A Call to Spiritual Maturity Pt2

The transcription discusses the four stages of spiritual maturity: I, not Christ; I and Christ; Christian, Christ and I; and Christ, not I. It explains that the first stage rejects salvation, while the next three stages involve belief in Christ and vary in the perspective of earning eternal life through good works. The final stage emphasizes that only Christ's sacrifice can bring salvation and that believers are always in God's presence. The transcription encourages continuous pursuit of God and acknowledges that growth in faith is a process. It also addresses a seeming contradiction between Paul's statement in Romans and James' statement in James, highlighting the need for understanding and growth in interpreting Scripture. Part two, a call to spiritual maturity. Last week we started into this. We talked about the four stages of spiritual maturity, I, not Christ, which refers to the unsaved person, I and Christ, the newly saved or very young believer, Christian, Christ and I, the growing Christian, Christ, not I, the mature Christian. And we discussed the difference between these categories, of course the first one being the one that says I don't need Christ at all, I'm not interested in salvation, I am good on my own, or the one that completely rejects God, or the one that just tries to get there on their own. And the next three, of course, are ones who just represent the beginning stages of belief in Christ. Just come to the Lord, or I'm just learning these different things about Scripture, but has the perspective of if I work hard enough, if I'm good enough, if I do good to others and keep the commandments and do what Scripture says, then one day God will reward me with eternal life. The third one being Christ and I has to do with I know my salvation comes with Christ, that I can't necessarily earn that preliminary salvation, but I must continue to work throughout my Christian life so that on that final day I will be able to have deserved eternal life. You see, even in stage two and three, it still has to do with what I do. It still has to do with my efforts, it still has to do with my perspective on who God is, what Christ had done on the cross and the fullness of His sacrifice for me. Now the fourth category is not I, but Christ. It's reaching that level of maturity and understanding that we realize that nothing we can do at all can merit bringing us before the Father. Christ has done it all. He paid the sacrifice. He shed His own blood. He poured His blood out over us. He poured His blood out on the temple in heaven as it tells us in Hebrews. He did everything. There is nothing that we can do to earn our place with God. The mature Christian reaches the place where they understand that it's not necessarily us taking God with us wherever we go, for Scripture does say, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. But it's the realization that wherever we go, we are in His presence. It's not just us taking Him into our environment, but it's the very environment of the throne room of God that no matter where we are, we are in His presence. It's the understanding that even when I fail, even when I, you know, my prayer every night is God may tomorrow I, whatever I do and say, may it glorify You and forgive me in what I do and say that may not. Because it happens. But the great thing through Christ is understanding that whenever that does happen, we don't have to go to the Father and plead and beg and hope that He will forgive us. It's simply coming to Him and saying, I did wrong, I'm sorry, thank You for Your forgiveness. Because Christ died for our forgiveness. He died for our sins, whether that's the sins that you commit before receiving Christ as your Lord and Savior, or it's the sins that you commit as you continue to grow and mature in the things of God. John says in 1 John, if we sin, if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Which to me says it's possible to get through the day completing God, or pleasing God completely and not having committed a sin in that day. Praise God for that. How is that possible? Because of Christ. Because when Christ looks at you, He doesn't see the things that you did during the day, He sees the blood that has already washed over that and forgiven it. Now obviously that doesn't give us excuse to sin and do whatever we want to. But what it does show us is that we are never separated from His presence. And that is why we can, as Hebrews 10 says, boldly approach the throne of grace. So in this call to spiritual maturity, it's an exhortation, it's a challenge to us that we continue to pursue God. I was praying before service and I said, Lord, we just want to seek you tonight. And the verse out of Jeremiah 29 verse 13 says, if you seek me, you'll find me. And I said, Lord, you are the worst at playing hide and seek. It's like when you're teaching children how to play hide and seek, you yell out, are you ready? Yeah, I'm in the bedroom under the bed. And they tell you where they are because they really don't get the concept of hide and seek. And God's the same way. He promises if we seek Him, we will find Him. He makes it easy for us. Here is where I am. Here's how you get to me. Let me show you. I remember being in university and going through some things and some struggles. And I went to the pastor of the church that I was attending at that time. And I said, I feel like I'm away from God. I feel like I'm not in His presence anymore. And I know that Scripture says He'll never leave me nor forsake me. So that can't be totally true. What am I missing? And the pastor said, sometimes when we find ourselves having worked to gratify our own desires, we look back and we go, wait, where'd you go, God? And he didn't go anywhere except that he might just be standing behind a