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Well, it was a cold day in January of 1993.
There was a baby girl. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, a month premature.
She weighed just four pounds.
Her name was Brooke.
And at first, Brooke seemed like a perfectly normal child.
But by the time Brooke turned one, her parents began to become concerned because the baby wasn’t growing as fast as expected. And even though she was now one years old, Brooke was still the size that you would expect for a sixmonth-old baby. Her parents took her to the doctor who examined her and found nothing was wrong.
They said that Brook’s development was a little bit delayed, but she would surely catch up.
But over the next few years, the opposite happened. And by the time she turned five, Brooke stopped growing altogether.
At the age of eight, Brooke weighed just 13 pounds.
Brooke’s condition of arrested arrested aging was so unusual that she actually began to garner n national attention and scientists and doctors across the country came to study her for possible clues on how to stop human aging.
Finally, in 2013 at the age of 20, legally an adult, Brooke passed away, inhabiting the mind and body of a 2-year-old baby.
Now, Brook’s mysterious condition is obviously the exception, thankfully, and not the norm because by and large, we expect our children to what?
To grow.
And in fact, when uh my wife and I had our kids, we would take them every week to get measured by the doctor. And they would measure your your weight, your length, your head size, and then they would show you where the baby fell in all of these charts.
And I’ll admit that I would kind of obsess over these numbers and these percentiles. And you know, this one’s head is in the 90th percentile. So, she must be smart. But this one’s weight is only in the 70th percentile. That’s like a C minus. So, we got to work harder on that.
It’s easy, of course, to measure physical growth. But what if we were to measure your spiritual growth as a Christian?
Where would you land on the spiritual growth chart?
And have you been growing as you should?
In our passage this morning, the Apostle John will hold up to us a measuring stick to our spiritual bodies to help us see whether our growth is healthy or arrested.
Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of First John. We were just in the book of 1 John of course last week but today we will be in chapter 2 and it will serve us to start at verse 12. And if you are on your pew Bibles um if if you’re using those it is on page 1219 1,29.
It’s up on the screen as well if you can see that.
1 John 2 verse 12. Let’s read it before we begin.
I am writing to you little children because your sins have been forgiven you for his name’s sake. I am writing you fathers because you know him who has been from the beginning.
I am writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one.
I have written to you children because you know the father.
I have written to you fathers because you know him who has been from the beginning.
I have written to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.
Let’s take a moment now to ask for God’s blessing as we look at this passage.
Father, we’re so grateful for your word that gives us clarity on so many things in life and how we ought to live, not only for your glory, but for our good.
Lord, we want to be a church that is full of growing Christians, that would grow up to maturity and then be honoring to you as a lampstand, a faithful lampstand here in New Jersey. We thank you, Lord. We pray that you would help us to pay attention to your text today and to learn from your apostle, the Apostle John. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
By way of background, the book of First John was written, of course, by the Apostle John to a group of churches that were in grave danger. They were either in a state of spiritual stagnation already or about to fall into it. And that was for a very simple reason. False teachers had crept into the area and possibly even into the church.
These false teachers were the antichrists that we learned about last week where Mark Schwambbley helped us unpack in John 1:4, 1 John 1:4. And these false teachers taught numerous heresies and lies. And John deals with them throughout his letter. For example, they taught that Jesus in fact did not come in human flesh, but he was a spirit and he also did not really die on the cross.
This is a heresy that John directly rebutts in 1 John 4 starting in verse two. And they also claim to have special knowledge about God obtained outside of God’s word that conveniently only they knew about.
Yet at the same time, these false teachers who claimed they knew God openly practiced lives of unrepentant sin, possibly and most likely including sexual sin.
And they claimed that God was just fine with it. God was just fine with sin.
And God and uh John deals with this false belief in the beginning of 1 John chapter 2 3-4.
and actually all of chapter 3.
But this type of false teaching as it creeps into the church and infects the church, it was threatening to throw the church into a tail spin, into a state of deep confusion and stagnation.
After all, nothing stops spiritual growth in its tracks like bad doctrine and a failure to deal with sin. Bad doctrine clouds the mind and unchecked sin deadens your heart.
So the apostle John then is combating these false teachings and he writes this letter to the churches in Asia Minor out of great pastoral concern. He wants these churches to get back to a place where they are growing again.
