow.

But somebody who’s been away for a while can see that it’s, when they come back, that it’s progressed. Sometimes the growth starts happening so rapidly that even if you’re with them every day, you begin to notice. You say, you’re about three inches taller than you were when the summer started because they’ve gone through a growth spurt.

And they don’t all do it at the same time. Actually, it seems like they’re all growing all at the same time because we always are having to buy everybody all new clothes. I’m about to just sign my paycheck over to Super Thrift completely at this point.

Anyway, that’s how it is with our spiritual growth. That sometimes it’s slower than at other times. Sometimes it’s faster than at other times.

Sometimes it’s more noticeable than at other times. And we’re not all growing at the same speed all the time, but there should be growth. Unfortunately, sometimes people will come to Christ and they’ll have faith in him.

They’ll be born again. And then they just kind of hang out there in the playpen for the rest of forever. We were not intended to stay in that baby stage forever.

It’s expected, too, that new Christians are not going to know that much. If you’re a new Christian, that’s not to knock you. That’s not to put you down.

As babies, we don’t know much, but we learn and grow. Everybody starts from a place of not knowing anything spiritually, and then we learn and grow. And so if you’re a new believer, especially if you’re around more mature believers, and you should be because that helps in your growth, don’t beat yourself up because I don’t know as much as they do.

They didn’t used to know as much as they did, as much as they do. It’s expected that you’re not going to know as much. That’s where you start and you grow and you progress.

And the Spirit teaches you as you study God’s Word. But we keep learning and we keep growing. These people that he’s talking to in Corinth did not have the excuse of saying we’re brand new believers.

They had been believers for some time. We don’t know how many years, but they’d been believers long enough that they should be showing some progress and they weren’t. And so Paul is calling them out about it.

They should have grown, but they were still clinging to their old natural ways of thinking and natural ways of doing things. And so Paul points out that that is keeping them from having the spiritual growth that they needed and were expected to have. Come to verse 2 and he says, I gave you milk to drink, not solid food.

That’s normal when you’ve got a baby. You don’t start feeding them solid food right away. I don’t know if you know that.

I’m guessing you did. We don’t start feeding them. When Benjamin came along, I didn’t know they couldn’t have regular cow milk to begin with.

You learn and grow in what you do as a parent too. But there’s this progression. They need milk.

And then you start to introduce a little cereal as they get hungrier. And then you start to introduce some mashed up vegetables and fruit. And then you can give them smaller pieces of stuff.

And then eventually, you know, they have teeth and know how not to choke themselves. And you can give them bigger things. And eventually now they’re eating more than I do.

That’s how it works. That’s how it works in our spiritual growth. He said, I gave you milk, not solid food.

That’s normal. That’s what you give to baby Christians. But there was a point when they should have moved on from the milk to the solid food of God’s word, and they hadn’t. He said, for you were not able yet to receive it.

Indeed, even now you are not able, for you are still fleshly. Paul’s saying, the teeth are in. You should be eating by now.

I should be giving you steak and fish and hamburgers and all that by now, but you still want the milk. And he says, the reason why is for you are still fleshly. There’s deeper truth out there, but they’re stuck being spoon-fed the basics because they’re content holding on to the world.

Now, what’s the difference between the milk and the meat of the Word? I’m not sure if I could draw you a distinct line, but just understand it’s like anything else, like math, for example. I taught math for a while, and there were kids that, you know, you would have to teach them, teach them the numbers.

Fortunately, I taught old enough kids that they already knew the numbers. Somebody else had done that, and somebody’s taught them how to add, and then somebody’s taught them how to subtract, and by the time they came to me, we’re learning multiplication tables, which nobody loves to do, but it’s kind of a building block for what comes next. And if you don’t learn the multiplication tables, you’re going to have a lot of trouble learning division, you’re going to have a lot of trouble doing fractions, you’re going to have a lot of trouble doing algebra or anything, or the math that’s now beyond my capability.

I don’t even know what a calculus is, all right? I just know I avoided it like the plague in college. But you have to these things step by step on each other.

And there are your basics, the things you learn at the beginning, and then you start getting into higher order truth. It’s true in math. It’s true in God’s word.

There are basic truths that we have to learn. Jesus loves me. Yes, I know.

It’s very simple. It’s also very profound, but it’s very simple. But you’ve got to get some things down like that before we start getting into how do you answer the question, who made God?

Why was a blood sacrifice required on the cross. You know, there’s a spectrum between the easy questions and the hard questions, and we’ve got to start here, and we’ve got to master these in order to get to the harder stuff. So I can’t give you a strict definition of the milk and the meat, but we kind of know the difference between what’s easy and what’s hard, right?

And he says, I can’t go any deeper with you than the basics. I’m still having to spoon-feed you the basics because you’re too content still living like the world and thinking like the world to go any deeper. And so he warns that worldliness will stunt our spiritual growth.

He said, you’re still babes because you’re still fleshly. And this worldliness in the church, as I said earlier, it comes in all shapes and forms. It’s not just factions. That’s just what he was dealing with in Corinth later on.

