Hebrews 5:11-12
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!
What determines if a person is an effective teacher? Is it one who stands in front of a class to expound the truth? Possibly that is the case. Is it someone who spends hours, days, and weeks in careful study before sharing what has been discovered? That, too, may be the case, but I want to offer that there are wonderful teachers who are just one lesson ahead of the people they are teaching.
Joyce and I are eagerly awaiting the birth of our fifth great-grandchild. We love babies and it is a special joy to watch them grow and develop. They start with milk and then are fed predigested food. As a grandpa and great-grandpa I cheat and slip them bites of mashed potatoes and gravy . . . until I am discovered and told to stop. It is hard to look innocent when you have been caught red handed.
There comes a time when babies move from being fed by others to begin feeding themselves. It is often a messy sight, but it is the price for personal development. (Some of us seem to have over developed this process of feeding ourselves.) Eventually, the time comes when they are old enough to feed their own babies. It is then that the cycle is complete: 1. Being fed by someone else; 2. Feeding ourselves; 3. Feeding others. The writer of Hebrews is confronting his readers by using this illustration.
There was a pastor in Missouri who shared with me that his greatest blessing was a meat-cutter who worked at a meat plant near his church. Every afternoon this older man would drop by the pastor’s study to share what he had discovered in God’s Word the previous evening. The pastor said it made him into the preacher he was. I never met that old meat-cutter, but I praise God he blessed me by his teaching this pastor.
Blessings dear hearts. Draw near to God today, trust Him completely and be a blessing!
—Pastor Cecil