And he structures the letter in this way. It’s helpful for us to understand the structure of the letter. The be beginning of first John from chapter 1 to chapter 2 verse 12 is where John is primarily laying out the theological basis and and ethical groundwork that he needs to lay out in order to combat this false teaching. This section then is mostly focused on you would say maybe theoretical matters. But then after chapter 2:1 15, John switches to the imperative mode. He switches to giving them commands, looking the church in the eye and saying, “Okay, now this is what you have to do.
These are your marching orders.” He delivers them in a very soft, in a very loving way as the apostle John generally does. But yet these are directives nonetheless so that they can successfully throw off the yoke of these false teachers and get back to what they as a church ought to be doing. So then that section is going to be more commands.
John, just to give you a a sampling, John tells them to turn away from sin.
In 1 John 3:4, he tells them to forsake false teachers. In 1 John 4:1, he implores them to get back to loving one another. in 1 John 3:11 and to get back to prayer 1 John 5:14 between these two sections of you would say maybe theory and practice is this short transition section where John before he gets to commanding the church looks each of the groups of the church in the eye and with love and concern calls them to attention.
And it’s as if he’s saying, “You, you and you, you need to hear this. You need to listen up.” And buried into this short transition section, John intentionally lays out for them a picture of healthy spiritual growth. And it’s as if he’s saying this.
He’s saying, “This is what a healthy church ought to look like. This is what healthy spiritual growth ought to look like. And if you listen to me, if you obey the commands that I’m going to give you in the rest of the letter, then you can get back onto this track.
So then in our section today in chapter 2 12- 14, we’ll see that the apostle John is giving us this vision of spiritual growth in three pictures, three stages of growth. And we’ll call this, I guess, the three stages of of spiritual growth. And if you like outlines, before we sort of dive into it, I’ll just give you the outline up front. It’s we’ll see simple children, then we’ll see strong young men, and then we’ll see spiritual fathers.
Simple children, strong young men, and spiritual fathers. Now, before we dive too far into the text, I want you to notice a few things that are interesting about the text in the structure.
First, you’ll notice that when John goes through the groups of the people in the church, he goes through how many times?
Twice. He goes through twice. Some slight differences, but mostly it’s the same. And second, you’ll notice that the first time he goes through, he’s writing in the I guess in the present tense in our English. And then the second time he switches to I have written. So he starts writing I am writing and then he switches tense to I have written.
And then finally, you’ll notice that the order he does it in is from children to fathers to young men. Um addressing fathers before young men. So why does John do it this way? Why is John doing it this way? And the answer is nobody knows.
Looked in a lot of commentaries. No one has a clue. These just seem like stylistic choices that John uses perhaps for emphasis.
So we we’re not going to belabor those choices. But just you just so that you are aware, we will be taking them a little bit out of the order that John presents them in the way that sort of makes sense in our progression. So we’ll look at children first and then young men and then fathers.
So let’s get into it. The first category that John shows us is simple children.
If you have that up there, it’s a little small. Simple children.
Now John of course is not talking about little kids in physical age like those in our nursery.
But throughout the letter, he actually uses this term little children as a term of endearment to refer to the entire church. He’s talking actually about the whole church regardless of physical or spiritual age. And if you want to see this, he does this twice more in just this chapter in 1 John 2:1. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And also in 1 John 2:18 and also throughout the book.
So I think that when he says little children, he’s talking about all believers, but he’s also talking about the common denominator of every believer. That this is true of you even when you are first saved. This is really the first thing that’s true about you and therefore the first stage of spiritual growth. This is where everyone starts out and then we never really get back get away from it.
But it’s where we start out.
So what then do simple children, even simple spiritual children, know at the very beginning of their spiritual journey? So you look at the text, it says, “Your sins are what? Are forgiven.” See, that’s the most basic thing about a Christian.
Note, of course, he does not say that your sins are forgiven if you continue to grow or your sins are forgiven if you do enough good works.
No, this is a statement of finality and certainty. It is done. It is a done deal that your sins are forgiven.
At this point, I think we need to take a a small moment to just be super clear about the relationship between the spiritual growth we’re talking about today and forgiveness of your sins.
You see, your sins as a Christian are forgiven you once and for all at a single moment of your life. In a single moment, it is forgiven. The moment of course is that you confess that you are a sinner before God. And the moment that you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who came in human flesh, died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins, boom, that’s it. You are part of this club. Your sins are forgiven.
