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well thank you Stephen hey Kevin made it good good morning well let's dive in we will read Hebrews 5 8 through 14 and I'll read from the ESV sometimes I I jump around now with the LSB but Hebrews 8 Hebrews 5 8 14 ESV although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. 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.

Now, speaking about Jesus Christ, still in this section, and remember this section began with an explanation of how high priests are selected. And the idea being that, you know, priests had a particular procedure that they would go through, an anointing, an ordination, that would make them into priests in a sense. And Jesus being the great high priest is going to be typified by all of those ways that they did this in the Old Testament and fulfill these kinds of things and show that he actually is the fulfillment of them.

And so the issue, again, with the recipients of this letter was an adherence to the Old Testament forms that were given by God and that were important for the people of the time before Jesus to pay attention to and to do things as God had said. and now Jesus had come, he had fulfilled the prophecies about him, he had fulfilled all of the things that were typified about him, he was the result of everything that had been pointed to, and the Hebrews were not recognizing this. And so while they believed in Jesus and trusted in him for salvation, so they had, you know, if it was 2022 or whatever, they had prayed a sinner's prayer and they had started to have faith and they believed that Jesus was their salvation, they were still practicing these forms from the Old Testament. And I don't think that their main issue was that they were trusting in these things.

I think that some people, I'm sure, did, and of course still do today. I think the author's trying to speak to believers who he's trying to tell them, you don't have to do those things anymore. So it's not a, you're practicing a dead religion, you're an apostate, get away from me. This is a, hey, I know this is hard. I know this was a little bit confusing.

And obviously, if there's going to be a major transition from what God had told you to do to now don't do it, there has to be some revelation. And so this is our revelation. And so this seems obvious to most of us, especially most of us being Gentiles by birth, at least raised as Gentiles, because we weren't tied to some old religion that Jesus came and fulfilled.

But for these guys, this would have been a big deal. They would have thought, why would I stop doing what God has said? And so the author's laying out his case, that Jesus is the fulfillment, and he is the perfect high priest. And so in verse 8, we see, although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And that's always been an interesting line to me, and we went over this when we were in Hebrews 2, that there are some explanations of Jesus that require us to think a little harder than normal. because what we want to think to ourselves is, well, Jesus is God, and Jesus is man.

We're happy to say that. And we like to think that means that, well, Jesus couldn't learn anything, because, well, God couldn't learn anything. And yet here we have, although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered. and so what we see and this was in hebrews 2 verse 10 was where the last time we talked about this you know uh for it became him for whom all things and by whom all things are all things and bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings and so and sorry that was the kjv with all the little greek letters in there and uh so that's hard to But the idea being that Jesus Christ had to become the perfect high priest.

Good morning, Ryan. Jesus Christ he had to become perfect not in the sense that he wasn already perfectly morally upright but he had to fulfill everything that a great high priest would have to fulfill He had to have the experience that allows him to be a compassionate high priest. So back to Hebrews 4, verse 14. No, I'm sorry. Hebrews 4 15 for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin so you may remember we talked about that Jesus Jesus's mere existence in the presence of so much sin is a form of suffering.

So when we think of Jesus' suffering, we just think of like the flogging, the crown of thorns, being spit upon, you know, maybe we call being mocked suffering. Sometimes we kind of put those things down a little bit as if the only son of God not getting all the due worship he's owed isn't a form of suffering. Hanging on the cross, things like that. But in reality, his suffering also included simply being around the existence of sin.

Jesus hates sin so much that to have to be in the presence of it was a form of suffering for his entire life. And so, although he was a son, Jesus learned obedience through suffering. So now, what we have to try to figure out is, why did he do this? And the reason is for you. and for me because if Jesus would have come into the earth and he would have just sat around and and ate good food in a king's palace and just enjoyed himself and had the you know had direct tv and he had uh you know spectrum so he could have any channel he wanted you know if Jesus would have just lived this perfect life and then at the end said hey by the way you know I'm the savior of the world worship me it would have looked a little strange when you started to suffer for being a Christian.

And that hypothetical is just so silly, I can't even really defend the example. The idea here is that you look to Jesus, who, although he was a son, he's going to suffer. And so while you're in this world and you're suffering, don't be tempted to start to believe, well, maybe this religion isn't correct, first of all, Because if it was correct, well, we wouldn't be suffering.

