Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Hebrews 5. We are starting a new series called “Next Steps.” Appropriate for the beginning of the year, isn’t it? The New Year is always a great time to try to begin a new program or routine or regimen. Nothing wrong with that. There is something about turning the calendar page that gets us into the mode of first steps.
A 2018 survey showed that 44% of American adults said they were likely to make a new year’s resolution.
These were most popular resolutions:
1. Exercise more (13%)
2. Stop Smoking (12%)
3. Lose Weight (10%)
4. Be a better person (9%)
5. Spend less money/save more (8%)
6. Improve health, Self-Improvement (6%)
7. Other (5%)
8. Use time better, go back to school, enjoy life, or get closer to God (3%)
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that more gym memberships happen in January than any other month. More people sign up for diet plans in January. More people start reading their Bibles. More people listen to Dave Ramsey.
But guess what happens in February? More people stop going to the gym. More people give up on their diets. More people stop reading their Bibles.
Now, as a pastor, I can tell you that I really don’t care whether or not you exercise more. I mean, I do, but I don’t. I can’t give you any advice on quitting smoking. I’m all for it, but whether you smoke or not makes zero difference in your spiritual life. And while I can point you to biblical principles about money, I will never be an expert on how to manage your money.
What I do care about is that you grow in your Christian maturity. That’s why we are beginning the year talking about spiritual disciplines. My prayer is that a commitment to grow in Christ isn’t just a new year’s resolution.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews had a lot to say about spiritual maturity. Let’s look at our passage together. This is Hebrews 5, beginning in verse 13. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray…
I want to start with a little background on the book of Hebrews. It was written around AD 67-70, so about thirty years or so after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven. No one knows who wrote Hebrews, but since it is called Hebrews, we can assume the primary audience is Jewish Christians. In other words, some of the very first to believe the gospel about Jesus.
And let’s remember the last thing Jesus said to His disciples when He left the earth. He said, in Matthew 28,
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I’ll be with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Jesus didn’t say “go and make believers, or go and make church members.” He said, Go and make disciples. And notice, He didn’t say, “baptize them, then give yourself a pat on the back and declare mission accomplished.” He said baptize them and teach them to obey everything I’ve taught you.”
So fast forward to the book of Hebrews. A generation after Jesus gives this command, and what do we find?
A bunch of members. A bunch of baby Christians.
The writer has just laid down some of the most complicated teaching in the entire New Testament, about how Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizidek. And in verse 13, it’s like the writer stops himself and says, “You know, I know you guys aren’t tracking with me.” (preachers and teachers can tell that, you know). He says, “I would love to unpack this with you, but y’all ain’t getting’ it.” Verse 11 says, that they have become “dull of hearing.” That’s actually one of the nicer translations. The NIV says, “you don’t even try to understand,” and the CSB says, “You’re too lazy to understand.”
Remember these are Christians. He’s not saying they have given up on God; he’s saying they have given up on moving forward in spiritual maturity. Did you know you can be a Christian and give up on growing spiritually? It’s possible to be at church every weekend and no longer be trying to grow closer to Jesus.
And friends, that’s not normal. Look at what the writer says, in verse 12: “By this time you ought to be teachers.” Circle that phrase “you ought to” and realize the first truth from this Scripture:
We expect living things to mature.
The writer naturally expects a level of Christian maturity from the Hebrews, just as a parent expects their child to one day graduate from baby food to solid food. In fact, that’s exactly the image the writer uses. He says, “You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature…”
Living things are supposed to grow up, right? We all have milestones that we chart with our kids—turning over. Pulling up. Walking. First words. Teething. Potty training. The list goes on. We listen to the doctor tell us our child is in the 95th percentile for length, or weight. We take a picture on the first day of school. We chart growth.
