This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I welcome you to day one of 1 Corinthians chapter 3,
one of the great chapters in all of scripture. Of course all the chapters in 1
Corinthians are great chapters. This chapter though answers a question that I
think burns on many of our minds.

What do you do when Christians don't act Christian? This week we're going to
talk together about how you keep encouraged and growing in your faith even when
others are not acting Christian who are around you. Or maybe it's you yourself.

You think, "Why am I acting this way? I'm not acting like I know I should be
acting in Christ. What do I do about that?

Where do I turn? Where do I find new hope, new encouragement, new strength? "
Each day we're going to talk about from this chapter one principle, five
principles for the week, one principle for each day, something you can do when
others aren't acting Christian, when you're not acting Christian, to see change
happen in your life.

And the first one might surprise you. The first thing you do is this, you
recognize that we can choose to act like babies in our faith. The first thing
you do when you see other people not acting like Christ like they should or
maybe you struggle with it yourself is you recognize that we can choose to act
like babies in our faith.

We can choose, well Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 3 verses 1 to verse 4.
"Brothers," he writes, "I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly,
mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet
ready for it.

Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is
jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?

Are you not acting like mere men? For one says, 'I follow Paul,' another, 'I
follow Apollos,' are you not mere men? What after all is Apollos?

And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe, as the Lord
has assigned to each his task. " Paul writes in these verses and he reminds us
that the person who is not acting Christian may indeed be a Christian.

Sometimes we think, well they're not acting Christian or sometimes I don't act
Christian. Does it mean I'm not? I'm not part of God's family.

The problem is they're acting like a baby Christian. They're acting like what
Paul says here is a mere infant in Christ or like mere men, like mere human
beings. And really what he's focusing on here is the power of the Holy Spirit in
our lives.

At the beginning you notice in verse 1 he says, "I could not address you as
spiritual but as worldly. " Through the power of the Holy Spirit, you and I can
allow his Spirit, God's Spirit, to fill our thoughts, to fill our actions. Or we
can allow the Spirit of this world.

That's being worldly. And the Spirit of this world, what is it? It's
selfishness.

It's living for myself. And if you think I'm the only one, when you think of
yourself as being selfish and you struggle with that, that's ever faced this,
we've all faced this one. Why do we become mere infants?

Why do we become more worldly? Well, obviously the temptations of this world are
huge and part of it is the choice to follow those temptations. To trust that
somehow I can get my needs met for comfort, for love, for grace.

By the temptations of this world, I listen to the lie of Satan and follow after
that. That's an obvious one that creates a worldliness in us and it happens to
many of us. And when that happens, what do you do?

You turn to Jesus. You recognize his forgiveness. You ask again for the strength
and power of his Spirit.

But there's also another, there's another more, it's sneakier, there's another
way that you and I become worldly that seems spiritual at first. And it's when
we call on our own strength, even to do the things of God, we call on our own
strength rather than the Spirit's strength. And there's a process that often
happens with this.

I've seen it happen in my own life, in many other people's lives. As you're
trying to grow to become more and more like Christ, to trust him in the
circumstances of life, maybe trust him with a marriage situation, maybe trust
him with a financial situation, maybe trust him in a ministry that you're
beginning to start or wanting to be faithful in, we ask God's Spirit to fill our
lives as we're trying to trust him. We want his Spirit to fill our lives, we
want his strength, and he keeps his promise.

His Spirit fills our lives. And so he begins to use us. The marriage begins to
change.

The ministry begins to flourish. Things begin to happen in our finances that
glorify God and not just ourselves. We begin to see things happening.

And as we see those things happening, we naturally, the natural human tendency
is we feel strength. We feel confidence. We begin to soar.

And then right on the other end of that, we begin to think that we can handle it
all ourselves. So we say, in essence, here we are soaring. We say, "Lord, I can
take it from here.

" And it's as foolish as thinking, I'm on a 747, thinking that somehow because
I'm soaring at that great height, that great speed, that I could step out of the
plane and keep flying at that speed. It's the foolishness of thinking that the
power is coming from me. But I've done it, and you've probably done it.

You say, "Now I'll take it from here, Lord. " And what happens? You fall flat on
your face.

And once again, you recognize your need for God. And in recognizing your need
for God, you ask Him to fill you. He begins to use you.

And then sometimes the process just starts all over again. You feel strength.
You begin to soar.

You trust in yourself. And you fall flat on your face. The question is, what do
you do when you fall flat on your face?

Do you blame Him or do you trust Him again? If you're going to love the Lord
with all your soul, you have to ask the Holy Spirit to be in control. That's
what it takes.

Our lives need to be filled with His Spirit. To be spiritual, you have to allow
His Spirit to be controlling your life. It's easy to be worldly because we're
surrounded by the world, the jealousies of this world, the quarreling of this
world.

