Hebrews 5:11-6:3 - Moving Into Maturity
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction:
Maturity. The process of reaching full development.
We often use this word when describing the physical and intellectual development of young persons. As children grow, they begin to mature and develop.
However, the author today wants to talk about a much more important form of maturity - spiritual maturity.
Although we can observe someone’s physical and even intellectual maturity easily - growth in stature, change in voice, ability to understand abstract concepts among others - it can be difficult to see someone’s spiritual maturity.
But this spiritual maturity matters greatly. Without spiritual maturity, one may fall for false teaching and heresy. True believers will continue to grow into mature believers. This is one way we can see who is truly born again - that they continue in their maturity.
Although we all spiritually mature at different rates just like we all mature physically at different rates, true believers will show gradual maturity. We call this sanctification - or being made more like Jesus.
With this understanding of maturity, let’s listen to the author exhort us to continue moving into maturity…
Read Full Scripture:
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 instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
And this we will do if God permits.
Prayer
Today we will see three ways that true believers must show that they moving into maturity. The first is…
I. True and Maturing Believers Must Be Willing to Listen (11)
I. True and Maturing Believers Must Be Willing to Listen (11)
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
About this - what is this? He has just mentioned Melchizedek and wants to go into more detail about the high priesthood of Jesus, but he doesn’t think they are ready because of their immaturity.
The old theologian and preacher, John Chrysostom, noted that this exhortation that the author places here right in the middle of his teaching on the Great High Priesthood of Jesus was a brilliant place for it. In the middle of this deep dive into theology, he takes a turn from their minds and aims into their hearts.
The author gets his readers engaged in their intellect and then shoots for their insides.
This warning is because the people have become dull of hearing.
The Greek word for dull here is nōthrŏs (no-throse) which means lazy, slothful, and sluggish. This word was often used in describing an athlete who was out shape. However, here the author intends to use this word in admonishing some of these people who hear but they don’t really listen.
I think we can all relate to this in some ways. We may be in a classroom hearing a lecture, but our minds may be far off. We may be in a conversation with someone and appear to be intensely listening, and yet our mind is daydreaming.
Unfortunately, one of the most damaging areas of our lives where this slothful, dull, or sluggish listening occurs is in our spiritual life.
Many people do this during church services, Bible studies, and even personal study as well.
People often have an unengaged spiritual life and lack maturity because they refuse to actively study the Word of God.
Sermons can be a place where this can really be seen. Though the immature and dull may hear it, they don’t listen. Listening requires activity. We must intentionally listen. It doesn’t just come naturally to most of us. It requires focus and dedication.
Church, just like an athlete doesn’t just go into a game without warming up, we must come to church ready for worship as well. This means being regularly in the Word the week before coming to church. This means being in prayer for the service, the church members, the worship pastor, and for the preacher. This means getting our heart ready Sunday morning. This means coming with the right attitude.
Last weekend, my family went to hear a Christian comedian and had a great time. However, I noticed that since we got to bed later, it was more difficult to come ready for worship. We were sleepy and tired, and it took a bit more effort to get ourselves ready to serve and worship.
We were reminded why we usually go to bed at a decent time Saturday night as a family. It helps us be prepared for worship.
But it also reminded us that sometimes, even when we aren’t able to be prepared the way we would like, we need to step up or prayers and focus and ask the Lord for a special blessing of grace and energy to glorify Him in worship and service.
No matter how we might feel, we need to come to church with the type of attitude of the Psalmist in Psalm 122:1
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Are we glad to be here today? Do we count it a privilege to gather with other believers, to lift up the name of Jesus in singing, and to hear the Word of God preached?
I pray that we are. I pray that we are excited to worship the God of creation. I pray that we are excited to lift up our voices to Him - to learn about Him through His Word - to serve Him - and to fellowship with His people.
The Puritan Richard Baxter, in his “Directions for Profitably Hearing the Word Preached,” gives great advice to us in how we should listen to the Word preached…
“Make it your work with diligence to apply the word as you are hearing it.… You have work to do as well as the preacher, and should all the time be as busy as he… you must open your mouths, and digest it, for another cannot digest it for you.
Richard Baxter
I love this quote. Many of us come to church to be fed the Word of God but are not willing to open our mouths to eat. We must actively listen, actively engage in the Word, actively digest the Word. We must actively listen to the lyrics of the songs we sing.