pillar. This is how he explained it. He didn't leave us. He didn't separate from us. He didn't leave us to go off and fend for ourselves. He's still there. He said, all you need to do is say, God, please reveal Yourself to me. You see, most of the time we don't really give attention or realize to the fact that we are continually in God's presence. We tend to think, well, I'll go to church and then I'm in God's presence. Or I'll have my devotion time and there I'm in God's presence. Or well, if I sing the right song or if I have the right series of songs that, you know, the theme builds upon each other, you can see my playlist. It all goes in sequential order of topic because that's how I like it. But that doesn't mean that if I listen to these songs in this order, then I will be in God's presence. It means asleep, awake, here, there, wherever I go, I'm in God's presence because of Christ. And I'm kept in God's presence because of Christ. And that place of mature believers brings us into a place of not earning, not deserving, but simply receiving. Our desire for maturity should fuel our pursuit of God. Remember that I said last week that fluctuating between the levels is okay, but stagnating is not. In different things about Scripture and about God's character, we'll find ourselves possibly in two, three, and four all at the same time. And there's nothing wrong with that because our growth in God is a process. He says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. In other words, you have to grow in your faith. You grow in your understanding. And we cannot understand everything all at once. It would be an extreme overload to our finite ability to understand things if God was to open up everything of who He is all at the same time. So it's okay to go between the different levels. Don't go back to level one. If you're in level one, get into level two and stay there within two, three, and four. But within two, three, and four, it's all right to fluctuate. Just continue to pursue God. I want us to go to a portion of Scripture. And the reason that I picked this, I'm going to make a couple of disclaimers here. As we go through this topic today and next week, I want to make this disclaimer that my depiction of each of the stages is by no means meant to be all-encompassing or restrictive. To say, if you are this, then you're in this level. If you are this, then you're at this level. Because each stage is so vast and can cover years of Christian experience. So I want us to understand that this is not restrictive in nature, but it can encompass different things. This portion of Scripture that I chose, that we're going to look at, I chose it specifically because we can study this Scripture in a manner that gives us a perspective of each of the stages of two, three, and four. What a new believer would think of this Scripture, what a growing believer would think, and what a mature believer would think. Many, many years ago, there was a man who led a large number of people into error and into death because he told them, Scripture contradicts itself and the only way that you're going to understand it is if you listen to me. I'll explain it to you and then you'll understand it. Because if you read it alone, you won't. People see contradictions and he went through and picked some apparent contradictions in Scripture and proved it to them by highlighting these contradictions. I want to, tonight, bring up an apparent contradiction, but not from the standpoint of saying, I'll explain it to you and don't listen to anybody else. Take it for yourself and ask the Holy Spirit to give you understanding. The thing is that God designed and the Holy Spirit inspired both of these writers and he made sure that when the council got together to choose which letters and which writings of which people made it into the canon of Scripture, God chose those and led that group of individuals to choose what he wanted to be in what we would know as the Bible. So if it was God's design and the Holy Spirit's inspiration to make sure that both of these writers were in Scripture, then is there a contradiction? No. What there is, is a lack of understanding that we need to grow in. Just because we don't understand something in Scripture doesn't make it wrong. It makes us ignorant. We're simply ignorant. Not ignorant in the ugly way that people use the word. Ignorant means lacking knowledge. And when you are ignorant in Scripture, then it's really easy to misunderstand things. But that doesn't make Scripture wrong. That makes your need for understanding greater. So Paul says in Romans chapter 3, verse 28, Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Yet in James chapter 2, verse 24, it says, You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. So which is it? Is Paul correcting James? Was James correcting Paul? Perhaps both of them were wrong. If they were wrong, then all of this is wrong. And we are messed up. But they're both right, and that's what I want to show us over these next two weeks. So open your Bibles to James chapter 2. Try that again. Open your Bibles to James chapter 2. Thank you. That's better. See, I waited to say the reference and caught you off guard. We're going to read verse 14 to verse 26. Father, by Your Holy Spirit, give us understanding that no matter at what stage we are in our walk with You, that Your Holy Spirit would enlighten us tonight to understand what Your Word says. Though it could appear to be a complicated section of Scripture, when Your Spirit illuminates our understanding, it becomes so easy to grasp, and so easy to understand, and so easy to apply in our lives. Father, be glorified in Jesus' name, Amen. Verse 14, What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, Depart in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works. Show me