Spiritually Stagnant

0:04My next-door neighbors are moving out, so if anybody wants to be neighbors to the pastor, you're welcome to. And I won't take offense if none of you jump at that offer, but they're moving out. And in their backyard, they had a pool that they bought probably 6 months ago in the midst of the stretch of 100 and ungodly degrees of weather and everything else. So they bought this pool, and it's one of those kind of above-ground pools, and they have that. They're moving out and that, for some reason, is still in their backyard.

0:29But what happened is, during the summer, they had the pump running and the water was fresh and it looked appealing and everything else. But he went to go empty his pool and he emptied it, but the problem is he emptied it most of the way. So he left about a foot of water in the bottom of this pool. And that water is no longer moving around. It's no longer being filtered.

0:53It's no longer being freshened up by the pump and everything else. So what has happened to that water? Well, that water has become stagnant. And if you know anything about stagnant water in Texas, you know that that is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. So that's my backyard right now.

1:09My boys play baseball in our backyard, wiffle ball in our backyard, and they had hit some balls over there, so I got up on a stool to kind of peer over to see, you know, where they were and if we could get them, and there was that pool. And it was just no longer appealing in any way, shape, or form. It's brown, it's murky, it is stagnant. Stagnant water is not anything that anybody looks at and says, that looks appealing. I would love some stagnant water in my life right about now.

1:36The thing about stagnant water though is it's not just that it's totally still. There's activity in stagnant water, but it's not any activity that we want. There are things that breed in stagnant water; there are mosquitoes that feed in stagnant water; there are all kinds of germs and amoebas and everything else that are existent in stagnant water. And so it's not that stagnant water is absence of activity, it's just absence of the right kind of activity. It's not full of the type of activity that we would want.

2:04Stagnant water is never good, but this morning I want us to understand and realize that stagnant faith is never good either. See, Paul's writing to the Corinthians here, and one of the things that was threatening the Corinthians that we're going to discover this morning is that they were facing the dangers of having a stagnant walk with Christ, a stagnant faith. Oh, there was activity, but it wasn't the right kind of activity. And what we're going to see in 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 here is that spiritual stagnation is a threat. And it's not just a threat to the Christian, it's a threat to the church as a whole.

2:41Our big idea this morning is that spiritual stagnation costs the Christian and the church. And both of those things are important for us to see. That our walk with Christ and whether or not we're growing as a Christian, whether or not we're excelling in our pursuit of Christlikeness, that doesn't just have a bearing on you and your relationship individually with Christ, that has a bearing on the overall health of the body of Christ, your brothers and sisters in this room. And so Paul addresses them in 1 Corinthians 3:1. Paul writes this, he says, but I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

3:19Before this, he had talked about interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And Paul here is saying, I was not able to, I could not address you as spiritual people. The word address there, it means to speak. I couldn't speak to you the way that I wanted to be able to speak to you about the things I wanted to speak to you about. I couldn't interpret spiritual things to spiritual people because you were acting as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

3:47Did you ever, growing up, have one of your parents say— and my dad's in the room so I can attest to this— the painful statement that your parents made? They would say something like this; let me see if you can finish it for me: I'm not mad, I'm just— you see, man, we are better off because our parents told us that, aren't we? Yeah, yeah. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Man, that was the worst thing.

4:13It's like, please be mad at me. I don't want to disappoint you. That's what I think I hear Paul saying to the Corinthian church. I'm not mad, y'all, because he would have said y'all. I'm just disappointed.

4:28I can't, I can't speak to you the way that I want to speak to you. I can't speak to you about the things that I have for you. Because why? Because you're people of the flesh, you're infants in Christ. Again, he's just come off of this glorious section where he's talking about people who are spiritual.

4:43And who is the spiritual person? The spiritual person is the person that has the Spirit, right? So it's not this uber-Christian, it's not this separate class that you have to get to by taking this class or going to seminary or anything like that. A spiritual person is somebody who has the Spirit and then shows in the way that they're living their life that they have the Spirit. And so Paul's just come off this section saying, hey, isn't it a great thing when we can interpret as apostles spiritual truths to those who have the Spirit and they receive them and they live them out?

5:14But now he says to the Corinthians, but I can't address you as spiritual. I can't speak to you that way. Because you, church there, are acting more like those that are in the flesh than you are those that have the Spirit. In other words, you've got a stagnated spirituality. And that remains as much a risk to the Christian today as it did in Paul's day.

5:40And so this verse should challenge us as believers to examine our own lives and to prompt us to look for the right kind of growth in our lives. Again, stagnant water is not totally devoid of activity. It's just devoid of the activity that we want to see. And so as Christians, we need to look at our lives and make sure that the activity that we see in our lives is truly activity that would point to the signs of life within us, that we have the Spirit within us. Point number 1 this week is this.