Why am I spending so much time on discussing active listening? Why is the author of Hebrews dropping the proverbial hammer on his listeners?
It is because we live in a world with persecution. We have an enemy, namely the Devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). We are in a spiritual battle ragging all around us (2 Corinthians 10:4, 1 Timothy 1:18).
This young church that the author was writing to was about to undergo severe persecution. Some would be imprisoned and some killed for their faith. If they were not true and mature believers, they would be unable to stand in the end.
Brothers and sisters: our world continues getting more and more anti-Christian. There will likely come a day where our sermons will be considered hate speech. The exclusivity of the Gospel and the commands of God are offensive to a lost world. There will likely come a day where it will be much harder to access solid Biblical teaching.
If we aren’t able to engage and learn in the environment we are currently in, how are we going to be able to persevere when it is harder?
May we at CrossPointe be a church marked by our love for the Lord and His Word.
May we be known as a people of passion and pursuit of our Savior.
Not only do we need to be listeners of the Word, we also must be…
Scripture References: Psalm 122:1, 1 Peter 5:8, 2 Corinthians 10:4, 1 Timothy 1:18
II. True and Maturing Believers Must Be Willing to Learn (12-14)
II. True and Maturing Believers Must Be Willing to Learn (12-14)
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.
If we are not willing to listen and learn then we end up immature in the faith. This first century church receiving this letter must have heard the Word of God taught to them many times. We see here that many of them should have been teachers even. This doesn’t mean that they necessarily needed to be pastors - but it means that they should have been ready to disciple others in the faith.
Yet, instead of growing in the faith, these people were still babies in the faith - needing milk and not solid food.
My friends, I pray that this is never true of us here. May we never be continually satisfied with milk. Yes, we must start with the milk - but as we continue on in the faith we can certainly get to the solid food.
However, this takes work. Sadly, some people refuse to put in that work and are content with drinking milk and drinking smoothies! They are okay with superficial Christianity. They are like proverbial Vacation Bible School adults. They understand the basics, but there is no depth to their faith and knowledge of the Word.
Chewing steak takes effort! Even after developing teeth, a young child cannot chew a steak. Why? It is because their mouths aren’t strong enough for it. They need to mature and grow in their strength.
Don’t be satisfied with staying on a bottle, Church. No one who has eaten solid food wants to go back to pureed baby food! Why? Because solid food tastes so much better.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
God’s Word is a delicacy. It is wonderful to study and learn the Scriptures.
For those who refuse to study and learn the Word, we are told that they are unskilled in the word of righteousness. In other words they are incapable and unprepared. They do not understand the Word of God - namely even the Gospel.
Charles Spurgeon gave a wonderful illustration comparing the baby to the full-grown and mature man of God.
“The full-grown man is stronger than the babe. His sinews are knit; his bones have become more full of solid material; they are no longer soft and cartilaginous, there is more solid matter in them.”
Charles Spurgeon
When we are mature in the faith, we are stronger. We are able to be productive. We are able to withstand the attacks of the enemy.
Now before moving forward, we must be clear that the Scriptures by no means encourage some type of superior intellectual assent or snobbery here. That extreme might even be more dangerous to the church. Men who condescendingly walk around acting like they know every answer to every question are an extreme danger to the household of God. However, those who have been truly trained by the Word should have both depth and humility. They should be being conformed into the image of Christ.
And the author continues encouraging a love of learning the Word because of the importance of discernment. Let’s read verse 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.
Those who are mature in the faith enjoy the solid food of the Word. They love the deep things of God. (Romans 7:22)
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
They delight in studying the Word of God. (Psalm 1:2)
They understand that the Word is a lamp unto their feet (Psalm 119:105).
And in doing so, they become discerning.
Discernment refers to the ability to perceive and distinguish good and evil. It can be described almost like another organ of sense. However, this is a spiritually given sense.
This gift that is given to believers can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:10. We also see discernment taught in Acts 17:11 as we see the Bereans who were noble-minded and examined the Scriptures and did not just believe what people said and taught.
Although some are given a greater gift of discernment than others, we all should seek to be discerning. Satan is a liar (John 8:44). He is a deceiver. And if we do not know the Word of God well, and we are not relying on the Holy Spirit, we will be deceived.
Children are usually much easier to deceive than adults. Why? Because they lack real world experience and knowledge, they will often believe lies more readily than adults.
