So, all right, well, I learned something new this past week, something that was interesting, and that is that the word interesting itself wasn't invented, it wasn't in our lexicon until 1768. And that's interesting, of course, because the concept of something being interesting certainly existed before that. And there must have been some other term used to describe something that was interesting because people have always been interested in things that are interesting. And there could be some subjection involved in this, of course. I mean, I can't be the only husband in the room who is interested in things that my wife is not interested in. And there are certainly things that our wives and our children are interested in that we are not. And that's totally normal and natural. But what we have for us in our text this morning is something that I hope that we all actually find interesting, something that I hope we're all interested in. And that is, of course, God's word and his warning to us in it. the apostles' admonition to us to guard against becoming dull. Dull of hearing. In other words, that we remain interested in God's Word. We remain interested in hearing what God has to say and not becoming dull of hearing. interested in those deep truths of the gospel and their application to our daily living. And when you have become dull of hearing in that moment, you're not interested in God's word and his gospel word, his word of life. And that's a dangerous place to be. And that's what the apostle is showing us. So let's hear from God in his word. We'll begin reading at verse 11 in chapter five, and then we'll pray after we read. God's word says, 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. That ends the reading of God's sufficient, certain, and infallible word. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we are so grateful that in your divine forbearance, you have preserved your word through your prophets and your apostles, that we might benefit from knowing it today, that we don't have to search deep inside of us for a message from You that we don't have to look up in the stars or throw down a bunch of sticks on the ground to try to hear from You, the God of this universe, that we have Your inscripturated Word before us. And so we ask that You would cause us to reverently approach it, that You would help me to say what is true and right, that I could disappear behind your text, that we might hear from you this morning and be encouraged and sanctified and pointed to your beloved Son, our blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray. Amen. All right, well, young people, I have a question for you guys to kind of start out this morning, and that is, let's say that you are playing a game with a friend or maybe, you know, even just a brother or a sister and you're playing and everything is going fine, but then you do something they don't like or maybe, you know, maybe you win and they start complaining and they walk off. And so you call them a baby. call them a baby, how's that going to go? Not very good, right? I was once a kid, I know, and I have a bunch of kids now and I've broken up a number of fights, fights in which my kids come to me to tattle on one another because one of them has called another one a baby. And I know for sure there's one thing that kids don't like and that's being called a baby. And in fact, adults don't really like to be called a baby either or some equivalent term. And that's in fact why We do it sometimes, you know, to get under each other's skin. You're weak. You lack fortitude. You're a baby, essentially. And sometimes our motives aren't very pure in that. And that's a problem. But the apostle in Hebrews, here and now, he says in our passage, You are babies. And the reason is not some sinful animosity. He has a concern for their soul. And the reason he says it is because he knows them. And he says that you guys should be grown up by now. But instead, look, the apostle says you're in fact babies, you're children, you're infants. And this is far from a like a backyard insult. This was a serious assessment of their own dangerous spiritual condition. The apostle that he addresses here, those that he addresses are actually what he describes as spiritual infants. And yet that's a problem because they should be mature. By this time, they should already be mature. They should be spiritual adults, as it were. And even more, they should be, what he said, were teachers by now. And so as we saw last week, the indictment against them is that they haven't progressed healthily. They should be, you know, all the way over here, but they're still stuck back here, all things considered, all the things that God has provided for them. They should be way over here by now, but instead they're here in the back. They still have so much room to grow. And as for the apostle, this isn't just a matter of simply saying that you're spiritual babies and you should be more grown up by now, but it's okay. Like, it's not a big deal. You know, eventually you'll get there. That's not his perspective at all. In fact, the reality is that they are children when they should be mature. And that is a very, very dangerous place and condition to be in. According to the Apostle, they should be at a place where they were mature enough to handle the doctrinal and the ethical, the moral challenges that came their way and were coming their way. They should be mature enough to have a faith that was growing and persevering, not wavering and shaking all over in the face of trials. And the Apostle says, you're babies. your babies and you're in a very real danger. We saw last time that the apostle tells them what they had become, right? And that indicates that they were something else before. They were in a state before where they were one thing and then they had become something else. And what they had become caused them to be what he described as dull of hearing. They'd become slothful. They had lost interest. They'd become lazy in their hearing. of God's Word. In