Supreme Maturity

I. Christ’s Maturity

A. Through Prayer

Hebrews 5:7 NASB95

7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.

In the days of His flesh. That is, from His conception to His death while here on this earth.

Save Him from Death? Referring to the garden of Gethsemane.

Luke 22:42–44 NASB95

42 saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” 43 Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. 44 And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.

Literally save Him “out of” death. Jesus wasn’t praying to be spared from death, He was praying for resurrection!

Piety=reverence

B. Through Obedience

Hebrews 5:8 NASB95

8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.

Not like a wild horse needs to learn how to be gentle.

Not that He didn’t know how to obey. As the Son He could not possibly disobey, but He had to experience obedience as a man to be an example to all men what obedience to the Father requires.

C. Resulting in Salvation

Hebrews 5:9 NASB95

9 And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,

Made Perfect:

Completed or mature. When you work on a puzzle and get to the last piece, you have to put into place to finish the puzzle. When you write a text or email, it isn’t complete until you hit the send button.

Jesus had to seal the deal. He had to die and more importantly, He had to rise from the dead. That was the final piece of the puzzle. It was tapping the send button that allowed Him to be the source of eternal salvation.

Obey by believing

Acts 6:7 NASB95

7 The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

D. Resulting in Ordination

Hebrews 5:10 NASB95

10 being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Jesus was appointed to His position of High Priest by the Father. His priesthood is superior to Aaron and his sons, so why would you want to go back to the law under an inferior priesthood.

Melchizedek — more on him in chapter 7

II. Jewish Maturity

3rd warning passage. 2:1-4 — Don’t Neglect the Gospel, 3:7-19 — Don’t Harden Your Heart to the Gospel, Don’t stay Stuck in the Law

The maturity that is discussed is not the maturity of a believer growing in spiritual maturity, but in an unbeliever taking that first step of spiritual maturity of becoming a believer. How does a Jewish person who grew up learning the O.T. law and sacrificial system become mature? By believing in the superiority of Jesus as priest and king. By understanding that the law was a tutor to bring them to Christ who gives them a new covenant and ushers in the age of grace.

The author breaks it down for them in this way.

1. Be Sharp

Hebrews 5:11 NASB95

11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

Dull — slothful. spiritual apathy that kept them from spiritual development.

These Jews that he is writing to had drifted into spiritual laziness. They knew the OT but had not connected the dots between the law and the grace of Jesus Christ. They looked no further than performing the rituals that their religion demanded without understanding what they meant and more importantly, Who they pointed to.

This can happen to anyone Jew or gentile who knows good Bible teaching. Unless they get beyond the mechanics of the truth and trust in the organics of the Savior.

Hebrews: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Dullness Is Unproductive

Some years ago at a Christian youth conference I spoke on choosing the right life partner. After one session a young girl came up to me and asked to talk. As we sat on the chapel steps, she began telling me that her boyfriend said that whatever a person does, in sex or in anything else, is all right as long as no one else is hurt. After a little questioning I discovered that her boyfriend was 21 and she was only 14. When I briefly reminded her of what God says about sex outside of marriage, she hung her head and said, “I know that. You know what I need? I need to be saved.” She explained that she not only had been raised in a church but that her father was a pastor. I replied, “Then you know how to be saved.” “No,” she said, “I don’t. I have heard my father preach on it but I don’t understand it.”

Here was a perfect illustration of spiritual sluggishness. This girl had heard the gospel all her life, but she had rejected Jesus Christ for so long that the gospel now was foggy to her. She could not understand it anymore. She thought her father’s sermons were boring and made no sense. She had become totally indifferent to God’s Word. After I carefully delineated the gospel to her, we prayed together and she confessed Christ as her Lord and Savior.

The primary application is to unbelieving Jews, but there is much here that we can apply to ourselves as believers.

Be Sharp. We too should have an eagerness to listen to and apply the Bible in our lives. We need to be careful not to let our interest in spiritual matters cool by allowing our attention be distracted into other interests.

Because of our sin nature, if we are not pushing on to progress in our faith, then we will start falling back by default.

2. Be Responsible

Hebrews 5:12 NASB95

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers

These religious people, as Jews, knew the Bible well enough to teach it. They had heard of Jesus, yet were missing simple truth of grace.

Romans 2:17–21 NASB95

17 But if you bear the name “Jew” and rely upon the Law and boast in God, 18 and know His will and approve the things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, 19 and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, 21 you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that one shall not steal, do you steal?

application for believers

Be Responsible You have been given a lot of good teaching about Jesus. You can use it to grow in your relationship with your Lord and help newer believers, or you can squander it by doubting it, always questioning it, and not applying it in your life. If you have been here or in another Bible teaching church for 5 years or more, you should be using your knowledge for Jesus even if you don’t have the gift of teaching.

Don’t just seek biblical understanding to satisfy your own intellectual pursuits, but ask, “how can I use this understanding to help others in their walk with Christ.” This is most needed in the home. Your home should be a Christian seminary.

Spiritual maturity is not how much you know, but how much you apply to your walk with Jesus.

3. Eat More Than Baby Food

Hebrews 5:12 NASB95

12 you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

Hebrews 5:13 NASB95

13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.

They seemed only able to understand spiritual truth on the lowest level. Milk is used as a metaphor in a number of ways in the Scripture. Here the “milk” that the author is talking about is “the elemental teachings about the Christ (Messiah) and repentance from dead works.” (6:1) That is: works that can never save.

The gospel is the true milk of the Bible. You can’t give babies steak and potatoes. They don’t have teeth to chew and they will choke. A mother’s milk is designed perfectly to nourish the baby as it develops. The gospel is all that an unbeliever can handle.

4. Train in God’s Word

Hebrews 5:14 NASB95

14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

Maturity is not possible without initial faith. If these religious unbelievers wanted to understand more complex truths like the priesthood of Melchizedek, then they need to get off the fence of faith, be done with the Old Covenant and believe in Jesus.

The babies were the unbelieving Jews. The mature are the believing Jews.

Like a baby learning language — start out with picture books because that is all they can handle. You don’t give them letters and sentences and paragraphs. When they learn the elements, then you can teach the meaning.