Learn to Chew...
Desire Earnestly... • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 2 viewsLearn to Chew... In life we must learn to chew. We cannot go on being bottle fed milk. We must learn to chew on meat.
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Desire Earnestly…
Desire Earnestly…
Describe the journey we are on and Recap last week: Build a foundation
Last week’s core verse from Paul:
2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
Recap the previous verses to this one: You seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.
Recognize Independence Day… I thought it fitting that this sermon fell on this weekend, because what most of us do when we get together to celebrate Independence Day is two things:
We light fireworks, and we eat!
In fact, We had a great time of fellowship here yesterday. Wyndal cooked us some great fish and sliders and potato wedges and hush puppies…
Others brought sides…
There was fried squash and hot dogs and beans…
There was pasta salad, potato salad, and deviled eggs…
For desert we had American flag cake, strawberry cake, chocolate fudge cake, cinnamon rolls, and half a dozen other sweet things…
You hungry yet?
But I want you to imagine something with me. What if we had showed up yesterday to all this wonderful food, but had somehow lost the ability to chew…
Worse yet, what benefit would all that food be if I had never learned to chew in the first place?
What a frustration it would be to see the spread in front of me, but not have the ability to partake…
I had a conversation with the neighbor right here and he was telling me they were having a fireworks show and wanted to let me know so I wasn’t surprised, but they wouldn’t be up late, because they have a newborn baby.
What would it be like if that little baby had been there last night and we put the baby on the counter and said, “Ok! Get after it. All the food you need to sustain yourself is right in front of you. All you have to do is eat it.”
That baby wouldn’t have the slightest clue! Because babies are not born with the ability to chew… It is a learned behavior. They start with milk and work their way up from there, and sometimes even that is a challenge.
As humans, in order to survive the growth we are meant to go through, we must learn to chew…
In the same way, if we are to grow as Christians, we must also...
Learn to Chew...
Learn to Chew...
As we are working our way through the foundations laid by Paul in 1 Cor. leading up to our engagement with the Spiritual gifts, we started by laying the foundation for the last two weeks and now we find ourselves in chapter 3 of 1 Cor.
So far Paul has spoken of the need for the Gospel, and his reliance on the Spirit, and now reveals the need the Corinthians have for the Spirit by saying,
1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.
2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able,
You thought I was being silly when I talked about never gaining the ability to chew, but here Paul is telling these churchgoers at Corinth, “I gave you milk, because you can’t chew!”
Now it’s easy to look at them and point the finger and think we are better than they, but how often do we find ourselves in the same pitfall?
How often do we think of Church as an automatic carwash, where we come in and let the worship leader lead us through the motions of worship and listen to the preaching and think that somehow by just going through we have done our duty to maintain our vessel?
What happens if we think about Church as a consumer, we come in and go through the order of service without ever getting vulnerable, without ever engaging on a deeper level, without ever laying down our church masks and getting to the roots of the issue.
This produces the appearance of a clean outside with a messy inside…
See I have a yellow truck that is a work truck. It’s a 2000, Chevy silverado 1500 with 315k miles on it.
I work out of it quite a bit. I carry tools in it, i carry straps and hardware and extra oil and my golf clubs…
Here’s what I’ve discovered about that old yellow truck....
No matter how many times I go through the automatic car wash, the inside never gets cleaner without some additional effort on my part…
The outside can be shiny yellow, but the inside will still be a cluttered mess until I take the time to open the doors, unload my junk and allow access into the innermost parts of the truck…
If we come to church treating it like an automatic car wash, we keep our doors shut, we keep our junk piled up inside, and no matter how shiny the outside gets, the inside stays the same…
In order to make any progress in this Christian walk, we must open the doors of our heart, allow God to use this community of believers to hold us accountable, get the junk out in the open, and allow access to the innermost parts of our hearts…
Christianity is not a consumer sport. Those who never go beyond the automatic carwash mentality, will never learn to chew what is laid out before them…
It reminds me of the disciples that walked away from Jesus in John 6.
If you remember from last week, this is part of the same conversation where Jesus tells the crowd, John 6:26 “26 “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”
28 Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?”
