Hebrews chapter 5. We begin reading
in verse 10. Called of God and high priest
after the order of Melchizedek. We just got through looking at
the, speaking of Christ, our high priest. And here the writer
says, He's called of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek,
of whom we have many things to say. and hard to be uttered,
seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought
to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which
be the first principles of the oracles of God, and are become
such as have need of milk, and not strong meat. For every one
that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness,
for he is a but strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age,
even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to
discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving the principles
of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and
of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on
of hands, and of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. And this we will do. We will
go on to perfection if God permits, God be willing. This passage
of Scripture is teaching us to walk in the light
that God has given us, to be diligent in searching the Scriptures
and learning what Scriptures say about Christ and grow in
knowledge and understanding of Him We start with a word of caution
here. The Lord Jesus Christ, we know,
is the one toward whom believers should always be looking. And by that I mean we should
apply ourselves to grow in knowledge, to truly seek to learn more of
Him and to understand more of Him, His person and His work. We begin believing Christ being
taught by the very first principles of the doctrine of Christ. We
build upon that foundation, learning more and more of the rich treasures
of our Lord and Savior. Look here with me at Hebrews
5.10. It says, called of God and high priest after the order
of Melchizedek, of whom we have many things to say and hard to
be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. This is what the
writer is writing, is wanting to speak about. This is what,
when he says, going on, this is what he's talking about. There's
many more things we can learn about Christ as our high priest,
our great Melchizedek. But they're hard to be understood.
They're hard to be uttered. And we know that that's what
the Hebrew book is about. We've seen that from the very
beginning, that Christ, the Son of God, is superior to the prophets. We begin with that in the very
first verse of the book. We saw that Christ is preeminent
above the angels. We see He is the Apostle and
High Priest of our profession of whom Moses wrote. We know
all the prophets wrote of Him. Christ is our Sabbath rest right
now, and He is our heavenly Canaan hereafter. We are not looking
forward to mansions. We are looking forward to being
with Christ. We are looking forward to being with Him. He is our
heaven. And the Lord Jesus Christ we
saw is our Joshua. Moses, who typified the law,
died in the wilderness. He didn't enter into Canaan.
Joshua carried his people into Canaan. Christ carries his people
into heavenly glory. And then we saw all through the
fifth chapter how that Christ is our great high priest who
offered himself to God and who ministers to his people. This
whole book is about Christ. There are many more things Paul
would say about Christ here in the book. And he'll go right
on saying many more things. But the problem is that the Hebrew
brethren, he says here, their whole concern wasn't about hearing
about Christ. They wanted to hear about some
other things. And he called it dull of hearing. Dull of hearing. Tired of hearing these things.
Those who are taught the Word of God should mature as they
understand more of Christ, but many remain babes. Many stay
as babes. Verse 12 of chapter 5 says, For
when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that
one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles
of God. And are become such as have need
of milk, and not of strong meat. For everyone that useth milk
is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even
those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern
both good and evil, that which is truth and that which is error,
that which is good food and that which is evil. The milk and the
meat. The title of our lesson this
morning is From Milk to Meat. The milk is all concerning Christ
and the meat is all concerning Christ. Christ is the Word. He is the Word. Christ is our
righteousness. The believer's righteousness,
his only righteousness is Christ. So when we read here the Word
of Righteousness, the Word of Righteousness is concerning the
Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what the Gospel is concerned
with. Newborn believers begin feeding
on this Word, and it's the sincere milk, the first principles. The
ABCs and the 1, 2, 3s. We've got to start out there. We can spell big words, we've
got to learn our ABCs. We can do hard arithmetic, we've
got to learn our 1, 2, 3s. So we start out with small things. And then we mature. Newborn believers
are unstable at first. They like babes, the writer says. So they must be fed with great
care. A baby is not skillful in eating. It has to be fed very
carefully. A newborn baby can't really see
very well. A newborn baby doesn't have all
its senses about it. It has to be fed very, very carefully,
very tenderly. But as it grows, it graduates
to mashed up baby food. And then it graduates from that
to some little bits of Maybe some mashed potatoes or something.
