A spiritually mature person has a rich, full, complete knowledge of the word of God. Actual knowledge of the Bible is essential to our salvation.
This is Andy Davis, and this is the Two Journeys podcast. This is Sanctification Monday. Thank you so much for joining us. In this podcast, every week we’re going to talk about Christlikeness, growing into full maturity in Christ. This is the work that God has laid before each one of us. Once we have been justified, once we have come to faith in Christ, by trusting in him, all our sins are forgiven. We are conformed to Christ progressively, gradually. It’s a process called sanctification, and that’s what we’re talking about on Sanctification Mondays. Now, we lay out in this podcast a kind of a roadmap of what full Christlikeness or spiritual maturity looks like. We believe it consists in four main parts, knowledge, faith, character, and action. And so, a spiritually mature man or woman has a very strong knowledge of the Bible and a rich wealth of spiritual experiences.
a spiritually mature person has a rich, full, complete knowledge of the word of God, knowledge of scripture.
A spiritually mature man or woman is strong in faith. They are able to see the invisible spiritual realms, past, present, and future as though they are really here, able to see the past history of the Bible, the present reality of Almighty God, the future that God has promised us, filling us with hope. We have a character conformed to Christ, a heart that loves what Christ loves and hates what Christ hates. We think Christ’s thoughts after him. We make choices and choose what Christ would have us choose and reject what Christ would have us reject. And all of that feeds into a lifestyle of habitual obedience to the commands of God. That’s the basic roadmap, knowledge, faith, character, action. Now today, we’re going to zero in on knowledge and we’re making the contention that a spiritually mature person has a rich, full, complete knowledge of the word of God, knowledge of scripture.
Now, knowledge of the facts of the Bible, factual knowledge of the Bible is essential to our salvation. You can’t be justified without knowing some things about Jesus. The Gospel has basic facts about Christ: that he’s incarnate of the virgin Mary, he was fully God, fully man. He lived a sinless life. He died an atoning death. He was raised from the dead physically. These are the facts of the Gospel. It says in Romans 10 that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but how can they call on someone that they’d never heard of? And so, you can’t believe in someone you’ve never heard of. And so, the facts of the Bible are essential. If you’re a Christian, you already know some basic facts about Jesus Christ, but there’s a lot more facts in the Bible. You know this well, better than you ever dreamed of.
There are more facts in the Bible than we could ever fully remember for our entire lives. And yet those facts are, all them, God-breathed. They’re all of them, part of the perfect word of God. And so, I want you to have an image in your mind of a system of truth that’s being set up in your mind and your heart by your Bible reading. An interconnected system or a city of truth, of theological precision, a theological accuracy of the truths of the Word of God. And that’s being erected. And there’s an old statement. Rome wasn’t built in a day. And so that vast city on the Tiber that ruled the ancient world for centuries, oh, it took a long time to build. Think about all the Roman roads, the aqueducts, the forum, all of the Colosseum, all of the arches and all of those things.
They took a long time to build. It was many, many Roman emperors. And so that’s an image I want you to have in your mind. Factual knowledge of the Bible takes a long time to accumulate. And the only way that can happen is by consistently making yourself available to take in the Bible, Bible intake. And so, what we’re asserting today is that a spiritually mature person, a man or woman, a spiritually mature individual has a full, deep, rich, comprehensive knowledge of the facts of the Bible. You know what the Bible teaches? You’re aware of it. The only way that can happen is if you regularly consistently take in the word of God. So, think about all the facts that we’re talking about. Some of the facts are more obvious than others, such as in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That’s a fact that the Bible asserts.
Some of the facts are more obscure, like you think about the genealogies of the sons of Jacob, the descendants of Jacob, like the sons of Naphtali or the sons of Dan. Those are not so important facts, but they’re still in the Bible. The facts of the gospel, we’ve been over those a few times and there are many other facts besides. All of them are part of what God wants us to know. God doesn’t say anything to us in the Bible that he doesn’t want us to know about, and there’s a lot to learn. So, a spiritually mature person is going to be regularly, consistently taking in the word of God. You’re going to be accumulating biblical knowledge. You can be genuinely forgiven of all your sins. You can be genuinely adopted as a son or daughter of the living God and have very little knowledge of the Bible.
