From Milk to Steak
We are all aware that as human beings, we begin our lives living on milk alone. As we grow stronger and our body matures, we are able to start to digest more solid food, but that food is still soft enough that we can learn how to chew and work it in our mouths prior to the emergence of our teeth. It is expected that teeth will emerge which will allow us to tear into more substantial foods, grinding it down and starting to extract all the goodness from it that we can in preparation for our bodies to put that nourishment to good use to meet all the needs of our body through the further processes of digestion.
This is a well known progression in our natural bodies, and if for some reason we do not see this progression occurring in our children, we will naturally intervene for their sake. We will seek outside help if we cannot find a solution for ourselves. We want our children to grow to be the strongest and the best that they can be. We know that there is a necessity to take in real nourishment in order to grow in our bodies, so why does this not seem to be the case when we consider our spirit?
Recently as my wife and I were reading through the book of Hebrews in our shared devotional time, verse 13 of chapter 5 jumped out at me, and a few words in particular. This verse reads, "For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant." This is from the New American Standard Bible, which is my personal favourite, but for our devotions, my wife and I use the Bible that my departed Mom used to use, which is a New International Version. In that version the words are "Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness." It is the words, "the teaching about righteousness" that jumped out at me. I am going to try to determine now why those words jumped out at me.
First of all, we don't actually know who wrote the book of Hebrews. There is evidence that the Apostle Paul wrote it, but the author is not actually identified, as Paul tended to do with his letters to the churches. But there is much to learn from the book of Hebrews even though we don't know who penned it. We know that church tradition accepts the book of Hebrews as a part of the Scriptures and that the real author is God Himself, and that is enough for us to read and digest it's words as worthwhile and edifying for our growth and maturity. And this is, in part, exactly what the author of Hebrews writes about.
The instruction that the author gives is written to those who have believed on Jesus for their salvation. This is something that is important to remember whenever we read any of the New Testament writings that come after the four gospels. The recipients of this were not the lost ones who needed yet to be introduced to the message of salvation through Jesus Christ. In fact, the writer indicates that those to whom he is writing are well versed in the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles in that he states in verse 12 that, "by this time you ought to be teachers". There are many people who have been followers of Jesus for many years and decades; many who have been so for practically their entire lives, yet there are so many who will shy away from the opportunity to teach others about Jesus even though they should have a solid foundational knowledge of the subject. So here we have a group of people that are known to have this foundational knowledge and who should be teaching others, yet they are not. In fact, the accusation is made that they "have need again for someone to teach [them] the elementary principles of the oracles of God". They have forgotten what they had previously known. This was not only a problem for the church in the first century, it is every bit as much of a problem in the modern church, if not more so.
How do we forget something that we have previously known? We forget it when we fail to put it into practice. It is likely that every grade 12 math teacher has been asked every semester, "When are we ever going to use this stuff?" And how many of us can actually recall and use most of the math that we learned in our grade 12 year? In my previous work I did have to call on some of those math skills for certain calculations that I came across, but even those skills have gotten very rusty over the last several years because I have not continued to have the need to call on them. There are some calculations that I used to use regularly on a job site that I now struggle to remember even where to start. It is the same with our faith journey. If we fail to put into practice the things that we learn, we will forget them. And if we fail to continue to practice them after having started, we can forget them then too.
And what does the author say about those who have forgotten what they previously had a grasp of? He says that they again need the milk of the Scriptures and not yet the solid food (v.12). These people had received the Word of salvation from people who had actually walked with or had received a revelation from Jesus Himself, the very author of their salvation. Yet they had not progressed beyond that which they had obtained through the efforts of others. It was like a baby who had not yet even tasted softened bread or mashed veggies; they were still subsisting on that which was only intended to get them started.
