Sermon Tone Analysis

It was around August 20, 1959 when a cry was heard . . .

and heard . . .

and heard!

It was me.

I was wailing, and wailing, or so I’ve been told by my mom who was probably traumatized by the event.

I’m telling you, I was a mess.

Couldn’t eat by myself, probably threw up on everybody and besides that I wet my pants over and over again.

If you had been there, you may have been tempted to brand me as a loser who’d never make it, but you really needed to be more patient because, you see, I was only three days old.

I didn’t need to be shot or even spanked at that point, at least.

I just needed to grow up.

It was during the school year of 1970 when I met her.

I thought she was the prettiest girl in the fifth grade.

Her dad was a preacher and so was mine.

I used to walk her home from school.

I thought I was in love, but in just a few years I had forgotten all about her.

If you’d have talked to me, you might have told me I was a hopeless romantic who would never settle down.

But that really wasn’t the problem at all.

I just needed to grow up.

Fast forward to 1976.

I was driving by that time.

Mom and Dad had gone to North Carolina for the whole week and left me alone because my Grandmother was very sick.

They left me strict instructions not to allow anyone to ride with me in the car.

I agreed to their terms, but my girlfriend was just down the road from me and I just really thought it would be cool to take her to the mall.

Pulling out at an intersection, I was looking at her instead of traffic and plowed right in the back of some guy’s beautiful fastback Mustang.

If you’d have been there you might have called me a careless liar, or a bad driver, or both.

You might have said “You’re barred from driving forever, and you might have been justified.

But, the truth is, what I needed more than punishment was time.

I needed time to grow up.

Fast forward one more time to 1986.

I’d been in full-time ministry for two disastrous years.

Now I don’t call them disastrous because I destroyed the church I was in or because people didn’t like me.

They were disastrous because of what was going on in my heart.

In my heart I had checked out.

I was burned out and fed up, so I left the ministry and, for 7 years, I tried to make my own way in the world.

If you had been there, you might have written me off and said, “That Rusty’s a spiritual loser.

He quit once; He’ll quit again.

He cannot be trusted.”

You know, there would have been a lot validity in those words, but the truth is, what I needed was not condemnation.

I needed to grow up.

YOU

What about you?

Need to grow up?

You’re here today and that habit of sin is plaguing you.

You want to stop going to those internet sights, but every time you promise the Holy Spirit that was the last time, you find yourself right there again and the cycle of guilt starts all over.

The more judgmental among us might say something like, “If you really loved Jesus, you’d stop.

If you were really saved, you wouldn’t have a problem with that.

If you’d have your quiet time, you’d stop that.”

Now some of those things might really be true, but I rather suspect that’s not your problem at all.

You don’t need condemnation, you just need to grow up.

You might be plagued by a dirty mouth.

You grew up in a verbal sewer.

All around you was terrible language and you just picked up naturally.

But then you gave your heart to Christ.

You thought those words would never come out of your mouth again, but even now when something happens, you can say some things you later regret.

There might be some who would say that a cursing tongue and a godly heart cannot go together.

They might even tell you that you’re not saved, but I rather suspect that what you need is not salvation but sanctification.

You don’t need conversion because you already belong to God.

You just need to grow up!

And I can hear what some of you are saying: “Hey, is this supposed to help me Rusty?

I’ve got these big spiritual problems and, instead of really understanding them and trying to offer a proper solution, you just say, in essence, GROW UP?

Well, if that’s true, I’ve got one question for you.

How?

How can I genuinely grow up?

Well, the answer’s right where it’s always been: in God’s Word.

In fact, Peter addresses your growth in 2:1: Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

The purpose of this little paragraph of scripture is found right there.

We are to lay aside some things and as babies crave milk so that” we can grow thereby!” That’s the purpose: Peter is saying, “Do these things and you can grow.”

Well, we’ve struck pay dirt here.

This passage promises exactly what we said we needed: growth.

But just how does it tell us to go about seeking that growth.

Well Peter, here, describes a process by which growth can occur in our lives and I want you to understand and, yes, apply that process to your life.

So just in case you fall asleep in the next few moments, let me just tell you right up front what that process looks like.

Here it is: The key to growth is desire; the key to desire is experience; and the key to experience is surrender.

Now let’s look at this a little more carefully.

In the first place, if you want to grow, you must understand that

DIV 1: THE KEY TO GROWTH IS DESIRE.

EXP

Now the reason I say that desire is the key to growth is because that is so clear from this passage.

As a matter of fact, desire really is the thing that catalyzes growth.

You see that in v 2 where it says “As newborn babes, (literally) crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow. .

.”

Isn’t that amazing?

Paul reaches out and grasps the most poignant, powerful picture of desire here.

Once a baby is established in their feeding and they get the grasp of sucking on a bottle, heaven help you if you don’t get that bottle there on time.

Babies are big bundles of one thing . . .

well, maybe two: Needs and desires.

They want what they want, and they haven’t learned to sublimate those desires yet, so they’re always right on the surface where you can see them . . .

and mostly hear them.

ILL

Our grandson Riley (you knew if I was talking babies, I’d end up here, didn’t you), is without a doubt, the best-looking, fastest-growing, popular, smartest, and, in general greatest little kid alive.

But he does have his moments.

Like when we were coming back from vacation a couple of weeks ago.

We thought we’d outsmart him and wait till bedtime to come home.

That way, he’d just go to sleep.

WRONG!

What we forgot was that if we traveled at night, he’d be more tired then than at anytime during the day.

He screamed a good part of the way home.

No! I’m not exaggerrating when I say “screamed,” he screamed.

Now what was his problem?

He was one big desire at that point.

He wanted to sleep; He wanted to be out of his chair; he wanted a bottle; he wanted something he wasn’t getting, but whatever it was he wanted, HE WANTED!!