Maturity No.10 Full Maturity

Again from Matthew 13, and then if you'll be kind enough to have your Bibles open at Philippians 3, we'll major on some verses there in a moment or so. But Matthew 13 and the 23rd verse says, But what was sown on good soil is a man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.

If you've got a good memory, you might recall that when I commenced this series of studies on Christian maturity, I made reference to a nursery which I visited as a lad back in my home county of Yorkshire. By nursery I don't mean something that two and three year old tiny tots go to, I mean where you buy young trees and bushes and plants and shrubs and what have you. And I told you that the owner of that nursery was a pastor, a Pentecostal pastor actually, and I well recall him telling me how it was very difficult to run a nursery from scratch, because very often large profits could not be made until something like seven years hence, as some of the trees which have most of the profit in selling them are not ready until that period of time has elapsed.

You don't become mature overnight, it takes time. And it seems to me from this parable that we looked at in Matthew's Gospel that the Lord Jesus Christ has as his wish for you and me that we might be fully mature as Christian people. On several occasions our Lord dips into his knowledge of horticulture and farming in order to emphasise the fact that he wants people in his kingdom to grow up tall and to be fully mature, able to cope with all the various pressures and temptations and challenges of life.

So that's the reason you will recall why commencing more than ten weeks ago now we embarked on this subject which meant that we had to look at a variety of topics throughout the whole of Scripture that have something to do with, some play upon the concept of Christian maturity. The Apostle makes it very clear, the Apostle Paul when he writes to the Ephesians you remember that our aim is to be as tall so to speak as the Lord Jesus Christ, we are aiming to be mature in him. And it's the hymn writer who says of our goal that our goal is God himself.

So we have as Christian people the idea, the concept of wanting to grow, to be strong so that we can cope with all that life brings. The Apostle tells us in Corinthians in understanding we are to be men, the anonymous writer of Hebrews tells us that we are to go on to maturity. Punctuated throughout the whole of the Old Testament and the New Testament is this idea of the man, the woman of God beginning to grow and growing strong and growing true.

To the end that you can make this conclusion at least academically if not practically, the longer a person is in Christ, in other words the older a person is, the more mature he or she should be. Whether that works out always, only you by God's grace and the play of the Spirit upon your personality can really determine. But that should be the case, that if you're feeding on God's Word, if you're in close contact with the Lord Jesus, if you're coming into the fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters on a regular basis, then you should be coming more and more like the Saviour in a word going on to maturity.

What is the mature person really like? Well I think I spelt that out for you in the first and also in subsequent studies. If we dip back into the Greek usage of the word mature, which I've already done so I'll only just recap without spending too much time, we're presented with the idea of a man who is thoroughly equipped, that's the idea, thoroughly equipped in life to cope with the challenges of belonging to Jesus Christ. You imagine a boat moving out from Chichester yacht basin, it's got its sails either up or ready, it's got all the necessary navigational equipment in case it's going to go out from Chichester and ultimately to the Channel and perhaps across to France.

No yachtsman, unless he is a fool, takes a boat out that is not thoroughly equipped. And that is one of the Greek ideas when you come across the word mature in the New Testament. And then there's the idea of becoming complete.

In other words, let's think in terms of coming to church on a Sunday, at least the old-fashioned idea, which for my money is still the best, that you look reasonably decent. Remember how we were brought up as kids in the north of England and Sunday was a day when if your shoes weren't shining and you hadn't got a white shirt on and a nice tie, then my goodness you've got a clip around the ear, but well days have changed. I'm not necessarily defending the practice, but you had to turn up in your Sunday best, fully equipped and perfectly complete.

And that's the idea. Whenever you come across the word mature, as used in the New International Version of the Bible, which is sometimes translated perfect, which perhaps isn't too helpful in the authorised version of the New Testament, the concept of the Christian being absolutely complete in Jesus with all the knowledge that he requires and all the strength to be able to resist the temptation of the devil. And in another context, and again not really much time to delve into the scripture to show it, but it's in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, the mature Christian is capable of getting on with someone else.

Now that's a good test. The mature Christian gets on with someone else. He can be brought up against the rough edges of someone else's personality and he does not react, because he has the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to be able to cope even with the angular features of someone.

Well you see what a glorious word this word mature is. You can approach it from several angles and although we have looked at ten, or we're on ten different studies under the heading of maturity, we've really hardly got out of the shallow end. There are many, many waters in which to swim.

One more thing by way of reminder. You'll recall how on past occasions we have delved into specific areas in which we should be studying to be absolutely mature. Our handling of the word of God.

