It’s Broke. Fix it.

I don’t know if I mentioned it last week or not, but the Young at Heart went to the Cherry Blossom Gospelfest.

A guy who’s heart was in the right place got up to speak.

He truly wants people to be saved but he said something that made me absolutely crazy.

He spoke for a long time and he offered an invitation and no one came down to be saved.

So he said, “I know there has to be someone here who needs to be saved.

“So with every head bowed and eyes closed - I don’t want you to leave here tonight and be in a car accident and die not knowing Jesus.

“So everyone, please say this prayer with me - and if you say this prayer, you’ll be saved and you’ll go to heaven when you die.”

A lot of folks have been told that story.

That’s broke and it needs to be fixed.

If all you are doing is praying a prayer so you can go to heaven when you die

And nothing goes with that - no life change - no church - no yearning for forgiveness, no hungering to know more about the Lord

Then you have believed a lie straight from the pits of hell and it smells like smoke.

You might as well buy a magic wand, wave it over your head three times and say “abracadabra.”

Let me tell you a little story.

Jesus was travelling all over the place on foot.

He’d tell people to come follow Him and they’d follow and He had all kinds of followers.

They walked everywhere.

It gets hot over there.

It’s rocky and they have oodles and oodles of hills and mountains.

It was not easy to follow Jesus - but a lot of people did.

Until Jesus taught them that He was the bread of life and to be saved they’d have to eat his flesh.

Of course He didn’t mean that literally but He said it.

That’s where John 6:66 “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”

They turned back.

For the longest time they looked like Jesus followers.

Until something changed and the fun stopped.

And following Jesus got very real and many fell away.

At the church the book of Hebrews was written to, following Jesus was getting very real.

And some people were thinking about walking away from Jesus.

And some people did - we call them apostate.

An apostate is someone who once seemed to be a believer, but who later totally rejects Christ, turns away from sound teaching, and leaves the church. Apostasy is a real, sobering, scary, weighty issue. Michael J. Kruger

Turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 5 verses 11-14.

While you do, let me speak to the kids for a second.

There are people who will tell you it is easy to follow Jesus - they aren’t telling you the truth.

It’s not easy - it’s a lot of work.

It requires us to read our Bibles, to listen to reputable Bible teachers.

It requires us to do things we might not normally want to do but we have to

Because it is something Jesus would want us to do.

Every Jesus person in this room wants to you to trust Jesus and to follow Jesus.

We pray for you and many of us teach you.

But before you say you want to follow Jesus, you think about what He is asking you to do.

Following Jesus is the best thing you’ll ever do.

It’s also the most difficult.

We are praying that you decide that Jesus is worth the effort.

The three words you are listening for on your worship guide are: Word, Jesus and Know.

Everyone, if you have your Bibles open to Hebrews, please follow along with me.

Hear now the Word of the Lord from Hebrews 5:11-14

Hebrews 5:11–14 ESV

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.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray…… In Jesus’ Name, Amen

What does it mean to be “dull of hearing?”

Hebrews 5:11 “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”

Do you remember verse 10 from last week? Hebrews 5:10 “being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.”

Turns out this Melchizedek thing is a big stinking deal.

And the Pastor - that’s what I’m going to call the writer of Hebrews from now on instead of “the writer of Hebrews”

The Pastor was ready to explain to them why Jesus being a high priest “after the order of Melchizedek” is so important for them

But he stopped himself.

He realized that he was about to wade in deep - and they weren’t ready for it.

Because, as he says himself, it is hard to explain this Melchizedek thing to people who “are dull of hearing.”

He’s knows he’s going to be preaching to blank stares.

It’s the worst feeling in the world to be preaching and see nothing but blank stares.

You know no one is getting it and you feel like all you are doing is wasting everyone’s time.

Somehow, this Pastor is writing this letter knowing that if he dives in deep on Melchizedek he’ll lose his audience

And his point is too important for them to miss.

So he takes about a chapter break

And he calls them out.

“You have become dull of hearing.”

