SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be in First Corinthians chapter three.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna read this from the ESV version this morning.
SPEAKER_00: But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.
SPEAKER_00: And even now you are not ready.
SPEAKER_00: For you are still of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
unknown: Whoa.
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Lord, we pray that you would just speak to us by your spirit this morning as we look at this text.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for giving us the book of 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: We pray, Lord, that you would just instruct us.
SPEAKER_01: Instruct us, Lord, as we go along.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians continues.
SPEAKER_01: Paul here is going to drop the hammer.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's got a word for this church.
SPEAKER_01: So if you happen to be new with us, other than filling out the contact card, other than that, we are going through the book of 1 Corinthians this year.
SPEAKER_01: I think we're going to be in it for a good bit of this year.
SPEAKER_01: We're going through.
SPEAKER_01: And we are looking at a church that was a mess.
SPEAKER_01: And thank goodness that they were a mess.
SPEAKER_01: Because it prompted it, it prompted this interaction of Paul with this church.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul planted the church in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: And we see this whole thing play out in the second missionary journey, Acts 18.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to go back, you can read that.
SPEAKER_01: You get a little bit more of a context from Acts 18 about what's going on with him.
SPEAKER_01: But after Paul leaves Corinth, he ends up, after a couple years, back in Ephesus, which is basically a across the sea from Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's relatively close geographically.
SPEAKER_01: The ships are going kind of back and forth from Ephesus to Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul is hearing reports, bad reports, back about this church.
SPEAKER_01: And he also gets a letter from Corinth with some questions specifically about marriage, sex, suing one another, the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_01: There's some stuff that's going on.
SPEAKER_01: So for our sake this morning, we're in the middle of a section about factions.
SPEAKER_01: This church had broken itself up into little camps.
SPEAKER_01: There is a schism in this church over who was their favorite pastor.
SPEAKER_01: And so some people in this church were in the camp of Peter, right?
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Peter, because of course that was Jesus' favorite disciple, right?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that was their case.
SPEAKER_01: Then you had Apollos, right?
SPEAKER_01: Apollos is this incredible kind of, we would call him like the millennial preacher, right?
SPEAKER_01: He was the guy wearing the skinny jeans and he could bring the fire, right?
SPEAKER_01: That was Apollos.
SPEAKER_01: He was sharp.
SPEAKER_01: This guy was sharp.
SPEAKER_01: And then you had Paul, who had planted the church, and there was the camps who were like, well, we're of Paul.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe he was kind of ugly and he had a crooked nose, you know, and his eyes didn't work that great pri by the time they saw him, but he was the founder of the church.
SPEAKER_01: So we're with Paul.
SPEAKER_01: And then you had, you know, the people who were super spiritual, and they're like, well, we're just of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You know, so you've got the four camps, and these people were, uh we find out later on in the book that they they um were exercising spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: So imagine this being the church.
SPEAKER_01: You'd have some people that would come in, and you know, one person would stand up and say, I've got a prophetic word for all of you, and then somebody else would say, I've got a prophetic word, and then at the same time, somebody's in the back speaking in tongues, and then you've got this guy like healing people, you know, with the gift of healing.
SPEAKER_01: And it was just like their church gathering was just crazy pandemonium.
SPEAKER_01: But they thought of themselves, because of these this giftedness, they thought that they were like the most spiritual Christians ever, right?
SPEAKER_01: And they're really kind of arrogant about themselves.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul here is addressing this church first on factionalism.
SPEAKER_01: And it starts in chapter 117 and goes through till 417.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul, he has um we've seen a number of contrasting concepts.
SPEAKER_01: Um we saw um a few weeks ago the eloquence of speech versus straight to the point.
SPEAKER_01: And can I just say, I'm gonna share on Slack.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not on Slack, maybe I'll put it on Facebook.
SPEAKER_01: Uh if you're not on Slack, you should talk to Marvin and get on Slack.
SPEAKER_01: But there's this great podcast that I ended up finding this last week called Philosophize, Philosophize This or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, they went over, it's like the history of philosophy, and they cover the period of time around the um sophists.
