About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 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, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

Hebrews 5:11-6:3 ESV

In 2 Samuel 11, we read one of the most tragic stories within the Old Testament. After David’s kingdom has been established, he decides to remain in Jerusalem while his armies go off to war. That neglect of his kingly duty facilitated his sight from his palace of the wife of one of his soldiers as she was bathing. After sleeping with the woman, she became pregnant, and David’s attempt to cover up his sin eventually led to him murdering her husband, who was one of his most loyal soldiers.

In the first seven verses of chapter 12, we read how God rebuked David’s sin through the prophet named Nathan:

And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

Nathan said to David, “You are the man!

Reading this, we can safely say that David was not called a man after God’s heart because he was sinless. Instead, when David sinned, he poured out his heart in repentance to God, which is precisely what he did after this sin when he wrote Psalm 51.

I bring this up because the text before is very much a rebuke. Like Nathan did with David, the author of Hebrews is pointing our lazy listening and our infantile immaturity. Therefore, as we hear the Word of the LORD, will we respond in repentance like David?

YOU NEED MILK, NOT SOLID FOOD // VERSES 11-12

In the first ten verses of chapter 5, the author of Hebrews began his discussion of Jesus as our great high priest, which will encompass chapters 5-10 of his sermon-letter. After first describing the sympathy and appointment of the Old Testament high priests, he described the appointment and sympathy of Jesus as our great high priest. In verse 6, the author established this exposition in Psalm 110:4 (“The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”), which must have been one of the most perplexing verses for the Jews throughout the years. After all, Melchizedek is famously only mentioned one other time in the Old Testament, where in Genesis 14 Abram gives a tithe to him as a priest of the Most High God. Thus, with such scarce information about that ancient king of Salem, Psalm 110:4 must have been most mysterious, likely even to David himself as he penned those words. Thus, when the author wrote in verse 10 of Jesus “being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek,” his Jewish readers must have been joyous to finally have that great mystery explained to them. Yet while it is the author’s intent to expound the importance of Jesus’ being ordained into the priesthood of Melchizedek, he pauses his exposition again in order to make an extended exhortation to his readers.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. Although the author is ready to venture into this theological deep dive, he pauses to express his concern that his readers are not able to properly digest it. They have become dull of hearing. Dennis Johnson notes:

The preacher is about to embarrass his hearers for their infantile incapacity to “digest” the solid food he intends to serve. But theirs is not a case of arrested development. It is worse: they “have become” sluggish, relapsing from an earlier, healthier spiritual state, of which he will remind them (Heb. 6:9-10; 10:32-34). A confluence of external opposition and internal misgivings about the sufficiency of Christ threatens to pull them back from their prior confidence and courage.[1]

Indeed, the fact that their hearing is dulled and sluggish makes sense of why the author has placed so much emphasis upon God’s Word and the hearing of it. Of course, he began the sermon-letter by contrasting how God has spoken (1:1-2). Then in the first major exhortation he warned that “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (2:1). The second warning was then centered around the words of Psalm 95, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (3:7-8, 15; 4:7). His readers were in danger of doing exactly that through their own laziness in listening.

Verse 12 describes how the author has diagnosed their spiritual and selective deafness: For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.

First, he notes that his readers should be teachers by now. Some have wondered how such a blanket statement can fit together with James 3:1’s warning that “not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” James is warning against those who desire the authority of being a teacher without fully comprehending the responsibility that goes alongside it. The author of Hebrews, however, is not speaking of teaching as an office but as a natural outflow of maturity in the Christian faith. Paul commended such teaching in Titus 2:3-5:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

So, it ought to be with all Christians. The more mature have a responsibility to teach the less mature, and no one is exempt from that work. That sort of teaching, we could also call it discipling, is what the author of Hebrews has in mind. His readers ought to have been mature enough to teach and disciple others; however, he chides: you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

Here the author is most graphic because the Greek translated “the basic principles” actually means something like, “the ABC’s of the beginning of the words of God.”[2]

Thus, even though they had been Christians long enough to lead others in the faith, they were still at a preschool reading level, not yet having the alphabet mastered. If that were not enough, the writer takes things one step further, inferring that they are not just preschoolers but infants: you need milk, not solid food. For at least the first six months, a baby ought to be able to grow and thrive solely on breastmilk. Beyond that point, milk increasingly becomes a supplement as the baby depends more and more on solid food. Spiritually, the readers were still in infantile dependency upon milk, even though they should have been mature enough to give that spiritual milk to true infants in the faith, that is, to new believers.

UNSKILLED CHILDREN // VERSES 13-14

Verses 13-14 explain how the readers and we today become dull of hearing and infantile in the faith:

For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Those who live on milk are unskilled in the word of righteousness, keeping them in perpetual spiritual childhood. What exactly is the word of righteousness? To me, it seems that in 5:12 and 13 and 6:1 the author is using different wordings for the same idea. First, he calls it the basic principles of the oracles of God, then he calls it the word of righteousness, and lastly he calls it the elementary doctrine of Christ. Each is referring to the basics of the gospel as revealed to us in Christ, the embodied Word, and Scripture, the written Word. Thus, those who live on spiritual milk are unskilled in the Scriptures; therefore, they are childish in the gospel.

