More Than Milk

Intro

When I was a kid I had a few VHS tapes that I liked to watch. I remember as a kid I used to love Peter Pan

I would think, how cool is that, Peter Pan flies, he hangs out with the Lost Boys, he gets into all kinds of trouble and is always fighting captain hook.

When your a kid, this movie is awesome

Your fighting the bad guys…You stay a kid forever…you have no responsibility forever and its great

And now, just the other day I watched a bit of it with my son and it totally changed for me…So I began doing some research on the symbolism in this movie and here is what I found

“Pan” is a god in the ancient world and he is a god of the shepherds and the wild people…Pan is the god of all things like panthiesm...so in this instance…Peter Pan is sort of this child god who looks out for the Lost Boys

Neverland: is the eternal world of child imagination, time stands still here, there is no responsibility here and you are always able to live in the moment

Flying: symbolized the escapism of childhood. That you can elude all adult responsibilities and just fly over it all

The Lost Boys: Are children who like peter pan are choosing to never grow up and to remain on Neverland forever

Captain Hook: symbolizes adult authority, he represents the strict rules that children associate with adulthood

The crocodile that is always chasing captain hook if you remember has swallowed a clock…And its taken a part of captain hook, his hand…and hook is deathly afraid of the crocodile…The symbolism here is that the croc has a piece of hook and time is always coming for you as an adult…Time wants to swallow you up…The crocodile is the dragon of chaos....and just adults have to deal with that

The great problem of the entire movie is growing up!

Wendy is gong to move out of the nursery! This is a huge problem

And of course…In the movie…all the lost boys have to deal with is this adult authority, Captain Hook.

And Captain hook has all of the problems that come with adulthood

The idea is if you never grow up then you will never have adult problems...

So where I used to see Peter Pan as a fun childhood fantasy, but now I see it as a tragic story of a failure of kids to mature

I get it that there are very real fears about kids growing up…but here is the issue

If you are 16 and you have your first job and you are making all the mistakes…showing up late, making dumb comments around your co-workers, screwing around on the job…well usually that is to be expected, at least a little bit...

But if your 30…doing the same stuff then thats just sad…and if your 35 and you are not maturing then this is just tragic

The point I am making is Peter Pan is all about the wonders of childhood and not growing up…

But it is an absolutely tragedy when it happens to someone in real life

If you are a man-child and you have never grown up…then you will eventually live in a world that you can not thrive in

I saw a video online that illustrates this...but I cant show it to you because it has too much foul language in it…is this dad who who had an adult child that has graduated college and is living in his house. for three months this kid did nothing but play video games…So the dad takes all of these video games and puts them on the grass…he writes on his son’s white board....”Get a Job, get a life, no more games” and when this adult child goes outside he sees a pile of his own video games and his dad on the riding mower…and he mows them all down…And of course…the son just freaks out...

Now it came out later that this video was staged and fake

But sometimes this is what needs to happen in our lives

We need to have our immaturity exposed and scattered all over the lawn and have it mowed down…We need to stop lifting the immaturity of Peter Pan up in our lives and take some real responsibility for our lives.

And this is basically what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 3…Lets look at it now

1 Corinthians 3

Please flip your bibles to 1 Cor…I just want to read you the text in its entirety and then we will break it down a bit

1 Corinthians 3 NIV

Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

The Call for Maturity: (1-5) Lack of unity = immaturity

So Paul begins and says…You are like the church that is playing video games all the time and not taking life seriously. You are Peter Pan.

The first thing Paul does here is to say…You are still acting like people of this world.

See the reason why Jesus says we have to be “born again” is because we are called to put this world behind us and focus on the cross…we are called to focus on the things of God.

What Paul will say in other texts and some translators translate 1 Corinthians 3 this way. You are people who live by the flesh and not the spirit.

The very first sign that Paul gives the church that they are not mature is they hold onto worldly values...

Growing to maturity

In order to grow to maturity I need to value life with God over worldly values

See this church valued what was happening in the world and this is the first thing that Paul calls them out on

What do we think is impotrant?

See when you come to follow Jesus, everything in your life has to be evaluated

Every idea you have, every position you hold, every thought and you have to ask the question, is this honoring God or honoring humans?

Even your political ideas...

Oh Pastor now your really meddling…Its true though...

And by the way, following Jesus doesn't fit nicely into either of our political parties

You have to re-evaluate your sexual ethics....

Because God has a very specific design for sex and that is marriage between a man and a woman and that he calls men and women to get married then have sex specifically in that order, its God’s wisdom and design for marriage

You have to re-evaluate what you believe ethically.

God has a different set of values than the world has

You have to re-evaluate how you feel about people that you disagree with

See you have to value loving others even when you perceive that they are on the other side of the fence from you.

Butt see the problem with the Corinthian church was that they never repented from their old values…They just tried to combine everything

And I’ll tell you what, if you want to not be successful in a walk with God then just try and combine all of the world’s values and all of Jesus’ values and try and live in that world of contradiction.

Central to growing in maturity is this phrase, and I rarely do this but I am going to ask us all to say it. And it’s going to feel like ripping off a band-aid, its going to hurt a little but…

And I know when I put this on the screen some of you are not going to say it…But its just three words and we need to practice it if we are ever going to grow to maturity

Ready? Here it is:

“I was wrong”

Ok lets say it together…Did it hurt?

Saying things like, “I was wrong” is basically repentance…And the more you can examine your life and hold it up to scripture then the more you can freely say that!

You need to ask the question, is this biblical? is this right?

Am I valuing human ideas rather than Godly ideas?

This is why Paul is saying…You’re all a bunch of infants…And Paul is using this example of breastfeeding...