SPEAKER_01: And I learned some stuff this last week that I had no idea of, but it ties in beautifully with some of the stuff that Paul's saying in chapter one and two.
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, this is so perfect.
SPEAKER_01: I wish I would have known this four weeks ago when I was teaching that section.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, okay, so Paul is contrasting eloquence of street speech versus getting straight to the point about the cross and the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He contrasted wisdom and folly, weakness and power, natural versus spiritual, we saw last week.
SPEAKER_01: Also, last week we saw the rulers of this age versus the Lord of glory.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's been kind of building off of those contrasts, those themes to make his point.
SPEAKER_01: And really importantly, you'll notice that Paul is rotating between the message, the message recipient, and the messenger.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be we've already gone through a full cycle of Paul describing the message.
SPEAKER_01: What was the message?
SPEAKER_01: The message itself was simple.
SPEAKER_01: It was not this eloquency of speech, it was not worldly wisdom, right?
SPEAKER_01: The message was the gospel and the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Well, who was the message recipient?
SPEAKER_01: What did we learn about the message recipient?
SPEAKER_01: Shout it out.
SPEAKER_01: Who were the message recipient?
SPEAKER_01: They were the church and they were simple, right?
SPEAKER_01: We said they were like the Walmart crowd, right?
SPEAKER_01: I was at Walmart again this week.
SPEAKER_01: I love Walmart, right?
SPEAKER_01: But that was the idea, right?
SPEAKER_01: God chose the recipients of this message to be simple people, right?
SPEAKER_01: In general.
SPEAKER_01: And then the messenger, Paul described himself.
SPEAKER_01: What did he say about himself?
SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, when I came to you, I came in fear and trembling, right?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't come as one of these competing philosophers trying to just um get your allegiance through eloquency.
SPEAKER_01: No, I came and I just was about the cross, the gospel, so that your faith would rest in the power of God, right?
SPEAKER_01: And not in the wisdom of men.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is like, I it's just straight, simple.
SPEAKER_01: So now we're starting on the second cycle.
SPEAKER_01: We're starting on this the second cycle, um, talking about the message, the messenger, the message recipient.
SPEAKER_01: Um last week we returned to the nature of the message.
SPEAKER_01: We returned back.
SPEAKER_01: So we we started the cycle again, we returned to the nature of the message, and we saw that the message was primarily, what did we see last week?
SPEAKER_01: The message was primarily, starts with an S.
SPEAKER_01: Spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: The message was primarily spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: And what he said last week was that the wisdom that I give to you, that Paul's saying, I have a um, I have a wisdom that I impart to you, that wisdom is spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: It's literally the Spirit of God reveals these things to us.
SPEAKER_01: They're the hidden wisdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what we saw last week.
SPEAKER_01: We saw how God wants to impart wisdom to his followers by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It is a wisdom that is different, really different from the world's wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: Second, we saw that the Holy Spirit knows about God's hidden plans that are prepared for those who love him.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: God has a plan for your life that has been designed for you before you ever came into this world.
SPEAKER_01: That plan is uh it's for those who love God.
SPEAKER_01: It is hidden.
SPEAKER_01: It's not like you are going to somehow uh discover that plan on your own, independent from God.
SPEAKER_01: But God wants to reveal those things to you by his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The third thing is the spirit wisdom is for the spiritual person, right?
SPEAKER_01: So this wisdom of God that is spiritual is for the spiritual person, which makes sense, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's not for the natural man.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at our text this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Just three verses.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says this, but I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Having explained the spirit wisdom that is available for the spiritual person, Paul now drops the boom on this church.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I could not address you as spiritual people.
SPEAKER_01: Now remember who he's talking to.
SPEAKER_01: These people, these people not only think that they're spiritual, they think they're very spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: They think they should get a trophy for how spiritual they are.
SPEAKER_01: They think that they should win the prize for being the most spiritual church.
SPEAKER_01: And here Paul is saying, I could not address you as spiritual people.
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he says that they had to be addressed as people of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: This is the initial contrast, right?
SPEAKER_01: How do we know there's a contrast?
