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Well, this morning we are bundled up and working through this series on the whole body.
We don't have that many body parts left. In fact, come mid -April, we'll be in a new series working through Ecclesiastes and be looking forward even this next week doing some heavy preparation for that.
And we certainly should be praying that the Lord uses all the things that we've received up to this point and that we don't soon forget some of the things that perhaps
He's placed uniquely on our hearts as individuals, the things that even tonight as we gather and talk more practically about where the rubber meets the road, that we would be able to grow into all things into Him who is our head, that the
Lord by His own Spirit would join and knit us together and that we as individual joints would supply that which effectively works to build this body up in love.
That's Ephesians 4 in a nutshell and that's been the banner over which we've spent these past several weeks.
The head, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth, the heart, the spine, the shoulders, the hands last week and this morning we're at the stomach.
Now when I thought about the stomach and why it would be a useful body part to discuss about the health of the body or a whole body, you realize a lot of our bodily health is bound up to our stomach.
It reminded me of a fable from the Greek writer Aesop where he describes the body parts were beginning to feel a little jilted that the stomach could just revel in eating luxurious foods all day long, you know.
The hands are saying, I'm basically grinded down to my knuckles, scabbed and bloody with all the work
I have to do. The brain says I have migraines and headaches with all the thinking and planning and anxiety that's wracking my body.
The knees are weary, the feet are tired, the back is aching and here's the stomach.
All it does is just eat olives and garlic and lamb chops and what have you. And so all the body parts decided they would rebel against the stomach.
They would work together to make sure that the stomach would not have it so easy and would not have the food. And as the fable progresses, all these body parts begin to fail and they realize that though that stomach seemed to be just receiving, that in fact their health was uniquely tied to the stomach and it was because the stomach was receiving food and the fruit of the hands and the back and the knees and the brain that actually it was able to give life and growth and sustenance to every part of the body.
Now if that's true and he was using that, Aesop was using that to speak of the body politic, I think we can use it to speak to the body corporate, the body ecclesial.
The stomach, however, I want to tie to the individual believer and the stomach here being the means by which we digest that which causes growth, right?
That's what the stomach does. Stomach receives something and it's able in receiving it to transform it into energy for growth.
And so the stomach is that which will digest the word of God and therefrom cause growth.
That's true corporately. That's also true individually. So we're talking about the means of growth and specifically within that, the means of growth that comes from the word of God.
That's how I want to approach the stomach this morning. Now we're going to have a roundabout way of getting there as we come to talk about growth because the first thing
I want to do is just talk about how not only do we receive the word of God, but first we are born of the word of God.
The word of God is that which begets Christians and only from that new life born of the word do we actually receive the life and the growth that comes from that life.
It's the word that's living and active and so as that word has brought life to those who were dead and trespassed in sin, as that word has brought new life and new light, it also causes growth, it edifies and advances.
And so the word, the power, the life, the endurance of the word, that's the first thing that we need to establish and only then can we consider the digestion of the word, the progress of the word, the growth of the word in our lives.
And I think all of that gets held together rather neatly in 1 Peter 1, 22 through chapter 2, verse 3.
We don't often go across chapter divisions. That's a good practice. In fact, some
Bible publishers print Bibles now without chapter or even verse number and the idea is that you just read the text as the text and don't use perhaps artificial numbering systems as a way of dividing things that would have been organically linked together.
Read a letter as a letter rather than say, oh, I'm done the chapter, therefore I'm done the reading.
And maybe here's a good case and example of why we should do that. 1 Peter 1, beginning in verse 22, since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and abides forever because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers, its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
Now this is the word, which by the gospel was preached to you. Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all 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. You see just across 1 20 through 2 through 2 3 how several themes are held together.
We have been born again and therefore as newborn babes we desire the milk of the word.
What is this word? It's the word which was preached in the gospel, which you heard, which you tasted. This word doesn't fade, it doesn't wither, it endures forever.
Just like your birth from that word showed that it was not a corruptible seed, but it was an incorruptible seed.
This word lives and abides forever. This word will cause you to purify yourselves because this word tells you the truth that you are to obey.
In obeying that truth, you will be able to love the brethren. What does loving the brethren look like? Laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, all evil speaking.
You see all these things are held together just across 1 22 through 2 3.
Now we want to pay due attention to the flow that Peter gives us, the birth of the word, the endurance of the word, and then we'll come to perhaps the meat of the sermon, which is the milk of the word.
Now Peter begins at the very beginning of his letter by saying, blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again. This idea of the new birth is front and center.
And here, as we come to the end of chapter 1, he's returned to it again, having been born again.
Peter's argument presupposes that a Christian is one who's born again. I don't know about you, every now and then
I hear people who, they speak of born again Christians like that was some denomination. It's not a denomination.
It's like, oh, you know, where do you go to church? A Baptist. Oh, I'm a born again Christian. It's like every
Christian is born. You're not rightly called a Christian unless you're born again. Of course, there's those who are
Christian in name only, those who are called Christians but are no such thing. But to be rightly called a
Christian, to be rightly defined as a Christian, you must be born again. There is no other. This Peter assumes.
