Speaker: Did you know you probably did, but did you know
you can drink too much water?
Did you know that you can actually have too much oxygen?
Which is crazy.
There's something as that, that if you are drink or drinking, inhaling breathing
in pure oxygen for too long, it can actually damage, uh, your, your system.
Did you know that you can wash your hands too many times?
Do you know you can take too many showers?
Uh, some of you in the room, you don't need to worry about that.
Just keep showering.
We're, we're grateful for that.
Thinking about the, uh, my, my kids in the room, my son, especially in the room, um.
He's catching strays from his dad.
That's not fair.
He's fine.
He takes care of himself.
Yeah.
You can shower too much in, in other words, there can
be too much of a good thing.
Too much of a good thing can sometimes become a, a bad thing.
Uh, when my wife and I were in California, we had moved out there and our twins were.
Uh, like two weeks old at the time.
And, uh, we had them and, and we were getting ready to go to
dinner someplace and we, we put them in their car seats to leave.
What we also had, my son Luke and my son Luke, was 18 months old
at the time, so we had two week old twins and 18 month old Luke.
And we're putting the twins in their, their car seat carriers.
And Luke comes totting down the hall with an open pill bottle and crumbs
of, of a white pill on his mouth.
So as mom and dad, we panic immediately and we leave the twins.
And I don't know who was watching the twins at that point other than God.
And, and we run to, to our 18 month old and we're thinking to
ourselves, what, what did he get into?
And worst case scenario is running through your mind.
And so we grab the pill bottle, we look at the pill bottle, and it was
my wife's folic acid that she had been taking while she was pregnant.
So we still called poison control.
By the way.
They make note of who you are when you call them.
So just know that, um.
We may have had to call them multiple times at, at, at this point.
And so we called poison control.
And poison control basically put our heart at ease.
They said it's okay.
They said the body will process the folic acid.
It doesn't, it, it wants, and, and just get rid of
everything that it doesn't need.
So you're fine.
Uh, fast forward maybe another 18 months later.
Uh, we had my, my twins that were now around that age, around Luke's age,
and we were meeting with some people in our home, having a, a community group.
And, and we went upstairs and, and we had a bottle of gummy vitamins that
we would give our kids each night.
We would give them one a night and, and we went up there and we had just
bought a full bottle at Costco and we walk into their bathroom and that full
bottle from Costco was down to about a.
Third left in the bottle.
And we look at Sam and John and we're like, what did, did you guys do this?
And they're like, yeah, it was great.
It tasted fantastic.
We ate all of the gummy vitamins.
Poison control again.
Hey, uh, it's the burners again.
Um.
What do we do?
And poison control said You, you're gonna be fine.
Even if they buy themselves ate the whole bottle of gummy
vitamins, they would be fine.
Which caused me to, to think two things.
Number one, I was super relieved and number two, I was like, why
do we give them then if, if a full bottle doesn't do anything to them?
What are we doing with these?
Who is behind this big Pharma is pedaling gummy vitamins to
our kids, but we get it right.
Too much of a good thing can become a bad thing if we're not careful.
Um.
Some of us though are, are treating God as though that's a possibility.
Some of us are treating God as though maybe we can get too much of God.
Some of us are taking a daily multivitamin of God and, and saying to ourselves,
you know, that's enough God for today.
I don't need any more than my daily dose of God.
Some may not even be getting a daily dose of God.
Some may be looking at this and saying, you know what, I, I,
I've got my weekly dose of God, and, and that's enough for me.
Too much of a good thing can become a bad thing unless it's God that we're
talking about in our passage this morning.
What we're gonna find is you can never have too much God in your life.
You can never have too much God in your life.
Second Peter, or first Peter rather.
First Peter, chapter two verses two and three says this.
It says like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that buy it.
You may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
So like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that buy it.
You may grow up.
Into salvation.
The key word in this passage, in this verse is long form it.
It's a, a verb that's in a command form in the original language.
It's a, a word that is an intense craving.
In fact, other translations may say, yearn for this desire, it crave it.
It's a strengthened form of the normal word that just means to desire something.
So this is desire that's ratcheted up to a next level.
This is like when I go to the pantry at night and I go to the pantry.
Longing to see that I've got enough double stuffed Oreos in the package
to satisfy my craving for the greatest cookie ever known to mankind.
I long for these things.
In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word shows
up in a couple of passages.
Yes, faints for the courts of the Lord.
My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
My soul longs for it.
Or in Psalm 42, 1 King David writes and he says, as the dear.
Pants for flowing streams.
So pants, my soul for you, that word pants is the same Greek
word in the step two agent.
The Greek translation of the Old Testament as the word Peter uses here when he
says that we are to long for the pure spiritual milk, or Paul uses the word
in second Corinthians five, verse two.
He says, in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.
