A while ago a friend shared with me some advice from his personal trainer. He said that if you want to build muscle, you need to work the muscles to exhaustion and eat right. No news flash there, I thought. But then my friend went on to explain exactly what that advice meant. Working your muscles to exhaustion doesn’t mean lifting until you feel a bit winded. It means lifting until you can’t lift anymore and then picking up a lighter weight and lifting that until you can’t lift it anymore. Well I can do that, I thought. But I don’t think I can eat the way my friend’s personal trainer suggested. For breakfast he urged my friend to down six eggs and three cups of oatmeal. That sounds like a breakfast for a family, not one individual! But I suppose if you’re serious about putting on muscle, you’ll follow the advice.
Today the writer to the Hebrews urges us to get serious about developing our spiritual muscles. We do this is the same way we would develop muscles in our arms and legs: eat right and work out.
Although we don’t know who the author of the New Testament book of Hebrews is we do know to whom he was writing. He was writing to Jewish Christians who were in danger of leaving the Christian faith and going back to Judaism. There were a couple of reasons for this. First of all Christians were persecuted for their faith while followers of Judaism were not. And second of all Christianity was a rather “plain” religion compared to Judaism’s fancy worship rituals like animal sacrifices. To keep these Christians from falling away the Holy Spirit moved someone, perhaps the Apostle Paul or his co-worker Barnabas, to write a letter explaining how Jesus is better than all of the Old Testament rituals. In the middle of this explanation, however, the author paused and said: “We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 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…Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, 2 instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment” (Hebrews 5:11-13, 6:1-2).
“You are slow to learn.” Is that something you would hear a teacher say to a pupil today? You might if a student has academic gifts, but is not using them to the fullest potential. That’s what was going on with the Christians in our text. They weren’t slow in the sense that they didn’t have the aptitude to understand what the author was saying. They were slow to learn because they had, as the Greek literally says, “become lazy in their hearing of God’s Word.” While these Jews had started out as eager students of the Word, they had become distracted so that the author had to keep reviewing with them the basics of Christianity. He was feeding these Christians baby formula when they should have been on solid food.
Are we like these Christians? Are we sipping baby formula when we should be downing the meat of God’s Word? Do I ever say things in my sermons that you don’t understand? If so, what do you do about it? Do you seek an answer or can’t you be bothered and are instead content to say that I was speaking over your head again? What about your family devotions? Do you challenge your children or are you reading the basic Bible stories without really delving into them? If so, you could be setting up your children to despise God’s Word as something just for little kids – the way pre-teens and teens think of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. One of the most memorable devotion series my family did when I was growing up was studying the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. We even had workbooks so that this was more class than a casual after-supper devotion. The fact that I still remember it means that it must have been beneficial. A good place to find solid spiritual food is in our church library. Pick out any one of those books and start reading. You’ll find it’s what you need to re-energize a stagnant faith.
But why should we bother? “Jesus loves me this I know” isn’t that enough to get me into heaven? It is and that’s the beauty of Christianity. Even a little child, even a baby can be brought to faith in Jesus. But “Jesus loves me this I know…and that’s all I wanna’ know” is not a God-pleasing attitude. Our text explains: “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” (Hebrews 5:13, 14).
We want to eat well the solid food of God’s Word so that we can have a good faith-workout – or as the author of our text puts it, “so that we can distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14). What’s so hard about that, you might wonder? Isn’t it enough to know the Ten Commandments to do that? Just because I read the owner’s manual to my camera doesn’t mean I’m ready to take pictures like a pro. It will take years of practice to do that. And so it takes practice to correctly apply God’s Word. For example will you know what to do when the doctor suggests taking a loved one off of life-support? Would you be guilty of murder if you did, or would you just be accepting what God has made clear – that your loved one’s time on earth is at an end? Will you know what to do when the doctor says that you must end the life of the unborn child, or his mother will lose her life too? Would you be guilty of the sin of abortion if you ended the child’s life? No, I’m not going to give you answers to those questions in this sermon. I can’t. The issues are complex and take a bit of Bible reading and searching to arrive at a God-pleasing answer. That’s why I want you to think of your Sunday mornings here as a two-hour commitment. Yes, come for worship but stay for Bible class and Sunday School. If you can’t stay for Bible class, then make it a priority to come to a midweek Bible class. It’s in Bible class that we get to work hard our God-given faith. We discuss issues that Christians face in the world and then search God’s Word for answers on how to deal with those issues. Sure, you can do this at home but you’re apt to get a much better workout when you partner with fellow students of God’s Word.
You might not be into lifting weights or eating six eggs and three cups of oatmeal for breakfast. That’s OK. You don’t need to be that extreme if you want to stay healthy. But when it comes to keeping our spiritual health the Holy Spirit makes it clear today that God’s deep truths are revealed only to the careful and constant reader of his Word, not to the casual, careless one (Richard Lauersdorf). In fact if we are casual and careless about our Bible study, our faith can only grow weaker. Do you realize what that means? That means that your hold on eternal life will become weaker while the possibility that you’ll spend eternity in hell grows stronger. Jesus didn’t die on the cross only to have us treat our faith as if it’s an extra tuna sandwich that we may or may not feel like eating at lunch. As our gospel lesson pointed out Jesus is the bread of life. Without him we remain enemies of God. But even for this sin of taking God’s Word lightly we have forgiveness. In a show of strength never seen before or again Jesus lifted the world’s sin on to himself when he shouldered the cross to Golgatha. There he paid for your sin and mine. Don’t take this gift of salvation for granted. Don’t risk losing your faith. Instead, strengthen your grip on it. Get serious about developing spiritual muscles. Eat right. Work out. Amen.
