Are You Ready for Solid Food?

Are You Ready for Solid Food?

Hebrews 5:11-14

July 7, 2024

Today, I invite you all to reflect upon your spiritual journey. If you have been saved for over six months or many years, ask yourself: Are you still on milk, or have you progressed to meat yet?

Getting saved isn’t the hard part; the gospel of Jesus Christ is simple to understand.

Even children can grasp the facts of the gospel—that God created us in his image to be good.

But man didn’t listen to God and couldn’t live up to God’s expectations.

Thus, we needed a savior to save us from our sins.

God loved us so much that He sent his son, Jesus, as that savior.

Jesus was punished for our sins and was raised to life to open the door for us to get back to being with God in heaven.

Those who believe in this good news repent of their sins and put their trust in the Lord Jesus is saved.

This simplicity of the gospel is a source of security and confidence in our faith.

But that is not all there is to the gospel. There are also “deep things of God” that we who believe in this gospel must eagerly pursue if we are to mature in our faith.

This scripture encourages and supports us in our journey to mature in the faith, to progress toward maturity, to transition from spiritual infancy to a state of full-grown faith.

It is natural to be a spiritual baby when we are first born into this new life, but it becomes problematic if we remain spiritual infants throughout our faith journey. We are urged to grow in grace and the knowledge of Jesus.

However, there are some things that we encounter that will hinder our growth.

In verse 11, the author says that their hearing has become dull.

This doesn't mean the teacher is boring, but rather that the audience is not fully engaged.

We talk about dull preaching or teaching, and I'll admit, I've both heard and delivered dull sermons. But the term “dull” covers more than just boredom.

It includes slothfulness, sluggishness, and laziness, depicting a lack of interest and lifelessness that can hinder our spiritual progress.

Dull ears that are slow to learn or ears that no longer try to understand are the plague of the modern church. It’s an affliction that paralyzes most Christians and keeps them in an infant state, unable to mature. Dull ears leads to Christians no longer trying to understand the Deep things of God.

Some Christians are satisfied with their salvation thus doesn’t pursue the deeper things of the gospel of Jesus.

They think it unnecessary to know these deep things of God if they have the assurance of heaven. But because they no longer try to understand, they are like infants who constantly need their diapers changed. They become a heavy burden to the church to bear because they need constant care.

It changes the pastor’s role from that of a shepherd to that of a nursery worker.

The second hindrance is development. The recipients of the letter had been saved long enough to share God’s truths with others. They had faith, but their faith was stuck in the Old Testament ways.

One of the greatest hindrances to the development of Christians is the church building. Once we started building buildings to host large gatherings as churches, Christians stopped developing their faith. In the early church, everyone had an important role when people met in homes. However, those roles are no longer the same in a building of 50 – 100 people.

Christians are no longer encouraged to develop their faith, and so they can’t teach anyone because they are still babes in Christ.

The author encouraged these believers to develop their faith in the oracles of God, which were the beginning lessons, the essential elements, and the first truths of the gospel. There is nothing wrong with the first truths of the gospel, but when you are a spiritually immature person, you must be taught those first principles repeatedly.

The next hindrance is our diet. Similar to physical sustenance, our spiritual diet consists of milk and meat, symbolizing the stages of spiritual nourishment required for our growth.

Milk is a predigested food especially suitable for babies, while meat is for those with teeth.

The "milk" of the Word covers what Jesus Christ did on earth—His birth, life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection.

On the other hand, the "meat" of the Word focuses on what Jesus Christ is currently doing in heaven.

We start our Christian journey based on His completed work on earth, but we continue to grow spiritually by understanding His ongoing work in heaven.

The last hindrance to our spiritual maturity is discernment. We are called to attain maturity and sensitivity in our spiritual walk, demonstrating an acute understanding of God’s Word. We are maturing in our Christian lives and developing our knowledge of the Bible when we can apply the principles of the Bible to our daily lives, and that is discernment.

A high school principal promoted a man with just ten years’ experience to an important position. Then, another person with twenty years on the job complained. So, the principal said, “You have one year of experience repeated twenty times. He has ten years of experience.”

Spiritual growth is not a matter of time. It’s your attitude. It’s how much you train yourself in the word of God. Without being thoroughly acquainted with the teaching of righteousness, especially as he says here, it comes by constant use and self-training; you cannot hope to distinguish good from evil. You will have to train yourself to take the study of God’s word seriously and then practice God’s word seriously as well.

You must recognize that we should not stand still in our Christian walk. We either go forward and claim God’s blessings, or we go backward and wander aimlessly.

As the saying goes, “most Christians are betweeners,” caught between Egypt and Canaan, or between Good Friday and Easter. They are saved by the blood of Christ but are yet to experience the newness of resurrection life fully.