So we're to long, it's a command.
It's an order.
It's, it's not an optional, it's a, you should do this.
In fact, not just should, but you must do this.
And what is it that Peter wants us to do?
What does he commanding us to long for?
He's commanding us to long for the pure spiritual milk, the pure spiritual milk.
If you look back at verse.
One of chapter two, Peter had written this, and Pastor Rod
preached on this last week.
He said, so put away all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy
and envy, and all slander.
And then you'll notice there's a period there in your ESV and in verse two, it
picks up a new sentence like newborn infants long for, well in the Greek,
it's one sentence from chapter two, verse one into chapter two, verse two.
And so what?
Peter was doing here is he's creating a contrast here that helps us
understand the pure spiritual milk.
He's saying at, at one time you lived for these things, for the slander and the
malice and the hypocrisy and the envy.
That was something that characterized your life.
But now in Christ, you need to long for what's new.
You need to long for life in Christ.
You need to long for, as he puts it here, metaphorically, the pure spiritual milk.
Pure spiritual milk.
You may have heard this referred to or always thought of it as the word of God.
In fact, some translations take that approach.
They'll say, this is the, the pure milk of the word.
And, and that is, is part of what Peter means.
But I don't think that's everything that Peter means.
The word, word or logos in Greek for scripture or message or revelation.
It, it's not there in the Greek, in this passage.
What some translations have done is they've taken the word that the ESV
translates as spiritual and they've chosen to translate that as word, the
pure milk of the word instead of as the ESV says, the pure spiritual milk.
The word in the Greek is logon.
And the only reason I bring that up is to hear the, the
similarity between logon and Lagos.
So etymologically, there's a similarity there.
There's something that you could see the connection point there.
And like I said, the Bible is part of what we're to pursue,
part of what to we're to long for.
But it's, it's more than that.
Like we said, this is a, a contrast of verse one.
Peter's contrasting our old way of life to our new way of life.
And so the command for you and I is not just to long for more Bible.
It's, it's that, but it's also to just generally long for
the grace that God gives us.
To live lives as believers to long for more of a presence of God in
our life, to long for the sustaining power of his grace that enables our
faith to persevere through trial.
So that the tested genuineness of our faith, more precious than gold,
that perishes by fi those tested by fire, can be found a result in the
praise and glory and honor of the revelation of Jesus Christ, right?
It's, it's wanting more of the life sustaining grace of God.
And yes, that is the Bible, but it's not just the Bible.
In fact, I want you to think about it this way.
If Peter was just thinking about, Hey, read your Bibles more, think
about his original audience.
His original audience, these first century spiritual exiles, literal
exiles, they wouldn't have had the Bible that you're holding in your laps.
They wouldn't have had the Bible on your phone.
They wouldn't have had the Old Testament scrolls, even in their homes.
So for Peter to tell them long for the pure spiritual milk and have that
mean read Bible, read your Bible more and have that be all it means it,
they would've sat there and been like.
How, how we don't have that.
We don't have access to it.
We don't have it in our homes.
And then you think about the New Testament.
The New Testament was still under construction.
As Peter's writing this, they, they didn't have the New Testament letters.
The way that we have the New Testament letters, they were
still formulating a lot of them.
Some of them, in fact, a lot of them hadn't even been written at this point.
And so Peter's not just talking about the word of God.
Is he talking about the word of God?
Yes.
But he's also talking about more than that.
He's talking about the fact that we need to crave, we need to long
for the life sustaining grace of God to be present in our life.
And he calls it the pure spiritual milk of the word, the
pure spiritual milk of the word.
Uh, this idea of, of purity here is not simply that he's contrasting
it to the, the, the fraudulent.
False teachings out there.
But, but rather as you think about an infant, an infant going to its
mother to nurse knows that what it's going to get from its mother is good.
It's right, it's pure, it's unadulterated, and it's, it's good for that child.
And so likewise, when we come to the Lord for the spiritual milk,
we can know, we can have confidence that it's going to be good for us.
It's the pure spiritual milk that we need.
This life sustaining grace of God is to be, for us the same that
a mother's milk is to a child.
That newborn cry, it still sends shivers down my spine when I hear it, and, and
I think about those times in the middle of the night, waking up to that baby.
That's, that baby is gonna be inconsolable until it gets milk.
And that's Christian.
What we need to be for God in our lives, we need to be unsatisfied.
We need to be insatiable until we can be satisfied with more of God.
And that's my prayer for us Church.
I want us to be a church that's desperate for, that's obsessed with,
that's hungry for not just moment by or not just daily encounters, but moment
by moment encounters with the life sustaining grace of our Heavenly Father.
Point number one this morning is crave more God in your life.
Crave more God in your life, long for desire.
Pursue again that that word in the Greek long for is in the imperative
voice, meaning it's a command.