29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
30 So they said to Him, “What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform?
31 “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’ ”
Jesus answers them with a discourse where he basically says, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven… I am the bread of life…”
49 “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
50 “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
51 “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
He’s telling them, I am the sign you’re looking for. I am that which your fathers looked forward to. I am your provision. I am your strength. I am your sustenance. I am that which empowers you…
But it went right over their heads…
This is what happens when a table of meat and bread is laid out in front of infants only capable of drinking milk…
How often do we come into church and expect the pastor to cook the food, pre-chew the food, spoon feed us the food, digest the food on our behalf, and then we wonder why we are not sustained throughout the trials of life…
Casia cutting the kids food into tiny pieces, because they will choke if she doesn’t…
They have not reached the maturity in life to be able to sit down at a juicy t-bone steak and properly work their way through until there’s nothing left except the bone.
I always tease her “If you cut that any smaller, you might as well chew it for them.”
But the truth is, they are still learning to chew…
As Christians, we must continue learning to chew…
Chew?
Chew?
What does it mean to chew?
For those who were listening to the teachings of Jesus, only a few took His teaching and chewed on it. In fact, v. 66 says…
66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.
The first thing we have to recognize is that chewing requires us to persevere.
When a baby drinks milk, it is instant satisfaction. There is very little effort, it’s straight to the tummy and it’s done.
When you sit down at a steak dinner, it takes some effort to cut the meat, chew the meat, cut the meat chew the meat, cut the meat, chew the meat…
If we are ever going to get beyond the milk of the word, we have to learn to cut and chew cut and chew....
You’re looking at me crazy, let me put it into scriptural terms for you… 2 Tim. 2:15:
The New King James Version Chapter 2
15 uBe diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Just because you don’t understand it, does not negate the fact that it is truth…
It is our job to rightly divide… Cut… chew… Cut and chew… Cut and chew
These disciples that Jesus was talking to said…
60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”
It’s too hard. I don’t understand. Why me? Why this way? Why this church? Why these people? Why this family? Why this disease? Whine and moan and complain and eventually walk away, because rather than chew on it and parse it out, it’s too hard…
If you come into church expecting the pastor to do it all, how will you ever face the difficulties of life when it’s your time to chew?
Jesus said it this way…
61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?
62 “What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?
You’re upset about this little thing? You can’t handle the first challenging teaching I throw your way? The first time it gets hard and you stumble?
What are you going to do when it really gets tough? You’ve gotta learn to chew now, or you’re never going to make it later…
but they walked away instead of chewing on what He said....
We have to learn to chew… We must learn to wrestle with the text as Jacob wrestled with God and walk away different…
We must learn to contend with that which challenges us… And the more we grow both in spiritual matters and in capacity, there will be challenges…
How do we handle these challenges? How do we take something which would cause a milk drinker to stumble and find sustenance in it?
How do we learn to chew?
How do we learn to chew?
I think Jesus gives us the answer by his next statement…
63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
In other words, if you try to understand by the flesh, you will never get there.. This is a spiritual walk and it takes a reliance on the Spirit to digest what God is saying to us…
Paul echos this back in our text in 1 Cor.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.
16 For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
This is a spiritual walk! and when we have been born again, we have received the Spirit of God…
Why?
So that we may know the things freely given to us by God! We can’t know them by the flesh, we must engage His Spirit…
This is why the foundation must first be laid… We must first choose Him, knowing He chose us…
Those who have not been born again as a new creation cannot chew the meat of the Word… To them it is foolishness!
This Word is spiritually appraised. It is spiritually handled… It is spiritually digested…
No amount of training can ever bring you to the true knowledge of God, except that you first receive the Spirit of God into your heart by choosing to serve him!
Until that time we are what Paul calls, “Mere men.”
3 for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?
Mere men… We are more than mere men… We are something new altogether… We are no longer only natural, we are the product of a supernatural process…
And having been borne of a supernatural process, we must now rely on that same agent of the supernatural process to teach us how to chew…
It is a reliance on the voice of God, listening to the Spirit of God, allowing Him to speak to our hearts as we digest the meat of His Word…
We first build the foundation that is Christ, then rely on the Spirit to take us deeper into the mind of God…
These are the first two steps in our earnest desire of the spiritual gifts…
If we were to jump straight to the gifts without these two things in place, we would wind up in the same place the corinthians were when Paul wrote…
They were seeing the moving of the Spirit, but dealing with jealousy and strife and disunity.
Let us first build the foundation, then learn to chew…
Learn to Chew...
Learn to Chew...