Solid Food

Please remain standing for the reading of God's Word. If you want to grab a Bible, please feel free to do that If you use one of the ones that we have underneath the chair in front of you. It's on page 1278 I'm going to read Hebrews chapter 5 verses 11 through 14 Here now God's holy true and life-giving word About this we have much to say and it is hard to explain since you have become doll of hearing For though by this time you ought to be teachers You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk Not solid food for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child But solid food is for the mature for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish Good from evil. This is the word of the Lord You may be seated Let's pray Heavenly Father, we do thank you and praise you for your word and for its power and For the way that you have revealed yourself to us in and through your word and most of all in and through the person and work of your son our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit would you now open our eyes and hearts? To the glory of the Lord Jesus in this passage to our great need and the way that he meets all of our needs Would you Lord Jesus teach us train us? That we might be More excited and better able to continue to run to our neighbors and to the nations with the gospel We pray these things in your name a Amen I Never forget when Hannah and I had first started dating. That's my wife when we first started seeing each other I was on the worship team at a huge church in rural Minnesota. There was 23 members and and and and and I was on the worship team and Wednesday nights we would get together and Me and the few other people that would sing on Sunday mornings all of whom were about 30 years older than me and We would practice and so as I began to get to know Hannah I Started telling them on Wednesday nights about her and so they began to be Excited to meet her and they were saying you got to bring her to church. You got to bring her to church and so I eventually did and So she met all of them. I mean literally all of them is only 23 of us And we spent some time together. So then next Wednesday came and So I kind of burst through the door for choir practice as we call it and I said I said hey everybody What did you think of Hannah? and If you've met her you won't be surprised that Ross He said oh, Matt. Yeah, she's she's a keeper. I'm like. That's right. She's a keeper and And then Cindy said oh, Matt she was such a sweetheart and I said that's right. She's a sweetheart and then Sue Said you know, Matt. I realized something while I was talking to Hannah on Sunday and I said a do do tell and She said yeah, I remember it as I was talking to her that you had mentioned that you're several years older than her and as I was talking to her I kept thinking she's so wonderful and she seems to be really mature for her age and Sue says and I realized that Hannah is at a minimum about three years more mature than people are normally her age and We all know that you are at least a minimum of three years less mature Then people of your age so you're really kind of perfect for one another to which I responded Thank you, Sue. Let's sing songs to the Lord