It does not do credit to the Christian church when a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness can run a circle round an evangelical. It should be very, very much the other way round. Our maturity in our time of prayer.

Our maturity in being able to cope with the fact that there have been past occasions in our lives when we have failed abysmally and not to let those failures blight the present and bankrupt the future. Our ability to spread the gospel and to counsel other people. All these are things that are not just basic to the man who preaches the word of God.

They're basic to everyone who is a believer in Jesus. In fact in one sense we are all preachers. Someone, a little boy, once misquoted that text.

If any man be in Christ, he is a new preacher. A new preacher. Well, there's some justification in thinking along that line of understanding the text.

But I want to bring you back, as has been my custom in this particular series, to a passage of scripture which will help us as we round off this subject of Christian maturity. And I have in mind that little cameo, that little insight into the life of the Apostle Paul, which we are given in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians. It's not often that Paul talks about himself.

Very rarely does he make any direct autobiographical reference. But he has an exception here in this third chapter. So let's read from the twelfth verse.

Remembering here is the ideal for us to reproduce in our own lives. Here is a man who is mature moving on to a greater degree of maturity. And it's maturity he's speaking about throughout these verses.

Let's pick up the reading from the tenth verse. I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I had already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind, and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.

And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you, only let us live up to what we have already attained. Now I think you will agree that that little passage will serve us extremely well in tying together any loose ends, or underlining afresh some of the conclusions that we've already made in this particular series of studies. Here is Paul making a profession.

I want to know Christ. And that really is a summary of a mature man. That's his outlook.

Less than that he will not settle for. More than that is absolutely impossible in any case. So Paul harnesses his whole energy in wanting to know more and more about the Lord Jesus Christ.

But what is this knowledge? You see, very often in the Greek world, knowledge was just something to do with the mind, the intellect, philosophy, academic things. But Christian knowledge hits the mind, but it goes further. That's why I've been emphasising in Sunday morning addresses recently, the uniqueness of the mind.

It's that which we have that is dissimilar from any other being, from any low animal creature that reflects something of the image of God. We worship God with our heart and with our mind. But it does include our heart also.

Merely pursuing God theologically will take you nowhere. To know Christ, to be found in Christ, means that certain specific things also are necessary in the knowledge that you accumulate. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings becoming like him in his death.

The knowledge that Paul is seeking for goes beyond the mind and involves the total personality. There's something there that's very attractive, isn't there? It's the idea of power. I want to know Jesus Christ and I want to know the power of Jesus Christ.

And that's a very singular and a very significant thing to strive after. But you know, knowledge about Jesus, twinned with the power of Jesus, cannot come without something else that is emphasised in that verse. The fellowship of sharing in his sufferings and becoming like him in his death.

It seems to me that very often in the world, the evangelical world in which we live, we want power without the suffering. We want the upper room experience without the trauma of Gethsemane and Calvary. And yet that is clearly impossible.

Jesus said that there was one road to heaven and he was the way to direct us on that road. He said that it's a narrow road and few there are that find it. And that road down which we travel as Christians, that road which should only be for mature people, will take you by Gethsemane and it will take you past Calvary and you cannot conceivably get to the upper room until you have been by these other places first.

There's no bypass. There's no optional road that will take you to Pentecost that bypasses Gethsemane and Calvary. That's one of the reasons you might recall that in handling this series on Christian maturity, when we were speaking about prayer and being competent in prayer, being fully equipped in prayer, I took you to that passage of Scripture where Jesus says to his disciples in rebuke, could you not watch with me one hour? What was the context? Gethsemane.

Gethsemane with all its pressure, with all its pain, with all its danger, the disciples were in default at that part of their own spiritual pilgrimage because they didn't appreciate the significance of Gethsemane and in one sense my friend, you and I can share the same mistake of the disciples. Knowledge of Christ and equipment with the power of Christ takes you also to Gethsemane to watch with the Savior and to recognize the tremendous battle that is involved in living for Jesus maturely in this world. But it's not just the olive grove of Gethsemane that you need to visit.

If you are going to be complete in your knowledge of Jesus, you have to climb that hill called Calvary and though you cannot share in the atoning work of Christ, what is so vital is this, that you commit yourself to the Savior, to the end that what he has achieved on the cross, you will spread around the globe even though your suffering might be equivalent to that of being crucified yourself. That, you remember, was the experience of the Apostle Paul when later on writing to the, I say later on, it was an earlier letter, writing to the Corinthians, he said, I die daily. I bear in my body, writing to the Galatians, the marks of the Lord Jesus.