6:09If you'll write it down this way, look for signs of life in your walk with Christ. Look for signs of life. And I want to qualify that, if I can, without making this point too wordy, the right kind of life. Life that is produced by the Spirit in your life. Look for signs of life in your walk with Christ.

6:28There's 2 words that Paul uses in verse 1 here to describe the people in Corinth. The first word is spiritual people. Spiritual people. It's from the Greek where we get the word Holy Spirit. Pneumatikos is the word there.

6:43And this is the person that's contrasted back in chapter 2, verses 14 through 16, with the natural person. So the spiritual person is the spiritual person because they have the Spirit of God dwelling within them. That's what makes them the spiritual person. It's not, again, that they're smarter than the rest. It's not that they've matriculated further in their understanding of the Bible than the rest.

7:05It's that they are those that have the Spirit of God dwelling within them, and the Spirit of God dwelling within them is doing the work of God with the Word of God, in their lives. That's the first group that Paul identifies here. I wanted to address you as spiritual person— people. And yet he says, but I was unable to. Because why?

7:28Because you're acting as mere humans. That's the second type of person that Paul identifies in verse 1. So you've got the spiritual person and you've got the fleshly people here. People of the flesh. People that are humanish.

7:42If I can put it that way. But this is interesting because Paul addresses them as what? First, as brothers. So Paul's writing to a group of Christians, at least professing believers here. The word brothers here would have incorporated brothers and sisters and he's writing and this is a term that he uses to refer to those that are believers.

8:03And so Paul's assuming that, yes, you are believers but brothers, you're not behaving in a way that would indicate that you have the Spirit of God. Rather, What I see in you is far more of the flesh. What I see in you is far more of the humanishness of your life. There's one Greek dictionary that this word, of the flesh, describes it as, it pertains to being human at a disappointing level. I appreciated that.

8:29Being human at a disappointing level. So this is not just like, well, all of us are human beings. Yes, we all are human beings and that doesn't change when you get saved; you are still a human being. So when Paul says people of the flesh, he's not just talking about the physical clothing of your body. He's talking about it in a negative sense, that you're behaving in a worldly fashion.

8:48You're behaving as those that don't have the Spirit of God. It seems that in the way that you're living, that no one would really be able to tell that you are a follower of Christ. At best, Paul says, it seems like you're infants in Christ. That you are, you've made no progress. That if someone were to look at your life and examine your life, that they would conclude, again, at best, that you must be a new believer.

9:13But wait a minute, we've talked about this. Paul planted this church, Apollos came along, in fact our memory verse says that Apollos was watering, so Apollos had a ministry with this church. And then they had earlier, some of them claimed to be of Cephas, so it seems that even Peter had been there at some point in time and been ministering to this church. So these guys had heavy hitters that were coming in and teaching them and feeding them and helping them as this church is getting up and going. And so it's not that they lacked as far as information.

9:47They didn't lack the teaching. And I would say that probably many of them were tracking with a lot of the teaching. And that's why they were saying, well, I like Apollos, I like his style. I like Cephas, I like his style. Well, Paul really kind of appeals to me over here.

10:02And so what this tells me then is what Paul is seeing in them is not an intellectual deficiency. And what that also tells me is that our walk with Christ, in our understanding of the gospel, in the wisdom of God, is more than intellectual assent. So your relationship with Christ has to go beyond the, the walls of your mind. It can't just be that you intellectually agree with the gospel. It can't just be that you intellectually say, yes, I get it, I'm a sinner and Jesus died on the cross for my sins almost 2,000 years ago and rose again.

10:33I intellectually comprehend that and I believe it. It's more than that. It's, it's an intellectual assent that is rooted in a life that has been transformed by the Spirit of God. And Paul's saying, I'm not seeing the evidence in your life to show that what you have is more than just an intellectual understanding of the gospel and of Christ. And so Paul writes to them and he says, I couldn't address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

11:07In 2 Timothy 1:12, Paul, writing to his young protégé there, he says, you know what, Timothy? I'm suffering right now but I'm not ashamed. And then he says this: For I know whom I've believed. I love that because that's kind of what we're talking about here. Paul's confidence to Timothy, as Paul is suffering for his faith, as Paul is in jail, as Paul is going through everything that he went through, you know, as we read through 2 Corinthians 11 and we read about the beatings and the shipwreck and the whipping and everything that Paul endured as an apostle, then at the end, Paul tells Timothy towards the end of his life, Timothy, I'm not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed.

11:51Paul's confidence, in other words, was the relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. It wasn't simply the doctrine. He doesn't say, Timothy, I'm not ashamed because I know what I believe. I know that I conceptually understand the gospel and understand eternity and think about heaven and know that Jesus died for my sins and rose again. But rather, Paul anchors his confidence to the young Timothy in, in towards the end of his life.

