Growth Is Not An Option
GNLCC Exodus 2:1-14 Ephesians 4:11-16 Hebrews 11:24-27
Come go with me on a trip for a moment on a pastoral visit to Louise’s house.. What would you think if I told you that when I went to Louise’s house I had a chance to meet her son for the first time. The fellow came crawling around the room with a blue bib around his neck with the words “Mama’s little boy” written on it.
He had a big diaper on real tight and a bottle in his mouth. When Louise saw him crawling around the corner, she smiled and said, “aw look at my little baby boy”. Her boy John smiled at me with barely a tooth in his mouth. He said, ga, ga, goo goo. Now what if I told you that her little boy as she called him. Now what do you think as you look at this boy and realize he has to be at least 16 years old.
How many of you very quickly come to the conclusion, something is wrong with this boy and something is wrong with Louise and if I don’t leave the house something is probably going to go wrong for me. We recognize something is wrong with John, because he’s been doing the same thing for the past 16 years. He’s been a baby for sixteen years. Now the first year of his life all of this was normal but not now. Something is wrong with Louise, for accepting John’s lack of growth as something normal She is content with having a 16 year old baby boy.
Now we know that if something is alive, it is suppose to grow. Growth is not an option for something that’s living. If it’s alive it’s going to grow. That’s part of the process. Now in this illustration, it’s easy to recognize that something is wrong with John and Louise. But do you know it’s very easy to allow John and Louise to become an acceptable part of us in our spiritual lives.
When we give our lives to Jesus Christ, we are born again. Now if something is born, then we expect it to grow. At first like John, we have others around us to help us in our growth process , but at some point, we have to make some decisions on our own to begin to grow spiritually.
We have to say, “I’m not putting on any more diapers. I want some panties or underwear to wear. I’m not sucking any more bottles, give me a glass to drink from. I’m not crawling on my knees anymore. I want to get up and walk, skip, hop, jog and run. I refuse to be a baby any longer.”
Now on Saturday the 13th, we are going to have our Spiritual Growth Conference, on Pushing To A Higher Level, Four Habits To Success. In it we will learn practical ways to move from where we are, into a deeper and growing relationship to God. God is not like Louise. God loves us far more than Louise did John, because God wants us to experience all of life, and not simply the first stage of life. God is not happy with us just being Christian babies. Let’s read Hebrews 5:12-14 together:
Hebrews 5:12-14
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Everybody that God calls is given an assignment. Growth is not an option for children of God, it is a requirement. It is more than just an expectation on the church’s part, it is a commandment from God. Even in our purpose statement, there is a process of growth which has to take place. The first part states, that our purpose is to bring people into a right relationship with God. At that point they are baby Christians.
But the next part of our purpose is to equip them for the ministry of Jesus Christ. In our New Testament verse, it spoke of equipping the saints. The word equip means to make right, like the setting of a broken bone, or to bring to completion by training or restoring.
Suppose you fell down the steps and broke your leg. What happens if you get to the hospital, and you refuse to allow the doctors to treat your broken leg? If you do not allow the doctors to equip your body for repair, your leg may heal itself over time, but you will never be able to use it as effectively as you would have had you submitted yourself to the doctors orders.
Whenever you’re going to make a difference, you have to be equipped for it. Football teams are great, because they are equipped by coaches through practice and teaching. You can have the greatest coach in the world, but if the players are not equipped, they are going to lose during the game. Each player has to go through a certain amount of training. There is something everybody has to do, then there are others things that certain people have to do to be equipped.
The big guys on the line, do not have to spend time running out for passes. The wide receivers do not need to spend at much time lifting weights. The quarterbacks do not spend much time on how to block.. But everybody needs to run some sprints. Everybody needs to learn the plays. Everybody needs to learn about the opposing team.
Now God has placed coaches within the church, to equip the saints for ministry. What’s going to happen to our team, when only 60% of the players show up for practice, and then only 30% show up for the strategy sessions. Well we know we are not going to be equipped to become all that we can be, as individuals and as a church.. No one in the church has the option of not growing. If you want to stop growing, please pray that the Lord will let you die and not be a bad example for someone else.
Each believer has been called to the work of ministry. Some of us can do one thing, and others can do something else. Together we can obey God more fully than any of us can do it alone. A serious problem we have at times is that we tend to overestimate what we can do by ourselves, and underestimate what we can do as a group. This is true in our homes as well as in our church. But as the body of Christ, we can accomplish more together, than we could dream possible working by ourselves.