You need to know the basic facts of the Gospel. Those are what the Bible calls milk, the milk truths of the Bible. But that’s not what maturity is about. We’re talking in this podcast, Sanctification Monday about Christian maturity, about Christ-likeness. And that would involve a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible. And so, you need to be regularly, consistently taking in the facts of the Bible, taking in the teachings of the Bible, reading it consistently.
And as you do, you’re going to find more and more that the facts that you take in are going to connect with other facts, and they’re going to get put together into things that we call doctrines. There are going to be certain doctrinal truths get put together from a variety of biblical sources. Take for example the doctrine of the Trinity. There’s no one verse that teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, that there is one God who has eternally existed in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Those come from a variety of places, and they’re put together in our minds and our hearts. And so it is with all of the doctrines of the Bible, both the great doctrines and the lesser doctrines, they come from facts of the Bible, scriptural facts that then combine, somewhat like the atoms and the periodic table, that hydrogen and oxygen combines two hydrogen and one oxygen, H2O to form water. And so it is with these biblical facts, they come together, they click in together, and then we learn things and we little by little have this system or city of truth that gets erected in our hearts. That needs to be going on, dear friend, in your life, that needs to be happening inside your heart. And it happens only by consistently reading in, taking in the word of God. And I would contend being part of a healthy local church where you’re hearing somebody unfold the word of God week by week, doing faithful exposition and feeding you by the word of God.
And so be in the word every single day. Sit down in the morning, crack open the Bible, be on a systematic reading plan. Take in the word of God, feed your soul on it. I would also recommend that you memorize scriptures. You can just little by little be taking in the truths of the scripture. And as we do that, we’re going to find ourselves little by little transformed. Romans 12 says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That happens as we have our minds immersed as it were in the stream of biblical truth, just immersed in it.
Number of years ago, I remember I went with some friends of mine to a river in New Hampshire, the Kancamagus River, and I remember we were talking about this, this issue of being transformed by the renewing of our minds. And I remember an illustration. And I picked up from the floor of the forest there right near the riverbank, a forest rock. It was covered with moss and dirt and all kinds of stuff. And I went over to the river, and I reached down, and I pulled out a smooth little river rock and it was beautiful.
As you looked at, they’re both made of granite. It’s from the Granite State there in New Hampshire, both basically the same material, but one of them was covered with dirt and moss and the other one was dripping wet. And I said, “How does the forest rock become the river rock?” And one of the guys said, “Well, just put it in the river.” And so, I put it in there, but I didn’t let it go. And I swished it around, and as I did all of the dirt, and the moss just came off the rock and I pulled it out.
I said, “Okay, is it a river rock now?” And they said, “No, not really.” Because it had jagged crystalline edges. It was sharp, whereas the river rock was completely smooth. So, I said, “Well, how then does this forest rock become a river rock?” They said, “Put it in the river for a long time.” And as you immerse that rock and the little, tiny abrasive sand goes over it, I mean, I don’t know how long, who’s ever done that study? Is it one year? Is it six years? Is it 20 years? I have no idea. But you know what I mean. When you pull out one of those rocks from the bed of a bubbling mountain stream, it’s smooth as silk. And so, it is with our minds. Our minds have to be immersed in the constant flow of the word of God.
And if you want to grow into Christlikeness, this is Sanctification Monday, we’re thinking about growing into full maturity in Christ, you have to immerse your mind in the constantly flowing river of truth that comes from the Bible. Sadly, we’re immersed in something else, and that is in the world. We’re immersed in a constant flow of lies, frankly, from Satan, of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. It’s just coming at us. And Paul says there in Romans 12, “Do not be conformed to that, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” We’ve already spent enough time in the past being immersed in worldliness and false doctrines.
We’re just constantly being pulled away from biblical truth. In order to counteract that, we need to have our minds immersed in a constant flow of the word of God.
And so, in order to counteract all of the false thinking that we get from the world, from the media, from movies that we watch, from the newscasts that we listen to, from interacting with non-Christian coworkers and neighbors. We’re just constantly being pulled away from biblical truth. In order to counteract that, we need to have our minds immersed in a constant flow of the word of God.
