Pastor Jonah Sage preached from Hebrews 6:1-12. He taught that Solid food looks like lives of obedience fueled by experiences of God’s presence. Lector: Kristen Shaffer
Pastor Jonah Sage preached from Hebrews 6:1-12. He taught that Solid food looks like lives of obedience fueled by experiences of God’s presence.
Lector: Kristen Shaffer
Last week, we talked about Christianity as a developmental journey from infancy to maturity.
Infants feed on milk, spiritual truths of God. Doctrine, beliefs.
Adults need milk too. Babies can live off milk alone, adults need solid food as well.
Solid food = lives of obedience fueled by experiences of God’s presence.
The journey from infancy to maturity is the journey from information to intimacy, understanding to obedience.
Verses 1-3 describe spiritual milk as the basics of God’s word
Core doctrines. Repenting of evil deeds, faith in God, getting baptized, praying/laying of hands. Resurrection, eternal judgment. That’s spiritual milk. Theology is milk.
We always need milk. Does a body good.
Those new to the faith feed primarily on milk. Think years w/ Jesus, not biological age
A 60 year old can be a spiritual infant. Get them milk! Get in the word. Get in Sunday Bible Fellowship. You have to know this book, know the language of God, learn right from wrong. The Preacher follows this w/ a curious warning, though:
For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened
-Hebrews 6:4
If this means you can sin bad enough where you can’t repent, we have big problems
Doesn’t fit the rest of the Bible. Doesn’t fit with Jesus saying he won’t lose a single one
The Preacher used reverse psychology last week, and he’s doing it again here.
You ever tell your kid “if you keep making that face it’ll stay that way?”
The preacher is making an invitation by way of warning.
“The solid food…it’s so good that if you gave it up you’d never eat again…”
What would your first question be? Would it be “well why would you give it up?” Or would it be “WHAT’S THE SOLID FOOD?”
This is meant to elicit desire and interest. Look at how he describes maturity:
…those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word and the power of the age to come…
Hebrews 6:4-5
How do these words affect you? Are you interested in the good things of heaven?
Sharing in the Holy Spirit?
We’ve moved from information about God’s word in the beginning of ch 6, to now he says the mature taste the goodness of the word.
Do you want the power of the age to come?
You see what he’s up to, here?
What carries more weight, the warning or the goodness of what we could have?
He spills the beans in verse 9:
Dear friends, even though we are talking this way, we really don’t believe it applies to you.
-Hebrews 6:9
He’s arousing their appetites, getting them hungry for solid food.
So, let’s put some pieces together.
In every stage of our development as Christian’s, there is a problem to solve, a plan to solve it, and a posture to embrace to achieve the plan.
Every stage of biological life has unique problems and plans, new skills to learn etc.
Faith is no different.
BABY CHRISTIAN | MATURE CHRISTIAN | |
|---|---|---|
| Problem to Solve | What I do (behavior) | Who I am (relationship) |
| Plan to Solve it | Competency | Communion with Christ |
| Posture in the Plan | Willfulness | Willingness |
****I need the non-bold text to show up one at a time on screen.
Baby Christians: vs. 1. Problem is they don’t know. How do you solve it? Study. 5:14, training.
-remember the early days of your faith? You had stuff to learn, stuff to change.
-problem for Baby Christians is what I do. Our behavior. Our ignorance.
-addressed through growing competency. Here’s a shovel, can you dig it.
-Posture is willfulness. Get to work, Christian!
You who are new to the faith, get in Sunday bible fellowship. Devote yourself to Sunday attendance. Read everything we have on our “how we grow wall.”
Get. To. Work! Serve in a Sunday ministry. I mean it. Get to work.
Some of you are dragging your feet. Been here too long to know as little as you do, be as uninvolved as you are. Get to work. Let’s go!
Christian infancy is marked by learning, studying, striving, changing our behaviors and learning the rhythms of the Christian life. So, get to work, Christian
Now…hearing me talk that way…anyone’s heart racing?
Let the 40 and up crowd say amen? Anyone feeling guilty?
Anyone feeling tired? I felt a couple eye rolls there…
Why? Why do you feel this way?
How many of you have been reading your Bible, serving, doing the things for so long…and it seems like it’s just…not working?
Listen to this quote I came across recently:
The problem with a religion that…bustles with activity but lacks real holy encounter, is that people finally grow weary and lose hope. So much hard work, so little real worship. So much struggle and toil, so little Sabbath rest.
-Thomas Long, Interpretation, pp 95-96
Listen, if my call to action stirred your soul and filled you with excitement, I’m begging you to RUN HARD! GO FOR IT. Study, learn, serve, run! Go!
You young people, now is your time. Get busy and run. Bring your ideas, try new things, work hard and put in long hours.
You’re supposed to, and this is good.
At some point, you will feel the weariness kick in.
Some of you are weary now. And you keep trying, keep trying, keep trying…and where does it leave you? At some point, it leaves all of us feeling like Paul in Romans 7:
I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway…when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong…there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.
-Romans 7:19, 21, 23
Is that not one of the most honest things you’ve ever read in the Bible?
If you are here, and you can say “amen” to that, you’re in such a precious spot.
***Bring chart back up***
At some point, competency, willfulness, striving, it doesn’t work. It exhausts, you keep trying, but then you eventually will throw your arms up and say:
What a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?
-Romans 7:24
Notice he does not say “awful stuff that I do!” Or “if I only knew more!”
Notice the problem has shifted away from behavior?
Not “what I do” to “WHO I AM”
Spiritual puberty, that transition from infancy to maturity, begins when we realize I’m the problem. It’s me. High! I’m the problem. It’s me.
If I am the problem, not what I do, then I can’t simply get better.
Paul cries out “who will free me?!” I need help. I can’t work my way out.
The solution is no longer competence, but communion.
Not doing stuff for Jesus, but being with Jesus, because it is in his presence we are healed and changed and transformed.
So, the rhythms of life become less about getting good at Christianity, and instead become about getting more of Jesus.
And so our willful posture softens. We take the hands off the plow, so to speak, and instead embrace a posture of willingness.
Help me. Lead me. Teach me. Guide me.
Become less interested in sophisticated knowledge, but instead:
Our great desire is that you will keep on loving others…then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent. Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God’s promises because of their faith and endurance.
-Hebrews 6:11-12
If you’re new, get active. Sunday Bible fellowship, every Sunday, at least a year.
Join a Sunday ministry. Learn to love the Bible, learn how to pray.
If you’ve been doing that for a long time, and it’s feeling like it’s not working, the first thing I want you to know is that is a normal part of growing up.
You’re in a transition. And you need to know that the way ahead of you is not like the way behind you. You’ll keep reading the Bible, keep praying, keep serving…but in new ways. It’ll be different. And it won’t be nearly as straightforward as it used to be.
So, 3 invitations for you. Again, not as straightforward, but being an adult is not as straightforward as being a child, amen?
Our great desire is that of the Preacher in Hebrews…that you would keep on loving others.
That your heart would remain tender towards the lord, and your spirit sharp against the attacks of our enemy.
That the aroma of your life would be love, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, and self-control.
We desire for you to become mature, to feast on solid food, to live lives of obedience fueled by experiences of God’s presence.
Let’s pray.