In the same way, baby Christians are impressionable. They will believe lies and false teaching much easier than someone who has a firm foundation in the Word.
We must seek to study the Word and learn under solid Bible teachers. Heresy abounds today. Almost everyone has a social media platform and the amount of likes may often be inversely proportional to the amount of truth spoken by the individual. That is because we live in a Biblically illiterate society. People are quick to go to churches with flashy man-centered slogans and ‘seeker-sensitive’ attractional images. Because most people have not worked up to chewing the solid food, they settle for milk. And because of this, many false teachers eventually turn this food into false teaching that tastes good in the mouth but rots the bones and destroys the body.
So the real question many of you might have right now is:
How do I grow in discernment?
With all of the false teaching in the world today and all of the false philosophies in our world today, how do I choose the good and reject the evil?
Today, we are going to go through a few practical steps to help you increase in discernment.
1 - Be sure you are saved!
Before you can discern, you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. True discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit as He guides you and leads you. Be sure that you have repented of your sins and placed your faith and trust in Christ alone for salvation. Be sure that you have placed your faith in Jesus, who being fully God took on human flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross for the sins of the world - namely those who would place their faith and trust in Him - and then rose from the dead three days later and is now seated at the right hand of the Father ready to intercede on your behalf.
None of this message matters without having Christ as your Lord and Savior. Any type of maturity or spiritual growth is impossible without being saved first.
Next we see that we should…
2 - Be in the Word daily.
This seems straight-forward. However, without an accurate knowledge of the Word, you will be unable to discern truth from error. For believers, the Holy Spirit illuminates the pages of the Scriptures and helps us understand the truth. Although intellectual knowledge is not bad, true wisdom and discernment only comes from God (James 1:5, Philippians 1:9).
3 - Be in prayer regularly.
Some things are difficult discern at first. Even with a good knowledge of the Word, there are some decisions in life that take time and prayer in order to figure out.
4 - Be humble and remain teachable.
The Church is one body with many parts. Be sure that you are being mentored by someone further along than you spiritually. And be prayerful about who you go to for mentorship. Find someone who gives advice based on the Word of God and not their own opinion.
Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.
We aren’t to do this life solo. We need to seek out godly counsel.
5- Be continually practicing discernment.
Like anything, you will become better with practice. As you seek the Lord through His Word and through prayer and as you seek wise and godly counsel from other strong believers - the Lord will continue increasing your ability to exercise discernment. You will more naturally see false teaching for what it is. You will more naturally gravitate to good and avoid evil. But this takes diligence and a continued reliance on the Holy Spirit.
As you continue along the road of practicing discernment, God will continue increasing your wisdom through His Word and through His Holy Spirit.
Wisdom is not only knowing the right thing to do - but it is knowing the right time to do it.
It comes through training and learning through experience. Now experience doesn’t always increase wisdom. Many people experience bad outcomes from their decisions and never gain wisdom. They continue in their sinful ways and reap the negative consequences for their sins. However, wise men and women understand how to learn and glean discernment and wisdom from their knowledge and experiences.
I pray that each of us are gaining wisdom and increasing in our discernment through the power of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.
Moving to our last point, we see that…
Scripture References: Psalm 34:8, Psalm 119:103, Romans 7:22, Psalm 1:2, Psalm 119:105, 1 Corinthians 12:10, Acts 17:11, John 8:44, James 1:5, Philippians 1:9, Proverbs 15:22
III. True and Maturing Believers Must Be Willing to Leave (1-3)
III. True and Maturing Believers Must Be Willing to Leave (1-3)
They must be willing to leave behind the elementary and move on toward maturity.
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 instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
By leaving, the author doesn’t mean to forget the elementary doctrines of Christ. We must stay firmly fixed on this. But he means to go on, progress from, and build upon such a foundation. The foundation of repentance and faith in Christ should be built upon.
The author gives us six doctrines that he encourages his readers to move on from. These come in 2x2 pairs. In each of these there is an orthodox, or true doctrine, and a non-orthodox or false doctrine.
The first is:
1 - Repentance from dead works and faith toward God.
Repentance and faith are always intimately connected. It isn’t enough to turn away from sin - one must also turn toward God through faith in Jesus Christ.
