I'm excited. I'm going to jump into part two of built on not stuck in. And everything God builds, he builds with purpose. Amen?
All right. And purpose always requires progress. Amen? Come on.
All right. See, a foundation is only the beginning of something. This is what we started to learn three weeks ago. Foundations were laid.
The foundation of the early church was laid, but it was never meant to say just a foundation. We were meant to carry it on and to build onto it. It's meant to become something greater. And that's what the writer here of Hebrews.
That's why he says, let's move beyond. I want you to really grasp this. And it's not just a call to grow. It's a call to go.
Somebody say go. You got to do better than that. Somebody say go. That's what I'm talking about.
See, guys not finished with you, with me, with anybody. When he started, he's good to carry it onto completion. And he's still forming all of us today. We're the church.
We're one body. We're all together. And we're carrying out this kingdom mission that Jesus started. Amen?
All right. So I believe that God is calling our church, the church, to grow up, move forward, and be carried along by the Holy Spirit. But here in my heart, I told Pastor Fred this morning, I used to read these verses, and I almost took it as if it was like a rebuke. Like it was like, come on, you need to grow up.
But it's really not. It's an invitation to more. It's an encouragement. It's saying, hey, come on, you're here, and that's great.
But let's go beyond this into the more of what God has. So it's an invitation. So if you're sitting here today, please hear my heart. It's not to beat anybody up.
It's to encourage you that there's more. Say there's more. There's more. So before we talk today about maturity, I just want to tell the ones who were not here, we learn that foundations are meant to be built on, not lived in, and the mission of God always, always, has been forward, not backwards.
A foundation isn't a destination. It's preparation. It's meant for construction. It's meant for something.
And faith doesn't camp around what God did. It builds on what he's doing. Can I get an amen? I'm not saying we don't remember what God's did.
But faith is something that it's supposed to continue and it's supposed to grow. Shoo, wee. I'm still in my intro, and I'm getting super excited. It builds on what he's doing.
From Israel's journey out of Egypt to Jesus, call to follow me. Every move of God has momentum built into it. Every move of God has momentum built into it. The kingdom never moves in reverse.
Can I get an amen? And faith never rewands. It advances. Are you excited to advance today?
Come on. Do you got your notebooks? All right. That was you.
That was a rough one, y'all. Wake up. Come on. It's exciting.
Your phone does not know. It does count. But hear me. If we're meant to be the church that carries on, to build on the foundation, and we're committed to move forward in the mission, then I think we're ready to talk about the next step, which I believe is maturity.
And so that means movement. Can you say movement? Matureity means movement. That's the title of my message today.
And we're going to be in Hebrews, chapter 6, starting in verse 1. So if you've got your Bible, go ahead and turn there. If you're there, say I'm there. If you're not, you can read on the screen.
Verse 1 says, therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward into maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death and of faith in God. I want to just tell you real quick that understanding the therefore, any time you see a therefore in scripture, you need to ask what is it there for? Amen? All right.
So I want you to understand that it's a connecting word. It's a hinge that ties what's coming next to what was just said. So at the end of Hebrews 5, the writer told them, by now, you ought to be teachers, but you still need milk. You're not ready for solid food.
So when he opens up in chapter 6, therefore, it means because of what I just said, because of what I just said, it's time to do something about it. I get one amen on the left side, right side, wake up. Because of what I just said, it's time to do something about it. Ooh, I feel like people are going to realize it's time to do something about it today.
He's saying, you've been saved. You've learned the basics. The basics are repentance, faith, baptism, et cetera. But he's saying this, now it's time to build on them.
Those are great, but we have to build on them. And then after this verse, we see six elementary teachings that is laid out, the foundations of our faith. It says, repentance from dead works, faith toward God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment. All these are essential.
I'm not talking bad about them. They're all essential, but they're foundational. They're the start. They're the start.