This is not optional.
It's not optional for us to decide whether or not we want
spiritual nourishment from God.
We have to have it just like a baby has to have its mother's milk.
This is such a tangible illustration that Peter uses here.
It's one that I think all of us can relate to whether you've had kids or not.
You, you know that the baby that that is, is a newborn, that's an infant
needs its mother's milk, and God C commands us to crave him, to desire
more of him in that same fashion.
Church, I don't know where each of you stands in your walk with
Christ in this room this morning.
I know there are differences here.
There are new believers.
There are seasoned believers no matter where you are.
Though I can say with absolute confidence, you should want more of God in your
life than what you currently have.
You should want more because we should never get to the place where
we say, I have enough God, you can never have too much God in your life.
And so the first thing that we have to understand is we have to say, I
need, I want more of God in my life.
And the good news is it's never bad for you.
I have to stop myself from eating Oreos because eventually they are bad for me.
They're always bad for me.
I get that.
Don't talk.
Talk to me about that afterwards.
I don't care what's in them.
If you're gonna come talk to me about food dyes and MSGs and whatever else, you're
gonna make up those words that I don't understand, tell me how bad the Oreos are.
It's a common grace.
Let me have the common grace of my Oreos.
Okay?
And double stuff is the only option.
Oreo thins are an abomination.
They're an abomination.
They need to go away anyways.
I know though that I need to stop eating Oreos at some point before
I want to stop eating Oreos.
You don't have to stop pursuing God before you want to stop pursuing God.
You can never have too much God in your life.
Prayer, scripture, accountability, worship, meditation, scripture,
memorization, growing in holiness.
You can have as much of those things as you want, and it's
never gonna be bad for you.
In fact, it will always be good for you.
There is no serving size when it comes to Jesus.
You can have as much Jesus as you can.
Take as much Jesus as you can handle.
And the thing about it is we need to crave that.
We need to want that, we need to desire that.
And it's not just a general interest.
Like if somebody were to say to you, Hey, do you wanna go out
for, for lunch after church?
Uh, yeah, I guess so.
Yeah, sure.
Why not?
Let's go now.
It's an obsession and a fixation.
It's a, I'm not gonna be satisfied until I get this.
In fact, the word that Peter uses here for long for it conveys that
if you don't get what you long for, you're gonna suffer loss.
You're gonna say, man, this is to my detriment if I don't get this.
That's how desperately we need to want more of God in our life.
So maybe you're asking the question how, if you're sitting out there going,
I, I don't know that I feel that.
How can I cultivate more of that?
Lemme give you a few suggestions.
Stop me if you've heard me say this before, but fill your life with the
things that make you love Jesus more.
That's step one.
What does that look like?
Well, first, make time for him in your life every day.
Make time for Christ in your life Every day.
Spend time with him.
Put it on your calendar and treat it like you treat any other meeting that you have.
In fact, treat it more importantly than any other meeting that you
have, nothing's gonna interrupt that, nothing's gonna take you away from
that because there's no person more important in your life for you to meet
with every single day than Jesus Christ.
Make time for him every single day.
Carve out a place for you to meet with him every single day where you know,
this is where I meet with the Lord.
Go to the word every single day.
Second, though, don't just spend time with him every single day,
but spend time with people who make you love him more every day.
It doesn't necessarily have to be in person, but through
text, through phone calls.
Use your, your communication sources to encourage other believers with Christ.
Normalize talking about Jesus with people that love Jesus.
Ask them about what, what God's been teaching them lately.
Ask them what their favorite thing about their walk with Christ is.
Ask them how they're growing in the relationship with Jesus.
Ask them, Hey, what stirs your affections for Christ?
Talk with other people who love Jesus too.
That's gonna help you develop more affections for Christ.
Listen to rich worship music that fixes your mind on Jesus.
Y'all, there is so much that we can turn to out there and, and
fill our, our, our dead air with.
Fill your dead air that, that time when you're getting ready in the morning,
taking a shower, fill that time on your commute with things that are gonna cause
you to love Jesus more, that are gonna strengthen you, that are gonna stretch
you to think differently, to think more deeply about scripture and about Christ.
There's a lot of neutral things out there that are fine to listen to.
I've been listening to this podcast about jobs that people have, and there was
one about an executive chef this week.
It's, that's fascinating, but I can't tell you that, that makes
me love Jesus more necessarily.
And, and if that's your primary diet, I'm, I'm saying let's
get a, a better diet in there.
Let's, let's substitute, let's put more things that you can listen to,
worship, music, podcast, preaching.
They're gonna stir your affections for Christ.
And then last, but certainly not least, pray.
Pray.
And I know that one's hard because a lot of us sit out there and say,
I'm, I'm not very good on that one.
Can I encourage you this week to just start small and build?