But maybe more likely is, hmm, if I'm suffering so badly, maybe I'm not really loved by God. And that's a concern that the Holy Spirit through the authors of Scripture has throughout the New Testament. To be certain is, you actually are supposed to be assured of God's love through your suffering. while you are experiencing the suffering of persecution, the suffering of trials, even just the normal difficulties of life, getting cancer, getting fired from a job, feeling cold because your furnace went out and you have to spend the night in the cold.

All these things we suffer, some of which are common to everybody, God wants to remind you that even though you're suffering, that does not make you not a son. So you don't lose your sonship because basically your father is letting you have a little bit of suffering. In fact, Jesus, who was eternally God's son, suffered also. And so this is for our assurance.

It's to make you feel actually more close to God and loved by God through your suffering. And so what did Jesus do? It says he learned obedience. Jesus was a human being. We talked about this. He wasn't Superman.

Jesus was a little boy. He had to learn to eat. He had to lose teeth. He had to grow stronger. Chances are his dad had to tell him to do some work, and then he would try to do it, and he couldn't quite do it, so he had to ask for help. And then his parents would help him, and then he'd get stronger, and then he'd be able to do the thing later.

And that is exactly how God deals with us in the spiritual ways. God gives us tasks that we're supposed to do always. And while we're struggling with these different tasks, we go to him and we ask for help. And then, Lord willing, we get stronger. Lord willing, you are able to do more today as a Christian than you were able to do a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago.

I'm not saying that everything's always better every day as it was the day before for you. But ideally, you can see the growth. You can see the increase in strength, the increase in ability, barring some kind of strange brain disease that somebody could have. You'd hope that you understand doctrine better year after year, and that's part of what the end of the chapter will hint at even.

And so Jesus learned obedience on this earth, not in the sense that he wasn't already obedient to his father. It was in the sense that he fulfilled it all. He learned what it was like experientially to be submissive to God as a human being and to submit to God's will no matter what it was. And Jesus did that, of course, perfectly, and we're asked to do it and follow in his footsteps.

And so don't let suffering and difficulty be your lack of assurance Let me put it that way If you are going to struggle with oh am I really saved It should be because you find yourself unrepentantly sinning. That is the one sign of, hmm, maybe you're not saved. I guess the even bigger sign would be denying Christ altogether. But if you find yourself saying you trust in Christ and yet able to sin unrepentantly, that is where you should be worried.

If you find yourself trusting in Christ and experiencing a lot of difficulty, even within the church, even within your family sometimes, not because of your sin, but just because of the general sin of people, and oftentimes because you take a stand for what you think the Lord has said, that's actually a sign that you're one of his sons. That's an indicator for you. I don't like the word sign sometimes because we're not trying to look for signs.

So now another verse, verse 9, that starts to be a difficult one just because of the word. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. So being made perfect. So then the question people would obviously ask is, well, wasn't Jesus already perfect? And again, in Hebrews 2, we have the same language. Being made perfect has the idea of completeness.

He completed all of the earthly work that had to be done in order to effect salvation. So we could say something like, in theory, God could have not sent Jesus into the world, and he could have just said, hey, do this thing and I'll give you salvation. And the thing could have been called believe in Jesus for all I care. It's a hypothetical. So in theory, there could have been these other things that happened where God made salvation possible without Jesus coming.

But that's not how God planned it. God said this is how salvation is going to happen and it's going to be by my son coming and I'm going to typify that by these Old Testament sacrifices for centuries so that the people who actually practice these types of things in the Old Testament would recognize when the great high priest came. People would constantly see this repeated year after year and day after day sacrificial system of Jewish sacrifices, and they would finally realize, wait a second, this cannot be the final answer.

God would grant them faith in his son, even in the Old Testament. By grace, through faith, people would be saved. And these people would practice the religion that they were given because it's what they were supposed to do, not because they thought, oh, the blood of bulls and goats forgives my sins, but because they know they were supposed to do it, and they know that it pointed to something greater.

They knew that it pointed to the fact that someone was going to have to get burned outside the camp. If you don't know what that reference is, go look through these Levitical laws and how it talks about taking sacrifices outside the camp. And they know that the sacrifice would have to be spotless. And yet we all know that there's never going to be an actually unblemished earthly animal.

