"Pursuing Growth In Christ"
I. The Diagnosis: Dull Hearing (Hebrews 5:11)
Hebrews 5:11 – “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”
Luke 10:27 – “And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’”
II. The Symptom: Childish Understanding (Hebrews 5:12-13)
Hebrews 5:12-13 – “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.”
1. Failure to know and grow
Matthew 28:20 – “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
James 1:22 “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
2. Getting back to the basics
3. Milk and moral immaturity
1 Corinthians 3:1-2 “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,”
Mohler - “…Spiritual immaturity leads to moral immaturity. Spiritual immaturity leads to believers who live according to the flesh rather than the spirit.”
4. The word of righteousness
III. The Remedy: Discerning Power (Hebrews 5:14)
Hebrews 5:14 – “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
1 Corinthians 14:20 – “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”
Maturity is a way of thinking
Ephesians 4:13 – “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,”
Philippians 3:15 – “Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”
Colossians 1:28 – “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”
Colossians 4:12 – “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.”
Hebrews 6:1 – “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,”
Take Home Questions:
1. Evaluate your own life. Can you think of any areas in which you are spiritually immature and are thus still an infant in the faith? Name them. Are you currently growing in spiritual maturity? If so, in what ways?
2. What excuses do you often hear regarding one’s ignorance of biblical knowledge or spiritual understanding? What excuses do you find yourself using? How does this passage address the excuses we usually give for our failure to grow in biblical literacy and spiritual maturity?
3. The author rebukes this congregation for needing teachers when they should be teaching others. Does this rebuke help you think differently about your responsibility to teach other Christians? If so, how? How is an individual Christian’s responsibility to teach others different from an elder’s or pastor’s responsibility to teach the church?
4. What are the fundamentals of the Christian faith? Why do you think Christians are so prone to forget the spiritual truths they have been taught? What are some ways we can fight this forgetfulness?
5. What is the purpose of discipleship? What should the process of discipleship look like? Are you currently discipling a younger believer? Why or why not? Think of a less mature believer in your life you could disciple.
6. What is the difference between childishness and childlikeness? What does it look like to be both childlike and mature at the same time?
7. In your own words, explain what it means to be unskilled in the message about righteousness. How is this related to our spiritual maturity?
8. In what ways do you practice spiritual intuition on a daily basis? How can you sharpen this intuition? How does the local church help us develop a spiritual intuition?
9. When you open Scripture, do you feel like you are in familiar or unfamiliar territory? What does Scripture have to do with our discernment and spiritual maturity? How can knowledge of the Bible help us discern good from evil?
10. Who ultimately is responsible for the spiritual maturity of a Christian—the individual or the church?