It's like if, if you wanna say, I wanna run a six minute mile, and you're not
running a six minute mile right now, you're not gonna start by dialing up
the treadmill to a six minute mile and then just praying and hoping that
you're gonna be able to make it work.
It's not gonna go well.
You're gonna start wherever you're at.
Let's say you're at a 12 minute mile right now.
You're gonna get on that tread at 12 minutes and you're gonna do a 12 minute
mile, and then the next day you're gonna bump up the speed a little bit and go a
little bit faster, but just incrementally.
And, and as you go along, maybe you're never gonna make it to six minute mile.
That's, that's pretty fast.
But, but you are gonna get better and better and better
and better and better as you go.
And you're not gonna realize it because it's incremental.
So here's what I mean with that, with prayer.
Why don't, this week you set a timer and pray for five minutes a day?
If you're already doing that, great.
Wherever you are, start there and, and build from there.
But if, if right now you're saying, my prayer life isn't where I want
it to be, and it's not really there much at all outside of praying for
food, start with five minutes a day, set a timer on your phone and pray.
You say, well, what if I keep, what if the timer goes off and I'm still praying?
Keep praying.
You don't have to stop.
I'm just saying if, if getting to five minutes is difficult for you, set a timer,
discipline yourself, get to five minutes, and then maybe in a couple days, do that
for a few days and then add two minutes to that, change your timer to seven minutes,
and then a few days later, maybe you bump it up to 10 minutes and, and before
you know it, you're gonna get to a place and you're gonna go look back and go, I
remember when it was hard for me to pray for five minutes, and now I'm able to
pray for 15, 20, 30 minutes at a time.
Pray, spend time communicating with God if you wanna desire him.
That communication part is so important.
Look, I, I, I know I've preached on these things so many times, but it, it's
no trouble for me to quote the apostle Paul because this is a safeguard for us.
These things are things that we need, Christian.
This is what it looks like to crave more of God in your life, to pursue these
things to chase after these things.
Matthew Henry said this, he said, joy in God is a duty of great consequence
in the Christian life, and Christians need to be again and again called to it.
Joy of God.
Joy in God is a duty of great consequence in the Christian life, and Christians
need to be again and again called to it.
That's what we're talking about in this first point of
craving more God in your life.
Why do babies need milk though in the first place?
The answer is to grow, right?
A mother's milk has various components to it that help that baby grow.
For example, it has macronutrients, fats, and carbs and proteins.
The baby needs that to grow.
It also has vitamins and minerals like vitamin B six and calcium and potassium
and iron in the mother's milk, and the baby needs that to be able to grow.
It has bioactive elements in it, things that are gonna support the immune system.
It has hormones, it has growth factors, it has enzymes that, that
the baby needs to be able to grow.
It has probiotics that the baby needs to be able to grow, right?
So, so the baby needs a mother's milk to be able to grow.
So Christian, why do we need the milk that the Lord offers us?
Why do we need spiritual milk?
And the answer is the same.
We need the spiritual milk the father offers us to be able to grow.
We need to be able to grow in the knowledge of the Lord.
We need to grow in the the grace of the Lord.
We need to grow in conviction about what is right and what is wrong.
We need to grow in hope during trials.
We need to grow in wisdom for life.
And so that's why Peter goes on and he says this like newborn infants along
for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation, that
by you may grow up into salvation.
Now he's saying grow up into salvation.
You might be thinking, I, I, I thought I already am saved.
And we've hit on this a couple times already, but just to
remind us, you are saved.
You are being saved, and you will ultimately finally be fully
saved when you're delivered into the presence of the Lord.
It, it's a guaranteed process.
Remember, you're being guarded by God's power through faith for salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time.
So we are to grow up right now.
The process of being safe, we are to grow up right now into salvation.
When, when one of my kids was, uh, entering the solid food stage, uh, they
weren't retaining a, a lot and they, they, they weren't growing the way that
the doctor wanted them to be growing.
So we took the child in for a, a well visit, and the the doc said, Hey, you need
to increase the fat content in the diet.
And so we went from there to the grocery store and we bought the
ice cream, and we bought the cheese and we bought sticks of butter.
We're like, we're gonna, we're gonna fatten this kid up no matter what.
And the, the, you should have seen the cashiers we're going through with our
cart and we're like, it's for the baby.
She's like, okay, sure, sure.
It's for the baby.
At 41 years old, you're not gonna go to the doctor and have the doctor look
at you and be like, you know what?
I'm concerned about your growth.
You should load up on ice cream and butter and Oreos and cheese, and all
the fats you should load up on that.
It's not gonna happen.
Why?
Because expectations change, don't they?
The, the doctor's not looking at you measuring you and going,
you're on the, the, the scale.
You're, but you're in the 10th percent for people your age on growth.
No.
