SPEAKER_00: Good morning, church family.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Melissa Kramer, and today's scripture passage is from 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verses 1 through 24.
SPEAKER_00: This can be found in our church Bibles on page 962.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can follow along on our new screen behind me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so also you are to do.
SPEAKER_00: On the first day of the week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.
SPEAKER_00: And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.
SPEAKER_00: I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you, or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey wherever I go.
SPEAKER_00: I do not want to see you just in passing.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.
SPEAKER_00: But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.
SPEAKER_00: When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord as I am.
SPEAKER_00: Let no one despise him.
SPEAKER_00: Help him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now.
SPEAKER_00: He will come when he has opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Be watchful.
SPEAKER_00: Stand firm in the faith.
SPEAKER_00: Act like men, be strong.
SPEAKER_00: Let all that you do be done in love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanus were the first converts in Achaea, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Be subject to such a deeds, and to follow every fellow worker and laborer.
SPEAKER_00: I rejoice at the coming of Stephanus and Fortunatus and Achaichus, because they have made up for your absence.
SPEAKER_00: For they refreshed my spirit as well as yours.
SPEAKER_00: Give recognition to such people.
SPEAKER_00: The churches of Asia send you greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Aquila and Priscilla, together with the church and their house, send you hearty greeting to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: All the brothers send you greetings.
SPEAKER_00: Greet one another with a holy kiss.
SPEAKER_00: I, Paul, write these greetings with my own hand.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord, come.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.
SPEAKER_00: My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Melissa.
SPEAKER_01: I think I could listen to you read scripture every day.
SPEAKER_01: Have you thought about doing the dwell app?
SPEAKER_01: That would be awesome.
SPEAKER_01: Um, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Mission Hills Church.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a guest with us, my name is Sam, and I'm one of the pastors here.
SPEAKER_01: It's my privilege to walk through God's word together with you today.
SPEAKER_01: Um, 1 Corinthians, we're we're drawn to an end here, walking through this wild and wonderful book.
SPEAKER_01: It's got some challenging passages of scripture, and I'm excited to draw it to a close and wrap up this study that we've been doing over the last several months.
SPEAKER_01: Um, this passage of scripture here that we're reading, it has some wild statements in it that we're not even going to be able to spend time with that I would love to.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Paul says this, for example, I'm gonna stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me.
SPEAKER_01: And there are many adversaries.
SPEAKER_01: Did you catch that part?
SPEAKER_01: How many of you, when you see a bunch of adversaries, you're like, that's a wide door of opportunity?
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the Apostle Paul thinks.
SPEAKER_01: I would like to know more about that.
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of strange things.
SPEAKER_01: A guy named Fortunatus, I was thinking to myself, maybe we've misnamed our children, right, honey?
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe we should have named one of them Fortunatus or Achaichus.
SPEAKER_01: And that the households that are involved and the missions work and the teamwork of Paul, this collection that they're taking up to send to the city of Jerusalem to help the believers who are in poverty there.
SPEAKER_01: Lots to be thought about.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, even Paul's famous statement, Our Lord come, the the Greek word here is Maranatha.
SPEAKER_01: Our Lord come.
SPEAKER_01: And in Paul's view of the end, all that he does is in view of this great coming and end of Christ's return.
SPEAKER_01: There's lots to say and lots to think about in this text, but I'm going to focus our attention this morning on one particular set of words that Paul says there in verses 13 and 14.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles, you can look with me there.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says this be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a really helpful summary of everything that Paul has taught so far in this letter.
SPEAKER_01: Let all that you do be done in love.
SPEAKER_01: And he pairs that statement up with this strange statement that we'll get to later act like men.
SPEAKER_01: I don't typically have a title for my sermon, but this morning's title would be something like this Love is for Grown-ups.
SPEAKER_01: Love is for grown-ups.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Paul has been getting at throughout his entire letter.
SPEAKER_01: If you really understand, we want to understand Paul, Paul can be easily and simply understood.