And what does the author say about these people? That they are not yet "acquainted with the teaching about righteousness". I am afraid that many Christians today are also not "acquainted with the teaching about righteousness", but have remained in their faith at the same point where they were upon belief. The author of Hebrews tells us that there is a spiritual solid food that we should be striving towards consuming, and he tells us how we become mature enough to be able to handle the solid food of the Word; it is through the practice of what we have been taught that we have our "senses trained to discern good and evil."
I have an old friend who I don't get to see or talk to anymore. We were very close. His friendship and personality pulled me out of my shell when I was a young man. We spent hours together every week, and he probably doesn't realize how much our friendship made me who I am today. We only met for the first time when we were about 17 years old, but when we started to hang out together, we did so quite a bit. This is a guy whom I thought would be my closest friend for the rest of my life. We attended Christian events together, we sang Christian songs together as we drove all over the countryside. He was even the one who first introduced me to my wife. But in my youthfulness I failed to see that he was not practising what he already knew beyond where he had been brought by the efforts of others. He was enjoying the spiritual milk so much that he didn't develop a taste for the meat of the Word. It could be 15 years ago now that we initially lost touch, and this was because I had to call him out on the reprobate lifestyle that he was pursuing. He didn't take it well that I was calling out the blatant sin in his life, and I haven't seen him since. I still miss him. The last I heard, he had rejected God, which means that I will not see him in the hereafter and my heart aches for him, but we all make our own choices and he has made his. He failed to stay in the Word and he failed to practice what he already knew in order to gain the knowledge that he needed so that he could taste the meat of the Word.
"[S]piritual life is sustained by the solid food of sound doctrine and it is protected by that spiritual and ethical discernment which is the fruit of an ever-deepening knowledge and constant exercise of faith."[a] My friend's life is an example of the failure to seek the solid food of sound doctrine, and as a result, he did not retain, or maybe he didn't even attain the ethical discernment that would have protected him, because he didn't put in the work towards the "ever-deepening knowledge and constant exercise of faith". This is not merely the doctrine of salvation which every new believer accepts, but this is sound doctrine that is sought out and found in Bible preaching churches and personal devotional times. And I personally find that the teachings that come through the churches can be somewhat lacking, depending on the pastor and the spirit of the church. This can be for a few reasons.
The first and possibly the most prevalent is that the pastor has a limited scope of Scriptural understanding himself. A life of pastoral service is one that a person is ideally lead and called to by God. Unfortunately, there are many who choose it for themselves for any number of reasons. I knew of a gentleman, younger than myself, who decided that he wanted to be a youth pastor. He got some Bible school training under his belt and managed to get a position at the church that he grew up in, which I was attending at that time. I was a youth sponsor under this youth pastor, so I can personally attest that he was awful. So much so that I came to the conclusion that he chose to be a youth pastor because he thought it would be an easy job. He only lasted a few years. He was too immature to understand what the job required and he made a poor career choice. Many pastors are in this type of situation. They thought that God would be pleased with them if they devoted their life to preaching and teaching His Word. But they haven't put in the work to attain to their own maturity in the faith. God would probably have been more pleased with these men if they had become plumbers rather than preachers, and this is because of a certain "law" of leadership. This "law" states that a man can never raise someone up higher than that which he himself has achieved. This means that the entire congregation's knowledge of the Scriptures will never get beyond that of the pastor. Jesus even speaks to this when he berates the religious leaders of His day. In Matthew 23:15 Jesus proclaims, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves." These men went around telling others how to come to God through the observation of the Law, yet they themselves were too blind in all of their book knowledge to recognize the arrival of their very own awaited Messiah! With the coming abolishment of the sacrifice of the Law, these men were actually condemning their followers to hell. When God calls a man to the ministry of His Word, He will equip him for that work and will teach him how to teach others. If your pastor is not still learning more about God and Scripture than what he knew when he started pastoring, then you may need to consider sitting under a different pastor.