Mature believers, however, are not unskilled in the word of righteousness; rather, they are their own powers of discernment, which as the writer notes is the ability to distinguish between good and evil, trained through God’s holy Word that the LORD has ordained to discern “the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (4:12). It is that trained and discerning mind that makes them mature enough for solid food, to rightly handle matters beyond the basics.

Lest we look in judgment upon the original audience, we have no moral high ground. As Richard Phillips writes:

The recipients of this letter were like many Christians today who think that theology is a waste of time. What difference does it make, people ask, whether God is a Trinity or not, whether Christ’s righteousness comes by imputation or by infusion, and whether regeneration comes before faith or after? What is important, they say, is that we get along with each other. Then they cite passages commending a childlike faith, as if that were the same as a childish faith, that is, one that is indifferent to or ignorant of the Word of God.

This attitude is so prevalent that perhaps the majority of professing believers try to nourish themselves on the weak diet of milk alone. Not that there is anything wrong with milk. It is just that those who are no longer babies require a stronger diet if they are to grow. Yet we are living in a time when most church members are immensely ignorant of the Bible and its doctrines. Evangelicals heartily agree that the Bible is true, but they simply don’t take the time to learn what it teaches. Recent surveys show that most professing Christians cannot, for instance, list half of the Ten Commandments, cite the names of the four Gospels, or articulate what is meant by the term “justification.” They do not know who Abraham was or what Paul wrote in the Book of Romans. Asked if the Bible says, “God helps those who help themselves,” 80 percent of self-described “evangelical Christians” agreed (actually, it was Benjamin Franklin). Pollster George Gallup summarizes the situation today, citing “the glaring lack of knowledge about the Bible, basic faith, with many people not knowing what they believe, or why.” No wonder, then, that the secular culture is unimpressed by teachings in which we ourselves are so disinterested.[3]

Perhaps the greatest benefit of homeschooling so far has been the humbling effect of realizing how many basic pieces of knowledge I have failed to commit to memory. The same has been true of our journey through the 1689 Baptist Confession. Though the archaic language can make things more difficult for us today, we tend to view such things as theological deep dives. Yet the 1689 was written by pastors for their congregations to help clarify the basics of the confession to which they were holding (4:14). Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress are two other great examples of introductory works to the Christian faith that we now elevate today into the classification of deep theology. Of course, the fact that they explain the basics of Christianity does not negate their status as great works of theology; it only means that we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we are venturing into deep theological waters. Indeed, most great works of theology were written for the everyday Christian, not for academics. Our present trouble is that we are often too lazy to even receive those forms of milk. But importantly, infants only grow through milk; therefore, we need to properly consume milk in order to grow into eating solid food. Likewise, if your theological reading only consists of devotionals like Jesus Calling, you will stay spiritually malnourished. Use devotionally the 1689, Pilgrim’s Progress, Calvin’s Little Book on the Christian Life, or any number of other great works for helping us to digest the spiritual milk of God’s Word.

Indeed, we would do well to recall Paul’s great words in Ephesians 4:11-16:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

The great danger of remaining in spiritual childhood is that it makes us prone to be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” That is why powers of discernment are needed. We live surrounded by spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places that long to entice the wicked desires within our own hearts until we are securely sucked down into the abyss of eternal dying alongside them. Our King has given us His Word for us to use as a soldier uses a sword, warring in this evil day, yet all too many Christians use it as a divine self-help book, perhaps for growing in patience whenever the coffee shop line is too long.

Should we be surprised to find that much of the church has been tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine? Biblical illiteracy is not merely correlated with the moral degradation around us; I would argue that it is largely the cause of it. We forfeited our value of marriage long before gay marriage was legalized by passing over cohabitation and making light of divorce. We forfeited our belief in the difference between men and women as men rejected the responsibility of household headship and women bought into the feminist lie that career-building is more significant than homemaking. Notice that marriage and complementarianism are not necessarily essential to the gospel; they enter the category of solid food rather than milk. Therefore, our enemy has attacked the church on those very fronts because we have failed to be fully equipped for theological and intellectual warfare.

As anti-intellectualism became all the rage in the 1800s particularly, Christians began to abandon the importance of growing in sound doctrine in favor of just loving Jesus. Unfortunately, deceitful schemes from men like Darwin, Marx, and Freud came on the scene around the same time, and we have been on the slippery slope ever since. Thankfully, in the Lord’s mercy, much is becoming so plainly demonic that our drifting into wicked waters is becoming much more evident each day. Let us, therefore, grow up in everyway into Christ, which is what our remaining verses describe.

IF GOD PERMITS // VERSES 1-3

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

Leaving the elementary doctrine of Christ to go on into maturity is a summary and restatement of the previous verses, and the author then follows with what some of those elementary doctrines are. Indeed, he also calls them a foundation. Many scholars believe that these six doctrines were essentially an ancient outline for catechizing new Jewish believers.