They are, like in the first, the concrete slab. They're the start that we're to build on. It's not the finished house. I told Pastor Friend, I'm like, man, I got thinking about this this morning.
Those are pretty extreme topics that we just heard about. And you know how much they're talked about over and over and over again? And while they're essential, and for most people, the basics, the basics are good. I'm not talking bad about the basics.
They're needed. But it made me realize how much we talk about them. And I'm like, wow, we're stuck on the basics. We talk so much about the basics and the essentials that are true and they're good, but they're meant to be built on to move into the greater things.
Come, I need some help this morning, y'all. I can't have a quiet room. You need to give some, hey, man, we need to get excited. Those are the basics.
We need to build on them. There's more. Can someone say there's more? Shoo, therefore, therefore.
It's more than just a transition. It's a call to action. I believe it's heaven saying, you don't need another round of milk. We have milk.
You had milk. You need motion towards maturity. One will. This is going to be fun.
We need to start building. You've laid the foundation. Start building on it. You've learned the truth.
Start living it. You've been equipped with knowledge. Now walk it out with obedience. Ooh, wee.
Therefore is the moment. Yeah, go ahead and say it. Therefore is the moment. Therefore is the moment where understanding must become action.
Must become action. It's where faith moves from the foundation understanding into transformation. It's where we begin to move forward into the greater things. And that's why maturity requires movement.
I want to read. You all know I like the message translation, so I want to read out of it. So I'm going to read Hebrew 6, 1 through 3 real quick. It says, so come on.
Let's leave the preschool finger painting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. The grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place.
They're in place already. We have that. Turning your back on salvation by self-help and turning in trust toward God. Baptismal instructions laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment.
God helping us. We'll stay true to all that. But there's so much more. Let's get on with it.
If that doesn't excite you, not much else I'm going to say today is going to excite you. That's the word of God right there. So my first point is this. You can't grow standing still.
Therefore, let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ to be taken forward to maturity. There's two phrases there. Move beyond and be taken forward. Faith doesn't mature standing still.
It's move beyond, let's be taken forward. So nothing about that says if I stand still, I'm going to mature. So we must be taken forward. We must be movement.
There's emotion. There's a movement in the scripture that's saying we must be active growing and moving into something. Do you guys see it with me? So you can't expect growth.
Am I staying grounded in the same patterns? I'm going to go a little more into this, but I'm going to tread lightly. I'm not saying that God can. I believe he doesn't.
He doesn't mature people that just remain stationary. Just stay in the same spot. Like I said, I'm not saying he can't. I just don't believe he does because it requires a moving into a partnering with, a belief, a stepping out in obedience for him to be able to work with something.
Amen? You can't mature if you won't move. The word mature in the Greek, teleoatsis, I can't pronounce the Greek, but it means completeness, perfection, fullness of purpose. See, it's not just about knowing more church.
It's not just about that. It's about becoming more, not knowing it but becoming it. That was the whole purpose. And that phrase, taken forward, uses the Greek word pharaoh.
I can't pronounce that one. And it's to be carried. It's to be carried. See, it's the same word Peter uses in 2 Peter, 121 when he said, men were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
So maturity isn't achieved through striving. It's activated through surrender, through understanding. And that's the Holy Spirit. Hey, you got it up there.
It's keeping up with me. It's being carried on by the Holy Spirit. See, it's not, you just grow by pushing harder. You just need to try harder.
You just need to try harder. I've heard that phrase so much. And if it was that easy, everyone, I believe would be successful in it. Amen.
But it's, you grow by yielding, healing to the Father. He's the one who carries you on. He's the one who carries you through. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the work.
If you will partner with him and trust him, he will carry you on. Here's what I want to say today. If you feel like you're being dragged, does anybody here feel like they're being dragged through life or they're being just drug along? Right, depends on what day it is.
I want to say this in love. I think you got it backwards. Yeah, you didn't want to raise your hand to that. But like listen, it said, carry along by the Holy Spirit.
