11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to
make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12 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!
13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the
teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by
constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Dig Deeper
Very recently the weekly pop magazine “Time” came out
with a cover that has generated a great deal of controversy. This is a magazine that has made a living
over the past decade or so by still positing itself as the newsmagazine that it
once was but really being much more concerned with an ideology, creating
sensation, and selling copies of its magazine than with actually being a
serious reporter of the truth and news.
This recent cover, however, has really fulfilled their constant desire
for attention and “buzz.” It features a
woman on the cover with her bare breast exposed. Standing in front of her on a small chair is
her nearly four year old son, looking much more like a regular “boy” than a
baby that would normally be of breast feeding age. In the picture the boy is shown suckling at
his mother’s breast. The article
portends to be about a growing movement of mothers who argue for children to be
breast fed well into their childhood, going far beyond the normal infant stages
of breast feeding. Setting aside the
controversy of the picture and the magazine cover itself, the point of the
article is that some people believe that it is a better alternative for young
children to continue to be nurtured by their mother’s milk for many years past
the normally thought of time frame.
Others, however, find that strange and abnormal to the point of doing
harm to the children.
Whatever you might think of that particular issue, this
is something of the picture that Hebrews presents here. He is envisioning a body of believers who
should be well beyond the normal stage of breast feeding and using that milk as
the source of their nutrition. It is
fine for a baby to breast feed and grow strong on the milk of his mother but it
becomes a rather grotesque prospect to think of an eight or ten or fifteen
year-old child doing the same thing.
Wherever that age might be, there is an age where the child needs to
leave their mother’s milk and move on to solid food. This is the stage at which the author of
Hebrews believes his audience is at. In
fact, he believes that they had passed that stage long ago and were still
stamping around demanding milk when they really needed to start chewing some
serious food. Milk nourishes babies but
it simply won’t do for those who are up and moving, and exercising, and living
life the way that they should.
This warning, in fact, comes out unexpectedly like
suddenly seeing the flashing lights of a patrol officer in your rearview
mirror. The rebuke is so straightforward
that it gives us a flash of insight as to how well the author knew his audience
and their spiritual condition as well as how much he cared about them as to
tell the truth no matter how it might have stung. The author had been teaching about the
importance of understanding about Jesus as high priest in the order of
Melchizedek. He wanted them to
understand that they now have a high priest who did not rely on being of the
lineage of Aaron because he was far greater than that priesthood. He was not a temporary priest, but the
eternal and complete high priest, and was thus, the one to be clung to tightly. But he breaks off in the middle of that
teaching to give a stern rebuke and warning of the type that almost anyone who
has ever taught is quite familiar with.
There is more that he would like to say; greater depths to which he
would like to take their understanding, but he cannot because they are not
fully engaged in the process of learning.
We’ve all heard of speakers who are dull and lifeless
and we’ve all probably suffered through one or two in our lifetimes (or made
others suffer through our own dullness on occasion). But rarely do we hear of an audience being
dull. That’s exactly what Hebrews says
to this struggling group of Christians, though.
The NIV translates what could be rendered as “dull” with the phrase “you
no longer try to understand.” And that
was exactly the situation. It wasn’t
that they couldn’t understand but they weren’t trying. They were giving no real effort and had grown
quite lazy. They had fallen into the
inexplicable zone of thinking that they didn’t need to work hard at learning
about God through his word. Their eyes
had long glazed over and they had stopped thinking that learning any more or
going any deeper was necessary. It would
be one thing if they were too young and immature spiritually yet to be able to
process what the author would like to teach them. It would even being something different
entirely if they were just exhausted and worn out and needed something light
and easy to encourage them. But that was
not the case. They were fully capable of
of what our author is calling them to but had grown lazy in learning. That might not have shown up fully in their
actions yet, but it would before long.
This should be a stern warning for many of us who are quite comfortable
in simple little devotionals and lessons who balk at the first sign of lesson
being a bit tough to chew or an implication that we need to step up our Bible
study and work harder at grasping the depth of God’s word. The warning is clear: baby food only
nourishes babies.
They should, at this point says Hebrews, be
teachers. They should be able to take in
and give out to others but instead they are like immature children who only
want the warm comfort of an easily swallowed swig of milk and do want to share
with anyone else. That’s fine for a baby
but it’s monstrous behavior for an adult.