other words, they were not receiving what God had had for them. And the result of not receiving it, the result of that was them not then implementing it and living according to it. And he drives this home and he says it's an absolute shame because they really should have been teachers by this point. they, in other words, they should have been mature enough, they should have had enough understanding of doctrine, of truth, and of the faith, and how it needs to be lived out in life, that they could actually be explaining these things to other people who were genuinely, who were actually and legitimately infants in the faith. The newer converts, and instead the Apostle turns around and what he says to them, is therefore because of this condition, you actually need milk and not solid food. Today, we're going to get to verses 13 and 14, and where he tells us very explicitly why it is that they need this milk rather than the solid food, and where he's not happy about this at all. And verse 13 begins by saying this. for everyone who lives on milk. Well, that little word for there is just the ordinary conjunction in the Greek, but it's actually really loaded. He says that it has the force of saying like, look, you already know this. I shouldn't really have to state the obvious here, but then he's going to offer this explicit explanation of his criticism for those who he's writing to. Now when he says everyone living on milk, he goes, that concept, that goes back to what he said in the previous section in verse 12. To those who he was speaking about who needed the basic principles of the oracles of God. The person who is living on milk is only partaking of the elementary things of the oracles of God. In other words, how this all pans out. It comes together when you think of the audience and the book as a whole, that what he is saying is that milk is the fundamental basics of the Gospel, that perhaps even the elements contained in the types and shadows that the Hebrew people would have been familiar with that are contained in the Old Testament, and that they are those basic, elementary, fundamental things, things pertaining to the Gospel that they should obviously know. The commentator, F.F. Bruce, He makes a very interesting observation. And you remember the audience here, you know, they're likely there's a group of people who a church who is wavering in their faith. They're approximately 15 to 16 years old in the faith at this point in time, the oldest ones of the congregation, certainly. And, you know, that's, of course, a decent amount of time. And now on the verge of facing new crises and new persecution, they're wavering in the face of those things. And in fact, there's this incredible temptation for this Hebrew congregation to kind of back off their commitment to Christ and then maybe turn back to some of the old things of their old life. Judaism, you know, the sacrificial system, the temple and so forth, and to look back and for their own preservation, to avoid persecution, to back off their commitment and their dedication to Jesus Christ. And so F.F. Bruce, he says, And then listen to this insight that he says. He says, palatable. The intellect is never ready to entertain an idea that the heart finds unpalatable. Unfortunately, that is how a lot of people determine what they're going to believe. That's how a lot of people determine how they're going to behave even. If whether or not it's palatable to their own heart, to their own emotions. So the Apostle says to them, you're living off of milk. You've gone back to the most basic, the most elementary things that, you know, everybody agrees on. You've gone back to those basic principles that even perhaps your unbelieving Jewish neighbors would recognize as being true. He says this, And he says, That is an astonishing statement, really. That is an amazing statement. The idea of life without experience, being unskilled, unacquainted, unaccustomed, not understanding, without lack of skill in this sense and without lack of practice. It is linked, I should say, to a lack of practice. And so what he's saying is that your lack of understanding has caused you to form a lack of application in the process. Your lack of understanding has caused you then to have a lack of application and practice. Now remember, This is a willful lack of understanding that they have. It's not as if their problem is that they're fundamentally that they're not smart enough to get it or that they're just like too green in the faith. They're too new. They've had the time. They're not dumb. They've had the training. They've had the teaching. Their problem is that they're fundamentally not willing to press ahead. There's some heart issue going on. And because they're not willing to press on, they're dull. They've become more and more spiritually slow and dull, dull of hearing. And in that dullness, they find themselves unable to press ahead. And so they're unprepared. They're unskilled and dull. So they have no skill linked with the ideal practice of the Christian life. They don't have orthodoxy, which that is right teaching. And then from that, they don't have orthopraxy, which is, you know, right living. So it's all in that context of what we read in the Word of Righteousness. And this is an interesting phrase and there's been much debate about the meaning of this phrase. I think from what I was reading, about four different views are offered to explain this expression, but it really comes down to two primary views. One, that this phrase, word of righteousness, is referring to a moral righteousness. It's about morality. It's about one's own personal holiness. That is, it's a righteousness that is ethical. And others, though, would say that it's forensic. That is, in other words, it's talking about justification, that it's talking about the imputed righteousness that is ours because of Jesus. So the word of righteousness here is either, on the one hand, ethical righteousness or, on the other hand, imputed righteousness or justification, in other words. But