If you're being drug, I think it's backwards. If you feel like I'm being drug along, I'm being drug through, then you got it a little bit backwards because the Holy Spirit carries you along. If you're being drug, I think it's the spirit of trying to be holy. Not the Holy Spirit, it's the spirit of, I'm trying to be holy.
That religion is creeping in there. And what I'm doing is I'm challenging you that the spirit doesn't force maturity. It forms it. He forms it in you.
See when you're led by him, there's grace. If you're not experiencing grace and it's not the Holy Spirit, that's all I'm saying. Because that's who he is. There's peace in the moment, in the movement.
There shouldn't be pressure to perform. I feel like the Holy Spirit's breaking and pressure to perform today off of people. Come on, there's peace in the movement forward with the Holy Spirit. If he's carrying you, what's stressful about that?
There's not a whole lot of pressure if he's doing the work. Chewie. My goodness. Point two, we're moving from milk to meat.
Hebrews five, verse 11 through 14 says this. I have a lot more to say about this. But it is hard to get it across to you since you've picked up this bad habit of not listening. Chewie.
Yeah, I was gonna say, if anyone leaves right now, I'm calling you out and I'm joking. By this time, you ought to be teachers yourselves. Yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again. Starting from square one, babies milk.
Say babies milk. When you should have been on solid food long ago, milk is for beginners. Inexperienced in God's ways, solid food is for the mature who have some practice in telling right from wrong. See what I wanna say is, they had foundation.
Babies milk is foundation. They had something. But it's saying they don't have transformation. They don't have the ongoing process of what maturity does as you connect to the father and you grow and you step out and you move.
That's what they don't have. But they do have the basics. They have foundation, right? And it's not about, we're talking about, the foundation is laid, we gotta build on it.
They had foundation. See, milk represents what's already been processed. Truth that's easy to swallow and doesn't require wrestling with. Meat represents revelation that requires chewing.
I like to eat, listen. You're gonna think I'm funny, but it says solid food, but I put meat there because I was thinking of a steak. You all know me, I don't eat steak a whole lot, but I had one recently, it was so good. Guess we made it, this guy.
You know? But I put meat there because there's solid food. So when I'm talking about meat, I'm talking about, that requires chewing. Milk doesn't require you to chew.
It's still good, it's still necessary. But it doesn't require you to chew. To get fed, to grow into that. Go from milk to meat, we're supposed to grow up in this and I believe that the meat of solid food represents revelation that requires us to chew on.
God revealing something to us that requires us to discern. To chew on and to die, like we gotta digest it. We gotta take it in. I think milk is what God feeds us.
What's giving us? Solid food and meat is what you learn to prepare, what we learn to prepare. Here's what I believe. Here's how you know you're maturing.
When you stop waiting for someone to feed you and you start learning to feed yourself. When you stop saying, I didn't get nothing out of that message. Whoo, whee, whee. I just didn't receive from that.
I didn't get nothing from that. I don't listen to that person. I don't, yeah, that word wasn't for me. That's not, you're nudging the person to Sadja.
That was for you. Yeah, I know you have. See, I think you stop, again, you stop saying these things. You stop approaching things that way because you're so desiring the more of God and know that he can show up in any environment, any space and his presence can fill it because you're so connected to wanting to just latch on to him that he can come and be and just fill that space.
And you don't no longer say like, oh, I can't, you know that God's able to do all things. And he can meet you right where you're at. And speak straight to your heart in the middle of chaos, in the middle of anything. You start to learn to look at what the Father's doing, not what's not happening.
I hope today that you still pull something out of this word because it's God's word that we're reading through. And the reason that I know we can, and I'm learning that we can in all situation, because it's already been placed in me, we have to start to learn church to be able to pull out of us what's in us. Like we have to be able to tap into that. Bless you.
So I want to be real for just a second. And I really felt like God challenged me with something personally while I was studying this. And if you know me, you know how picky of an eater I am. I'm really picky.