12:15And after having lived this life where he has been faithfully suffering for Christ, he says to Timothy, Timothy, my confidence is in the fact that I know Jesus. I've got a relationship with Jesus. And so church, it's good for us to read what Paul's writing here and saying, if I look at my life, do I see evidence of the Spirit in my life? Do I see signs of life? Do I see signs of a vibrant walk with Christ?

12:46Do I see signs that my life is built on a confidence in the person of Jesus and not just what I know about Jesus. Because I can know plenty about Jesus, but then live a life that is still immersed in this world. My mind can know about Jesus and my walk can stagnate, in other words. And so we should, as Christians, when we read something like this, have an opportunity to stop and give pause and say, okay, Paul was saying, I want to write to you as spiritual people, but I'm just not seeing much of the Spirit in your life. And we should be willing to stop and push back and say, okay, God, am I seeing much of the Spirit in my life?

13:25Am I seeing the signs of life? Am I seeing signs of progression? What are some of these signs of life? This is not an exhaustive list and it's not inspired. This is just some suggestions of what I'm trying to communicate here, what this would look like.

13:40The signs of life. Well, is it, Pastor, are you saying that we should be sinless? No, not that you should be sinless, but as our old pastor in California used to say, not that you're sinless, but you sin less. That's progressive sanctification; that's growing in Christ's likeness; that's signs of life. Man, I'm seeing that I don't have the same sins that I originally had; I don't struggle with the same things; I'm growing; I'm putting sin off in my life.

14:05Again, not that you're sinless; nobody's going to be sinless this side of eternity. But that you are battling and seeing victory over sin in your life. Or another sign of life might be a change in your affections. You begin to love more of the things that Christ loves. You begin to desire more of what honors Christ and exalts Christ.

14:24And to look at your life and say, okay, this thing here, it doesn't honor Christ and so I don't want this. So a change in affections. Another sign of life might be maintaining an eternal perspective. I was talking with somebody yesterday as we were passing out candy and sitting on my driveway with them and just about kind of the state of the world right now. What's going on with the cost of diesel?

14:46What's going on with AI? What's going to happen with the election season? What's going to happen? And it's enough to tie anyone up in knots and paralyze you with anxiety and fear. But one of the signs of life for a Christian is to say, but I know the God of Daniel chapter 2.

15:01I know the God that raises kings and takes them out. I know that the God of Revelation chapter 1, I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I know that God, and so my confidence is in him, and so I'm going to maintain an eternal perspective. Another sign of life in your life is, again, just less fear and more trust. You don't find that you're as paralyzed anymore by the things that you once were afraid of, the things that once kept you up at night.

15:27For an extra hour.

15:30Another sign of life in your heart might be more of a concern for the lost. That's a push that we're wanting to make more of as a church right now. It's just to realize we are in an area that God is bringing people here that need the gospel. So signs of life in our lives as individual believers and also as a church would be a concern for the lost. Another sign of life might be more of a hunger for the word.

15:53And for being around God's people. You start to say, man, I want to be in the word of God. It's not as much of a burden anymore for me. I'm willing to carve out the time to be in his word because I want to hear from him. Because my walk is not just knowledge, it's a relationship.

16:07It's with him. Is there evidence? Are y'all seeing this? Is there evidence of your continued growth? Peter puts it this way.

16:15He kind of communicates the same concept that there should be some some growth here. Notice what he says in 2 Peter 1:5-7. Peter says, for this very reason, make every effort to, notice this, supplement your faith. So Peter's not suggesting that your faith is not able to fully save you, okay? Let me make that clear.

16:35And I'm not suggesting that either this morning. So what I'm not saying is you need to finish your salvation by works. That's not it, that's Galatians. Paul says, hey, Foolish Galatians, you who were begun by the Spirit, are you now seeking to be perfected by the flesh? He says, that's nonsense.

16:50And that's, that's not what I'm up here to say this morning, and that's not what Peter means here. But he's rather saying, supplement, bring these things alongside your faith. Your faith is that which saves you, but if you're truly in Christ, if you have this faith, these things should be accompanying your faith. You should see signs of these things in your life, and these things are what? Well, supplement your faith with virtue, And virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

17:21Now notice what Peter says next here. He says, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, okay, so they're ours and we see signs of life, we see that these things are increasing in our life, they keep you from becoming ineffective or unfruitful. If I can substitute a word, stagnant. 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.

17:51Therefore, Peter continues, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and 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 Jesus Christ. Okay, that last line there, if you practice these things, in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Again, Peter's not suggesting that you work your way into salvation, but salvation works in your life, okay? There's going to be transformation such that if you're saved, if you truly are a spiritual person who has the Spirit, Peter's saying these things are gonna come alongside your faith, and when you see these things, it's a blessing, it's a joy for you in Christ, 'Cause you can see these signs of life and it can confirm you're standing before the Lord.