SPEAKER_01: Because there's a but in the middle of it, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is the initial contrast in our text.
SPEAKER_01: Spiritual people versus people of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we've already had a few things that we've read about spiritual people in verse 212.
SPEAKER_01: Here's, let me remind you, this is what he said, and we read this last week.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says to this church, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
SPEAKER_01: So Paul has already established that we have received the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a follower of God and you've placed your faith in Jesus Christ, then God has given you his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus spent three years training his followers.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was with these disciples, the twelve disciples, night and day for three years straight.
SPEAKER_01: Then, right before the crucifixion, Jesus sat the disciples down at what we call the Last Supper, and he explained to his followers that he was going to go away.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, In my absence, the Spirit will be sent to you.
SPEAKER_01: He says the Spirit would be sent to them in place of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the Gospel of John, chapter 14, 15, and 16 is the entire message or a summary of what Jesus taught at the Last Supper.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus sat these twelve down.
SPEAKER_01: This is the night before he is crucified, and he specifically explains that he's going to go away, and then he almost with anatomical language, in technical detail, he explains that in his place the spirit would be given to these disciples.
SPEAKER_01: And he explains the role of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And he actually says that your condition is going to be better off.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to be better off with me leaving because the Spirit will be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you just two verses from that message.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells his disciples, he says, These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.
SPEAKER_01: But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
SPEAKER_01: So here Jesus is explaining, I'm going away, but the Spirit, the Spirit is going to be given to you.
SPEAKER_01: The promise, this promise, is for all Christians.
SPEAKER_01: If a person turns to God and places their faith in Jesus Christ, then they are given the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: In a couple of weeks, probably in a couple of months, I think.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a couple of months, we're going to read that famous passage in chapter 5 that says, you are the temple of what?
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit, right?
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to see why Paul describes you and I as the temple of God's Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You are a container, and when you place your faith in God, one of the things that God does for you is that He places His Spirit inside of you.
SPEAKER_01: Now you have a Spirit, and God's Spirit communes with your spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And this is kind of that passage out of Psalms where it's called the idea of deep cries out to deep.
SPEAKER_01: God's Spirit is revealing things to you.
SPEAKER_01: He is, as Jesus says here, He is your helper.
SPEAKER_01: Now, last week I encourage you, one of your home pieces of homework or application that I gave you last week was to give some time in your schedule to listen for the Holy Spirit's voice in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And hopefully that's not just a homework thing you would do last week, but you have a sense, an ongoing sense of God speaking into your life.
SPEAKER_01: The thing that's at war in our own life, in our own routine with being able to hear the Holy Spirit's voice is our schedule, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because the emphasis last week that we saw is God wants to speak to us.
SPEAKER_01: The system, right?
SPEAKER_01: The family that we've been adopted into, we are all, not just the pastor, not just the people who are super spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: We are all given God's Spirit because God wants to make known to you the hidden things of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you're like, well, I don't know, Josh.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we all get the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Well, if that's your question, let me just show you a couple of verses very quickly.
SPEAKER_01: In Romans chapter 8, and we're going to spend a little bit of time this morning in Romans 8.
SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful parallel to what we're looking at, but I just want you to see this verse first.
SPEAKER_01: You, however, are not in the flesh, but you're in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
SPEAKER_01: So if you call yourself a Christian and you've placed your faith in Jesus Christ, right, those are the same thing, then you have the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_01: God's spirit, no matter whether you feel goosebumps or not, right?
SPEAKER_01: Whether you wish you had more revelation or not, whether, no matter whatever you kind of think this looks like, if you are God's, you have the Spirit of God, right?
SPEAKER_01: That is how it works.
SPEAKER_01: Let me show you another passage.
SPEAKER_01: Galatians 3, 2 through 3.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_01: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
SPEAKER_01: Are you so foolish?
SPEAKER_01: Having begun in the Spirit, you are now being perfected in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Again, similar concepts, similar language to what's going on in our passage in Corinthians, but he's assuming, with this question, that you received the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, now when you got the Spirit, obviously what's implied there is that you got the Spirit, when you were given God's Spirit, was it because you followed the law, the Ten Commandments, God's moral law in the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_01: Is that, did you did you earn the Spirit?