This is a foundational truth of the Gospel. We are saved by grace through faith and not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9). All of our works are dead apart from Christ. They are all evil. Even the best of what we do before coming to Christ is an offense to Him.
And the author warns his readers not to go back to works-based righteousness. They are to continue on with a correct understanding of the Gospel.
Next he mentions…
2 - Instruction about washings and the laying on of hands.
Scholars are not always in agreement on exactly what these two refer to.
However, the term washings likely is comparing the Jewish cleanliness washings to baptism. The author wants to remind his readers that they are only cleansed by the blood of the Lamb (namely Jesus Christ) and not by any rituals or sacrifices.
And regarding the laying on of hands - this likely is comparing the laying on of hands on an animal sacrifice under the old covenant compared to the laying on hands through commissioning and sending out in the New Testament.
We are no longer under the sacrificial system. We need not consider those past rituals. Instead, we need to live as New Covenant believers.
New covenant believers use the laying on of hands oftentimes in sending out or commissioning missionaries, ordaining deacons and pastors, and even in prayer requests for healing. We understand that this laying on hands does not atone for any sins or impart any extra amount of grace or favor from God. We understand that it all the work of God through His Holy Spirit that indwells believers from the time that they are truly saved that does all of the work - not us.
And lastly…
3 - The resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
It is obvious from Scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 15 that some first-century congregations didn’t grasp the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
In fact, during Paul’s last letter written in the Scriptures, namely 2 Timothy 2:16-18, Paul tells us of two false teachers teaching that the resurrection had already happened.
Many Jewish converts struggled to understand these teachings regarding eternity. The author wants to warn them to not return to their unclear and incomplete Jewish theology, but to accept the clear teachings of Jesus.
What did Jesus teach? He taught that we all would be resurrected. Some to eternal life in heaven and some to eternal judgment in hell. He taught that all people were eternal souls that would have one of these two destinations. And only by faith and trust in Him alone and repentance of one’s sins could one find eternal life in heaven.
Friends, have you grasped these elementary doctrines of the faith? Do you understand that salvation and repentance is found in Christ alone. Do you understand that we are not saved by works but by grace alone? Do you understand that we all are eternal beings that will face either eternal life or eternal judgment?
I pray that you do. This is so important for us to have these elementary doctrines nailed down so that we can move into maturity. We must understand salvation. We must understand baptism. We must understand Jesus’s teachings regarding eternity.
I encourage you to listen to a couple of our “Ask Pastor Jonathan” segments that you can find on our website regarding baptism and the foundations of the faith if you struggle with some of these doctrines. Seek out a godly mentor here to help you walk through these teachings so that you can grow in your wisdom and discernment.
There is one other important thing that we must understand as we seek to move into maturity. Namely, we must understand the sovereignty of God.
The author states in verse 3…
And this we will do if God permits.
God is the One Who must draw us in order for us to come to a saving knowledge of Him - see John 6:44. We are not good and do not choose God, but He chooses us and we respond to that drawing Romans 3).
The understanding of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility is one of the beautiful mysteries of the Scriptures.
We have heard the author give strong exhortation to persevere and move into maturity. And now we see him acknowledge that the only way that this is possible is by the sovereign will of God.
The Scriptures constantly hold both of these truths in tension. We are exhorted and commanded to obey the Lord and continue on in the faith. And yet, we are also told that it is God Who saves us and sanctifies us.
These are beautiful truths that should actually give us peace.
When we accept the beauty of this mystery, we realize that everything is on God. All of the pressure is on Him. Yes, we need to obey and to be faithful. Yet, it is only through His power that we can do so. With that understood, we must rely fully on the Holy Spirit Who works in and through us to accomplish the purpose of the Lord.
Scripture References: Ephesians 2:8-9, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Timothy 2:16-18, John 6:44, Romans 3
Conclusion:
As we come to a close we have seen three ways that we must move into maturity. We must be willing to listen. We must not only hear, but we must actively listen to the Word of God. We must do this so that we can learn the Word in order to exercise discernment and choose good over evil - right instead of wrong - righteousness instead of sin.
And finally we must be willing to leave behind our preunderstandings and incorrect doctrines, come to a correct understanding of the basic doctrines of God, and then be willing to move on into the deeper waters of theology.
May we never be satisfied with milk alone. May we hunger for the Word of Life. May we seek to understand the beautiful teachings of the Scriptures and mature in the faith day by day.
