Time to Grow Up, Part 1 (Hebrews 5:11)

And now in your copy of God's Word, will you turn to Hebrews chapter five, please? And we're gonna read verse 11 through chapter six, verse three.

Hebrews chapter five, beginning at verse 11. Concerning him, we have much to say, and it's hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant, but solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

And this we will do if God permits. Let's pray together. Father, we are yours by your grace and by your doing, and you have chosen us, you have called us, you have wooed us, you have caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You indwell us in your Holy Spirit, and you have adopted us and regenerated us, and you've given us new life and a new heart, new affections and new eyes, and all of this is your doing.

We pray that it might be your doing today to sanctify us in the truth. As we look at your word, we pray that you would encourage us and exhort us together, help us to learn what needs to be learned here and to be able to learn with discernment and wisdom.

Open our eyes to your word that we may behold in it wonderful things, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

Newborn babies are cute, aren't they? Even within the last couple of months, we've had a couple of families in our congregation who have had newborn babies and you look at them and you're cute,

I think all of us would agree that newborn babies are cute, in spite of the fact that their bodies are completely out of proportion.

Did you know this? That a newborn baby's head is one quarter the length of its body, its whole body, and by that time you are an adult, the age that most of you are now, your head is one tenth the size or the height of your whole body.

And yet when you look at a newborn baby, you don't say to yourself and to other people around you, look at that freakishly large head out of proportion, it looks like something out of an

Alfred Hitchcock novel or Alfred Hitchcock movie, it is freakishly ugly and disconcerting, nobody would say that, you would say, oh, isn't that cute?

And maybe it's because we have seen so many pictures of babies, maybe it's because we've seen so many babies, maybe it's because you've had babies, and so you're just used to it, you come to expect that.

But if my head were the same proportion right now as it was when I was born, my head would be 18 inches tall from my sternum to the top of my head.

And if I stood up here with a head that was this big, nobody here in this entire room would say, like, isn't he cute?

You would think, isn't that freakishly out of proportion? There is something wrong with him. And yet we think that babies are cute, even though they are freakishly disproportionate in their body and their height.

It's ugly, isn't it? But we adore it, we think it's cute. And that freakish disproportion is not the only thing about babies that we think are cute.

There's all kinds of other things about babies that we think are cute. We think it's cute that they are completely dependent upon others.

Unable to feed themselves, unable to prepare their own food, unable to even move on their own. They can't even roll over until they're several months old, they can't crawl until they're several months old, they can't even walk until they're about one, and even then, after they've lived for a whole year and finally starting to walk, they stagger around like a drunken sailor in high seas, smiling from ear to ear, grinning and grabbing onto everything in sight, and totally confident beyond anything that would be warranted for their abilities.

And we think that that is cute. We think it's cute that they have no motor skills, that they can't hold a knife or a pen or a pencil or a comb.

They can't pour their own water, they can't drink out of a normal cup. They have no motor skills or dexterity with their fingers or their hands at all.

They can't even scratch themselves when they itch, and yet they poke themselves in the eye and put their fist in their mouth, and we think all of that is cute.

We think it's cute that they don't even have to live up to our expectations. We don't expect children to change themselves or to feed themselves or to prepare their own food.

We don't expect them to be able to move themselves or drive themselves around, or hold down a job and prepare for other people.

All of that is cute. Those are the endearing things about an infant, a newborn. But when somebody is 25 years old, and they can't hold down a job, they can't feed themselves, clean up after themselves, take care of themselves, provide for themselves, cook their own food, plan their day for themselves, do we think that that's cute when they're 25?

Now the qualities that we adore in an infant, we abhor in a 25 -year -old.

And I'm not talking about people who are born with mental or physical handicaps and are unable. I'm talking about generally speaking,

I'm not talking about the exceptions, I'm talking about the rule. Those qualities which are endearing and that we adore in an infant, we abhor in an adult when the same thing is true of them.

A 25 -year -old who does not care for themselves and cannot care for themselves is not cute. If your 12 -year -old is walking through the mall and picks up some foreign objects on the floor and tries to put it in their mouth to find out what it is, you don't think that's cute, do you?

But if your 12 -month -old does it, you might not think it's cute, you might think it's gross, but at least you understand it.

Your 12 -year -old does it, it's totally different. You don't expect your two -year -old to make a sandwich, but you do expect your 20 -year -old to be able to make a sandwich and fend for themselves, don't you?

Yeah, so we have different expectations in a physical realm for kids who are a certain age, and we expect that with the passing of time and the growing up and the maturing, that they will be able to handle all of the duties and responsibilities and be something like an adult.

It's unrealistic to expect young children to know and to do and to be able to accomplish certain things.

Imagine, and it's even immoral for us as adults to expect more of a child than really what they are capable of doing.

Imagine, what would you think of a parent, of two parents who left their four -year -old in charge of their younger siblings and went out for a night on the town to a dinner and a movie, but they didn't totally neglect the kids because they left written instructions of what to do.

And they say, you can just order yourself a pizza, go to dominos .com, use the silver credit card, make sure you tip the delivery man 15%.

If you order it at five o 'clock, it'll be delivered at 5 .30, so that should be no problem at all. And just expect that in the event that something happens, here's a can of pepper spray in case of a home invasion or something like that.

And here's our cell phone numbers, write them down in some directions to grandma's place in case something goes wrong. And the parents went out on the town.