Your faith without Your works, and I will show You my faith by my works. You believe there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac, his son, on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. Do you see, then, that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone? Likewise was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. The unsaved person would approach this passage or approach life in general and conclude that if they are a good enough person, treating others well, being kind, not breaking the law. I've had this conversation with people who are not believers, asking them, well, how do you get to heaven? Well, you know, you just have to be a good person, and, you know, take so-and-so, a friend of his who is incredibly immoral in general, well, he's a good person, and he treats people all right, but, I mean, he's no closer to heaven than any other unbeliever. I know the guy. But my friend that I was talking to, his measure of salvation, or his measure to attain heaven was completely works-based. You just have to be a good person. So the unsaved person would extrapolate from this section of Scripture that faith is not enough, that you must have works in order to earn righteousness and in order to earn eternal life. Now the young believer would read verse 21 and 22, was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works, faith was made perfect? Okay, the young believer would say, salvation does come through Christ. We got that. I understand that. Salvation through Christ alone. But I have to be good enough to earn it. Because after all, Abraham did something. Abraham sacrificed, or was willing to sacrifice his son, and therefore, God said, okay, you are now justified. So it was through Abraham's actions that he was justified. So although salvation comes through Christ, I understand that I must be still a good person obeying the law, keeping the Ten Commandments, earning this place in Christ. I have a neighbor that I've talked about before. Richard knows him. He always says it's hard to be a Christian. Well, of course it's hard to be a Christian when you're trying to earn it. When you're in this place of just understanding salvation through Christ, but also feeling like you have to be good enough. You know that we can never be good enough. It's impossible for us to be good enough because that amount of good does not reside in us. We are not capable of it. We are not born with it. It is not innate in our nature. Our innate nature is sin. Our innate nature is to be an enemy of God. It is not born within us to please God. That has to be produced in us through faith in Jesus Christ. And so the new believer will read this and be validated in their thinking that they need to work. Abraham worked, so we must work. Abraham was not justified until he acted, but that's not what James is talking about. The third, the growing and maturing Christian, would come to verse 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God. The growing Christian finds themselves in the place of asking questions and searching out the answers, where in times of reading Scripture they go, wait, why is that there? God, why did you put that verse there? What does that verse have to do with everything that is around it? I brought this up as we were going through Hebrews and in Hebrews 4, I know, we've been going through Hebrews all year. I still got like five more messages from Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12 says, For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and the joints of marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intent of the heart and there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. The writer of Hebrews puts that statement there right after talking about those who did not get to enter the promised land because of disobedience and telling us that we need to come boldly before the throne of God when we need help. God, why, oh why, did you put that there? And what does it have to do one with the other? You see, a mature Christian will, or a growing Christian will reach that place where they're not just reading what is there, disconnected from the rest of Scripture. The growing believer will say, what does this have to do with the rest of Scripture? You do know that there is one theme that runs throughout the whole Bible from the first verse in Genesis to the last verse in Revelation and it is Jesus. Everything is connected. It's all connected and it's amazing that over the many centuries that Scripture was written that that theme held true, which obviously goes to show us that the Holy Spirit was involved from the beginning until the end. The growing Christian studies the Word, compares Scriptures, that although James was saying that Abraham was justified by words and Paul says that Abraham was justified by faith, it's necessary to ask which came first and what does it all mean? We can find the answer to that in Genesis chapter 15 verse 6. Abraham is accredited righteousness. That is where it says, and Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Genesis 15. It's not until Genesis 22 where Abraham puts Isaac on the altar and God says, that yells down from heaven, stop Abraham. Now I know that you fear God, as if God didn't know. I mean really. If you read a verse and it says that God said, now I know, don't trip up on that. God knew. What God is saying is, Abraham, now it is shown, I try not to give away my ending here, now it is shown that you fear God. It's really easy to get confined to the definitions of the words in Scripture that we have in our own language, apart from the original language that it was written in. It is also necessary to ask the Holy Spirit because just like in our languages where one word can mean a multitude of different things, Adriana was watching a