February 5, 2017 Hebrews 5:11-6:20 Pilgrims Should Make Progress One of the most popular brands of TV commercials out there these days advertises Geico insurance and in my opinion their commercials are usually very entertaining. Does anyone agree? I don t use Geico but I love their commercials! One that played several months ago featured Peter Pan who flies in to attend his 50 th high school reunion. Did you see that one? After showing his immaturity in the way he treats his aging classmates the commercial ends with him hovering above their heads singing: You make me feel so young you make me feel like spring has sprung And then the tag line is: If you re Peter Pan you stay young forever. It s what you do. If you want to save 15% or more on car insurance, you switch to Geico. It s what you do. I think one reason this commercial hits home is the fact that many adults embrace a Peter Pan outlook on life in that they resist growing up. In fact, social scientists and psychologists have noticed a trend in our culture they ve seen an increasing difficulty that twentysomethings are having in making the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It s even been given a name. It s called: The Peter Pan Syndrome. Maybe this is where the Gieco script writers got their idea. I share this because in today s text the writer of the book of Hebrews addresses a spiritual version of the Peter Pan Syndrome seen in the lives of his first century readers many of whom had obviously not grown up spiritually. 1
Take your Bibles and turn with me to Hebrews 5 as we read about this. We ll begin with verse 11 and go through verse 20 of chapter 6. 11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God s Word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. 6:1 Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying AGAIN the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, 2 instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And God permitting, we will do so. 4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age 6 and who have fallen away to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace. 7 Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. 8 But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. 9 Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case the things that have to do with salvation. 2
10 God is not unjust; He will not forget your work and the love you have shown Him as you have helped His people and continue to help them. 11 We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. 12 We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. 13 When God made His promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, He swore by Himself, 14 saying, I will surely bless you and give you many descendants. 15 And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. 16 People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. 17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. As we just read, the writer says he wants to present some of the deepest spiritual truths found in the New Testament but he realizes his readers are not up for the challenge. They re still in the Peter Pan stage when it comes to spiritual growth. And in the verses that follow he cites the REASONS by reviewing the symptoms of spiritual immaturity. 3
I d like us to focus in on them this morning as a way of evaluating our own spiritual growth our own level of maturity as God s sons and daughters. The first symptom he mentions is LETHARGY. Look at verse 1 where it says, it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. Another translation puts it this way, you are SLOW to learn. Literally it says, you have become SLUGGISH in the ears. Now understand these Christians weren t intellectually DEFICIENT but they HAD become spiritually LAZY. They listened in church but with the attentiveness of a bored sloth. They had become lethargic and unreceptive. By the way this kind of thing had happened before. The prophet Jeremiah talked about this and wrote, Behold, the Word of the Lord is a reproach to them; they have no delight in it. (Jeremiah 6:10) You know, when people FIRST put their faith in Jesus they ENERGETICALLY listen to Biblical truth. You might say, they are all ears. They have a desire to grow and learn. They hunger for more and more spiritual truth. Their Bibles quickly become dog-eared from constant use. Verses are high-lighted and hand-written notes fill the margins. This reminds me of something I remember seeing in a Billy Graham crusade broadcast from Russia back in the days before the fall of the Iron Curtain. The people living in that atheist nation were so HUNGRY for the Word that they crowded into the church by the thousands and the entire time they all held up tape recorders so as to catch every word. I mean, they didn t just sit and yawn as many immature believers do here in the U.S. they energetically stood and held up those boom boxes the entire service. 4
I share this because if we are not careful that hunger that eagerness goes away. Like these Hebrews we become dull in the ears lazy we lose our zeal for the Word. When it s read we let our attention drift we cease to listen. We no longer STUDY it to show ourselves approved, workmen who rightly divide God s Word of truth. Well, how do you measure up to this first symptom? Are you LETHARGIC when it comes to spiritual truth? This leads to the second symptom of spiritual immaturity the writer mentions: a WEAK STOMACH. Look at verse 13 of chapter 5: You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. As all parents know babies drink ONLY milk for several months. Only after those months past can they begin to taste solid food and they make this dietary change gradually until the day comes when they finally put aside the bottle. Their stomachs grow and mature so they can digest things like cereal and then vegetables and fruits and finally meat. Their grandparents can give them cookies and cupcakes and ice cream when their parents aren t looking. Well, it would be a terrible thing if a baby s stomach DIDN T mature or regressed back to milk only. A diet like that would stunt their physical development. And that s like what had happened to these Jewish believers. They were back to the point of only ingesting the elementary truths of our faith. You could say anything complex gave them spiritual indigestion they just could not internalize it. 5
Think of it this way what if our adult Sunday School Classes only used the curriculum we give to our pre-schoolers? What if that s the only thing they studied every week? I suppose we d have to extend Kat s responsibilities to cover our Adults as well as our children! One of the sad things about all this is immaturity makes people susceptible to false teaching. The writer warns his readers then and now of this in the later part of our text. He says because of their immaturity it s like they had no anchor of belief to hold on to. Look at verses 19 and 20 where he writes, We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. My New Testament professor in seminary was Dr. Roger Omanson. Dr. Omanson had been a Bible translator in a central African nation before coming to the faculty of Southern Seminary. The African nation where he served was land-bound. It had no lakes no real rivers so the people who lived there had no boats and therefore no understanding of the word anchor. So, when they came to this verse in Hebrews Dr. Omanson worded it like this, We have this TENT PEG firm and secure. Well, we need this TENT PEG the ANCHOR of a deep, growing, intimate relationship with Jesus. Otherwise, as Paul warns, we will be, infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:13) The third symptom of spiritual immaturity we SEE here is POOR VISION. As you probably know, babies are born with a full visual capacity to see objects and colors. But 6
