Continuing with:
I Peter 2:2a
"As new born babes, (see the illustration? Just like a newly born infant, a human infant.) desire the sincere milk of the word,…"
We as believers, start out as newborn babes desiring the sincere milk of the Word. The principles, as Paul said in Hebrews, of the Word of God, the very foundations, the basics. And what’s the purpose to be? That we grow. Now babies don’t stay on milk. There comes a point in time when they can handle more solid food, because it’s a growth process. Well, the Bible is the same way. You start out with the basics and you grow in your desire and your knowledge. It's when this hasn't happened that we're to sit back and ask, why not? What's wrong or missing and what's needed? Alright verse 3.
Peter 2:3
"If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." What is the Lord? Gracious!
When you begin to taste of the goodness of God, it just whets your appetite. Now we’ve got to come back to Hebrews, so back to chapter 5. Remember, the whole connotation is again, that instead of being ready to teach the Word to others, most believers are still on the milk bottle, and not ready for strong meat. As soon as you start talking some of the deep things of Scripture what do they do? They say, "I can’t understand that anyway, it’s over my head." Well, whose fault is that? It’s their own. They're not listening to God our the God head in us.
The reason these deep things go over their heads is that they haven’t taken the time to study the simpler things and to progress. Just like in our secular education, it’s a direct parallel. Would you take a kid and put him in a calculus or a physics class as a teacher if he never mastered fourth and fifth grade arithmetic? Of course not! That would be impossible. And as our whole secular education is a progressive thing to bringing or training up our young people to the place where they can comprehend the deeper concepts of whatever discipline. This is where we need the Holy Spirit because it is He that is given as our Trainer, Teacher, Guide and Tutor while we're in the elementary phase of our spiritual life. We have this benefit which Israel did not while she was under the tutor of the Law. Remember that All the Law does is convict us of sin and now He reveals Christ to us throughout the Old Testament up through and including Acts chapter 11. Because of how the Holy Spirit does His work in us.
As a child in school grows and moves on from the elementary stages of education so must the spiritual child of God move forward to the deeper things of Christ and God.
Now then, let’s move on to verse 13 of Hebrews chapter 5.
Hebrews 5:13a
"For every one that useth milk…"
They most likely, are still on Christ’s earthly ministry. At least let’s hope maybe they’ve gotten that far. They understand that Jesus of Nazareth had a ministry, and His miracles and so forth, but that’s as far as they can go. All they know is just simply His earthly ministry, and consequently, they are not knowledgeable in the Word of righteousness. In other words, they have not made or entered that grade in school yet. They're still in need of being taught that level of education. But the teachers can't teach them because they don't know it either. They believe that all they have is all they need or that it's all there is and they'll fight to the death defending that, not realizing their lack of spiritual knowledge. They thereby remain practical or earthy in their thinking not having the mind of Christ. They have not learned dependency on the Holy Spirit to bring them into the deeper things of God. For only the Spirit can speak to spirit, but these depend on the words of men instead. So therefore it's not a spiritual training but on mind or head knowledge. And this does nothing for their walk of Faith.
Most of the deeper concepts come from the pen of the Apostle Paul, and I imagine that the vast majority of church members know nothing of those concepts. For example, the first one that comes to my mind is that the old Adamic nature is bent to sin. "We’re not sinners because we sin, but rather we sin because we’re sinners." Most people don’t even know what I’m talking about, and Paul enlightens us on that subject.
You see, the old Adam-Satan-child nature that we’re born with, is hell-bent. And the only way you can overcome that is by the regeneration brought about by the power of God. And once we’re regenerated, then we should seek to understand these spiritual concepts, but too many people/teachers/preachers are afraid of them and refuse to learn them.
Most people think that once we're born again or regenerated that we should automatically understand spiritual concepts. We're just not equipped to discern between the Old and New and therefore we combine them, and that is wrong. This is why Paul emphasized to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:15) to rightly divide the word of Truth. And we'll read in Hebrews about the two edged sword used to cut into or divided both bone and marrow. Jesus also used the old cloth and new cloth and the old wine skin and new wine to reveal the same concept.
Most Church members can only rehearse Christ’s earthly ministry. I mean, they’ve heard that in Sunday School for years and they know that pretty much, but beyond that, they just don’t know. When it comes to end-time events as we see them rolling up around us, most people don’t have a clue as to what all this is about. They’ve never gotten off the milk bottle. They’ve never gotten any further than the Old Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then Paul goes on to say here in Hebrews:
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