It's easy to be worldly. But to be spiritual, you have to let His Spirit fill
your life. If I just left a sack open, like a grocery sack in the middle of a
family room, what would that sack get filled with?

Well, it depends on who's there. If there's a bunch of two and three-year-olds
there, eventually it's going to be filled with little toys. It's going to be
filled with kid things.

The sack is open. The person who's in the room is a child. And so the child
fills the sack with kid things.

How do I let my life get filled with God's Spirit, with spiritual things? He's
in your life if you're a believer. He's come into your life the moment you were
saved.

But how does He fill your thoughts? How does He fill your actions? It's when you
leave your life open to God.

As long as you've got the sack closed, God, I've got it all handled, I've got it
taken care of, I know what I'm doing, my schedule, it's mine, my finances,
they're mine. As long as it's closed, you're filled with yourself. But when you
open it to God and say, "God, open-handed, here's my schedule, here's my life,
here's my finances," then He can make a difference.

You see, as Paul talks in these verses about this choice that we can make to act
like babies in our faith, he really gives two sets of pictures in these verses.
We just talked about the first one. He talks about being spiritual versus being
worldly.

Worldly, he says, is acting like mere men, acting like the people of this world.
And we, because we know Jesus Christ, you have the power to act differently. You
have that power to act spiritually because you have God's Spirit in your life.

Spiritually does not mean some thought process. Spiritually means letting God's
Spirit take control. Spiritually means letting the ways of this world, the
selfishness of this world, take control.

That's one picture. And then he gives a second picture, the picture of infancy.
He says you're either an infant in Christ or you're a mature believer in Christ.

And really, spiritual growth, Christian growth, is the process of moving from
spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity. Now, what am I talking about? What does
that mean, moving from infancy to maturity?

Let me just go through some different areas of life. For instance, your
possessions. If you're an infant in Christ, you're still consumed by your
possessions.

They seem all important. But the more you mature in Christ, the more you become
content with your possessions. You realize whatever God has given you, He can
use it for His glory.

When you're an infant in Christ, you're selfish in your relationships. You hold
on too tightly. When you become more mature in Christ, the more mature you
become, the more sacrificing you become in relationships.

It has to do with how we see ourselves. As an infant in Christ, my body is my
business. Stay away, God.

Whatever I put into this body, whatever I do with this body, it's my business.
Don't mess with me. The more I mature in Christ, we're going to see this as we
go through 1 Corinthians, the more I realize that my body is His temple.

You can see this in every area of life. As an infant in Christ, prayer is an
infrequent cry for help. The more I mature in Christ, prayer becomes a constant
act of trust.

As an infant in Christ, it even affects my work life. Work expresses my worth.
As an infant in Christ, I try to get my worth, my self-image from the work that
I do.

The more I mature in Christ, I realize that work expresses my worship. It
expresses the way that God has made me, not who I'm trying to make myself to be.
It's every area of life, infancy or maturity.

As an infant in Christ, I look at my problems and I think they're destroying me.
The more I mature in Christ, I look at my problems and I realize that they're
developing me. As an infant in Christ, I seldom handle the Bible.

As a mature believer, I accurately handle the Bible. As an infant in Christ, my
time is spent wastefully. Ephesians talks about this.

The more I mature in Christ, the more my time is spent wisely. I've just gone
through a quick list. We could give a hundred things, but the question is this.

Are you growing? Are you taking some steps toward maturity? I don't know about
you.

I sure don't live on the maturity side all the time. I'm not totally content
with my possessions. I'm not totally sacrificing in relationships.

Prayer is not always a constant act of trust. Work doesn't always express my
worship. I still struggle.

I still need to grow. But the question is, are you growing? Are you making
progress?

You see, as we talk about today, Christians who don't act Christian, one of the
questions you have to ask yourself is, are you allowing the struggles of others
to drag you down? You have to watch out for the danger of comparison with each
other. Are you comparing yourself to how others are doing in the faith?

Are you comparing yourself to what God's doing in your life? Is he taking you
from worldly to become more and more spiritual, more and more filled with the
things of the Spirit each day of your life? Is he taking you from infancy to
become more and more mature, thinking more and more like Jesus each day?

Let's pray together that that would happen in my life, your life, today. Jesus,
help us to grow through the ups and downs of life. Help us to grow.

Instead of comparing ourselves to others, even other believers, Lord, let us
look to you today. And we pray that we would grow less selfish and more
spiritual, more connected to your Holy Spirit's fruit and work and direction in
our lives. We pray that we would grow less to be infants in our faith, so
concerned about ourselves, but more and more to be mature in our faith, able to
give ourselves to you and to others.

Lord, do this work in us that we can't do for ourselves. We pray this in Jesus'
name, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to talk about a second thing to do when Christians don't act
Christian.