A Time To Grow

Introduction

A phrase that will be uttered several times this week, especially by those who have younger children, will be it’s not time. We recognize that for many things there’s a time when it’s right to do something, and a time when it’s not yet. And as you get older, sometimes you tend to forget when it’s time. But I have technology to help me. I have a phone that reminds me, an apple on my phone that reminds me it’s time to take my pills. And my watch even reminds me to breathe and to stand up. I want to talk to you this morning about time, not in the general sense, but to encourage you to think that now is a time for action. Turn with me, if you will, as we begin in the Old Testament to the book of Ecclesiastes.

There are certain passages of Scripture that it seems like everybody knows, or at least knows about.

Psalm. But everybody knows about Ecclesiastes 3, verses 1 through 8. Let’s read it together this morning. Ecclesiastes 3, beginning in verse 1 says, To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted. A time to heal, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to gain and a time to lose.

A time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to sow. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate.

The wise man says by inspiration that there are times to do this and times to do that. Is he saying that that’s just the way it is? That life kind of forces its schedule on you that there’s going to be a time and you can’t change it to do this, and a time to do that, and you can’t change it, or is he saying that we are to choose our time, that we make a time to do this, and a time to refrain from doing that. It’s really both, isn’t it?

And maybe the wisdom of Solomon imparted unto us is to recognize both. And to recognize how they work together. That sometimes it’s a time to do something, it’s a time for action, because it’s the time for action. As we bring this year, thankfully, to a close.

As we wrap up this year. What’s it time for? Is there a time being placed before us by God providentially? And is there a challenge of time that we should be taking up of something that right now it’s time to do this? I want to challenge you to think about that throughout this coming week. What is this a time for? And I want to offer one thing to you this morning as we now turn our attention in the New Testament, the book of 1 Peter, chapter 2, I want to offer a suggestion to you this morning that I think right now, because of our current conditions and all of the fallout from it, that I would argue to you this morning, that now may be above any other time in our life, that now is a time to grow.

What has this year done to you spiritually? With all of its challenges and opportunities, maybe it’s caused you to grow spiritually. But I fear that for many of us, because of its challenges and its restrictions, that if we’re honest with ourselves, many of us can say and freely admit that this year has been a step back for me spiritually. Or at least I have plateaued spiritually.

That’s taken a toll on me spiritually. I haven’t been able to set face to face and open up my Bible and study with someone of a like precious faith, or of someone who is searching for that faith. And that’s taken a toll on me spiritually. And I haven’t grown as I normally would have.

Spirituality and spiritual strength. I think for many of us that that’s the case. And so to still the words of the wise man, let’s just say that now is a time to grow. It’s a time maybe providentially being forced upon us, but it’s also a time for us to accept that challenge and to make that decision to grow. Would you look with me in the book of 1 Peter chapter 2? We’re going to use this for our text this morning. And so you may want to put a bookmark there or your finger and hold it there. We’ll be looking at a couple other passages of Scripture, but we’ll always be coming home to 2 Peter chapter, or 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, where the writer says, Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking.

As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

1. Spurn Certain Things

And so let’s look at those. The first thing he tells us in verse 1 is that there are certain things that we are to spurn. There are certain things that we need to put off or to take away from our lives. Or as he says here, lay aside. Look at verse 1 again. Laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking. Let’s understand this, that the first step in growth, the first step in spiritual growth, is first something that we are to put away. Think about how many times the New Testament urges that upon Christians. Lay aside the sin that so easily besets us. Lay aside malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy from this text. Hold your finger here and go to the book of Colossians and see how Paul words it to the Colossian Christians.

In Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3, beginning in verse 5, after telling us that if we have been raised, and Paul would tell us in Colossians 2 that we’re raised when we’re raised from the waters of baptism, if you’ve been raised with Christ, seek those things which are above. But he says, a part of that process, and maybe the first part of that process is we need to put off certain things. Colossians 3 verse 5, therefore put to death, he uses stronger language than Peter. Peter says, lay them aside. Paul says, put to death your members which are on the earth. Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil, desire, and covetous, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them, but now you yourselves are to put off all these wrath, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth, and do not lie to one another, since you’ve put off the old man with his deeds.