Like I like what I like, I know what I like. I'm not trying nothing new. We got to Costa Rica, the nice gentleman took me to this restaurant. I found the most Americanized comfort food I could find, which was chicken cord on blue and I loved it.
And I didn't, and they had pizza, but I don't branch out y'all. We were going to dinner a little bit later that evening. And guess where we arrived? Same restaurant.
I'm like, I don't say where we get down, sit down. I'm like, I know what I want. What are you talking about? I was here earlier.
You're like, no, let's go somewhere else. I'm like, nope. I know exactly what I want. I'm going to eat that again.
I got chicken cord on blue twice in the same day, a couple hours apart from the same place. I like what I like, and I'm a picky person. But see, I want to, I believe God began to speak to me about the comfortable, familiar things that I like to stick to. And see, when you only eat what you're used to, you'll never discover something better.
You'll never discover something better. There is a whole world of food y'all that I will never eat, probably still. Hey, Fred's got me trying weird fruits, different crazy things, lying to me to eat things. And then be like, did you like it?
And I'm like, I was eggplant. I'm like, what? But the reality is, it's not that I don't try it because it's not good, but it's because I'm unwilling to try it because I'm stuck in my ways. I'm comfortable with where I'm at.
You could say that I'm comfortable with the basics. I received the basics. I got them, I'm comfortable with them. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
Am I speaking to anybody today? You become comfortable. I believe that's how we live spiritually. We get so comfortable in milk in just the basics of everything.
The simple, the familiar stuff. We just get to a place of convincing ourselves, wherever God met us or wherever He started at, that this is good enough. I'm fine right here. I'm getting to experience some goodness.
I'm getting to experience some love. I'm getting to experience something different. And I'm good and it feels good and I'm good right there. But we'll never experience the greater things if we're satisfied with the bare minimum, the basics of what this is.
See, if you stay comfortable with milk, you'll never taste what maturity can cook. Shoo. If you want to move to, if you want to move to meat, you have to desire more. There has to be a desire for more.
I want to just make sure you understand. I'm not saying milk is bad. I'm just saying it's basic. And I don't want to stick to the basics.
I don't know about you, but God has more for us. There's something greater. And you don't move on from milk because it's wrong. You move on because there's more.
There's so much more. Maturity starts when your desire outgrows your diet. Here's what I believe. I believe that maturity isn't always just a hunger issue.
I actually believe that most believers don't even struggle with hunger. They struggle with habits, certain habits. See, we love encounters, but maturity isn't sustained. Like when we, I don't want to say this, when we just keep chasing encounters, and we create these habits of these counters and this connecting with the basics, right?
And we're fine there and we want to live there. We often find ourselves wondering why it doesn't sustain us. And here's what I'd like to propose today. That maturity itself is sustained through consistency.
There is consistency that's connected to the Father. Is anybody with me? Do you hear what I'm saying this morning? You have to stay connected.
There has to be a consistency in your life that develops. That spiritual hunger and hunger can start the journey. It's not bad. I'm not talking bad about it.
But I'm saying it can start the journey. But there's some holy habits. Are you with me? Is anybody with me?
There's some habits that's going to sustain it. Church, can I just be honest? I'm tired of watching believers walk away. Like come on.
There's a fire that starts and then there's a disconnection. And I'm not talking bad about anybody. I'm just saying, I believe there's a reason for that. And it's because there hasn't been consistency through the thing that's going to help sustain a long journey that we're all called to to serve God in advance the kingdom.
Amen. I knew this was going to be a little challenging today. Yeah. So you can be passionate in a moment, but powerless in the pattern.
Maturity isn't proven in how high you shout. I believe it's revealed in how steady you walk. See, Church, you don't mature about what you feel on a Sunday morning. And I hope you feel God's presence.
I'm not saying it's wrong to feel. Like I said, I'm trying to help us grow. It's not about how you feel on Sunday. You mature about what you practice on Monday.