That, that changes at some point based on expectations.
You expect the baby to grow, and when the baby's not growing, you're gonna
say, okay, why isn't the baby growing?
We need to adjust some things.
We need to change some things to make sure that baby can grow.
Christian, you and I always need to be growing.
We're never gonna get to that state where it's not expected that we
should be growing as Christians.
Growth is something that should perpetuate and and should characterize our walk
with Jesus for our entire lives.
And it's not just this passage that says this.
Hebrews chapter six verse one says, therefore, let us leave the elementary
doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.
That's a progressing, that's a growth that he's talking about there.
Or in Ephesians chapter four, verse 15, rather speaking the truth in love.
We are to grow up in every way into him.
Who is the head into Christ?
So again, we are to grow up there.
Or you look at two Peter three 18, it says, but grow in the
grace, in knowledge of our Lord.
Savior Jesus Christ.
So there's an expectation that we should, and we will be growing as Christians.
Put it this way, your spiritual metabolism always needs fuel.
In, in that spiritual metabolism that is, that which makes you grow.
And, and that growth is gonna take place as you take in the fuel, which is
the pure spiritual milk that we talked about in point number one, craving
more of God, more of him in your life, pursuing more of that grace, more of that
relationship that is, uh, supposed to be something that we long for and we desire.
When we do that, when we desire that it is going to produce that
growth in our life, a healthy Christian is a growing Christian.
And so as we long for those things, as we long for the pure spiritual milk that
God commanded us to, to long for, it will produce that and it should produce that.
So point number two this morning, along those lines, is this, expect spiritual
growth as a sign of healthy faith.
Expect it, expect spiritual growth as a sign of healthy faith.
Think for a moment of, uh, an area in your life where you might be better
than someone else in that area.
For, for me, growing up I played a lot of golf.
And playing golf was, was always a joy to me.
And, and I would go out and I would spend hours on the driving range and I, I would
take lessons and, and I would be working on shot shapes and chipping and, and sand
bunker play and everything else like that.
And it was never a burden for me because I loved the game.
And I loved the idea of getting better at it.
And so when I would go out and I would, would spend hours out there
when my dad and I would go out and play rounds of golf together, it always
was disappointing for me to, to get to the final hole, no matter how well or
bad I played, because I wanted more.
I wanted to keep going, and I wanted to get better.
And so I was willing to put in the, the work to get better.
And what I ultimately found is the work became a joy for me because I knew that
the work was making me a better golfer.
Okay.
We want to be better Christians.
We want to be more like Jesus.
And if we're gonna be more like Jesus, we need to see growth in our life.
We need to hit the driving range spiritually speaking so that we
can be better than we were before.
We should desire the pure spiritual milk so that we will see this growth.
If you want to see growth spiritually, you have to be willing
to work it growing spiritually.
Physical growth happens whether you want it to or not.
Physical maturity, spiritual maturity are different that way.
If you are not willing to work at growing spiritually, you're
not gonna grow spiritually.
If you go to bed tonight and you say, Lord, I want to love you more tomorrow, or
I want to be better tomorrow, or, I don't want to have this sin in my life tomorrow.
Amen.
You're gonna wake up tomorrow and if you are passive in your pursuit of godliness,
it's not gonna do any good for you.
There's an active pursuit of Christ's likeness that we're being called to, and
that's this growth up into salvation.
And lest you think that I'm preaching to you a workspace gospel, I'm not.
Your salvation is the work of Jesus and Jesus alone.
Your sanctification is a work of Bo Jesus and us together.
It's why Paul says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, knowing
that it's God who's at work in you both to willing to work for his good pleasure.
Again, it's this synergistic pursuit.
We've talked about this before.
But you should be seeing growth.
In fact, Peter says this, if, if you'll flip over in your
Bible, just one book over.
Second Peter.
Second Peter, chapter one, second Peter chapter one, look at verse five.
I want you to note what Peter says here should be
characteristic of us as believers.
He says, for this very reason, make every effort notice that word,
effort to supplement the word there.
Supplement can also mean nourish.
To supplement or nourish your faith with virtue and virtue
with knowledge and knowledge.
With self-control.
And self-control.
With steadfastness and steadfastness.
With godliness.
And godliness.
With brotherly affection.
Brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing notice, the expectation
is that they would be increasing.
They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful.
They keep you from stagnating in your walk.
They keep you growing in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind
having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent.
Notice, the the call to work, the call to effort, the call to growth, to
confirm your calling in election, for if you practice these qualities you
will never fall for in this way, there will be richly provided for you, an
entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, savior Jesus Christ.
In other words, you will grow up into salvation.
And so if we're craving the pure spiritual milk, we should
expect to see growth in our life.
We should expect to see transformation in our life.