the book of Hebrews... What's interesting about it is that righteousness is actually used pretty consistently as referring to both. And it's not like it starts with one use and then in the latter chapters, it gets to the other use. And it's like that in most books of the Bible, even. You need to pay attention to the context to see what is being described with the words that the apostles under inspiration use. But it's clear that when you read Hebrews, Hebrews is not like, for example, the Book of Romans. or Galatians, right? I mean Romans and Galatians, they focus on and they drill down specifically on justification in those early chapters. And if they flow really nicely, they begin with the majority of those early chapters focusing on justification, how one is justified, and then also what had to happen for one to be justified. And it's not till the latter chapters, the closing chapters, that there's emphasis on morality and sanctification, on Christian living. Certainly, at the heart of the Apostle Paul's theology is justification. I mean, if you look at the 13 letters, 14 letters that he wrote, it is obvious that he cares greatly about justification. But you get to Hebrews, and Hebrews doesn't just have justification front and center in the sense that Romans and Galatians does. But it's obvious that justification is not absent from the book as well. In fact, when you look at it as a whole, Justification ends up being this integral part to the larger picture. There's the better mediator. There's the better covenant and the arrival of the perfect in Jesus Christ and His priestly ministry. And so what I'm saying is that Hebrews doesn't deal with justification in an orderly manner, in a linear manner, but it is nevertheless still a vital part to understanding the big picture of the book. So let me show you a verse that bears out what I'm trying to get across here. If you turn over to chapter 10 and verse 14. You read there. And here it's explicit, but it's often not explicit like this in Hebrews. Now, justification is in that verse. We don't see the word exactly, but it's there. What word or phrase indicates what we would call justification? It's perfected for all time. That's the concept of justification, of being declared righteous. You are perfected for all time. But it's also more than that there, isn't it? This view of righteousness is more than that. And justification is cached in the light of sanctification. And so the idea is that He has once and for all justified those who are now being sanctified through His priestly office. His priestly offering, which He Himself offered up and He did so on our behalf. And so what I'm saying is that that verse does what the message of Hebrews does by and large at a number of times and in many places. And that is that it expresses the priestly ministry of Jesus in its fullness. And then what does that entail? Well, it entails that once and final act of justification whereby our sins are forgiven and Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. And with that, what comes from that, what flows from that, is also the ethical ramifications of being made right with God. So back to 5.13, the Word of Righteousness, what that is referring to there is actually, I think, both of those main views. It is the whole complex of Jesus' ministry as High Priest, which fulfills the Old Testament promises and then brings about justification and the moral, ethical transformation of those who have been justified. In other words, Whereas the word righteousness here is justification and its application to all of our life now in being sanctified by God. The context tells us this, and it's common in Hebrews. We've been seeing it. It was just a chapter ago, two chapters ago, you've been brought to blessing in Christ. Now don't harden your heart. Jesus is the source of eternal salvation for all who obey. See, so righteousness has both of these concepts caught up in it often here in Paul's language in Hebrews. The reality of their justification and then the life that flows from it. Now notice what the apostle says here, because this is really important in understanding what he's getting at. Again, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. That is a person who is not experienced in the word of righteousness. He doesn't have any practice regarding the word of righteousness. And you know, This is conveying to us something that is very, very important. And that is that justification is not only a doctrine that is to be understood and believed, but it's also something that should be experienced. And it changes you. It changes who you are. You once were lost, but now you're found. You were an enemy, but now you're a child. You were a rebel, and now you're a new creation. And the actual experience of justification happens at a moment in time where God makes a declaration regarding us that our sins are forgiven and that we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Justification in and of itself is a legal declaration that we don't actually, that we experience, but not in such a way as like we experience it with our feelings. Maybe some don't like that if we're more feelings orientated, but I mean, can you actually feel justified? Sure, you can have a piece of God that surpasses understanding, but is that constant all the time in your life? Can you feel a legal declaration? Think of it like this, you know, the person who is married, does that person feel married? they don't actually feel any different than they did months before or the day before even. But even though they don't feel any different, are they actually married? There is a covenant that says they are married, yes. And just like with justification, even though you might not feel justified, there's a covenant saying that, yes, you are justified. And then you, with a marriage, you know, you're of course married, even though you don't feel married. And then you live in a certain way in which matrimony is played out from that. But the doctrine of justification is a declaration