The first step of substantial growth is to just stop certain things. You know, the word, the New Testament has a word for that, doesn’t it? Repentance. Repentance is that concept of we once did that, but now we do not. I fear that so many times we want to talk about spiritual growth. We maybe even want to act upon spiritual growth. We want to do this going forward, and we never really start that first step of spurning sin. No growth will ever be accomplished until we begin to put off the old man. I think that’s accomplished two ways. Number one is there must be that initial, what we might call the power surge of repentance. That when we become a Christian or we decide to take the step of spiritual growth, that we decide in this big picture way that I am going to be a different person.

By the grace of God.

But then there’s another sense in which that must be accomplished, and that is every day. That’s not just something that we did once when we became a Christian. That’s something that we do every day of our lives. We put to death the old man. Because that old man of sin sometimes is like the monster in some horror flick that you kill him in the first ten minutes of the movie, and you think this is going to be a short movie, but guess what? The monster keeps coming alive.

And sin’s that way, isn’t it? Satan is that way. To my knowledge, Satan has never said of a new Christian, oh, well, I guess I lost that one. I’ll leave them alone. And so we must constantly be putting off, putting death to death the old man, spurning that old life. And in this text, back to 1 Peter chapter 2, Peter says that you may grow thereby, and he starts by saying, we’ve got to put away certain things. And that’s just a choice. Now this is one of those easier said than done moments, but that’s just a choice, a decision that we make. And that we constantly make and renew is that I will not be that. In our text, 2 Peter chapter, or 1 Peter chapter 2, I’ll get that right in a minute.

2. Yearn: Desire the Pure Milk of the Word

1 Peter chapter 2, after saying, laying aside all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking, he famously says in verse 2, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. We are to yearn. And again, I would argue to you that no real substantial growth ever takes place without a desire. And can we not take that a step further? That the greater the growth to be accomplished has to be preceded by the greater the desire, the deeper the yearning. So now that we’ve laid aside, or we’ve begun that process at least, of daily laying aside the old man, now we are to desire. Reminiscent of the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, is it not? Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

The Holy One says, in describing our desire for righteousness, he uses the most basic and the strongest of all human urges. Hunger and thirst. I’ll make a shocking confession to you this morning.

I don’t know that I’ve ever really been hungry.

I mean really hungry. And I don’t know that I’ve really been thirsty a day in my life. And what I mean by thirsty is stranded in a desert, thirsty. I’ve always lived in abundance. And what I call hungry and thirsty doesn’t really sum up the language of Jesus when he says hunger and thirst after righteousness. I have a good friend who served in the Vietnam War. If you get him to open up, he would tell some stories about his time there. And one story that he shared with me was being on patrol in Vietnam for days.

That makes it worse. And so they would talk about something else, but he said inevitably, whatever we talked about, the conversation would turn to food. Because it was all consuming. Hunger.

He said he realized for the first time in his life that he could smell water. He was so thirsty that if they got anywhere close to a source of water, he says, we could smell it. That’s the meaning of hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Peter uses maybe a more readily available analogy to us when he says, as newborn babes desire the meal. Now again, I can’t relate to that directly. I don’t remember what it was like to be a hungry baby, but I can relate to that indirectly because I’ve seen, or let me rephrase that, I’ve heard hungry babies. They let you know in no uncertain terms and with no uncertain volume, their needs and their desire, their yearning, and guess what? Experience has taught us this, that nothing will satisfy.

There’s not been a toy invented that will distract that infant long enough for them to forget that they are hungering and thirsting. That’s what Peter says, that you may grow thereby, put off, spurn the life of sin, and develop this deep, innate yearning for God in His Word. Do you have that? Will you allow the unfortunate recent circumstances to not allow you to become accustomed to not being with your brethren, to be accustomed to the distance, but will you allow it and realize that this is a time to grow and allow that distance and those restrictions and the things that you’ve done without to allow them to cause an urging and a yearning within you that you want those things like a newborn babe wants milk.

We need to go beyond the Sunday only mentality of being a Christian. And recognize that our Christianity is not a component, not a part of our lives, is not a day of our lives. It is all of who we are. Being a Christian isn’t summed up by sitting in a pew looking bored at the preacher. Our Christianity involves our assembling together and worshiping on the first day of the week, make no mistake about it. But our Christianity, if it is real and if it is to grow, must envelop and infect every aspect of our lives. Our families, our jobs, our lives in the community, every waking hour is defined by our living Christianity. And then Peter says, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

3. Learn That Word

Our third word, and you knew it was going to rhyme, is learn. That’s an essential step in growth, isn’t it? To spurn to put away the old man in the old life, lay it aside, cast it off, and then to desire, to yearn for God and his word, and then implied, is it not, if we desire that word, that we are to learn that word. That’s how you grow. And make no mistake about it.