SPEAKER_01: He's actually a very simple man.
SPEAKER_01: He is animated and moved and compelled and committed singularly to one thing, which is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the message of Jesus' life, death on the cross, resurrection from the dead, and ascension to the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: This is the animating motive for all of Paul's life.
SPEAKER_01: And it has two basic expressions to it.
SPEAKER_01: Two basic expressions to it.
SPEAKER_01: Paul even tells the Corinthians right out of the gate in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, he says, I came to you, Corinthians, desiring to know nothing except Christ and him crucified.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have lots of things to share with you, lots of interesting ideas that we wanted to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: I wanted you to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified.
SPEAKER_01: And as I said, this has two basic expressions in Paul's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was passionately committed first to calling people who were far from God, estranged from God, into relationship with God through the work of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Peter famously said it this way in 1 Peter 3.
SPEAKER_01: He said that Christ died, the righteous, for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point of the gospel is to reconcile and restore lost, broken, failed, sinful, wandering, heartbroken human beings back into relationship with their Maker.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And this animates Paul and his ministry.
SPEAKER_01: You could sum up this statement this way: beginning in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was passionate about helping people begin in the gospel, to begin a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: His second passion is related to that.
SPEAKER_01: Those who've begun in the gospel, those who have placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in his death and resurrection, he wants them to grow up in the gospel that they have received, to mature in it, to grow out of some of the destructive and harmful practices and behaviors that have marked their life before Christ, and to grow up into the very manner and way of life that Christ Himself lived, a way of love.
SPEAKER_01: He wants them to mature and grow up.
SPEAKER_01: So he wants people to begin in the gospel, and he wants people to mature in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: This is his animating drive in all of his life.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that Paul says and does can be explained by this singular commitment.
SPEAKER_01: We get a feel for that even in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: If you go back to the book of Acts, we read the story of how the Apostle Paul arrived in the city of Corinth, and there he spent a year and a half doing two things.
SPEAKER_01: Helping people begin in the gospel and helping people what?
SPEAKER_01: Mature in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: In Acts chapter 18, verse 4, we read that he was there persuading both Jews and Greeks.
SPEAKER_01: He was trying to convince them that the gospel was true, and it was the singular source of reconciliation and right relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: And it was because of Paul's work that there were Christians in Corinth at all.
SPEAKER_01: These people had begun in their faith because of Paul.
SPEAKER_01: But then he stays on for another year and a half, and we read in Acts chapter 18, verse 11, that he was there teaching them the word of God, not only helping them enter relationship with God, but to mature in that relationship.
SPEAKER_01: This is the backdrop of the entire letter Paul writes.
SPEAKER_01: Paul writes this letter some five years after he has planted the church.
SPEAKER_01: And five years later, he hears a report.
SPEAKER_01: We read about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, that there are some from a household in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: Her name was Chloe.
SPEAKER_01: There are some from her household that made a report to her.
SPEAKER_01: Also, these some of the people we read about here in chapter 16, Stephanus, have brought to Paul a report about what's going on in the church.
SPEAKER_01: And so this report occasions Paul's response, which is this letter that we have with us today.
SPEAKER_01: And this occasion is that this church that he planted, these believers that he called into faith, have failed to grow up, have failed to mature.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 3:1.
SPEAKER_01: I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as what?
SPEAKER_01: Infants in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You should be grown up by now.
SPEAKER_01: You should be more mature, but you are still behaving as infants in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They have succumbed to what we might call arrested development.
SPEAKER_01: They have failed to grow up.
SPEAKER_01: One of the primary themes that we have seen as we've walked through 1 Corinthians is that the Corinthians have mistaken spiritual pride for spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_01: That's their major mistake.
SPEAKER_01: They have thought that spiritual pride is spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_01: And this shows up in almost every section of the letter and almost every shortcoming and every form of immaturity that shows up that Paul addresses.