SPEAKER_01: Or were you given the Spirit of God because you had the hearing of faith?
SPEAKER_01: In other words, you responded in faith.
SPEAKER_01: When you heard the gospel, you believed.
SPEAKER_01: The obvious answer is no, it's by faith.
SPEAKER_01: Let me show you another passage out of Titus.
SPEAKER_01: He saved us, not because of works done by us, right?
SPEAKER_01: We didn't do the works of the law.
SPEAKER_01: He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit, right?
SPEAKER_01: There it is.
SPEAKER_01: End of verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: Who is the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_01: Well, good thing you asked, because in verse 6 it says, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of theological concepts right there, but what I want to draw your attention to is the fact that the Holy Spirit is poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's not because you are the best Christian ever.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because you did the works of the law.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because you attended church.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because you love your neighbor, it's because you placed your faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: God gives you his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: No, okay, we're there.
SPEAKER_01: So spirit is given to all Christians, but not all Christians operate according to the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: So in our text, Paul is saying to them, in Corinth in cor in this Corinthians passage, he's like, I can't talk to you as spiritual people because you're in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at this in Romans 8, okay, because he explains this to the church in Rome many years later, he writes this letter, but he's talking about the same idea.
SPEAKER_01: He said, For those who live according to the flesh, they set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on things of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
SPEAKER_01: For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot.
SPEAKER_01: Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
SPEAKER_01: So there's some things going on here that are tricky, but here's what you need to know.
SPEAKER_01: You have a Christian has both their natural nature, right, the flesh, and when you are given the spirit, you have the spirit of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're called to operate according to the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: But it is possible, we see from the from Romans, we see from Corinthians, we see from Galatians, it is possible for you and I, even though we have the Spirit of God, to opt out and still do life according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You have God's Spirit, but you're you and I are not necessarily Doing life according to the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We're minding the things of the flesh here.
SPEAKER_01: That's the language there in verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's laws.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just keep going a little bit more.
SPEAKER_01: Let's jump over to verse 12 in Romans 8.
SPEAKER_01: So then, brothers, we are debtors.
SPEAKER_01: You're in debt.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_01: You're in debt.
SPEAKER_01: Not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
SPEAKER_01: But if by the spirit, this is really important, if you get anything this morning, okay, key in on this.
SPEAKER_01: If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
SPEAKER_01: What's the remedy for the flesh?
SPEAKER_01: It's the spirit, by the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The spirit is the instrument for putting to death the deeds of the body.
SPEAKER_01: You and I live and exist with warring natures.
SPEAKER_01: There's a part of you that wants to do life independent from God, that is self-seeking, that is proud, and it's the part of you that Satan tempts into sin, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's the part of you that wants to abandon God's plan.
SPEAKER_01: Now, before you become a Christian, Romans 6 says that you are enslaved to that nature, that you have to do life according to the will of your flesh, that you are subject to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: When you are, when you place your faith in Jesus Christ and you become a Christian, that necessity, that nature, is severed.
SPEAKER_01: It still is there, it's still very much contending for your in mind attention, but our flesh has been reduced to just an urge rather than a dominating force.
SPEAKER_01: You now have a choice between doing life by the spirit or doing life by the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when you die and you put off your body, when you physically die, you will be separated from your flesh.
SPEAKER_01: No longer will you have that nature contending against the work of God's Spirit in your life.
SPEAKER_01: So I know that these, I know that what we're talking about is not very concrete.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to like touch these things, wrap your hands around them, but um that is how God describes you and I, right?
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't describe us necessarily just according to our, you know, that you're blonde, blue-eyed, you know, five foot seven.
SPEAKER_01: Um He is describing kind of your in our internal nature.
SPEAKER_01: Let me go a little bit further here in Romans.
SPEAKER_01: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, we sing that song, right?
SPEAKER_01: We sing, uh don't we have lyrics like that, Nick?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: That's one of like our lead favorite songs as a church.
SPEAKER_01: Um we don't fall back into fear, but we have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father.