of truth by God that says that something that we, it's something that we, once we understand it, We are to embrace it with our whole heart and then we live out of it as if it is true every single moment, no matter what we feel. It's a truth that is to be lived out and experienced. It's a truth that is to be put into practice. And the Apostle says, Because you've gone backwards, you're completely unskilled in the truth of justification as it works itself out in your daily life. Puritan pastor John Owen notes that the Word of Righteousness indicates the teaching about righteousness. See, so, What he means is that this group of people here, they actually lacked a full understanding of justification. And as a result of lacking that understanding, which they should have had by then, remember, they should be teachers, but they're not. As a result of lacking that most fundamental understanding, they were slipping back into self-righteousness. They were slipping back into works righteousness. They were slipping back into things that would put their own souls in peril. And beloved, please hear this. Please understand this. Rightly understanding justification is at the heart and the soul of what it means to live the Christian life. day in and day out. It is the grace of justification that properly motivates you unto obedience. You lose sight of the word of righteousness, the doctrine of justification. You lose sight of that and there will be spiritual regression. That's what he's saying. Justification is something that is to be understood, but then also experienced and lived out. And what does it look like when you take the doctrine of justification? You know, Christ for me. I don't go through any other mediator but the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't trust in my works. I don't look to another human being. I don't go through anyone but Christ. My faith is built on nothing less than the blood of Jesus Christ and His righteousness. When you embrace the fact that your sins are forgiven 100% for the sake of Jesus because of the shedding of His blood, when you embrace the fact that you are accepted with God because of a righteousness that is outside of yourself, freely imputed to you, when you embrace that, when you accept that, do you know what that looks like on an everyday, practical, experiential level? It looks like this. It looks like confidence in God and assurance of faith and perseverance and hope. You can't have a true confidence in God. unless you understand justification. You can't have a biblical assurance of your salvation unless you rightly understand salvation and justification. And this is where the apostle is aiming here. You won't persevere if you don't understand justification. And so here the apostle gets down to his method, his means of waking them up to the issue. Everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. More literally, since he is an infant, a child that is still nursing. That's what the Greek word there really means. It's a baby, a baby. We've got a couple of new babies in our congregation lately. It's such an amazing blessing. I mean, how many of you guys like babies? Maybe easier, who doesn't like babies? Good. Not a single hand goes up. I say there's time to repent if so. But I mean, I know people, I've heard of people who don't maybe like middle school aged kids or, you know, the dreaded millennial or whatever. But everybody's supposed to love babies. They're adorable. My oldest son, we call him a baby whisperer until they get older. Then he butts heads with them. But a baby, they're great. A baby is great. And I'll just make a very obvious statement here for you guys. When a baby is a baby, it's completely appropriate, and it's usually super cute. When a baby does baby things, nobody has a problem with that. Nobody is mad at Talia or Titus when they have to wear a diaper, right? Nobody expects them to be beyond that right now, certainly not. Nobody says, to a baby, you can just put yourself to bed because I'm too busy, I need to go watch football or something. When a baby does baby stuff, everybody thinks, okay, it's not a big deal. That's great. It's appropriate there. Certain things need to be done for them. They control your sleep schedule for a little bit. They're cute and sometimes, you know, they're a little stinky. But there's something else that is going on here that's axiomatic and that is that when an adult acts like an infant, well that's a cause for alarm and even repulsion. We've got a lot of weird, satanically evil things going on in our culture right now. It's mental illness, but it's worse. It's spiritual darkness. And so you have teens and adults dressing up as like so-called furries, like wearing an animal costume, which is cute on a baby. but not on an adult. You have a whole subset of adults that actually act like babies. I mean, really strange, bizarre things, wearing diapers, using a pacifier, drinking out of a baby bottle, sleeping in a giant crib. It's alarming and repulsive every time. It's normal for an actual baby, but absolutely inappropriate for an adult. You rightly like babies, but you wouldn't rightly like an adult who acts like a baby. And so the apostle indicates very clearly to these people You should be mature by now. You should not be what you are right now. You should be teachers by now. You should actually be rooted and grounded in Christ so much so in view of His glorious work that you should be rooted and grounded in understanding the doctrine of justification with all of its ramifications and how it impacts your life and how you are to live out of it. But yet nevertheless, here you are at a place where you are letting your feelings dictate your heart and you're going to believe what is easier out of convenience. But rather, what you should be is sound doctrinal practitioners of the word. By now, you should not be babies, but doctrinally, spiritually, ethically, you should be mature people. By the way, It's not solid food that belongs to the mature as if it's a possession, as