SPEAKER_01: We've watched over the last number of months these five sections of Paul's letter as he addresses how spiritual pride has actually afflicted and infected this church.
SPEAKER_01: In chapters one through four, we read about how spiritual pride has produced divisions in the church.
SPEAKER_01: That this church is actually fracturing and splintering.
SPEAKER_01: And this is because different groups are boasting about their associations and preferences for one leader over another.
SPEAKER_01: I follow Paul, some say.
SPEAKER_01: Others say I follow Apollos, and others say I follow Peter, and others say I follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And they're all competing with each other over who's the best leader in the church and who ought they to follow.
SPEAKER_01: Boasting, I'm associated with this leader.
SPEAKER_01: He's my pastor.
SPEAKER_01: Turning the church into some kind of leadership competition.
SPEAKER_01: Every Sunday morning, something like instead of, you know, America's got talent, it's like the church has talent, and they just try out each pastor.
SPEAKER_01: Which one's better than the other?
SPEAKER_01: This is chapters one through four.
SPEAKER_01: Chapters five through seven, spiritual pride has led to a kind of defiant and destructive sexual behaviors, both in marriages and outside of marriages, boasting in sexually deviant behaviors that are causing great harm to the church.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul warns against this pride and the way that it's showing up in their sexual practices.
SPEAKER_01: Chapters 8 through 10, we read about how spiritual pride has led some Christians in the church to associate with other religious systems, the religious systems that they came out of, these Greek pagan religions.
SPEAKER_01: And now they're going back and associating with them.
SPEAKER_01: And what it's causing is some of the new believers that are in the church to look at these supposedly more mature believers going and participating in the rites and rituals of these other religious faiths, and they're beginning to wonder: is there really any difference between Christ and my former faith?
SPEAKER_01: My former belief system, the former worship of these false gods?
SPEAKER_01: Is there really any difference?
SPEAKER_01: Spiritual pride was leading to this.
SPEAKER_01: Chapters 11 through 14, we saw how spiritual pride was turning worship services into a kind of performative competition.
SPEAKER_01: Whose spiritual gifts are better?
SPEAKER_01: It was turning into a kind of belligerent and chaotic setting in which people were interrupting one another, talking over one another, all to show how much more spiritual they were than their neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 15, we saw how spiritual pride was leading to a kind of denial of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Some kind of philosophy that they had embraced that made them feel like they had a greater insight into the truth.
SPEAKER_01: And because of this denial of the resurrection of the body, it was undermining Christian faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: And this is why Paul will say, you are indeed a what?
SPEAKER_01: A people of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: What Paul means by that is that your lives here in Corinth are marked by the same features of those who don't know Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Your life doesn't actually look any different than those outside of the church.
SPEAKER_01: Your lives are marked by tribalism and self-indulgence and virtue signaling and status climbing and exclusionary practices and a competition for superiority and attention and belligerence and practices that humiliate others in order to make you look better than them.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the world looks out there.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the people of the flesh look like, and you look like that too.
SPEAKER_01: You have not grown up, you have not matured in your faith.
SPEAKER_01: The warning in Hebrews chapter 5, verse 12, could have easily been written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: The author of Hebrews 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.
SPEAKER_01: You need milk, not solid food.
SPEAKER_01: You should be teachers by now.
SPEAKER_01: You should be instructing others in the faith, but you can't even do that.
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, this wasn't a problem only in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: Paul will say it this way in 1 Corinthians 13 in his great chapter on love.
SPEAKER_01: He talked about how I had to put away childish ways.
SPEAKER_01: I had to grow up.
SPEAKER_01: This is the meaning of his phrase, act like men.
SPEAKER_01: What he doesn't mean by that is act like men, not women.
SPEAKER_01: He means act like adults, not children.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be childish any longer.
SPEAKER_01: Act like children, act like adults, like grown-ups who have matured, who have grown up in their faith so that love is the true mark of maturity.
SPEAKER_01: That's his basic conviction.