The second reason that comes to my mind is that, unfortunately and well beyond anybody's control, the pastor has to make sure that he is not preaching over the heads of those who sit under him. This means that even if he has discovered for himself some wonderful truth of the Scriptures, he may not be able to teach this to his congregation because they may not be ready to hear it. At best, they will do nothing with and learn nothing from the sermon, and at worst, they will feel that this preacher is "too smart" for them; they will either leave the church for something that they are more comfortable with, or worse, they will fire the pastor because he is not "meeting the needs" of the church. This is not necessarily the fault of the pastor, though he may bear some blame due to the reason that I mentioned above. But the congregation also has an obligation to study the Word for themselves and to be acquainted with it, in order to be prepared to point out errors or to receive deeper teachings. I recall very clearly a time when I was attending a church where the pastor taught the adult Sunday School class. He asked a question of Biblical knowledge of the adults, of whom I was by far the youngest, and I don't think he was expecting an answer, but I answered immediately. I saw the look of surprise on his face when he turned to look at me, that not only did I know the answer, but it seemed that none of the older adults had known it, which was what he had expected. Study and retain the knowledge in the Bible. Call out false teachings, but also make yourself ready to receive teachings that are currently beyond your understanding and give your pastors and teachers a prepared field in which to plant the seeds of the knowledge that you are paying him to find.
The third reason is that there simply is not a spirit in the church in which teaching and learning are desired. Call it a spirit of lethargy or apathy, but there can be many reasons for it. My guess is that a church that suffers under this type of demonic suppression, because that is what it is, has a congregation that is just going through the motions. They go to church on Sunday mornings because they always have and they are supposed to. There is no life to their spiritual walk; no spark, no spring in their step. This is a dead church and I am afraid that they will hear Jesus say to them, "I never knew you; depart from Me".
This is why personal devotions are important for any believer; not only the new ones but those who have walked the path for a long time. It must be done intentionally as well, and not just as a practice or a habit. There is also value in meeting together in a group of other believers to study the Word of God in such a way that you can learn from each other. I have personally liked to lead Bible studies in a conversational type of way. Not with a leader who is preaching at everybody else, but as a group reading and studying the Bible together, digging out the marrow of the Word and discovering it together. This is how we raise ourselves to new understandings of Scripture according to and aligning with the Word.
Matthew Henry tells us that, "The deeper mysteries of religion belong to those who are of a higher class in the school of Christ. Every true Christian stands in need of nourishment. The word of God is food and nourishment to the life of grace. There are spiritual senses as well as those that are natural. The soul has its sensations as well as the body; these are much depraved and lost by sin, but they are recovered by grace. It is by use and exercise that these senses are improved, made more quick and strong to taste the sweetness of what is good and true, and the bitterness of what is false and evil."[b]We are all in the "school of Christ", but we will all be in different grades, if I may use the analogy. A brand new believer may be in Kindergarten where they are just learning how to learn and are figuring out the building blocks of the language of the Bible. Beyond that are endless grades of learning, all the way up to masters degrees and doctorates, which are actually available to those who pursue Biblical knowledge to that degree. But please be aware that a man can know the Scriptures back and forth and have several doctorates hanging on the wall and still miss the fundamental Truths of Scripture. No matter how many diplomas a man may have under whom you sit to receive a teaching of the Word, pay attention! If what they are saying does not align with the Word then they are wrong! All Scripture has to align with itself.
And as Matthew Henry also states, "Every true Christian stands in need of nourishment". We all need the milk of the Word to start, but it should also be an expectation that we will all move on to the steak of the Word. This is the natural progression of a healthy spiritual walk. One thing that I love about the Word of God is that it is easy enough for a child to understand and accept, even if the child is merely so in a spiritual sense, but it is deep enough that even almost 2000 years after the completion of the Word of God, men are still plying it's depths and finding new truths that they have not previously known.
I implore you to develop a hunger for the Word, and don't be satisfied with a milk or even a vegetarian diet. God gave us teeth for a reason. Let's use them.
In the next article, I will show you what "the teaching about
righteousness" is and how we can attain to it. I hope that you return to
read it.
Please let me know what you think by leaving me a message in the comments section below.
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