We get into the fact that they’re having parties during the Lord’s Supper instead of treating it seriously. He talks about sexual sin. He talks about them fighting in court and just all sorts of worldliness showing up in the church.

It wasn’t just the factions. Worldliness can still keep us away from spiritual growth. And I don’t see people dividing up in the church over, oh, I like Jared, I like Rodney.

You know, I’d say Rodney and I are pretty close together on what we teach. And I’m thankful that even though they were close together, we don’t see the factions dividing. But it happens in churches where worldliness gets its foot in and it robs us of our ability to grow spiritually.

Robs the individual, not just the church. Robs the individual of the ability to grow spiritually. They were, I can give you a modern day parallel, and I’m not talking about anybody in particular, but the modern day equivalent, I don’t see anybody, they were dealing with, okay, we like Paul because we like the way he teaches.

We like Apollos because of the way he teaches, not what he teaches, but the way he teaches. So if we were to pick a church based on, well, that guy’s message made me feel good, so I’m going to go there. That might lead you to the right church, but for the wrong reasons.

And it tells us that we’re looking at spiritual matters in a fleshly way. Or I’m going to go to that church or not go to that church because of my preference in music. Not the right reason.

It’s not the right reason to pick a church or pick who you’re going to listen to. And again, I’m not calling anybody out because if you’re here for the preaching or for the music, I don’t know that. Nobody’s told me that.

But we do that. People will avoid, sometimes people will avoid going to churches where they preach the truth because of the way it makes them feel. Or they don’t like the guy’s tone when he says it.

Or they’ll not go to a church because of the music and the way it makes them feel. These are fleshly ways of looking at spiritual things. Pick a church, and I hope the why you’re here is because of conviction.

Because we teach the truth and we sing the truth. And some days we have a hard time with the music. We’re human.

Sometimes I stumble all through the message. I didn’t plan that when I thought about what I was going to say today, but sometimes I stumble all through the message. Some days the service comes together better than others.

But to the best of our ability, we preach the truth, we sing the truth, we pray the truth. We need to go places where we can hear the truth. We need to follow people who are going to tell us the truth.

There’s a radio program that I listen to in my vehicle, and it’s a political show, but it’s also a Christian worldview show. And I’ve told Benjamin, I don’t know if I want to listen to it today. I’m not sure I feel like getting yelled at.

Sometimes I just feel like the guy’s yelling, but I’ll still turn it on anyway. And I thought to myself the other day, why do I turn this on to feel like I’m getting yelled at on the way home. It’s because I know this guy is telling me the truth.

He’s looking at the world around us and he’s telling it like it is. He’s looking at God’s word and he’s telling it like it is. And you know what?

Sometimes his phrasing and his tone makes me uncomfortable, but he’s telling the truth. And that’s what this church needed to understand. Now I’m going to tell you the truth and I’m going to try to do it with a nice tone, but you know, we go where we’re told the truth because that’s how we grow spiritually.

And if we’re evaluating everything, every message, everything we hear on the radio, everything we read in our Bible on how it makes us feel or how it suits our preferences, then we’re evaluating spiritual things according to fleshly criteria. And that’s not a way to grow spiritually. That’s a way to make sure we stay stunted.

Because our goal is not to fit in. Our goal is not to always feel comfortable and comforted. Our goal as believers, our goal as Christians is to become more like Jesus Christ and less like the world.

That’s what we’re here for. If we were just supposed to stay babes in Christ, if we were just supposed to be saved and that was it, then he could have taken us right on home. But he left us here to grow, to become more like Christ. This is the training ground.

When we look at all of this together that we’ve looked at so far, we start to see the bigger picture. Their problem was that they were following men and they were not following Christ because they were following men. They were trying to be like these men instead of growing in Christ. And the fact that they remained infants in Christ was a huge problem because these men that they were trying to follow were not the ones that they were supposed to pattern their lives after.

These were helpers to help them become more like Jesus Christ. I don’t know that anybody’s trying to do this, but I’m not the guy you try to pattern your life after. Now, I hope to be a good example, but I also know that I’m a sinful human being just like everybody else. I am not your example.

I am a helper to help you follow the example. Did I say that right? I do want to be an example, but I’m not the one you try to be like.

Brother Rick is a tremendous example. Brother Tommy, I’ve told both of their wives I want to be them when I grow up. They’re not exactly the same, so I’m not sure how I can be both, but I’m going to figure it out.

There are men and women in this church who are tremendous examples of following Jesus Christ. But I think they would all say to a person, I’m not the one you’re trying to be like. Those who lead in our church, whether they have a title or an office or not, those who lead in our church are helpers to help us become more like Jesus Christ, to help us become more like the one we’re trying to be like. We’re not supposed to be of Paul.

We’re not supposed to be of Apollos. We’re supposed to be of Christ and not in the passive-aggressive way that the people in chapter 1 were saying it. Our job is to grow like Christ, to grow to be like Christ, not to emulate other people.

And in order for all this to happen, we need to recognize God’s plan and where we fit into it. God’s plan is not for us to become more like Paul. God’s plan is not for us to become more like Apollos.

It’s not for you to be more like me, not for you to be more like Brother Rodney