How vital is this new birth? John 3, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews. He came to Jesus by night, said, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher come from God.
No one can do the signs you're doing unless God is with him. Jesus said to him, oh, by the way, notice that Nicodemus says, we know, not just I know, we know, we actually really do know.
That's why I'm coming to you by night. I don't want to get outed by my group. See, it's pretty popular to reject you, but secretly we all know
God is really with you. He comes by night. He asserts this. We know that you really are from God.
Now, Jesus says, well, it's not that you know so much as it's been revealed to you, Nicodemus. Most assuredly,
I say to you, unless one is born again, he can't even see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born again when he's old?
Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Nicodemus is very literal in his understanding of what
Jesus was saying. Jesus says, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Without this new birth, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Without this new birth, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
That which is born of flesh is just flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
And so don't marvel, Jesus says, that I said you must be born again. And he describes the work of the spirit.
The spirit blows where it wishes. You can hear the sound of the wind. You cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.
This is how the spirit works. This is how the spirit moves. Have you ever met someone who chose to be born?
Yeah, I figured it was about time. I was born in 86. Yeah, it's a good year for the Celtics. This is as good a year as any.
I might as well be born. No, no man ever chose to be born.
No man ever chose to be born again. This is a work, a sovereign work of the spirit of God.
As many as received him, John 1 says, to them he gave the right to become the children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, not even the will of man, but of God.
It's God's will to bring about the new birth. And how does he bring about this new birth?
This is the whole point of where we're going. That which gives life is that which sustains life. That from which we're born is that from which we grow.
It's the word of God. We've been begotten of the word, and now we need to receive that word that this principle of life, this principle of new growth, new transformation may continue.
Every good gift, every perfect gift is from above, James says. It comes down from the father of lights, with whom there's no variation or shadow of turning.
Of his own will, again, not of our will, of his own will, he brought us forth, how?
By the word of truth. God brings forth his people, his children, by his word.
His word is this incorruptible seed. His word is this spirit -wrought principle of life.
Romans 10 presumes this. In a few weeks, when we come toward Easter, we'll be at the feet, the beautiful feet that herald the gospel, and Paul reasons in this way.
How will any call on him whom they have not believed? And how can they believe if they have not heard?
So then, faith comes by hearing. Well, how does hearing come? Hearing comes by the word of God.
Paul says to the church at Ephesus, in him you trusted after you heard the word of truth, which is the gospel of your salvation.
So it's the centrality of the word, it's the efficacy of the word. First Thessalonians 2 .13,
for this reason we also thank God, without ceasing. When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you did not receive it as a word from men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, and it's effectively working in you.
So Paul recognizes that which gave you new life is that which causes new growth.
It's the word of God, effectively working in the life of the believer. Joel Green in his commentary says it so well, if the seed from which these believers were begotten was a perishable seed, then their fate would surely be just like the grass, just like the flower, it withers and falls away.
But if the word of God, if the gospel of God's truth is a living word, an everlasting word, and if believers are begotten from this word, the life into which they've been reborn is unending, and therefore even the way they love one another can become unending.
It's exactly right. And secondly, we see Peter's drawing out this idea of the permanence of the word, the endurance of the word.
Verses 24 and 25, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because all flesh is as grass, all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers, its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. This is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
So this is the source of life. We have this language of the fading flower, the flesh being like grass, it withers, it falls away.
In a world where everything is lacking permanence, here's the word that endures, here's the one thing that will never pass away.
God being the Alpha and the Omega, all that he says is true, eternally so.
In a world, as Ecclesiastes will show us, where under the sun all is vanity, if we understand the word vanity rightly.
There is one who sits above the sun, there's one who sits outside of time and space and creation itself, and his word therefore endures forever.
It's not subject to decay. Think about it in this way. This is
Charles Spurgeon, I have to mention him at least weekly, wonderful sermon called
The Withering Work of the Spirit. He says, when the Spirit of God breathes on us, that which was sweet becomes bitter, that which was bright becomes dim.
The world and the lusts thereof are to the unregenerate as beautiful as the meadows in spring.
They're bedecked with flowers, but to the regenerate soul, the born -again soul, they're a wilderness, a salt land, uninhabitable.
Of those very things in which we once took to light, we say, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Beloved hearers, do you know what this kind of withering means? Have you seen the lusts of the flesh and the pomps and the pleasures fade away before your very eyes?
It must be so, or the Spirit of God has not breathed upon your soul. You see, there's nothing enduring, nothing satisfying, nothing fulfilling.
The only thing that's enduring, the only thing that holds true, the only thing that is solid and lasting and therefore can be a refuge and a shelter for my undying soul is the very
Word of God. What He says abides forever. What He's promised is the only truth that will abide.
Everything else is lies in a world of lies. It's the Word of God that abides forever.
Spurgeon, like James in his letter, uses this metaphor of the fading flower or all flesh being like grass.
He talks about the glory of man fading away, and that's in high contrast to the Word of God abiding.
If you're reading 1 Peter, it's throughout 1 Peter, he's referencing this Word of God in chapter 1.