He said I gave you milk but you never moved on to solid food…And this is a reference to breast feeding…And the evidence is that there are all of these divisions

Divisions and fights reveal our lack of maturity

Now if you didn’t say ouch…you should have!

What do divisions reveal? Divisions reveal a group of people who are unwilling to lay down their thoughts and ideas for the sake of others. Thats what Division is...

Nope…we are going to have it my way

No…I refuse to listen to you

Divisions ultimately expose our own selfishness and reveal that our lives are not centered on the selfless One who would lay down his life for us on the cross!

Did you know our social media world it basically runs on an algorithm…If you like a conservative video then it will keep showing you more of that …If you like a liberal video or post, it will keep showing you more of that

So what is social media then? It turns out to be an echo chamber where we just hear more and more extreme versions of our own ideas fed back to us…and what it does it it takes people to the polar extremes and then what do we do

Thanksgiving dinner blows up because someone mentions Biden or someone mentions Trump...

Paul looks right at this church and says your not mature because you are all divide on who you follow…Just follow Jesus

Divisions reveal our need to win

Divisions reveal our own selfish nature

Divisions and fights reveal that we are bad at reconciliation or that we just dont want it at all

Now if your familiar with the church in Corinth you will know that there are very real serious problems between people …that there is idolatry in the church, all kinds of sexual sin…all kinds of issues

But what does Paul cite here as the root cause of their lack of maturity?

Their division! The fact that they are not united!

Built to last

So then Paul moves on in the next section and I am not going to read it again..but its verses 6-15

And Paul is mixing metaphors...

He said He planted a seed but apollos watered it and God made it grow

Then he says he laid a foundation like an expert builder but you have to build the house on that foundation

Then he talks about the refiners fire

So what I want you to see in this section is that Paul is talking about your spiritual life as building a house...

And something that everyone would have known back then is that when you build a temple, you use material that lasts, there is lots of gold silver and costly stones in a temple that will stand up to fire...

So Paul is saying…hey are you going to build your life up with the good stuff

or are you just going to build a regular house with wood and hay

Because a fire is coming…a judgment is coming and that is the judgment of Jesus

1 Corinthians 3:14–15 NIV

If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

There is no doubt that many of us at the end of the day are going to see the work we’ve done get burned up...

Like video games sprawled across the lawn getting mowed down

The things we think are so impotrant but really has no eternal significance....

Mature people intentionally build lives that will last .

and what does that mean? Because nothing is really going to last...

But people do...

There is an eternal significance to people

See in the christian worldview we believe that people last forever.

And if you make the choice to surrender to Jesus then you live with God forever in Heaven

and if you choose not to, you live in eternal seperation and we call that Hell

I’ve said this before, but its worth saying again, One time the great Philosopher and Theologian, Dallas Willard was asked, “Who goes to heaven?”

And what he responded was, “all who can possibly stand it”

Meaning that those who are building a spirit filled life now

meaning that those who want to live their life with Jesus now...

So if you are here and you are concerned about building a life that will last, a life that will have eternal significance…What about taking everyone you know to heaven with you?

What about sharing the good news of Jesus with your family and friends...

What if instead of being concerned about building your reputation, your status and your wealth you were primarily concerned with building up people...

That is a building that lasts!

And see when your life is surrendered to Jesus..>And when what you primarily care about is taking others to heaven....Then all of the things that divide us will just be silly trivial things

And then Paul shows them…Hey dont you know that when you gather together as the church that you are God’s temple

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 NIV

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Ok so in Greek, the word “You” here is plural...

I find its better to read this in your best Italian Gangster voice

Dont you’s know that all you’s are god’s temple and that god’s spirit dwells in your midst?…All of you’s together are god’s temple...

Paul is saying look in the former days...

God dwelt in a cloud on Sinai, then God God dwelt in a tabernacle that moved around the dessert and then Solomon built God a temple and then very clearly at Jesus’ baptism we see the spirit descend on Jesus …Then Jesus dies and then is raised from the dead but then he ascends to heaven…and then Pentecost comes...

God’s spirit comes on the church and in the backdrop is this temple…this building that used to house god

But now God is present in the fellowship of the church!

And this is why divisions are so destructive! This is where God’s spirit is supposed to dwell!

What Paul is saying is CHURCH GROW UP! YOU HAVE GOD”S SPIRIT AVAILABLE TO YOU AND YOU ARE DIVIDED ON YOUR CELEBRITY PREACHERS

Church GROW UP! You have god’s spirit here and you are worried about worldly things!

Church GROW UP You have the spirit of God available to you and all you care about is winning the argument!

Paul is saying CHURCH! Stop pretending to be peter pan and the lost boys when eternal life is available to you

Paul is saying CHURCH quit playing video games in your mom’s basement, there is a world to win for christ!

GROW UP!

CS LEWIS once wrote

The Quotable Lewis Joy: As Sehnsucht or Longing

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

I want to invite the band to come

This will be Paul’s message all through the book of 1 corinthians and he will pepper it in everywhere

1 Corinthians 13:11 NIV

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

So maybe your here and spiritually your playing video games in your mom’s basement rather than leaning into the real work that God has called you to…Unity and making disciples

Maybe your here and you know what your immaturity is…

you know what is holding you back from taking deeper steps of faith

Throw it on the lawn and mow it down

Maybe your here and for your deeper step of maturity you need to come before God and say, LORD I AM WAS WRONG, I NEED YOU!!!

Maybe your here and you dont really know how to respond other than just to say, Lord take me deeper into maturity with you. Help me to build a life that lasts!

Let’s pray