We’ve noted many times on the blog, the podcast, and in messages that the culture is full of worldviews challenging our Biblical one. Many among us, particularly the young, are finding these challenges all but insurmountable, faced with questions for which they do not have answers. Some are struggling with doubt while others are overtly walking away.
This is a situation not unlike the audience to whom the book of Hebrews was written. It seems the recipients were Jewish Christians under an onslaught of persecution, tempted to leave the faith and perhaps return to Judaism. The author sets out to undergird their understanding of the gospel, particularly by demonstrating the supremacy of Christ to the shadows of the Old Covenant. However, just prior to his strongest arguments, the author laments,
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
12 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,
13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.
14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
(Heb. 5:11–14)
The author wants to call his readers to hold fast to faith in Christ, but his meatiest arguments are too much for the spiritually immature recipients to digest. In other words, it seems that the greatest danger to their faith is not that the Scriptures lack answers, but that the readers lack the appetite for the Scriptures necessary to find and comprehend those answers.
This leads the author to a rather lengthy tangent, warning about the danger of falling away from the faith. Only after that warning does he return to his deeper arguments for the supremacy of Christ.
The flow of thought in this section of Hebrews should lead us to conclude this: a shallow grasp of the Scriptures leaves one susceptible to a precarious faith. As Paul writes, we must press on to maturity lest we be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:14).
When we find ourselves unable to answer the world’s challenges to our worldview and then begin to doubt the hope we have in Christ, we must consider that it is not that a biblical worldview can’t hold up to scrutiny. It is that we haven’t gone deep into the Scriptures. The tree whose roots only go three inches deep shouldn’t blame the ground when the wind blows it down.
The deeper you go into the Word—understanding not only what texts mean, but how they fit together and testify to hope in Christ—the more securely you will hold fast to the confession of your hope. This is because the Scriptures show that Christ is imminently superior to what we left behind to follow Him.
Thus, we find numerous calls in both testaments to go deep into the Scriptures:
Deut. 11:18: You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
Jos. 1:8: This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Psa. 1:1-2: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Psa. 119:9: How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
Psa. 119:11: I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
Phil. 2:16: …[hold] fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
Col. 3:16: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…
1 Tim. 4:13: Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
1 Tim. 4:16: Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
2 Tim. 4:2-4: …preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
So, what can we do, if we don’t have an appetite for the Word and recognize our resulting vulnerability? Pastor John had some great application points in the sermon on Sunday. I’m going to co-opt them here.
- Pray for a greater appetite. This is something God wants for His people. We can pray with confidence.
- Meditate on the connection between the Word and our hope in Christ. Rom. 10:17: So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Paul has in mind primarily the gospel when he writes “word of Christ.” However, the whole Bible testifies to the coming of Christ and our hope in Him. Jesus Himself said, “[the Scriptures] bear witness about me” (John 5:39b, cf Luke 24:27). Those steeped in the things of Christ found in the Word will find great depth of soil for the roots of their faith.
- Get into the Word. Don’t wait for a change in appetite. Rather, develop that appetite by eating. Our website has a host of Bible reading plans. Read alone. Read with someone else. Read good theological books. Listen to good teaching and preaching outside of Sunday mornings. Eat until you develop a taste for the meat of the Word…and then keep eating.
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