18:44You see signs of life that wouldn't be there if you didn't have the Spirit, in other words. And through that, there's richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That Christianity is not like a, hey, I'm saved and now I'm just gonna stay where I'm at and wait until Christ comes back and gets me. But when you're saved, God will save you where you are, but not leave you where you are. Because he's going to give you the Spirit, and then the Spirit is going to make you more and more like Jesus until God leads you all the way into the presence of Christ.

19:15And so look for signs of life in your walk with Christ, as painful as passages like this can be from time to time, because it's like, oh man, this is a gut check for me. And it is, it's a gut check for me, it's a gut check for you, it's a gut check for all of us to stop and say, okay, am I seeing signs of life? We should be thankful for passages like this because they challenge us to make sure that we are not growing stagnant in our relationship with Christ. And that's a reminder all of us need because, again, we can be busy with a lot of activity that's not a healthy activity. Just like stagnant water can have a lot of activity in it but it's not the right kind of activity.

19:55We want the right kind of activity; we want signs of life that is wrought by the Spirit within us. Paul's not seeing this in the Corinthian church here and it's inhibiting him. It's inhibiting his ministry amongst them. Brothers, I wanted to be able to address you. I wanted to speak to you about these spiritual matters, but I was unable to.

20:10So he goes on, he says, I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you're not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. So this, for Paul, was more of a concern, but I believe now we're beginning to see that this was This is a warning that he's writing to the Corinthian believers. Again, he's still addressing them; he addressed them as brothers. But I do believe that there's a new thought that he's introducing here and that is this: it's not just that they were forfeiting the deeper riches of teaching that maybe Paul could have had for them to develop more of, this is what the wisdom of God looks like living it out in your life.

20:47It's not just that, but it was as though they were acting as though they didn't even belong to Christ in the first place. And the danger is, if that persists, what might be found in some of them, at least, in the end is that they never really did belong to Christ.

21:05At best, they needed the basics and that's what Paul means when he says, I fed you with milk. They needed to come back to the essentials, the basics of the gospel, and be called to live the life that they profess that they should be living. Spiritual stagnation is a threat no matter what angle you choose to look at it from. If we look at our lives and we find more in common with the world than the word, we have cause to be concerned. And that concern should not cause us to say, oh well, I must thereby conclude that I'm not saved.

21:32But it should cause us to at least go back to the gospel again. To say, okay, let me remind myself of what I profess to believe in, to make sure that we truly have surrendered our lives to Christ.

21:44We should heed Paul's warning as well, just as he was warning the Corinthians. So our second point is this: I want you to recognize your flesh as the threat that it is. I want you to recognize your flesh as the threat that it is. And again, not your physical body, but flesh as in the worldliness that still clings. We're not going to be done with the flesh until we're with Christ.

22:05And so this message, what I'm preaching to you, is not that if you have any sin, you must not be saved. Okay? That is not what I'm saying. Because that would mean every single one of us in this room, starting with the one behind the pulpit, would not be saved. That's not it.

22:17Because this flesh is always going to be with us. But as believers, like we talked about just again in point number 1, we should be seeing signs of life. So if there is no sign of life, okay, that's where we need to start really beginning to go back to the gospel and making sure that we understand the gospel and that our faith truly is in Christ.

22:37And so Paul says, I fed you with milk, not solid food. In other words, the word fed there is the word that means I made you drink milk. The image is of a nursing infant and milk is metaphorical here for the basics of the faith. See, Paul expected progress by now with them that he wasn't seeing. He was expecting signs of life that wasn't present.

22:59Hebrews 5:12 says this, for though by this time, You ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. So there the writer of Hebrews is saying something very similar to that audience. Hey, by this point in time in your walk, you should be further along than you are, but you're not.

23:20And so I need to come back to the basics. I need to come back to milk. I need to come back to the gospel with you and make sure that we understand what it is that you are professing to have believed in, in the first place. But there's expected growth there. Peter picks up on the word, the concept of milk as well.

23:35He says this in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 2, like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk. Notice here that by it you may, what? Grow up into Christ. So there even Peter is saying milk is good for a, a young Christian, a new believer, but it's meant to then cause us to grow.

23:58Paul says, I had to feed you this milk because you were still acting as infants in Christ. I had to go back to the basics and not be able to give you the solid food; the food that is meant for the mature.

24:15Imagine for just a second seeing a 7-year-old with a bottle.

24:21It would seem out of place, right? Imagine the 7-year-old has the bottle because the 7-year-old just never developed a taste for solid food.

24:33Mom and dad were there and saying, hey, here, you should eat this. Here's mac and cheese, here's mashed potatoes, here's, you know, whatever the peas are in the jar that they feed babies as they're first getting started, the transition foods and everything else like that. And mom and dad were putting it, but this child, up until they're 7, is just like, I don't want it. I don't want it, I don't want it.

24:53And then instead, they're just having the bottle. You would look at that, you wouldn't just conclude, well, you know, different strokes for different folks. You would say, man, there's something wrong there. And that's what we should feel with what Paul's talking about with the Corinthians.

