Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
Savor what is wonderful about every season of life.
Each life stage that we go through has something that is distinctly wonderful.
It’s wonderful when you first get married before kids, and you’re just so....rested.
It’s wonderful when you bring that first little one home from the hospital, scared as you are.
It’s wonderful as your kids begin to talk and walk and tell you that they love you.
It’s wonderful to discover God’s care and kindness as you navigate the teenage years.
It’s wonderful when your kids come off of the payroll, and you seek to rediscover the joys of empty nest.
Not a single one of the life stages are easy or pain free, but they are all uniquely wonderful — unless there is disfunction of some type.
Disfunction at any point of the life stage can cause the whole experience to sour, can’t it?
It’s not wonderful to navigate the teenage years alone because your husband or wife walks out on you.
This is similar to what we will see in our text this morning.
Just as there are distinct life stages that all people experience, there are distinct life stages that we experience as Christians.
And, each one is distinctly wonderful, so long as disfunction doesn’t creep in.
That is, just as we saw last week that connection is starting line of Biblical Christianity, we will see this week that connection is wonderful so long as we don’t just stay there.
Thinking and acting like a baby is beautiful, unless you’re 29.
Our faith must be put into gear, but it must not stay in first gear forever.
It must advance.
Second gear has to becoming.
Babies should transform into children, then teenagers, then men and women.
We’re going to make three observations about the Christian life cycle (headline) from our text this morning.
God’s Word
Read
Christians Ought to “Grow Up”.
v. 12 “For though by this time you ought to be teachers” Everybody in my house talks like Sara, my youngest.
She says all of her ‘r’s’ like ‘w’s’, and it’s just the best.
There’s nothing more beautiful than listening to children talk or watching children play.
But, if someone still talks, plays, thinks like a child as a teenager, it’s a delay.
If it’s still the case into adulthood, it’s a disability.
This is the author of Hebrew’s point for the Christian life: Christians ought to “grow up”.
It’s why he says: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers.”
That is, “You ought not to be babies.
You ought to be strong enough to be the ones teaching the babies.
You ought to be healthy.”
There’s nothing more beautiful than a baby Christian, but there’s nothing more troubling than a Christian continuing to live and think and act like a newborn over time.
Growth in the Lord, maturity, sanctification, is a process, not an instant.
It happens over a life time, but it does happen.
Maturity isn’t an “option” of the Christian life; it “is” the Christian life.
We ought to grow up.
Our discipleship process is meant to mirror the life stages of the Christian life.
It’s intended to help you continue to shift gears in your Christian journey to reach greater joy, greater passion, greater worship, greater wonder for the rest of your life.
And, wherever you are today, that’s okay.
What you did or didn’t do in the past is irrelevant.
What matters is that you don’t remain where you are today — tomorrow.
You ought to grow and then keep growing, mature and then keep maturing.
The Reason: Dullness of Hearing
v. 11 “It is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing” This whole conversation is really an aside for the author.
He’s actually in the middle of a discussion about how Jesus is our great high priest, that Jesus is our great mediator and representative to God and vice versa.
And, he’s wanting to explain to us the glory, the power, the wonder of how Christ is a priest in the line of Melchizedek from fame, but it’s hard to explain to them.
They just don’t have the understanding.
They just don’t have the frame work.
And, he tells us the reason that they haven’t grown up and matured and taught as they ought.
They ‘have become dull of hearing.’
In fact, this is the problem that he’s going to go on to address through 6:12, when he uses the exact same word, this time translated as ‘sluggish.’
They’re ‘(sluggish) of hearing’, and he’s writing this so that they ‘may not be sluggish.’
The problem isn’t that they are unable to hear; it’s that they are unwilling to listen.
It is that they can’t read the word; it’s that they’re too lazy to open it.
It isn’t that they can’t understand the sermons; it’s that they prefer overtime and career advancement and Netflix and Fortnight and Facebook.
APPLICATION: “Stunted” Christians are too easily “satisfied”.
God has offered them steak, but they settle for a bottle.
God has offered them wonder, but they settle for apathy.
They don’t feast on the steak of God’s word; they feast on the saturated fat of the world, supplemented by as little of God as they can stand.
They’re lazy and sluggish and dull to the glory of God because they’re willing to settle for a lot of the world and only a little of God.
What does your diet say about you?
Do you autopilot sermons wishing you were on Facebook?
Do you skip your time in God’s word to earn another dollar?
Could you talk about Tua Tagovailoa more naturally than you can talk about Jesus?
You’re too easily satisfied to grow up in the Lord!
The Result: Need to Be Taught Again
v. 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.” And, the result of their dullness of hearing is that they need to be taught again.
They need to be weaned again.
They had once known all of these things, but now they must be taught again.
The scariest day after my surgery a couple of years ago might surprise you.
I had already come through the surgery fine and had been seated in my recliner for 6 weeks like a beached whale.
I was just starting to feel a little better.
Gracie Kate came and asked if I would turn the TV on for her downstairs.
As I stepped down to the top step, my legs began to tremble underneath me.
It was the first time in my life that I had ever felt frail.
All of those weeks of sitting had caused the muscles in my legs to atrophy, and though I had ran six miles just two months earlier, now, I could hardly walk.
For how many does that describe your walk with the Lord?
You haven’t grown; you’ve regressed.
You can’t teach; you must be retaught.
There have been too many days in the recliner, to many months of neglect, and now, you’re frail and weak.
The Repercussions: Vulnerable to Death
v. 13 “for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.”
And, the repercussions are that they are vulnerable to death.
They are vulnerable to be destroyed.
This is the fear of the author.
This is the main point he’s making.
If you continue dull in your hearing, if you are unwilling to listen, if you willfully choose as little of God as you can handle, not only will your growth be stunted, but you will wreck your life.
This is life and death.
You’ll be like an infant in war.
God has given to you the sword of the Spirit, but babies are no good with swords.
You can give an infant a bazooka, and he’ll still be vulnerable to a man with a knife.
He’s just a baby.
He’s weak and vulnerable and unable to defend himself.
That is, he is ‘unskilled’ with the weapon that he’s been given.
Brothers and sisters, we are at war.
We are on the front lines.
And, baby Christians leading families and navigating marriages are headed to destruction.
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