Back to the Basics, Part 1
Selected Scriptures
Recently, one of the elders came to me and said, "You know, I was listening to your tapes when you were preaching in New York." I was back in New York doing a series. And I was sort of surprised that this elder had gotten hold of the tapes from that entire series. Nothing I say anywhere escapes the scrutiny of the elders, by the way. Which I'm excited they want to hear it. But anyway, he said, "I feel like I've been cheated because often when you go away, you share things with other churches and other people that were very foundational in the ministry here, very basic, very important things that you taught at Grace before I ever came. And I feel like I've never heard those things. And there's sort of another whole ministry of John MacArthur elsewhere that the folks who've come recently to Grace never get involved in because those were things you did early in the ministry here."
And so he encouraged me to reach back and do some of the very most important and foundational things that we've ever done at Grace Church. And I thought about that and meditated on it and felt that that's really what the Lord would have me to do, as I share with you today. And what I want to do is reach back to some of the very basic things that we have learned here, relative to this whole matter of spiritual growth and the theme of glorifying God. And I'll show you how those relate as we get started.
But just to sort of establish a point, I'd be curious to know how many of you, here this morning, have come to Grace Church within the last five years? Lift your hand up high. Okay. That is really ... what happened to all of our people from before? Amazing! And so, I need to be aware of the fact that many of the things, as I say, that were very foundational in the life of our church, need to be reiterated and reaffirmed so that all of us can get a handle on some of the very, very basic things. And I want to share with you along that line this morning and then again tonight. And probably two weeks from tonight, I'll just pick up what I don't get to finish. But I'm very, very anxious to share with you in the matter of glorifying God and how it relates to spiritual growth.
Now to begin with this morning, I want you to open your Bible to 1 John chapter 2 ... 1 John chapter 2. And we need a sort of a launching point. Now by the way, the message that I'm giving this morning, we have the material in print in a little study note set called, Nourishment for New Life. Those are available this morning on the patio. We only have about 500 left. I don't know how many are left now since the first service. But they will give you in printed form, the things that I'm saying to you this morning and tonight with a few different emphases and so forth. But basically the same Scriptures are dealt with. And if you'd like a copy of these very essential, basic things for your spiritual growth, get a copy of Nourishment for New Life on the patio after the service this morning.
All right, 1 John chapter 2 and verse 12 introduces to us our subject. John writes, "I write unto you little children," and he uses a word that simply means "children" in a very general sense. In the sense that anybody is a child of their parent, it has no age identification. "I'm just writing unto you because you're children, because your sins are forgiven you, for His name's sake." John says, "I'm writing unto because your sins are forgiven for His namesake." And may I suggest to you that what he means by that is for the glory of the Lord. We are forgiven for His sake, not ours.
I think you have a little bit of an idea of how I feel about much of contemporary Christianity. But I continue to be rather appalled, almost on a daily basis, at the burgeoning cult that is growing in and around Christianity, a cult that I call a "cult of human exaltation".
I mentioned to you a few weeks ago about a parade I saw of Christians, each riding on their own float, to the applause of the people watching them. And I told you how distressed I was to see Christians being paraded around as if they were some kind of celebrities.
I pick up yesterday, the latest edition of Newsweek magazine and read a two-page spread about the current rock music mania that's hit Christianity. And some of the comments of these supposed Christian artists. I saw one group that looked like they were demonic, as demonic as any other heavy-metal group might look. And yet, they're supposed to represent Jesus Christ. And at the end of their concerts they throw New Testaments at the audience. I read about another female singer who comes out, and machines pump great amounts of smoke, and she comes out through all of this smoke and these flashing lights. And she's got some drapery on or something. And she throws it off to reveal her spandex skin-tight white pants and goes on in a comment about the fact that she is both sacred and sexy. Went on to read about certain bumper stickers that are associated with this kind of thing, the sayings on which I would not repeat.
And again, I saw in mind this incredible perversion of Christianity to the point where it is now trying to compete with the world's exaltation of its own. And has almost, on a wholesale basis, lost sight of the fact that we are redeemed, not for our own selves, but for God. Not for our glory and not for our exaltation, and not for our success and our promotion and our prosperity, but for God's glory. And all of this really is the byproduct of an abhorrent theology that teaches that salvation is primarily for me, to make me feel good. There are no limits on what I might do because God wants me to have a good time. God wants me to be prosperous. God wants me to be successful. God wants me to be me to do my own thing. I was saved for me. That is the underlying abhhoration behind so much of contemporary Christian perversion.
And all the people who are now teaching doctrine of affluence and the doctrine of prosperity and, I like to call it, the doctrine of fame, really have come up with little else than another form of idolatry. But we have, who are Protestants historically, taking a rather sad and severe look at the Roman Catholic Church because of its idols. And yet we, in Protestant Christianity today, are creating idols of another sort which if anything are even worse than the ones you might see in a local Catholic church.
But we have lost sight of a basic truth. And that is that you are saved for the glory of God, not for your own blessing and not for your own prosperity and not for your own ego satisfaction and not for your own healing and not for your own self-aggrandizement. You were saved for the glory of God and anything which does not point to His glory is a perversion of the intention of God's redeeming work. And the self-consumption of contemporary Christianity, to me, is absolutely frightening. I mean the old word was "worldliness". But we are for the sake of His name, for the sake of His glory. And the idea of for His namesake, the concept of name means all that He is. And all that He is, is His glory. And we have been forgiven for His glory.
Now within the family where all of us have been redeemed for His sake, all of us have been forgiven for His sake there are three levels of spiritual growth. We find ourselves somewhere around these three different levels, beginning in verse 13. The first level that he identifies is fathers. And he writes to fathers, and he's not talking about physical fathers, or earthly fathers, or human fathers. But spiritually mature people who have reached the highest level of maturity. The level where they are actually reproductive, they are fathers, they are giving life to others, they've reached the level of maturity that identifies them as "those who have known Him that is from the beginning".
Then he also, writing to this group of Christian, says, "I also write to some of you who are young men." And he's not again talking about physical young men, he's not talking about earthly age, but he's talking about a level of spiritual maturity. And he says, "You are young men because you have overcome the wicked one."
"And then I write unto to you who are babies," and here he uses a different word for children than in verse 12, he uses the word for infants, "and I write unto you who are spiritual babies because you have known the Father."
Verse 14 repeats, "I have written unto you fathers because you've known Him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one."
Now we see then that there are three levels of spiritual growth: there are spiritual babies, spiritual young men, and spiritual fathers. All of us, within the family of God, are set for the glory of God which process takes us through those three areas.
We start out as spiritual babies. And you'll notice at the end of verse 13 how they are identified, "You have known the Father." In other words, you now have a relationship with God; you're in the family. Like an infant who knows Ma-Ma and Da-Da and not a lot more, unable to make proper judgments, unable to be discerning, as Ephesians 4 says, "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine." So they are vulnerable, they are defenseless, they need protection and care and nurture.
And so it with spiritual infants, they know the Father. They have an intimate relationship with God. They are in the family. The have parental recognition but very little else. They are highly vulnerable to the encroachment of false teachings, false teachers, cults, and sins of all sorts. And they need insulation and protection and care.
That is why in Matthew chapter 18, the Lord says, "You better be careful how you receive one of these little ones who believe in Me. Because how you receive them is how you receive Me. You'd better not lead them into sin," He says, "or you'd be better off if a millstone were hanged around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. And if one of them goes astray," He says, "you go and get that one and bring it back." Why? Because little children have those tendencies.
So when we come to faith in Christ, we have parental recognition and we're like children. But there's no strength there and we tend to be vulnerable to everything around us. So we don't want to stay at that level.
Spiritual growth pulls us then to a second level, identified in both verse 13 and 14, called young men. And he says about young men, "I write unto you, young men," verse 14, "because you are strong." Now the mark of a young man is strength, virility. How did they get strong? "The Word of God abides in you."
Strength in spiritual growth comes from internally knowing, understanding, and holding to the truth of the Word of God. The Word is our food, is it not? The Word is that upon which we feast. "Man shall not live by bread alone," said Jesus, "but by every word proceeds out of the mouth of God." So the Word of God is our spiritual food that takes us from being an infant to being a young man. And a young man is identified as one who is strong because the Word of God abides in him.