25:11You shouldn't be on milk anymore at this point. You know, you've had Paul in, you've had Apollos in, you've had probably Peter in at this point. You guys should be further along than where you're at, and so I'm having to come back and feed you the milk. Why? Because, again, what I'm seeing in you is I'm not seeing evidence of the Spirit, I'm seeing evidence of the flesh.

25:33The milk should create a hunger for more and more, a desire for more and more, a desire to grow, and it's not that you ever leave the milk of the gospel behind, but the milk is there to supplement now the growth in saying, okay, what does it look like now? I've got the gospel, but now how do I live out the wisdom of the gospel. Think as Paul wrote about the different things that he wrote to the Ephesians or to the Colossians and about how he's writing about setting your mind on the things above, not on the things of the earth and putting off these things and putting on Christ-likeness. And how in Ephesians, Paul's talking about the blessings, the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ in Ephesians chapter 1. That's some of the example of what solid food is.

26:08And Paul's like, I can't get there with you Corinthians where you're at right now. I have to go back to reminding you, hey, to come to faith in Christ is to die to the world. It's to die to the old self. It's to put to death the flesh and surrender to Christ as your Savior and Lord. And if you have the Spirit, then you should be walking by the Spirit now.

26:31So there should be a transformation. So Paul's saying, you were not ready for it. The word not ready is the same word that he says earlier, I was not able to. I was not able to address you as spiritual people. It's from the same word.

26:46They were not capable. It's not just that they were not ready, they weren't able to understand the things that Paul was wanting them to understand. Because why? Because they were still of the flesh. That's a bone-chilling statement that he makes.

26:59Even now, he says, you're still of the flesh. You were of the flesh when I was dealing with you when I was planting the church. You were of the flesh when I wrote my first letter to you. And now, even now, I still see that you are of the flesh. Still.

27:11Some of the things that probably evidenced that to Paul was the letter they wrote back to Paul. We know they wrote a letter back to him because he addresses that in 1 Corinthians 5. He says, now concerning the things of which you wrote to me. We know that also because of the report of Chloe's people, remember, from back in chapter 1, verse 11. That's one of the reasons why he knew of the divisions because Chloe's people had come to Paul and said, hey Paul, they're saying I'm of Paul, I'm of Cephas, I'm of And he knew this also because just the general reports of immorality that he received in 1 Corinthians 5.

27:38He's saying, look, it's evident that you are still in the flesh. Again, this charge should have sent chills down the spines of the Corinthians and even down our spines as well. The flesh in us, unchecked, is a threat. In Pauline writing here, and we read flesh and spirit and we kind of hear these things thrown around in the church, But we should understand that in Pauline writing, the flesh and the Spirit were never, ever, ever teammates, but always on opposite sides. For example, in Galatians 5:17, Paul says this: The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.

28:19These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. And so when Paul says you're still in the flesh, Again, that's not a great thing to hear from Paul. If you're a professing believer hearing somebody say, hey, you, you're living a life that's still in the flesh, that should be terrifying. Because that's never a good thing in Scripture, ever. Galatians 6:8, the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reach, or reap, eternal life.

28:57The flesh and the spirit, in other words, are not teammates. They're also not roommates. And so we can't live a life thinking to ourselves, well, it's okay if I've got a little bit of flesh in my life because after all, Pastor, you said nobody's ever going to be sinless. That's true.

29:15But as Christians, we have to have a healthy fear of the flesh. We need to see any evidence of the flesh that we become aware of and say, how can I get rid of it?

29:24It's not that you can be just at peace like 2 roommates that don't really like to hang out together. They're not really friends, but hey, he's got his half of the rent, I've got my half of the rent, and we're both under the same roof because it just works out. We just don't interfere with each other too much. That's not the relationship of the flesh and the Spirit. The flesh and the Spirit is you're roommates with your worst enemy.

29:44And you want that out.

29:47Trying to keep some flesh around along with the Spirit is like trying to domesticate a wild animal. It's like trying to play with a king cobra. It's like trying to have a tiger as a house cat. It's not going to go well.

30:02We need to be suspect of the flesh. We need to be fearful of the flesh. We need to be like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:27, I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching Christ to others, I myself should be disqualified. Qualified. Y'all, your flesh is not helping you grow in your walk with Christ at all.

30:23There's nothing inherent about your flesh, your worldliness, your fleshly passions, that are helping you grow in your walk with Christ at all. And so for the Christian, it's contingent upon our walk with Christ that we do battle against the flesh in our life. That we see the flesh as the threat that it is, and we do battle, we strive. We read this earlier in our scripture reading, but from Hebrews chapter 4, notice the words there, strive to enter the rest? Why do you and I have to strive as Christians to enter the rest?