That word dull

One version used the word “sluggish.”

A commentator said the word “Numb” would be a good translation.

The New International Version says, Hebrews 5:11

Hebrews 5:11 NIV

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.

So for the NIV, dull means “you no longer try to understand.”

Peterson translates it in the Message, Hebrews 5:11

Hebrews 5:11 MSG

I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening.

For Peterson, dull means - you have a bad habit of not listening.

But the word “dull” literally means “dull or lazy.”

The Pastor is teaching into a community that had lived a pretty good life.

Their lives weren’t perfect, but they knew how to get along well enough that they could be happy

And mostly content the way they used to live.

But this new Jesus way - well, Christians were getting persecuted and killed.

That’s pretty extreme

And this Jesus person had not returned as they heard he promised.

So why keep listening?

Why lose your job or your promotion or your friends or you life for something that really doesn’t seem to matter so much.

It’s too much work and the result doesn’t seem to be all that great.

So, I’ll just kind of ignore it and let it go away.

Now there are a lot of words that the Pastor could have used here without using the word lazy.

It looks like those folks are a lot like us.

When we look at our days, we can’t say we are lazy.

On the contrary, we are mostly a flurry of activity almost all of the time.

We’d never consider ourselves lazy.

But really, when you don’t want to put the work in necessary to do something difficult.

And following Jesus requires a lot of effort

When you don’t think you’re really going to get much out of it, why do it?

This was the attitude of the Hebrews.

“I tried it.

“It didn’t work out.

“Say what you will, I couldn’t care less.”

But the Pastor wants them to care, because he knows, he knows that losing Jesus is losing everything.

So he keeps hammering the point.

Hebrews 5:12 “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. You need milk, not solid food,”

You ought to be teachers.

He is saying, by this time you owe it to other people to be their teachers - you are obligated because of the truth that been entrusted to you.

The NLT puts it very clear, “Hebrews 5:12

Hebrews 5:12 NLT

You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food.

There is the cold shower.

There is the slap in the face.

You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others

But you aren’t.

You keep reading the same kind of books

And watching the same kind of shows

That keep teaching you the same kind of things.

It’s like never graduating kindergarten.

But that’s not the way it’s supposed to work when we follow Jesus.

Everyone who is a Christ follower ought to be able to do two things - which we’ll talk about in a second.

But he’s not through slapping us around yet.

Hebrews 5:13 “for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.”

He’s telling people who have heard the word preached to them for years

He’s saying they are unskilled - inexperienced.

About as spiritually deep as a first grader.

And it shouldn’t be that way - because

“Spiritual infants can’t remain where they are. They will either go forward or fall away and be destroyed forever.” Thomas R. Schreiner

This has to stop us for a moment at least.

Can we see ourselves in this?

How comfortable are we where we are in our faith?

Do we have enough Jesus in our lives?

Are we settled in and comfortable?

We can take a little change but not too much

We can take a little push to read more and pray more but not too much

Just keep in mind preacher, in the world we live in, this church stuff has it’s place

But preacher, you’ve got to remember, there is more to life than church.

Maybe we don’t say that out loud, but, do you remember ‘The Truman Show?’

I never watched it - Jim Carrey can get on my nerves

But the premise of the show was his life was a reality TV show being broadcast to the world.

So if your life turned out to be the Truman show - what would everyone see?

If someone was watching how you did the things you do, how important would people see this Jesus stuff being to you?

When the car breaks down

Or your really great boss gets a new job

Or the compensation plan is changed

Or the folks at work just aren’t that serious about God

Or - life

How important would people see the Jesus stuff being in our lives?

What should they see?

Look at verse 14 Hebrews 5:14 “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Let’s do the definition thing - powers of discernment

That’s your ability to perceive - and right here is a diagnostic test for us?

When someone says, “You are judging,” how do you feel?

Do you feel guilty for “judging” someone?

Well, you are right, we aren’t allowed to judge - that means we have no right nor do we have any power to condemn someone to hell.