He calls it the truth in verse 22, the seed by which we're born again, the living and abiding
Word, the Word of the Lord, the Word which was preached to you. And as we'll see a little bit later, the pure milk of the
Word. It's what the writer of Hebrews was getting at in chapter 4. The Word of God is living and powerful.
Where do we derive our life from? The Word of God. Jesus says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my
Word will never pass away. This is the great contrast.
Where is Peter pulling this from? He's pulling it from several places in Scripture, but preeminently
Isaiah chapter 40. There's a lot of parallels, in fact, we'll look at them in a moment, but let me just begin with Isaiah 40, beginning in verse 1.
If you remember the prophecy of Isaiah, with all the judgment and oracles of woe that are about to come, occupies largely chapters 1 through 39.
You have brief little moments of respite along the way, but generally speaking, it's a pretty bleak prophecy, and then you get to chapter 40, and the whole tone shifts.
The promises of God begin to adorn all that Isaiah has to say, and God desires now to speak comfort and hope to His people that are going to face
His judgment. Isaiah 40 begins, comfort, yes, comfort, my people, says your
God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem. Cry out to her. Her warfare has ended. Her iniquity is pardoned.
She's received from the Lord's hand double for all of her sins. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, speaking to John the
Baptist's ministry. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill brought low. The crooked places will be made straight, the rough places smooth.
The glory of the Lord will be revealed. All flesh will now see it together. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.
The voice said, cry out, and He said, what shall I cry? Verse 6, all flesh is grass.
All its loveliness like the flower of the field, the grass withers, the flower fades. Because the breath of the
Lord blows upon it, surely even the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our
God stands forever. You see how this is tied into the comfort of a people who are withering and decaying in the exile to come.
In a world and a life of absolute and utter decay, what is the comfort that will comfort the people of God?
The word of God stands forever. It's this promise, this good news of the gospel.
There's this way in the wilderness that I'm preparing. There's a time coming when you're iniquity will be pardoned.
This is the entrance into the suffering servant songs. God is showcasing all that He will do with His mighty arm to deliver
His people and redeem them from their death. In a world of decay, in a world of absolute corruption and ruin, the one thing that endures forever is the word of God.
All of its promise, all of its hope, all that God has purpose to bring about. Unthwartable.
This is the word of comfort. And there's parallels here. Peter is writing his letter to a group of discouraged believers that are about to be tried with a fiery trial.
And he's speaking comfort to their souls in this very way. Everything's fading. All flesh is reeling.
All people are like grass. The one thing that endures forever is what God has uttered. The one thing that will endure to the end is what
He has foretold. That's the one thing that abides forever. And he says, this very word of God is how you have been born.
You've been brought into light. So that's the word of hope. That's the comfort that God speaks to His people.
It's the grace that Isaiah was prophesying. Peter wrote earlier in this letter of this salvation, the prophets inquired and searched carefully who prophesied of the grace that would come to you.
Searching water, what manner of time the spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand of the suffering of Christ and the glories that would follow.
Most evidently having Isaiah. And that's why he goes to quote from Isaiah. To them, it was revealed that not to themselves, but to us.
They were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you.
Now we come to verse 25. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
You've been born again. You've been begotten by this word of God. This is how life came about.
This is how your life has begun. How must that life continue? It's the milk of the word that must be received.
That's where he goes. So if you've been born of the word and now you need the milk of the word that that same life which only comes from the word, the word that alone abides forever, that that life would continue in you, renewing you, transforming you, bringing you from one degree of glory to the next.
That's the idea. All of the life, all of the endurance comes from the word of God.
So we come to now chapter 2 beginning in verse 1. Desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby.
If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. If you've been born again, you'll desire this milk of the word.
If you've been born again, you'll desire that this life you've received would continue to grow and transform your life.
This word is an imperishable source of food. It's an everlasting bread. It's pure milk.
And interestingly here, to begin, he says, therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking, desire the milk and receive the milk.
So notice here that something has to be laid aside in order for us to rightly receive.
If you could put it this way, putting away these sins, putting away these vices, putting away these corruptible activities is part of the stomach properly digesting the word.
But you will not rightly, you will not desire purely if you're walking with envy, if you're practicing evil speaking, if you're acting the hypocrite, if you're playing part in deception, if you have malice toward others.
In other words, if you're not loving the brethren with fervent love, how can you rightly receive the pure milk of this word?
They too have been brought of this word of God. They too must receive it. Therefore, how we occupy our walks with one another in the body has a lot to do with how we receive the word of God as the body.
This is not just Peter's insight. Since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which so easily ensnares us, so that with endurance we may run the race set before us, looking unto
Jesus. Something has to be laid aside for us to see him rightly. Or James 1, 21, therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word.
Do you see what James is saying? You must lay aside something in order to receive something. That's what
Peter's saying. Lay aside this filth, lay aside the overflow of this wickedness, these evil desires, so that in meekness you can receive the word.
James calls it the word that's been implanted in you. It's the life that you've been born from, but now it's the life you need to somehow receive.
The word is the womb that bore you, and to it you must return that you may be sustained in that life.
So putting away this filth, this wickedness, not walking in hypocrisy or malice or envy or deceit, is proper digestion for us to receive rightly the word, the pure word.
