Introduction: At a recent viewing of the Disney movie Monsters, Inc., a preview announced the re-release of Disney’s Peter Pan. The story of Peter Pan (whether Disney’s version or the much preferable Mary Martin, 1960’s Broadway production) is based upon Sir James M. Barrie's 1904 play about the boy who refuses to grow up. This film begins in the London nursery of Wendy, John and Michael Darling where Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up, visits the three children. With the help of his tiny friend, the fairy Tinkerbell, Peter takes the three children on a magical flight to Never Land. This enchanted island is home to Peter, Tink, the Lost Boys, Tiger Lily and her Indian tribe, and the scheming Captain Hook who is as intent on defeating Peter Pan as he is from escaping the ticktocking crocodile that once bit off the pirate's hand.

Throughout the story Wendy confronts Peter Pan that sooner or later he has to grow up, leave the days of the nursery behind and become what he doesn’t want to be-adult. Regardless if you are Peter Pan or not no one likes to be confronted with their places of immaturity. It is painful to hear as a child but even more painful for an adult. Because these confrontations are so painful, we want to retreat into our secure worlds and cease to grow. We are reluctant to leave "Peter Pan" behind and we cease to grow and mature. When we stop growing and prove our immaturity, sometimes we need to hear, "Grow up!"

"Grow up!" is what our writer told these first century Christians. The challenge to grow up spiritually is what our sermon series as well as Sunday School lessons for the next eight weeks will explore. We’re calling this series Membership 201: Growing as a Member. Our goal in Membership 201 is to motivate you to want to mature as a believer and also as a member of the family of First Baptist Church. Our mission statement says that one of our first priorities is to "nurture, challenge and build believers for service and ministry." By presenting this series and these studies to you as this new year begins we are saying to you that we are serious about enabling you to grow up spiritually. This means that we want you to be persons who are inspired, unmistakable disciples of Jesus Christ. It means that we are not going to be satisfied with failing to challenge you to move beyond the stage of confessing your sins and saying a prayer to accept Christ as your Savior. Our goal in this study is not make sure you are saved or to help you be a nicer person. Our purpose is not for your "restoration" but to develop in you a launching pad for life long transformation!

Our text today is the one of several warnings that the writer gives to the Hebrew Christians. The writer is not shy about urging these believers to mature because there was so much at stake. The words I use this morning are strong not because I want to be unkind but because there is much at stake. Heb.6:11-12 says: "And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." He wants to lead them into deeper truth but is limited by their immaturity. We have the same problem. We need to grow up!

Over and over the New Testament writers encourage the believers to grow up. Let’s listen to these scriptures about growth:

1 Cor. 14:20: Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be babes, but in your thinking be mature.

Ephes. 4:14-15:…we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ…

1 Peter 2:2: like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation…

2 Peter 3:18: …grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In all but one of those verses is the analogy of moving from immaturity to maturity, from childlikeness to adulthood spiritually. There is no question that believers are to move beyond a level of shallow Christian living to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ! But that doesn’t happen for everyone. When it doesn’t there are some very tragic consequences!

Birth into God’s family is naturally to be followed by growth. Sadly, growth that is consistent is rare! These believers have allowed themselves to return to the preschool department of theology when they should be in graduate school! Our writer tells these believers to simply: Grow up!

We lose the ability to respond spiritually: The writer tells these Christians that there is so much that he wants them to understand but it is "hard to explain". There is much for them to know and they are lagging behind. Their learning deficiency is not because the knowledge is so difficult. It is that they are too immature to receive it. What has caused this? They have become what the writer calls in verse 11, "dull of hearing". The word "dull" means to become incapable of hearing which in turn causes a person to be slow, sluggish and lazy in their mind as well as in the ears. He also used the word in Hebrews 6:12 to describe the condition they were to avoid at all costs so that they not "become spiritually dull and indifferent". What you need to see is that this condition was one that they had fallen into, not one that was original to their experience. This does not suggest that they are in themselves intellectually or spiritually inferior. It is not a question of what they were originally but of what they have become by now. They have become spiritually hard of hearing and their problem has affected their ability to listen, receive and retain solid spiritual instruction.