And it just gradually goes. And its senses become exercised.
It learns to taste. It learns to discern between
that which tastes good and that which doesn't taste good. It
grows. It becomes a toddler. And then
it becomes a child. And then it becomes a teenager. And then it grows up and matures.
And that's the life of a believer. We start out with the very principles,
learning about Christ. But we go on from there. And
we grow in those things. And that's how it is with a believer.
You remember the blind man in Bethsaida? When the Lord put
His hands upon his eyes and sped upon his eyes, he said, I see
men walking as trees. His vision was blurred. He could
see now, but he couldn't see very well. And then the Lord
put His hands upon him again and caused him to look up and
restored him. And he saw all things fully.
He saw everything fully. That's sort of an example of
growing, and that's how we grow. It's through Christ, it's by
Christ, it's by hearing of Christ. But if we become lazy in exercising
these new spiritual senses, we become dull. We become dull.
What happens if you don't eat the food that is set before you? You get sick. You get sick. Even so, if a believer neglects
to pray, to ask God for wisdom. That's where our wisdom comes
from. If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. He gives
freely, abundantly, continually. He doesn't upbraid his people.
He gives wisdom to his people. We've got to ask Him. And if
we neglect the worship, public worship with God's saints, we'll
grow sick. We'll get sick. I've seen it
happen. We neglect the reading of God's Word, private worship,
where we're just by ourselves reading and studying and learning
more of Christ. We grow proud in our own ignorance,
and we become self-sufficient, we think. We become full of pride. We begin to think everything
depends upon us. And we're slowly drawn away.
We're just slowly drawn away. What happens when you don't eat
your food? You get sick. Then when you get sick, what
happens? You don't feel like eating anymore, do you? The more
you hear of Christ, the more you'll want to hear of Christ.
The less you hear of Christ, the less you'll want to hear
of Him. Living things grow. We have to grow. And we do that
by hearing more and more of Christ. And what happens if we just stop
eating altogether? We get sick. We stop eating.
We can't eat because we're sick. We die. We die. Even so, believers
must continually feed. We must continually be fed and
we must continually feed upon the bread from heaven, upon the
water of life, upon the sincere milk of the Word that we might
grow thereby. In 1 Corinthians 14.20, Paul
says, Brethren, be not children in understanding. Howbeit in
malice, be ye children. Be like babes when it comes to
sinful things, evil things, and malice. But in understanding,
be not babes. Study to show thyself approved,
Paul told Timothy. Study to show thyself approved
unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of truth. And that's not just an exhortation
for God's preachers. That's for everybody to study. And so we can rightly divide
the word of truth. Now let's look at the exhortation
here in Hebrews 6.1. Therefore, leaving the principles
of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not
laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and
of faith toward God, and of the doctrine of baptisms, and of
laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. Now I want you to understand
what is being taught here. The oracles of God that we saw
mentioned, the word of righteousness, the doctrine of Christ, they
are all the same thing. They are all the same thing.
Christ our righteousness is the sum and substance of everything
God speaks to us in the Scriptures. Christ is the end of everything
for which God speaks to us in His Scriptures. All the purpose,
will, and decree of the triune God are revealed in whom? They're revealed in Christ. And
they're revealed by Christ through the Spirit of God. The person
of Christ is the object of all scriptural doctrine. He's the
object of it. And he's the object of God-given
faith. Believers are not being taught
here, brethren, to leave Christ and go on. Who is our perfection? Who is our maturity? When will
we reach the fullness? We reached the fullness of the
stature of whom? Of Christ. So we're moving on,
learning more about Christ. I know there's a lot of folks
that read this, and they say, well now, once we've preached
this to believers, and we got them saved, then we can go on
and preach other things. Does Paul do that? Does the Hebrew
writer do that? He talks about Christ all the
way up to this point, and as soon as he gets through giving
his exhortation, he goes right back to preaching, telling them
about Christ. That's what the book is concerned
with. The whole book. Believers, these are some of
the principles that are laid down. Believers repent from our
dead works. of self-righteousness, and we
believe God. We believe Christ our righteousness.