Make sure that you go to bed at a decent time, right? Bathe everybody, make sure everybody's bathed and in bed by the time we get home at 11 o 'clock tonight.

What would you think of those parents? No, but there does come a point as a parent when you can leave your kids to do those things.

Just last night, we went out to dinner at somebody's house and I left my kids at home. Why? Because I can't.

So I left them at home, didn't plan their meal. Dad, what are we gonna eat for dinner?

I don't care. You can prepare food if you want in the pantry, you know where the stove is at, you know the refrigerator's at, you're aware of what food is, you know what to eat, what not to eat.

Bet you're a 15 year old, a 16 year old, a 22 year old, you're living here, order a pizza if you want.

And I'm not paying for it because you have money. Two of you have jobs, you can go out and order your own pizza. So order a pizza if you want, tip to what is appropriate.

The only thing I care about is that it's all cleaned up when I get home, that's the only thing I want. Those are my expectations.

If something happens, I expect you to be able to figure it out and to accomplish something as an adult. In the spiritual realm, it is entirely equivalent to what we see in the physical realm.

Just as it is disconcerting to see somebody who is physically only a few years old, or just as it's disconcerting to see somebody who is mature enough and old enough physically to handle things but cannot, so it is also with a spiritual newborn or an infant.

This is true in the spiritual realm as well. You see, we don't expect people who are only a couple weeks old or a few months old in the

Lord to be able to discern necessarily the difference between spiritual food and spiritual poison.

We shouldn't expect that. Somebody who's only been a Christian for three or four months, don't expect them to be able to discern that.

If they can't tell the difference between good teaching and bad teaching, we'd say, okay, well, that's typical of somebody who is brand new in the faith.

If you're three months old in the Lord and you cannot tell the difference between a Joel Osteen and a John MacArthur, okay, you need some instruction, some help in that, maybe a little bit of discernment.

We expect that to happen. But if you've been a believer for 10 years and you cannot tell the difference between a Joel Osteen and a John MacArthur, something has gone tragically wrong with your spiritual upbringing, tragically wrong.

There is cause for grave concern for somebody who has been a believer for years but cannot discern between good and evil, cannot discern between true and false, has not grown up to the point where spiritually they are mature enough to handle deep and profound doctrines of the faith.

Don't expect it from a three -month -old, but somebody who's been in the faith for 30 years, it's tragically disconcerting to see somebody who has been a

Christian that long or says they've been a Christian that long but still cannot discern and understand the basic elements of the

Christian faith. That's what was going on in the church to which the author of Hebrews writes.

In chapter five, we're looking at verse 11 through, well, honestly, today we're just gonna get through verse 11.

I'd planned on getting all the way through verse 12, but I sort of had to redo a whole bunch of stuff this morning in the message. And so everything is all kind of jumbled up.

I was planning on doing verses 11 and 12, but we're not gonna get to that. This is the introduction to the third warning passage in the book of Hebrews.

And it begins, this third warning passage begins with a stern rebuke for the spiritual immaturity of the hearers, verse 11.

In fact, this is some of the strongest language directed at Christians that you will read anywhere in the

New Testament, this third warning passage. I can think of a couple of passages in Galatians.

I can think of a couple of passages to the Corinthians that would rival this, but one commentator that I read said this is the strongest language aimed at Christians that you read anywhere in the

New Testament. And what was his cause for concern? These were people who had been believers for a considerable period of time.

And yet in the words of verse, it is 14, they could not discern good from evil.

They didn't have, even though the time had passed and the teaching had been there, they didn't have the ability to discern between good and evil.

They lacked maturity, they lacked discernment. They were still spiritual babes in Christ that the author says needed milk instead of solid food because they were still immature, even though adequate time had passed.

These were 25 year olds in the Lord still learning to walk. And there was no excuse for that.

And the reality of that caused the author of Hebrews to express this grave concern for their spiritual condition, which is why we have this warning passage, even looking out at his congregation and realizing that some of these people had adequate time since their conversion to be mature in the

Lord and they were not. And that caused the author to start to question, are these guys really saved or not?

Having never progressed beyond the ABCs, are these people who even have a spiritual capacity to grasp anything beyond the

ABCs? And so the warning passage is directed toward those Christians who were there who might've been Christians, but were still immature and growing very slowly.

And it is directed toward those in the body who were not believers that thought they were, and they're still chewing on spiritual pablum.

And so it is a strong, strong warning passage. We see in verses 11 and 12, the spiritual immaturity of these people described.

Verse 11, concerning him, we have much to say, it's hard to explain since you've become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers and you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God.

And you've come to need milk and not solid food. And then in verses 13 and 14, that analogy of the difference between milk and solid food, the author kind of unfolds that a little bit.

He unpacks that and develops that analogy of the immature needing milk and the mature being able to handle and take in solid food.

So in verses 11 and 12, we see in verse 11 that there, in 11 and 12, we see there are two characteristics of these

Christians and everything that can be discerned about this audience from our passage in the context would fit into these two general descriptions.

First, they had become lazy listeners. And second, they had become stagnant students. Lazy listeners and stagnant students.

And these two things are related. And we're looking now at the lazy listeners in verse 11. Read verse 11 again with me.

Concerning him, we have much to say, and it's hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. Now the concerning whom, of whom was he speaking?