One of the biggest hurdles that we're gonna have to overcome in
our pursuit of spiritual growth is the natural inclination that's
true of humankind, that we prefer.
The path of least resistance, we just do.
And to grow spiritually requires us to do the hard work, to fight the flesh.
To choose the pure spiritual milk over the fraudulent, uh, saccharin substitutes
that the world is gonna throw at us, for example, it's easier right to
scroll Instagram than to read the Bible.
It takes less effort.
It's easier to check fantasy football than it is to pray.
It's easier to send the family off to binge watch on various
screens and devices than to have a time of family devotion together.
It's easier to let your kids make foolish choices than to raise them
in the discipline and destruction of the Lord like we were asking
these families earlier, and yet, the better thing is not the easier thing.
The better thing is to grow in christlikeness as we crave and
desire more of God in our lives.
And yes, that's going to be hard work because we live in a world
that doesn't wanna see us do that.
Remember, we are spiritual exiles.
We're not on vacation.
We are the exiled church.
It's gonna require work from us.
We're gonna have to put that in if we wanna see the growth.
And, and some of us aren't disciplined into other areas of our life, and that
bleeds over into our walk with Christ.
And so some of you may not be making progress spiritually because you're
not making your bed in the morning.
Some of you may not be making progress spiritually because you're
not getting your exercise in.
Some of you may not be making progress spiritually because you're racking
up credit card debt in order to have the things that you want, that
your, your eyes desire and crave.
In other words, lack of discipline in life in general can creep into a lack
of discipline in your life, in your relationship with Jesus, and, and, and you
may not be seeing growth because the lack of discipline is, is more holistic than
in just one compartmentalized area There.
And so the call this morning is to say, Hey, if, if you wanna see
growth as Christians, we have to reject the idea that Christianity
is a set it and forget it.
Religion, it's not, Christianity is a battle.
Christianity is exhausting.
Christianity is the apostle Paul saying, I discipline my body and make it my slave.
Lest after preaching Christ to others, I myself should be disqualified.
Christianity is swimming counter culturally upstream against the the world.
Christianity is choosing to be satisfied in Jesus rather than satisfied in
the things that the world offers us.
And that's hard, but when you do that, when you crave more God in your
life and you put off the things of the world that the world's trying to
substitute for him, you will see growth.
And so Christian, as a sign of a healthy faith, you should
expect growth in your life.
You should expect to be in a different place this year following Jesus than
you were last year at the same time.
Same thing for next year.
You should expect to be in a different place next year than you were right
now in your relationship with Christ as believers craving the pure spiritual milk.
You should expect that milk to do the work that it does, which
is to cause us to grow in Christ.
We should desire him because it will cause this growth.
But then Peter provides this sobering caveat that is lingering and maybe
you're saying, well, what if I, what if I'm not seeing the growth?
What if I don't desire him?
Peter May have the answer in a sobering fashion in verse three where
he says this, if indeed you've tasted that the Lord is good, if indeed
you've tasted that the Lord is good.
This is a quotation from Psalm 34, 8, which says, oh, taste and see that
the Lord is good, which is basically what we just read in verse two.
Long for the pure spiritual milk of the word that buy or
pure spiritual milk that buy it.
You may grow up into salvation.
Psalm 34, 8, taste and see that the Lord is good.
Peter takes it though and makes it a qualifier here.
In other words, he's saying, you are going to long for the pure spiritual milk and
you're going to grow up into salvation.
If notice the, the, the, the caveat, the the condition.
If you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, y'all, we crave
things that we know to be good.
I don't crave oysters because I haven't found 'em to be good.
I don't crave cottage cheese 'cause it looks weird and I, I have not found
it to be palatable enough to try it to find out whether it's good or not.
I found out what sweet breads are this week because I was listening to
that podcast about the executive chef.
They're glands from the neck of a cow.
Why did somebody decide, let's make that into food?
I don't know.
I don't crave those because I haven't tasted and found them to be good,
not interested in tasting them.
I do crave Reese's.
I've tasted and found those to be very good.
And we're in Reese's season right now.
This is the season for Reese's.
You know why?
'cause the pumpkins are back, and then we go from pumpkins to Christmas trees.
Then we go from Christmas trees to rabbits at Easter time.
This is the greatest time of the year for for Easter candy or for for Reese's candy,
because we get all of the best kind.
The ratio is just perfect.
I crave that because I've tasted and seen that is good.
I crave a glass of milk and Oreos every night because I've tasted
and seen that they're good.
We develop a love for those things we find to be good.
And we crave that which we found to be good.
And so if we found that God is good, we're gonna crave more of God.
And that's a good thing because you can never have too much God in your life.
But Peter's argument here is this, God is good.
And if you've experienced that, you're gonna long for more.
So the flip side is true as well.
If you haven't experienced that, God is good.