So just be in God’s word. Be accumulating the facts of the Bible. Let him show you the truth of the Word of God in all of its grandeur. Details, and then grand structures of truth that get put together, the gospel and what a healthy church is like, what a healthy family or marriage is like, parenting. All of these vast themes are going to come from biblical truths. Now, you may think this is so overwhelming. How could this ever happen? But the Lord has given us the indwelling Holy Spirit. We have the mind of Christ, and we have the spirit of Christ within us. And after Jesus was raised from the dead, he began to tell his disciples what the plan was going to be for the rest of their lives. They’re going to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And he said, “This is what is written.”
And he quoted scripture, the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead, and then repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations. And then it says beautifully, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.” Isn’t that beautiful? He opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. That’s what the Spirit of Christ is here to do in your mind. So, as you sit down and you have your quiet time, maybe tomorrow morning or if you’ve not had it today, do it after you’re done listening to this podcast. You open up the word of God and you say, oh, Lord, send forth now your Holy Spirit. Illuminate, lighten up the scripture for me so I can understand its truth. Open my mind to understand the scripture. Speak to me the truth. And as that happens, your faith in Christ will get stronger and stronger.
Your knowledge of who Christ is going to get stronger and stronger. And dear friends, that is exactly how you’re going to be progressively conformed to Christ. Little by little, you’re going to be abiding in Jesus. You’re going to have his words abiding in you. Like he said, I’m the vine, and you’re the branches, and you’re going to abide in Jesus and you’re going to bear much fruit. So, this week, as you’re about to embark on a week of service to Christ, keep this in mind. God has gone ahead of you and he’s prepared things that you’re going to experience this week. And some of those things are going to be painful for you, and some of them are going to be quite delightful to you. But God has orchestrated all of these things to conform you to Christ so that you might bring maximum glory to God as you are progressively made more and more like Jesus Christ.
So dear friend, go into the week with full confidence, with full hope, and know that the holiness that you so deeply yearn for is most certainly going to be yours when in the end, God finishes what he has begun in you. So have a good week and we look forward to talking with you next week on Sanctification Monday.
This is Andy Davis, and this is the Two Journeys podcast. This is Sanctification Monday. Thank you so much for joining us. In this podcast, every week we’re going to talk about Christlikeness, growing into full maturity in Christ. This is the work that God has laid before each one of us. Once we have been justified, once we have come to faith in Christ, by trusting in him, all our sins are forgiven. We are conformed to Christ progressively, gradually. It’s a process called sanctification, and that’s what we’re talking about on Sanctification Mondays. Now, we lay out in this podcast a kind of a roadmap of what full Christlikeness or spiritual maturity looks like. We believe it consists in four main parts, knowledge, faith, character, and action. And so, a spiritually mature man or woman has a very strong knowledge of the Bible and a rich wealth of spiritual experiences.
a spiritually mature person has a rich, full, complete knowledge of the word of God, knowledge of scripture.
A spiritually mature man or woman is strong in faith. They are able to see the invisible spiritual realms, past, present, and future as though they are really here, able to see the past history of the Bible, the present reality of Almighty God, the future that God has promised us, filling us with hope. We have a character conformed to Christ, a heart that loves what Christ loves and hates what Christ hates. We think Christ’s thoughts after him. We make choices and choose what Christ would have us choose and reject what Christ would have us reject. And all of that feeds into a lifestyle of habitual obedience to the commands of God. That’s the basic roadmap, knowledge, faith, character, action. Now today, we’re going to zero in on knowledge and we’re making the contention that a spiritually mature person has a rich, full, complete knowledge of the word of God, knowledge of scripture.
Now, knowledge of the facts of the Bible, factual knowledge of the Bible is essential to our salvation. You can’t be justified without knowing some things about Jesus. The Gospel has basic facts about Christ: that he’s incarnate of the virgin Mary, he was fully God, fully man. He lived a sinless life. He died an atoning death. He was raised from the dead physically. These are the facts of the Gospel. It says in Romans 10 that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but how can they call on someone that they’d never heard of? And so, you can’t believe in someone you’ve never heard of. And so, the facts of the Bible are essential. If you’re a Christian, you already know some basic facts about Jesus Christ, but there’s a lot more facts in the Bible. You know this well, better than you ever dreamed of.