SPEAKER_01: That the true mark of spiritual maturity is not what leader you're attached to, is not how free you think you are to do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_01: It's not how spiritually gifted you are.
SPEAKER_01: The true mark of spiritual maturity is what?
SPEAKER_01: Let's try that all together at once.
SPEAKER_01: The true mark of spiritual maturity is love.
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
SPEAKER_01: That was like popcorn prayers right there, you know?
SPEAKER_01: The true mark of spiritual maturity is love.
SPEAKER_01: And for Paul, this closing refrain, act like men, let all you do be done in love.
SPEAKER_01: It's time to grow.
SPEAKER_01: It's time to mature.
SPEAKER_01: Not acting like children.
SPEAKER_01: Not acting like love is not the true mark of your life.
SPEAKER_01: I share this conviction with the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_01: Jim, can you get that for me?
SPEAKER_01: My wand is broken.
SPEAKER_01: All the magic is gone.
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
SPEAKER_01: Growing up at Mission Hills Church, I share Paul's twofold gospel motivation.
SPEAKER_01: That people who are far from God here through the ministry of Mission Hills Church can encounter God and be reconciled to Him, be brought into right relationship with Him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If that's you today, maybe you've come here and you came and you were lost, broken.
SPEAKER_01: You have failed in ways that seem irrecoverable.
SPEAKER_01: My message to you this morning is that you can be made right with God, that there's no sin, no failure, no obstacle, no heartache that God cannot overcome through faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: My call to you is to place your faith in the Lord Jesus today, to begin this relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a second animating part of that motivation, which is that we not only here at Mission Hills Church would see people come to faith in Jesus, but that they would mature in their relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I could say this any better than the Apostle Paul does in the book of Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bibles turned on or open, turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: This is a really, uh for me as a pastor, this is a passage I go back to over and over and over again as I think about what my vocation, my role is here in the church, what I'm supposed to be aiding and serving and assisting in.
SPEAKER_01: And what we as a church together are called up into.
SPEAKER_01: Paul here is talking about people who've been given to the church, shepherds and teachers and evangelists to equip the saints for the work of ministry, he talks about.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to focus here on verse 13, he says, They are all given to church until we attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be what?
SPEAKER_01: Children.
SPEAKER_01: Tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, speaking the truth in what?
SPEAKER_01: In love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Grow up in every way, he says.
SPEAKER_01: From whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in what?
SPEAKER_01: This is the call for all of us here at Mission Hills Church to grow up in Christ, to mature in Christ, and that's a maturity.
SPEAKER_01: In love, the Apostle Paul says here.
SPEAKER_01: But as a pastor, I've now been here at Mission Hills for 20 years.
SPEAKER_01: And I've seen the same features that the Apostle Paul saw in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: A rested development, a failure to grow.
SPEAKER_01: I know and I've experienced and witnessed people who have spent years and even decades in the church, but have not matured in their faith.
SPEAKER_01: Sitting in worship services week in and week out, going to life groups, volunteering in different contexts, going on missions trips, doing all kinds of things, and yet have not matured.
SPEAKER_01: When you look at their lives, maybe it's in their marriages or how they parent.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's how they behave at work or maybe how they behave in private when no one's looking.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's when hardship and suffering comes.
SPEAKER_01: What gets forced out into the open is childish behavior.
SPEAKER_01: Childish behavior.
SPEAKER_01: Despite years of being in church, despite years of service, despite studying the Bible still not maturing.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen adult-sized tantrums.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody ever seen an adult-sized tantrum?
SPEAKER_01: That would put like a two-year-old to shame?
SPEAKER_01: They're like, whoa, man, you got problems.
SPEAKER_01: Pity parties, wounded pride.
SPEAKER_01: People who punish one another with self-pity, feeling sorry for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: And often this will be masked with spiritual sounding language, biblical language, a kind of biblical justification for behaving like a child.
