Maturity in An Immature World

Good morning. Let me just start by saying what a thrill it is to get to stand up here and speak to you guys. This is our church. My parents go to this church, my wife's parents go to this church, they raised us here. We went through Sunday school up through the junior high and high school groups. We worked at the Cruz kids, our summer camp. We've got our own kids now who are working here, who are growing up here going to Sunday school and the summer camps and stuff. So it's just a major honor to get to speak to you guys this morning. This is our church.

And if you don't know me, let me just tell you a little bit about myself. Like I said, I'm married, I've got a couple of kids. Here we are down at the beach. That's my wife Rachel, my son Calvin, and my daughter Mercy. And also, as the video said a little bit about me, I'm a rock star. So James Durbin, you've got competition. Not really. I am an academic theologian. I love theology. I love studying the Bible and talking about what it means and how it applies to some of the big questions in our day.

But I'll also admit on the downside, I can love to argue about theology. And that's not an uncommon trait among academic theologians. I'll admit one of our favorite phrases is "well actually." You know what I'm talking about? So you're having a conversation and you say something totally not controversial, and one of us just sort of pops up like, "well actually blah blah blah blah." You know who likes to correct people? Do you guys have somebody in your life that you know like that who well actually leads you to death? My whole extended family just put their hands up.

Well actually, the Bible says that's a problem for Christians being super argumentative. It's not a good thing for us to be because it undermines what we're all about, which is telling people about the love of Christ. And we're continuing this story; we're continuing this morning our series through the book of 2nd Timothy. We're calling the series Strong Race. Verse by verse through 2nd Timothy, and this morning we're gonna be in the second half of chapter 2.

And what we're gonna see there is that as Paul is facing the end of his life, he's in prison and he knows he doesn't have much time left. And he's writing a letter to this young pastor named Timothy in Ephesus, a guy Paul has trained. We're gonna see in this passage that Paul is concerned that the church he has worked so hard to build up is in danger of becoming overly quarrelsome. And so he's gonna encourage Timothy and Timothy's church in Ephesus, and through them the whole church, us, he's gonna encourage us to grow in our spiritual maturity, which means growing in our ability to live out our faith vibrantly and talk about our faith boldly in the world, but doing that with gentleness and kindness and love and not being pushy or argumentative.

Now I find it kind of funny they asked me to preach this sermon. I said I'm kind of an argumentative God, and I don't mean to be that way. It's just, you know, I argue because I care. It might not be theology for you, but you probably have something that you just really care a lot about, and if people get you going, maybe you just get really fired up about it. Well, I'm that way particularly about the gospel, and it's not like that's a surprise to any of the pastors here. That's one of the things if you grow, if you work at a church you grow up at, there's no way you can hide who you really are. Everybody knows you.

So it was funny to me. A couple months ago, René comes up to me and he's like, "Hey Adam, how would you like to preach a weekend sermon?" And I was like, "Oh, thank you, that's awesome, I'm honored. What's the passage I'd be preaching on?" And he says, "Oh, I don't know, let's see, we're gonna do a series on 2nd Timothy, and you know I've put all the passages on the calendar, and let's see, you know Mark and I are gonna be gone Memorial Day weekend, why don't you preach then and just take whatever passage happens to fall on that weekend." And so I'm like, "Oh, that sounds great." I walked back to my office, opened up my Bible, looked at the passage, and right in the middle of it is this verse, "don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments because you know they produce quarrels." And it's not like that's a side point; as you'll see in this section, that's like the main point of this whole passage.

And so I read that and I'm like, "All right, sure, René, this just happened to be the passage on the weekend I'm preaching." He still totally denies it, but I am positive that he knew I should preach this sermon because I need to hear this passage, and fair enough, I do. But I'm also convinced that we all need to hear this passage because, like I said, Paul's gonna be encouraging us to grow in our spiritual maturity, and we all live in a very spiritually immature world.

We live in a world where men turn on the TV and see if you don't see some polarized arguments where no one listens. But also, we live in a world that has less and less patience for anything it has to think very much about. We live in a world that is more and more convinced that anything that's true and that really matters should fit legibly on a bumper sticker. We just want the headline, the soundbite. Paul's gonna say no, we need to grow up past that, and that means we have to be intentional about a few things, and so grab your notes if you don't already have them out.

The first thing Paul is gonna tell us to be intentional about is this: don't water it down. Don't water the gospel down. Don't water down the message of Jesus that is at the heart of the Bible and the whole Christian faith. In our world, the idea that the truth of God is a story that takes like the whole Bible to tell is, I understand, a little off-putting. That can be a little daunting, but the reason that is because God has something so much richer for us than a bumper sticker. And thank God that's true. So we need to not water it down.