That may be the reason why you don't crave him.
That may be the reason why you're listening to this sermon
going, okay, I don't know that I've ever desired God that way.
You're not gonna crave spiritual milk if you haven't found the Lord to be
good, which means if you don't find that you desire God, something is off.
Our final point this morning, along those lines, is this, beware
the dangers of spiritual apathy.
Beware the dangers of spiritual apathy.
Remember again, from verse two, long for the pure spiritual milk is a command.
It's not optional.
If we're not longing for it, then that means that something by
implication is off in our lives.
The human body naturally sends hunger signals, and if they're
not there, something is wrong.
If you have a baby and that baby doesn't want to drink from its
mother's milk, you're not gonna sit there and say, well, that's okay.
Maybe we should just get it something else.
Maybe it needs Diet Coke.
You're gonna take that baby to the doctor and the doctor's gonna look at
the baby and help diagnose what's wrong.
And that's just it.
Y'all, what's wrong?
God is good.
In fact, God is the one that has defined what good is.
God is the first person to say something is good, and
God is the definition of good.
If we don't desire him, if we don't crave more of him, it's perhaps because
you haven't tasted and seen that he is good compared to the saccharine
substitutes that this world offers you
signs that something may be amiss for you may be this.
You don't desire to be in God's word.
You don't crave being around God's people.
You're more entertained by almost anything other than being at church
and listening to another sermon.
You're comfortable with sin and you feel no impetus or desire
to confess and repent from it.
You look at the sins of others and, and you're trivializing them and, and tending
to shrug them off as, as no big deal.
You're not thinking about or looking forward to eternity.
You lack a desire to go deeper in your understanding of God.
If that's where you're at this morning, it, it's not okay to be not okay.
Uh, that's something the world will say.
It's, it's okay to be not okay.
It's not okay to be not okay in this way, because again, God's design, God's command
for the Christian is to be growing because God's design, God's command is that
we would be longing for him because we would've tasted and seen that he's good.
Some of the things that can lead to spiritual apathy in our lives,
obviously first would be sin.
When we have unconfessed sin in our life, man, that is gonna
produce less of a desire for God.
Maybe that sin is, is pride, do you think to yourself?
Man, I, I just, I know it.
I, I've heard the sermons.
I've grown up in the church.
I went through Awana and got the Timothy Award.
I'm good.
I don't need more God in my life.
That's pride.
And it couldn't be further from the truth.
Maybe the sin that's holding you up from desire and God is impatience.
You, you live in the world of immediate gratification and you've given yourself
over to the pursuit of immediate gratification so much that when God calls
you to a delayed gratification, sometimes you say, I, I I'm out, gimme the, the,
the spiritual junk food of the world instead of the pure spiritual milk of God.
Or maybe your sin is, is laziness.
You're not willing to mind the scriptures.
You're not willing to get up 30 minutes earlier to spend time
with the God of the universe.
Who loved you so much to give Jesus for you to die on the cross
for your sin so that you can be forgiven and rushed in the dead so
that you can live with them forever.
But to get up 30 minutes earlier, no God, that's too much.
Or maybe your sin is, is just straight up selfishness.
I want what I want and I don't like that God tells me I can't have
what I want, so I don't want God.
Or maybe it's in gratitude.
You think to yourself, look, I am where I am because I got myself here.
I pulled myself up by my bootstraps,
or maybe the sin is unbelief.
You just don't believe that God is really better than the
sin that you keep turning to.
Uh, John Piper said this, he said, having a spiritual taste for the glory
of Christ is not morally neutral.
Not to have it.
Piper says, is evil and deadly not to see and savor Christ as an insult to
the beauty and worth of his character.
Preferring anything above Christ is the very essence of
sin, and it must be fought.
He's right, desiring Christ.
Whether or not you desire God.
This is not a morally neutral thing.
It's not something that you can say, yeah, I can give or take God.
No, you have to crave God.
Because if you've tasted and seen that he's good.
If you've been brought into a relationship with him, if you've encountered the
reality that he sent his son to die on the cross for your sins, and all
you can do is shrug that off and be like, God, I'll give you five minutes
a day in the Word, and I'll show up at church every once in a while.
Seriously,
this is not something that we can kick back and say, well, it's all right.
And, and, and pastor, you're, you're, you're, you're being legalistic.
You're telling me I gotta do too much.
I'm saying, no, I'm just telling you, you gotta love God.
That's all I'm asking you to do.
I'm not asking you to earn anything.
I'm just asking you to respond to what God's done for you.
He's done so much for you.
Other things though, besides just sin that can keep us from.
Desiring 'em the way that we should.
Sometimes it's, it's sickness, right?
Sometimes our, our physical health can impact our ability to get up and, and get
in the word and, and pursue these things.