My generation has shown an increased problem with hearing loss due to "noise pollution" and it is showing up even as early as 21. One of the key areas causing the problem is due to listening to music either on headphones, car or in other locations at levels damaging to your eardrums. Pete Townshend from The Who, once touted as the loudest rock band in the world has to wear earplugs and stand behind a Plexiglas barrier at concerts to prevent further damage to his ears. Hearing loss is a slow and insidious process that does its damage over time. (Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "Deaf Jam" by Jack Hill, December 31,2001) It is the same way for us spiritually. There are things that we should be responding to but the noise pollution in our heart has created a dull response to spiritual truth.

Why does it happen? Why do some who are born into God’s family stay immature and become dull spiritually?

One reason is because they fail to grow up as they grow older (v. 12a). (Sean Penn "I am Sam"-new movie about a Dad who is mentally challenged)He says, "For though by this time you ought to be teachers…" Notice "by this time"—it’s time for them to be instructing, but instead they are back in spiritual preschool dealing with the "elementary principles," in the things of God (Greek actually means the ‘ABC’s of the oracles of God). We know that growing in age or position often has little to do with growing wiser. We all know adults who have never matured not because of a mental or physical problem but because they have never allowed themselves to be challenged to mature. Marking time is not the same as marching forward. That’s all many of us ever do. It takes time and energy to grow! We think: "Why bother?" The question is: How much farther along am I now than when I was an infant or adolescent in God’s family?

Another reason for their becoming spiritually immature was because their lifestyle prevented healthy development (12b-13). He said to them literally, "you have become having need of milk". This condition was something they allowed to happen! The contrast of milk with solid food is the contrast between the elementary principles of Christian living and the deeper, more mature doctrines or principles. He points out to them that this condition is by their own choosing. The phrase, "for everyone who partakes" means they have never learned to apply the truth they have heard!

What are some lifestyle patterns that promote immaturity? One habit is refusing to be challenged spiritually. We want the equivalent of spiritual "milk" not solid food. Another habit is an emphasis on absorption of more and more spiritual information without applying it to our life. It’s becoming obese with content and no action! Finally there is the desire to never face or take risks to grow or mature. Simply being afraid to try anything that calls for effort!

The lifestyle that is described in the previous verses is not God’s desire for us. His desire is that we become persons who are mature and transformed spiritually. How does that happen?

To be a person whose life is transformed spiritually first involves changing your diet from junk food to solid food as the writer says in verse 14. The use of milk reminds us that it is a substance that is predigested. A diet of spiritual milk is always depending on predigested spiritual food-i.e. Always reading a devotional thought written by someone else. There comes a time when Christians are to start feeding themselves with proper spiritual food! It means that you stop depending on a one minute devotional that you read while you are gulping down that one cup of coffee or diet drink before you dash out to work or school or before you turn out the light at night. Instead you determine that you will begin the habit of disciplining yourself to spend more significant time in God’s presence and before His word. We need to be self-feeders of God’s truth!

Next it means the right kinds of activity. The writer says the mature are those who "practice" their spiritual life continually. If we fail to practice what we know, we will fail when we must succeed. Point: Use it or lose it! I mentioned earlier that we could become spiritually obese. That is when we are trying to find one more worship service, hear one more sermon, attend one more Bible study or one more seminar but never do anything about what we have heard! The only way to mature is to practice or apply to your life what you have heard.