He's speaking of Christ in the previous passages, but specifically of Christ and his relationship to Melchizedek.

In fact, verse 10 ends with Melchizedek being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

That's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is designated as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. And now the author wants to go on and explain some things regarding Melchizedek, which we want him to do.

If we've read it twice of Melchizedek, once in verse six and once in verse 10, and we get to the end of verse 10 and we're starting to wonder, okay, who is this

Melchizedek? We know that he's mentioned once in Genesis chapter 14. He's mentioned again in Psalm 110. We only see these two references to him in the

Old Testament. And yet it seems like that's a pretty big deal since he brings it up in verses one through 10 of chapter five concerning the

Lord Jesus Christ. We want a little bit more information about Melchizedek, who he is, what his symbolism is, what his significance is, how he functioned as a priest in the

Old Testament, what his relationship is to Aaron. And the author wants to go through all of this. And he will in chapter seven.

You'll see in chapter seven that he mentions, well, he mentions at the end of chapter six, verse 20. Again, he says that Christ has become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Then he mentions Melchizedek in chapter seven, verse one. He mentions Melchizedek in chapter seven, verse 10.

He has mentioned in chapter seven, verse 11, verse 15 and verse 17 of chapter seven. He is going to unload for us the apple cart on the doctrine of Melchizedek, but not yet.

He wants to say more things concerning Melchizedek, but it is almost as if the author or the speaker, if he is speaking at this point, is aware in his audience that this is going to be very difficult for them to understand.

I wanna tell you about Melchizedek, but you become dull of hearing.

Oh, that stings, doesn't it? I'd really like to tell you a very important, some significant spiritual truth, but this is gonna be difficult for you to understand.

It is hard for me to explain to you because you have become dull of hearing. And that word dull of hearing or the word hard to explain is a word that comes from our word hermeneutics.

We get our English word hermeneutics from that. You know what hermeneutics is? Hermeneutics is the interpretation, the art and science of interpretation.

A lot of times we refer to hermeneutics as being the art and science of biblical interpretation, though everything that you are, every element of communication between two individuals, whether it's written or spoken or singing or whatever, has to be interpreted.

The words that I'm saying to you right now, you are applying principles of hermeneutics completely unaware that it's even happening in your head.

As you're hearing, you're interpreting what I'm saying in terms of the English language and your understanding. We can have a conversation because of hermeneutics, the principles of understanding, interpreting what each other are saying.

When we apply it to scripture, we say that we are understanding or interpreting the things that are in scripture.

And this word for difficult to understand or difficult to explain comes from that word hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the art and science of interpreting something so that we can understand it. And then when somebody who has done the work of hermeneutics stands up to explain it to somebody, if the other people are dull of hearing, then it becomes very difficult to explain.

And so that's the word that's used. It means to interpret something or to explain something. And notice the reason for this difficulty.

It was difficult for the author to explain these things concerning Melchizedek as much as he wants to, and he will in chapter seven.

It is difficult for him, not because of the subject matter. You'll notice the author doesn't say, this is really difficult to explain because this is some deep and profound doctrine.

This is top shelf Christianity. This is the stuff that seminary students get all churned up over and have to write papers on.

And this stuff is so high level that you just can't possibly understand it. He doesn't say that. The difficulty is not because of the subject matter.

And the difficulty is not because of some lack of ability in the speaker or the author of Hebrews. He doesn't say this is difficult to explain because look,

I don't quite have my mind around it yet and I'm not a really a good communicator and I can't really make difficult things simple for you.

And so because of my inabilities, I can't explain this to you. Where does he lay the fault for the difficulty to explain?

It is because he says you have become dull of hearing. It's not in the subject matter. It is not in the ability of the speaker.

In this case with the Hebrews, it was entirely a matter of their own spiritual immaturity and the fact that they had become dull of hearing.

Dull of hearing. That phrase is only used twice in all of the New Testament, both times in the book of Hebrews and both times in connection with this warning passage.

It's used here in chapter five, verse 11. You have become dull of hearing. It's used if you look over in chapter six, verse 12, he says that he has written these things so that you will not be sluggish, that's the word, sluggish or dull of hearing, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

So he is aware of their sluggishness, their dullness of hearing, and he writes to them to move them out of this dullness of hearing, to make them to hear and to understand this and to move them beyond their spiritual immaturity.

And the word translated dull there is appropriately translated in verse six, sluggish. It means lazy or slothful, indolent, unable or unwilling to be moved.

And so the idea is, although they heard something, they were not moved by it. Although they heard it, they did not take action on it, either mentally or physically or volitionally, they just remained unmoved.

They heard it okay. It seems that they were able to understand it because you'll notice that it is not a lack in their ability to understand because of some intellectual stigma in their head or some intellectual inability.

He doesn't say this is too difficult to understand because you're just a bunch of mental midgets and you can't handle anything that is difficult for you.

You've become dull of hearing. It's not an intellectual problem. It was a moral problem, moral problem.

They had become dull of hearing, sluggish and lazy. We often don't think of this word lazy in terms of hearing, right?

When was the last time you described somebody as a lazy hearer? You may describe somebody as being intellectually lazy.

And by that, we would mean somebody who's just not willing to put forth the effort to understand something.

It's not that they can't, they just don't want to. It's not willing to put forth the effort. They don't want to think this is too difficult for them. They'd rather just turn on reruns of Seinfeld and sit back in their easy chair and eat popcorn and drink their tea and forget about life, become intellectually lazy.