Not in this cursed world. You're always going to have the one that's the best, but you're never going to think, wow, this is the one that can forgive my sins. And so Jesus was made perfect by coming and experiencing everything that had to be experienced so that he could be that sympathetic and compassionate high priest for each and every one of us. And so this isn't about Jesus having some moral failure early on and then having to learn from it.

That's not what this is. This is about Jesus simply having to do all the things that had to happen. and so when I said hypothetically God could have made salvation some other way he didn't so Jesus had to come and do exactly what he did he had to die on that cross for us because that was the plan God had if somehow it could have been thwarted which it couldn't have been salvation wouldn't have been possible but because Jesus was made perfect because he did complete everything that he was tasked to do by God, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. And so in this wording, we have this works-based kind of concept that people can be confused about.

And the Bible makes no apology for equating your obedience to God and his law with your salvation. And the Bible doesn't have any problem with that language. It's us who have the problem with it, because perverted men and doctrines of demons have created religions that take those words and make them mean you work for your salvation. You do some good things.

You obey God's law, and God will accept you. God will love you. God will forgive your sins if you just do these other things. when it says all who obey him it's it's a reference to the kind of people who god has saved and we have no problem understanding this in a post-reformation world where we know that salvation is by grace through faith and always has been this is explained throughout the scripture and in the book of hebrews in particular and so we have great confidence that all who obey him are the ones where he's the source of eternal salvation, that that can confidently just mean, yeah, those who are saved are going to obey him.

And I can't go up to you, and I can look at your undershirt and see if there a big E for elect on it I can open up your heart and take a quick peek to see if the Holy Spirit in there So the way that we judge one another and that not a bad word, the way that we judge one another, the way that we speak to one another and help one another work out our salvation with fear and trembling is by looking at whether the works we're doing are obedient to God. And if I look at you and the works you're doing seem obedient to God, I have less reason to question whether you've actually been saved and more reason to just work with you as a Christian. If you had a brother in real life who hated your parents, never did what they said, and as soon as possible moved away, he's never officially not a brother because of that, but a part of you would think, yeah, he's really not part of this family.

That's what you'd say. You'd say, by his own choice, he's not part of this family. He doesn't want the benefits that the parents provide. He doesn't want the shelter that's given. He wants his own thing. And he's a prodigal.

And we all can go the same way. But if you have a brother that fails to obey your parents, but he confesses to love him regularly and he he's sorry when he fails and he admits that he fails at least partially because he's weak and he needs help to be able to do what he's told you don't say well you're probably not my real brother get out of here you know that's when you bring them in and you say okay we'll help you we're glad that you're part of this family and so Jesus becomes the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him he is the author and perfecter of our faith he is the one that we come to for salvation and so now there's no more sacrificial system so we have to remember the context here that the the author is trying to drive it into the heads of these Christians you have basically a new religion and this these old religious works that you did And although good and right for the time that they were given, they are no longer even to be practiced because the perfect has come. Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all of those Old Testament priests, has come and he has fulfilled what was necessary.

And you have no need of those things. And in fact, at this point, for people to pick them up is problematic. for people who were new Christians and Christians in the first century I think we give them a pass and say ok that was confusing, you're figuring things out and now that the book of Hebrews has been written and disseminated we have no excuse and so you can look at religions like the Roman Catholic religion you can look at Mormonism you can look at Eastern Orthodox stuff Russian Orthodox and all these religions that call themselves Christian and their focus is utterly on those religious rights, then you can see that this is a problem. They do not trust Christ as the source of eternal salvation.

The source of their eternal salvation is them fulfilling these works of God. Basically, them doing God's law. Now, before I'm accused of some kind of antinomianism or whatever, I think we should follow God's law. in fact I probably would to a lot of people I'd probably be called a legalist because I believe we should follow all ten commandments and I think we should actually take them seriously and think about them in a meticulous enough way that I probably think that we should do some things that people would say we have freedom about I also think we should practice communion every week and do the Lord's Supper which is a religious ritual that is done on Sunday that does not practically speaking affect your salvation, but is used by God as part of your growth in Christ.