There are more facts in the Bible than we could ever fully remember for our entire lives. And yet those facts are, all them, God-breathed. They’re all of them, part of the perfect word of God. And so, I want you to have an image in your mind of a system of truth that’s being set up in your mind and your heart by your Bible reading. An interconnected system or a city of truth, of theological precision, a theological accuracy of the truths of the Word of God. And that’s being erected. And there’s an old statement. Rome wasn’t built in a day. And so that vast city on the Tiber that ruled the ancient world for centuries, oh, it took a long time to build. Think about all the Roman roads, the aqueducts, the forum, all of the Colosseum, all of the arches and all of those things.
They took a long time to build. It was many, many Roman emperors. And so that’s an image I want you to have in your mind. Factual knowledge of the Bible takes a long time to accumulate. And the only way that can happen is by consistently making yourself available to take in the Bible, Bible intake. And so, what we’re asserting today is that a spiritually mature person, a man or woman, a spiritually mature individual has a full, deep, rich, comprehensive knowledge of the facts of the Bible. You know what the Bible teaches? You’re aware of it. The only way that can happen is if you regularly consistently take in the word of God. So, think about all the facts that we’re talking about. Some of the facts are more obvious than others, such as in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That’s a fact that the Bible asserts.
Some of the facts are more obscure, like you think about the genealogies of the sons of Jacob, the descendants of Jacob, like the sons of Naphtali or the sons of Dan. Those are not so important facts, but they’re still in the Bible. The facts of the gospel, we’ve been over those a few times and there are many other facts besides. All of them are part of what God wants us to know. God doesn’t say anything to us in the Bible that he doesn’t want us to know about, and there’s a lot to learn. So, a spiritually mature person is going to be regularly, consistently taking in the word of God. You’re going to be accumulating biblical knowledge. You can be genuinely forgiven of all your sins. You can be genuinely adopted as a son or daughter of the living God and have very little knowledge of the Bible.
You need to know the basic facts of the Gospel. Those are what the Bible calls milk, the milk truths of the Bible. But that’s not what maturity is about. We’re talking in this podcast, Sanctification Monday about Christian maturity, about Christ-likeness. And that would involve a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible. And so, you need to be regularly, consistently taking in the facts of the Bible, taking in the teachings of the Bible, reading it consistently.
And as you do, you’re going to find more and more that the facts that you take in are going to connect with other facts, and they’re going to get put together into things that we call doctrines. There are going to be certain doctrinal truths get put together from a variety of biblical sources. Take for example the doctrine of the Trinity. There’s no one verse that teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, that there is one God who has eternally existed in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Those come from a variety of places, and they’re put together in our minds and our hearts. And so it is with all of the doctrines of the Bible, both the great doctrines and the lesser doctrines, they come from facts of the Bible, scriptural facts that then combine, somewhat like the atoms and the periodic table, that hydrogen and oxygen combines two hydrogen and one oxygen, H2O to form water. And so it is with these biblical facts, they come together, they click in together, and then we learn things and we little by little have this system or city of truth that gets erected in our hearts. That needs to be going on, dear friend, in your life, that needs to be happening inside your heart. And it happens only by consistently reading in, taking in the word of God. And I would contend being part of a healthy local church where you’re hearing somebody unfold the word of God week by week, doing faithful exposition and feeding you by the word of God.
And so be in the word every single day. Sit down in the morning, crack open the Bible, be on a systematic reading plan. Take in the word of God, feed your soul on it. I would also recommend that you memorize scriptures. You can just little by little be taking in the truths of the scripture. And as we do that, we’re going to find ourselves little by little transformed. Romans 12 says that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That happens as we have our minds immersed as it were in the stream of biblical truth, just immersed in it.
Number of years ago, I remember I went with some friends of mine to a river in New Hampshire, the Kancamagus River, and I remember we were talking about this, this issue of being transformed by the renewing of our minds. And I remember an illustration. And I picked up from the floor of the forest there right near the riverbank, a forest rock. It was covered with moss and dirt and all kinds of stuff. And I went over to the river, and I reached down, and I pulled out a smooth little river rock and it was beautiful.