30:53Because we have a flesh that wants to hold us back. We have the flesh, we have our sinful desires that want to get in the way of us growing in Christlikeness. Hebrews chapter 12, you know this passage probably, that we need to lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely so that we can run the endurance, run with endurance the race that is set before us. So the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, you've got something that's gonna try to slow you down, and that's the flesh. And so as Christians, we need to see the flesh as the threat it is and do all we can to put it off as we try to put on more Christ-likeness.

31:28Now, let me say this, all of this in place here, spiritual stagnation can happen to a believer, okay? And so it's not that if there's signs of spiritual stagnation in your life that I'm saying that you're not saved. That's not what my argument is this morning.

31:47Okay? It can happen. There can be seasons. There can be times where a believer really genuinely does need to go back to the gospel and be reminded of the gospel truths, be reminded that you have been set free from sin and you've been set free from slavery to sin, to live now in newness of life. That's why Paul still writes to them as brothers.

32:05But there's a difference between being at war with sin and living peaceably with it. The believer that is stagnating spiritually but still has a desire to war with the sin that's in their life, to be at war war with the flesh, to fight, that's one thing. There's another thing when somebody is spiritually stagnant and yet there's a peace about their condition. They're okay with it. This may be the person that knows that they're in unrepentant perpetual sin and rather than fighting it, rather than cutting off the hand and throwing it away from you, or gouging out the eye and throwing it far from you, instead you have a false balm for your soul that says, but when I was a 8, I prayed a prayer and I got baptized and so I'm okay.

32:57There are a lot of people that are going to be in hell who prayed a prayer and got baptized.

33:04Y'all, there's going to be a lot of seminary graduates in hell.

33:11And so spiritual stagnation is a threat because, yes, while it can happen in the life of a believer, it also can be a symptom of a much greater problem and that is, it could be a sign of an unconverted life.

33:26And so if there's not the signs of life, if there's not the growth, it could be that you are still of the flesh. And I think that's what Paul's warning the Corinthians are saying. Look, I have to treat you like you're in the flesh, and I'm hoping this is gonna be the wake-up call so that you start showing the signs of life that I trust you will if the Spirit truly resides in you. But listen, y'all, if you stay in the flesh and you don't show the signs of life, then it could be that your profession of faith is a in vain. And you say, is that really a thing?

33:55Yeah, 1 Corinthians 15:2. 1 Corinthians 15:2, Paul says, this is what I delivered to you as of first importance, lest you believed in vain. So there is such a thing as a false profession, as vain faith. And listen, y'all, again, this is why we need one another. This is why we need the church.

34:19Because we need brothers and sisters that can look into our lives and think to themselves and say to us, hopefully, you know what, brother or sister, I'm concerned because I would love to see you grow in the Spirit, but what I see is I see a lot of the flesh.

34:33We need brothers and sisters that will do Galatians 6 in our lives. Brothers, if any of you are caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore that person in a spirit of gentleness. We need the church to make sure that we're not drifting over to the flesh. We need one another. We need community with one another.

34:51Again, I'm not saying to you this morning, if you are somebody that's looking at your life and you see sin in your life, that you're not saved. That is not my message.

35:01But what I do want you to wrestle with this morning, if you are looking for signs of life and not seeing signs of life, then I want you to begin to investigate the question why.

35:15Why is there no life there? Do I desire life? Do I want to see growth? Do I want to show more signs of the Spirit in my life? Am I willing to do the hard work of going and getting a brother or sister in Christ and opening up with them and saying, guys, look, this is who I am and I need you to just know and this is where I am and I need your help because I want to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh.

35:39Or perhaps it's an opportunity for you to get to the place of going, maybe I never really truly have surrendered my life to Christ. And just like we read in Hebrews 4 earlier this morning, today's the day. Don't harden your hearts if you hear his voice. Repent and believe today.

35:57Recognize your flesh as the threat it is. But the big idea, remember, was that this is not just a threat to the Christian, it's a threat to the church too. And that's where I think we go next. Look at verses 3 and 4; Paul says this: While there's jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one of you says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not merely being human?

36:22Paul's evidence for the fleshly state of the Corinthians was that he looked at the body and saw through the body life that things were not good. There's jealousy, there's strife, There's division. And all of that kind of led Paul to this place of saying, okay, and that tells me that this body is more characterized by the flesh than it is by the Spirit. And so out of concern for that, he wrote to them as well that they should not only pursue Christlikeness because of the good of the individual and your walk with Christ, but also finally this morning, third point, pursue Christlikeness for the good of the body. This warning was not just to the individual, but also to the church.

36:58Because of the damage that our flesh can have, not just individually in our standing with the Lord, but also corporately in how we are doing and where we're at as a church. I want you for just a minute to compare and think about the relational impact of the vices and the positive, the fruit that are listed in these 2 lists. First is Galatians 5:19-21. Think about how many of these relate to personal relationships, okay? Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

37:40These are the works of the flesh. Do you notice how many of those impact more than just the individual? When our flesh is there, it's gonna bleed out into the relationships that we have in a negative way. And, and we can say the same thing about the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

38:00Against such things there is no law. In other words, do as much of this as you want. But notice how many of these bleed out positively into our relationships with one another. And so this point coming back here that Paul's trying to make, hey, you're acting like the flesh, and the reason I know it is because it's bleeding out into your relationships with one another in the church. There's jealousy and there's strife and there's division.