I think we should be baptized, and I think we should baptize, which again, it's a religious work that doesn't save people, and I think we should do it. I'm not saying we don't do religious works God's commanded. What I'm saying is God is telling us that these Jewish Old Testament sacrifices go away, because these ones actually ultimately end up blaspheming the work of Christ, I think. because for you to keep taking your ram or your bull or your sheep or your turtle dove or your pigeon and all these different offerings that were for that time, for you to keep doing that after reading the book of Hebrews is to say, I don't really trust that Jesus was enough.

I want to do these other things. God gave us baptism in the Lord's Supper as New Testament ordinances to remind us of what Christ has done for us. And so we don't need these ones from the Old Testament. There was a clear break. And as I think I said earlier in the series, God's about to destroy their temple. And yes, it was destroyed by humans.

But there is a sense that God destroyed their temple by his sovereign will. And that was a judgment upon the people that still had their hope in that temple. And people who truly trusted Christ at that time, although they may have been saddened by the evil of it all, their religion wasn't destroyed. Their faith wasn't shaken because of that. People who relied on the existence of a temple to go and take their sacrifices to, their faith would have been utterly shaken by that.

So in Hebrews 5.10, we see this guy Melchizedek again referred to. And this is, the author of Hebrews is reminding us that he was designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, which we read about Melchizedek a little bit earlier in verse 6. And we'll read about him more later where there's more description of him, so I won't go into it. it now because we'll get to it, Lord willing, when we get to where this author actually expands on Melchizedek.

But Jesus was not an Aaronic priest, A-A-R-O-N-I-C, a priest after Moses's brother Aaron. He was a priest and he fulfilled all of the priestly duties, but he was a priest of a whole different order, a better order, a higher order in that sense. And the author of Hebrews wants them to know that Jesus Christ was a priest of this other order, the order of Melchizedek, and he wants them to understand that this is something that should actually almost raise their eyes from looking at Jesus and looking at the other priests.

They should be looking up almost, like in their minds at least, thinking, okay, Jesus is exalted above this other priesthood. But there's a problem, and the problem is these people have become dull of hearing. And so now this author has to take a parenthetical or a rabbit trail from explaining Jesus to them, explaining the beauty of Jesus, the priesthood of Jesus, and helping them understand the priesthood of the Melchizedekian priesthood.

And instead of getting to the point of teaching them who Melchizedek was, how this makes Jesus the greatest possible high priest, he's like, okay, I've got to take a break here. This stuff is too lofty for you guys. And without saying it this way, he's almost saying you guys have almost become stupid. You're not actually learning things. you're just going through motions you're waking up in the morning you're doing the stuff you think you have to do it's like you have a checklist I did this, this, this and this and now maybe God will like me, maybe God will love me these people aren't really knowing Christ in the sense of learning about him more and loving his person they're just looking at the output they're just looking at the works that they're asked to do as the result You can do it as a Christian.

You can wake up as a Christian and you can read your Bible a little bit. You can pray a little bit. You can even do it a lot. You can have a pretty good day of practicing the seven effective habits of highly effective people or whatever. And you can probably not yell a lot. Maybe you don't get angry at work.

Maybe people even tell you, wow, you're a really nice guy. And then on the weekend, you can kind of rest on Sunday. You can take communion and you can be all serious while it's happening. You can celebrate if there's a baptism. You might even read at church. You might even preach.

You can do all these things. And the whole time in your heart, you're not really consecrating Christ. You're not really setting him apart in your heart. You're just doing the things he told you to do. Because for whatever reason, those appeal to you right now. Maybe you like the pats on the back from people when they say, Hey, you're a good Christian.

Or maybe you like that you just have less conflict in the world if you happen to follow what God has said. I mean, if the whole world just basically read Proverbs every day, we'd probably just have a better time together. Some people, their flesh is actually titillated by religiosity rather than, like we'll say, heathenism. so it's easy to look at people parading down the street of your city half naked uh gyrating against each other um dressing women dressing like men and vice versa um and uh strip club people it's easy to look at people like that and say wow what evil it's harder to look at religious people and and say what evil because it's it's far more hidden in their heart and so we need to take a good look at our hearts because we're generally religious people we need to think of ourselves as people who are failing to love Jesus fully from our heart every day rather than worrying about whether we're outwardly doing some of the things in some cases maybe some of you are doing evil and you need to confess it I don't know that you need to be ready to talk to other men about things that come up but the author of Hebrews verse 11 And now he says, about this we have much to say.

