June 11/23 Maturing Our Souls - Hebrews 5:11- 6:3

Today we are continuing our series based on the book of Hebrews. We will be reflecting on Hebrews 5:11-6:3 Maturing Our Souls. It’s easy to slip into complacency about our faith, doing all the right things, but never really engaging our faith in deeper ways. Sometimes we will depend on others to make sure we’re learning more about the Bible and God, but we don’t do the hard work of figuring out what that means in our day to day lives. The writer challenges the people to become more mature in their faith, to be able to eat solid food rather than being content with milk.

Transcript

Maturing Our Souls

Hebrews 5:11-6:3

This letter to the Hebrews is meant to get us thinking more deeply about who Jesus is and how he shapes our faith and lives. Faith is not just believing the right things; faith needs to be active and practiced in our daily lives and how we interact with the world. He’s echoing James, who wrote, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” 

The writer to the Hebrews is concerned about people in the church who’ve once been passionate and serious about their faith but who have lost that passion and began to take their faith and God for granted. C.S Lewis warns of this dullness of the soul in The Screwtape Letters, a series of letters from a senior to a junior demon advising him on how to draw people away from God. At one point the senior demon writes, “Your job is to make the person acquiesce in the present low temperature of his spirit and gradually become content with it, persuading himself that it is not so low after all. In a week or so you will be making him doubt whether the first days of his Christianity were no, perhaps, a little excessive…A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.” I’ve had parents tell me that the excitement of their teens after service projects and mission trips is all fine and well, but that it’s good it wears off after a while so that they can concentrate on getting a real job in the real world. 

As you read this part of the letter, there’s a sense of frustration creeping in here. He’s got so much to share with them yet, but he’s starting to wonder if he should even bother; he’s wondering if they’ll even understand what he’s about to share with them. Our Bible is very polite in how it translates this verse, “it’s hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand,” a more literal translation is, “it’s hard to make it clear to you because you’re lazy or sluggish.” There’s a lack of effort among them in continuing to learn more about Jesus and growing deeper in their relationship and faith in Jesus. 

The writer to the Hebrews is concerned about people in the church who’ve once been passionate and serious about their faith but who’ve lost that passion and began to take their faith and Jesus for granted. C.S Lewis warns of this dullness of the soul in The Screwtape Letters, a series of letters from a senior to a junior demon advising him on how to draw people away from God. At one point the senior demon writes, “Your job is to make the person acquiesce in the present low temperature of his spirit and gradually become content with it, persuading himself that it is not so low after all. In a week or so you will be making him doubt whether the first days of his Christianity were no, perhaps, a little excessive…A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.” It’s rather a sad the letter writer needs to challenge them on their attitude to Jesus. If we’re honest, Hebrews is just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. Faith is rooted in a trust and obedience relationship with Jesus, and this kind of a relationship takes effort. 

“By this time you ought to be teachers, yet you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid milk.” Ouch! John Stott, talking about the lack of people sharing their faith, writes, “Nothing hinders evangelism today more than the widespread loss of confidence in the truth, relevance, and power of the gospel.” We may have accepted the gospel, but we’ve accepted it only as a promise of a future in heaven for ourselves, confident we’re saved because we believe in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sin, his resurrection, and the forgiveness of our sin, but then we set it aside so we can live in the world according to the world’s way. Too many followers of Jesus don’t work at seeing the world at a deeper level. The gospel is given to us to help us understand God’s universe, the foundation from where we interpret history, the present, and the future. As Christopher Wright says, “Basically, they have “added Jesus” to provide a happy ending to an otherwise unaltered personal and cultural story.” 

The entire Biblical story is the gospel story; creation is rooted in God creating order out of chaos, humanity is created to be in relationship with God and to develop the potential in creation according to God’s design. Sin ruptures our relationship with God, so Jesus comes to bring salvation and healing and to set us on his way, bringing order out of the chaos sin creates, bringing healing and hope, being the blessing to the world God called Abraham to be. The gospel is not about escaping this world to get to heaven, it’s about this world and life here; it’s about sharing the gospel story of forgiveness, hope, and renewal found in Jesus and his way; it’s about living out the hope and healing that comes through Jesus so the places the Spirit leads us into begin to experience the gospel. 

Why do you come on Sunday mornings? To worship God. Another thing I hear is that many of you come to be fed. Nothing wrong with that, and we get fed in many ways, from the worship, the fellowship, and from the sermon. We’re blessed with much biblical knowledge and have so much knowledge at our fingertips, and still the church is struggling in North America, so more knowledge doesn’t seem to be enough. The writer of Hebrews challenges the people, “You ought to be teachers.” Do you come on Sunday, or go to any Bible study with the goal is learning in order to teach someone else, or is it all about you learning more, not bothering to pass on what you’re learning. Who are you teaching the gospel truths to, who are you mentoring in the faith?

The writer talks about solid food for the mature, those who by constant use, have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. They have basic knowledge of Jesus; the knowledge of repentance and faith, baptism and laying on of hands, of resurrection and eternal life, but now it’s time for something more. It’s the constant use part that gives us a hint to what being mature is. Bible study, praying, meditation, and learning more help us learn about Jesus and faith, but they don’t make us mature. We learn so we can teach others. Mature comes from the word “teleion” which means perfection as our end goal; meaning that we’re becoming the people God has created us to be. Mature looks like the fruit of the Spirit, like Paul’s definition of love as found in his first letter to the Corinthians, like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and shaping our values and lives by them.

Maturing our souls happens as we take the foundational truths to interpret our culture and apply them to engage our culture as followers of Jesus; engaging the world through gospel lens. The word practice is the word “gymnazo” where we get our word gymnasium from, a place to practice and train. Training is about doing something repeatedly, guided by coaches so that we can become skilful at whatever we’re training to accomplish. Practicing studying our culture with gospel lens takes training: Sunday worship together, studying Scripture, prayer, and seriously inviting the Holy Spirit to take charge of our hearts and minds. This week at our worship meeting, it was wondered if we should address Pride month here in Lacombe, and I will admit that my first reaction was to resist as it creates conflict, but as I reflected, prayed, I recognized we fall into identifying the LGBTQ+ community the same way our culture does; that their gender and sexuality is their primary identity. 

Gospel shaped engagement with the LGBTQ+ community begins with recognizing that each person is created in the image of God, the primary way we should see them. They’re among the people Jesus calls us to go out into the world to share the gospel with. Peter writes in his second letter, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” When we look at how Jesus interacted with those who sinned, such as the woman caught in adultery, we see Jesus first protecting her, challenging her accusers, and then lifting her up, telling her he’s not going to judge her, but he also commands her to go and sin no more. We also need the world to call us out on our sins, which we often find hard to see in ourselves.

Mature looks like doing hard things, entering the messiness and hardness of life with a soul shaped by deep love and commitment to God and love for our neighbours. It means studying our culture through the lens of Scripture, meeting with our neighbours to hear their stories, many with hard stories of brokenness, and feeling their hurt; listening to their stories of loneliness, of seeking love and acceptance. As you listen, you’ll begin to recognize opportunities to speak Jesus’ invitation to come to him and rest, to share his love for them, shown in Jesus’ willingness to die for us so we can have new life; sharing with them Jesus’ way, inviting them to journey with us into holiness, turning together from our sin and trusting in him and his way. 

God uses real life challenges and struggles to deepen our faith in him. Maturity recognises that everything God has created is potentially redeemable. All of life is about faith, learning how to live our faith in Jesus out together is how we gain a mature faith.