At that moment, you are saved. And that’s the gospel. And if you are not a believer currently, you literally can believe this right now as you sit there and your sins will be forgiven forever.
At that moment, your sins are forgiven completely and you were given a new life. You were transformed. Your eternal destination was permanently changed from being on the way to hell and eternal damnation to heaven and eternal life.
And we call this moment of conversion salvation.
That’s an instantaneous transformation.
The moment you believe, nothing can reverse it.
Nothing you do or nothing anyone else does, nothing Satan does, nothing that can happen to you by accident, nothing can reverse it. You cannot sin your way out of salvation.
No power or height or depth or angels or demons, nothing in the future or in the present.
Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God. That’s in Romans 3 and Romans 8:38.
So you are saved the moment you believe.
However, at that moment, you are not yet perfected in practical holiness.
That is, you are not yet morally perfect. Even though you hate sin and you don’t want to do it, lest you dishonor your God and Savior, you will find as a believer that you do sin.
So then spiritual growth, what we’re talking about is the process of gradually shedding your sin over the course of your life in a practical way and instead putting on righteousness that shows itself of course in good works.
And unlike salvation that happens in one instant, spiritual growth starts at the point that you are saved and then happens gradually over your lifetime.
It doesn’t end until you die. We call that process sanctification.
And unlike salvation, sanctification actually requires you to actively work on your part to resist sin, to put it off, and to do righteous works.
So although believers do sin and will sin until we get to glory, it will hopelessly hopefully become less and less.
But here John wants to be very clear and he says your sins as a believer even do not ever affect your standing before God. And that’s why John even makes sure to say in back in 1 John 2:1, he says this, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you what?
May not sin.” But listen, he says this. If anyone sins because you will sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation or of course the the satisfaction of God for our sins.
So then because of this, John can tell you confidently that as a believer, all your sins have been forgiven now and in the future. Past, present, and future.
But then he says, he adds this little mysterious phrase at the end of verse 12. Your sins have been forgiven for what? For your sake?
No, for his name’s sake. And this really changes everything.
This changes really how we think about this because we are not saved for our own sake.
You are saved for his name’s sake. And you know what this means? It’s not about you in the end. It’s not about you at all. But your salvation is in fact all about God’s name and God’s glory. God’s name of course is his reputation.
His glory and his honor. He is not saving you for your sake, but for his name’s sake. And that is great news for celebration for us. Because what does scripture tell us? It tells us that if God cares about anything, he cares about his name. Listen to what he says in Ezekiel 36:22.
This is where God is addressing a a sinning Israel.
He says, “Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, oh house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for my holy name which you have profained among the nations where you went.” And then he says in verse 23,”I will vindicate the holiness of my great name.” God is extremely concerned about his name. And in this verse, even though Israel was in a horrible state of sin, God is saying, “I will still rescue you because it is my name on the line.” And when it comes to your salvation, it’s the same. God is putting his name on the line for you.
If somehow he breaks his promise, God would then be shown to be unfaithful and his ra name and his reputation and his glory would be tarnished.
This is something that God would never let happen.
So instead, God, John here wants to show us and wants us to know that our salvation is actually part of God’s plan to glorify his name. It’s part of his larger plan and God can never fail at that. So this should give us immense peace as believers, assurance and security in our salvation.
And this is of course John’s intention because of course in 1 John 5:13 he says this. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know what that you have eternal life. He’s writing this entire letter. One of the purposes is for they for them to know with security and certainty that they have eternal life.
And why is this assurance of salvation so important for us as believers? Of course, it is a blessing for us to have assurance of salvation.
But I think it is because that even though sometimes as new believers, we know in our heads our sins are forgiven, we don’t always act like that’s true.
Sometimes the new believer who sins is is prone to doubt God’s forgiveness in his heart or to doubt God’s love. And then guilt creeps in. And what do we do?
We run away from God.
We avoid prayer because we are ashamed.
We don’t come to church and we don’t take communion because we are afraid.
And of course this just makes everything worse. Then we spiral into a vicious spiral of destruction. One actual famous example of this is John Bunan. You may have heard of this of John Bunan who is the author of the famous book the pilgrims progress.
In his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Bunan tells the story of his life after his conversion where he underwent agonizing struggle with blasphemous thoughts that would appear in his head and he would be tempted to swear because that’s how he lived his life before his conversion.
