Imagine trying to raise a fruit tree the way some people try to grow to fruitfulness in the Christian life. Plant the seed in one field. As soon as it begins to sprout, pull it out of the ground, run across the street, dig a hole and put it in there for awhile. Then when it begins to sprout again, yank it out and go put it in the ground someplace else. That tree would never reach maturity if it survived at all.

Eugene Barron, of Littleton, Colorado tells a story that will probably sound familiar to many of us. He was driving down a two-lane highway where someone had thrown garbage onto the road. Most of it had been scattered and blown off the road except for this one plastic cup (like this one I have with me this morning.) It was positioned right in the middle of road. In fact, it was in the center of the two yellow lines. The road was straight enough that Barron noticed the cup quite a ways before he got to it.

Every time a car passed by the cup, it would flip up and roll to the opposite side of the yellow line. Then when another car from the other direction came by, the force of the wind would flip the cup up and to the other side. When two cars passed by at the same time the cup went wild. It did not know which way to go.(1)

Something occurred to me as I read that. Some people’s lives are a lot like that cup. Something new comes along and off they go that direction. Then the winds from that issue die down, something else comes along, and off they go in the opposite direction. Then once in awhile, the wind currents come from several directions at once and they don't know which way to go.

And of course, finally a big truck comes along and flattens the cup and that is the end of it.

Paul said something in the Ephesian letter that all of us should see and hear, but its particularly relevant to people who tend toward any kind of instability. Turn with me, please, to Ephesians 4:14.

God doesn’t want us to be tossed around in our faith like a plastic cup on the freeway. He wants us to be stable.

Paul implies three things we must do if we are to gain such stability, and that is what I want to speak to you about this morning. First, it is obvious from Paul’s words that God want us to:

1. Grow Up.

"We are no longer to be children," he says in our text.

A group of tourists was visiting a picturesque village in Europe. As they toured the sites they walked by an old man sitting on a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one tourist asked, "Were any great men born in this village?"

"Nope," the old man replied, "Only babies."

Among new Christians, there are "only babies." But babies grow up in time. It is only natural for a baby to grow. When a young child doesn’t grow we take him to the doctor to find out what’s wrong. One of the first things the doctor asks is if he’s eating right. When a Christian fails to grow, isn’t it just as reasonable to wonder if something is wrong? Perpetual immaturity is not supposed to be a part of the Christian life. "We are no longer to be children," Paul says here in our text.

But how can we know we are growing? What is meant by maturity? What does Christian maturity look like?

I came across a list of characteristics that contrast some typical thinking of new Christians with that of mature believers.(2) This list is by no means complete. Neither should it be used as a litmus test or as a put-down to anyone. I offer it only as an aid to help us think about maturity. See if you can recognize some of these characteristics either in your life or in the lives of those around you.

We do change our thinking as we mature in Christ.

If you’re a new Christian, don’t worry about it if some of these things seem like a bit of a stretch for you. In fact, you may just be beginning to recognize some of these issues. If you’ve been in Christ some time though, I think it is reasonable that some of these attributes of maturity would begin to show up in your life.

I worry about Christians who do not grow. It isn’t natural. I worry about those who have no appetite for spiritual things but have plenty of love for the things of the world. Peter said in 1 Peter 2:2, "Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that you may grow in respect to salvation…" You don’t find a stronger instinctual drive than the hunger of a newborn baby for milk. (If you doubt that, just listen to him when you’re late with his 2 A.M. feeding!) Peter uses that picture of a newborn wanting milk to show the desire for the word of God that ought to be in us.

In time, as Christians, we need move toward maturity. As Paul implies here, we need to grow up. Perpetual immaturity isn’t natural. It is an indicator that something is wrong.

Secondly, if we are to keep from being like a plastic cup tossed around on the freeway in our spiritual lives, we need to:

2. Settle Down.

Our text says, "we are no longer to be...tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine…."

The operative word here is stability. Said another way, he’s referring to stay-bility – settling down to be constant rather than bouncing around.

I heard of a man one time that never finished grade school. There was nothing wrong with his ability. He had all the smarts he needed. In fact, he later proved it by becoming the CEO of a large corporation. The reason he never made it past the 8^th grade was because his parents were migrant workers. As he described it, during his few years of formal education, he attended nineteen different schools! He never completed even one full grade year before being moved. How could a person possibly learn anything that way? If you’re going to acquire anything worthwhile, you have to settle down and apply yourself. You can’t keep jumping around.

