NOURISHED AND TRAINED
Notes
Transcript
NOURISHED AND TRAINED
Hebrews 5:11-14
With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration:
the Holy Spirit; the Word of God;
Jack Hayford, Grounds for Living;
Henry Cloud and John Townsend, How People Grow;
John Stott, The Contemporary Christian;
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline;
Simon Kistemaker, Hebrews;
Mark Richison, Sermon 10/02
Dec 29, 2002
Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett
[Index of Past Messages]
Introductory
There's a great little story about an elderly lady with three grown and quite successful sons. She was preparing to celebrate her 90th birthday. She was understandably getting feeble. She was hard of hearing and she couldn't see well at all. Each son wanted to do something very nice for her birthday and, as each was well-to-do and not a little competitive, each was trying to outdo his brothers.
The boys got together to compare notes. Milton said, "Mom is going to love what I've done. I built her a big 50-room house. It is a dream house. She will love it."
Marvin said, "I think I can top that. You know she can't see too well. I sent her a new Mercedes with a driver so she can get out and go wherever she wants to go."
Melvin said, "I think I've got you all topped.. You know how Mom loves the Bible, but she can't read anymore? Well, I sent Mom a parrot. Not just any parrot--this parrot has the whole Bible memorized. It took 20 monks 12 years to train this parrot and I owe the monastery $100,000 for that bird. But, all Mom has to do is say book, chapter and verse and that bird will recite the Word of God."
They soon got a letter from Mom. "Dear Milton, what were you thinking? I'm too old to keep a 50-room house clean. I only need a little place. And Marvin, what are you thinking? I don't like to get out anymore and that driver is so rude. And then to Melvin, "You are a son who knows what his mother likes. That was the best chicken I ever ate."
The message this morning is for all of us who may not come close to having the Bible memorized, but nevertheless love the Word, believe the Word and in our hearts are determined to obey what we learn in the Word. As I begin this teaching on the Word of God, from the Word of God, it is appropriate that I affirm two things with you first.
One, I am absolutely, positively, resolutely, emphatically, unhesitatingly certain that the Bible is God's Word, inspired and revealed by the Holy Spirit, rendered in human language, true in all it says, and unquestionably reliable as our guide for life and faith. How many here believe that same way?
Grab your Bible, hold it up in the air and speak this confession with me: This is my Bible
It is the Word of God
It is the Sword of the Spirit (Hebrews 4:12)
It was "breathed out from God
And it is useful
For teaching
For reproving
For correcting
and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16-17)...It is "a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105)
Its words will I hide in my heart
That I may not sin against God
I say with David
"I delight in Your decrees
I will not neglect Your Word" (Psalm 119:16).
I believe that when I teach in this setting on Sunday mornings that I am carrying out a very important duty with eternal consequences. I believe that is true of everyone who teaches the truths of scripture, whether from a pulpit or over coffee at a kitchen table. Why? Not because the messenger is important, but because the message is critically important.
"The Bible stands alone as God's only perfect guide to life and growth. Through the miracle of forty or so authors over the course of fifteen hundred years producing a magnificently consistent set of ideas and stories, God laid out all the elements for us to understand how people grow. Since the Bible has been written down, it can be scrutinized and checked objectively. It is a trustworthy and dependable book of life for us (Ps 119:138)" --Cloud & Townsend, How People Grow, p. 191
Francis Schaeffer said of the Bible, "I don't love this book because it has a leather cover and golden edges. I don't love it as a 'holy book.' I love it because it is God's book. Through it, the Creator of the universe has told us who he is, how to come to him through Christ, who we are, and what all reality is. Without the Bible we wouldn't have anything. It may sound melodramatic, but sometimes in the morning I reach for my Bible and just pat it. I am so thankful for it. If the God who is there had created the earth and then remained silent, we wouldn't know who he is. But the Bible reveals the God who is there; that's why I love it."
The Text - Hebrews 5:11-14
The context of this passage is a teaching about Jesus as the great high priest of God, prefigured by the ancient Jewish priesthood. Verse nine quotes Psalm 110 about the mysterious Old Testament priest, Melchizedek. Verse 10 says that Jesus is in many ways a high priest in the order of Melchizedek. Just as the author begins to explain this analogy, which is later picked up at chapter 7, he stops and addresses his readers:
"We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
I'd like for us to walk back through these four verses and catch some of the impact of what this meant to the first century readers. Simultaneously, I believe the Spirit will bring to us any conviction and direction we need as well.
Verse 11
With the sensitivity of a bulldozer, the writer says to his readers, "I'd love to really run with this Melchizedek teaching, but I don't think you ignoramuses would get it." Well, not exactly, but it's close! "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn." Now, that's a charming and delicate approach, isn't it? You don't find that kind of overture in Dale Carnegie's textbook on "How To Win Friends and Influence People."
In its original language, the term "slow to learn" is literally, "you have become DULL IN THE EARS." What had happened to the readers was that they had somehow lost their love of God's Word. They had become, first, unenthusiastic about the Word, then downright apathetic. This is what happens when Christians don't continue to apply themselves to growing in the knowledge of the scripture, which leads to maturity. They get sluggish, lazy; they become apathetic.
They had not always been sluggish, though-new believers are given a sort of immunity to apathy. They are excited about their faith, anxious to grow and naturally hungry for the Word (1 Peter 2:2-3) But there comes a time when the new believer must turn a corner and apply himself to the discipline of Bible study. That instinctive, self-propelling desire to get into the Word regularly dries up. It gets harder to get the routine of time in the Word. The result-weakness, an un-fed faith, spiritual anemia.
Suddenly this automatic craving for the Word they had been experiencing gives way to a new kind of relationship to their Bible. Variously defined, it is now a matter of effort, commitment, discipline. At the same time that constant state of spiritual euphoria they had known for weeks as a new Christian begins to wane. Do you know what that young toddler of a believer needs right then and there? An older believer who's been through it to come alongside and reassure him that he hasn't backslidden himself out of salvation-that it's perfectly natural and predictable for his motivation to dampen down. And most importantly, someone who can encourage him in the new way of approaching Bible reading and Bible study-self-discipline.