This is lazy in a different way. This is lazy in terms of their hearing, lazy in terms of their listening.

And there's a similarity here to intellectual laziness, but in the sense that they have become unmoved or slothful in the way that they have listened and how they have listened and their willingness to listen to the truth and to the deep things of scripture.

They had just become lazy listeners. There's a lot of language in the book of Proverbs about slothfulness and laziness.

And so, since it's difficult for me to explain what a lazy listener would look like, I thought, well, what would, if I went back and looked at the book of Proverbs, at what laziness and apathy and slothfulness looks like, and you brought that into the hearing realm, what would that look like?

I think this would be a fun exercise for you if you want a little extra homework. You could go through the book of Proverbs, maybe this week, and just look at all the references to laziness and slothfulness and think, what does that look like in listening?

Here's what it would look like in listening. Proverbs paints a picture of a lazy man who is sitting in front of a big bowl.

And there's a proverb, and I don't have the references up in front of me, but this is the imagery of a man who puts his hand into the bowl.

He's too lazy to bring it to his mouth. Isn't that vivid? I love that. Picture some man, woman, with all that they would need, abundant provision right in front of them, within arm's length, and they dive their hand into the bowl, imagine this is a potluck, and they don't bring it back out again.

And they just sit there, why? Because they're too lazy. And the problem is not that they haven't been provided something, the problem is that they can reach out, but they're not fed and they don't enjoy it, because they're too lazy to bring their hands to the mouth.

Or there's another imagery in Proverbs of the man who refuses to go out and till his land, and put forth the effort of sowing his seed, and put forth the effort of then reaping the harvest and gathering it into his barns.

And instead, he sits inside, and in laziness, does absolutely nothing. And so then he ends up going without.

His laziness ends up costing him. Or there's another word picture in Proverbs, and I had all of my kids memorize this when they were young, and I forget what the reference is, but my kids would know this, of the man who is too lazy to go out and tent to his vineyard.

And so over the course of time, his vineyard walls become broken down, which allows invaders and vagabonds to come in and raid his harvest.

And there's no more vine there, because he hasn't kept and tended up the vine. And instead, the whole vineyard has become overgrown with thistles and thorns and thieves.

And so he loses what is something that is valuable, because he's unwilling to do the work of putting it forth and putting forth the effort.

He's become lazy in that sense. Now apply that to listening. What does that look like? It means that you get to the point where you just don't want to sit back and listen and think through something.

And you don't want to take in truth and work on it and think it through and analyze it in any kind of a rational sense.

You don't want to examine the truth and compare it to scripture and really go through the mental exercise of discerning what is true and understanding deep doctrine and applying that into your life.

And so you become like the vineyard with the walls broken down and the thorns growing everywhere and thistles, and it becomes a ruin and a wreck because of your own indolence.

That's what a lazy listener would be. And it's not that a lazy listener cannot understand.

It is that a lazy listener does not want to understand. It's not that a lazy listener lacks mental capacity.

It's that a lazy listener lacks the mental will to think carefully and to think clearly about spiritual truth and spiritual things.

They're not interested in sound doctrine, not because if the doctrine were explained to them, they couldn't grasp it. They're not interested in sound doctrine because it's gonna require me to think.

I might have to read something. Might have to think this through. I might have to, God forbid, memorize a couple of things or examine this or spend some time turning the wheels over in my mind.

And so it's easier just to become, just to let the words hit the ears and fall away and to not do anything as a result of it.

And that's really the problem. It is a moral problem. And it's not that they had not learned enough or they had not gone to seminary, they had not gone to Bible college or that they had not been taught enough.

They had been taught. He says to them later, by this time you ought to be teachers of these truths.

And you have come to the point where you need to be taught all over again. Why is that? Lazy listening.

Dull of hearing. Slothful in their intellect, slothful in their willingness to hear. And this was a moral failure that was worthy of reproof.

There's an aspect of what we do here on a Sunday morning and it is in our preaching time and it is in our study in Sunday school and in the preaching and teaching of the word of God that requires effort.

It requires effort. This, what we do here requires effort on your behalf, not just my behalf.

Now there's a lot of effort that is required of me that goes in Monday through right now this moment that I'm doing in preaching.

But this is not something that is just, I do all the effort and you can do nothing. You can't come here and just lean back with your free trade latte mocha with caramel drizzle and soy milk and put your feet up on the seat in front of you and say, just talk to me preacher boy.

That's not how this works. You are required or expected, at least in the way that we present truth here, you are required or expected that you're going to intellectually engage with what we are doing, that you're here because you want to learn.

So whether I'm teaching up here or whether I'm sitting down there listening to one of the other elders teach or the other teachers teach, in my mind,

I'm intellectually engaged in that enterprise. I'm not just expecting that I'd be able to zone out for a couple of minutes while Dave is preaching, zone out for a couple of minutes and plan my afternoon and my week and think about what else is going on and come back in because if I do that for even two minutes or three minutes,

I'm gonna be totally lost onto what he's talking about, totally lost. There are other churches where you can do that just fine.

You can zone out for 10 minutes, you're gonna come back in, probably in the same story that he was talking about when you dozed off, maybe even the next story and it really doesn't matter because look, all the stories really are saying the exact same thing.