Now anybody that’s gone out for a sport knows that the hardest part is getting past those first two weeks. Your body aches, you’re sore at night, you wonder why are you doing this, and is this really worth it.. You also know that the habits and short cuts you pick up during that time, will have a lot to do with your later performance. Those habits can later become hard to break even when it’s in your best interest to break them.
There are some habits we develop spiritually when we come to know Christ, that keep us from growing beyond simply coming to church. A big lie that Satan tells us is that our growth in Christ will be an automatic process. We begin to count years of salvation as signs of spiritual growth, rather than changes in our lives for the cause of Christ.
In other words, we say, “I’ve been a Christian for 5 years of I’ve been in the church for 25 years” but that does not necessarily mean spiritual growth is taking place. You or I could be like John, with 16 years behind us, but still wearing a diaper, sucking a bottle, and wearing a bib.
Jesus lets us know, spiritual growth is based on a willingness to deny ourselves and pick up our cross to follow Him. That’s just another way of Jesus saying, ‘you’ll must be willing to act like I want you to act, even though you feel like acting something totally different. It means doing something, because I want you to do it, whether it fits in your schedule or not.” With Jesus, spiritual growth is not an option, it’s a requirement to follow him. What do you think God is going to do with all of us who tell God, “well I don’t care. I’m just not going to do it.”
One day Jesus told a story about a farmer who went to sow some seeds. Some fell on hard soil and the birds immediately ate them up. Some fell on places where it didn’t have much soil, so that when the sun came up, the plants were scorhed and withered because they had no roots. Others fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or even thirty times what was sown.
It’s interesting that only 1 out of 4 situations produced crop. When Jesus interpreted this parable, he said the seed was the word of God. The types of soil represent how we hear and receive the word of God. Only 1 in 4 hearts hear and receive the word of God to make a change.
Do you know where the bulk of the church is when it comes the four kinds of soil? If we are truly honest with ourselves, we will admit most of the time our situation is like the seed that fell among thorns. The soil had the potential, but the things around it choked it out. Jesus described us in great detail when he said in
Luke 8:14 “The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.”
Our Spiritual Growth Conference is going to equip us to handle these situations in a way that will help us to move beyond these things and begin to grow further as believers. We all have to deal with life’s worries, riches, desires and pleasures, but they do not have to hinder us from becoming mature in Christ.
In our Old Testament reading, we met a guy by the name of Moses. Moses is one of the spiritual giants in the Bible. God spoke more directly to Moses in the Bible than to anyone else. Moses knew God on a level that was simply unbelievable. God spoke to him face to face. When Moses got through talking to God, his face radiated this glow, or this bright shine about it. Only Jesus did more miracles than what happened through Moses.
But Moses did not start out as a spiritual giant. He was not a bit different in terms of his desires than you or I. What separated him from many others, was the price he was willing to pay to be open to the things of God.
Times were very hard for God’s people just before Moses was born. God’s people were in Egypt in Africa and had been there for some nearly 300 years. After a new government came to power, the new leaders of Egypt were afraid of this huge population of people that were of a different ethnic background.
Pharoah was afraid the people might side with their enemies in an attack. The law was changed to make God’s peoples slaves, but they kept growing in numbers. Later the law was changed to every baby boy that was born among God’s people was to be thrown into the river and drowned, but baby girls were allowed to live.
We all heard the story of how Moses’ mother refused to obey the law, but kept her son alive. She hid him for three months, probably dressing him as a little girl. Instead of tossing him into the Nile River, she put him in a basket and let the basket float over toward the area where Pharaoh’s daughter did her bathing.
God intervenes at this point and touches Pharaoh’s daughter’s heart. On the spot, she has compassion on the baby in the basket, and even though she knows the child should have been killed and was not from among her own people, she makes the decision to adopt him. Moses’s sister is there and quickly asks Pharaoh’s daughter, if she would like for her to find a nursing mother for the child. Keep in mind the child is only 3 months old and is going to need some milk.
Pharaoh’s daughter agrees to have her find someone to nurse this baby. Miriam goes and gets her Mother, whom Pharaoh’s daughter then pays to take care of the child. Now I believe that this thing was kept a secret between Miriam, her Mom, Pharoah’s daughter and her staff.
I don’t think the Egyptian people would have tolerated a slave child in the palace. I also think there would have been enormous pressures on Moses birth parents for either being sellouts or people trying to get special favors from Pharaoh’s daughter through them. I also do not think Moses knew who his real parents were until after he became an adult.
Now when Moses was still a child, he was given a ticket to the good life. He left the ghetto and went to the presidential palace. He went from the schools with the lowest test scores, to the academic cream of the crop academy. As Pharaoh’s grandson, he was one of the most popular guys on campus. He had the latest in benze and lexus chariots.