Imagine trying to raise a fruit tree the way some people try to grow to fruitfulness in the Christian life. Plant the seed in one field. As soon as it begins to sprout, pull it out of the ground, run across the street, dig a hole and put it in there for awhile. Then when it begins to sprout again, yank it out and go put it in the ground someplace else. That tree would never reach maturity if it survived at all. Neither will anyone reach spiritual maturity unless he or she settles down and stays with it long enough to see results.

A lot of people drift around from church to church. They have no desire to be rooted anywhere and have no intention of any kind of loyalty. When you ask them about it, they say they’re "looking for something." The trouble is, they have no idea what it is they are looking for. So they settle for looking for a good time. They seek something that makes them feel good – something that makes them comfortable. And they usually find that, because there are plenty of places that provide good entertainment on Sunday - some at the expense of good Bible teaching. But their lives continue to be shallow. They know little or nothing of spiritual maturity. They still think like spiritual infants. In the end they are no different than those who never attend church at all.

Remember the cup on the freeway? It was the wind from the passing cars that kept driving it around. What kind of "wind" causes us to be tossed around spiritually? Paul tells us here. He says, "…tossed her and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine…" The winds in Paul’s description are doctrinal winds. So it is doctrinal stability that keeps us from being tossed back and forth. Yet there is a problem with that…

Doctrine is something to be avoided in the minds of many today. The so-called "experts" in church growth tell us that we shouldn’t present much doctrine on Sundays. It’s too boring, they say. People won’t sit still for it and if they do, they won’t be back. (And that part is true sometimes – they don’t come back.)

I seem to remember Paul saying something about that issue in one of his letters to Timothy. In 2 Timothy 4:1-5 he warned the young preacher that the time would come when people wouldn’t sit still for sound doctrine. But instead of telling the young evangelist to back off teaching it on Sunday, Paul told him to keep teaching it anyway, both when it was popular and when it was unpopular. Turn with me to that passage for a moment. I’d like for you to put your eyes on it so you can see it for yourself. Turn to 2 Timothy 4:1-5.

"I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word… [Notice that he didn’t tell Timothy to substitute music and drama and entertainment]; be ready in season and out of season [I assume "out of season" would include times when such preaching isn’t popular]; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction [It does take patience to continue teaching sound doctrine Sunday after Sunday when it is not appreciated by all.] For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine [There it is. That time has come.]; but wanting to have their ears tickled ["Tell me something that makes me feel good, not something that requires me to apply myself."], they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths ["They won’t sit still for it, Timothy! They won’t come back."]. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

What was Timothy to do in the face of declining appreciation for sound doctrine? Paul told him to keep preaching it anyway.

Doctrine is teaching. Those who are doctrinally stable and aren’t tossed back an forth by every wind of doctrine are those who settle down and spend the time necessary to learn biblical truth so that they are not easily pulled away from it. There is no substitute for doctrinal stability and there are no shortcuts to get to it. It will not always be comfortable to receive and you most certainly cannot "feel" your way to it.

This is a watershed issue, my friends. What you decide regarding this issue will determine whether you mature as a Christian or whether you get blown around and remain a spiritual infant.

Some folks start the Christian life like rockets. They take off in a blazing burn of glory and climb fast and high. They are, of course, running on pure emotion. But emotional highs cannot be sustained indefinitely. Pretty soon they fizzle and come crashing back to earth. They get disappointed or disillusioned and with no base of doctrinal truth from which to draw to sustain them, no stability, they cease.

God has a plan to keep that from happening, though. In fact, Paul mentions it right here in the context of the passage we’re considering. Look at verses 11-13.

Church leaders are charged with equipping God’s people for the work of service.

Maturity in unity and knowledge is the aim according to this verse.

Spiritual maturity comes not from "feel good" experiences but from solid equipping for service by spiritual leaders and growth in knowledge of the Son of God But in order for that to happen, you have to settle down and apply yourself - consistently.

Thirdly, if we don’t want to end up tossed here and there spiritually, like a cup on the freeway, Paul suggests that we need to:

Our text says, "…carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming…"

Trickery, craftiness, deceitful scheming - it’s hard for some people to realize that there are actually those out there who are willing to mislead people for their own selfish gain. Yet it goes on and naïve people continue to fall for it.