About what? Well, about Jesus being designated a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. This is like new stuff here, okay? Jesus talked about this when he was on the earth. He referred to Psalm 110 and very clearly said, this is about me? And people killed him for it?

And these Hebrew guys should have known who Melchizedek was from the book of Genesis. And this should have been really interesting. like, wait, this guy's, this is a neat thing. We don't know much about this guy. Are you about to reveal something to us from God that we don't know? And the author says, about this we have much to say. There's a lot to tell you about this guy.

You need to learn about Melchizedek. You need to know how Jesus became the high priest, the order of Melchizedek. I say became in one sense, he always was eternally because God declared it, decreed it. But he says, it's hard to explain since you've become dull of hearing. And so one of the marks of a great teacher, they say, is that they can teach anyone, right?

They can explain a hard concept to children. They can explain a hard concept to people that aren't in the same discipline as they are. And I think that's true about some things. But this author is saying, no, the problem here is you're not listening. If I were to explain to you the truth that has not yet been revealed about Melchizedek, so you can understand how Jesus is part of that order.

If I were to just open my mouth and give you the words of God, perfect clarity from the Lord Jesus Christ and His Spirit who inspires all Scripture you wouldn get it and it your fault you dull of hearing you have willfully because of your sin in a sense kind of covered your ears a little bit so you just don't hear as well when spiritual things come out okay so this isn't about being hard of hearing and you didn't control it. This is like people are putting earplugs in. And then you're telling them something and they're saying, yeah, I just don't quite understand you.

And you're loud and clear. Their ears have been covered up by the earmuffs or earplugs. Spiritually speaking, these people's ears are held away from hearing God's truth and being able to understand it because they filled their minds with so much garbage. They have filled their minds with worldly entertainment and recreation. They filled their minds with all sorts of sin and wreckage and devastation from sin.

And so you can't understand what God is saying because your mind isn't right. In the book of Romans, we're told that if you don't acknowledge God as God, you become futile in your thinking. And it's easy right now to look around at our world and think, okay, I see some futility of mind going on. If anybody in this chat has had a conversation in the last couple years with somebody and thought, wow, it's almost like we can't even think the same way, right?

You understand what I'm talking about. But the author of Hebrews is saying, you guys aren't even thinking straight in church here. You're supposed to be Christian. God didn't give you a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and a sound mind. Part of being a Christian is having been granted, basically, rationality. You've been given the foundational principles necessary to be able to think reasonably about things.

And he says, you're dull of hearing. it's a phrase not meaning that they don't hear it it's meaning you're not understanding what's clearly being spoken and whenever we get to a concept that's a little harder than hey believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved you're lost and he's rebuking them and he's frustrated with them and now he's going to compare them to children he says though by this time you ought to be teachers you've been a Christian long enough that I should expect that you're standing up and explaining the oracles of God to others I should expect you to be able to teach your wives to teach children, to be able to be preaching and teaching at church that's what he's saying and it's been long enough I don't know if it's been three months, I don't know if it's been three years I don't know, and for each person maybe there's a little different time but it's expected of all of us it's been long enough you can teach people about your favorite football team you can teach people about how you do golfing you can teach people about the thing you've learned at work to do well we are all capable of learning things it's amazing to me that people will say yeah I'm just not good at remembering things the stuff I know they remember he says you ought to be teachers he says you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God this is not an indictment against basic principles we should always go back to fundamentals we should always be remembering the basics he's not saying you don't even need to talk about the basics anymore he's saying you need someone to reteach you these things I need to explain to you that salvation is by grace through faith alone in Christ I need to teach you that after you believe in Christ, you should be more inclined to keep God's law and to love it with all your heart. Not because the law can save you, but because now that you've been saved, you're free to actually obey it. It's no longer a judge over you.

But instead of being able to teach you advanced concepts and talk about loftier theological things, we have to keep reviewing the same thing over and over. And my guess is it's because you show up at church, you hear the sermon, you don't think about it all week, you don't take notes, you don't read beforehand if you know what he's preaching on, you don't spend your week in prayer, you don't spend your week reading, you're not doing family worship, but you have time for the things that you choose to do and you're probably pretty good at some of them so this isn't to say hey quit your job and go live in a mountain and just study the Bible all day this is to say we need to be willing to work much harder than we do to know God's scripture better to be able to reference things. We're so lazy because of technology.