They're all about something that happened and you really could care less and you're not gonna remember it after you walk out the doors, that's all fine.

But in the act of explaining scripture and in teaching scripture, there is something that is expected of you and that is that you would engage your mind and be active listeners in the sense that you're analyzing scripture and analyzing what

I say and there's an active sense in which I am here to communicate truth to you and together we are learning.

I'm learning and you're learning and we're learning together and this is all of us under the word of God. That requires effort.

And then when I get out of here, I'm exhausted. Listen, on a Sunday morning when I get done listening to Justin or Dave or Cornell or Jess preach, my mind is engaged in that and I'm exhausted after that as well because I'm pursuing something,

I'm actively working. Preaching is not easy. Listening to good preaching is not easy either. Requires work.

Unless you're a lazy listener, then just bring in your free trade latte with caramel drizzled soy milk and sit back and you should be exhausted when you're done.

Well, maybe not exhausted exhausted because you're not standing up here but it ought to require some effort on our behalf, right?

If we are going to be something other than lazy listeners. Now look at this, it was a moral failure but I want you to notice something.

This was not something that had always been true of them. This was an acquired condition. Look at verse 11.

It's hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. Later on, it is down at the end of verse 12.

You have come to need milk and not solid food. And the implication is that there was some point in their previous spiritual commitment, their previous spiritual walk where they didn't need milk.

They had come to need milk. At some point they had been able to comprehend and grasp solid food.

But at some point they had regressed. They had not progressed, they had regressed. So now these people who at one time were not dull hearers, they were active listeners and they were people able to understand the things of the faith.

Over the course of this time, they had regressed to the point where now they were content with spiritual pablum and milk and unable to handle solid food.

And they had actually come to the point where they needed milk and not solid food. They had forgotten everything they had learned and all the progress they had made since their salvation had now been taken back.

And now they're back at square one, all because they were lazy listeners. It is possible to go backwards in our spiritual progression and to slip into spiritual immaturity, to go from being active and engaged in our thinking and in our reasoning and in our understanding and listening to divine truth, to go backwards in the sense that we begin to lose the things that we once knew, forget the things that we once knew and regress spiritually.

So then you have to take those people and you have to start all over again with the elementary things, back with the basics.

These people had reached a point where they were, had been able to handle the solid food of scripture.

Now it's just milk again. You see the cause for concern in this author?

See his reason for concern? What do you make of? What do you make of somebody like that? They truly saved?

Are they just playing the game? Were they really able to understand solid truth at some point or were they just playing games?

Were they just pretending to understand and grasp those things? And this is a form of unbelief and disobedience in the hearer and you remember back in the previous warning passage, the author talks about the wilderness generation who came out of Egypt and came right up to the edge of the promised land and they heard the command.

And what did they do about that? They did not take action on it. They did not obey because the hearing of that good news was not accompanied by faith.

And so these people did not take action. That was a form of disobedience. It was a form of unbelief and it is the same thing with lazy listening.

When we hear the truth and we refuse to take action on it or to be motivated or to be moved by it, eventually when we refuse to be moved by the truth, there will come a point where we cannot be moved by the truth and then you are in a dangerous, dangerous spiritual position because then something radical has to happen to make you get moved by the truth.

A lazy listener is somebody who is so slothful in their listening that they just get to the point where they don't wanna have to think, they don't wanna have to listen, it's too much effort and then they get to the point where they cannot be moved by it and no amount of preaching and no amount of teaching and no amount of lights and fog machines and music and puppet shows and drama can move them out of that because they reach a point of spiritual inertia where they cannot be moved again because they are lazy listeners and there is a caution in this for us,

I think, even in our day. We live in a culture that has become intellectually lazy. I don't know if you've noticed that.

Have you watched TV? Have you listened to the radio? Have you read some Christian books recently? We live in a culture that has become intellectually lazy and we value intellectual laziness, right?

We're not asked to think anymore. We're not expected to think anymore. We're not told to think, we're told to react. Don't think about it, just react.

And this week, before we gather here together next week on a Sunday morning, this week, the culture, the media, the political establishment will give you 30 things to be outraged over before we get back here next week at this time.

And you're not asked to think about it, you're not asked to reason about it, you're not asked to read anything about it. You're supposed to see the headline, get it outraged over it and share it to Twitter and Facebook and be hopping mad until you read the next headline.

And then you've got to tweet that and Facebook that. We're supposed to live in this perpetual outrage where we don't think, we just feel.

And the church has catered to that. Rather than reproving that as this author does, the entire church environment in our culture, in our age has catered to this discouragement to think and to be rational and reasonable and to grow up and to mature and to listen actively.

And so there are whole churches, the whole philosophies of church ministry that is intended to keep things shallow and to keep doctrine out and to keep mentions of the

Bible into Jesus at a minimum. And it is better to tell stories and it is better to use a video clip or put it up on the screen.

It's better to show somebody doing some spoken word presentation or drama or puppets or a fog show or a light show or almost anything else.

The church caters to this. I don't know if you saw this this last week. Ed Young, pastor of some goat herding center down in Texas.

In their church, this massive church, they built almost a full -size basketball court up on the stage and the amount of money and effort that went into that.

And then at the beginning of the sermon, they showed a five -minute video clip of him in his glory days in college.

This was all the March Madness theme. And I hate to bring up March Madness after yesterday's game, but it was all part of this March Madness theme that's been going on the last couple of weeks.