if it's something that they have. But solid food is given as a purpose or a designation for the mature. In other words, solid food is what is given to the mature. Solid food is designed for maturity. And what is the solid food here? We talked about this last time. The solid food is that full-orbed Christ-centered biblical teaching about Jesus, His office, His work, His justification, our justification, and the application of that in every bit of life that will result in the full assurance and perseverance of Christ alone. That's the idea of solid food, taking in that which is going to build up faith. taking in that which is going to build up your spiritual muscle, taking in that which is going to cause you to persevere, taking in that which is going to give you confidence and assurance with God, taking in that which is going to shape your mind and direct your life in such a way that it will govern who you are, the decisions and the choices that you make. That's the idea of solid food. And the Apostle says it's for the mature, that is, those who have moved out of infancy and into adulthood. It is It is to be doctrinally and practically mature. It is to be theologically and ethically mature. Understand, friends, that in the Bible, there is no separation between doctrine and life, between theology and practice, between truth and ethics. They are all bound together. You cannot separate them, orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And so what the apostle wants these people to see is that solid food is for people who are doctrinally and ethically growing. They're theologically and practically growing and he goes on and he describes them as having their powers, their senses, There's something interesting about this word powers. In the Greek, it conveys the idea of sensual perception. It is a sensing of the spiritual, a spiritual discernment. And that's why the ESV translators, they add of discernment to powers, actually. That's not actually, of discernment is actually not present in the Greek. They put that there for us so it makes more sense. But it's getting there. The idea is getting there. And this word that is translated as powers or senses, depending on your translation, it's actually very popular in Greek philosophy of the time. And the Greek philosophers, they would think of this sense, this power really as an organ, an organ in the body, kind of like how the Hebrews would speak of the heart, but not mean your physical heart or strength in such a way that kind of like the idea is that you could, you know, cut a person open and then wrapped and encased in flesh and muscle would be this sense, this organ of sense. And the idea is that one's sense perception, that is a person's, and this is important, a person's moral judgment with their decision making. The mature have their senses trained. The mature have their powers of discernment trained. The mature have their muscles exercised. It's toned. It's not flabby. The mature actually make moral judgments and then follow through with that decision, implementing those things in their life with the result of a proven character. So the Apostle is making the point that although, that through a steady diet of the Word, through a steady diet of sound doctrine, of solid food and the implementation of it in everyday life, the powers of discernment are exercised. And then he says this, that it's trained by practice. trained by constant practice. These senses are exercised because of constant practice. It's habitual. And this is all, he's building a picture of what a mature believer looks like. A mature believer is somebody who actually, because of their intake of sound doctrine and the grace of God, because of their intake of the word of God, because of their intake of the word of righteousness, and they're putting that into practice in their lives, they actually, through that, end up training their powers of discernment in daily living according to the truth in such a way that they acquire Christian maturity. Donald Guthrie says, And that's generally true. Maybe it could be, you know, not always the case that sometimes God might cause a quick, abrupt growing, but generally it's a process, a habitual process. It comes from a steady participation in the means of grace. It's a pretty profound statement when you really pull all of this together. The mature are mature because they eat the solid food of the Word. And in eating the solid food of the Word, they become experienced. They become skilled in the Word of righteousness. They are rooted and grounded in Christ and His work of justification. And in turn, that truth, that doctrine that is rooted down into their hearts and their souls, that ends up shaping their moral character. And because of exercise, because of discipline and constant practice, it leads them to what? to have the ability to be able to distinguish between what is good and what is evil. And here's the danger here. Right away, we all have this instinct as believers to say, well, I can discern good and evil. I mean, I must be spiritually mature then. I think the apostle here would say pump the brakes a little bit because there's more going on here. Before you jump to the conclusion that you are really able to discern good and evil, you better have a sharp understanding of what that looks like, because discerning good and evil is not simply a matter of saying, well, I don't steal because I know that's wrong. Discerning between good and evil is not simply a matter of saying a man should not marry another man or a woman should not marry another woman. And I believe that, so I must be spiritually mature. That's not what the apostle is driving at here. Not at all. Those things, by the way, those things are the milk of the Word. That's milk. That's just the basic, ordinary stuff that anyone whose conscience is operating even at a low level can read and get. When the Apostle says that you actually have to exercise your powers of discernment here, your senses, you have to feed them and practice them