A few years ago, the National Study of Youth and Religion conducted a wide-ranging survey of thousands of American teenagers and younger 20-somethings to see what they believe about spiritual things. And the dominant thinking before this survey, what people thought was younger people in America wouldn't, don't like to call themselves Christians. They don't like to associate with traditional religion. They would say they are spiritual seekers or maybe spiritual but not religious. That was the dominant thinking, but this survey found that a much higher percentage of young people than was thought were fine calling themselves Christians.

But they also found that those same, a lot of those same young people really had very little understanding of what Christianity actually teaches. The authors of the survey concluded that if you really start talking to them about what they believe, though they call themselves Christians, their worldview is more accurately described as moralistic therapeutic deism. I know. It's not an attractive phrase. Let me break that down and we'll walk it backwards. Deism means they believe a God exists, but that's about all he does. He created the world, he got it started, he gave it its basic meaning and order, but then he just kind of watches it from afar. Doesn't really interact with us in our day-to-day lives in a personal way, so God really isn't very relevant to our lives on the day-to-day level. That's deism.

But the therapeutic in this context means that they think that what God wants for us ultimately is to be happy and to feel good about ourselves. So they think faith has a basically therapeutic value. It's good for helping you feel good about yourself. And then the way to do that, to be happy and feel good about yourself, is to be moralistic. To try your best to live a good life. Right? Be a good person. Be moral. So you put all that together and moralistic therapeutic deism says this: God wants me to be good and feel good. That's what it all boils down to. God wants me to be good and feel good. That's it. Now big fancy words for a very simple idea.

Now remember, it's not that a lot of young people would call themselves moralistic therapeutic deists. They probably would never have heard that phrase if they heard it. But they would call themselves Christians. It's just that what they think Christianity really teaches is this: be good and feel good. It kind of just boils down to that. And it's pretty clear that it's not just young people that think that. I think a lot of us think that's a basically good summary of Christianity. You know? God wants you to feel good about yourself. So do your best to be a good person. But that's not the gospel.

If we open up the Bible and actually read it, that's not anything like what it says. What this is, this is what happens when a whole generation gets so sick of all the arguing. They get so sick of all the religious hypocrisy, the church scandals, the church splits, the religious wars they're really reading about in school. They get so disgusted by all that that they just decide not that God isn't real or that religion is necessarily a bad thing. Some of them do conclude that. But a larger percentage of them just say, "No, faith is a good thing. It's just better if you don't get too bogged down in all the theological details." Keep it simple. Just boil it down to like be a good person, be happy, water it down.

Well, what does Paul say? In verse 2:14, starts the passage we're looking at. Paul says this, "Keep reminding them," the church in Ephesus, "Keep reminding them of these things." What things? Well, if you read the book so far up to this point, he means keep reminding them of the gospel. The gospel is what that word means is good news. It's the good news about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, that he sent Jesus to come and take our sins from us and give us fellowship with him, give us a relationship with him. Keep reminding them of these things.

In verse 2:8, which we covered last week, René preached on that, it says this, "Remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel." Keep reminding them of that. Now that's actually, that's pretty succinct. You could fit that on a bumper sticker. I haven't seen one in this town yet, but I've seen every other bumper sticker, so I expect to see it sooner. But Paul's not watering it down when he says that. He's identifying the center, right? He's saying Jesus. Jesus is the center. Who Jesus is as God having become a man for us and what he's done for us by taking our sins from us and making us God's children. Keep reminding them of that. That's the gospel. Stay centered there.

The reason moralistic therapeutic deism doesn't work as a summary of Christian faith is because it says nothing about Jesus. It doesn't really need Jesus. I mean, if our understanding of our relationship with God is just do your best to feel good and be good, then I might have nice things to say about Jesus, but I don't really need him to do that. I don't need him to be good and feel good. That's why that doesn't work. But when you water the gospel down, that's what you do. You end up pushing Jesus out of the picture, and you end up just having God in heaven looking down on us and then us down here doing our best to be good and feel good, and maybe you're doing an okay job of that and maybe you're not.

But what the gospel actually says is that God came down here because he is good, and it pleases him. It makes him happy to make us his children and to bring us into his kingdom. That's the gospel. In 2:15, Paul tells Timothy, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth." So how do you do that? How do you correctly handle the Bible, the word of truth? Well, we have to understand its core, its central message, what holds it all together, and that is Jesus.