Nobody could come close to the wardrobe that he had. He was in line for the top positions in the government. The brother could have had just about any single woman in the kingdom. This brother had it going on. He could have made the show the rich and the famous.
He could have had his house showcased on BET. Now we know he was a beautiful baby, so chances are he’s still looking real good right now. He had the bling, bling to go along with his outfits. I doubt if there’s a single sister here, who would not have been tempted to at least give the brother a date.
The things we are eager to run after, which choke the seed of the word of God in our hearts, Moses already had them. How many of you ever watch the show Entertainment which show cases the life of the stars behind the scenes. Do you remember as a kid, wishing you could be like so and so on tv. Now so 10 or 20 years later and this show gives you a glimpse of what their lives really were like, and you say “thank God I didn’t end up like them.” You are even grateful for your little humble beginnings.
Yesterday my wife and I celebrated 23 years of a good and prosperous marriage together. That’s a lot longer than many of our glamour stars with all their money and fame have been able to do. For us, Jesus has made all the difference.
Ever wonder why someone as beautiful and gifted as Whitney Houston would destroy his or her life with drugs. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to us is to get everything we want by the time we reach 30 or 40. The world promises that if we get more, we will be happy and content with life.
There’s nothing wrong with you getting a whole lot, but don’t place your hope for happiness in those things. How many million dollar homes do you need to own, before you’re content? How many luxury automobiles? How many books do you need to write? How famous or popular do you have to be? How big of a company or church do you need before you can find what’s the meaning for your life.
The rich and the famous often surround themselves with drugs because they have discovered, the very thing they thought would bring them fulfillment, has left them with a feeling of emptiness. They are in search of one more experience. Keep in mind, nothing the world offers is going to do for you what you think in terms of satisfaction or feeling.
All of us are created in the image of God. That image longs for us to be in relationship to God in terms of worship. Everybody worships something. It is instinctive in us. Some of us worship things, some of us worship people, some of us worship ourselves, and some of us worship God. Why do you think people go wild at concerts. It’s a part of worship of their worship. They are seeking a worship experience without knowing it. Too often we want worship without responsibility, That’s why we prefer to worship something other than God.
Some of us want to worship God, but we battle with our worship of things. That is why Jesus said, you cannot serve God and money. Some of us want to worship God, but we battle with trying to enter into relationships with other people that God has not intended for us to have. That’s why Jesus says, if we do not love him, more than we love those closest to us, we cannot be his disciple.
Some of us want to worship God, but we are afraid of what we might have to lose. That’s why Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteouness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
By the age of 39, Moses already had the best that his nation had to offer and had come up empty. Growing up as a child through the years, no doubt Moses had heard rumors of his adoption. I can imagine him asking his mother, the truth about his birth. I can imagine her telling him about being found in a basket, but she did not know who his real mother was.
I can see Moses searching out for the girl who had found him a servant to take care of him to see to see if she had any knowledge of his mother or of the lady that took care of him. I can imagine Miriam taking Moses to his mother. I can see his mother telling him the whole story of how he came into this world some 39 years earlier and why she had done what she did. For the first time she can openly call him her son since the time he was three months old.
She probably tells him that God’s hand was on his life to deliver his people. The many false gods of the Egyptians had left Moses feeling empty. All of the pleasures he had enjoyed in Pharoah’s court, were fun during the time, but they too had left him empty. Could it be that entering into this relationship with his mother’s God is what he needed in his life? Did God really have a purpose for his life. Moses knew that if he chose this God, somehow he would have to grow in God.
Moses then left the hood and went back to the palace with another view of life. For the first time he began to have real compassion on people. He used to think nothing of seeing a slave beaten, even to the point of death. Previously he had cared little for justice for others, because he had the best that life had to offer, but now he was wondering if he could do more to help somebody else. His focus is no longer simply on his own pleasures, but now he wanted to have an impact for God in the lives of others.
As Moses decides to identify more and more with God’s people, he knew that growth was not an option. He has to be willing to change if he is to do what God has created him to do.
Now Moses has everything but God. He at first tries to use his own power and prestige to do God’s will in his own understanding. He has made up his mind, the next time, he sees an Egyptian abusing one of God’s people he is going to do something about it. Well when it happens , all of the rage that is building up inside him, blows up.
An Egyptian is beating a slave mercilessly with blood going all over the place. Moses goes off on the Egyptian, kills him, and tries to cover it up by burying him in the sand.