according to Scripture that you can distinguish between good and evil. Understand that the idea of good and evil contains two elements to it that he's getting at, both doctrinal and moral. And biblically speaking, moral, good and evil is not always a simple thing. In the Bible, you have Thou shalt and thou shalt not. Clear statements concerning absolute command and prohibition, right? But do those statements of ethics so neatly fit together that there's no room to ask any questions? And let me be clear, sometimes there's absolutely not. I mean adultery, there's no question. Worshipping false gods, there's no question to be asked. So it's black and white. But everything is not that way. There are things that are adiaphora. There are all kinds of ethical decisions that might be situational and that don't simply fall into the category of either black or white. And for those of you who are just black and white people, I mean that absolutely drives you crazy. I know because really I'm one of them. And the reason that it drives you crazy is because you don't have to think about the stuff that might be gray. how to respond in a certain situation? Is it best to do this or to do that if both options are morally and ethically right? Is it okay to lie in this situation, like Rahab in the wall? There's all kinds of gray areas. the Bible mentions these types of things and life produces these types of things. All these kinds of things that are actually not black and white, but are gray and are yet ethical and moral nevertheless. And so the answer to it is to not just color everything gray, black or white. I want to say this as clearly as possible. It is not mature. It is not spiritually mature just to color everything black or white. It is immaturity that cannot think beyond the categories of black and white and the categories of right and wrong. So everything has to be right or wrong. The Bible actually tells us there's lots of categories that aren't as simple as thou shalt and thou shalt not. And that's why you have a huge chunk of Scripture that is devoted to what we call wisdom. Wisdom literature, you have the Proverbs. If there was no gray area, you wouldn't need the Proverbs. You wouldn't need Job. You wouldn't need Ecclesiastes if everything was just black and white. But wisdom literature exists. And there are instances in life, and don't have to go into all of them right now, that are moral and ethical. And depending upon the contingencies involved, it's not a simple yes or no answer. And so to discern good or evil is more than just being able to recite the Ten Commandments. There are times when because of factors, maybe known or unknown, that finesse and nuance is required, especially when it comes to putting them into application and implication in your daily life. Not everything is black and white. So the Apostle says the mature have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. To be able to think and to make those kinds of decisions. But good and evil certainly go beyond just moral here in this context. There's also doctrinal issues that you have to discern between and to see if they are true and right or true and false between good and evil. These people that heard this letter for this first time were not some sort of people that live like in a doctrinal bubble. They didn't live in an echo chamber. They never had any false teaching. They, as a matter of fact, at the end of the book in chapter 13, near the middle of that chapter, the apostle is going to warn them to stay away from all kinds of strange teachings. And so there is a discernment that is required to be able to tell what is biblical and what is not biblical and what is true and what is false. I always think of that. quote from Charles Spurgeon that discernment is not the difference between telling what is good and evil but is the difference between telling what is right and almost right. Sometimes that's a very small margin and it's not an easy task at times. That's his point here is it takes skill. It takes training. It takes, and sometimes, you know, because of that training, you can hear something that's wrong, whereas another person who hears the same thing doesn't hear that it's wrong. And we've all been there in some way or another. That's a normal thing. I mean, maybe you used to listen to Joel Osteen and you had no problem with it. But then, you know, something just clicked and you see clearly the issues. That's through having your powers of discernment trained. And so the discernment has not only to do with ethics and with morality, but also has to do with the truth. And that's why we here are a Word-orientated church, a Word-centered church. That's why we hold to Sola Scriptura. That's why we ascribe to the Second Lenten Confession. because we love the Word, because we see the importance of the Word in helping us to discern and to be trained and to grow mature. And as the Confession says in chapter 1, You know, the most important thing that we could do for you week after week is to give you the Word of God. is to give you God's Word, to teach you the Word of God. That's the most important thing we can do. The most important thing we can do for you on a Sunday morning, on a Sunday afternoon, on a Wednesday night, it's to teach the Word of God. I know that I've come across churches before that will close down church on the fifth Sunday of the month so that they can go out into the community and do good works. You're helping people to be dull of hearing if you do that. You're not being trained up in the way of righteousness and the word of righteousness when you do that. The most important thing that we have, the most essential thing that we need is the Word of God. It's giving to you the Word of God is the most important thing that I can do. And so the apostle says you have your powers of discernment trained by constant practice. And as you're maturing, what happens is you gain the ability to distinguish between good and evil. But if you're a baby, if you're on milk, you can't do that. You won't