If we read the Bible and we don't see Jesus as what it's all really about, we might find all kinds of good things in there. We might find words of encouragement and comfort, or maybe it'll challenge us to take some new steps in our life, and maybe some really good things will come out of that, but we won't be handling it correctly as God's word of truth because it's about Jesus. Without Jesus, we're watering it down. To avoid that, we've got to go beyond a spiritual infancy of an overly simplistic gospel, a watered-down, be-good-and-feel-good gospel. We got to go beyond that.

But point two, we also need to grow beyond a spiritual adolescence, which means don't be argumentative. Don't be an infant in which we just water everything down, but also don't be an adolescent where we're, you know, don't be argumentative. This is really the main thing; this argumentative thing, this is the main thing Paul is hammering on in this passage over and over again. You hear him say this, "Warn them before God against quarreling about words." It is of no value and only ruins those who listen. Avoid godless chatter because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.

The words godless chatter can also be translated pointless or useless battleings. I like that. You guys have people in your life you wish would avoid pointless and useless babblings a little bit more? Again, my whole extended family just raised their hands. And then there's this one: don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments because you know they produce quarrels, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome. Okay, I get it. And do you think Paul's a little worked up here about this? I think this is important to him.

I mean, Paul knows, you know, when we are speaking a message of God's love to a world that just rejects him, there's just always going to be this friction. There's always going to be this temptation to get pushy, to get dragged down to the world's level, to get argumentative. We need to stick to our message. We need to not compromise on it, but that doesn't mean we need to be argumentative. So how do we avoid? How do we avoid being argumentative? I see three important facets here, and the first one is remain calm. Good job. Remain calm.

Paul points to a specific falsehood that's being popularized a little bit, I guess, in Ephesus during this time. It's being pushed by a couple guys named Hymenaeus and Philetus. So by the way, if anybody's expecting a baby and is looking for names, I think you've got a couple winners here: Hymenaeus or Philetus. Good names. And they say this: they say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some. So basically they're saying the show is already over. Christ has already returned, and if you're still here, you miss the train. Too late.

Now to me, that is a fantastic reason for a concerned pastor to freak out, get crazy argumentative. That's mean. I want to shut that down. I would want to make those guys look like idiots. I'd be all over arguing with those guys. And to be clear, Paul is not advocating silence. Here's what he says: "Nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription. The Lord knows those who are His." So in other words, no matter what kind of scary or crazy ideas people bring at us, we can still be calm and assured in the firm foundation of God's promises, right? We can know that if we put our trust in Jesus, you can know. If you put your trust in Jesus, God has you. He knows who are His. You're not lost. So you can just calm down.

People can say what they'll say. Remain calm. When it comes down to it, panic is just out of place in the kingdom of God. If we live in a kingdom where God is in control, then we're His. It doesn't make any sense to freak out. So we need to remain calm. B, we need to rise above the unwinnable. I skipped the last part of verse 2:19 before, so here's what that says: "Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness." Well, what wickedness? All wickedness, but I think Paul has a specific wickedness in mind here, and if you keep reading, it starts to come out.

In verse 2:22, he says, "Flee the evil desires of youth." What are those? What are the evil desires youth have? Well, some commentators say, well, it's lust, drunkenness, living just sort of an impulsive, wild lifestyle, and yeah, if we're following Christ, we want to avoid that. But I think Paul has something else in mind because if you keep reading, Paul says again, "Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments." So I see a connection there, right? "Flee the evil desires of youth." Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments.

How many teenagers do you know whose ultimate desire is to be right about everything? Right? Are there any teenagers in this room who just refuse to be proven wrong, no matter what? You could argue all day long with them, and I'm 35, and I kind of have this problem sometimes. I also found out early on in my parenting life that this trait is apparently passed on genetically. You saw my son; he just turned 12, and man, this kid is a chip off the old block.

So if you're someone in this room that I have driven you crazy with my argument in this, you can know that there is a just God because, believe me, I've gotten it back from my boy. I'm so proud of him. I really am. But one of our favorite stories about Calvin goes back to when he was six. One night, my wife was gone somewhere, and I can't remember where. I think she was with her sisters doing something. She had our daughter Mercy, who was just a baby. So I'm at home with just Calvin, and it's his bedtime.

Now, we lived on campus at Monte Vista Christian School. I was a teacher there, and if you've ever been on campus there, it's totally fenced in. So it's like the safest place ever, and we lived on one end of a triplex. And so I thought it would be okay if I put Calvin to bed and then just went right next door because my next-door neighbor was a friend of mine, and I forget what, but I wanted to talk to him about something. It was only gonna take like five minutes.