But it is true. I was less mature than her and I'm trying to catch up. I may one day, but probably not in this life but we do Understand and value the concept of growing up of growing to maturity We fully understand and expect That when a child is born, they're going to mature. They're going to grow into being an adult and less Providentially hindered so physically we grow to maturity. We would say also That we grow emotionally in our maturity We're different when we're adults and then we were when we were children Again and less providentially hindered so we understand that concept of maturity and we all we know it's important as well and Really what we're looking at this week and kind of for the next few weeks is that the most important type of maturity that we should have and strive for is is spiritual maturity that we would grow spiritually that we would grow up into being spiritually mature followers of Jesus is really kind of the emphasis That now we're going to see here over the next few weeks as we approach one of the most difficult passages not only in the book of Hebrews But in the Bible Later in chapter six and it's interesting what he does here You know, we took a break from our Hebrew series to focus on Easter for a few weeks now We're back and if you remember back Before we broke for the Easter series we were in chapter five the beginning of chapter five and and he has begun to sort of ramp up this discussion Of how Jesus is our great high priest and Right as he gets to this huge concept of the fact that he's our high priest after the order of Melchizedek look at verse 10 chapter 5 verse 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek It's like he stops the car And says we need to get out and we need to talk about something before we get back in and hit the gas and keep going on this Jesus and Melchizedek Concept which we will he will pick this discussion of Jesus and Melchizedek back up in chapter seven, but for now What he does is he lays or focuses us in on this concept and the importance of Spiritual maturity by addressing the fact that some of the people in the congregation that he was riding to We're not progressing in their spiritual maturity. They weren't becoming mature followers of Christ and and you know one of the things that's tough is You know in our fall in nature Doing the things that will lead to spiritual formation that will help us grow to spiritual maturity are not always the things we want to do And so it's something that we need to fight against and even see that it's God's grace It leads him to call us to pursue spiritual maturity to make it a priority And so our focus this morning and really over the next few weeks is that living by faith in Christ involves pursuing spiritual maturity that we would Prioritize the importance of growing spiritually and to do the things that lead to Spiritual maturity now again You know when we talk about our salvation as far as our justifications as far as being Forgiven of all of our sin and declared righteous in God's sight and promised eternal life. We play zero part in that That's all received by grace through faith But when it comes to growing mature in our relationship with God there are things that we are supposed to do We do play a role in that and when we don't Well then there tends to be some problems and some dangers and that's what the author is Pointing out here and so we'll talk about some of the the dangers if we're not growing spiritually if we have not Progress spiritually since becoming a Christian and before we jump into some of that. I want to Kind of give some categories when we think about spiritual maturity This is something that we can in a way we're always talking about this, but for now It's so that we have kind of a category for what I'm talking about. Let's think about spiritual maturity in this way kind of growing To a mature level in three ways our head and our heart and in our hands You've probably heard those categories before so what do I mean by that? I mean when the process of growing spiritually mature Involves our head by way of that that we should know what the Bible says that we should have a good understanding of theology That's what the Bible teaches Okay, so we want to be mature in the way we think about God Why don't we mature in our head and our heart? There's a lot to say about growing the proper affections for God and Having a proper emotional connection and relationship with God, so we want to grow to maturity in our affections or our heart or our hands We want to live in accordance with God's law Because it's what is best for us what leads to flourishing and And so we think of our hands. We want to grow to maturity in the way that we live in the way that we act Okay, so with with that in mind kind of thinking there's there's there's a lot to spiritual maturity that we would grow in the way We think about God in the way we feel about God in the way we live because of those things in light of God That is kind of a basic way to understand spiritual maturity. He in this passage the authors probably a little more focused on Our head the things that we know but nonetheless spiritual maturity involves way more than just knowing things So it's important. I wanted to make sure we point that out so Thinking about spiritual maturity that are we growing are we progressing as always an important thing for us to ask and To recognize that there are some dangers if we're not Which is why God calls us to pursue spiritual growth to pursue spiritual Formation And it in one sense what we see in this passage is he's addressing things that we're not able to do If we're not progressing spiritually so one of the things if we're not progressing spiritually We're not really able to understand some things about God and by quarry the more spiritually mature We are the more we are able to understand some of the deeper and greater mysteries of the gospel as John Owen puts it Also if we are not growing spiritually, we're not as able to recognize false teaching or By quarry if we are growing spiritually we're getting better and better equipped to recognize what's true and what's not Third We'll see the author talks about the fact that if we're not growing spiritually, we're not as able to help others grow spiritually But as we do grow spiritually we become more and more able to help others So those are kind of the three things that I want to look at in the text this morning And so go ahead and let's follow along in in your Bible look at verse 11 Let's talk about how we're not able to understand certain things about God verse 11 He says about this and he's talking about this connection between Jesus and Melchizedek from the verse before He's saying about this we have much to say and it's hard to explain since you have become doll of Hearing and here's what he's getting at he's basically saying that because they have not moved forward in their understanding of some of the basic things It's going to be really hard for him to make sense of this glorious truth that Jesus is our great high priest after the order of Melchizedek now we're doll of hearing it sometimes you see it translated another Translations as sluggish So there is kind of a Sharpness to that that he's pointing out some laziness But what he's getting at is that they're not going to be able to really understand some of these things It's really hard to explain some of these things if you haven't moved forward and understood some of the deeper things And this is not the only place that we see something like this the Apostle Paul says something pretty similar in First Corinthians three where he's talking to the Corinthians and he's telling them that that first he's telling them that he couldn't say Some things to them because they were infants in Christ Okay, so again, they were not as mature and their understanding of things and he goes on to say in First Corinthians one verse two he says I fed you with milk not solid food so the same illustration that the author of Hebrews uses For you were not ready for it

