"Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is! - Matthew 6: 22-23 (NLT)
We are seeing the growth of myopic Christians. Shortsighted to only want to believe what they have chosen to follow. Don't quote the Bible to me! You can present them with the soundness of Scripture only to be rebuked for "sowing discord" or some other useless trite Christianism they have gleaned along the way. Recently a mega church pastor was caught spending church funds to cheat his way onto the best seller list and the people flocked to defend it - instead of defend what is right. The amount of pastor worship and church worship is outpacing the growth of true God worship. We must be willing to listen to the truth if it is to ever take any root in our lives.
Next in the key verses the Hebrews are admonished for being stagnant. You have been believers so long you ought to be teaching others but instead you are still in need of the basic things of Gods Word. Wow; what an indictment! Yet what do we see around modern Christendom today? Growth is now measured in service to the church building instead of personal spiritual maturity. Spiritual babies crawling around on the floor. The worst is we seem sometimes to be unable to even discern what is good spiritual milk and what is spoiled. I remember a congregant of Joel Osteen once declare that "Pastor Joel gives me just what I need to get back to him next Sunday." What a defeated life! Yet it is not surprising since the only time you tend to see the Word of God in an Osteen sermon is when he makes you hold it up before he preaches. He is on record as saying that he does not bring Scripture in until the end and he is "OK with that." Instead what you get is a half hour of funny stories, hokey anecdotes, positive confession, and humanistic motivational speaking. You may leave there feeling better but your spirit just becomes duller. This is not to just pick on Joel because it is what is replicated throughout the landscape of churches across America. It is what sells - so they market it. Men in thousand dollar suits telling you how much God wants to give you your own thousand dollar suit.
The key verses close with important reminders for us today. We cannot know how to do what is right as long as we remain on milk. As long as we keep our sword dull. Do we honestly think we will attain any maturity hearing the word of God for one half hour each Sunday? There is nothing duller in the kingdom of God than Sunday morning Christians. As spiritual babies we become easy targets for the many lies and myths being offered to us each day. That is how we start to accept the little leaven here and there. That is how we see spiritual quacks calling themselves prophets and apostles generating such large followings. That is how prosperity and cheap grace continue to grow. That is how something as clearly unbiblical as holy laughter, was so widely accepted. No beloved, we need to move on to solid food.
Solid food is for the mature. As the key verses teach us, there is a skill that separates spiritual infancy from spiritual maturity. That is the skill to be able to recognize the difference between right and wrong. In the ESV, those words become good and evil. That is what discernment is beloved. It is the ability to determine what is from God and what is not. What is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is evil. It is not contingent upon anything we naturally possess. It is not based upon our feelings or understanding. It is not based upon our perceptions. It is based upon the only thing that never changes, God's Word. As the key verses teach us, this skill is gained through training. We need to be found in training in the Word of God. I remember watching an interview last month with a figure skating couple who had just won the gold and they said it was a culmination of 19 years of training! Could you imagine! That is 19 years of training and preparation for that one moment in time. Athletes will all tell you that the championships are won during the training; where you learn to discipline yourself. Well beloved, we are running a race according to the Bible so that we might earn the prize from Almighty God. That race requires training so that we can become more disciplined according to what God has told us. That training is conducted within the pages of the Word of God. Through this training we will move from milk to spiritual meat. We will not be tossed to and fro from every wind of doctrine that comes along. We will know better. We will know God. We will discern.
Reverend Anthony Wade - March 11, 2014