SPEAKER_01: And it becomes tricky to even notice.
SPEAKER_01: Or is that okay?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm the crazy one.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen people leave church, not because they've been mistreated, not because of a doctrinal violation, but because they didn't get what they wanted at church.
SPEAKER_01: People who have been at church in high levels of leadership, not getting what they want, and so they leave.
SPEAKER_01: I'm taking my ball and I'm doing what?
SPEAKER_01: Going home.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen sin hidden for years behind a mask of spirituality and church involvement.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen marriages fail over the last 20 years.
SPEAKER_01: Because one or another spouse couldn't find it in themselves to genuinely apologize for a failure.
SPEAKER_01: Couldn't find it in themselves to repent and make every effort to change a destructive behavior pattern.
SPEAKER_01: Communicating to their spouse, I want this behavior more than I want you.
SPEAKER_01: I've watched children leave the faith.
SPEAKER_01: Because mom and dad are different at church than they are at home.
SPEAKER_01: Saints in the pew, monsters in the living room.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen it.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen the worst, perhaps, of all that I've seen in 20 years of ministry is people who are blind to themselves, leaving in their wake devastation, all the while claiming to do God's work.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a problem in ancient Corinth alone.
SPEAKER_01: We've seen all the problems in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: There's crazy problems in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: But they didn't grow up, and I've seen it here as well.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to take some time here in the last little bit of time we have together to ask this really important question for us here at Mission Hills Church.
SPEAKER_01: And the question is simply this: how do we grow up?
SPEAKER_01: How do we grow up as Christians here at Mission Hills Church?
SPEAKER_01: Three answers to this.
SPEAKER_01: Three answers.
SPEAKER_01: First, you have to want to.
SPEAKER_01: Second, you can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: And third, you have to accept that you're going to fail.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: You with me?
SPEAKER_01: You have to want it.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: And third and finally, you have to accept that you're going to fail.
SPEAKER_01: So first, you have to want to.
SPEAKER_01: How do you grow up as a Christian?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the irreducible minimum, I can talk a lot about spiritual disciplines or kind of engaging with different practices in the church or, you know, participating, and all those are important, and not I don't want to diminish those.
SPEAKER_01: But the irreducible minimum of growing up as a Christian is that you have to want to grow up.
SPEAKER_01: I have never in all of my time as a pastor seen somebody grow up in their faith who didn't want to.
SPEAKER_01: It's not something that you trip and fall into.
SPEAKER_01: It's not something that happens by accident.
SPEAKER_01: It begins in the heart.
SPEAKER_01: Christian maturity begins in the heart.
SPEAKER_01: You have to want to grow up.
SPEAKER_01: There's no such thing in the Christian life as faking it till you make it.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all know this, right?
SPEAKER_01: Many of us have done this in our jobs, you know, just kind of like, oh, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'll pretend like I do.
SPEAKER_01: And then somewhere along the line, you figure it out.
SPEAKER_01: But as a Christian, you can't fake it till you make it.
SPEAKER_01: Here's why.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you fake it, at some point, your faking it is going to be exposed.
SPEAKER_01: Whether in hardship or suffering or in your own failure, what's going to come out of you is all the childishness that was never matured, that never grew up.
SPEAKER_01: Maturity, Christian maturity, begins in the heart.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a little problem, and maybe some of you are starting to feel it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Like, ooh.
SPEAKER_01: But what if I don't want it?
SPEAKER_01: Or what if I don't want it enough?
SPEAKER_01: Or what if I don't want it when I should want it?
SPEAKER_01: How many of you have at some point in your Christian life made like a really like a vow, like a promise to God?
SPEAKER_01: Like, God, I swear to you, I'm really going to follow you now.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you have ever done that?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And then, like, four days later, what happened?
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So you may have really great intentions at one moment, but then it doesn't carry through.
SPEAKER_01: What if I don't want it, or don't want it enough, or don't want it when I should want it, or to the degree that I should want it?