In other words, he was saying that there's there's things that you need to know and you need to understand And I want to say to you, but you're not really ready for it because you haven't moved Beyond some of the basic principles of what God has revealed and you know if if you have a smartphone You probably have angry birds or multiple versions of it and and when you play angry birds One of the things that you know is that there's some Higher levels and lower levels and you can't get to the higher levels unless you you got to you got to solve level one and that Unlocks level two and then you solve level two and that unlocks level three, right? You can't just go right to the good ones And what he's getting at is it's kind of the same way like if we're not progressing and really deepening and widening our understanding of the Bible and understanding of theology There's there's a lot of just profound life-changing beautiful truth About the gospel and about what we have in Christ that we can't really get to Because we won't really understand it And in a sense then we're robbing ourselves of the experience of Understanding those things and being gripped by those things and having our minds blown by those things About God and we're sort of robbed of what we see Paul going through from time to time when he's writing through his Letters and he'll just suddenly stop and just kind of cry out with praise something about God because he's just so amazed by it Okay, I'll give you an example turn to Romans 11 look at Romans 11 33 through 36 if you're using our Bible. It's on page 12-05 So Romans 11 so Paul in chapter 10 11 he's talking about the the remnant of Israel He's talking about the Gentiles being grafted and he's talking about the mysteries of Salvation and he's he's he's he's flushing all this stuff out and then he just has this moment Where he just kind of burst forth in this worship look at verse 33 He just says oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God how Unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways for who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given A gift to him that he might be repaid for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever amen And then he's like oh, yeah, I'm writing a letter. Okay chapter 12 and you know, it's just this God wants us you know we for eternity. We will have our minds blown at who God is He's infinite and so if we're not aggressive and relying on the power of the Holy Spirit to help us grow in our spiritual maturity We really are missing out on some things we won't be able to understand some things about God that he really wants us to understand He wants us to explode into worship When we're thinking about him so we want to be spiritually mature so we can understand these things about God number two We want to be able to recognize false teaching We want to be able to recognize false teaching look at the second part of verse 12 through 14 where he says you need milk not solid food He says for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child But solid food is for the mature for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish Good from evil So ultimately what he's getting at here is that when we if we remain spiritually immature if we if we're not growing in these things then Well, one of the things he says is we're unskilled in the word of righteousness other translations kind of say in in what God teaches about righteousness And that word on skill is interesting because it also can be translated as inexperienced In other words, he's saying we don't really know how to handle It's amazing these amazing things that God has told us about righteousness and about how he gives us righteousness his righteousness for free And then what it means to live a righteous life. We can't really understand and experience these things But then he also shows that when we are mature When we are mature, then we have our powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil in other words when we are more spiritually mature We can tell what's really true and what's what's not true? We can tell what the Bible is or we can tell when people are saying things that the Bible is not teaching We can tell when somebody's bringing some sort of false doctrine or unbiblical teaching We're much more attuned to that when we are not mature. How do we know? In other words the one of the reasons that God calls us to pursue spiritual maturity is so that we are not vulnerable

To the plethora of false teachers out there that are Teaching things that just aren't true. They're not biblical and they're harmful and they draw people away from God instead of to him Think about Ephesians 4 turn to Ephesians 4 if you want to it's on page 12 43 This is where Paul uses the word mature And I want to I want to show you this real quick This is one one thing in Ephesians 4 it's very informative about a pastor's job But it also helps us understand why God calls us to maturity He's saying something very similar to what the author of Hebrews is saying look at verse Ephesians 4 11 and following Paul says and God gave the apostles the prophets the evangelist the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry For building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and Of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature Manhood there it is the maturity to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ why Verse 14 so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro By the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by human cunning by crappiness and deceitful schemes rather Speaking the truth and love we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ from whom The whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped When each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up In love and so it's the same thing we want to be able to distinguish between good and evil It's kind of another way of saying we want to be able to do to not be swept away by every wind of doctrine and human cunning and Crappiness and I think one of the Difficult Illustrations of this one of the one of the sad and Sad ways that we see this Happening is is the way that studies are showing there's a high volume of Young Christians who grew up in the church And then leave the faith sometimes never to return while they're in college and

The reality is once once they hit the college campus. There's all these ideas flowing around and people are saying all sorts of things about the Bible and very often Kids who grew up in the church they don't know how to answer any of those Objections they don't they didn't realize the Bible teaches some things that they don't know how to explain they become very uncomfortable

and some People are arguing that as high as 80% of young Christians leave the faith during college Some are saying it's maybe lower like 60, but either way It is a common thing we see kids getting swept away because they Maybe didn't have quite as mature a faith when they hit the college campus It's one of the reasons we try not to have a youth ministry here that's all about fun and games, but really more about really equipping Partnering with parents to really equip students for the college Campus and not to be swept away by all these false approaches and ways people look at the Bible and let me just by the way if you are a Parent who has somebody who has walked away from the faith My parents have somebody who walked away from the faith and it's me and I'm back. So have hope

If you can bring me back and probably the single most important thing you could do is just keep your eyes fixed on Jesus as you weigh and hope and pray