It's amazing. You read these guys from the 16th, 17th, 18th century who wrote about the Bible and the things that they wrote and the references they made from one passage of Scripture to another. And just to realize that these guys didn't have electric concordances where they could just look up words and really quickly see the 39 times that Greek lemma appeared.

Okay? These guys were reading it all the time. So when they were reading through the book of John, and the words weren't necessarily capitalized for them, like in the NASB to say it was an Old Testament reference, they recognized it. And it wasn just because the Holy Spirit just made them recognize it which is part of what happens It because they studied it They knew the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Exodus so well that when Jesus referred to something there they realized it We don't get it.

We need the footnote. And so we're a little spoiled in that sense, and we should be more disciplined. But so he compares them to children. He's basically, you know, he's not saying children are bad. He's saying children are unskilled. Children drink milk instead of eating meat, right?

You don't give your baby meat, you give them milk. Then you give them crushed up peas and then crushed up whatever, and everybody knows how we feed babies, and eventually get them to eat more solid food, right? And if your kid's nine years old and he's eating baby food and drinking milk, it's probably a problem. He's unskilled. He's unable to digest the tougher meats. and so the author of Hebrews is kind of throwing out a little bit of an insult you're like little kids we invite you to our wedding and we have to give you the pudding instead of a filet mignon you know you need to work to make yourself skilled in being able to understand the words of righteousness You need to master the easier concepts so you can start to master the more medium concepts, we'll call them, so you can get to some of the harder concepts.

You need to be able to read hard things with big words. And so he's telling them, you're dull of hearing and it's your fault. Just real quick, we'll focus more on it. I don't want to just gloss over it, but just to finish this section, I want to look at verse 14. He says, solid foods for the mature. We just explained that.

He says, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good and evil. And that's really the point here is you're dull of hearing and it's because of your own lack of practice. The reason you can't chew steak is you stopped chewing steak. You just started drinking milk all the time because it was easier. It's probably because you're lazy.

Deep down in your heart. You're not lazy about the things you really love, though. And so you practice constantly so that you may distinguish good from evil. So you will have discernment. So you won't be swept away by false teachers. So you won't be switching churches every two months because your doctrine changes.

So you'll be able to stand and teach things with some confidence that you actually know what God has said in his word. So that when you're faced with a difficult situation, an ethical dilemma as they're called, where you've never thought about that one before. This one's weird. It's new. You are in a place where you have to pick A or B or C. you've got a few choices, you have to try to figure out which one you're going to make, you don't have a lot of time.

And you can't go grab a Bible right then and just start reading. And the Bible doesn't specifically say anything about the situation you happen to be in. You have to have the discernment at that time, meaning you understand God's Word well enough that you can take every thought captive to obey Christ, and you can make the right decision, because you're responsible for that.

You're responsible in the tough situations to know how to obey God. And you're not going to be able to do that if you don't practice it when it's easy. Train yourself. Solid foods for the mature. So it's kind of an insult. It's one of the neat things about the New Testament is how many times the author kind of tosses out an insult.

I always think it's funny, I guess. but he does it with love and it's for the benefit of those who are going to hear it that they might grow and so Jesus the great high priest after the order of Melchizedek perfect morally perfect man still grew in wisdom and stature and in favor among God and man as a person submitted perfectly to the will of the Father on this earth suffering amazing difficulty, not just his death, but even his whole life, surrounded by the evil he hates the most. And he is worth studying a little bit harder than we do, probably a lot harder than we do, so that we can actually understand the more exciting concepts, the loftier concepts, I'll call them. So I'll stop there and open up the floor for comments and questions.

Michael, first of all, thank you very much as always for your commitment to the group and for your teaching. one quick question I have so it's the wisdom of ministers who rightly divide the truth right when we're talking about this idea of babes needing milk and you know you use the analogy that you know where your kids are concerned they start with milk and they move to crushed peas and carrots and then they work their way up to the full food right I like for you to if you could for the group sake to talk about a little how in your development in your pastoral development how you come to develop the wisdom for knowing how to rightly divide that truth to the people who really only need milk now and to the people who need peas and carrots now, and the people who are really ready for the meat. Could you speak to that a little bit about what you've encountered in your own personal ministry? This is a good question.