38:21You're saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos. I know that that's overflowing from the fact that you are not showing signs of life. You're not walking by the Spirit, but you're walking by the flesh. See, church, your holiness, your godliness impacts more than just you. It impacts this place right here.

38:41It impacts your church body. Jealousy and strife, you're only behaving in a human way. Despising the success of another or sowing discord and contention and rivalry. He says you're behaving in that fleshly way. How you treat your brothers and sisters in Christ, how you interact with one another.

39:02So there's 2 sides of this coin. There's the one side, which is just when our flesh shows up in hostility towards others. How you treat one another, how you think about one another, even the conversations, the thoughts that you have in your mind about other believers in this room, y'all, that shows me a lot and shows you— should show you a lot about your relationship with Christ. When Jesus was asked the question, hey teacher, what's the greatest commandment? What did Jesus say?

39:25Love God, and second is what? Love one another. Love God, love others. The reason he marries those 2 is because if you love God with everything that you are, it's gonna overflow in the fact that you love one another. If you aren't loving one another, well, we need to go back and say, how's my love for the Lord?

39:45Or like James says, how can you say that you love God, whom you haven't seen, if you don't love your brothers and sisters, who you do see? And so that's the one side of this. When we are fleshly, it opens itself up in kind of hostile ways that we treat one another and think about one another and act around one another. But there's another side of this too, if I can kind of develop a little bit further here, and that is that when you're not pursuing Christ and growing in godliness, you are, are in effect robbing your brothers and sisters in Christ here of the vitality and the impact and the positive impact that you can have here in this body. Ephesians 4:16 says, the body of Christ is meant to grow up into the head, who is Jesus, when every part, that is every person, is working properly.

40:31When we allow too much flesh in our life, when we allow the flesh to take over, when we spiritually stagnate, then what we are doing is we are not working properly and that is inevitably going to hurt the body of Christ. And you might be saying, well, I'm not sowing discord, I'm not causing division or strife, I'm not jealous of another brother or sister in Christ in the room, I can say that I love everybody. Great! But if your spiritual vitality is less, if you are allowing sin in your life that you think, well, this isn't hurting anybody, I got news for you: it is.

41:04And it's hurting more than just your walk with Christ, and that should be number one in your heart and your concern, But second to that should be, it is, it's hurting the body of Christ here. You're not going to be nearly as effective in serving. You're not going to be able to use the gifts that God has given you in a way that you would otherwise if you were running hard after Christ.

41:26The other thing is, think about this, what are we called to do with one another? We're called to make disciples, right? And making disciples is more than just seeing somebody saved. And so as you're called to make disciples, a spiritually stagnant person is not going to be active in making disciples. You're not going to be, faithful to the mission that God has given us, to be out there making disciples of other believers in this room.

41:47The other thing is, a spiritually stagnant person isn't going to be seeking discipleship from others. And so we're going to have seasoned believers that have a lot to offer, but just like Paul, they're going to say, I don't have anybody. I'm ready to pour into somebody, but there's nobody here. Because of the flesh that we allow into our lives.

42:09And so we have a responsibility to one another even to pursue Christlikeness. We have a responsibility to one another to make sure that we're not allowing the flesh to cause us to become spiritually stagnant.

42:22You need it for your walk with Christ and we need it from you and you need it from me because if we're a spiritually stagnant body or if we have spiritually stagnant people in the body, then we're not going to be doing as much as God has for us to do. To do.

42:38But if all of us see that, man, it's not just your Sunday morning, it's not just your Wednesday nights that impact the overall health of the body of Christ, it's your Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and it's how you're pursuing Jesus there. All that has a bearing on what God's doing in and through this place. And we want to be seeing that life. We want to be vibrant. We want to be a church that is doing a lot and accomplishing a lot.

43:03For Christ.

43:06Again, spiritual stagnation is a threat not just to the believer but also to the church. And the reason is because it's inconsistent with the gospel.

43:18When Nicodemus came to Jesus in John 3, Jesus described coming to faith in Jesus as being what? Born again; having new life. In Ephesians 2, Paul said that that it's to go from being dead to being alive. Or in Romans 6, Paul says that we've died to sin, how should we continue to live in it?

43:41And so the call for spiritual vitality, the call for growing in Christ-likeness, the call for, for making sure that we see signs of life, is really a call just to say, is the gospel doing the work that the gospel is supposed to do in my life? Am I seeing that I'm a new creation in Christ? And that's why it's so good that we're doing what we're about to do right now. See, we're going to conclude our service together by taking communion. And in taking communion, what we're doing is we're going back and we're remembering the very foundation of what is this life change that we should see in our lives.