And so then they showed a video clip of him that was easily five minutes long of him in his glory days playing basketball in college for I don't even know, whatever university,

I don't pay attention to that. And then he comes out on the stage dressed up in kind of some outfit and whatever, starts spinning the ball on his finger and taking shots and three -point shots and free throw shots and everybody in the audience claps.

And this whole thing went on for like five minutes before he finally started to draw some stupid point out of all of that.

And I could only watch about five minutes of it before I just, I bordered on losing my salvation over the amount of anger that I have for that, because I think how stupid do you assume that your people are?

That this is where they're at mentally and emotionally. The church caters to this nonsense.

So the whole philosophy of ministry for the modern church age is keep it simple, dumb it down, don't expect anybody to learn anything, don't expect anybody to recall anything, don't expect anybody to have any kind of grasp of doctrine or theology or the word of God.

That is the polar opposite of what scripture says. Instead, as a congregation, as Christians, we ought to be pursuing maturity in our faith as quickly as we possibly can.

That's the goal, not being lazy listeners. The goal of the modern church is to seek to entertain and not equip people.

And if you notice that the deep stuff in these congregations is always just around the corner. So if you get discontent, you say, when are we gonna get to the deep teaching?

Oh no, we'll get there, we're just laying a foundation, we'll eventually get to it. I mean, you might wanna join a small group or come to Sunday school, we'll get to the deep teaching.

The deep stuff, the profound stuff is always just around the corner, it's just out of reach, just over the horizon, we're eventually gonna get to it.

But it turns out they never ever get to it. They never get to anything deep. And they say that they're making disciples for Jesus, it's what their doctrinal statement says, what their purpose statement says, wanna introduce people to Jesus, make disciples for Jesus, train them up in Him.

They never get to anything that actually makes disciples for Jesus. Because Jesus said, teach them all things that I have commanded you. And that's doctrine and theology, that's the entire

New Testament, it's the whole counsel of God. And they're not after the whole counsel of God. They're after the lowest common denominator.

They build an entire church ministry around attracting and attending to the most spiritually immature amongst them.

And everything that they present is intended to be on that level. Now, let's say that Dave Rich is that spiritually immature person, and he's not, so that's why

I can pick on him with immunity. Let's say that he is that person. And I'm aware that he is here, and there's a few other people that are like him.

What is my message? If I adopt that philosophy of ministry, what is my message gonna be geared toward? It's Dave, I don't wanna offend him.

I don't wanna lose him. Now, there might be somebody over here who's starving to death spiritually. But if I start talking about great and profound and deep things, and doctrines of the

Christian faith, trying to move this person on to maturity and to feed them, I'm gonna neglect Dave and leave him behind. I don't wanna neglect him and leave him behind.

So what do I do? I gear everything to him. And in an environment like that, you know what happens? Peak spirituality becomes the lowest common denominator.

The person who is on the uttermost lowest level in fear of leaving them behind, or saying something that they cannot comprehend, in fear of doing that, they gear everything toward that, and that becomes peak spirituality.

And nobody rises above that level. Nobody can rise above that level, because everything is done for those people on that level.

And even when they do present truth that everybody should be able to understand, they present it in such a condescending fashion that it should insult the intelligence of anybody with two brain cells to rub together.

And so they'll say something like, there was a man, his name was Paul. He was what the Bible calls an apostle.

Well, you just can't say apostle Paul. You have to give me four sentences to make me feel like a two -year -old.

You can't just say apostle Paul. Well, they might not know what an apostle is. They don't have access to a dictionary at home.

They can't look it up when they walk out of here. You don't expect them to have the spiritual capacity or the maturity to even know how to look up a word when they leave your congregation.

See, that's the expectation level of so much of church ministry. And it ends up coddling spiritually immature people so that churches become sanctuary cities for lazy listeners.

And we expect that. And people want that. The author doesn't give that.

He says, grow up. Stop being a lazy listener. That's not spirituality. That is not

Christian maturity. Solid food is Christian maturity. Pursue that. Go after that.

Hold yourself to that. So totally different. And yet this is how we are told that we are to win disciples for Jesus and grow them up into functioning adults.

You never get to true faith. You never get to rich doctrine. You never get to anything that challenges anybody.

You never end up producing spiritually mature people at all. Why? Because we have catered our entire church philosophy in America to the lowest common denominator.

We have catered it to encourage spiritual slothfulness, lazy listening, and the lowest spiritual peak.

And that is the opposite of what we should be pursuing. And this type of a mentality is worthy of a reproof.

Worthy of a reproof. Now, what are the causes of this dull hearing for the Hebrews? What is interesting is that there is nothing in the context or the text, nothing in the text or the context that would tell us what it was that caused this condition for these

Hebrews. There's nothing there. He just identifies the condition. But he doesn't say this is because your preacher is horrible, your leadership is atrocious.

He doesn't say this is because you've been watching too much TV. He doesn't say this is because you have been listening to false teachers.

He doesn't identify the cause of the spiritual immaturity at all, other than they have become lazy listeners.

That was the only cause for that. That was the cause of their spiritual immaturity, the fact that they refused to put forth the effort and energy in their listening, in their heeding of truth.

But there are causes to being lazy listeners. It's not like you're actively involved in studying scripture and you're hungry for the truth on Tuesday and Wednesday morning you wake up a lazy listener.