newborns are extremely nearsighted. Far away objects are blurry. In fact, they can only see things about eight to fifteen inches away clearly. Well, the writer is saying that the immaturity of his first readers was kind of like that in that they could not SEE good enough to discern the difference between good and evil. As verse 14 says, they had not, trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. This problem stems from the prior two symptoms of immaturity. I mean, since they had grown lazy in Bible study since they were only able to hear the elementary truths of Scripture they were unable to see evil for what it is. You may remember my telling you a few years back about a man named Mickey Cohen. In the 1950 s Cohen was a famous gangster who ran Los Angeles much like Al Capone did Chicago. When Billy Graham came to LA to host a crusade Cohen was convinced to attend. In fact, many prominent Christian leaders had visited him in an effort to convince Cohen to accept Christ so he went to the crusade and then afterwards after repeatedly being encouraged to open the door of his life to Jesus, Cohen did so. Well hopes ran high among his believing acquaintances. Cohen s conversion got a lot of publicity: INFAMOUS GANGSTER COMES TO JESUS! But with the passing of time, no one could see any change in Cohen s life. Finally, they confronted him with the fact that being a Christian meant he would have to give up his friends and his profession. Cohen said something like this, There are Christian football players, Christian cowboys, Christian politicians why not a Christian gangster? Many doubt Cohen s conversion to this day and I can certainly understand but if it WAS real (and only God can judge that) he had certainly not matured to the point that he could see clearly. He 7
couldn t distinguish between right and wrong good and evil. He didn t realize that if anyone is IN CHRIST, they are a new creation the old has passed away the new has come. A growing Christian is a DISCERNING person. The longer we walk with Jesus the more time we spend in His Word, the more often we follow the guidance of His Holy Spirit the more discerning we become about everything in life. We develop a moral sense a keen spiritual insight that guides us and enables us to separate right from wrong. Dr. Charles Ryrie writes, A spiritual Christian will be able to tread his or her way carefully through the complexities of Christian living so that they not only do what is right and spiritual but also what is useful and for the good of others. Well, how is your spiritual eyesight these days? Are you able to see sin as sin? As a recipient of God s grace are you able to see beyond the sin of others see them with eyes of compassion? Okay to review the symptoms of spiritual immaturity are LETHARGY when it comes to spiritual growth, a WEAK STOMACH when it comes to Scriptural truth and POOR EYESITE or the inability to see clearly when it comes to right and wrong. I m calling the final symptom of spiritual immaturity mentioned in our text: a FAILURE to THRIVE. That describes a Christian who is not making any real PROGRESS toward spiritual growth. Their spiritual infancy makes them like infants who haven t yet learned to crawl and because of that they don t get anywhere. Do you remember the writer s words? He said they ought to be teachers by now but they still needed someone to teach them. They hadn t THRIVED. They hadn t grown. They hadn t gotten anywhere. They were back at the 8
starting line. We need to heed this text because there is no such thing as a STATIC Christian. You see, the Christian walk is an uphill climb. It s going against the flow of this fallen world so if we stop forward progress if we put it in neutral we actually regress. I can t help but think of the words of General Patton in WW2 who said, In battle the greatest security is found in ADVANCING against the enemy. Our enemy the adversary doesn t want us to THRIVE. He wants churches filled with spiritual infants. We must be diligent. Have you heard the story of the USS Astoria which was the first U.S. Cruiser to engage the Japanese during the Battle of Savo Island in World War 2. This was a nighttime battle fought in August of 1942. About two o clock in the morning a young Midwesterner, Signalman 3 rd Class Elgin Staples, was swept overboard by the blast when the Astoria s number one eight-inch gun turret exploded. Wounded in both legs by shrapnel and in semi-shock, he was kept afloat by a narrow lifebelt that he managed to activate with a simple trigger mechanism. At about six in the morning after being in the water four hours Staples was rescued by a passing destroyer and returned to the Astoria, whose captain was attempting to save the cruiser by beaching her. The effort failed and about noon Staples still wearing the same lifebelt found himself back in the water. He was picked up again a few hours later, this time by the USS President Jackson. He was one of 500 survivors of the battle who were evacuated to Noumea. On board that transport ship, for the first time Staples closely examined the lifebelt that had served him so well. He saw it had been manufactured by Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, and it bore a registration number. Months later when he was given leave to go home, Staples told his story and asked his mother, who worked for Firestone, about the purpose of the number 9
on the belt. She replied that the company insisted on personal responsibility for the war effort, and that the number was unique and assigned to only one inspector. Staples remembered everything about the lifebelt and he quoted the number. It turns out it was his mother s personal code affixed to every item she was responsible for approving. That mother s unheralded diligence in an anonymous wartime job made sure her soon-to-be shipwrecked son s hope of survival. Well, how much GREATER are the stakes in eternal matters, and how much greater is the challenge to diligence. In verse 11 the writer says, We want we LONG for each one of you to show this same diligence to the very end in order to make your hope sure. And don t misunderstand the Bible does not teach that we are saved by our works. The writer is not saying our hope is made sure by our diligence. Of course not but he IS saying that our works show we are saved. He s saying that as James puts it, we authenticate our faith we show that is ALIVE and THRIVING by our works for God. When we help others with physical needs when we tell others about the love of Jesus with these works we show we are GROWING making progress as believers. When our children were young, we took them for regular check-ups and I remember the pediatrician would always gauge their growth. He d weigh them measure their height check on how they were doing when it came to walking, speaking, seeing, hearing, etc. Well think of our text this morning as sort of a spiritual check up and as we pray in a moment, use the 10
four things we have focused on to evaluate YOUR growth. Then based on that exam ask God to help you to mature in the ways you need to because pilgrims SHOULD make progress. 11