44:13Your salvation is not contingent upon how much you work for the Lord. It's not. Your salvation is contingent upon whether or not you've surrendered in faith and repentance to what God has done for you; that Jesus has done the work for you; that Jesus died on the cross for you; for your sins and rose again so that you can live with him forever. That's the foundation, that's the basis, and we get to remember that here in just a moment together, which is so good. But in remembering that, it's so important for us to remember that it's not just that, hey, isn't this great?

44:41I get a get-out-of-jail-free card and now I can just chill the rest of my life until Jesus comes back for me. But rather, in seeing these elements, we should remember the cost that was paid for you and for me so that we could be forgiven, so that now our life wouldn't look the way it used to look.

44:59His body broken for us not to continue to sin rampantly. His blood shed for us not to continue to just harbor unconfessed sin and say, well, it's fine because it's, it's all grace. It is all grace, but it's so good for us to contemplate these elements, to contemplate the sacrifice of Jesus, and to realize, man, if we really get this, this, then there shouldn't be any room for spiritual stagnancy in our lives. We should be saying, man, how can I just show Christ how much I love him by just— what does it look like to live my life for him? Let me get off the sin and get off the weight that's slowing me down.

45:37I want to run with endurance the race that's set before me. So these elements are going to be passed. Hold on to them. Contemplate. Take this time to pray.

45:44This is for believers. Take this time to confess sin, take this time to think about your own life and to consider where you're at. And if you've been spiritually stagnant and you are a believer in Christ, maybe this is that moment that you can hold these things, you can confess that, you can go before the Lord, you can say, Lord, I'm sorry that I haven't been growing the way that I should be growing. You can ask him by his Spirit to help you to turn that around.

46:08Those of you that would say, man, I feel like I'm growing, I feel like there's signs of life, praise the Lord for that. Reflect on these elements and remember that your growth is not about how great you are, but it's because of what these elements represent; that Jesus died on the cross for your sins that you can be forgiven and rose again so that you will one day live with him forever. So these elements will be passed and then I'll come back up and we'll take them together.

49:25I don't know where you find yourself on that spectrum this morning. I want to encourage you. The heavy soul— the song that was just playing behind us is the song Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

49:39Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. If you're there and you feel this morning the conviction, I want to encourage you that there's hope. It's represented by these elements right here.

49:55The message to you this morning is not you just need to try harder. The message this morning to you is not even just stop. Message to you this morning is find hope at the cross.

50:10Christian, if that's you this morning, you can have hope. You don't need to leave crushed and burdened and ashamed. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. That's why I love that we're doing this right now, because this can be the stake in the ground moment for you. If you've been spiritually stagnant, this can be that moment this morning for you to say, Lord, I'm done.

50:33Because not because I'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps, not because I've promised you 100 times before that things are going to be different. It hasn't been different. It's not that, Lord. I'm done because the cross is done, because my sins have been paid for.

50:48And so I'm driving the stake and I'm telling you, Lord, I'm surrendering to you completely. Do whatever you need to do in my life to turn it around.

50:58For all of us, this is our hope. For all of us who are in Christ, to be able to say strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow is because of this right here: the body broken, the blood poured out, your sins forgiven. Of course, the empty tomb as well.

51:15The Apostle Paul said this: I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. You. Do this in remembrance of me. Let's eat.

51:35In the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

51:52For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Let's pray together.

52:01Heavenly Father, it's a heavy text. It's a difficult passage for us to think about and to consider our own lives and to think about whether or not we see signs of life and whether or not we're showing that the Spirit truly is at work in our lives. And yet, Lord, I thankful for opportunities like this. It's good for us to examine ourselves, even as Paul says elsewhere, to see whether or not we're in the faith. God, I pray for those in this room that this message would not have caused unnecessary doubt to anyone who truly is saved, but an opportunity to go back to the cross and repent of sin that needs to be repented of.

52:35But I do pray this morning, Lord, that if you are working and pressing in on somebody's heart who maybe has believed in vain to this point, or those that have not believed at all, I pray that this morning that you would press upon them an urgency to make sure that they get right with you. And we are grateful that there are no prerequisites for that. We don't have to clean ourselves up first, we don't have to go through a specific class or anything else, but we can simply acknowledge our sin and trust that Jesus Christ died on the cross so that those sins could be forgiven and rose again so that one day we will live with him forever. Lord, the gospel is simple.

53:14And yet it transforms our lives forever, for all of eternity. So we are thankful for that reality. We pray, God, for this next week in front of us, that you would help us to live as those that are truly spiritual people. And we need your Spirit within us to be able to do that. So God, cause us to be a vibrant church, a bright lampstand.

53:35Outreach Week is over, but it's really not, Lord. We are living our lives on outreach. So help us to be a fruitful, faithful church towards that end. We ask and pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.