video the other day on the word, which word was it, pasar in Spanish has 64 different uses. The word pasar in Spanish has 64 different uses. So if it's hard enough to understand the word pasar, it can be pretty difficult even in the original language to extrapolate what God is saying by doing it at face value without the illumination of the Holy Spirit. I can look up words as I'm preparing my sermons. I look up words in their original and I see what the word means and you can come to a word where the list of possible uses or the list of actual uses and what they mean in that instance, in that context, in that portion of Scripture is like this long on the page. And there's six or seven different ways that that word is used. So when we come to a word, especially the big words, the big words like justified, Paul uses the word justified, James uses the word justified. Are they using the same word? Are they using it in the same context? Are they using it in the same meaning? You see, when we get to the place where we ask these questions, we know that we are beginning to search out Scripture for the point of maturity and understanding. God said, now I know you fear God. There was 30 years, 30 years passed between Genesis 15 and Genesis 22. So for 30 years, was Abraham accredited righteousness or not? It says in 15 that he was righteous, but in 30, now I know that you fear God. So what is James saying when he says, show me that Abraham was justified? We begin to get an idea that the point James is making leads more to verse 18, show me your faith without your works and I'll show you my faith by my works. Hebrews 11, verse 17 through 19 says, by faith Abraham, when he was tested. You see, he was able to confess, I believe God. But then the testing came to put that faith to a trial. When he was tested, he offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promise offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called. Concluding, I love this use of this word, concluding. In some translations it says reasoning. And there are many that would teach that faith and reason are two different things, that they are diametrically opposed. If you look at Scripture and try to reason it, you're not going to get there. You have to receive it by faith, but you know there is an aspect of faith that God desires for us not to be stupid. He desires for us to think, but not with human understanding, but with the wisdom and revelation that comes through the Holy Spirit. You see, Abraham was able to reason that God would give him Isaac back from the dead. He reasoned that he would sacrifice Isaac. He went through the whole process in his mind. He had the knife raised. He was ready to do it because he had come to the certainty in his heart that because God promised, and God would fulfill His promise, that even if he killed Isaac, that God was able to bring him back from the dead. My goodness, how do you get there without Scripture? How do you get there being the first to interact with God in this manner? How do you understand that if it wasn't for the Holy Spirit? Abraham believed God, therefore he was righteous. In other words, Abraham had faith. But when his faith was tested, he passed the test because, as James says, he put work to his faith. Therefore there is no contradiction between Paul and James because Paul is talking about a justification that makes a person righteous. That's Genesis 15. James is talking about a justification that is an example or a proof of your faith. James is saying, you say you have faith, back it up. You can't be words only. In fact, previously in the chapter he says, let us be doers of the word and not hearers only. Thankfully I'm out of time because I really want to keep going and give you the rest of it, but that's next week when we talk about the mature believer and we really see how all of this fits together. How Paul and James complement each other. How Paul and James are actually saying very similar things. So let's stand together. You see, the growing believer still finds themselves, perhaps with the understanding of this section of Scripture, that though salvation is by grace and though it is all Christ, I have to live in such a way that I'm deserving of the gift of salvation. Not earning, but deserving. But it still works. It's still our own effort and it still puts a whole lot of weight on us. A weight that Christ already took to the cross and bore on His own shoulders and in His own body so that we could come to the throne of God. Father, the longer we walk with You, God, sometimes it seems like You reveal how much we still don't understand. I pray for everyone in this room, everyone that's a part of CCI Fellowship, that our desire, no matter at what point in our walk with You that we are, may our wholehearted desire be to know You more and to understand just how incredible and how complete the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was to bring us to You unrestricted, unhindered, not kept at an arm's distance, but invited, Lord God, to live every day, every moment in constant communication and fellowship with You. That we would never have to leave Your throne room. That we would never have to leave Your presence. God may we grow and mature that it might not be said of us as it was said of the Hebrews that by now they should be teachers, but they're still drinking milk. Father, may we grow. May we consume the meat of the Word. May we understand it and may we depend, Lord God, fully and completely on the task that You have given the Holy Spirit to teach us, to reveal things to us. That we would grow to know the voice of the Spirit inside of us. That we would grow to receive, Lord God, wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of You. I bless Your people, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen.