Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 5 this evening, verse 11 through chapter 6 verse 3. This evening we're thinking about issues with the writer here of spiritual immaturity and spiritual maturity. Now the writer says, says, we'll read in a moment, he says in verse 12, you need milk, not solid food. In verse 14, he says solid food is for the mature.
And at chapter 6 verse 1, he says, let us go on to maturity. So you're going to hear that language of spiritual maturity and immaturity. And we want to think about that together tonight. Let me invite you to give your attention then to God, holy and inspired work.
You're going to get Hebrews chapter 5 verse 11. About this, we have much to say and it is hard to explain since you have become dull 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. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God and of instructions about washings, the laying out of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.
Amen. This is God's word. You write it on our hearts, let's pray together. Our father, we come to you as your children and we ask that you admire us, that you by the gospel would present us each one mature in Christ.
So grow us, strengthen us, help us, we need you. And so we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. And like I saw a Facebook post recently, one of the women in our church some time ago, he'd taken a picture of four or five of the young mothers in our congregation who had all lined up a great with child at various stages of that greatness.
It was really cute picture, but then now months and months later, four of the five have had their child and then so it was a retake and they were not carrying their children in their arms. And it's just such a sweet picture, very cute, of course. But it's a reminder that this is how we start in life, right? As babies, God brings us forth, as it were, in new birth.
And we begin like children and children, how do they start in terms of appetite and eating? They start on mother's milk. They begin with milk and it takes a while and then their appetite grows and you introduce to them really nasty stuff called mashed mush vegetables, stuff we wouldn't eat ourselves. And fruit, of course, and eventually some meats and then potatoes.
And it would be a really weird thing, very awkward. And there would be something seriously wrong if after being introduced to what I like to call people food, they reverted back to simply only drinking at their mother's breast. It would be a sign of regression and a serious sign of illness. Well, so too in spiritual matters, yet so common among Christians, feeding on spiritual food like babies instead of adults and so remaining in or reverting to immaturity instead of progressing in maturity and in maturity.
And so the writer here is thinking of the Christian life this way. He wants to have them and us think it through. Why does this happen? What are the marks of immaturity?
How can we become more mature? And so in verse 11, he speaks of the cause of their spiritual immaturity. Why are they immature? Verses 12 to 14, the symptoms of their spiritual immaturity.
How does he even know that that's the case? Then in chapter six verses one and two, the foundation of spiritual maturity on what is it built and then verse three, the source of spiritual maturity. Where do you get it? So the cause of the symptoms, the foundation and the source.
Let's think about these things first. Verse 11, why are they spiritually mature? What's the cause of it? We'll notice verse 11 about this.
We have much to say and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. There's a story told of Franklin Roosevelt who often endured long evening receiving lines at the White House and he complained that no one really paid any attention to what he said in those lines. So one day during a reception, he decided to try and experiment to each person who came down the line, he shook their hand and murmured. I murdered my grandmother this morning and gets responded with phrases like marvelous.
Keep up the good work. We are proud of you. God bless you, sir. Well, it's not till the end of the line while greeting the ambassador from Bolivia that his words were actually heard and understood.
Unconcerned the ambassador leaned over and whispered, I'm sure she had it coming. Well, it is perhaps that we are often guilty of a similar listening to Jesus. Not politely. Hear what we want.
Say thanks and keep on moving. And that's what he means here by dull of hearing. They have become dull of hearing. They don't really pay attention.
So he needs to interrupt himself from what he'd like to talk about to frankly rebuke that in verses seven to ten in chapter five. Just prior to this, he had been speaking about Jesus and his perfect obedience because because of that, he is the source of eternal salvation. And he went on to say he is our high priest after the order of Melchizedek. And he wants to say more about all that.
So he says about this, we have much to say. Verse 11, but they're not ready to hear it about this. We have much to say. But I can't talk to you about this right now.
We need to deal with something else. It's not that the subject is difficult. It's not that they're too stupid to understand, but it is that they have become dull or sluggish or lazy or maybe smugly self-satisfied. And frankly, in this passage, they need to be taken down a notch.
They think much too highly of themselves. They think they have Christianity all figured out and they're proud. And no one really grows if that's our attitude. No one with that attitude really grows.
If we say to our teacher, Jesus, or those who are the Lord has given us to teach us, yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll talk to the hand. Yeah, sure, whatever. I already know what I need to know. I don't need to know anything anymore.
And if we think like that, we're actually like a child, spiritually speaking. John Calvin said this, he alone is truly wise, who owns that he is very far from perfect knowledge. When we think we have arrived, well, we think we have nowhere else to go. And so when we think we are mature, we don't think we need to grow.
And so if we think we are mature, we are very immature. Indeed, it's a great irony that kids, teenagers, think they're all grown up and they have nothing more to learn. They have all the answers. And then Lord will, they hit their 20s at some point and they realize, I think my parents had something to say.
I'm not as smart as I thought I was. So the irony, of course, is that when you think you've got it all together, you really don't. When you think you're mature, you're actually very immature. And so this is, I think if we think about the American church today, often described as a mile wide and an inch deep, that just may be us.
We have many unread Bibles in our homes. We have access to the largest libraries of the best Christian scholarship. We have with 2000 years of reflection, we have a podcast of excellent preaching from Godly pastors all over the world. And yet the modern American church is often seen to be very unfamiliar with the scriptures, lacking fluency in basic Christian orthodoxy, basically spiritual babies.
And that's our generation. And certainly here at Redeemer, we haven't gone nearly deeply enough, progressed far enough. We have so much yet to learn. And I hope that you think that about us, and I hope that you think that about yourself.
I hope that we're not too proud to admit we aren't all grown up. We don't have it yet altogether. And so he says, you know, children, children, the natural desire of children is to grow. The natural progress of children is to grow and progress from milk to solid food.
But these believers were not childlike. They were childish, as one put it, like Peter Pan never wanted to grow up. And so how do you know this about them? How do you spot this in them?
Well, second thing, he highlights some of the symptoms of their spiritual immaturity. I mean, beginning at verse 12, he speaks of their underdevelopment in ministry, their underdevelopment in doctrine, and their underdevelopment in morals. First in ministry, verse 12, 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.
He says, you ought to be teachers. He's not saying that every last one of them ought to be a teacher in a professional sense. He's not implying that every last one should be an ordained pastor. Everybody should give up their trade and enter ministry vocationally.
But he is getting at this that all Christians should be learning and growing so that we can explain the gospel to others. We ought to go to the point where we can helpfully instruct others, others who are outside the faith, others who are younger in the faith. They ought to be teachers, he says, in that informal sense. But they have become ineffective and not useful for others.
They aren't being helpful to others. They aren't even looking after themselves. And it's not just that they aren't going forward, they're actually going backward. They're underdeveloped in ministry, you ought to be teachers, but you're not.
And they're underdeveloped in doctrine. You need end of verse 12, you need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. So what's he saying?
It's as though their mother weaned them off the breast, they started to eat from the table and suddenly they're back on the breast. And that's a sign of illness. They are, he says, unskilled in what? The word of righteousness.
He's talking about doctrine here. The normal way to grow is by receiving teaching, particularly about God's gift of righteousness. God's own righteousness, of course. And his gift of righteousness to us.
I mean, the Christian life isn't just one single mind-blowing experience, but it is a series of lessons and they ought to have grown, but they haven't. And they've been regressing. And he's saying, but it's impossible to obtain spiritual maturity without understanding. Doctoral truth without understanding the word of about righteousness.
And so we should just pause there and reflect it too often. Christians will say things like, well, don't say this, but well, doctrine is better left of the experts. I don't need to study doctrine. I just need to know Jesus, no creed, but Christ.
Well, you don't have much of a Christ if you don't have anything true to say about him. If you don't have a doctrine of him. And so the writer, you'll Paul Elsewhere will say we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Jesus prayed for us in John 17.
He said, Lord, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is true. That'd be a great prayer to pray for yourself. Lord, sanctify me in the truth.
Your word is truth. And Jesus had promised to us that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. In other words, the truth is good for your soul. And it's dangerous to remain then.
Doctorally ignorant children. It's dangerous. Paul says in Ephesians 4, we are to mature so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine and every by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Remember brothers and sisters that the devil's a liar and a liar from the beginning.
And he's always trying to deceive you. You have to battle that with the truth. So we need to bite down on the truth, but they were underdeveloped in doctrine. And so too easily let us try.
And not only in ministry and in doctrine, but also underdeveloped in morals for 7, 14, for 14. 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 milk represents elementary teaching.
Sol of food represents more profound teaching, especially about Jesus. And that truth about Jesus is designed to transform us. It's not merely designed so that our heads can fill and we can be puffed up with knowledge. That's not the point of being doctrinally mature, but to have that doctrine transform us so that we live it out and live in line of it.
Right? So that we don't just grasp it in our minds, but internalize it and bear fruit in the way we live. So eat solid food, your body grows muscles and bones and brains and so too spiritually. As verse 14 suggests, their powers, however, of judgment have been impaired.
He says your ability to discern good and evil has been weakened. In other words, they're making poor moral choices because they're not seeing clearly the distinctions between that which is good and that which is evil. And this is what children do. I mean, a little kid will crawl all over the place and put anything that can get their hand on into their mouth.
Right? And they'll go anywhere with no concept of what is good for them or what's bad for them, what's helpful for them or what's dangerous to them. But a mature adult has developed discernment. Right?