But we want to be spiritually mature so we can recognize false teaching so we can reject it and so we can keep on Enjoying and growing in our relationship with the Lord so so Two things so far so we want to be spiritually mature so we can understand these things so we can Recognize false teaching and then third so we are able to help others grow look at the first part of verse 12 back in Hebrews Chapter five verse 12 he says for though by this time you ought to be teachers You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God The oracles of God is a Jewish way of referring to what God has revealed so he's he's talking about God's word And what he's saying is that by this time they should be able to teach others at least the basic things But instead they need to be reminded they're needing to hear them Again, and I do want to say this if you're a new Christian you're like well, I don't know anything that's that's normal That's okay. We're we're glad you're here and we intend to teach you He's not talking about brand new Christians and we know that because he says for by this time In other words, he's saying you've been in church long enough to where you should be able to teach others and articulate At least the basic principles to other people, but instead you need it taught to you And so what we're seeing there is the principle that we draw from that is that When we are not spiritually mature, we are not going to be able to help others We're not going to be able to help others grow You know, you really can't lead somebody any farther than you are And so that has huge implications For parenting if we want to raise spiritually mature kids. We've got to be spiritually mature parents It has Big implications for serving in the church if we want to be helping children through Sunday school grow to spiritual maturity We ourselves need to be spiritually mature. I mean, there's just so much reason for us to be pursuing spiritual maturity so that we can help others grow

Now here's what's awesome um When we do pursue Spiritual maturity and we gain that through some of the things we'll talk about next week But through a deeper and wider understanding of the Bible and theology having the right affections Living as we are called to live As we as we grow in spiritual maturity God does use us. I mean, just this is how it happens He grows us up and then he sends us out and he uses us And so you know that if you are pursuing spiritual maturity You're basically getting ready to be used by God for really amazing things

He will use you. I'll tell you a story about my friend David now David it's a good friend of mine And a mature follower of Christ and David Years ago was driving down the highway And he could see way ahead of him several car lengths ahead maybe even a quarter mile He could see way ahead. There was this big black SUV in the far left lane And he was as he's driving along looking at the road which is a good choice He can see ahead And he can see that this big black SUV is in the far left lane and also it goes into the middle lane and then to the right lane and then off the road The guy may have fell asleep with the wheel or something like that But the truck goes off the road and starts to spin and roll and bumpers are flying and mirrors are flying and glass is exploding and going everywhere And it rolls many times now because it was so far ahead of David and a few other people on the highway that day He was able to stop his car and get over to the side and then run to this port utility vehicle Which at the point he got there was upside down And so the driver inside was upside down kind of being held there hanging by his seatbelt And so David gets down kind of lying down in the in the debris in the glass He's trying to talk to this man through this open window because the glass was all shattered And he sees other people stopping there and he sees him on their cell phones and he says to the man Are you are you alive? Can you hear me?

And the man kind of tries to move his mouth a little bit But he can't really say anything so David just says look look if you can understand what I'm saying blink your eyes twice And the guy links his eyes twice he said okay good good. We're calling the paramedics Help is on the way so just Do you understand? Do you understand that? You got blinks and blinks again and he says okay good now listen to me I don't know how much time we have and so I need to tell you something right now And here's what I need to tell you god is good and he's holy and he's loving. He's a loving father He created all things But he's also a just judge which means he must punish sin and wrongdoing and that creates a huge problem for you and me and all human beings Because all human beings are sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God And we all deserve to be punished eternally for our sins But God who's rich and mercy he sent his son the Lord Jesus Christ To live this perfect life and then die a sinner's death on the cross in order to pay for the sins of all who would trust In him and believe in him and whoever puts their faith in Jesus receives forgiveness of all their sins They're declared righteous and they're promised eternal life in the new heavens and new earth With God himself And he said do you understand what I just said to you and the man blinks and blinks again and David says Do you want to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior right now and the man blinks and blinks again and then did not open his eyes And was pronounced dead on arrival

I want to be used like that you want to be used like that you want to be ready You want to be mature So that you can understand these things that just will blow our minds for eternity about how amazing and glorious God really is You want to be mature so we can always recognize false teaching and help others see it when it's around and you want to be able to help others Grow or maybe even come to know Jesus for the very first time we want that Which just shows that it's so gracious of God To not only forgive us of our sins but then call us and empower us through the work of the Holy Spirit to grow In our relationship with him to grow in our having the right thoughts about him having the right affections for him And living the right way for him also that he gets the glory and we get the joy So we'll talk more about this again next week For now I want I just want to encourage you to be thinking and praying about what it look what will look like if you were to prioritize More in your life time and energy for pursuing God and looking to grow spiritually We'll do this again Because every single one of us has room to grow and We have a God who grows his people. Let's pray father um Thank you Uh for your word once again and for the way that It's just so filled with all these amazing ways that you're always rescuing us and giving gifts to us caring for us and loving us Forgive us for the ways that we turn away from you and reject you and just through your spirit would you help Turn our eyes back to Jesus help our eyes be fixed on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith that every one of us here would grow To mature manhood and that you would get the glory and that we would enjoy The sweet joy of knowing you more We pray these things in Jesus name and for his sake amen