That's one of the first principles we have to learn. Repentance
and faith. It's a two-sided coin. They go
right together. If we're going to repent from
dead works, we've got to believe Him who is the finished work
of redemption, Christ our righteousness. In water baptism, we confess
Christ. We died when He died. We're buried
when He was buried. We arose when He arose to newness
of life. You'll see little hints as we
go on through here that the Hebrew brethren were going back to the
ceremony. When they would see here the
Passover used to preach from the Passover, they rejoiced to
hear Christ preached, but they wanted to offer a lamb too. What
does Paul say in Romans 14-2? He speaks of the weak ones in
faith, the man that thinks he can only eat herbs. He said the stronger man is one
who knows he can eat anything. They were going back and looking
at the washings. He talks about divers' washings,
different kinds of washings. There were a lot of different
types of washings in the Old Testament. The Pharisees had
many different types of washings that passed along by traditions
of men that weren't even according to the Scriptures. But we don't
move away from faith and repentance and baptism. We don't move away
from those things. We learn more about them. We
learn more about Christ and how He's the object of these things.
The Mosaic Law, the laying on of hands That typified the union
of the believer with Christ. They brought that lamb, and the
believer put his head on that lamb, laid his hands on that
lamb. His sin transferred to that innocent
lamb, and that innocence of that lamb transferred to him. And
then the lamb died in his place, and he confessed he was a sinner. He's the one that deserved that
death, but a substitute died in his place. That's Christ. But we preach from those things
and we learn from those things, but we don't mix those things
and then go out and start raising lambs so we can start slaughtering
lambs. Christ is the fulfillment of those things. The Lord gave
the apostles in the early church, He gave them power to lay their
hands on people to give them the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
And it's the same thing typified of Christ giving through the
Holy Spirit the gifts of faith and repentance and all these
things. You laid hands on Me to come here to preach for you.
For what reason? To preach Christ and Him crucified
to you. You see how these things all
glorify and exalt Christ. We believe we should be resurrected
from the dead. Why? Because Christ lives. He's raised. He's seated at the
right hand of God. There's a lot we can go on and
learn about the resurrected Christ. There's a lot we can go in. We
can never exhaust that subject, talking about Christ resurrected,
reigning and ruling, sitting at the right hand of God. We
can never exhaust it. But when I start preaching about
Christ being seated at the right hand of God, I don't have to
go back and say, now, let me convince you that there's a resurrection.
You know those things. So we move on talking about more
in-depth things about Christ seated at the right hand of God.
You see what I'm saying? We're constantly moving forward towards
Him. We believe there's an eternal judgment. And in Christ on the
cross, we believe we were judged and died in Him and became dead
to the law. Don't we? But see how that eternal
judgment? We could talk a lot about the
eternal judgment. The world's going to be judged
in righteousness one day by that man, Christ Jesus the Lord. But
it all points to Christ. And so when the writer says here,
we move on, we don't leave Christ. We don't leave Christ. We don't
move on past Christ to something else. Now, if folks don't like
to hear about Christ, they'll use a scripture like this and
say, that shows we don't have to preach Christ all the time.
We can move on to something else. Well, if you've got something
better, move on to it. I've got to stay with Him. There's nothing
better. There's nothing better. I've
not even scratched the surface. In nine years of preaching, I
haven't even begun to exhaust the subject of Christ. These first principles, the beginning
of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit brings us not to the doctrines
of grace, but to Christ. Isn't that right? And then for
the rest of our days, we're always going on toward Christ, our Lord
and our Savior. Always striving to learn more
of Him. Believers never leave Christ.