SPEAKER_01: Here's the paradox, brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_01: You have to want it, even if you don't.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone kind of screwing up their eyes a little bit?
SPEAKER_01: Huh?
SPEAKER_01: You have to want it, even if you don't.
SPEAKER_01: The truth is, even for me, I don't always want to.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to when I should want to, or as much as I should want to.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the crazy thing.
SPEAKER_01: You guys want to know a secret?
SPEAKER_01: My degree, I have a master's degree in what's called spiritual formation.
SPEAKER_01: What that means is I'm supposed to be an expert at this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01: And I still don't want it when I should want it, or as much as I should want it, and sometimes sometimes I don't want it.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm supposed to be the expert.
SPEAKER_01: So how do we deal with this paradox?
SPEAKER_01: You have to want it.
SPEAKER_01: But what if I don't?
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is why the second part, the second part, is so critically important.
SPEAKER_01: Not only do you have to want it, but you can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: This is absolutely critical for spiritual growth as a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Because if it came down to your heart, to your desires alone, to wanting it enough or wanting it when you should want it, there would be no hope.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you in your Christian life have come to discover that your heart is fickle?
SPEAKER_01: It's okay, you can be honest here.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And if it comes down to that, there's no hope because my heart is.
SPEAKER_01: I have to want it, but I don't.
SPEAKER_01: I don't always want it, or when I should want it, or as much as I should want it.
SPEAKER_01: Ah, yes.
SPEAKER_01: Now you are primed for point number two.
SPEAKER_01: You need help.
SPEAKER_01: Can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_01: You need help.
SPEAKER_01: You need a help that doesn't originate with your own heart or your own desires.
SPEAKER_01: You need something that does not originate with you, begin with you, start with you, come from you.
SPEAKER_01: You need help from outside of your own heart.
SPEAKER_01: To say this somewhat differently, you need something that is deeper than your own heart.
SPEAKER_01: And here is the amazing news.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John 3.20.
SPEAKER_01: God is greater than your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Does that feel relieving to you?
SPEAKER_01: Paul, or John, what he says there is, when our hearts condemn us, how many of you have ever had your heart condemn you?
SPEAKER_01: Come on, Christians.
SPEAKER_01: God is greater than your heart.
SPEAKER_01: There is something outside of your heart that is greater and deeper than your heart.
SPEAKER_01: This is why Jesus will call the Holy Spirit the helper.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that a great phrase?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that a great hope as a Christian that you have not been left to your own heart and your own desires as much as you need them?
SPEAKER_01: You have not been left only to them, but that there is a helper that has been given to you, the Holy Spirit, who has been given specifically to your heart.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit has been given to your heart.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to walk through a few passages here because I want you to hear how the scriptures teach us that the Holy Spirit's help is prime, for a Christian, is primarily located inside of you who works in your heart and in your desires.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul writes this that the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts, scattering abroad the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Holy Spirit is there to do, is to pour love into your hearts so that what John says in 1 John 4 can be heard and is true.
SPEAKER_01: We love because what?
SPEAKER_01: He first loved us.
SPEAKER_01: His love is applied directly to your heart.
SPEAKER_01: How can you begin to love?
SPEAKER_01: By God loving you and pouring his love into your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Another powerful text.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians chapter two, verse thirteen.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says this: It is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_01: It is God who works where?
SPEAKER_01: In you.
SPEAKER_01: Orienting, this is what he says, both to will and to work.
SPEAKER_01: God is at work with your will, in your heart, to work for his good pleasure.
SPEAKER_01: One more text, Galatians chapter five.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to turn with me there, you can, or just listen along.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says this, but I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For the desires of the flesh, all those desires that we just talked about, that lead to all this immature behavior, the desires of the flesh, he says, are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For these are opposed to each other.
SPEAKER_01: You have desires, immature desires.
SPEAKER_01: Things that are gonna lead you to all kinds of bad behaviors and actions and practices that are gonna bring harm to yourself and harm to others.
