From the previous posting we know that spiritual knowledge refers to the Word of God. Note that God refers to what He has written in His Holy Bible in the singular–Word, not Words, meaning that He presents them as one entity to be accepted, believed and obeyed totally or not at all. The Apostle James makes this clear in 2:10 where he tells us that to break one of God’s commandments is to break all ten of them. The Ten Commandments are a miniature version of the entire Law–Genesis to Revelation. The Bible is God in written form. We are commanded to take God and His Word as one entity or not at all. This answers the WHAT part of the series–what we must know. Now we must determine the HOW we are to learn God’s Word. Without understanding the HOW part, one will be “ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the Truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). Note that KNOWLEDGE INVOLVES GOD’S TRUTH, which Jesus identified as His WORD (Jn. 17:17). EVERYTHING COMES BACK TO GOD’S WORD WHICH REFLECTS HIS MIND, HIS WILL, HIS WAY. This is the Word by which we will all be judged (Jn. 12:48). According to Jesus, our attitude toward the WORD reveals our attitude toward the Father and the Son (Lk. 10:16). The entire 119th Psalm concerns God’s attitude toward His WORD. We must have the same attitude. Indeed, everything comes back to the Word. So how do we learn that WORD so as to believe and obey it? God tells us.
In Isaiah 28 God asks and answers a vital question: “Whom can He (God Himself) teach knowledge? and whom can He make to understand (His) doctrine?” He then answers the question: “They who are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts” (vs 9). Weaning a baby from a diet of only milk and drawing him from the breasts is not voluntary on his part. This is a forced operation that initially is not appreciated by the little one. But it is absolutely necessary for the baby in order for him to develop, grow and mature into adulthood. A diet consisting of only milk will eventually kill the baby because it does not contain all the ingredients necessary to sustain an adult body and mind. Whom can God teach knowledge is a question that must be answered individually if one is to become spiritually educated. God makes it clear that He can teach only those who leave the milk and the breast voluntarily and go on to “strong meat” (Heb. 5:14).
The Apostle Paul found that many of the Hebrew (Israelite) converts to Christ were milk and breasters. He addresses this problem in Hebrews 5. Note in verse 6 God calls Jesus “a high priest forever.” Then in verse 9 we learn what caused Him (Jesus–a normal human being) to be a high priest forever: “And being MADE PERFECT, He BECAME the Author of salvation to all of those who OBEY HIM.” Jesus wasn’t born a human high priest. He had to achieve that status through learning the ways of God and obeying them. In this way he had been MADE PERFECT. Having laid that foundation, Paul went on to chastise the Hebrews in 5:11-6:2, telling them that he needed to teach them the deep things of God, but could not because they were “dull of hearing.” How had they become dull of hearing God’s Truth? “For … you have have need of (want only) milk ….” These people had been on spiritual “breast milk” for so long that their minds rejected spiritual “strong meat,” which I call “fine print.” Paul goes on to say that those on a milk diet could not attain the RIGHTEOUSNESS necessary for salvation because they were still spiritual babies and unable to “discern good and evil.” Paul then tells them to get off the breast milk and to “GO ON TO PERFECTION” by progressing beyond such teachings as repentance of sins, faith in God, baptism, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. Paul was telling the Hebrew Christians that these doctrines were MILK-LEVEL TEACHINGS that they should have gotten past long ago.
Fast forward to modern times. The obvious irony is that THOSE SAME TEACHINGS CONSTITUTE THE “MILK” THAT CHURCH PEOPLE RECEIVE FROM THEIR HIRELINGS WHO FEED THEM ONLY WHAT THEY WILL TOLERATE. When someone tells them about God’s “STRONG MEAT” they reject it like a baby resists being “drawn from the breast.” God is telling us that the only way we can understand His doctrine is to be “weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts.” Few, Jesus warned, would desire to leave the breast, move past the milk, enter His strait (difficult) gate (church) and walk His narrow (strict) way (doctrine) that leads to salvation. The religious masses, He said, would enter Satan’s wide (easy) gate and walk his broad (any way you want it) way to death (Mat. 7:13,14), all the while believing that they are on the path to heavenly glory. Satan has convinced them that the “milk” they are being fed is God’s “strong meat.” Jesus was right, Satan has deceived the whole world, including the church world (Rev. 12:9).
Satan knows that as long as church people remain on breast milk they will never desire God’s strong meat that would enable then attain the “righteousness” (Heb. 5:13) necessary to “go on to perfection” (Heb. 6:1). In order to spend eternity with Father and Son we must desire first and foremost to be like Them in every way. The Scriptures tell us concerning Christ that there is “no darkness in Him at all” (1 Jn. 1:5). And in that a true saint is “in Christ,” the saint must have “no darkness in him at all.” If a saint has sin (darkness), and the saint is “in Christ,” then there is (sin) darkness in Christ, which cannot be in that “there is no darkness in Him (Christ) at all.” If we are truly “in Him,” which we must be in order to rise to meet Him in the first resurrection (1 Thes. 4:16), then we must wean ourselves from the milk that the Institutional Church provides, seek out, believe and obey the strong meat that is found in God’s “fine print”–His strong meat locker. As the next posting will reveal, that locker must be searched for and found. Only those who truly crave its contents will go to the trouble of searching for it, and only those who truly love what’s inside will continue to dine on it. These are God’s Very Elect who will sit with Christ on His throne in the Kingdom of God (Rev. 3:21). These are those within God’s church who are truly RIGHTEOUS. And as the Apostle Peter tells us, “only the righteous will be saved” (1 Pet. 4:17,18). L.J.
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