A little of hell spilled over on the world because two people believed in a false prophet. The two were Nicholas II and Alexandra, Czar and Empress of Russia prior to the Communist revolution. An impostor monk who claimed to have miraculous powers misled the two and gained control of their lives through deception for the better part of ten years. Here is how it happened…

After many years of anxious waiting for an heir, the royal couple was blessed with a son whom they loved dearly. Six weeks later however, doctors discovered that the baby had hemophilia, a painful and often fatal blood disease. The royal family lived in nearly constant fear that they would lose their little boy at any moment.

Into this tragic situation stepped Gregory Yefimovich Novykh - one of the most notoriously evil men in all of Russian history. He was better knows as Rasputin.

On several occasions the child came very close to death. It terrified his parents. Seeing his pain and knowing the danger, they begged doctors to do something to help him. But they were helpless. Finally, through a series of events, the desperate monarch and his wife turned to this man Rasputin, a religious mystic and self-proclaimed holy man with questionable credentials, later to be known as "The Mad Monk of Russia." Rasputin would pray for the boy and there would seem to be a marked improvement. Even today doctors are at a loss to account for how this happened. Through each crisis, Rasputin would always warn the parents that the boy would live only as long as they did what he said. In this way he gained ultimate power over the throne. With a word he could have men appointed or dismissed - a power he used and abused to his own advantage in ways that greatly damaged the empire and ultimately brought it down. With the Russian government in chaos, the common people were greatly dissatisfied. Their discontent finally erupted into murder of the royal family and what is known today as the Bolshevik revolution. A key government official would later say, "Without Rasputin, there could have been no Lenin." The deception of one man brought down an empire.

The ultimate irony of the story of Nicholas and Alexandra to me was that they were so fully deceived. While they thought they were being helped, they were actually being destroyed.

What Rasputin was to Russia, Satan is to this world. With the help of many who have their own selfish agendas, he worms his way into the midst of our lives by trickery and deceit, just like our text says. Soon, unless we wise up enough to understand what is going on, he is in full control and proceeds to destroy us.

We need to wise up.

Paul says later in the Ephesian letter (6:11), "Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil."

This is not a time for playing church. It is not a time for fun and games at the expense of solid spiritual growth. It is a time for vigilance. It is a time for wisdom and discernment. It is a time to be serious and wake up. One far worse than Rasputin is alive and working to destroy the kingdom of God and to destroy you and me. We dare not let him in.

During the 1930's in England, criticism of the Third Reich could ruin a person’s name. Those who spoke out and warned of Nazi aggression were called "hysterical," "fanatics" and "alarmists." William Manchester in The Last Lion (Vol. 2) tells how for years before 1939, in speech after speech, one newspaper article after another, the man Winston Churchill hammered away at his own leaders, trying to get them to wise up from their self-deception. It seems that the good people in government just couldn’t get themselves to believe that such a great nation like Germany could be in the hands of criminals. They didn’t wise up in time and fifty years later we know some of the cost of that deception.

Let us hope and pray that people will wise up to the spiritual deception around us. Let us be sure first and foremost that we wise up.

It’s time for us to grow up. To those who are new in the faith, I say dig into the disciplines that will help you grow. Study your Bible. Come to the classes offered by the church. Grow in your knowledge.

To those who are older, well, what should I say? I don’t wish to offend you but I do want you to take this seriously. I read an account the other day about a man who makes his living capturing sharks for aquariums. He dives down and catches them when they are very small. He said that one characteristic of sharks is that if they are captured young and placed into a small container, they grow only big enough to fit the size of their confinement. (That’s how they get all those little six-inch sharks you see swimming in the aquarium at your doctor’s office.) I wonder if that’s also how we end up with so many six-inch Christians. We set such tiny limits of comfort for ourselves.

It’s time for us to grow up.

It’s also time for some of us to settle down. We lack maturity because we don’t sit still long enough to learn. A little taste here, a little bite there, but never with any consistency.

And, it’s time for us to wise up. These are high-stakes issues. We dare not keep dismissing them or one of these days we’ll be destroyed by the deceiver.

Footnotes: Please use your "back" button to return to your place

1. Adapted from Mark Devries, Family-Based Youth Ministry, (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 26

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

[Archive]    [Home]   [Comments]   [Search]