SPEAKER_01: That's desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: But Paul says, but you have the Holy Spirit who gives you his desires, the desires of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And they are opposed to those desires.
SPEAKER_01: God is at work right in your heart, right at the level of your desires.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing: I've discovered this.
SPEAKER_01: Rarely do people do anything that they don't want to do.
SPEAKER_01: Can I get an amen to that?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, the heart wants what it wants.
SPEAKER_01: And the key, and this is one of the deep insights throughout the Christian tradition, is that if any change or any maturity is going to happen, it's gonna happen because there was a change of heart.
SPEAKER_01: A change at the level of our desires.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what the Apostle Paul tells us is the good news.
SPEAKER_01: You need to desire it.
SPEAKER_01: You must want to grow up.
SPEAKER_01: But you don't have it in you to desire it the way you ought to.
SPEAKER_01: So God has given you help.
SPEAKER_01: And he's gonna work right in that level of your desires, working in and massaging into your heart his desires.
SPEAKER_01: So that your desires change.
SPEAKER_01: Third and finally.
SPEAKER_01: So first, you can't do it, you have to want it.
SPEAKER_01: Second, you can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: Third, you have to accept failure.
SPEAKER_01: Yay! You're dismissed.
SPEAKER_01: Have a great day.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the standard Paul lays out for all of us who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He says in 1 Corinthians 16, 14, let all that you do be done in love.
SPEAKER_01: That's quite a standard, yeah?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what are how would you measure yourself?
SPEAKER_01: Like 60% of what I do is in love.
SPEAKER_01: Let all that you do be done in love.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 14, 1.
SPEAKER_01: Pursue love.
SPEAKER_01: This needs to be your aim.
SPEAKER_01: That everything that you do, even down to the level of your motivations, needs to be love.
SPEAKER_01: How are we doing Mission Hills Church?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe what you're beginning to notice is what I would call a gap between where you are and what you have been called to be.
SPEAKER_01: Do you feel that gap?
SPEAKER_01: Here's where I am.
SPEAKER_01: I want to pursue love.
SPEAKER_01: That is my aim, but how many of you fall short of the call to love at any given moment in your day, week life?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And then here's where I'm supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: All that I do is to be done in love.
SPEAKER_01: What do we do with that gap?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that gap, we could just describe it as failure.
SPEAKER_01: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Even Christians.
SPEAKER_01: What do we do with this gap?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the first thing I want to be careful that we don't do is make a virtue out of failure.
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes even in our culture now, it's like, oh, failure's great.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're not failing, you're not trying, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01: And look, here's the truth.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like, does anybody here like failure?
SPEAKER_01: Like you're just like, ooh, yeah, I love to fail.
SPEAKER_01: No, failure is not a virtue.
SPEAKER_01: It is not a virtue.
SPEAKER_01: And particularly when we fail to love.
SPEAKER_01: It brings harm into other people's lives.
SPEAKER_01: It breaks relationships.
SPEAKER_01: It brings harm into our own lives.
SPEAKER_01: Failure isn't a virtue.
SPEAKER_01: But it's still a reality.
SPEAKER_01: The gap between where we are and where we should be.
SPEAKER_01: So, what does accepting failure mean for us as a Christian?
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me state it this way.
SPEAKER_01: Failure, failure can be the mother of humility.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that one more time.
SPEAKER_01: Failure can be the mother of humility.
SPEAKER_01: What failure can teach you if you listen to it is that you are just like everybody else in this room.
SPEAKER_01: This is part of the problem that was in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: They were all trying to be better than each other, more spiritual than one another.
SPEAKER_01: And what failure was meant to teach was, hey, welcome to the company.
SPEAKER_01: We are all failures here.
SPEAKER_01: I can't elevate myself above anybody here.
SPEAKER_01: I can't put myself in a superior position above anybody here.
SPEAKER_01: Because I, like you, have failed.