And the question is, just at the beginning, do we recognize this? Do we recognize that receiving the word of God is a moral exercise, and therefore it cannot be done in immorality?
It must be done in sincerity, must be born of real hunger and real repentance.
Receiving and understanding God's word is a moral activity. It requires morality, it requires moral sincerity.
Again, if we don't lay aside all filthiness, we may not receive the implanted word. If we do not lay aside all these evil things that divide and sour and embitter the people of God, we should not expect that we'll have the right hunger pain, or that we'll be able to have our mouths open to receive that which
God would supply. Desiring the word is simply the hunger pains of the stomach.
The hunger pains of the stomach are the sign of life. Baby is hungry.
Baby is crying for milk. That is a sign of life. That is a demand for life.
The cry is almost a subconscious expression of, I must eat that I may live.
Don't deprive me of the very thing that sustains my life. It's this hunger pain that we know begins in the stomach.
The lack of sustenance, the lack of that which causes growth sends a signal to the head to say, if I don't eat,
I'm going to die. Sometimes our stomach talks before even our mouth does.
We have grumbling stomachs. Sometimes I meet with some of you brothers early in the mornings and my stomach is doing half the talking, uttering the things of the deep.
An empty stomach demands food. Why? Because it demands life.
The body demands growth. We grow thereby. We must receive this word of God that we may grow thereby.
This is the idea. Isn't it amazing? I hope I'm not mixing up trivia and facts.
I've been out of the newborn season for a little bit of time, but I do remember visiting our pediatrician for a couple of the children.
And of course, at the very beginning, what that infant needs most is milk. But that is the source of nutrition, and that is the nourishment that will cause growth well through what?
Maybe the first year or something like that. And maybe toward the end of that year, you can begin to get them used of textures and other foods, but their body essentially doesn't use that.
The content, the nutrition, the source of life is going to be the milk. But in time, as that infant begins to mature, no longer can milk sustain that growth.
Now that food that the body didn't know what to do with and just essentially ignored, it was useless for nutrition.
Now that milk is not able to sustain that new growth. It's not able to sustain that maturity. And so other food is needed.
To put it in biblical language, meat is needed. And so God has so designed a human body that in our spiritual infancy, we see this parallel.
In our spiritual infancy, we need the pure milk of the word. We don't have time to read Charles Hodge's systematic theology.
We just need to know that Jesus says, stop lying. That's pure milk. But eventually you need to move on to, well, who is
Jesus? What does it mean that he's called the son of man? And what did Chalcedon figure out about the interrelation between his humanity and his divinity?
That's going from milk to meat. Because as Irenaeus says, heretics like to add chalk to the milk.
They cut in with things that won't actually cause growth, but stunt it. And so the idea is, again, infants aren't capable of receiving nutrition or growth from meat.
It's just out of reach. Their body won't be sustained by that. Their growth can't benefit from that. They need the pure milk of the word until they can grow thereby to have meat from the word.
We'll see that in Hebrews and 1 Corinthians 3 in a moment. But you understand the emphasis here. It's that empty stomach that's been born again by the very word of God that now demands the word of God so that it may grow, that life may continue, that fruit may appear.
Peter implies that believers who have tasted the word of God will desire the word of God and receive the word of God.
To put it frankly, if you have truly tasted the Lord as gracious, you will have an insatiable hunger to continue tasting that grace.
To put it even more simply, do not presume you've been born of God if you have no hunger for the word of God.
I was reading some comment from a teacher at a Bible school, one of these big tent schools, and they have people from all manners of walks and traditions and says, you know,
I teach undergrad Greek and I have to very deliberately change some of the wording on my exams because if I just take a
Greek Bible sentence and I put it on the exam, all of my Baptist students will recognize one or two nouns and then they'll figure out the whole verse because they have the verse memorized.
And he goes, but I never have to do that to my Catholic students. They're like, wow, this is in the Bible? I never read this.
And he's commenting. You can always tell what traditions are coming from where. The Catholic students aren't even aware of what's in the
Bible. The Baptists have almost the whole Bible memorized. Amen.
That makes me very proud to be a Baptist. We ought to be people of the word, people of the book, people who have been born of the word of God and therefore have this insatiable hunger for more of the word of God so that we can grow in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord Jesus Christ. How else can you grow? According to 1 Peter 2, 1 through 3, growth comes by the word of God.
The stomach demands more life and life comes from the word of God.
That's been the whole thrust here from 1 22 through 2 3. The life of God is born in us in his word and therefore life received from the word of God will be growth received from the word of God.
The word alone endures forever. The word alone is incorruptible. The word is the one thing that won't decay and wilt away.
The word is life. Jesus shows us this by his own example in the first temptation in Matthew 4 when he was led up by the spirit we read into the wilderness to be tempted by the evil one.
And there he fasted 40 days and 40 nights and afterward he was hungry.
This is what theologians call an understatement. He fasted 40 days and 40 nights.
Yes, he was very hungry, ravenously hungry. And the tempter came to him and said, if you're the son of God, command that these stones would become bread.