Sometimes in church history, people got the idea wrong about being identified in the suffering of Jesus. There were mystics, sincere people, who believed that somehow or other what the Bible was directing them towards was to so stay their minds upon the cross and the passion of Christ that the very stigmata of Christ appeared in their body. And phenomenally, because it's remarkable what influence the mind can have over the body, there are occasions which seem to be vindicated or the accuracy seems to be without dispute, where people literally did begin to show something of the marks of Christ, of suffering, of crucifixion in their own body.

It was known as the stigmata. But you see, this was the wrong approach. This was purely mystical and magical.

What the Apostle Paul is here saying is that maturity for him must be sharing in the sufferings of Christ to the extent that when he declares the gospel, there are times when it will be a very, very costly business. And there are times when he will suffer physical pain and bear the scars of injury in his body as a result of being an ambassador of Jesus. Thus he writes to the Galatians, let no man trouble me.

I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Do you remember the story told of Hudson, the great missionary to... of Judson, the great missionary to Burma? On one occasion, he was imprisoned and thrown into the jail, in Arva jail, and the months lengthened into years. The shackles that bound him dug deep into his wrists and into his feet, his ankles.

And then the day came when he was allowed to go free. And on one occasion, so his story writer tells us, a writer of his life informs us, he stood before the king and he asked for permission to go into a different part of Burma to preach the gospel. The king said no.

And Judson said, well, why not? You've let other missionaries go, why not me? And the king said some very significant things. My people are not so foolish as to believe what you have to say, but they will take notice of your marks. You've shared in the very sufferings like Christ did.

And as a result, the king was arguing, Judson's ministry would be powerful among the people. And this is what Paul is getting at. He wants to know Christ.

He wants the power of the upper room. But he recognizes that that knowledge of Christ and the achieving of that power, the acquiring of that power, might well involve him in fellowship, in the sharing of the sufferings of Christ, to the extent of becoming like him in his death. And if legend, tradition, is correct, that's precisely what did happen to Paul as he was done to death, killed brutally in Rome.

Now all these things I mentioned to you, because you see, they're part of the program of maturity. Here is Paul confessing that he wants a mature knowledge of Christ, and indicating how that knowledge comes through the mind, yes, by the power of the Spirit, yes, but also by being conformed in one's personality and lifestyle, so that come what may, one lives for Jesus Christ. And in the very living, you acquire a maturity that is splendid in the sight of God.

Well, that's all very good, isn't it? And it sounds reasonable, logical, and we thank Paul for the comments that he makes. This is his profession, this is what he wants to do, this is the target towards which he is aiming all the time. But then, in the next few verses, he makes a confession.

And I thank God that this has been put down in Scripture. Not, he says in the 12th verse, that I have already obtained all this. Just in case you don't hear him aright, maybe you're staggered that such a mighty man as Paul has not achieved his goal, he repeats it virtually in the 13th verse.

Not exactly the same words, but certainly the same meaning. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. What's he referring to? Well, this achievement of full maturity in Christ, knowing Christ, knowing the power of his resurrection, submitting at every end and turn of his life to the disciplines that are necessary for him as an ambassador of Jesus to be successful in his ministry.

This is my goal, these are my targets. I know where I am directing myself, but I haven't yet obtained all this. And one thanks God, as I say, for the honesty of Paul.

Thank God for honest preachers. You know, it's very difficult for a preacher to be honest, because very often the congregation expect far more of him than they expect of themselves, and sometimes feel that he's got a charmed life, and that the devil's temptations are, well, if they're as powerful, he's got such a thick skin that, you know, he rebuffs them all the time, that he never fails, that he never feels frustrated, that he never feels like throwing in the towel. Well, the apostle here and elsewhere, particularly in Corinthians, concedes that that's not the case with him.

He's still struggling, he's still engaged in moving forward, but thank God he's going in the right direction. He's not arrived, but he's traveling. And if that sums up your life, then you're getting somewhere, because you're, if you're traveling, and you're in the right direction, even though you have a lot of mileage, you hope that one day your destination will be arrived at.

Well, this is what the apostle says, my goals are these, I want to know Christ, I want the power of his resurrection in my life, I want ultimately to be raised from the dead, so that I might share in the very victory of Christ's own resurrection. Now, all these things, they're, they're still unfulfilled, at least partially unfulfilled, but I tell you, my dear, dear brothers, I'm moving forward, and I'm going to try to achieve what is my goal. So, I want to give advice to you, on behalf of the apostle Paul, and take his advice for myself.

