You Ought to Be Teachers! (7)

But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Hebrews 5.14

Into the deep water of truth
The writer of Hebrews is galloping along at a fairly brisk pace in his epistle, presenting the claims of Jesus Christ to be our great High Priest and Savior. He’s trying to keep his readers, who, because of persecution, have begun thinking about going back to Judaism, from falling away from what they have believed. He knows they’re stuck on the milk of Christian instruction, and that this is not sufficient to help them endure as followers of Jesus in the face of trials. They needed to reaffirm what they had heard by putting into practice everything they already knew, for only then would they be able to move on to the kind of maturity that stays the course for Jesus.

Apparently they were not strong enough to encourage one another to persevere in their faith and hang in there for Jesus (chapter 3). Rather than teach one another and bear witness to their persecutors, they were starting to lapse into quietude and to regress into unbelief. If they didn’t check this, they would be found out not to have been saved in the first place.

But they needed more than the milk of Christian teaching to persevere as followers of Jesus. They needed to learn the deeper truths of Scripture in order to hold firm their confession of faith in Jesus Christ, come what may. Yet the evidence was that they were not quite ready for it.

So, in chapters 5 and 6, the writer interrupted his eloquent defense of the doctrine of Christ to chide his readers for not teaching and encouraging one another, and for shrinking back from their profession rather than continuing to proclaim the faith. Then, having re-established their footing in the faith and encouraged them with the evidence of their assurance, in chapter 7 he launched into the deep water of the life of faith, fully confident that his readers – real Christians all – would be able to follow along.

An eighth-letter four-letter word
He began to serve them, in other words, the solid food of faith, for this solid food was what they needed in order to encourage one another in love and good works (Heb. 10.24), to follow in the footsteps of great saints (Heb. 11), and to stand firm in their faith as witnesses for Christ (Heb. 12.1, 2).

In our day doctrine has become an eight-letter, four-letter word. Ask a believer what his favorite doctrine is and he’ll probably wrinkle his nose and decline to respond. Some pastors openly rail against doctrine as not what the Church needs these days. Apparently doctrine was what the Church needed in the first century, but now we don’t seem to require it as much?

The Christians who helped to found this country feasted on doctrine, powerful sermons of great depth and resonance by the likes of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Cotton Mather, and John Witherspoon. Those colonial believers sailed their vessels of faith through depths of spiritual truth, and found there the vision and courage to declare themselves a nation under God, and not under tyranny, and to make that declaration stick.

Without sound doctrine, consistently taught, faithfully believed, and diligently lived, we shall not have the strength to persevere in faith and hold firm to the end our convictions concerning Jesus Christ.

Feed on the solid food!
Friends, if your pastors won’t feed you on the solid food of Christian doctrine, they don’t deserve the title. Encourage them to preach the great doctrines of the Christian faith, so that you can feed on those great truths, and bear the fruit they can produce in lives of holiness, witness, and mutual edification.

Mature Christians hunger for solid food, deep and mysterious doctrines of faith that re-focus our minds, renew our hearts, refurbish our consciences, and revive our lives in true witness for Jesus Christ. Their sails filled with the truths of God’s Word, they are ready for every opportunity to encourage a fellow believer or speak the truth in love to an unsaved friend. This is because the truth on which they journey, which fuels their souls and fills their sails, cannot be contained. It will well up, overflow, and issue forth in rivers of living water, so that we cannot not teach the things of Christ to the people to whom He sends us.

You will not be able to fulfill your calling to teach others and to bear witness for the Lord until you begin feeding consistently on the great doctrines of God’s Word. Feed yourself on the Word of God, daily reading, meditating, and going deeper into the great truths of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. When the Word of God is truly the joy and rejoicing of your heart (Jer. 15.16), you’ll begin to know more of the benefit of that solid food as you teach and share the Good News of Jesus with others.

For reflection
1.  Why do you suppose many Christians have a negative attitude toward doctrine? What is doctrine?

2.  How would you describe the relationship between learning sound doctrine and fulfilling your calling to teach others?

3.  What could you do to help ensure you had a more steady diet of doctrine in your walk with the Lord?

Next steps – Preparation: How might you improve your time in the Word of God to make sure you are always going deeper, learning more, and making good use of the solid food of God’s Word? Talk with some of your fellow believers about this question.

T. M. Moore

This week’s study, You Ought to Be Teachers!, is Part 2 of a 5-part series on Following Jesus.Each week’s study is available in a free PDF which you can download by clicking here. Watch the video on our Mission Partners Outreach for more information about how you can begin to follow Jesus in your Personal Mission Field (click here).

Want to learn more about your Christian worldview? Our free online course, One in Twelve, is available any time, and at no charge. Click here to learn more about this helpful and challenging introduction to Christian worldview, presented by T. M. Moore.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.