Series: A Church on the Rocks

I Corinthians 3:1-4

“It’s Time to Grow Up”

Introduction:  There were two boys in grade school who use to run around the playground and play all the time.  They laughed constantly and consistently.  Everything was funny.  They repeated this jovial experience all the way to the 7^th grade.  However, one day in the 8^th grade, one of the boys was looking at a particular 8^th grade girl and his friend saw him in the hall and yelled “fresh cut” and his hit him in the back of the head and ran.  In the meantime, his friend, frustrated and fumed with anger, with the little 8^th grade girl in his peripheral vision, yelled out to his friend as he ran…GROW UP!  This is what I interpret Paul to be trying to say to the Corinthian Christians in his letter to them…GROW UP!  The purpose of this sermon today is to no less that the Apostle Paul was trying to communicate to the Corinthian Christians…GROW UP!  The church was on the rocks due to the lack of spiritual maturation of the believers.  Let’s take a look at why Paul could have felt this way.

I.                   Your Demeanor (1)

·        The Apostle Paul uses words like—“brethren” and “speak”.  The word brethren means a fellow believer, brother.  Even though they were not brothers through blood, they were brothers through “THE BLOOD”.

·        The word “speak” literally means to use words in order to declare one’s mind and disclose one’s thoughts.”

·        What their demeanor was not – Spiritual – men who walk so as to please God.  “The spiritual state of soul is normal for the believer, but to this state all believers do not attain, nor when it is attained is it always maintained.”  To be spiritual is to manifest the fruit of the spirit.  The spiritual state reached by diligence in the Word of God and in prayer, it is maintained by obedience and self-judgment. 

·        Carnal – signifies having the nature of flesh; human with added idea of weakness as to spiritual warfare.  Christians were doing & behaving like non-Christians.  You really could  not tell them apart. (This is why we must “let the wheat and the tares grow together…”)

II.                Your Diet (2)

·        Milk – metaphorically, of rudimentary spiritual teaching, or less difficult Christian truths.

·        Cp. Hebrews 5:12-13, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God’s word.  You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on mild is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child."

·        Meat – solid food;

·        for hitherto ye were not able to bear it;
they could not receive, relish, and digest it; it was too strong meat for them, they being weak in faith, and but babes in Christ; wherefore he prudently adapted things to their capacities.

·        neither yet now are ye able; which carries in it a charge of dullness and negligence, that they had been so long learning, and were improved no more in the knowledge of the truth; were as yet only in the alphabet of the Gospel, and needed to be afresh instructed in the first principles of the oracles of God; for anything beyond these was too high for them.

III.             Your Deficiencies (3-4)

·        Your deficiencies are manifested in your divisions & quarreling. (concerned more with personalities than preaching; more about style than substance)

Conclusion: Milk – born again; meat – living victoriously;

Milk – believing in the resurrection, living in the power of it.

(illustr.- get a baby’s milk bottle and a sandwich/hamburger)

Conclusion

·        Though many of us have seen pictures of a huge eagle's nest high in the branches of a tree or in the crag of a cliff, few of us have gotten a glimpse inside. When a mother eagle builds her nest she starts with thorns, broken branches, sharp rocks, and a number of other items that seem entirely unsuitable for the project. But then she lines the nest with a thick padding of wool, feathers, and fur from animals she has killed, making it soft and comfortable for the eggs. By the time the growing birds reach flying age, the comfort of the nest and the luxury of free meals make them quite reluctant to leave. That's when the mother eagle begins "stirring up the nest." With her strong talons she begins pulling up the thick carpet of fur and feathers, bringing the sharp rocks and branches to the surface. As more of the bedding gets plucked up, the nest becomes more uncomfortable for the young eagles. Eventually, this and other urgings prompt the growing eagles to leave their once-comfortable abode and move on to more mature behavior.