That’s what judging is - saying definitively that this person or that person is going to go to hell.

So we don’t get to do that.

But right here the Pastor talks about our powers of discernment

That’s our faculties, our senses, our ability to perceive something.

He’s not giving us permission here to discern - he’s stating the fact that discerning is something that a brother or sister who is mature in the faith will do.

A mature Christian has the powers to discern things - situations - people - philosophies - world views

We will have the power to discern - but how do we get it?

“… who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice…”

Definitions - I suspect some of you have heard this before somewhere.

The word for trained here is gegymnasmena - you might hear our word gymnasium in it.

What do you do in a gym?

Do you know I went out for basketball in Junior High?

My best friends were the twins that lived across the street, Jeff and Deborah Becker.

They were superior athletes and Jeff was killer at roundball.

We played on his driveway court all of the time.

So when tryouts came - of course I went with him.

Do I look like a basketball player?

Part of the tryouts was wind sprints, have you run them?

Start at the base line, run to the foul line and back, run to the top of the key and back run to half court and back

Run to the top of the opposite key and back, run to the opposite foul line and back, run to the other base line and back

And then run that pattern in reverse.

I did it and I wasn’t last.

But I wasn’t in the top 10.

Or really, the top 40 or so.

Those that made the team did wind sprints about every day.

They trained to play basketball - this crazy game where overly tall people run back and forth on a hardwood court

Trying to throw an orange ball in a hole that has a net on it.

Not exactly something that will bring about world peace

Or help you through your mom having cancer.

But they sure did train hard for it.

That’s what the Pastor says it takes to be a mature believer - training.

It means you have to put in the time.

But training in what?

“Hebrews 5:14 “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Trained - like you would work out in a gym

By constant practice - doing it regularly - over and over again

To distinguish - hold on to your hats, the root word for distinguish means to pass judgment on.

So - train like you would if you worked out in a gym by doing repetitions so you can see things and pass judgment of whether they are good or evil.

Instead of running wind sprints - it’s reading and hearing the Word.

And not the same things over and over again.

But the full counsel of God - as much as you can.

That’s your practice.

If you look back at verse 12, you’ll see the phrase, “Oracles of God.”

The word Oracles is a form of the word Logos - and many of you know what logos is.

Logos is The Word.

The Pastor’s argument is pretty simple - You’ve heard the Word so many times that by now, you should be able to teach others about Jesus.

But you couldn’t be bothered to make the time to dig into the Word - you could do everything else, but you couldn’t do that

So now you are about to lose your faith.

But the Pastor doesn’t want that to happen.

He knows where apostates end up.

So, he’s going to keep on for a while.

There are two things any mature Christ follower should be able to do

First, a mature follower of Jesus should be able to explain fairly concisely what they believe.

Every mature follower of Jesus should be able to explain the gospel without breaking a sweat.

Number two is a little more difficult.

We need to be able to explain why we believe?

In our Wednesday kids class last week we were talking about who is a part of the church

And we talked about being saved and the role of the Holy Spirit

And Ms. Felicia asked “How do you know it was the Holy Spirit and not just a feeling?”

And one of our students started answering.

And she said first she could feel the Holy Spirit

So we challenged her on it being just a feeling

So she said it was also a knowing - that she KNEW that it was the Holy Spirit

And she really struggled for the words and it was so very special

Because I could see in her that she had had an experience with the Lord.

Her words weren’t perfect.

And in her place, my words would not have been perfect.

But they conveyed the fact that she had been changed and it was nothing she had done.

She knew that it was the Lord and she knew she had been saved.

A mature Christ follower knows they have been changed

They know how they have been changed

They know why they continue to follow Jesus.

And, they have a desire to be to trained in His word

Training - not just on Sunday morning - but regularly making time to practice

So that they know when they are hearing from the Lord

And when they aren’t.

The book of Hebrews is pretty stark.

You can either grow in the faith or die

And you are going to do one or the other.

Put in the work

Follow Jesus.

Let us pray.