And I get that There's gonna be seasons where maybe physically you struggle
a little bit more, just 'cause the, the, the health and where you're at.
There's other seasons of discouragement, depression that make it harder to
desire the pure spiritual milk.
That's true.
Perhaps the most dangerous of all though is self-deception.
And, and that is this, you may think that you're a believer in Jesus Christ because
maybe you prayed a prayer at some point.
Maybe you went to a rally, you raised your hand with every head bowed and
every eye closed, and, and you said, Jesus, I wanna ask you into my heart.
But you never surrendered your life to him.
There's been no transformation, no change.
Even if you got baptized, some people get baptized, they don't really get baptized.
All they get is wet.
'cause they don't have a full surrender to Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
They haven't truly given their lives over to Christ and, and these are the ones that
on that day are gonna say, Lord, Lord.
And they're gonna hear from him, depart from me.
I never knew you.
That's the greatest danger of spiritual apathy.
And that's why if you have it in your life, let me encourage you not to
be content until you get rid of it.
Don't be okay with not being okay.
Crave more of God in your life.
If you say, man, I don't even know how to begin, then begin by praying, saying,
God, I want more of you in my life.
Help me have more of you in my life.
And I just wanna wrap things up by, by just addressing that right now.
If, if, if this is you, if this is where you're at today, what needs to change?
First thing I wanna say to you is, is if you feel a desire for
that change, rejoice in that.
That's evidence of the spirit within you, prompting you, convicting you,
saying This is not okay, not to be okay.
Rejoice in that.
Second, I would say this, begin with a, a prayer of repentance to the Lord.
Name specifically those things that you have been turning
to instead of turning to him.
Name, the, the, the substitutes, the, the junk food of the world that you
have been finding satisfaction in.
Temporary, though it is, instead of finding satisfaction in
Christ, repent from those things.
Put them off, write them down.
Call them out.
Repent of spiritual apathy.
Repent of boredom.
Repent of tolerance of sin.
Repent of sin.
Repent of disinterest in Christ.
Repent of an earth bound infatuation with the things that don't hold eternal value.
Repent of not setting your minds on the things above.
Repent of those things and then following repentance.
Put them off.
Put off the things that cause you to put off God.
Get them out of your life and seek accountability finally, in that process.
Bring a brother or sister into that process.
Bring community into that process to help you say, I, I want to desire Christ more.
Will you help me desire Jesus more?
I need you.
That's the beautiful thing about the church, y'all.
It's a beautiful thing about community groups.
That's what they're designed for so that you have people that you
can pursue christlikeness with.
You can desire more of God with together.
If you haven't tasted and seen that the Lord is good, let's
change that this morning.
If you're out there saying, man, I, I.
You know what?
I, I feel like maybe I am self-deceived.
Don't leave, still self-deceived this morning.
Rejoice in the conviction that God might be putting upon your heart.
And let's come and let's, let's do business with God together this morning.
I stand back there after prayer every time.
That's, I disappear here.
I I don't teleport.
I just walk back there.
But I, I would love nothing more than to have a conversation with you, pastor Rod.
He can have a conversation with you, pastor Mark Lewis.
We would love to talk with you.
'cause this is that significant.
Crave more of God, right?
Crave more of God long for the pure spiritual milk.
Grow more in God.
'cause we long for it, that we may grow up into salvation
because you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good.
Too much of a good thing can't become a bad thing.
It's true unless that good thing is God.
'cause you can never have too much God in your life.
Let's pray together.
Lord, we rejoice in that glorious reality that we can never have too much
of you in our life and we rejoice as well, Lord, that that you have given
us a A means through your word and through scriptures and through the
church and through the Holy Spirit dwelling within us to crave more into
experience, more of you in our lives.
Lord I, I pray that we wouldn't be paralyzed and, and not knowing where to
begin, but that we would begin by even just picking up our Bibles and spending
more time with you in your word this week.
That we would begin by setting that timer and praying a little bit longer this
week, that we would begin by spending time with brothers and sisters in Christ
this week, or joining a community group this week, or being engaged and connected
with our community around our houses this week and pursuing the lost around us.
Lord, we want to crave more of you.
We want to be with you.
We want more.
Of God in our lives.
And so help us, I pray towards that end, that we might grow.
Lord, we want to be a more mature body of believers.
We want to look more like Jesus next week than we did this week.
And we want to be a, a body that is continually growing in Christ's likeness.
We want people to walk in here Lord, and encounter men and women
who love Jesus so much that they can't help but walk away saying,
wow, that church just loves Christ.
I, I, I desire that.
I long for that.
For us, God.
I pray in the end that truly our motivation of this would simply be
because we know how good you are and we can't wait till we're in your presence,
and we know that with full reality.
In the meantime, Lord, help us to taste more and more of that goodness,
and we pray that in Jesus' name.
Amen.