There's things that go into creating lazy listeners and there are causes for being a lazy listener. And I'm gonna suggest a few of them, but I'm in no way trying to impugn or take these suggestions and put them into the

Hebrew situation because I think it is possible that the author does not identify that for a reason. And that is that if he had identified, if he had identified the cause of their lazy listening, it might've caused us to think, okay, so that's not true about me,

I don't have to worry about that. But just by leaving it general like this as a warning, we're open to kind of say, okay, we ought to be on heed for all kinds of lazy listening.

In other words, if he had said, look, you become dull of hearing because your preacher is horrible. If he had said that, then we'd say, okay, well, at least

I hope you would think, I should have thought this analogy through before I started it. You would say, I hope, well, we don't have a horrible preacher, so that can never be true of us, any of us here.

Or if he had said, you are lazy listeners because your leadership is atrocious and they're teaching a false doctrine, then we would get all say, okay, well, that's not the cause in this church, and so we don't have to worry about that.

But he just says you're lazy listeners, and there's all kinds of things that can cause lazy listening. For instance, it can be caused by poor preaching.

A lazy preacher creates a lazy congregation. A lazy preacher who spends his week doing everything but studying, and then stands up Sunday after Sunday and just spews out the same spiritual problems

Sunday after Sunday with the same stories that get repeated every three years, and the same illustrations and cliches and all that other nonsense that happens.

If that's what he produces Sunday after Sunday, you know what that creates as a congregation? Creates a congregation of spiritually lazy listeners.

Because a congregation as a whole can never rise above the preaching and teaching ministry of the people who teach the word in that congregation.

It can never rise above it. There might be individual people within the congregation, and they will be few, who are able to rise spiritually above the preacher or the pastor and the teachers.

But that will be in spite of him, not because of him. So it can be caused by poor preaching.

It can be caused by men who are not willing to put forth the effort and are not willing to themselves grow up.

And I've sometimes heard, and I've listened to podcasts of pastors, and I'll get a listen to a church podcast, and it is not uncommon to hear a pastor offer some excuse as to why he never teaches doctrine and deep doctrine to his congregation.

And it usually goes something like this. I would love to be able to handle this doctrine that's mentioned right here in this verse, this doctrine of election, atonement, eternal security, whatever it is, the

Trinity. I'd love to be able to talk about this, but I don't want you all to get lost in the theological weeds of the conversation, because it's pretty erudite and top shelf.

So instead, we'll just say this, and they'll do some stupid summary and then move on. Let me translate what that means for you.

When they say that, here's what it actually means. It means I am not theologically adept to begin to discuss this, because I know that what

I'm saying is being recorded, and it's gonna be put online on the internet. And the minute I begin to talk about this subject,

I'm so over my head that I cannot handle it. And anybody with even six months of Christian education would be able to out me for the theological fraud that I am, because I cannot grasp or understand these issues.

And so since I am so ill -equipped theologically, and so unable to teach anything to anybody,

I'm just gonna pass over it. That's what that means. That's not what they say. They say it's too erudite for all of you.

It's a nice cover, isn't it? And I listened to that, and I think, why don't you just study and teach your people the truth?

Forth the effort. That creates lazy listeners, poor preaching, inadequate teaching.

Lazy teachers create lazy listeners and lazy congregations, who eventually become so inert in their theological progress that they begin to regress.

Second, it can be caused by believing in false teaching. Believing in false teaching can cause this. False teachers do not like people to think about what they're being told.

Have you noticed that? That is the distinguishing mark of a false teacher. Touch not God's anointed, don't question this.

I got this straight from the Lord. Trust me on this. You're not gonna read this in your Bible, but I'm getting it right now, right here in my head, and I'm giving it to you right now.

They don't wanna be checked out. They don't want people to think through those things. They don't want people to test them scripturally. They get quite upset by that.

And so when people begin to believe false teaching, it actually handicaps their ability to think rationally and reasonably, and to examine the truth for themselves, and to apprehend and comprehend the truth for themselves.

Believing false teaching handicaps people so they cannot understand solid food. And if you listen to false teaching long enough, it will warp your ability to even think biblically.

You don't realize it's happening because it doesn't happen overnight, but it happens nonetheless. It can also be caused when we do not obey what we read or what we hear or what we learn.

This ends up just hardening our hearts. You hear the truth and you say, hmm, get to that next week. Next week comes, you forgot what you listened to last week, but you knew there was something you guys said.

There's something I read that I was gonna jump on that as soon as I had opportunity to do that. And I'll obey that later.

I'll apply that later. I'll get to that later. I'll repent of that later. And that type of a mentality, that type of an approach when we do not obey what it is that we hear ends up making us dull listeners because it comes to the point where we don't want to hear anything else because we get tired of putting off obedience.

We get tired of putting off applying the truth. The fourth thing that can cause this is to place ourselves in a shallow environment where all we are exposed to is spiritual pablum and milk constantly.

Eventually you will lose appetite for the truth of Scripture. You lose the appetite for it.

When you're no longer fed solid food, you lose the ability to chew solid food and you lose the ability to even hunger for solid food.

And pretty soon you think that the milk you're getting is the deep things of Scripture and it's not. And it's not until we are rescued from that environment or somebody is rescued from that environment that all of a sudden the lights come on and they see it for what it is and they realize

I was just being fed rice cakes week after week after week. And it made me feel full, but I'm being malnourished.