SPEAKER_01: So, man, there's so much great stuff.
SPEAKER_01: We just don't have time this morning to go too deep into all of this.
SPEAKER_01: But I just want you to see, I want you to be um familiar with this tension between the flesh and the spirit, and I want you to know that God's offer to you, if you do not have, if you're not yet a Christian, and you're considering Christianity as a as a way of life or as an idea, one of the beautiful things of Christianity is that God sets you free from the things you don't like about yourself or some of those activities in your life where you're like, I hate the fact that I do this.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible teaches us that when we give our life to God, that nature of the flesh, its um edge is taken off.
SPEAKER_01: It's poison, it's defanged in a sense.
SPEAKER_01: You're liberated.
SPEAKER_01: Now, three times in the text that we're looking at, twice in verse three, this phrase that we're of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: We have it found three times.
SPEAKER_01: People of the flesh, you are still of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Um are you not of the flesh, behaving only in a human way?
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at verse two.
SPEAKER_01: What does this mean?
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to be in the flesh?
SPEAKER_01: Um willful, independent effort, human earth focus are two things that I wrote down.
SPEAKER_01: Um Galatians chapter 5 tells us what the works of the flesh are.
SPEAKER_01: The evidence.
SPEAKER_01: We would say this is kind of the evidence or the manifestation of the flesh are these things.
SPEAKER_01: Sexual sin or sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, that's like witchcraft, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, getting drunk, orgies, and things like these things, like these, he says, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do those things, where it says those who do those things, that's those who practice these things, they will not inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: So here's the deal.
SPEAKER_01: This conversation of flesh and spirit are not very concrete.
SPEAKER_01: But when you put up a list like that, it gives some more definition to what we're talking about when it comes to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus came to set us free from these things.
SPEAKER_01: We do not have to be.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are like, well, you know what, I don't really struggle with um envy a whole lot.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's not your fleshly weakness.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing: one of these other things may be your thing.
SPEAKER_01: And the reality is that the Spirit of God has been made available to us to crucify, to put to death the deeds of the body.
SPEAKER_01: Paul tells the Corinthian church that they are people operating according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: People that are, and what is it specifically in here?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're this list, you'll notice that two of the words here, strife and enmity, or strife and jealousy, divisions, those things pop up in our text that we are looking at.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in verse 1, he uses a metaphor, and he says that they are infants in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So he tells them, you know, you're operating according to the flesh, and then to um reiterate this issue, he says, You are um you are operating as if you're infants.
SPEAKER_01: Now, wait a second.
SPEAKER_01: If why is it a bad thing to be an infant here?
SPEAKER_01: Because don't we have in John 1, we have Jesus or we have in John 1 that He's given you the right to be called children of God.
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes the metaphor, the family metaphor is used in a positive sense here, Paul is saying, you're infants in Christ, what I want is maturity.
SPEAKER_01: So we are introduced to this idea, infants, but to go even a little bit further, he says, here's specifically why I'm using the metaphor of an infant.
SPEAKER_01: I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it, and even now you are not ready for it.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_01: A baby, a baby rightfully is nourished by a mother's milk or a formula.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem is the end of the sentence or the end of the verse.
SPEAKER_01: And even now, you're not ready for it.
SPEAKER_01: These believers had been Christians for at least three to four years, maybe longer.
SPEAKER_01: These Christians, they should not still be babies.
SPEAKER_01: They should still, they shouldn't be stunted in their growth.
SPEAKER_01: They shouldn't just be having, um, they shouldn't need to just be accoddled along and given the basics of the faith when they should be mature.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what I love.
SPEAKER_01: This passage is um elaborated on over in Hebrews chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Lest this picture be kind of um too simple, the writer of Hebrews, which was either Paul or somebody probably who was uh a disciple of Paul, riffed on 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: This was probably written after Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, but this person who wrote this is taking from this picture in 1 Corinthians 3 and using it here to teach the Jewish Christians, basically.
SPEAKER_01: And he says this about this, we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
SPEAKER_01: 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: For everyone who lives on milk, here's the milk drinker, Christian, right?
