The Milk, The Meat, or The Pacifier

This message has been on my mind since January 2019.

The Lord has allowed me to preach it today!

I hope that you are ready for the message.

I have been meditating on this for a while and struggling with how God wants this to be delivered.

I had on idea that included a big blow up prop…that didn’t work out.

I had another idea about making a large order for a bunch of props…couldn’t make it work out.

Now, I have heard the Lord say use three props to get the visual that I want them to see.

I said YES!!

We have three items up here and i will go through each one of these in detail and what there purpose is for.

Some of you may already know, but bare with me as I unfold this.

If you are a Christian this morning, you are in one of these stages of you relationship with Christ.

The church is poised to be in one of these three stages of their life.

The questions that I have been given for this message are these:

“What stage are you in?”

“Are you okay with where you are?”

It’s okay to be in two of these, maybe, but not okay to be in one of these!

Let’s get into this and break it down for you.

The Milk

1 Peter 2:2–3 MEV

As newborn babies, desire the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow, if it is true that you have experienced that the Lord is good.

If you have been saved for a short period of time, this is where you should be.

This stage in your relationship with Christ is okay if you are being fed with the milk of the Word while striving to move forward.

Babies need someone to prepare the milk for them and feed it to them!

This is okay if you are a baby in Christ.

We do not come out of the womb ready to eat hamburgers and fries.

We have to work up to that and our bodies have to grow so that it can digest that kind of food.

So goes it spiritually!

We can not get saved and automatically be expected to understand the Word of God, or digest the Word of God.

We have to learn from fellow Christians on how to rightly divide the truth of God.

2 Timothy 2:15 MEV

Study to show yourself approved by God, a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Do you notice the words of this passage?

“study”

“workman”

“rightly”

“truth”

These are words that can be misdefined if we are not careful or we are listening to the old way of living.

Most of us don’t need to carry over our study habits from high school or college into our Christian life.

Those habits wait til the last minute to study only what you need to know for the test that you know that you will have to take.

We must be ready for what ever the world may throw at you!

Some definition of working is standing around letting everyone else do the work while I watch and get credit.

“Right” and “truth” are misused every day in the world!

If you get saved, we expect you to understand the Word of God the next day.

“Well, if they truly get saved, they should hear from the Lord!”

Some of you that have been saved for 20, 30 or 40+ years and still don’t hear from the Lord, and you expect a new born baby to hear and understand God?

Give me a break!

Babies are easily distracted from their needs, they can be fooled!

The problem in this stage is that some Christians are still here and can not move forward because of the lack of maturity and growth.

Those need to remove the distractions that are in their life.

There are things that are in your life that need to be destroyed.

Yes, even you!

You have replaced the love that you once had for the presence of God with the presence of sports.

If your team does not win, you would think that a family member died!

The defeat that comes from a team that you didn’t even go to that school or aren’t even associated with that area can alter your attitude is amazing.

Some can even get caught up in the nascar racing and get so into it that when their team looses, they crash and burn.

If you just went after God as hard as you are going after sports, you would be unstoppable!

If you have had a real experience with God, like the scripture says, how can you go back to the world?

Because we have neglected our relationship with the Lord.

If you are still on milk, then it is time to move to the meat of His Word.

The milk, like I said, has to be prepared by someone else and fed to you.

Babies need help when they mess up, someone has to change their diapers!

When you are not mature in Christ, you can be content to just sit in your mess.

When a baby has made a mess, they sit there and cry!

Is that what you do, or do you get up and change the mess?

When something goes wrong, a baby will cry with no idea what to do to fix the problem.

This is not necessarily a bad thing if you are a baby in Christ.

There are those that are still babies in Christ that need someone that is more mature to help them out.

Babies are always into stuff and are good at making the mess, but not really understanding how to clean up the mess.

This is why they need to be nurtured, taught, and helped a little more often than someone who has been in the faith for a while.

BUT!!

This is the problem with the church today.

We are basically a bunch of nurseries taking care of 20, 30 and 40+ year old babies!

When are we going to grow up?

When we decide to start eating the meat of the Word!

Do you want to eat the meat or are you content with drinking milk the rest of your life?

Are you only eating spiritually on Sunday mornings?

Are you relying on the preacher or teacher to give you what you get from the Lord?

Are you lost when it comes to understanding what the Word of God says?

Should you be more mature in Christ than you are?

The Meat

Hebrews 5:14 MEV

But solid food belongs to those who are mature, for those who through practice have powers of discernment that are trained to distinguish good from evil.

Are you mature in Christ?

Have you reached the place that you have the desire to sit down and read the Word of God and study it?

Looking at this scripture, we see that those who consume the solid food are those who practice the powers of discernment.

This is how we can combat against the powers of evil that try and disguise the difference between good and evil.

How do you know if you should or shouldn’t?

Discernment!

When we get to the place that we desire the meat of the Word, we are ready to work for our food now.

The taste of what God has done in our life has reach a place that we realize that it is worth the effort to prepare to eat!

There are still stages to the solid food of the Word!

Simple Foods

John 3:16 MEV

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

These are the scriptures that we can easily understand with a little bit of reading.

We have to start somewhere.

When we read this verse, we see that we are loved by a God that sent His only son because He loved us.

This scripture explains why we can have salvation the way that we do.

God sent His son to die for us.

We can read some scriptures that just make since to us just because we can read, but there are others that require us to study a little and research.

We start with the book of John because it is the best book that gives us an overview of Jesus and who He was.

The life that He lived and how we should live our lives for Him.

When we make Jesus the Lord of our life, we give Him the reigns of our life.

This means that He is in control!

We must get up every morning and deliberately give Christ the reigns.

Luke 6:31 MEV

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Here is another one!

These are easily understood unless you just do not want to obey them, they can be understood and digested.

We learn how to treat others when we read the Word of God.

We learn from the master and how He lived on this earth.

Moderate Food

The Pacifier

Are you relying on fake foods to meet your nutrient and satiety needs?

Mature Christians don't sit idle in their faith, and assume God will do all the work inside them, when God has clearly called them to "make every effort" to draw near to Him.