I'm being malnourished by this. There's no spiritual food in it. There was no depth or profundity in it. We didn't learn any doctrine.

We didn't grow or progress in our spiritual life. But man, I felt like a baby. I would suck a whole bottle of milk down and throw up half of it and feel like I was well -fed, but I actually wasn't.

It's not until you're removed from that environment and you're put into a place where you're exposed to sound teaching and you're made to think and you begin to progress in your spiritual faith and in your walk that you start to realize, wow, what was

I doing there? You're in a shallow environment where you're exposed to shallow teaching and if that's what you listen to in podcasts and that's what you read in books and that's what you think through in your devotionals and all you get is shallow milk week after week, day after day, you will lose the ability to handle solid food.

And somebody will come along and try and explain a doctrine to you and your eyes will glaze over and you'll hear in the headlights, it'll go right over your head.

You have no idea what's being said and you're not even quite sure why it is that you can't understand it anymore. This is a long spiritual process that causes somebody to regress in the faith.

We become unable to handle sound doctrine and mature truth when we start off as lazy listeners.

And this is, you can guess that this is a spiritual spiral and one that caused the hearers of Hebrews, the listeners in Hebrews, it should have caused them to examine themselves.

Now, at this point, this is where I wanted to move on to being stagnant students but I will wrap all of this up because we don't have time to do that.

We'll wrap all of this up with these three observations. I want you to notice that the author's reproof of these

Hebrews is a loving thing to do. Don't think for a moment that he is motivated by anything other than love. This might be the strongest words directed toward a

Christian that you'll read in all the New Testament, but it is love that is his primary concern because they needed to come face to face with their inability to understand and handle these spiritual truths and it is his love for them that causes him to stop and say, look,

I'd love to move on with this and I will in a bit, but you have to come to grips with your own spiritual immaturity.

And it's stern and it's hard to read and it's hard to think and listen to this ourselves, but it is love that motivated him to say this.

He's not being harsh to them, he's not being unloving to them. Second, you'll notice that he does not accommodate their immaturity and this

I think is key. He doesn't accommodate their immaturity. He is aware that this is the case in his audience for the first four and a half chapters.

Have you sensed at any point in the first four and a half chapters that he is writing to people who are dull hearers and lazy listeners and unable to handle the meat of the word?

Is there anything in the first four and a half chapters that doesn't sound like the meat of the word to you? Hebrews is a tough book.

It is I think the toughest book in the New Testament to try and preach through or to try and listen to or to try and understand.

It's tough. And he hasn't accommodated their spiritual immaturity at all. He is unloading salvo after salvo of deep and rich theological truths all rooted in the

Old Testament and the Old Testament symbols and types and shadows and the Old Testament texts. And he is quoting prolifically from Psalms and alluding to Leviticus and all over the

Old Testament is this author's mind and he's given it to them all. And then he stops and says, you really become dull of hearing.

You would never have guessed that he knew that or thought that from the first four and a half chapters, would you? He doesn't accommodate their spiritual immaturity.

And even more significantly, the answer to their spiritual immaturity is not to continue to give them spiritual milk.

Although in chapter five here at middle of this and all of chapter six, he is warning them of things of the dangers that face them because of their spiritual immaturity.

When he gets to the end of chapter six, he says, now back to our regularly scheduled program,

Melchizedek. He doesn't say you've come to the point where you can't handle spiritual food anymore.

So I'm gonna continue to give you milk and I'm gonna dumb this down and make it as simple as I possibly can for you.

He doesn't do that. It's high level, top shelf theology coming in and it's high level, top shelf theology going out of the warning passage.

At no point do we feel that the author is in any way accommodating their spiritual immaturity or their hunger for milk.

You know what the answer is for a group of people who have come to need milk and not solid food? You know what the answer is?

Solid food. It's not milk. It's to cut the milk spigot off completely.

To stop with the spiritual milk and to give people solid food. And that might drive some people away.

No, I don't want that. That's tough to listen to. That's heavy, that's poof. I don't need that. Some people might leave.

Some people might not be able to handle that. That is exactly what they need. It's exactly what all of us need.

Solid food creates solid Christians. Solid and sound teaching and deep and profound teaching and rich teaching about doctrine and theology and things pertaining to the truth is what produces spiritually mature

Christians. Not stories and anecdotes and quotes and elaborate stage displays and themed sermon series and all that other nonsense.

That coddles spiritually immature people. Spiritually mature people are produced by solid food.

And the author knows this. So even after chiding them for their inability to handle it, that is what he serves up, solid food.

I'm thankful for that example. And I'm thankful for this man. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your word. It is in so many ways and in so many cases far beyond what we can understand and even grasp.

And yet you have made it simple enough for us to at least apprehend the truth in all things.

And even the deep doctrines of scripture, there's not a one of us here who cannot understand them rightly or think through them.

We do not lack any spiritual capacity or ability that would keep us from being mature. It just might be that we need to be reproved for being lazy listeners and lazy students.

And if it is your intention or cause, your purpose to reprove us in that way, we pray that we would accept that and enjoy it and receive it in love and gratitude that your word addresses these things.

Help us to pursue maturity, to pursue godliness and to pursue a sound and deep grasp of your truth that we may honor you in the lives that we live in response to your truth and praise and glorify our