SPEAKER_01: The milk drinker, that person, they're unskilled in the word of righteousness since they are as a child, or since he is a child.
SPEAKER_01: But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive me for using this example, but uh some of you are new.
SPEAKER_01: Um when I was 14 years old, I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and I was given a choice between uh taking Ritlin or drinking coffee.
SPEAKER_01: And I opted for coffee.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know chemically how those correspond, but I opted for coffee.
SPEAKER_01: And um I lived in Africa at that time, and the coffee that I drank was instant coffee.
SPEAKER_01: Nestle's instant coffee.
SPEAKER_01: That was probably you know multiple years old.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought this is great.
SPEAKER_01: But as I got older and I kept drinking coffee, I realized that Nestle's instant coffee was horrible.
SPEAKER_01: Horrible.
SPEAKER_01: Like the worst possible option for coffee, right?
SPEAKER_01: And now I'm at the point where, in my coffee drinking experience, I'm very picky.
SPEAKER_01: I'm very picky.
SPEAKER_01: It's because the powers of my coffee discernment have been trained by constant practice.
SPEAKER_01: Constant practice every day.
SPEAKER_01: Every day I practice my ability to distinguish good coffee from bad coffee, good from evil.
SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you a good cup of coffee from a bad cup of coffee.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul is telling this church in Corinth, and then this writer is telling this group of Christians, you should be teaching by now.
SPEAKER_01: You should be spiritual people that you're able to teach other people by now.
SPEAKER_01: But I can't because you're unskilled in the word of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: I can't give you solid food.
SPEAKER_01: You're not mature enough.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you go on in Hebrews chapter 5, you go to chapter 6, he explains some of what those elementary principles are.
SPEAKER_01: What's it like for milk?
SPEAKER_01: There he says it's repentance, doctrine of resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Like the basics, right?
SPEAKER_01: The basics.
SPEAKER_01: What's mature here?
SPEAKER_01: What's the writer of Hebrews, what's like mature Christianity?
SPEAKER_01: New covenant theology, the grace of God, being able to contrast the law versus grace, that's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: This is like the big boy stuff, right?
SPEAKER_01: You're able to, you've used scripture long enough that you're able to see the difference between old covenant and new covenant teaching.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to live by the grace of God?
SPEAKER_01: So going back over to our text, in verse 3, he says, For you are still of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For while there's jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
SPEAKER_01: In other words, here's why I'm telling you that you're not spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: You are not spiritual because among you there is jealousy and strife.
SPEAKER_01: And he asks the question if these things are the case, are you not of the flesh?
SPEAKER_01: Behaving only in a human way.
SPEAKER_01: Look, you can speak in tongues, you can have gifts of prophecy, you may even have the gift of healing people.
SPEAKER_01: But if you're fighting with your fellow Christians, you are a fleshy Christian.
SPEAKER_01: You are a baby Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's something that's mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_01: Baby Christians can have spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_01: Your spiritual giftedness, your ability to help on Sunday and make our church a better church and a spiritually fruitful church is not contingent upon your spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_01: That's the amazing thing about being a Christian, is like you get the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You get the ability to be a gifted Christian in the church.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul's like, hey, at the same time, you need to get rid of the sin in your life.
SPEAKER_01: You need to let the Spirit of God put to death the deeds of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is why some of you in Christianity you will have some very bad examples of Christians like on TV who are flat out like teaching bad stuff like false doctrine, teaching false doctrine, and healing people, sometimes legitimately, like you'll have gifts of healing, and yet they seem corrupt.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: It's because of the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is like this mind-blowing crazy thing.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the giftedness that you have is not the stamp of approval upon your life.
SPEAKER_01: You and I, we need to pursue spiritual maturity, to be separated from our sin, not to earn God's favor or to become more spiritually powerful.
SPEAKER_01: No, we need to be separated from our sins so that we can be the spiritual people that's Paul's talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, understand this.
SPEAKER_01: That giftedness is not wrong.
SPEAKER_01: You want to stay, you want to have the Spirit's giftedness in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And let that blow your mind in my mind, right?