From that moment on, Moses can never go back to all the fame, the popularity, the pleasures, and prominence he once knew. He had decided to stake his claim with the people of God. He believes he has a more fulfilling future living for God, than he would find in the vast wealth of Egypt.
Let’s read what it says in Hebrews 11:24-26
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
Moses did not know it, but he had ahead of him forty years of learning how to be equipped for the ministry God called him to do.
When we make that decision to side with Jesus Christ, the one thing we cannot be is the same person we use to be. God expects us to change. God requires us to be equipped for ministry. Ministry means service. To be a minister is to be a servant. If we are not becoming more like servants, we are not growing in Jesus Christ.
Where Is God calling you to serve?
What change do you know you need to make, but are reluctant to do so?
What does you lifestyle say about who you really worship.
Are you putting off your spiritual growth until one day?
Have you decided, I’ll be there for the spiritual growth workshop first for myself and then for my church?
We all have plans of what we think will make us happy. But like our opening hymn declares, trust and obey, trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus. But to trust and obey. Growth is not an option. Growth should be the very cry of our hearts.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick
Growth Is Not An Option
Exodus 2L1-14 Ephesians 4:11-16 Hebrews 11:24-27
A. Stopping By For A Pastoral Visit
1. Louise, John, Mama’s Little Boy
2. Uh Oh Something Is Not Right In The House
3. That Which Is Alive Is Growing
B. Coming To Jesus Is The First Step In The Journey
1. Making A Decision—No More Diapers
2. Spiritual Growth Conference Sept. 13th
3. Pushing To A Higher Level 4 Habits 2 Success
4. God Is Looking For Those Wanting To Grow
Hebrews 5:12-14
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
C. God In The Business Of Giving Assignments
1. Growth More Than Just An Option
2. Our Purpose Statement—To Bring & To Equip
3. Hey, I Broke My Leg, Now What
4. Great Coaches Need Great Players To Win
5. Differences Among The Players’ Training
6. Some Things All Players Must Do
D. When We Do What We’re Called To Do
1. We Can Do More Together Than We Can Alone
2. Stop Overestimating And Stop Underestimating
3. Satan’s Got A Big Lie About Growth
4. When 5 Or 25 May Really Be Just 1
E. Jesus Speaks To Us About Spiritual Growth
1. The Meaning Of Denying & Picking Up The Cross
2. Doing It With A Bad Attitude—It’s A Step
3. Farmer And Four Kinds Of Soil
4. Seed—The Word Soil—The Hearts
5. Where Is Most Of The Church
Luke 8:14
The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.
6. Spiritual Growth Conference Will Move Us Ahead
F. Meeting A Man By The Name Of Moses
1. Knew God On A Level Few Would Experience
2. Face Radiated God’s Presence
3. Willing To Pay A Price
G. God’s People In Africa For Over 300 years
1. Pharaoh and Egyptians Betray God’s People
2. An Attempt To Murder All The Baby Boys
3. Moses Mother Takes Steps To Defend Her Son
4. God Touches Pharaoh’s Daughter
5. A Secret In The Palace And In The Hood
H. What A Ticket To The Good Life Is Really Like
1. Best Of The Educational School System
2. Popularity Beyond Measure
3. Money To Burn, Power, & Prestige
4. This Man Could Have Showcased On BET
5. All That Looks Good On TV May Not Be
6. Entertainment TV On The Stars Makes You
Thankful
7. What’s The Price Of 23 Years Together
I. Searching From The Inside Out
1.Whitney Houston And The Stars
2. When Is Enough Really Going To Be Enough
3. How Much Fame Do You Need
4. The Consequences Of Being In The Image Of God
5. We Cry Out To Worship Something
6. The Worship Of Things, Money, People, Self
7. Jesus Has A Response To Them All
J. Having It All---But Still Needing More
1. At 39, Moses Checks Out His Roots
2. Searching For Miriam & Searching For Mom
3. The Truth Is Made Known
4. God Has A Call On Your Life Moses
K. Moses Decides To Side With The People Of God
1. No Longer The Same Man He Once Was
2. People Mean More Than Things & Pleasure
3. Moses’ Tries To Do Things In His Own Strength
4. Moses Gives Up All To Try To Know God
5. There’s No Going Back To The Fame He Once
Knew
Hebrews 11:24-26
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
6. Giving It Up Was Just The Beginning
7. When We Come To Christ—No More Business As
Usual
8. Called To Ministry Because We Are Ministers
9. Ministry—Service Ministers—Servants
10. Proof Of Growing In Jesus Christ
11. The Key Is To Trust And Obey
What Changes Do I Need To Make Today & This Week As A Result Of Hearing This Sermon Today?
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