And so if you can reflect upon your life honestly and say, I’m not growing. Or I’m not growing as I ought to be. Then may I offer this suggestion. Learn. Yearn for this word and learn of this word, because in this word you find God. As he has revealed himself to you. And you find and you see what God wants of you. James would tell us famously in his epistle that the word of God is a mirror. Into which we look and we, and it’s a mirror, I think, in two senses. Number one, it’s a mirror who reveals who we really are. It can expose us.

What’s the addict? We talk, step on my toes. You were looking into the mirror of the word of God, and it exposed you. It shows you for who you really are. But it is such a powerful mirror that it doesn’t just show you who you really are. Thanks be to God, this mirror will show you who you can be. If you allow this word and the power of God to transform you, putting off, spurning the corruption of sin and growing back into the image in which you were created, that is the image of God. And here in my notes is where I say, insert shameless plug. Starting in 2021, we’re going to do another reading program. We’ve spent a year in the Psalms. We spent a year in the life of Christ.

Would you accept the challenge and recognize that this is a time to grow by spending a year in the epistles with us? 2021, if you’ll join us in this journey through the epistles, we’ll start in the book of Romans. And we’ll read through to the book of Jude. And we’ll read every chapter of those letters that God wrote to his children. That God wrote to us. Now I want to remind you of how we’ve been doing Bible readings. We’re familiar with the daily Bible readings where you read from Genesis to the maps in one year. And that’s a good reading program, and I’m not discounting that. Do that, please. But I think there’s two disadvantages, if I can say that, of those traditional Bible reading programs.

Number one is, and they’re both associated with the pace, you have to read pretty quickly. And at a pretty good pace to get all of the Bible read. And so there’s two disadvantages, I think, within that. Number one is it’s easy to get behind and get discouraged.

And it’s easy to just kind of push it aside because I can never catch up. Secondly, because of that pace, you’re just reading. You don’t have as much time to study and to look at the text and wonder. Our slower-paced reading is not to make us lazy. Please. That’s not the objective. We’re reading for the most part about two chapters a week. Let me sell you on the advantages of that reading program. Number one is you can do that. Even if you get behind, you can catch up two chapters a week. But to me, what’s the greater advantage of this reading program is you’re not just reading them. You’re not just reading through them as fastly as you can as fast as you can to keep up with the schedule, but you have time to pause.

You have time maybe to read them two or three times in a week. Or to examine and dig down deeper into Romans 1 and 2 that we’ll be reading in the first week of the next year. And so don’t just read through them, but to say, what does this text say? What is God saying to me in this text? Make some notes. Ask some questions. And we’re going to be helping in this. We’ve come up with some ideas, and I want to solicit some ideas from you of ways that we can encourage one another and stay connected with one another through this reading program. We’re going to use some social media as a way to kind of talk about our weekly readings. And so if you have those questions or notes or something that jumped out at you from that text, save that and share that with us on our social media.

We’ll be doing sermons. Who’s we? I’ll be doing sermons from our readings. Not every Sunday, but from time to time, we’ll drop into our reading and draw a lesson from that week’s reading. We’re also getting into the recording business. We’re going to ask some of our men to record these weekly readings. And so you can read the text yourself, and we’ll make available to you audiophiles where you can play and listen to the dulcet tones of some of our men as they use their baritone voices to read the word of God. Just ways that we can both learn, but stay connected in our learning. And so will you join us in that journey this next year as we read together, as we learn together? Because, as we’ve said, this is a time to grow.

Conclusion

Will you accept that challenge this morning? Will you make that decision to recognize that this year and the pause that has been this year has created for us a time to grow. A time to put off the old man as we spurn the sinful way. A time to yearn for the sincere milk of the word. A time to learn in that word that we may grow thereby. Would you begin that journey? Maybe you’ve never started the walk. Then why not start that today? What a wonderful way to erase every bad thing of this year by giving your life over to Christ, putting to death the old man and beginning this wonderful journey of growth and this wonderful journey to heaven. Would you believe in him? Repent.

We talked about this morning. Confess yet faith and be baptized this very morning, rising to walk in newness of life. Would you join us on that journey? Would you join God on that journey this morning? If so, we encourage you to come right now as together we stand and as we sing.

Gently to his fold seed.