SPEAKER_01: But let us be a maturing people.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Is there anything else I want to say this morning?
SPEAKER_01: Let's close with these four points.
SPEAKER_01: Four ways that we can kind of just practice this.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, make sure you're born again.
SPEAKER_01: If you're here new with us and you do not know if you have a relationship with God, I want to make it really, really simple.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible teaches that we can have a relationship with the God of the universe by simply placing our faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: When you turn and you say, God, I want to give you my life and believe in Jesus Christ, at that point you are born again spiritually.
SPEAKER_01: You become a child of God.
SPEAKER_01: So make sure you have a relationship with God by turning to Him and placing your faith in Him.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you make that decision, you should tell somebody this morning, right?
SPEAKER_01: I've had people come up to me after church and say, I've decided I want to now be a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: And that's great because I can help you.
SPEAKER_01: I can help you formulate that into a prayer.
SPEAKER_01: But literally, you can pray that on your own.
SPEAKER_01: You could be on the desert island today with nobody around you.
SPEAKER_01: You can say, God, I want to turn my life over to you.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be a child.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be in your family.
SPEAKER_01: I place my faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's what you're going to verbalize.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, that's your step.
SPEAKER_01: Second, make the connection between behavior and nature as we see in verse 3 and Galatians 5.
SPEAKER_01: The junk in my life indicates that I am not spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: I am in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's not pretty.
SPEAKER_01: That's not very nice.
SPEAKER_01: You may say, Josh, that's mean.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the truth, right?
SPEAKER_01: When we look at our life and there's junk there, it means that the flesh is having its way over us.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: We need to let the spirit have its way.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the next thing here.
SPEAKER_01: If Paul's words have motivated you to be a spiritual person, isn't that the language of our day?
SPEAKER_01: I want to be a spiritual person.
SPEAKER_01: I know so many people that I interact with and tell them I'm a pastor and I hear, oh, I'm a spiritual person.
SPEAKER_01: I don't go to church.
SPEAKER_01: I don't really have a faith.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have I don't believe in God, but I'm a spiritual person.
SPEAKER_01: No, Paul says, if you want to be a spiritual person, then let the spirit put to death the works of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: God's the picture here is that if you are able to identify something in your life where it's just like, man, the flesh is having its way.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: The flesh is winning in my life.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't want that anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what do I do?
SPEAKER_01: I don't want that anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, the spirit will help you, right?
SPEAKER_01: The spirit is the instrument according to Romans 8.13.
SPEAKER_01: Just read that verse over and over again this week.
SPEAKER_01: The spirit is how you put to death the deeds of the flesh, the deeds of your body.
SPEAKER_01: And verse 4, all of this we want because God has a hidden wisdom for us.
SPEAKER_01: Revelations from the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we saw last week.
SPEAKER_01: Like last week was this description of this beautiful package.
SPEAKER_01: Like God wants to just blow your mind, right?
SPEAKER_01: He wants to show us here's my plan for you.
SPEAKER_01: Now Paul's kind of been like, yeah, but I can't tell you these things because you're carnal, you're fleshy, right?
SPEAKER_01: But it should motivate us.
SPEAKER_01: Like, God, I want to be, I want to be a spiritual person.
SPEAKER_01: I want to see these things.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we um we ask that you would um just work in our own lives and that you would separate us from the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, God, that you love us.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, you knew how messed up we were when you died on the cross for our sins.
SPEAKER_01: Um you knew uh that we would even still, after becoming your children, that we'd still give in to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And you still loved us.
SPEAKER_01: You still, you still called us to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: Just like you loved this church in Corinth, you love us.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, you're you're willing to rebuke us and to correct us through your word.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, um, there's there's individuals here this morning that feel like most of their life is the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: They feel like they're dominated by the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters here this morning that you would set them free from the life of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I ask that you would um that you would put to death those things that their conscience is guilty over, the things that are dominating.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, just lift up their heads this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Give them the hope of your forgiveness, of your future that you have for them, the victory that you've promised.
SPEAKER_01: You've already worked on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Give them your life, that promise, that hope this morning.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.