I never really thought about it. So I think that as you partake of, we'll say, the milk and the meat, right, you start to see the difference. I mean there's things you know for me that I could sit and teach right now you could ask me explain the five points of Calvinism okay I can explain that to you I can reference scripture off the top of my head there's certain things that are just clear to me because I've studied them enough and I've been convicted of it long enough if you ask me to explain you know but you know sometimes like eschatology is a little harder for people to explain uh obviously and there's different views on it that are all considered you know sort of valid so it's hard to argue every point um so for me some of it is just in your mind realizing okay this one seems at least harder to me right uh and look around there's Presbyterian churches there's churches that are you know a millennial there's post millennial it seems like you can kind of see that there's some things that people seem to grasp on too differently I guess and so you know I guess from a from a preaching standpoint I just try to preach the truth and like if I was given a sermon the sermon would be designed so that if children are listening they're gonna pick some things up and if if people who are supposed to be maturing in the faith are there they're gonna pick some things up and if somebody's if somebody's pretty advanced like you know a lot of servants aren't gonna be overly teaching to them you know they might just be building them up so that but with with dealing with people individually I think you just talk about things and just kind of listen to where they're at I guess um does that make sense like when we went to Pennsylvania we just talked and talked and talked you know by the end of it you know I I kind of knew the stuff that I probably could have talked to you about where I would have disagreed.

I would have known where, oh, well, he probably doesn't know what that word is yet, because maybe I used a word you didn't know. But it was a word that I learned somewhere, things like that. So I guess it's just talking and listening to people a lot. Yeah, that's specifically why I asked, because, you know, I thought of that very trip when we went up to the Bible conference, and we were in the car together.

And for the other men on the call. I know you all have come to know Michael in a different way than I have. But, you know, living in North Carolina, I don't have a regular face-to-face interaction with Michael. And so when we were in the car for hours at a time, as Michael talked about his life, how he ministered, he demonstrated in some ways. We actually stopped, remember we stopped, it was at Penn State, right?

And Michael was like, you know, I'm not here today to evangelize at Penn State, but hey, it looks like a good day to me. Let's just see if we can find a spot. And so we took a break, and we tried to go. And I'm not laughing about ministering. It's just I'm laughing because that is exactly what we should do, right? Every opportunity, we should take it, right, for an opportunity to witness for Christ. but in that dialogue back and forth, you know, I could tell that there were certain areas of your life that you were just, your walk was a deeper walk.

So I would say I was more in the milk in some areas, you were more in the meat, right? But it gave me hope, right, and it gave me a desire to want to sharpen those areas. So I would like to think that in that time that we were in the car, I wasn't dull of hearing. I was apt to get to those points, to get to that same level of walk, right? So I asked you that question because I kind of think in my mind it's a process of mutuality, right?

If you're really trying to grow in your faithfulness, I think as a minister probably you can tell because of how people ask questions and how people, you know, the desire of their heart to want to grow kind of will reveal itself in the conversation, right? but I wanted to see if that was the way you felt too if it was kind of a process of dialogue between you and your flock is that how the wisdom comes about in terms of how you divide that truth well thanks for saying those kind words about me something else I thought of was one of the ways that I would distinguish where people are at and and where people are at doesn't need to be insulting like if you happen to be a little bit newer or even just in an area that's okay the question is are you staying there you know you know are you there because you're lazy or that's just where you are but is when people focus on actions, that tends to mean this person's not thinking very deeply, right? So what can I do to get my wife to love me more? Or what can I do so that my wife will have sex with me?

What can I do so that my kid will behave? When it's always, what can I do? I'm just looking for the formula to follow. I'm just looking for the outward forms that I can go through so I get the desired effect. When that's people's, the types of questions they're asking, when that's clearly the way that they're thinking about things, that's when you think this person's on, this person's, you know, and I'm like, I don't like the meat milk analogy for everything because we're just talking about that now though.

But that's what's like, wait, this person needs to learn to think a little deeper here. How does my heart need to be changed so that my heart's disposition towards my wife is the way God would have it be? That's the question we need to ask ourselves. How does my heart need to be disposed toward my children and toward the Lord Jesus Christ when I'm dealing with them?