And both verses tell us, "He has therefore overcome the wicked one." Now you can actually say as a Christian, that you reach a point in your life where you have overcome the wicked one. Now what does that mean? The wicked one is Satan. In what sense have you overcome Satan? In the sense that Satan is primarily disguised as an angel of light teaching false doctrine, teaching lies.
I told you last week about an encounter I had with one who was under the control of Satan. Who was teaching lies and teaching false doctrine. Now there were spiritual babes who were very vulnerable to him. When I confronted him, I was not vulnerable to him. I was not susceptible to his attacks of lies and false doctrine because I had reached the point in my own life of knowing what I believe out of the Word of God. And there's a certain strength that comes in that when you encounter the lies of the enemy. So being a spiritual young man is: understanding doctrine, understanding Biblical truth, coming to grips with what the Scripture teaches.
But there is even yet, another level of spiritual growth to which every believer should attain, and that is identified as being a father. Growing all the way up to being one who has known Him that is from the beginning. And it emphasizes there, the eternal God. Not just His fatherliness, not just the doctrine, but to actually come into an intimate communion with the living God Himself. The epitome of spiritual growth then, and carefully mark this in your mind, is to come to the point where you go beyond what it says on the page, to know and commune with the God who is revealed there.
And I can see these kind of patterns in the life of people as they progress in their spiritual development. Now we, who are redeemed and who have been forgiven for His namesake and are to live to His glory, are then to proceed on a path from knowing who He is to knowing what He says, to in a deep and profound way, communing with Him in a real and rich relationship. That's the process of spiritual growth.
Now the question is how do we get there? How do we move on that path? Let's look at 1 Peter 2 for a moment, and we're laying a foundation now, 1 Peter 2. It says, "Wherefore," verse 1, "laying aside," as if you were taking off old clothes, get rid of them, "all evil," the word is cocchia means evil, "and all galas, deceit that's used for fishhook," nothing is more deceitful than a fishhook, a fish thinks it's going to have a meal and turns out to be one, "so you lay aside all evil and you lay aside all deceitfulness, and all hypocrisy, and envy, and concellaliah," backbiting evil-talk about other people. In other words, you set aside your sin. Now if you're going to start with your spiritual growth pattern from being a baby to being a young man to being a father, the first thing that is necessary is to set aside the sin in your life.
Frankly, the churches are full of people who read the Bible. And maybe they read the Bible because they want God to think that they're devoted to Him. Maybe they read the Bible because they think it'll put them in a place where God'll have to bless them. Maybe they read the Bible because they want to impress their spouse or their children or their friends. Maybe they read the Bible because there's a certain sort of, I don't know, power that comes when you know the Bible and you can rattle off at a Bible study or answer questions and it gives you a sort of an ego trip. There are people who read the Bible, and maybe they have a sincere heart. They read it, but by not applying it and not dealing with the sin in their life, they train themselves to read Scripture without application. And that then, becomes the habit of their life. And the Scripture then, is thin and ineffective because it's not applied.
So to begin with, you lay aside the evil. It begins with a confession and a repentance from sin. And then verse 2 says, "As newborn babes desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow by it." The first thing, if you're going to grow by the Word, is you got to lay aside the evil. The second thing is there has to be consuming desire like that of a baby for milk. That's this point.
Now how strongly does a baby desire milk? Very strongly. In fact, a baby really doesn't desire anything else. Babies are only interested in the fact that you give them milk and deal with the consequences. That's the beginning and the end of the cycle of their life. They don't care ... there's never been a baby who woke up in the middle of the night screaming because there were yellow booties or her feet rather than blue. No, they don't care. They don't care about the curtains, or the carpet, or anything. They don't care about anything except that bottle. I mean that is the beginning and the end for them.
And that is what Peter has in mind when he says if you want to grow, the first thing is the setting aside of evil. The second thing is that consuming desire. And the point of it is, verse 3, "so be that you have tasted that the Lord is gracious," now listen to that. It isn't that in studying the Bible, you get a taste of information. It is that in studying the Scripture you get a taste of the Lord from the very beginning. The purpose of Bible study is not to gain information. The purpose of Bible study is to commune with the living Christ. I mean that's the bottom line. And anything short of that misses the point.
