How to Grow Spiritually: God’s Roadmap to Christian Maturity
Everybody here is in one of three categories, one of three classes. There is the natural man. There is the spiritual man. There is the carnal man. And I’m going to ask you before this service comes to a close that you will have categorized yourself because every mother’s child is in one of these three categories.
Either you’re a natural man, a spiritual man, or a carnal man. You’re a natural woman, a spiritual woman, or a carnal woman. Now, uh we divide people into different categories. We say there’s upper class, middle class, lower class, there’s this or that. Uh but it’s not the blue book of society or the bank book of finance.
But it is God’s book, the Bible, that puts us into these categories. 1 Corinthians, find it, please. And chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Already told you I want to be speaking to you this morning on this subject, the road map to maturity. The former pastor of this church, one of the former pastors was Dr. Robert G.
Lee. And you never really got up one up on Dr. Lee. Dr. Lee preached a sermon and it was uh straightforward to say the least. It was an excruiating sermon against sin and a lady met him at the door and he had ruffled her feathers some. And she said to him, “Dr. Lee, I didn’t appreciate that sermon one little bit.
” He said, “Neither did the devil.” So he said, “Classify yourself.” Well, today we’re going to let you classify yourself. Everybody here is in one of three categories, one of three classes. And I want to point them out in chapter 2, verse 14. Look at the first part of verse 14. But the natural man, do you see it? All right.
I don’t want to read the rest of that verse. All I want to show you is the category. There’s some here in the category of the natural man or the natural woman. Now let your eye go down to verse 15 and look in verse 15. But he that is spiritual. That’s the second category of persons here today. He that is spiritual. All right.
Now go right on through chapter 3 to verse one. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto but as unto carnal. Underscore the phrase the word carnal. There you have the three categories of persons. There is the natural man. There is the spiritual man. There is the carnal man. And I’m going to ask you before this service comes to a close that you will have categorized yourself because every mother’s child is in one of these three categories.
Either you’re a natural man, a spiritual man, a carnal man. You’re a natural woman, a spiritual woman, or a carnal woman. Now, uh we divide people into different categories. We say there’s upper class, middle class, lower class, there’s this or that. But it’s not the blue book of society or the bank book of finance.
But it is God’s book, the Bible, that puts us into these categories. Now you say, why do you want me to um uh categorize myself? Well, obviously I want you to be a spiritual person. But you see, the Bible is like a road map to guide you to get to where you need to be. Now, there’s one thing important about any map.