In this whole business of Christian maturity, let's be honest, let's stand in front of the mirror of God's Word, and let's say, well, look, in that area, I'm somewhat defective. Temptation, well, I'm not as resilient as I ought to be. I acknowledge this, and I come before the Lord, and I ask for greater strength.

In the study of God's Word, well, I've had many an opportunity, but I've let the hours go by. I settled for Coronation Street, or some other such rubbish, when I could have opted for, occasionally in an evening, absorbing something of the truths of Scripture. Let's be honest about our mistakes, about the hours that we have wasted.

Let's recognize just at what point we have come to, in our maturity. I don't always find it too easy to get on with people. I want to be that sort of person, who can always get on with anyone, realizing that nobody should get under my skin, because if I'm a true, 100%, full-blooded evangelical, I shouldn't really have a skin for people to get under.

But I haven't quite reached that goal yet. When I have, my wife will come and tell you, because she would be the best witness to give evidence as to my defects in this area. Let's be honest about our performance, and where we are not as mature as we ought to be, let's recognize this.

But then, moving on, still in this little section, where the Apostle is working out his own approach to Christian maturity, let's latch on to this. The involvement of Jesus in our lives. I almost jumped for joy when I saw this.

I never recognized it in the AV, quite as it struck me in the NIV, though that's no injustice to the AV, it's just the fact that I must have been blind when I was reading that particular Scripture. The 12th I'm referring to. I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Isn't that marvellous? Jesus Christ has taken hold of me. In other words, He thinks I am worth working on. And that's what Paul has to say at the beginning of Philippians, isn't it? When he talks about Jesus having begun a good work in me.

I make reference to the fact that there's a there's an acrostic that can be made out of the word tenet, and has been discovered, I think, in the environs of Jerusalem. If you don't know what an acrostic is, it's a little bit complicated to start to explain it now, but somehow or other, in an acrostic, wherever you look at the word, as it's written out, it spells the word tenet. It's the most remarkable thing, and I'm almost persuaded to explain it in full because it is so interesting.

But the thing that is so perhaps relevant for our Bible study this evening, is that the word tenet means He holds. He holds. I believe that there is a tombstone, an early Christian grave that was discovered, either in Rome or Jerusalem, that has that inscription on it, with the name of the person who's deceased, and then underneath, tenet.

He holds. And it's that that keeps me sane as a Christian, and when sometimes I feel so grossly immature, and that I'm not even moving forward. In fact, I'm in reverse gear.

I come to such a scripture as this, and I recognize He holds. I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. He thought I was worthwhile apprehending.

And that was always staggering to Paul, wasn't it? You know, that Jesus should have stopped him on the Damascus road and revealed the gospel to him. He never got over the fact that he, Paul, the chief of sinners, obtained mercy. That's the expression he uses when he writes to Timothy.

I obtained mercy. Jesus thought that there was something worthwhile in me, and that applies to you and to myself. Praise God for that.

Recognize the involvement of Jesus. And then, in trying to achieve these objectives of full knowledge of Christ, with all that that means, we have to sum up all our mental disciplines. This one thing I do, verse 13.

This one thing I do. He believes that the main objective in life is the goal of maturity. Knowing Christ.

Everything else is secondary to that. I reckon that this is where many of us fall. We've got our priorities a little bit out of order.

Do we really just live for Jesus? Can you honestly say that your job, your marriage, for that matter, your ambitions, are second and third place compared with this overwhelming desire of wanting to know him? This one thing I do. Well, how do you do it? Well, says Paul, in summoning up mental disciplines so I can keep my mind on this one pursuit, I have to forget some of the crass mistakes that I've made in days gone by. Forgetting what is behind.

That's the reason why in this series on Christian maturity, we had to look at the problem of failure and how to handle that. Because there are times when we do fail and we fail abysmally. I think that one of the great unheralded miracles in the life of the Apostle Paul was that he was able to put at the back of his mind all the diabolical things he did to the church of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem.

Do you remember how he carted off the women and the men? Can you imagine the terror that there was in their eyes as Paul sent his bully boys to arrest them and to have them killed? One of Campbell Morgan's great books, or one of his great sermons, he has, he quoted a verse which I read years ago and it still haunts me now of Paul, and that particular dilemma as he thinks about those dear Christians who he put to death. Saints, did I say, with your remembered faces, dear men and women whom I sought and slew, oh, how when I reach the heavenly places, I will weep with Stephen and with you. But you see, he had to put that behind.