Thirdly it means that these are things you do because you are trained by repetition. In other words it is just second nature for you to do them. The writer says the mature have their "senses trained." That phrase is where we get our word gymnasium. The mature work out regularly enough to know good and evil! They are able to do the right thing at the right time and in the right spirit because they are trained to do it. (Young Whirlpool execs trained by living together in a home using the appliances they are selling and making) "Like the serious athlete who trains himself so that he is in the peak of condition for the contest, the mature Christian is equipped to face responsibly the demands and endure to the end the rigors of the conflict by the habitual exercise of his powers." (Hughes)

How do I get to a place of maturity spiritually? The only way it can happen consistently is by your devotion to certain spiritual disciplines continually practiced in your life. Now I don’t want you to run from that phrase "spiritual discipline" for I know that it combines two words that can be hard to define. Yet there is no way to avoid the truth that for the last 2000 years the way that has been prescribed for a believer to mature is by putting into practice key habits that move them forward as a believer. Many of you have started an exercise plan for this year. Many of you have already changed your plan. (Garfield cartoon: Welcome to cat aerobics…now breath in…now breath out…whoa, lighten up there buddy) You have already begun to understand that for you to achieve your goals that it will not be easy nor will it happen without your being consistent in changing your diet, exercising regularly and doing those things consistently. You can’t put on an electronic belt or take a pill and get the results you expect.

The same thing is true in our spiritual life-you will not grow without putting into practice the disciplined habits that guide your spiritual life. Let me give you some key definitions of what I mean. These are taken from the book The Life You Have Always Wanted by John Ortberg. Ortberg defines a discipline as: Any activity I can do by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot now do by direct effort. A spiritual discipline is: Any activity that can help me gain the power to live as Jesus taught and modeled it. A person who is a disciple or one who is practicing the spiritual disciplines is someone who can do the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit! (The Life You Have Always Wanted, p.51-54)

Over the next several weeks there are seven disciplines or activities that we want to inspire you to place into your life. We want you to become convinced of your own need to mature and to say:

I need the habit of growing in worship, in learning, in prayer, in my relationships, in sharing, in service and as a witness. We believe that these are the starting points for you and me to gain the power to live as Jesus taught. We want you to believe that putting these activities into practice into your life will enable you to do the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit!

Conclusion: So what do we do? The key for you to become a more mature believer this year is understand the difference between training and trying. I have read recently the book by Stephen Ambrose Band of Brothers, which is the story of one company of the 101^st Airborne during WWII. Ambrose tells the story from the days as young recruits to the last days of the war. Their training was vital to their success. The difference in their training and experience was seen as the war progressed when new reinforcements came in-the reinforcements died quickly. The training of our forces for years prior to the current conflict in Afghanistan has made what was predicted to be an impossible situation has resulted in an overwhelming first step for our elimination of the threat of terrorism. They have succeeded not because they tried but because they were trained!

Trying really hard can only do so much. If you only try but never train yourself spiritually you will give up and go right back to where you started. If you are serious about leaving the nursery spiritually then you will have to enter a lifetime of training. Willpower won’t get it done! You must arrange your life around certain habits that will enable you to do what you cannot do now by willpower alone! You have got to stop depending on trying but train for a lifetime of transformation!

In the children’s book Frog and Toad Together, the two central characters discover the limits of mere trying when Frog bakes a batch of cookies. "We ought to stop eating," they say, as they keep eating. "We must stop," they resolve, as they eat some more. "We need willpower," Frog finally says, grabbing another cookie. "What is willpower?" asks Toad, swallowing another mouthful.

"Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much," Frog says.

Frog discusses a variety of ways to help with willpower—putting the cookies in a box, tying the box shut, putting it high up in a tree—but each time Toad points out (in between bites) that they could climb the tree and untie the box. In desperation, Frog finally dumps the remaining cookies outside on the ground: "Hey, birds!" he calls, "Here’s cookies!" "Now we have no more cookies," says Toad sadly. "Yes," says Frog, "but we have lots and lots of willpower." "You may keep it all," Toad replies. "I’m going home to bake a cake." (The Life You’ve Always Wanted, p.51-52)

When you get tired of trying and are ready to train you leave the nursery for a lifetime of transformation-and the training starts right here, right now.

Sunday, January 6, 2002

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org