But Jesus answered, citing Deuteronomy 8, it's written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Jesus understands the nature of true food, of true life. My body needs bread to survive but my soul feeds upon the very word of God.
I live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Jesus is actually doing that even here in Matthew 4.
He's living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of his Father. So if we live not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds of the mouth of God, what does that say about a
Christian's appetite? Some of you maybe,
I don't know how households do this, but some households, some homeschooling households often have the mantra, no
Bible, no breakfast or something like that. And I hope you young hearers, if that's the kind of household you're growing up in, that you don't count that some drudgery.
Oh, again. All right, let me just flip open some pages really quick so I can get to my
Eggo waffles and Froot Loops or whatever your parents are serving you. And then you grow up and you have a distaste for the word of God because you've learned that in fact you need to fill your stomach physically and not feed upon his word or his word has become a box that you check off and you don't understand anything that's being said here from 1
Peter or even from Matthew 4. This is the word of life. Whatever else you put in your mouth, if you're not feeding on the word of God, you are perishing.
This alone is food. This alone is life. This alone is growth. So what's the state of your appetite?
I'd say that to mature Christians too. Is it a box to tick or is it a meal to be had?
A meal to be enjoyed. Food to be grateful for. Food to desire and receive. You know what it's like in extreme starvation.
It's not just that people can lose the will to live. It's they lose the will to eat.
They're so starved they don't even desire to eat anymore. You can so starve yourself from the word of God that you don't even desire to eat it anymore.
Why open it? It's the deer essentially saying, maybe there never was a stream, maybe there never was a stream.
I'm done with my dreams. I'm done panting. I don't even desire it anymore.
We can't think of a better physical depiction of desire than hunger, food, the bodily demand.
Everything else seems to lose priority. As a pagan poet would say, no
God can stop a hungry man. Everything else begins to lose priority.
When you're hungry, are you trying to maintain a budget? That goes really well until you're hungry.
You're like, let's get some food and let's go get the steaks anyway. Hunger will drive you against your very principles and goals and convictions.
Hunger, that hunger of desire is something so profoundly powerful. But if you starve yourself, if you lose that desire, you essentially lose the will to continue, the will to grow, the will to have life.
We could call this spiritual fatalism. There's nothing to be gained. This desire can't be fulfilled.
John Piper, I really enjoy how he speaks about this, his whole ministry, of course, desiring
God and this whole point of thinking about one of the early books I read when I was cutting my teeth on Reformed theology was hungering after God and the idea of desire in this way.
And he warns against spiritual fatalism. He says this belief or feeling that you are stuck with the way you are.
And you have thoughts like this. This is all I'll ever experience of God. Whatever I had back in those glorious days when
I first came to him, those are the only moments of victory and power I've ever had and I ever will have.
The level of spiritual maturity or intensity I had then or maybe even I have now is all
I can have. Others have stronger desires. Other have better hunger. Others seem to have deeper experiences of pleasure and delight in power in God.
I will never have those. And the question is not, what are they doing?
The question is, what are you not doing? What secret source do they have?
No, what's in front of you that you neglect? What gives life?
What gives growth? It's the Word of God. It's a stomach calling for, receiving, digesting, and turning into energy and power and peace and joy and righteousness.
Life comes from the Word of God. And life continues from the Word of God. And what is ultimately the way that the
Word works this out? The Word is none less than Jesus Christ Himself, the very
Son of God, who is the Word. From the beginning, the Word was with God and the Word was God.
Jesus says, you search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life. These are they which testify of me.
You're not willing to come to me that you may live. So the life in the Word is not some detached object of study.
It's apprehending the very presence and promise of Christ in the Word of God. You come to the
Word. You come hungry for the Word. You lay aside filthiness that you may receive the Word. And what are you receiving?
The one to whom the Word testifies, the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the very Son of God. He is the way.
He is the truth. He is life. And so it's Jesus' Word that bears life in the
Christian. This ought to stir your appetite more than anything. This is not some formula, algorithm, magic book.
This is a way you encounter the very presence and promise of God. We sing hymns like, more and more about Jesus would
I know. How will you know more and more about Jesus? By getting into His Word.
Do you long to know Jesus? Don't show me a
Bible closed, as Stuart Elyot used to tease his congregation when it'd say turn to Micah or some
Amos or some obscure prophet and say, now you can start to crack that golden page gilding, you know, the parts that we never read.
Don't tell me you long to see Jesus if you've got a Bible that's barely ever opened and it's just collecting dust.
You don't long to see Jesus. Jesus is not condemning searching the
Scriptures. He's saying, you're searching the Scriptures and you're missing what the Scriptures are all about.
Me. They testify of me. You want to find life in the
Scriptures? You better find me in the Scriptures. I am the life of the Scriptures. I am that which causes life and growth.
Do you long after that? Do you understand that this is the spiritual stomach of your walk?
This is the spiritual stomach of the church. What are we doing if we're not growing in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord? And how do we grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord? By His Word.
Prayed, sung, celebrated, testified. Having it dwelling richly in us.
Speaking, exhorting, admonishing, comforting one another with it. This is the life of the church. This is what the church is for.