Luke 516 says this, but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. I want to point out that the word often shows that consistency created capacity for Jesus. He didn't pray when he felt like it. He prayed because it was his pattern.
He often withdrew. There was a pattern here that we see with Jesus. And I'm just wondering today, is there some patterns you need to create to stay consistent and connected with the Father? Like I said, Jesus, who he knows, the great, he's everything.
But he had patterns that kept him consistent and connected with the Father that he did. Not because he just, he need to, or I got to pray, or I got to do this, or I got to do that. No, it was a holy habit, if you will, in his life that he separated himself to go pray to stay consistent, to stay connected. And if we see him doing that, again, I don't, he did it because he knew the mission and the Father placed on his life, the importance of it.
And that's maturity at its best. There's a pattern created in his life because he was committed to the most important thing, which was the mission of what he was sent to complete. And I don't know if you're here today and know this, but there's a mission that you have from God. Every single one of us, to carry out the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If you've put your faith in that, there's a movement that should be shifting in your life and taking you forward into that as your partner and with the Holy Spirit to do that. I'm going to say some things that might be a little touchy, but it's just not about just hearing the next word, hearing the next sermon, going on YouTube and listening to this and doing all these things. These things are good. I'm not saying they're bad, but it's just not about hearing that.
In a lot of times the word that God's given us we're so focused on here in the next one that he's saying, just obey and walk out the first one that I gave you. One, amen. I paused for a second. Do you hear me today?
Do you hear my heart church? Here's what I believe. We have a lot of overfed and under-moved believers. We have full notebooks, but empty motion.
We have lots of intake, but little output. See, revelation without response leads to spiritual obesity. Hear my heart when I say this. Growth does not come from consuming more content and being overloaded with it.
It comes from cultivating more consistency, responding to the word. So you don't necessarily get stronger by eating more meals. You get stronger by exercising what you've already eaten. James 122 says, do not merely listen to the word.
And so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. I believe because maturity isn't measured by what we know or what anybody knows. It's measured by what you do with what you know.
Growth doesn't come from another meal. It comes from consistent movement. I don't know if you hear the pattern here, but I'm really punching home movement. Movement.
Movement. Like I said, we just live in a culture that chases the next thing, the next conference to go to, the next podcast, the next word, the next all this, the next, the next, next. And I just don't believe that spiritual maturity is found in the next word or the next thing. It's always going to be found in the last one that was given and that you have ate.
The next level of growth is hidden in your last step of obedience. Write that down. I feel like that's for someone today. The next level of growth is hidden in your last step of obedience.
When you move on what God already said, He releases what He hasn't said yet. Whew, whee. Psalms 11110 says, all who follow His precepts have good understanding. Obedience, prestige, revelation, understanding follows action.
Church, if you want to grow, move. If you want to grow, move. If you want more revelation, you need to respond to the one that He's already given you. If you want maturity, you need to make movement in your rhythm.
Movement in the habits, movements in the things that you've committed to. Faith matures when motion becomes your lifestyle, not your reaction. That was Jesus's lifestyle that we watched Him respond, how He responded. I want to say that maturity is about alignment, not age.
Ephesians 4, 15, and 16 says this. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head. That is Christ. From Him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
You can grow old in church and never grow up in Christ. I want to tell the new person today that I don't know what you've heard or maybe you're not even have a relationship with Christ. And I hope I get to introduce you to Him. But I just want to tell you that spiritual maturity isn't about time served or how much somebody's been around in faith.
It's about how much truth you apply to your life so it can transform you. Growth happens when every part of the body stays connected and moves with the head. When you stop moving with Christ, you stop maturing in Christ. And you don't grow because you've been here long.
You grow because you've stayed aligned. And I'm going to lead into my last point. Man, I'm doing so good, by the way. Shoot, we.