So that what you're doing then is: like a baby, you're desiring the milk. You want to be strong in the Word. But your real goal is to go beyond the Word to enter in to a communion that is profound and rich with the living God. That's the pattern. That's the essence of spiritual growth.
Now when you look at the Word, how do you do that? How can I so study the Word that I'm not just getting information? How can I so study the Word that I don't just say, "Well, I read my Bible today therefore I'm a spiritual hero and God has to bless me." How can I study the Word so that I plumb the depths of the God it reveals? 2 Corinthians chapter 3 will answer that question ... 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18.
Every time I sign my name, I suppose over the last 15 years, I've autographed a book or something, I always put this verse under it. People say, "Is that your life verse?" I say, "I don't have a life verse. This is just one that I think everybody ought to read and become familiar with. It's a powerful one." Now it says in verse 18, "But we all," and that means all believers, all of us as believers, "we all with an unveiled face."
Now earlier in this text, he's been talking about Moses. And he's been talking about the old covenant. And he's been talking about what it was like to live under the law. And the fact was that in the time of the law, the face was veiled in the sense that you couldn't fully see all that God had planned. Right? Even the Old Testament writers, for example, when they wrote about the Messiah, "Look," Peter says, "at their own writings to see what person and what manner of time they were writing about." In other words, they didn't fully understand everything of which they wrote.
Those who were under the old covenant had a certain veil over their face. There were certain things about the power of the Spirit that were unrevealed. There were certain things about, of course, the work of Jesus Christ that was as yet unrevealed. There were great mysteries of the Kingdom, Jesus call them. There were great mysteries of the new covenant, as Paul identifies them, that they were as yet unrevealed. And so there was, in a sense, a veil over the face of those under the old covenant.
"But as we have come into the new covenant," verse 16, "the veil is taken away." Now that we've come to the Lord, the veil is away. "And we," verse 18 says, "can look as we were looking in a clear glass. And we see there, the glory the Lord." Now, I want to just stop at that point.
Now, when you with the veil off your face by the work of Jesus Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit, lift up the pages of Scripture, you can understand fully the Scripture, right? There were many in the Old Testament time, and there are people still today, Jewish people who try to read the Old Testament without the New Testament, and they have a veil over their face, don't they? They can't understand it. They can't make sense of it. Because there's too much unrevealed, there's too much they haven't understood.
But we take the veil off and read the New Testament. And not only does the New Testament make sense, but so does the Old. But as we gaze at the Scripture, what is it we are looking at? Notice that in verse 18, "we are gazing as in a clear glass," not foggy but very clear, "and we are seeing the glory of the Lord." And beloved, may I suggest to you that that is that pursuit which must occupy your heart when you study the Scripture.
Spiritual growth, yes, it's a matter of desiring the Word. But when you look in the Word it is a matter of focusing on the glory of the Lord, not simply on the truth itself. Not the flat words on the page but what is it about the God behind the page that is being revealed. It's what was the cry of Paul's heart in Philippians 3:10, when he says, "That I may know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings, and the power of His resurrection," see. In other words, you might to say to Paul, "Hey, you know the Lord. You're saved. Hey, you know the Lord; you know doctrine." It wasn't enough for him to be saved and be in the family and be a spiritual baby. It wasn't enough for him to be a spiritual young man who knew doctrine. He wanted to see the glory of the self-revealing God in the pages of Scripture that he might become a spiritual father who really knew the One who was the eternal God.
So that to go to the Bible, with an almost sort of evangelical legalism, and just read it for the sake of reading, or just read it for the sake of knowing it, or just read it for the sake of being able to throw it around in groups that study the Bible, or read it to pacify a friend or a life partner or whatever, isn't the point. The point is to study the Scripture to understand the revelation of God that is in it. Now watch this.
"As you do that," back to verse 18, "as you focus on the glory of the Lord, clearly seeing it, you are transformed into the same," what? Image. Is the goal of a Christian to be like Christ? Is the goal of spiritual maturity to come to Christ's likeness? Obviously it is because 1 John 3:2 say, "When we shall Him, we shall," what? "Be like Him." And obviously, "We are redeemed," Romans 8