After his conversion, the temptation to swear actually increased.
And as a result, John Bunan was tormented with guilt and fear.
John Bunan recounts running away from God, avoiding prayer, keeping away from the Bible, forsaking church, and feeling that God had left him.
So for you and I, when we sin as believers, don’t do what John Bunan did and let that drive you away from God.
Confess your sin and remember that your sins are forgiven for the glory of God’s name. And this should drive you to your knees with joy and thanksgiving.
Now, we’re going to skip down to the second yellow text here where he addresses children again.
The second time he addresses children, he says something different and that is that they what know the father.
Now an interesting bit of trivia here is that the word for children in that verse verse at at the end of verse 13 is a little bit different than the word for little children. This actually does mean child.
Uh this actually does mean small child.
And I think the idea here is to bring to mind the kind of knowledge that a small child would have of his father.
See, if you’re a young human child, you know certain things about your father.
Some of you have small children.
You know his name.
Maybe you know what food he likes and what food he dislikes. You know his favorite couch. You know his favorite meal. You know He loves you and protects you. He know you know that he will provide for you and care for you. But that’s actually about how much you know about your father.
And even to this day, my teenage children, I don’t think any of them know what the what I actually do for my job.
I think they they mostly think I stare at the computer, mutter to myself, and somehow that results in in food on the table. But they don’t actually know how any of that works.
Because a child’s knowledge of his father is incomplete. It’s intimate. He knows he is loved, but it is an incomplete knowledge. And just like young human children, children, spiritual children who are young in the faith can sometimes be easily confused.
Listen to how Paul describes this. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:14, he is describing here spiritual children. He says, “As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.” Why are children so easily tossed here and there? Because even though they know the gospel, they don’t really know much else yet. and they can be easily conned by false teachers. When I was a child, I remember we would go to the mall. That actually a thing you did back then.
Nobody ever does that anymore.
My mom would take me to the mall and she would tell me over and over again to never talk to strangers.
She would tell me stories, made up or real, I’m not sure, but she would tell me stories of when the mom is distracted and the child is over here, somebody would come up with a lollipop and lure the child away and then they would be on the back of a milk carton, never to be seen again.
When I was a parent, when I became a parent, I would tell my children whenever they went to the park by my house to if they ever seen a if they ever see a white van without windows to run because they’ll probably get grabbed and a bag would throw be thrown over their head, they would never be seen again. I bet they still remember me telling them that. Why did we tell kids those stories? Because they’re kids and they are gullible and easy to be taken advantage of. They don’t yet know how dangerous the world can be.
And so it is with spiritual children.
They know the basics. They know that the father loves them. They have a childlike faith.
But to advance to spiritual adolescence.
to get to the get out of the first stage of simple faith, they have to grow up in their understanding of God and they have to grow up in their understanding of the world.
There’s a point at every Christian’s life, I think, where they begin to realize a terrible and a shocking truth.
And it’s especially difficult for us, I think, to grab it because we live in a safe and comfortable environment.
But the truth is this, and that is that the whole world is actually a war zone.
It’s a giant active war zone. And at the moment of your conversion, you were dropped into the front lines of that war.
It’s only when your spiritual mind is expanded to understand the true nature of the world you live in that you are ready for the next stage of spiritual growth. And this is what John refers to as young men. So we’ll call this next stage the strong young man or strong young men. And this is in verse 13.
I am writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one. In this stage, you have not only grasped that the Christian life is a life of warfare.
But amazingly, you have learned to overcome the war and be victorious.
Who is this war between? Who is fighting? Well, the war is between the powers of the world ruled by the evil one, that is Satan, and the kingdom of God.
Now, some of you may immediately look up and say, “Wait, uh, what do you mean the world is ruled by Satan?” Well, John actually himself is the one who tells us this. And John in in the Gospel of John 12:31, he calls Satan the ruler of the world. The Apostle Paul agrees. He calls Satan the god of this world in 2 Corinthians 4:4. And Ephesians 2:2, Satan is described as the prince of the what?
the power of the air.
It’s a prince of the power you see around you.
That is the reality of our world. We live in in many ways the kingdom of Satan.
A lot of things in the world that you see start to make a lot more sense once you understand this.
You are a enlisted soldier of God and you are deep in enemy territory.