So I put Calvin to bed, I read him stories, I tuck him in, and I'm like, "Okay, good night buddy. I'm just gonna run right next door to talk to our neighbor, and I'll be back in like five minutes." And he's like, "But what do I do?" I'm like, "Well, you just go to sleep. You're in bed, and I'm gonna be right back." He's like, "But what if there's a fire?" "Okay, Calvin, I'm gonna be right back. If there's a fire, we've gone over this. You know what to do. Just get out of the house. There's grass outside our house. Just go out there." "Oh, but then what?" "Well, then I'm gonna come, I'll see you. You're gonna be right there." He's like, "But what if I can't find you, and you can't find me?" "Okay, I've got my cell phone on. Go outside, and then go to a neighbor's house, and call me." "Okay, but what if the neighbor's house is on fire?" Which was a valid point. I mean, if our house is on fire, the neighbor's house might be on fire too.

Okay, all right. It's a big campus, lots of houses. All right, Calvin, go outside, find the neighbor's house that's not on fire, and call me from there. "Okay, but what if the neighbor's house isn't on fire, but their phone is?" And at that point, the argument was over. How do you respond to that? How do you make a six-year-old calm about the fact that the neighbor's house is...neighbor's phone is not going to spontaneously burst into flames? The point is, as we pursue spiritual maturity, we need to have a radar for situations where we're just not gonna win and just rise above. Don't get sucked in.

There's gonna be people in our lives that when we're talking about faith and things like this, they're just...they're gonna want to argue to the death, and there's no way to win, right? So we gotta rise above those situations. Don't get sucked in. Third, remember your purpose. Remember your purpose. Paul says this: "In a large house, there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some are for special purposes, and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from, not for, as your notes say, those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the master, and prepared to do any good work."

Now, when I was a kid, we had a plate just like this. It says, "You are special today." And all the rest of our plates were white, but this one was red, and it had writing on it. And so this plate stayed in the cupboard most of the time, but if you had a birthday in our house, my mom would make you breakfast in bed, and she'd bring it to you on this plate. So none of us would ever dare to use this plate on a normal day. We had other plates for common use. This one had a special purpose. And when my mom would bring it to us, I would just get really happy because we knew what this plate meant. "I'm special today." The plate tells me so.

If we have received the good news about Jesus, we then now have the privilege of being able to pass that on to other people, to tell other people that good news. And that privilege marks us out with a special purpose. So we need to live lives that reflect that purpose. If people look at us and they see someone who's just constantly flying off into pointless debates, maybe person-to-person, or maybe on Facebook, and maybe you just have exactly the right point and everyone needs to hear it, you're on exactly the right side. But if that's the way people always see you, what's the point? What good is that?

This isn't in your notes, but I encourage you to write it on the side. What good is winning the argument if you lose the person? What good is that? What good is winning the argument if you lose the person? It's getting people in touch with the good news of Jesus. Watching the good news change lives of actual people. That's the whole point. We've got to remember that. I don't know anyone who gave their lives to Jesus because they lost an argument. Do you? We need to not be argumentative. Remain calm, rise above the unwinnable, and remember your purpose.

That leads to the last point. So far we've seen that spiritual maturity means don't water it down, don't get argumentative, but then lastly, do everything with kindness and gentleness. I am so good at that. No, I'm listening. Listening to the Lord on this one. Do everything with kindness and gentleness. Right after Paul says flee the evil desires of youth, he says, "and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with all those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." And then right after he says in verse 24, "The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome," he continues, "but must be kind to everyone, able to teach and not resentful."

And then he finishes in verses 25 and 26, finishes this chapter, "Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will." Just like panic is out of place in the kingdom of God, so is being unkind. It's out of place. I mean, if the gospel we live for is the message that God has responded to our sin with kindness, then he's responded by sending his son to take our sin and forgive us, then shouldn't we act like that's actually true?

So we live that way in the world. I mean, does it make any sense to be harsh and unkind as we're telling other people about God's kindness? I mean, and even if the person you're talking to gives you every reason to be unkind, we've got to remember that we in our sin have given God every reason to be unkind to us, but he's responded with love. You know who that reminds me of? Not myself. If you have had the misfortune of feeling like you were an opponent of mine in an argument, I am so sorry. This is something God is working on me with, but it does remind me of my father-in-law, Steve Campbell.