They didn’t want to learn more but wanted someone to teach them the
basic elements over and again. The
deeper truths of the faith are demanding and cost us because they call us to
change our thinking and behavior. That’s
why people don’t typically want to go deeper in their study and understanding
of God’s word. They might use the cover
story that they don’t understand but the reality, as the author of Hebrews
points out, they just don’t want to badly enough.
There are two reasons basic reasons that we become dull
and immature as Hebrews describes. The
first is that we grow old without growing up.
Job 32 says “I thought, ‘Age should speak; advanced years should teach
wisdom’. But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that
gives them understanding. It is not only
the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right. “ Just being older or being a Christian for a
long time doesn’t mean that we have grown mature in our faith and
understanding. The second reason is that
bad habits keep us from growing. They
had fallen into the habit of taking in simple food but not growing beyond that
and not learning further so that they could teach others. Lazy habits of Bible study lead to dull
Christians. As Christians we need to
desire more food than what we take in on a Sunday morning. We need to develop healthy eating habits
spiritually so that we can get the nourishment that we need to grow and mature.
But what exactly was the author calling them to in
charging them with moving beyond the basic and simple elements of the
faith? The author cared for his audience
and he wanted what was best for them which meant that they would get off of the
baby food and move onto the teaching about righteousness. In using that phrase he didn’t just mean
teachings about how to be a good and moral person. “Righteousness” referred to being in a right
relationship with God, to dwell in his justice.
He wanted them to be people that didn’t just learn things that made them
feel better but he wanted them to be a people who “did” their
Christianity. He was calling them to
live out their relationship with God, being confident and faithful in their
relationship because of Christ, and then able to pass on that life to
others. There is also potentially
another element that he was inferring.
By the second century writings of the early Christians it had become
pretty common to speak of “the teaching about righteousness” to refer to the
advanced Christian truths that put emphasis on the cost and responsibility of
being disciples, a great portion of which included sacrificing and laying down
one’s life for others (in both a metaphorical and literal sense). It is quite probable, then, that this aspect
of that phrase was already being used at the time Hebrews was written and is
exactly what he had in mind for a group that was beginning to buckle under the
pressure of persecution.
The Hebrews writer wanted this community of believers,
and by extension all disciples, to grow into spiritual maturity which was
marked by three areas. The first marker
is solid food. Solid food takes time to
prepare, to chew, ingest, and digest as opposed to milk. So many Christians see deeper teaching and
learning as an option for the “smart folks” that they would rather not be
bothered with. It is important to note,
however, that Hebrews is talking about practical deep teaching that has an
immediate impact on the lives of believers.
The teaching he is referring to is not a bunch of interesting but
largely irrelevant scholarly material that has little bearing on our walk with
Christ or in sharing the gospel with others.
Biblical teaching encompasses the truths that will bring our walk in the
life of Christ into completeness and there is a vital connection between what
we learn and what we do. This is why
Jesus encouraged his listeners to dig in deeply into his word because we
receive the same measure of spiritual maturity from God as we use to dig into
his word (Mark 4:24-25).
The second marker is correct practice. The mature constantly use the word to train
themselves in righteous, just, godly, mature behavior. There is an old saying that “practice makes
perfect,” but that is incorrect. Perfect
practice makes perfect. Teaching that
does not induce us to grow is not teaching, it is information. Too many Christians avoid the hard work of
learning the deeper elements of walking as Jesus walked and prefer encouraging
devotional that are warm and go down easy but there is a time, and it comes
relatively quickly, to move beyond that.
The final marker is to have good senses. Once we have trained ourselves that enables
us to distinguish good behavior from bad.
It allows us to recognize immediately the difference between things that
further conform us to the pattern of the world and the things that will take us
through the often difficult process of being transformed to God’s will. Babies are blissfully unaware of much of what
happens right around them, but the wise and mature have been trained and they
know and understand what is going on and know how to respond. This is the mature Christianity to which we
must strive and join the recipients of Hebrews in answering the challenge to
leave the milk and go after solid food.
Devotional Thought
If our present dedication to growing through the word of
God is somewhat predictive of our future spiritual maturity, what are your
prospects at this point? Have you been
doing the work of feeding on the solid food of the word of God or have you been
stamping around for milk?
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