First, they were taught of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God. These two form the beginning of our coming to Christ. In order to find salvation in Christ, we must turn in repentance away from our sin and away from our own futile efforts to please God, and we must embrace faith in Jesus as our only Savior and Redeemer.

Next, they received instruction about washings, the laying on of hands. This could refer to baptism and various practices of laying on hands that we find in Acts. The fact that washings is plural is probably best answered by John Brown as referring to the how Jesus’ baptism compared with the John’s baptism and the ritual washings of the old covenant. Martin notes of laying on of hands:

The laying of hands is a rite associated with blessing, symbolizing the divine conveying of the blessing in view. Jacob did this in blessing Joseph’s sons (Gen. 48:13-20). It also appears on the occasion of our Lord’s blessing of children (Matt. 19:13-15); Mark 10:16) and in conjunction with his healing the sick (Mark 6:5; Luke 4:40; cf. Acts 28:8). It also was employed in setting apart persons to the office and work of the ministry and even in the conveying of spiritual gifts (Num. 27:18, 23; Deut. 34:9; Acts 6:6; 13:3; 19:6; 1 Tim. 4:14; 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:16).[4]

Finally, the last two doctrines to be taught were the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. These, of course, refer to the end of all things, for all will be resurrected, either to everlasting life or unceasingly death, and all will stand before the Judge of all the earth to receive His judgment.

These are foundational and elementary doctrines for the Christian faith. Of course, the author is in no way commanding us to abandon or move away from this foundation entirely. No, a foundation is the basis for everything that is built upon it. Yet as important as a foundation is, it does no good if a builder keeps laying a foundation and then breaking it apart in order to build another one. Ironically, that kind of focus upon the foundation keeps one from ever actually having a foundation at all.

So it is with the basics of the faith. We never outgrow our need for the gospel nor to confess and meditate upon the doctrines of the Apostles’ Creed. That is the milk that nourishes newborn believers into mature workers that properly handle “the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), and that is foundation upon which all our endeavors, including our own pilgrimage through this life, must be built. But we must also proceed to take in solid food, and we must not content ourselves with admiring the slab of our foundation. Praise the Lord that the gospel is simple enough for the youngest of children to comprehend, but it takes Scripture-saturated maturity to rightly build our lives, our households, our churches, our businesses, our cities, and our nations upon the gospel.

But stopping at the basics is a sign of immaturity rather than maturity. Therefore, we must be properly fed and equipped with the milk of God’s Word so that we may be rightly equipped to discern each new situation that comes our way. Whether it is a circumstance at work, in parenting, or in politics, our saturation in the Scriptures will train our powers of discernment to rightly know good from evil. That kind of maturity is sorely lacking. Let us be those who are growing up into the fullness of Christ.

This we will do if God permits. This is more than a pious stamp at the end of the author’s thought, like it is so easy to do with the phrase “Lord willing.” No, our growth into maturity will only be by the permission of God and by His providence. Interestingly, this actually takes us into one of those elementary doctrines that the author listed: faith toward God. This last phrase of verse 3 is a display of that faith toward God. Thus, he is encouraging us to press on to maturity by showing us how to press on into maturity, that is, by showing us how to actually live out the elementary doctrines of Christ rather than continuously resetting the foundation. After quoting 2 Samuel 10:12 (Be strong, and let us show ourselves courageous for the sake of our people and for the cities of our God; and may the LORD do what is good in His sight.), which is Joab’s word of encouragement to his brother Abishai before battle, John Piper makes the following point:

We have done all that we can do in preparation. We will fight with all our might. But in the end not we, but the Lord, will advance the victory or not. So there is where we rest: “May the Lord do what is good in his sight.”

That is where God calls you to rest this morning. Life is complex and full of uncertainties. We work hard. We make preparations. We plan. We preach. We persuade. We write. We try every way that we know to do all the good we can do for a perishing, God-profaning world. And when all is said and done, we say, “This will bear fruit, if the Lord permits.” “May the Lord do what seems good to him.”[5]

As we come to our King’s Table, let us indeed take this opportunity of reflection to see whether this text of Scripture says to us what Nathan once said to David: “You are the man.” Is this you? Have you been dull of hearing? Should you be able by now to teach younger Christians the basics of the faith but still feel insecure of them yourself? Then hear the words of 1 Peter 2:2–3: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” The path to maturity is not through rejecting this milk and choking on solid food; rather, the milk of God’s Word is the means of our maturity. It is how we taste and see that the Lord is good.

Indeed, here in the visual sermon of the Lord’s Supper, we find the elementary doctrines of Christ repeatedly displayed for us. In the crucifixion of Christ, we see the baptism with which our Lord was baptized, having God’s hand of judgment laying our sin upon Himself so that we can now receive the hand of blessing through the power of His resurrection. There in the death of Christ for our sake, we see how dead the very best of our works truly are and our only hope through repentance by faith. And as infants cry our for their mother, we cry out to Jesus to both give us Himself and to grow us to be like Himself.

---

[1] ESV Expository Commentary Vol 12, 81.

[2] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews, 149.

[3] Richard Phillips, Hebrews, 177.

[4] Robert Paul Martin, Hebrews, 278.

[5] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/let-us-press-on-to-maturity