SPEAKER_01: It can teach you about your common humanity.
SPEAKER_01: It can teach you that this all-important Christian truth, that you are in fact a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: Not theoretically a sinner, but practically a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: A very real one who fails and genuinely fails.
SPEAKER_01: Not like because this is the way sometimes we as Christians like to talk about sin.
SPEAKER_01: We we euphemize it, right?
SPEAKER_01: We we use nice language.
SPEAKER_01: Well, nobody's perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Ah, it was just a mistake.
SPEAKER_01: Like, whoops, I tripped and fell into sin.
SPEAKER_01: Didn't even see it coming.
SPEAKER_01: But the Bible doesn't talk about sin that way.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does talk about sins of ignorance.
SPEAKER_01: It does, in fact, make it clear that nobody is perfect, but it says more than that.
SPEAKER_01: That you have, in fact, sinned against the living God.
SPEAKER_01: You have genuinely fallen short, not theoretically fallen short.
SPEAKER_01: You have brought real harm into other people's lives.
SPEAKER_01: You have hurt them.
SPEAKER_01: You have broken relationships.
SPEAKER_01: And if you listen to that, it can teach you a really important truth.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a sinner in need of grace.
SPEAKER_01: I need God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: It can teach you that you can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: It can teach you that when you fail, when you sin, when you fall short, I need God.
SPEAKER_01: All of us, I think, are tempted at various times to by our own blood, sweat, and tears, make up for our own failures.
SPEAKER_01: Atone for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: But the message of the cross is no amount of your blood, sweat, and tears will atone for your failure.
SPEAKER_01: The only atonement for your failure is by the blood, sweat, and tears of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_01: You need him.
SPEAKER_01: Your failure can be the mother of humility and teach you, ah, I can't make this life alone.
SPEAKER_01: I can't even live the life I'm supposed to live on my own.
SPEAKER_01: I need grace.
SPEAKER_01: And not yesterday and not tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: I need grace now.
SPEAKER_01: I need God now.
SPEAKER_01: So how do you mature as a Christian?
SPEAKER_01: You need to desire it.
SPEAKER_01: This is seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: If you seek me with your whole heart, you will find me.
SPEAKER_01: You need to want it.
SPEAKER_01: But you can't want it alone.
SPEAKER_01: You need the Holy Spirit to work in the want into your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And third and finally, you need to accept failure.
SPEAKER_01: And in your failure, your need for God and His grace.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father, this morning as we draw to a close and receive all that we have just heard, we want to take a moment to consider it in your presence.
SPEAKER_01: Where we were convicted, where we are being challenged and pushed, where we need to make some changes.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe where we need to confess or apologize.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe where we need to admit failure.
SPEAKER_01: Would you just take a moment here in prayer to hold this before the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: And what you heard and what you you believe the Lord is calling you to do with what you've heard today.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I also pray for those who are here who want to be reconciled to you.
SPEAKER_01: That right now that they would hear your call to them to enter into relationship with you through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And that here where they sit would be the beginning of that relationship.
SPEAKER_01: A simple yes of their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be right with you.
SPEAKER_01: And Father, my prayer for Mission Hills Church.
SPEAKER_01: God, you have done great things here.
SPEAKER_01: You have matured this church.
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that you continue that work, that we would grow up in love.
SPEAKER_01: And for those who have not matured as they ought, Lord, I pray that today would be a call, a summons by your Holy Spirit, that they would indeed pursue love.
SPEAKER_01: That they would act like men.
SPEAKER_01: They would grow up.
SPEAKER_01: And Father, for those who are serving and loving you with their whole hearts here this morning, I pray that you would continue to give them the strength to do that, to love their brothers and sisters here, their wives, their children, their families, their grandchildren.
SPEAKER_01: Would you strengthen them in this love?
SPEAKER_01: And above all, Father, we ask for the power of your Holy Spirit to be at work in our hearts that we might mature and grow up in the love that you have called us to.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in Jesus' name.