They're careful about what they eat, what they do, where they go. And that's true spiritually. These were immature in teaching others, immature in learning sound doctrine and immature in living wisely. That's how he looks.
They're still children. So then what does he say? Well, he says they need to grow. Grow towards maturity.
Verses one and two, chapter six. Therefore, he says, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity. Now, now, don't misunderstand it. He's not saying we ever leave Christ that we ever go beyond Christ, but we do go deeper into Christ and all his benefits.
The elementary doctrine here is the foundation and we build on the foundation. We don't want them to go start a new foundation somewhere else. You can't put a roof on a house without walls. You don't build walls without first building a foundation.
So you need a foundation. But this is really interesting because you expect him to say, I think we ought to expect him to say, OK, here we go. Let me remind you of the basics. All right, you haven't gotten those right and you're not progressing.
So you might think what he's going to do is talk about that foundation again. But instead, what he actually says is, look, you're not ready for meat. You need solid, you need milk. And then he says, so let's leave that discussion about milk about which you're still confused.
And I'm going to go on to the deeper stuff. He says, you don't get this and I'm going to go even further. That's an interesting teaching technique when people don't get what you're saying, talk even further over their heads. But again, the problem is not the teaching.
The problem is not that it's difficult. The problem is with them because they're dull and lazy and self-satisfied about the easy stuff and think they've arrived and have got Christianity nailed down. So he provokes them to humble them, to teach them the importance of growing. You may remember Jesus commenting in the great commandment.
You're the great commission. He says to his disciples, go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. He doesn't say in there, now teach people the minimum amount of information and get the minimum to the maximum number of people. He actually says, what I want to do is I want to get the maximum amount of information to the maximum number of people.
And so his teaching technique here is to say to us, if people are spiritually lazy, you challenge them rather than pandering to them. Right? If they're infantile, don't just keep feeding that infantile appetite or you'll leave them immature. If they're doctorally weak and uninterested, present to them solid deep teaching.
And so a Bible teacher must aim above the reach of his hearers to stretch them. But of course, not too high to discourage them. But we certainly don't want to breed into people in ministry. The idea that the Bible has nothing more to say to them.
And they've read all that they need to read and they know all that they need to know. So now he says, so let's let's move on from the foundation principles. But he does enumerate them. He does briefly mention six of these in three pairs before skipping over them.
And what are these? Notice he speaks of the foundation of repentance from dead works. Chapter six verse one, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and a faith toward God. So he begins with something very basic.
Right. The first turning away from our own works, which cannot save us, turning away from all efforts at self-salvation and turning from that to Christ, faith in Christ. So he speaks then of faith toward God, of trusting God, that is, of looking to God for God's provision of salvation in Jesus. And of course, you can see that then that these foundation principles aren't things we leave behind.
We never go beyond our need for faith in repentance. In fact, I mean, this is the first of the 95 theses that we've been on the wall. When Jesus said, repent, he didn't mean one time only, some time in the great past, but that the Christian life is one of continual faith in repentance. That's foundational.
Then he speaks of a third foundation here, instructions about washings, the plural for baptism here. And so he may have in mind the various ceremonial washings of the book of Leviticus that these Jews would have been very familiar with that find their fulfillment in Christian baptism into Christ and his body. That may be what he means. Let's not go over all this again about the need for washings or its fulfillment in baptism.
And then fourthly, he speaks of the laying out of hands. And there are two views here, two major ones. One is that he might be thinking of the physical act sometimes associated in the book of Acts with the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is, the Spirit sometimes came on people when it apostolate hands on them while preaching to them the gospel, the laying out of hands.
But that of course wasn't invariably true. It's not like everybody has to have hands laid on them in order to receive the Holy Spirit. We know that even within the book of Acts, Cornelius, Lydia, the Philippian jailer, they all received the Spirit of God without the laying on a hands. You probably did too.
Right. So I leave to the other view that he's more probably thinking of ordination to office in the church, which was done through the laying out of the hands of the Presbyterian, as Paul will tell Timothy, and is symbolic of the gifting of the Spirit for ministry. Paul told Timothy not to neglect the gift he received with the Presbyterian laid its hands on him. We've seen that here recently back in October when we had the laying on of hands associated with the ordination installation of church officers.
Then, fifthly, he speaks of the resurrection of the dead and sixthly coupled with that eternal judgment. So on the one hand, the resurrection of the dead are great hope for the future. Not just a soul made perfect in heaven, floating on clouds with harps and halos, but eventually the body raised and raised in glory and power, indestructible, reunited to the soul. That's our great hope.