It's time to land the playing church. I was joking with them on Thursday that I've been away a couple weeks. And during that time, I had to preach a three point message in 11 minutes, and I got it done. And I was like, but now I'm going to take an hour and a half, this Sunday.
Well, pressure produces progress. Hebrews 12, verse 11. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness.
I want to tell you this, that growth comes with growing pains, church. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness. Do you know that early church didn't grow through comfort?
It grew through pressure. Acts 8 shows us that when persecution hit the gospel spread, the enemy tried to scatter, but God used it to sow. I want to say that sometimes God allows shaking, not to break you, but to build you, to grow, to advance. Pressure doesn't stop maturity.
I believe it strengthens it. Every pushback is a set up for progress. And pressure doesn't mean that you're breaking down or encourage somebody today. I'm going to say, I believe that it means you're breaking through.
Because if something's coming against you, you've got something greater inside of you that's going to turn something that looks like nothing into something that is way beyond what you ever could imagine it being. And the truth is pressure without progress will just leave you stuck. So when God stretches you, don't stay still. You need to step forward.
Step out. Every season of pressure is to produce movement. Is there anybody here that's going through some pressure right now in your life? You got someone who's holding up two hands.
Listen, I want to just say that it could be, it could be, that God's trying to produce movement in your life. But he's trying to take you forward. If you're in church, this message was, I believe, put on my heart to not just be a message, but for our church to move in mission. I believe God's trying to take us somewhere.
I don't think it's just about talking about maturity or talking about movement because it sounds good. There's a purpose for a church and there's a purpose for your life. And we're called to live it. We're not just called to read it and talk about it.
Stay where you're at. Keep talking about the basics. Keep laying the foundation that's already been laid. We're meant to build on it.
We're meant to take it further. So I have a challenge this week for you. Everyone say, move. Move.
Stay move. Listen, not just I'm going to move someday. I challenge you this week. Take one step of obedience.
Take one step of faith. One step towards growth. Take a step. Take a step.
And I think what I was hearing that God don't often, he can't grow what you just hear. You guys have heard a lot today. You read a lot. You hear a lot all the time.
But he grows what you do. Again, it's not about how much you know. It's about how far you go. And listen, when heaven moves, when you move, heaven moves with you.
But he can't do nothing if you're standing still. And you're not moving forward for him to give him something to work with. The Lord is challenging us to move. And for the Holy Spirit to carry us into, like we talked about this morning, it's going to require movement on our end.
To carry us further into maturity, further into advance in the kingdom. I'm going to get ready and close what you can come up. And I don't know where you need to move today, Church. But the foundation's been already laid for us as believers.
It's laid. And it's a great foundation. But we're meant to build on it. I don't know if you're aware of your eyes are open to the fact that the Lord is moving and things are happening.
But we've prayed and we believe for healing God's healing people in our church. And listen, I'm excited about that. But there's more. Like I said, in some of that, delaying on the hands, the some of these conversations, Church, are you all ready to move past the elementary teaching?
To get to the meat, the solid food of what the word is trying to tell us about our Savior and what we're called to step into and be? Like, are you all ready? Are you all excited? My encouragement today is not to beat anyone up to say quit drinking milk.
But it's inviting you to say, hey, there's more than just that milk. That's good. And I hope that you remember the taste of the milk, but that you start to learn to love the taste of solid food. Because he's trying to carry you into a greater purpose.
He's got more for your life. We keep pushing volunteers and serving and stuff because there's a mission for the church, but it takes people to move from the basics into the solid food to want to get beyond what they've been stuck in. So they actually can start to release what God has put into them to advance the kingdom of God. It's our cry.
It's our cry to say, do you know there's more? We're planting a church in Costa Rica, not because it's fun, because God said there's more. And you kind of expand the reach. You got to increase the reach.
You got to go after it. To the ends of the earth, are you willing? And we said yes, but you got to know there's more. We have to desire more church.
Because there's people that still need Jesus. And it's only going to come if you're willing to.