He teaches Sunday School over here for our kindergarten, and he's a good example of what Paul's talking about here because he's a super sharp guy. He knows the stuff backwards and forwards, but he's also one of the kindest and like most loving people I know. Now let me tell you how I know that's true. I started dating his daughter when she was 14 years old, and I was 15, and then we got married four years later. Some of you guys have 14 and 15-year-olds, and you're freaking out right now, and I understand. But so Steve has known me as I've gone through every stage from spiritual infancy through spiritual adolescence all the way up to the wisened immaturity you see before you now.

But man, when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I was insufferable. Rachel and I would go over to the Campbell's house for dinner, and I just start talking about some philosophical topic I really didn't understand very much. But to me, I was the expert, and I'm ready to tell everybody about it, and everyone would just eat their dinner and then just bolt out to the living room. But Steve would stay. He would stay behind and have conversations with me. And I remember especially when I was in college, I was like 19, taking an introduction to psychology, and I read Sigmund Freud's critiques of Christianity.

And if you've never come across that, Freud basically says, "All of us Christians, we believe in the heavenly Father because we couldn't handle it when we found out that our earthly fathers weren't infallible and weren't omnipotent. We just couldn't take finding that out when we were children. So we cling to this idea of a heavenly Father up in the sky to make ourselves feel better." And when I first read that, I freaked out. I thought for sure Freud was right. He had proven it. All of us Christians are just simple-minded infants. And again, I'm the expert, and so I need to tell everybody about this.

Now, Steve had majored in psychology decades before. I am taking introduction to psychology, but I'm the expert. Somehow he was able to resist the temptation to just slap me. But actually, you know what he did? He understood that this stuff was important. So he had real conversations with me about it. He did not water it down, and I'm sorry, but a lot of Christians do. A lot of Christians will respond in conversation to someone who's having big doubts, just sincere questions about the big stuff, and we respond with like, "Oh, you just gotta have faith." Bumper sticker. That's what we've got for people in the middle of the big crisis.

Now, it's true. We do need faith when we come up against the big questions, but faith doesn't mean simple-mindedness. It definitely shouldn't mean closed-mindedness. Steve never gave me any of that. He never watered it down, but neither did he shove anything down my throat. He listened. He took the doubts and the questions seriously, not that they caused him to doubt or question himself, but they didn't cause him to freak out and get loud and angry with me either, even when I was being loud and angry. He would challenge me in my thinking, rightfully, but he always did so in a friendly way.

And so in doing that, he didn't just argue for faith; he demonstrated faith. He demonstrated faith and hope in a loving God by being kind and gentle and intelligent and calm with me. That just totally spoke to me. I mean, can you imagine if that was most people's normal interactions with Christians when they were having some questions about stuff? Can you imagine if most people saw Christians as I saw this red plate when I was a kid? You see a Christian coming and you're like, "Ah, you know, I know their purpose. They're coming to tell me that I'm special. I'm special to God." That kind of gentle intelligence and love is hard, is super hard. I don't think it comes naturally to anyone, but that's why we call it maturity. It's about growing, and that's what Paul's calling us to.

There's no saying that has really been helpful to me in this area. And it goes like this: in essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. And in all things, charity. So in essentials, unity. The essentials are the stuff about Jesus. What the Bible says about who Jesus is and what he has done for us in revealing God to us and being God with us and for us and giving us fellowship with God, saving us from our sin, all that stuff. Everything about Jesus and what he's done for us, that's the essentials. And in that, we need to be united and standing firm as the bride of Christ, as the people of Christ.

But then in non-essentials, all the other stuff, secondary stuff, liberty. I can have my opinion and you can have a different opinion, and that's fine. We cannot freak out about that. We can be very convinced of our opinions, but we can give, we need to give each other the space to disagree on that and still call each other brothers and sisters. And we do that by having, in all things, charity. Having love and graciousness for each other in the essentials and in the non-essentials. So here's the bottom line. Spiritual maturity means leaving behind the ignorance of infancy and the argumentativeness of adolescence and growing in the peace and kindness of our Heavenly Father. That's what it's all about. Being like him, reflecting him.

In his kindness, he showed us his kindness by sending us his son. And so we want to show the world his kindness by reflecting that, by living in that life. That's our purpose. Let's pray. Father, thank you for loving us enough not just to wish us good things, but to come to us, to take our sins from us and fill us with your spirit. I pray that we would reflect that love with our whole lives in everything we do and say to everyone we have any contact with. Teach us to speak with both confidence and gentleness, being patient for each other's weaknesses, but also spurring each other on to live ever more deeply in your love. We pray these things in the name of your son Jesus. Amen.