So what are the marks of spiritual maturity? Years ago I was leading a Bible study on 1 Corinthians with a group of adults, and the topic one night was the marks of spiritual maturity. I had three questions up on the whiteboard:
1. What are the marks of spiritual maturity?
2. How long does it take?
3. Do you consider yourself spiritually mature?
I wrote their responses in one column on a whiteboard. The answers to the first question were along the lines of developing the Fruit of the Spirit, developing hunger for God’s word, practicing spiritual disciplines of prayer and Bible study and so forth. When I asked about how long it takes, responses were all variations on the theme of “Well, it’s an ongoing process.”
Then, when I got to the third question, very few adults were willing to say, “Yes, I am spiritually mature.” One senior adult in the group put it this way: “Well, even the Apostle Paul said he had not already obtained the goal or was already perfect (see Philippians 3:12-14), so how could I say I’m spiritually mature?”
Then I changed the question. I said, “So, what if instead of a group of Christians, we were a group of biologists, trying to decide when an animal was biologically mature? What would be on the list?”
This time, the list was pretty short:
• No longer depends on mother’s milk
• Capable of reproducing
Now do you see the connection? Sometimes we overthink “spiritual maturity.” But it really comes down to two things: “Can you feed yourself solid food, and are you reproducing.” Jesus covered the “reproducing” part in the Great Commission—go and make disciples. And the writer of Hebrews is dealing with the solid food part here. He’s saying, “You should be off the bottle by now and on to steak. You need to grow up spiritually. Every time someone offends you in the slightest way, you get hurt and take it personally. The only time you open your Bible is when someone else is reading from it at church. When you’re challenged out of your comfort zone at church, you go find another church. And if someone calls you to share your faith and tell other people about Jesus, you claim that you don’t know the gospel well enough to share it with someone else.
Now, here’s what I know about you: You don’t really want to be that way. You really desire a deeper faith. You don’t want to get ticked off at the drop of a hat. You don’t want to get stressed out by small stuff. You want to be kind and forgiving and secure in who you are as God’s son or daughter. You don’t want to be devastated every time someone critiques you. You want to be full of joy and for people to say that they look up to us.
The first thing we need to know is that all the stuff we want for our own lives, God wants for us, too. When the writer of Hebrews says, “By this time you ought to” be doing such and such, it’s like the pediatrician saying, “hey—you’re not hitting the percentile of development that we should reasonably expect at this stage.”
So what do we do about it? Hebrews 6:1 says, “Let us move forward into maturity.” It is normal for living things to mature. And in verse 14, the writer of Hebrews shows us how it happens.
Look at verse 14: But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
It’s actually a little easier to understand in the NIV:
But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
The passage says trained themselves. Mature believers take responsibility for training themselves. Not their pastor, not their parents, not their small group leader, but themselves. So that’s the second point. Point one, Expect to mature. Point two:
Stop trying and start training.
I want to clarify that when it comes to receiving Christ, it is completely God’s work. We can’t do anything to be saved. But when it comes to growing up in our faith, we absolutely have a role to play.
Think about the difference between a rowboat, motorboat and a sailboat. While we have a really important role in our spiritual maturity, it’s not all up to us to move forward. God IS the one who actually enables us to grow. At the same time, it’s not like we can just turn on some engine and expect God to make us grow automatically. So our job is more like a sailboat. We are to put ourselves in a place and schedule our lives in a way that God meets us and moves us towards him.
Here is a huge point for us to grasp if we are going to grow in spiritual maturity. We need to realize there is an immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something. Training is required for any significant challenge in your life, and while it’s difficult, training always leads to more joy, more fulfillment.
Listen to what the Bible has to say about spiritual maturity and training:
• “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” – 1 Timothy 4:7-8
• “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Training methods used to grow in your faith are called spiritual disciplines. Over the next few weeks, we are going to look at some of those spiritual disciplines. They are valuable because they enable us to do what we could not do with willpower alone. Disciplines like reading the Bible and prayer. The Bible is the primary way that God speaks to you, and prayer is the primary way you speak to God.
A disciplined person is not someone who exercises a lot of discipline. A disciplined person is someone who can do the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit.