It's a mantle for the Word. It's the ministry of the Word. Because the
Word alone endures and abides forever. So we are to be like, according to 1
Peter, newborn babes. In some unique way that's not just the beginning of the Christian life, but all the way through.
We're to conceive of ourselves as newborn babes. I take that as utter helplessness and total dependency.
Do you recognize that, believer? Do you know the depth of your helplessness, of your dependence?
A newborn doesn't even have enough cognitive wherewithal to understand how helpless they are.
All they can do is cry and receive the care that they need in order to survive. They're born and it's just cry, cry for milk, be clothed, be changed, be embraced, be fed.
They're not reasoning that. They're not like, can we have some time to talk? You know, some of my needs aren't being, it's just, they're just reacting.
They're clueless to their helplessness, clueless to their dependency. And that's true of Christians.
We really are that helpless. We really are that dependent. But we can also mature to become, as David says, like weaned children.
It's okay if I'm not getting milk on demand. I know my father cares for me. I know my needs will be provided for.
I can trust him because he's taught me to trust him. He's proved himself faithful to me, or and or.
So newborns are to desire pure milk. This is, if I want to grow,
I need to lay aside the things that will stunt or corrupt my growth and desire the one thing in my life that will give me growth.
The very word of God that brings me to Christ my Savior. That's the word I need to hide in my heart.
That's the word I need to meditate on all day and night. That's the word that I need to delight in and celebrate.
The word that I am so thankful for because this is the word that brings life. This is the word that gives me skill above my teachers.
This is the word that is true, everlastingly true. And so that's the word I desire.
And to desire it so that I can grow thereby. If you're desiring the word for anything other than growth, you may not receive the milk of the word.
Scholars desire the word in a certain way. It doesn't mean they're growing thereby. Some people desire to master the word or to study the word in order to show it off or showcase it or maybe even poke holes through it.
That never leads to spiritual growth. That's the very thing
Jesus was condemning in John 5. But of course, that's only one metaphor, one analogy for the
Christian. The other metaphor is that we go from milk to meat. We're still talking about the stomach, aren't we? And our growth is stunted.
At some point, that pure milk that is needed in Christian infancy must give way to stronger things, better sources of nutrition.
We must, therefore, leave milk in order to mature. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3.
Brethren, I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal like babes in Christ.
I fed you with milk and not with solid food because until now you were not able to receive it.
Even now, you're not able to receive it. You're still carnal. Where there's envy and strife and divisions among you, are you not carnal?
Isn't Paul saying the same thing that James and Peter is saying? You aren't laying aside these things that would cause you to receive the word and grow thereby.
And so Paul says, when I first was ministering to you, I really was like this mother to you, like a mother with the children.
I fed you with milk. That's all you could receive. That's all you needed to receive. But you're long past that point now and you're still not able to receive the things you need to grow.
Hebrews 5, beginning in verse 12. By this time, you ought to be teachers. Think about that.
Ephesians 4 is very clear that God gifts offices to the church for the sake of the church's growth into him.
So you have teachers and those that are gifted and even called into ministry. And Ephesians 4 is very clear about that.
But think about the first century context. Paul is planting churches as a result of sowing this incorruptible seed of the gospel.
And maybe within a year, maybe two years, having to appoint elders. Who is the oldest believer in this church?
Me, I was converted nine months ago. You're going to be an elder. That was a lot of Paul's missionary experience.
And he can say even to churches like that, you all ought to be teachers by now.
Now he's saying this to a group of people that perhaps were largely illiterate, who did not have frequent access to the apostolic writings or the scriptures as a whole, who were largely untrained, untaught.
This was a whole new world to them coming out of pagan backgrounds. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, you ought to be teachers by now.
Does that not condemn us? With our dozen Bibles on our bookshelf and our
Bible software and anything I'd want to know about the word is a Google search away. Could any previous generation of Christians be weighed down with more accountability for our access to the word of God?
Have you not seen the videos I've seen of aboriginal tribes or maybe tribes in some far flung island off the
Indonesian coast, finally having this product of years of painstaking and prayerful translation.
And now they have the word of God in their own tongue. It looks like people that had been starving to death receiving food.
It looks like that. Tears streaming down their face, joy inexpressible. And I can watch a video like that and recognize how far my emotions are from what it must be like to see the word in that way.
This is the word of God. This is the word of life.
This is that which will never pass away. This is truth in a world of lies.
This is refuge in a desolate death scape. How do we understand the word of God in this way?
What are our hunger pains? What's our stomach like? What are we feeding upon? How are we growing?
We ought to be teachers by now. But the writer of Hebrews says instead, you need someone to teach you the first principles.
You don't even know the ABCs, he says. And rather than growing into solid food, you've come back to that state of infancy where you need milk again.
But everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in a word of righteousness. He's just a babe.
Solid food belongs to those who are of full age. Those, that is, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
That's the picture of maturity held out in Hebrews chapter five. Because you've received the word and you've used the word, you're exercising that exercise of discernment, that power of discernment.
This is that which goes from milk to meat. Now, perhaps that's a heavy sentiment.
So let me give some encouragement as we come to a close. We ought to be teachers and we will give an account for all of our multiple copies of Bibles and Bible software and search engines.