Now, of course, I I we have to be clear here. The battle between Satan, Satan’s evil world system, and the kingdom of God. In this battle, Satan is, of course, no means by no means more powerful than God. And in fact, the Bible makes it clear that Satan is only able to do this because of God’s permission. You could say that Satan operates under God’s leash.
But I think a helpful way to think about it is just as God once gave Satan permission to tempt Job, God has given Satan during this time to rule over the world system and the levers of power in the world to tempt and test the saints.
And that’s why there’s so much false religion in the world. That’s why the world seems so corrupted because Satan has rigged everything to be against God and the people of God.
Satan has set up this world to promote evil agendas, to trap people in false religion and idolatry, to persecute the true church, and to set up minefields of temptation in hope of ensnaring Christians.
As a spiritual young man, you slowly begin to see that this invisible battle is going on all around you.
And Satan’s kingdom is bearing down constantly on the people of God and you’re on the front lines.
And what is your mission in this war?
Well, Paul explains it this way in 2 Corinthians 10 verse three.
He says, “We do not war according to the flesh.” It’s not a physical war. It’s not a war you wage with guns.
But the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying what?
Speculations.
And every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. By the way, that verse is commonly misunderstood to think we’re taking our own thoughts captive. This is actually saying we are going out there and taking other people’s thoughts captive. That’s your mission.
The picture here is that you are part of an invading army and you’re invading the fortress of evil.
Your mission is to use your weapons, which is the word of God, the gospel, and to tear down the fortresses, to tear down the false philosophies and religions of the world constructed by Satan to trap sinners and to free them from those systems.
But it’s not an easy mission because while you are doing that, you are taking enemy fire in the form of temptations and persecution that are trying to take you out of play.
This is the this is really the thrust of the famous verse in Ephesians 6 about the armor of God. In verse 11, he says, Apostle Paul says to put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of what?
the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against what?
Rulers, against the powers, against the world’s forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day.
That’s today, by the way.
and having done everything to stand firm.
The Apostle Peter puts it like this. 1 Peter 5’8, “Your adversary, the devil, crawls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to what?
Devour.” But resist him firm in your faith.
You see, Satan is trying to take down your character because he knows that if he can tempt you to sin and to destroy your witness, he can neutralize you as a force for God. And if that doesn’t work, then he will throw trials and persecutions your way to see if that will discourage you and and slow you down. The battle here is both offensive and defensive.
And as a spiritual young person, spiritual young man, you have somewhat amazingly figured out how to win this war. You are an overcomer.
You are an overcomer in both offense and in defense. And listen, this seems like a tough, very difficult war, but victory is not only possible, but is actually expected as you see here of the believer. And if you look in the parallel verse in verse 14, he says, “You are strong.” He does not say you are weak and you have no hope.
He does not say this is going to be too hard for you. He says you are strong.
And in what sense are you strong?
You would have to turn over to to 1 John 4:4 to see this.
He says, “Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the what? In the world.” If you have the Holy Spirit in you as a Christian, how can you not be strong?
You see, every Christian can enjoy victory in this battle. And you need to stop telling yourself that you can’t.
Somehow I I think we’ve gotten to this idea that Christians are weak and victims of our sin. And nothing can be further from the truth. We need to tell ourselves that we are strong because God is in us.
And then to advance in this war, Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 16:13. He says, “Be on the alert as a soldier. Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith.
Act like what?
Act like men be strong.
That is you already are strong as a Christian because of who is in you and now you just need to start acting like it. You need to really go do something.
And indeed we as Christians can do everything through him who gives us strength.
And what is the source of our strength?
Well, let’s look at verse 14 there.
into verse 14 it says the word of God what abides in you is the word of God the source of your strength is all all comes down to learning memorizing obeying applying and hiding the word of God in your heart so that when the day comes that you need to cross swords with the devil you can come out on top you can come out on top and so let me just pause here and just ask you, do you feel like you have matured as a Christian to the place where you can call yourself a spiritual young man?
How active and skillful are you at the offensive and the defensive requirements of this war?
Or on the other side, are you just sitting out the battle?
Are you sitting it out? Are you not going on the offensive? Are you watching as other people do that? If that’s you, then maybe you have let Satan win this round.
Don’t let Satan take you out before you even get started. Wake up and see the war around you and realize that you are strong. You are a strong soldier in this war because God dwells within you and you are to pick up your sword, the word of God, and to advance toward victory.