Spiritually speaking, the goal is not to calculate how many verses we read or how much time we pray but to use the Bible and prayer as opportunities for God to speak to us and to grow us up.
A disciplined lover of Jesus is someone who discerns when laughter, gentleness, silence, healing words or prophetic indignation is called for and offers it promptly, effectively and lovingly.
Here are a couple methods for training in any discipline.
1. Decide that you are going to train.
You can’t drift into spiritual training. You must decide to train.
[Josh— 4th grade walk]
If I am going to grow spiritually, it does not happen on accident. It’s from intentionality.
2. Get a training plan.
You need to set some goals. The physical training industry is a billion-dollar business. The #1 thing they will give you is a schedule. They first will give you basic fitness steps like exercise, getting enough sleep and eating right. Then they normally ask, “Do you have any specific goals you want to work on, as well?” The same is true spiritually. There are some basic spiritual habits that are good for all Christians, no matter where you are in your spiritual journey.
3. Get some workout buddies.
In 2013 I ran my first marathon. And it was a miserable experience. I hated the long training runs. So when I started training for my second marathon in 2014, I joined a running group. What a difference that made! [vamp on this…]
The word we often use for this spiritually is accountability. Christianity was never meant to just be an individual experience. Around here, the best way to find spiritual accountability is to get in a small group.
This can also take place in your family. Great questions to ask around the dinner table are, “What have you been reading in the Bible lately?” or “How can we be praying for each other?”
4. Take a first step.
One of my heroes of this pandemic is a British War veteran named Tom Moore. Back at the beginning of April, Captain Tom heard a story about how the British National Health Service was running out of funds to fight the coronavirus pandemic. So Captain Tom got an idea. His 100th birthday was at the end of the month, and he told his family members that by the time he turned 100, he intended to walk 100 laps around his backyard garden. He said, “If I could find 10 people who would donate a pound per lap (a pound is about $1.30), we could raise a thousand pounds for the NHS.
So Captain Tom got ten of his children and grandchildren and nephews and nieces to pledge a pound a lap. But then his daughter in law put the challenge online, and it went viral. The result was that by the time Captain Tom walked his 100th lap, he had raised over 39 MILLION pounds for the British National Health Service.
Since then, Captain Tom has become the oldest person to ever be on the cover of GQ magazine. He’s gained over 350,000 Twitter followers. He had the number one son on the British pop charts. He’s written a book called “Tomorrow will be a good day.” And in July, Captain Tom was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
When Captain Tom was interviewed about his experience, they asked him how he was able to do what he did. Look at his response: “The first step was the hardest, After that, I got into the swing of it and kept on going.”
When you take a step of faith, it always grows more faith in you. It’s why Jesus says faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. When you take a step of faith, it doesn’t stay the size of a mustard seed for long.
So I want to challenge you to take a step of faith this year.
Here are a few great first faith steps.
Receive Christ
Set a date to be baptized.
Start reading the Bible on your own.
Set aside several minutes to pray daily.
Begin tithing.
Invite a friend to church.
Join a small group
One last thing that is really the biggest step that goes unseen.
5. Move from “got to” to “get to.”
God’s ultimate goal is not that you would just obey him but that you would love him, and obedience would overflow out of that. God is the only one that can do this transformational work within us where we are so blown away by what God has done for us that our only response is to live for him.
Hebrews 12:1-3:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Our ultimate inspiration has to be Jesus. It has to start with him. It’s not all about moving toward an arbitrary line of spiritual maturity; it’s about moving toward a person. Toward Jesus. He left a throne in heaven in exchange for a cross on Calvary to make it possible for us to get close to him. When we really start to get this, then our spiritual disciplines move from something we “got to” do to something we “get to” do. That changes everything.
Understand that God wants you to grow in spiritual maturity.
Stop trying and start training. Allow God to move your pursuit of him from something you’ve got to do to something you get to do.
Let’s pray.