Not so that my kids will obey, but what is it supposed to be like? And then once we can establish I have the right attitude in this situation, then what are the right actions? And that's how salvation is, right? It's not what can you do, it's what is your heart's this position toward Christ supposed to be? And then as the result, what should I do, right?

And so that's another way that I listen to people. You can just start to see, and I'm not using this word in an insulting way, but some people just tend to think more carnally and fleshly. And I don't mean that in the really, really bad sense of those words. But I just mean some people, they're less thinking about faithfulness and heart attitudes about things, and they're more just thinking about outward actions.

And to me, as we mature, we should be more able to, especially as men, think about our hearts in that way. And we should be able to talk about it we should be able to discuss it together confess things And we just live in a culture where that just not how it is You supposed to just you know light a cigarette and and shoot a gun and and uh you know you don talk about your feelings and so whenever we use the word heart you know men freak out because you know it's feelings and i think we just need to be able to do that Thank you. Hey guys, my name is Ryan.

Hey Ryan. Hey Michael, I just wanted to say I really appreciate the last point that you made. A good friend of mine was, I was talking with a good friend of mine yesterday, and I was trying to make a similar point about the reflection of myself and something of him that he was talking with me about and that point really stood out to me so thank you. Great, good to meet you by the way.

Yeah, good to meet you too. Thanks for joining. Yeah, absolutely. I've enjoyed it. Count me in two weeks from now. What's the plan?

Awesome. Well I like to leave some silence and give people a chance if they want to share something So just a reminder, we are, you know, these guys, we care about each other, I hope. And so if maybe you were sitting here and there was something you wanted to say that maybe you didn't want to say it in front of a lot of people, you could always call me I'm sure the other guys in this group would be happy to talk to you too about things and as you know Jason did invite and Ryan to join feel free to invite other people to it's not a invite your non-believing friend and the hope he hears something you know kind of study it this is a you know for brothers but and then you can share the you know women tend to not join these things when it's a bunch of men already but you can always share the podcast with your wives too and in particular my own church I think you know if the wives wanted to listen and probably be good as we're all trying to understand covenant theology you know at our church the other thing I answered that final question you asked even about milk is I think having a confession helps okay so you know we have the London Baptist confession of faith which I'm not going to recommend any other one, but there's other ones.

Understanding that, that's kind of, to me, for a lot of people, what that confession says would be considered meat. And I would argue that getting that confession as well understood as you could, that's the milk. That's the beginning, the basis of where you find agreement with other Christians and you understand the foundational principles necessary so that you can go and do the rest of the doctrine.

Now, I'm not saying you have to read chapter 3 on the decree of God and totally understand it before you're on meat. But I'm saying just understanding what the confession says generally about it and deciding, do I agree? I mean, if you read through this confession, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and you read through it and you say, yeah I understand the words in it and I don agree with it I actually think we should baptize babies whatever right Okay At least you did the work You came to the conclusion like a man on your own You think you following the Spirit.

So go to a Presbyterian church if that's the result. But understand it. Read it. Do the work. And I think that if, you know, and that's why our church has the confession as its basis, is if we can't agree on what's in there, we're not going to be able to make any harder decisions. We're not going to be able to agree on tougher doctrines.

That's why I have a lot of... I don't know the right word. I have respect for people that are able to go to church with people of big-time different beliefs than them, because that eventually causes a lot of real difficulty, and it requires a lot of love and patience. but at the same time I think sometimes it stops you from being able to do things in an advanced way too because you know how can two go together if they're not you know united right and so you have to have some agreement to be able to do things with other Christians well let me pray it's about seven o'clock here and I know people have to go father bless our days ahead of us bless today, cause us to have hearts that sanctify the Lord Jesus, that we would set him apart and study him, that we would be dedicated to learning more about his person, that we would be concerned, Lord, that we are milk drinkers, and that we would realize our need to put in more effort to know you better.

And we also ask, Lord, that as we do that, that we would constantly trust in your grace to strengthen us, that we would never do these things on our own strength, but that through our prayers we would show you that we do believe that we are weak and incapable without your help. And so help us, Lord, to fulfill your command to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Amen.

Thank you.