We Must Mature

An Honest Reflection

Fred did a tremendous job last week breaking down the first half of chapter 5. Jesus is our promised high priest. In Him, we have an advocate who continually goes before the Father and offers up all that we are and do for the sake of the glory of God. In other words, Jesus is continually coming before the Father and pointing out the ways in which we praise and glorify God. Jesus is not only perfect in this, because in Him, even our failures are made perfect and glorifying to God, but He also serves as our example for how we glorify God more fully in our daily lives, even in our weaknesses.

In Jesus’ daily surrender to the Lord, we have been given a perfect example of how we are to live our lives and how our lives can become that which we could not hope or imagine in our own strength. We have been gifted the model for how our lives are an offering to the Lord in our high priest.

The writer of Hebrews closed the first half of the chapter speaking of Christ as our perfect high priest in the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek is a king/priest who is found in the book of Genesis in the story of Abraham.

Genesis 14:18–20 NIV

Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

Melchizedek is seen as a precursor or type of Christ. In other words, Melchizedek gives us a picture of aspects of the Messiah to come. In these short verses, we see Melchizedek as both king and priest. The name Melchizedek means king of righteousness and he is described as the king of Salem or peace. Melchizedek is the king of righteousness and peace, two titles given to the Messiah. He also the priest of God Most High. He has been given authority to bless Abram.

The writer of Hebrews is just about to continue to go on and we will see that he will in chapter 7, but before he does, there is this interlude or pause in his thought. The writer of Hebrews pauses to talk directly to the hearer, that is you and me by the way. The writer has concern that what he is saying, his hearers are not ready to hear because of the condition of their hearts.

Hebrews 5:11–12 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. 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!

Hebrews 5:11-

The original audience of this letter are Hebrew believers. These would have been individuals well versed in the Old Testament and the Jewish writings and thoughts surrounding it. These were people who had been waiting for so very long for the coming Messiah and now He had come and they trusted their very souls into His hands. They had seen Jesus as the fulfillment of so many prophecies and in Him was the hope for their hearts and for their nation.

But now the struggles of the day to day were threatening the steadfastness fo the faith of the hearers. They had not been intentionally pursuing and growing in Christ. Quite frankly, the hearers had fallen into the rut of doing and not intentionally engaging the Lord in the everyday. This rut leads every time back to the very legalism that Christ had saved them from.

In response to this, the writer of Hebrews has a harsh rebuke of the hearers. I can not tell you the depths of the truth of who Christ is because you have not even moved past the very elementary things of the faith. Your ears have become sluggish. My brothers and sisters, there is this same rebuke for us today. Many of us have failed to even try to understand. Jesus for us is our ace n the hole or our eternal fire insurance and the real reason that we are here this morning is not to draw closer to the Lord but rather to check a box off in God’s eternal attendance ledger. Here is a good test to see where your heart is and to gauge your desire to hear: when you miss church, do you feel guilty for not being there? Or are you driven back because of the missed relationships with God and His people? Do you see that your attendance is driven by the fact that there are jobs or tasks for you to do? Or are you driven by worshipping the Lord and hearing from His Word? These questions demand honest reflection, not the right answer or the answer that makes us look good. That was the issue for the hearers. They knew the right answers and what needed to be done to look right in the eyes of others, but their hearts were dull. They were like infants who had no hope of maturing.

How Do We Mature

Hebrews 5:

Hebrews 5:13–6:3 NIV

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. Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.

Maturing begins with the pursuit of righteousness. Do you notice that the writer does not say doing righteousness, but rather knowing the teaching about righteousness. In our own doing, there is no hope of righteousness because righteousness is not a byproduct of action but rather a gift from the Lord. The Lord is righteous, He does not do righteousness. As people maturing in Lord, our aim must be to grow in relationship with God. God must be our hunger and our passion. The Christian life is not lived by following a set of rules or doing the right thing at the right time. These are not the marks of “success” in the Christian life. These are the markers of good legalism. These were the markers of the very system that Jesus rebuked for perverting the Law. The Law of God, the Ten Commandments, was given to point us to our need for a relationship with God.

This was the very reason that the writer said that teaching the deeper truths of Jesus as our High Priest seemed pointless because if we are still trapped in a system of legalism then Jesus’ role as High Priest is mute. We mature in the faith as we fervently seek God and allow His righteousness to lead our lives. Do not be confused by what is being said here. The writers says that maturing occurs in those who by constant use have trained themselves, but what is it that they are constantly using and training themselves in, the teachings of righteousness or in other words, their relationship with God. We will mature as we seek God and chase after Him.

Look at the foundational teachings that the writer states we must move past in our maturing: the basics of our salvation, placing our faith in God, cleansing rites, eternal judgment. Do you see that these teachings truly are focused on us in regards to eternity or how we will be seen by God today. The hearts of the Christian life has little to do with our eternal position because God has already taken care of that. In the same manner, it has little to do with how we will look or appear to the Lord because God has already taken that.

Each one of these elementary teachings is focused on what there is for us in regards to our interactions with God. These are the very characteristics of the relationship between the Lord and the people of Israel in the Old Testament that led to their exile, captivity and judgment. These teachings place us at the center of the relationship and in doing so we lose sight of the Father.

It is meaningless for the writer of Hebrews to teach of Jesus as the center of our relationship if his hearers could not see past their own noses. Quite frankly, this is the condition of our church, both as a nation and even us as the local church. We continue to miss the point.