He had to forget that, as you must forget some of the things that would trip you up. Your present being blighted, your future being bankrupted, because you're constantly playing back on past mistakes and failures. I spent hours on one occasion, week after week, dealing with someone who got such a guilt complex of things that happened in their experience years ago, and it was devastating their witness as a Christian in the present, and would, as I say, bankrupt their witness in the future, until they realised that God forgives our mistakes.

And not only does he forgive them, he forgets them. And so Paul says, forgetting those things which are behind. Do you remember, if I may just enlarge on that point for a moment, how in a different context, using the choice language of the authorised version, Paul and Peter on occasions use the term, gird up the loins of your mind.

Gird up the loins of your mind. And do you know that is a sort of, I was going to say Hebraism, a Hebrew term, I'm not too sure that it's just Hebrew. It's probably basic to the whole culture and linguistic patterns of the Middle East.

Have you ever seen a Middle East man's dress? It's like a long maxi. If I wore it, you'd have me out of church and say that I was improperly attired for such a sophisticated place as Worthing Tabernacle. Well, doubtless such a dress as that had got great benefits in the East.

It would keep one cool and so on and so forth, and maybe there was a minimum amount of wear that you had to have underneath your long flowing gown. But try and run. Oh my goodness.

You imagine running in a long, long coat. Very, very difficult. So what did they do? Well, you see they had a sort of girdle or belt around their middle and if the shepherd was chasing someone or chasing an animal that was interfering with the sheep, he'd take his skirts and he'd bind them into his belt so that he would have absolute freedom to be able to run.

He would gird up his belt or gird up his skirts and as a result of that he can move forward. Now it seems to me that that idea is not distant from what Paul has in mind when he says about forgetting those things that are behind that would impede progress, past mistakes. Forget them because God has forgiven them and rather sum up mental discipline and channel all your energies and verse 14, press on towards the goal to win the prize for which, to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.

Well, you see what we have here from the apostle. First of all, we've got his profession, what he wants. He wants full maturity.

He wants to know Christ in all the multiple ways in which one can come to a great understanding of the Lord. But the profession, thank God, is not all that Paul gives. There's a confession that he hasn't yet attained, all that he desires.

And then he follows this by putting up a little bit of teaching over against which we are to make our submission. He says, verse 15, all of us who are mature should take such a view of things. In other words, he's talking to people who are partially mature already and yet they want to go on to a greater maturity.

And indeed the measure of the maturity to which they have attained will be worked out by the fashion in which they respond to what Paul has previously had to say. If on some point you think differently, says the apostle in the 15th verse, that too God will make clear to you. And then he comes back to repeat virtually what he said in the 15th.

Let us live up to what we have already attained. And that takes us conveniently back to the beginning of my study this evening, when I was reviewing some of those areas that we have deliberately touched on in this series. You see, we want maturity as Christians, don't we? We want to mature in every area of our lives.

And to that degree that we have attained, then we're to hold on, not go back, but rather to build on this. We were taught some weeks ago by David White when he shared these studies with me about guidance and the confusion that Christians sometimes are over when they handle guidance wrongly. Mature Christians should be able to cope with this problem of guidance, nervous energy or nervous tensions and worries.

Mature Christians should be able to handle these things because there's so much teaching in the Word of God about them. And so during these previous nine weeks of concentrated study, we have tried to show bit by bit where we ought to be able to apply the Word of God practically to our lives. And the Apostle says that as we've been making these tests, let's ensure that we live up to what we've already attained, so that we might go on from one degree of maturity to another degree of maturity, so that ultimately we might be fully perfected in Christ.

You remember the parable that I quoted earlier? The parable of the sower. And finally when Jesus interprets the parable, he talks about the seed that brings forth fruit a hundredfold. That's maturity, isn't it? That's fruition, fruiting, bringing forth seed a hundredfold.

That's our aim, that's our goal. To work for the Lord Jesus Christ and to reproduce his characteristics. You say will we ever achieve that perfectly on this earth? No, not on this earth.

But we'll move toward it because the Apostle tells us in the book of Jude that one day the Lord Jesus Christ shall present us all faultless before his heavenly Father with exceeding great joy. On that day we shall be fully mature, we'll have achieved all the goals because Jesus will have perfected those areas where we're still lacking. But we don't wait for that day to come in a passive fashion.

Rather, as the Apostle enjoins us earlier on in Philippians, we cooperate with the Lord Jesus Christ, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to full maturity. That's verse 6 of Philippians 1, we'll carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ. And as he works in us, so we cooperate with the ministries of his Spirit, always aiming for the full maturity which ultimately will be ours on the return of the Saviour.

Amen. you