And also, of course, this doctrine of eternal judgment, meaning why we need Jesus, of course, what we're safe from, we're safe by God's eternal judgment. And it may be then with enlisting these six basic things he says that he's brought those six before them because they are all the beginning of things. I mean, the beginning of the Christian life is faith in repentance. You haven't become a Christian if there isn't faith in repentance.
The beginning of life in the church, baptism or the beginning of service in an ordained capacity, the laying out of hands or the beginning of glory, we might say, which starts with, I mean, the conservation of glory, the conservation of the new heavens and the new earth. We all ultimately look forward to it begins with the resurrection of the body and eternal judgment that is being as believers, all believers will be acquitted before the judgment seat of Christ. But these all start something, in other words, there's more to the Christian life, more to life in the church and more to life in heaven than just the beginning. The beginning is not a stopping point, right?
But the door to progress says the commentator heaves. And so there's living the Christian life, not just starting it. They're serving in the body of Christ, not just being brought into it or even ordained. And there's glorifying and enjoying God face to face forever, not simply getting a new body and being acquitted.
And so we build on this foundation is his point, but we don't just start things. We need to press on. We press on in knowing Christ. We press on and being competent and sound doctrine and learning the Bible and applying the Bible, the issues of good and evil and living out the truth and being equipped to teach others.
That's what he's saying. So we need to go on to maturity brothers and sisters and where if we're going to do that, where ultimately will we get this spiritual maturity? What's its source? Notice verse three.
And this we will do if God permits. Maturety comes from God. Let us go on to maturity. Verse one is literally let us be carried forward to maturity.
That is God carries us forward to maturity. And so Christianity then is supernatural from beginning to end, right? It's not simply a matter of exercising some supposed natural ability to pull the right levers or turn the right keys to move the machinery of progress. We are wholly dependent on God on the work of the Holy Spirit from beginning to end.
As we often hear in the close of the worship service in the morning here at Redeemer, we'll take that benediction from the end of this book in Hebrews chapter 13, where he says, May the God of peace who brought up again from the dead, our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, he says, by the blood of the eternal covenant, may God equip you with everything good that you may do his will working in us. That which is pleasing in his side through Jesus Christ. Right. So may God equip you, God equip you with everything good, God equip you with everything good to do his will.
So God working in us was pleasing to him so that we grow if God wills it and we don't grow. If God doesn't, you will go nowhere spiritually. He's saying without God, God willing and God working. Therefore, don't just sit back on your hands, but seek him for it.
Seek God for growth. Part of the problem here is thinking our growth is ultimately in our hands. And if we think that way, we might set ourselves why I can take it or leave it. I can grab it or I can let it go.
I can turn it on like a switch or turn it off whenever I want to. So it's OK if I turn it off for a while, because any time I want to, I can just flip that switch. No wonder they're lazy. They think it's always within their reach to grow into maturity.
But just because God commands us to do something doesn't mean we have the ability to do it. He commands it because it's right. We aren't able to do it because we're fallen and sinful and of loss, the ability to do what pleases him without him working in us. And so he reminds us we can't grow without the Lord.
But by his grace, we can grow. So then we have to say this, there is no foolproof formula for spiritual growth, right? There are 10 steps for Christian maturity as the title of one book put it. I can't give you 10 things you ought to do.
And if you just start doing them, you'll automatically grow as if in doing the work it works. No, as we were speaking of this morning, we are all desperately in need of the Holy Spirit of God working in us. Just as an Ethiopian can't change his skin and a leopard can't change his spots. So you and I can't change ourselves.
God must do it by the power of the spirit. And so we should we should add this, of course, God's sovereignty in this. And this we will do if God permits God's sovereignty in this doesn't remove our responsibility to pursue it. It actually enables it, right?
Don't hear me saying, well, so God is sovereign. I guess I'm going to make sure if God wants me to. So I'll just do nothing and see if he does it. No, we work out our salvation for it is God who works in us both to will and to do if his good pleasure, Philippians 13.
We work out what God works in us. And that leaves us constantly dependent brothers and sisters, dependent on God as we read the Bible to actually enlighten the eyes of our heart and the knowledge of Christ, dependent upon God at the table of the Lord week after week, not simply to just take and eat and imagine that if I grab and swallow, I will automatically grow. No, no, no, we take and eat. We take responsibility.
We do something actively because we're empty and Jesus is food because we're depleted and he is our nourishment because we're weak and he is our strength. Because without him, we're dead and he is our life. Where do you get growth? Where do you get maturity?
You get it from God. Let's pray. Father, you know, each of us, you know me and we are not what we ought to be. And we praise you, thank you that we are not what we once were.
And we know that we are not yet what we one day will be. And so we ask that you would carry us along, bear us along to Christ's maturity. For greater usefulness for your glory for our souls. Oh, good.
In Jesus name we ask. Amen. Amen. Let's stay together and say.