As you looked at, they’re both made of granite. It’s from the Granite State there in New Hampshire, both basically the same material, but one of them was covered with dirt and moss and the other one was dripping wet. And I said, “How does the forest rock become the river rock?” And one of the guys said, “Well, just put it in the river.” And so, I put it in there, but I didn’t let it go. And I swished it around, and as I did all of the dirt, and the moss just came off the rock and I pulled it out.
I said, “Okay, is it a river rock now?” And they said, “No, not really.” Because it had jagged crystalline edges. It was sharp, whereas the river rock was completely smooth. So, I said, “Well, how then does this forest rock become a river rock?” They said, “Put it in the river for a long time.” And as you immerse that rock and the little, tiny abrasive sand goes over it, I mean, I don’t know how long, who’s ever done that study? Is it one year? Is it six years? Is it 20 years? I have no idea. But you know what I mean. When you pull out one of those rocks from the bed of a bubbling mountain stream, it’s smooth as silk. And so, it is with our minds. Our minds have to be immersed in the constant flow of the word of God.
And if you want to grow into Christlikeness, this is Sanctification Monday, we’re thinking about growing into full maturity in Christ, you have to immerse your mind in the constantly flowing river of truth that comes from the Bible. Sadly, we’re immersed in something else, and that is in the world. We’re immersed in a constant flow of lies, frankly, from Satan, of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. It’s just coming at us. And Paul says there in Romans 12, “Do not be conformed to that, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” We’ve already spent enough time in the past being immersed in worldliness and false doctrines.
We’re just constantly being pulled away from biblical truth. In order to counteract that, we need to have our minds immersed in a constant flow of the word of God.
And so, in order to counteract all of the false thinking that we get from the world, from the media, from movies that we watch, from the newscasts that we listen to, from interacting with non-Christian coworkers and neighbors. We’re just constantly being pulled away from biblical truth. In order to counteract that, we need to have our minds immersed in a constant flow of the word of God.
So just be in God’s word. Be accumulating the facts of the Bible. Let him show you the truth of the Word of God in all of its grandeur. Details, and then grand structures of truth that get put together, the gospel and what a healthy church is like, what a healthy family or marriage is like, parenting. All of these vast themes are going to come from biblical truths. Now, you may think this is so overwhelming. How could this ever happen? But the Lord has given us the indwelling Holy Spirit. We have the mind of Christ, and we have the spirit of Christ within us. And after Jesus was raised from the dead, he began to tell his disciples what the plan was going to be for the rest of their lives. They’re going to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And he said, “This is what is written.”
And he quoted scripture, the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead, and then repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations. And then it says beautifully, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.” Isn’t that beautiful? He opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. That’s what the Spirit of Christ is here to do in your mind. So, as you sit down and you have your quiet time, maybe tomorrow morning or if you’ve not had it today, do it after you’re done listening to this podcast. You open up the word of God and you say, oh, Lord, send forth now your Holy Spirit. Illuminate, lighten up the scripture for me so I can understand its truth. Open my mind to understand the scripture. Speak to me the truth. And as that happens, your faith in Christ will get stronger and stronger.
Your knowledge of who Christ is going to get stronger and stronger. And dear friends, that is exactly how you’re going to be progressively conformed to Christ. Little by little, you’re going to be abiding in Jesus. You’re going to have his words abiding in you. Like he said, I’m the vine, and you’re the branches, and you’re going to abide in Jesus and you’re going to bear much fruit. So, this week, as you’re about to embark on a week of service to Christ, keep this in mind. God has gone ahead of you and he’s prepared things that you’re going to experience this week. And some of those things are going to be painful for you, and some of them are going to be quite delightful to you. But God has orchestrated all of these things to conform you to Christ so that you might bring maximum glory to God as you are progressively made more and more like Jesus Christ.
So dear friend, go into the week with full confidence, with full hope, and know that the holiness that you so deeply yearn for is most certainly going to be yours when in the end, God finishes what he has begun in you. So have a good week and we look forward to talking with you next week on Sanctification Monday.
