Arrested Development Series

Arrested Development

Hebrews 5:11-6:3

Warning Signs of Arrested Development

Ears that Don’t Hear the Word (5:11)

Mouths that Don’t Speak the Word (5:12)

Stomachs that Don’t Digest the Word (5:12b-14)

Types of Spiritual Food

Spiritual Milk

The basics of Salvation

The basics of the Church

The basics of the Afterlife

Spiritual Meat

Teaching about Righteousness

Slide

Illustration – High School Reunion

I was on vacation this past week. We went down to Nashville with my family and had a great time.

Coming back home, we ended up stopping to get something to eat and some gas in Southern Illinois. So I am at this gas station and we have 2 cars I am filling up, and this lady comes up to me and says, are you Scott Kircher.

She looks a little familiar and I say yes, and she tells me her name and it is someone I went to high school with!

We haven’t seen each other since high school but we are friends on Facebook and she had seen some pictures I had posted from there. She was heading to Arkansas on vacation.

She probably wouldn’t have recognized me, nor I her if not for facebook.

It used to be the only way you ever connected with old high school classmates was at high school reunions.

That aren’t as necessary anymore since the invention of social media, so not too many, including me went to my 30 year reunion, but I did go to my 10 and 20 year reunion, before social media was everywhere.

At my 10 year reunion, when I was 28, I saw a friend that I hadn’t seen since college. In college, we were kind of on the same track. We were both unbelievers and lived the way unbelievers do. But even as an unbeliever, in my later years of college and after graduation, I recognized that the partying ways I lived in college needed to change as I got a job and got married and began to have a family. I grew up in those years.

Well, at the 10 year reunion, my friend, who I hadn’t seen since college, was still living like he was in high school or college. I have seen people do this, but eventually, they do mature and grow up.

Well, I did not see him again until our 20 year reunion. At our 20 year reunion, the only things that had changed in his life were the number of DUI’s he had, the jobs that he had and lost because of his partying, and the number of women that he had been with.

At 38 years old he was living as if he had not grown in maturity at all since high school.

It was pitiful to see someone who should have been maturing these past 20 years, not having matured at all!

And it was not just me who had come to Christ in those years that thought that. There were many people that were at that reunion who weren’t Christians who thought the same thing, that something was not right with this person, because he should have been growing up and maturing over those 20 years, but he didn’t.

Transition

When people don’t mature like they should, we recognize that there is something wrong with that.

Well, the author of Hebrews confirms that Christians need to be maturing spiritually, and that when we are in a state of Arrested development, there is something wrong.

Turn with me to Hebrews 5:11

Slide

Here the author begins another warning to them about the Arrested Development that many of them are experiencing spiritually and is hindering them from becoming Spiritually Mature.

Hebrews 5:11-6:3

Slide

1 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 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.

Pray

In the first part of the text, the author begins by talking about their lack of Spiritual Growth being caused by their arrested spiritual development.

The author has some strong words for these people, because they were not as mature as they should be at this point, just like my friend from high school.