We can think of ourselves as technologically advantaged beyond all previous generations.
But the truth is, we're tragically disadvantaged, because we use all those things as crutches and reasons not to get into the word of God.
Are you unintentionally starving your stomach because you could look into anything?
Do you then not look into anything at all? It's the dilemma of the search engine. I could know anything.
And just the fact that I could means I won't bother right now, because I always can down the road. And I can always read down the road.
And I can always memorize down the road. What's your stomach telling you, Christian? What's your growth from one degree of grace to the next telling you or telling others about your walk?
What does it mean in the year 2026 to be a man of the word or a woman of the word?
I think there'll be a stark contrast between most Christians. But the encouragement here is this.
A stomach is something that has to be continually fed. And therefore, our growth is gradual.
It's not this call to have one massive feast to end all feasts and to grow from that one feast for the next three years.
Aren't you glad that's not what God is calling you to? The amazing thing about our stomachs and the way
God has so designed our body is that just a little bit of food consistently eaten is all that the body needs to be nourished.
And if you eat more, more consistently, you'll even have more energy, more vitality, more health if you're eating the right thing in the right way.
So this is a very important point. Our growth is very gradual. We're not hunting for the one big feast, the one big powerful experience.
Things will never be the same now. Now I had my light bulb moment. Everything's different.
If that's your view, you're setting yourself up for failure. That's like saying, this will be the meal that I'll never have to eat again after I eat this meal.
It's like, what? You will constantly need to eat. Christians will need to constantly feed upon the word.
This will be the rest of your life as a Christian, learning how to feed and to grow by the word of God.
So you're not hunting for some great experience, some wave of new strength. You're not searching for some spiritual high that will coast you into eternity.
It's not coming your way. Our walk, of course, is never the outflow of one message we heard 13 years ago.
There can be powerful times in the word, powerful things we come across, powerful moments in the ministry of the word that do mark us and change the direction or the degree of our walk ever after.
For me, just as an example, when I first read Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul, that changed my direction in life.
That was an encounter that I can look back and say, I can count my life biographically as pre -R .C.
Sproul Holiness of God and post -R .C. Sproul Holiness of God. But I also recognize in all these years since, it's just been the regular eating and feeding upon the word of God that has caused me to endure, to persevere by faith, to grow, to understand how to grow and where I need to grow.
That's just been the regular eating and feeding upon the means of grace. My stomach saying I need something and the means of grace providing for that need.
And that growth is a gradual thing. One message lasting for even more than a week.
Isn't it wonderful that God gives us a weekly point to gather so that at least corporately we can feed on his word together at least once a week?
And hopefully that flows into feeding and snacking and feasting throughout the rest of the week. I can't even remember what
I preached last week barely. We constantly need food week after week, day after day.
So that's the idea. It's the regularity. It's the consistency. It's not that one feeding, not that one meal.
We're not decisively shaped by a single encounter or one great message or one time in the word.
All these things can prod us. They can bless us. They can stir us. But it's handfuls of manna. It's consistent steps.
That defines maturity in the Christian life. And the people
I count as the most mature, older men and women that I've known for some time and I can observe them from afar, they are living models of this for this very reason.
It seems like whenever I have opportunity to sit near them or hear from them, they're just sharing about something that they read from God's word or something they meditated on.
And they've probably looked at it a thousand times. It's just hitting them in a different way. I was just, you know, I was in John 3 this morning.
It's just so beautiful. You know what John's really getting at. It's just, what are they doing? They're just eating God's word.
It's not like, well, I've read John 3 about 10 years ago, so I don't need to go back there. It's a living. It's an active word of God.
Every time you open the word, it has something to give you, something to bring you to. That's the idea.
It's just day by day scope of progress. It's not the breakthrough. And so you're gathering up meals to eat.
You're not panning for gold. You're not this coal miner that's spending all this time looking for a single flake.
That's not how an infant grows from infancy into maturity. It's thousands of days, thousands of meals, thousands of naps.
I had to look up the statistics on this. Statistically, the average human worldwide eats 35 tons of food in their lifespan.
Americans eat more than that on average, by the way. For Americans, they eat an average of 2 ,000 pounds of food.
How much food is needed for a little bit of growth in that year? How much food? Translate that to your spiritual stomach.
How much of God's Word do you need that you may grow thereby? 35 tons worth.
So you learn to love and desire and have hunger pains for the
Word of God. You learn to eat. You develop your palate. It's not just the things that are sweet that I crave, but as I'm maturing,
I recognize there's something good about the sour. There's something good about the heat as well. You learn that your palate's now able to receive and enjoy things that at first were really difficult.
That upset my stomach. That was hard for me to read that passage. I was very confused and almost troubled by it. Yeah, but keep at it.
Recognize this is the Word of God, and soon your palate will become acceptable to that.
Soon you'll be able to actually delight in that. That's the idea of growth.
This is how babies grow. Goldfish crackers by the palate full. Thousands of gallons of apple juice.
This is how Christians grow. Thousands of conversations. A word in season.
A hand on the shoulder. Times of prayer. Countless hours in the Word of God or in fellowship with other believers.