do that. And the mature they're able to distinguish between good and evil, both moral and and doctrinally. So in other words, if that's who is being described, that would be a person of moral character and truth. And friends, those who are immature, those who are infants and should not be, I mean, if you're two weeks old in the Lord, nobody's expecting you to be doing this. But there's also a vast difference between someone who's two years in the Lord and someone who's 20 years in the Lord. But if you're immature and an infant and you shouldn't be, you need to understand that there is a fundamental danger going on here. That's what he's wanting us to be warned of. And that is those that ought to be at a certain place but are far behind where they should be. What's the reason? Why is it that way? Is there a constant misunderstanding of truth? Is there a constant idea that I discern truth not on its truthfulness according to the Word, but on how it makes me feel? And there's just a constant give and take between emotions and the Word. And you believe something because you believe it. And what you believe, you only believe it because it is believable unto you. And what you do, you do it because you do it. the person who is in that state is in a very dangerous, dangerous state, is what the apostle is saying. The person whose doctrine in life isn't built on the word of righteousness is in a dangerous place. The person who's immature and a baby and shouldn't be is looking at a coming moral, ethical, doctrinal, spiritual train wreck. That's what the Apostle wants us to know. But the mature have the truth woven into their souls and it governs by and large, not perfectly, but it governs how they think about things. You know, it's the whole conversation of worldview. Does God's Word shape your worldview or is it something else? The mature have God's Word for discernment. It governs how they act, how they live, and they're able to cut through the swamp of culture. They're able to disentangle the messiness of life. They have a spiritual, moral, doctrinal discernment and the ability to see things and grow. And they end up, by God's grace, being persevered by God. The reason that spiritual immaturity is so dangerous is because a lack of maturity, a lack of discernment, a lack of growth, that's the stuff that apostates are made of. That's the soil of apostasy. And that's what he's getting into here coming into chapter 6. So you have to ask. Are we growing? Are our powers of discernment being trained? Am I trained in the word of righteousness so that my assurance and my perseverance is all caught up in Christ and who He is? Not ever thinking that it's caught up in me and what I do, but it's all caught up in Christ and who He is. And that knowledge and that faith that would then instructs how I live. Or am I tossed about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes? If so, The gracious call of the Lord here in this warning text in Hebrews is if so, if that's the case, it's time to grow up. It's time. It's time to start eating solid food. I can't say this strongly enough. If so, then it's time to stop letting your petty preferences and your hang-ups dictate what you're going to believe and embrace the truth. It's time to actually take the truth, implement it in your life, to live it and then do with it and with a sense of conviction to embrace it all and then live it. It's time to rest in Christ in whom you have received. Now, listen to me here. We may not be facing times like this first century church was facing. They were about to face a season that would contain incredible persecution. We may not be facing that incredible persecution. But I'll tell you the truth, we face hard times. Every one of us in this room is facing hard times in some way or another. We face perilous times. That is the normal way of things in this age that we are living in, in between Christ's first and second coming. The Apostle tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, verse 1 through 5, he says, Remember from Hebrews 1, that's the time they're now living in, we're living in. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people." These are potentially dangerous times. And, you know, maybe, you know, going to the doctor and hearing that dreaded C word, it could be a thousand different things. But hard times will come. And the question is, will we be mature enough to discern our way through the difficulties? Not by our own strength, but by the grace that Christ gives us. And in doing so, banking our hope on God's Word, being by grace through faith ever interested in His Word of righteousness, not becoming dull of hearing. Let's pray. And then we'll look to the Lord's Supper after we pray. Our Father in heaven, we are so grateful for this warning. We don't want to be babies, Lord. We know that even in the natural realm of things, people are only babies for a short period of time and they grow up. And so we ask for grace in Christ that we might be sanctified and conformed to Christ and to grow up in the faith. We desire solid food, Lord. We want to be secure in what you call the milk. And from that, God, we pray that you would feed us with solid food so that our powers of discernment through constant training may be able to distinguish between good and evil. We know that The devil, our enemy, and those in the world who hate you would happily and readily do confuse those categories of good and evil. But we're so grateful that we don't have to have a subjective standard for that, that Your Word is clear and true about what is good and evil. And when it comes to moral situations about what is right and wrong, Lord, we pray for discernment in those times. We don't know when they will come or if they will come, but we know that when they come, that Your grace will be sufficient. And so may You help us. May You glorify Christ in our life and help us to be obedient unto Your Word, being fully and completely satisfied in Christ's righteousness for us. And it's in His name that we pray. Amen.