Amen.
That’s how you grow.
There’s of course one more category that we need to look at even after a young man. This will be brief and that is of a spiritual father. This is in the first half of verse 13. I am writing to you fathers because you know him who has been from the beginning.
This is the end goal to become a spiritual father.
This man has fought faithfully. He has s seen God grant him victory time and time again in the spiritual war zone. He is a veteran of many battles offensive and defensive.
And he knows how to use the word of God to tear down the ideological forces of Satan.
He knows how to defend against temptation. He knows how to deal with persecution.
And through it all, he has seen and experienced the faithfulness of God.
He can point even to specific times in his life where things seemed hopeless.
Yet, God granted him victory.
And having known God through his meditations on the word of God as well as his experiences of God’s faithfulness, the spiritual father now knows God not just in a way a small child would know, not just the basic facts, not just in an incomplete way, but a deep and settled and unshakable knowledge.
He can now confidently of course answer all the big questions of life. Why are we here? What is the point of my life?
Where is it going? How did it begin? And how did it end? And he is no longer deceived easily. Having studied the word diligently, he can smell a false teacher from a mile away.
And this spiritual father also know how to please God. He knows how to please God because he has in fact walked walked with God.
Actually to see this particular point, we can actually ask the question of this verse. Who why does God why does John say this way? Why does John refer to God as he who has been from the beginning?
Why does he choose this peculiar phrase?
Uh just turn back one page with me to first John chapter 1 and let’s see how he begins the book of first John.
He begins it like this. what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life. Okay, so he’s talking about of course God. But then he says, what we have touched with our what? Hands.
What we have seen with our eyes. So who is he referring to?
Jesus. He’s talking about Jesus.
what was from the beginning.
That is John is talking about Jesus here. He is saying that just as John himself the apostle John when Jesus was on this earth walked with Jesus touched Jesus saw Jesus with his own eyes as a disciple.
John is saying that the spiritual father has just as real and as a deep relationship with the risen Christ as he had.
So through the word of God, we can walk with Jesus in no less of an intimate way than the Apostle John.
We could truly know Jesus.
Finally, just notice that the fact that this man is referred to as a father brings to mind the fact that he is he is thought of as a father in the church as well. So, not only is he engaging in the battle himself, he is now expected to be a leader of the troops.
Not only is he protecting and loving and exhorting exhorting and providing spiritual sustenance for the troops, he’s coming alongside the rest of the congregation in the battle. And he’s also passing down the knowledge and experience that he has won through hard-fought victories to the next generation of believers.
Just as the apostle John has done here, spiritual fathers then ought to act like fathers in the congregation to teach, to exhort, to encourage, and to teach them how to fight.
Well, then these are the three stages of spiritual growth. The simple child, the strong young man, and the spiritual father.
Out of these categories of growth, where would you place yourself?
Your responsibility before God this morning is to assess yourself. Assess yourself accurately.
understand clearly what it is that you are lacking to get to that next stage of growth and then to really make practical changes in your life to get there by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Once you get to the spiritual father stage, you are not just to sit there, but you are also to help others in the church to climb that same ladder.
We are to get there together. The spiritual warfare is not just you as one soldier against the world. It’s an army of God’s soldier against the powers of Satan.
And the army is right here.
Calvary, don’t be satisfied where you are.
Grow up and progress upward for your good, for your joy, for the goodness of the church.
And so when you can finally hang up your boots as a spiritual father, you can say with the Apostle Paul in second Timothy, the time of my departure has come. I have what?
Fought the good fight.
I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. And in the future, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.
Let’s pray.
Father, as we think about what you have told us today here in just this small section of scripture, we’re just overcome by how much you have blessed us in giving us first of all assurance of our salvation. That once we believe, we are saved fully and forever.
To helping us understand that we are not weak as believers, but we are strong because of him who dwells within us.
that we are able to fight the battle that you have put in front of us to understanding that when we get to the spiritual father stage, you expect us to act like fathers to come alongside to teach to protect and to make sure that your war is won.
Lord, we know of course that in this war it is really you doing all of the work.
We know of course that at the end your victory is unquestionable.
But Lord, we are so thankful you allow us to participate and you allow us even to be rewarded on the basis of what we do here.
To you be the glory forever. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.