We go on to maturity in Christ. And everything we learn in the
heart is founded on Christ of whom these first principles are
used to reveal Him in us. Let's look over to Ephesians
4.11 here, and then we'll close here. Ephesians 4.11 When our Lord ascended, verse
7 says, unto every one of us is given grace according to the
measure of the gift of Christ." Look down at verse 11. And He
gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some
pastors and teachers. Why? For the perfecting of the
saints. The maturing of the saints. For
the work of the ministry. For the edifying of the body
of Christ. What does good food do for you?
It edifies you. It grows you. You grow in it. Some of us eat more than we should
and grow a little more than we should. But that's just good
food. I'd rather see you eating than
not eating. Till we all come in the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect
man, a mature believer, unto the measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ, to a mature age, that we henceforth be no
more children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind
of doctrine, by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby
they lay and wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love,
they grow up into Him." You see that? We grow up into Him in
all things, which is the head, even Christ. And from Him, the
whole body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every
joint supplies. Every member in the body He gives
according to the measure of the gift of His grace to supply the
whole need of this body right here. According to the effectual
working in the measure of every part, and He makes increase the
body unto the edifying of itself in love. You see that? We are
growing up into Him. When Scripture says go on to
maturity, how else can we mature? How else can we mature? Everything he said up to this
point concerns Christ. Remember the Lord gave this parable
in Luke 6, verse 47. He says, Whosoever cometh to
me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show to whom
he is like. He is like a man which built
a house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock.
And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that
house, and could not shake it. For it was founded upon a rock.
Is there any other foundation that can be laid? If you came
to Christ, you came to a living Redeemer. You came to Him that
is seated at the right hand of God. And ever since then, every
time you've been fed food, you can tell, you've grown, your
senses have grown, you can discern good from bad. You can discern
good from evil. You can tell if the message is
God-centered, Christ-centered, or if it's out of tune. You can tell. Your senses. Sarah
got a guitar for her birthday. Right now, she can tell when
that guitar is grossly out of tune. She can just listen to
a strum and tell it's out of tune. But as she goes and practices
playing it, and learns what it sounds like when it's tuned,
she'll be able to tell when one string's out of tune. And then
she'll be able to tell which string's out of tune. If she
keeps going, that's how it is. We hear the gospel and you can
begin to hear, that's out of tune. That's off. That's off the mark. Who is the
Alpha and Omega? Who's the beginning and the ending?
Christ is. Our God and our Savior, Christ
Jesus the Lord, the triune God of glory, is the beginning and
the end. Look over here at Hebrews 12.1 with me. Hebrews 12.1. Wherefore sin we are also accomplished
about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every
weight in the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us
run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto
Jesus. the author and finisher of our
faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God." Now, one more word here, a word of assurance.
Look here with me just a minute at verse 3. It says, Hebrews
6, verse 3, "...and this will we do." We are determined to
persevere. We are determined to move ahead.
When you first tasted the sincere milk of the Word, you want more.
You want more. Believers want to hear more about
Christ. They do. They want to learn more.
And when you first hear it, you want to move on. And we will
if God is willing. If God is willing to grow us,
and He is, brethren, He is going to grow His people. He is going
to have His people come and be seated and bow before the throne
of God cast their crowns at His feet and worship Him and rejoice
in Him. Look here. Look here with me. We're going to lay the foundation.
We're going to build upon the foundation, growing in spiritual
maturity and faith, hope and love. And we're going to persevere
in the faith of Christ by the grace of God, by His grace. Philippians 1.6. Philippians
1.6. You be turning to Hebrews 13.20.
Hebrews 13.20. Let me read. You can turn here
with me too if you like. Philippians 1.6. Paul said, I
am confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good
work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Look
at Hebrews 13.20. Now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd
of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working
in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ
to whom be glory forever and ever." We must either go forward
or go back. And it's an impossibility for
a believer, somebody that's truly tasted of God's grace, to fall
away. They're not going to fall away.
We can't be kept by the power of God. The Lord said, My Father
is greater than I, and no man is going to pluck Him out of
My Father's hand. No man. So, I hope that's been a help
to you, and I hope it was a help to me. That passage has always
been one that's... I've heard it badly abused, and
I hope that was a help to you.