This is growth. This is the spiritual stomach of our life. This is the spiritual stomach of our church.
All of these things coming together through progress because the Lord converts them into energy and life and power.
And so you're not looking for that one big feast. We're not spiritual chia pets.
You water once and then everything kind of grows. But you have to have this desire.
And you have to lay aside all filthiness of the flesh. Peter says you should desire the
Word so that you may grow. Do you actually desire the Word so that you may grow? Are you content to coast?
Are you hoping just to contain what you do have? Because if you press further, it's just too risky. It's too costly.
It's downright too uncomfortable. Then you're not understanding what Peter's calling you to. He says you should desire the
Word so that you will grow. The most convicting parts of the
Word will lead to the greatest areas of growth. The hardest things to chew will bring about the greatest nourishment.
This is what a mature Christian understands. Rather than avoiding the hard things in the Word, I am gravitating toward the hard things in the
Word. This is God's Word for me. I desire it because I want to grow. I desire the things that will cause me to grow.
I'm not here to be flattered by the Word. I'm here to be grown by the Word. And so that means
I'm pressing on from childish things to mature things. We don't want a generation of Peter Pans, the people that never want to grow, no one to mature in the
Christian life. We want men and women of the Word, seasoned by the Word of God, shaped out of conviction and admonition and exhortation from the
Word of God. When they were children, they thought like children. They spoke like children. But when they became men and women of God, they put away all those childish things.
This is the maturity of growth, growth from the very Word of God. And so we'll be pressed, we'll be encouraged, we'll be corrected, we'll be directed.
We've learned how to interpret the empty stomach and how to feed it by the Word of God. And having said that, the last thing
I'll say as an encouragement is simply this. As we feed upon the
Word, as we feed our stomachs and desire this growth, let no one cheat you out of the simplicity in Christ Jesus.
You don't need the Michelin star concoction to grow. You need the simplicity of searching the
Scriptures that in them you might find Christ. Feeding upon Christ in His Word, that's growth.
It might not be as flashy. It might not be something you can put a lot of pride into.
But if you're humbly and meekly feeding upon the Word in order to commune with Christ, you will grow in His grace and in His knowledge.
So don't let anyone cheat you out of the simplicity in Christ. You need more the simplicity of spending time in the
Word and a simple meal than you do need to master 18 blogs and the latest controversy.
That won't cause you nearly as much growth. And I've seen young men, more so than young women, but some young women too, but mostly my former friends who were so zealous like hungry young lines to navigate and wade into every latest theological scandal and feel the weight of the world from that.
Is it always when you're young, every scandal, every theological debate feels like this is the be all end all.
It just takes some decades to realize this is just one fad under the sun and it too will fade.
And the people that press on to the simplicity of Christ are those who are mature enough to discern between right and evil.
Whereas those who ignored the Word to get their hands around the meat when they were but infants in Christ, they end up rejecting
Christ in the end, apostatizing. Some of my former friends who were once counted as brothers in Christ could have crossed
T's and dotted I's about theological debates. And now they don't even name the name of Christ.
Do you see what I'm saying? Let no one cheat you out of the simplicity in Christ. Why are you hungry?
What is your stomach actually calling for? Why are you feeding on the Word of God? Is it that you may grow thereby in His grace and knowledge or some other end, some other ambition, some other source of satisfaction?
Growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ means we actually feed upon Christ.
We commune with Him in His Word. We seek to help others and encourage others to do the same.
If indeed we have tasted, the Lord is gracious. Have you tasted?
The Lord is gracious. Strong desires,
Matthew Henry says, and affections for the Word of God are a sure evidence of one being born again.
If they are like the desire a babe has for milk, they nearly prove a person has been newborn.
And since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the
Word of God, which lives and stands forever. Because all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man, like the flower of the grass, the grass withers and its flower falls away.
But the Word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the Word which by the gospel was preached to you.
Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the
Word that you may grow thereby. If indeed you have tasted, the Lord is gracious. Amen. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your Word. Lord, bless it. Lord, enlarge our appetite, strengthen our desire, our hunger, pain for your
Word. But let us eat not all at once, but rather consistently and frequently.
Lord, not just eating it in the moment, but hiding it in our hearts, letting it echo and sweetly recall in our memory, chewing on it, reflecting on it.
Lord, digesting and so that in every way you would intend we would grow. Help us as a church to be a church built upon this word, to be faithful Bereans, not becoming consumers and passively trusting whatever enters our ears, but taking it to your
Word to see whether these things that are being taught are so. Let us be shaped by your
Word. Lord, recognizing that we've been born of this Word and therefore our life began and must continue through the
Word until our faith becomes sight and what your Word has held out becomes fully consummated unto eternity.
Lord, bless us in these ways, each one here. If there's a stranger to your grace, one perhaps who has no appetite, no desire for your
Word, is just dead in trespass and sin, Lord, give them that new birth. Sovereignly as the
Spirit moves like the wind, Lord, bring new life. And with that, an empty stomach crying out for the grace and knowledge of the
Savior. And feed them your Word faithfully like you fed the Israelites man a day by day.