April 08, 2013
Preaching Milk
Every once in awhile I’ll hear a sermon that, to me, seems diluted and
lacking depth, but invariably someone else will say the same message was
exactly what they needed to hear. Paul chastised the Corinthians for their lack
of spiritual growth and described them as worldly, mere infants in Christ. “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you
were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.” (1Cor
3:2 NIV) I have to admit that my thoughts have always focused on the immature
Corinthians, but I’d never considered the frustration that Preacher Paul must
have experienced when he was forced to deliver a milky-type message.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----A little survey of Psalms and Proverbs turns up a connection between obedience and knowledge similar to that between fear of the Lord and wisdom. The Corinthians’ situation involved a lot of disobedience. Although it is not an easy thing to ponder, and it is quite frightful to think about men dealing with the behavior of others, Paul instructed the Corinthians to put out of their fellowship a quite disobedient man they openly received. And we’ve watched this instruction be badly abused by the church throughout its history to the present day. Because of extraordinary abuses like burning each other at the stake over “heresies” and inquisitively seeking out anything of interference with the its power over the general public, far too many people today are openly accepted into the church in spite of their behaving in ways the Bible sharply proscribes. Many churches glorify the filthy based on emotionally charged yet intellectually ambiguous expressions such as “alternative lifestyles”, “tolerance”, and “nobody has the right to judge.” The last one is true in most senses, but those senses are pawned for the entirely foreign application to nobody having a right to discern the behavior of others. And that just is not true to the Bible’s teaching. We are given a high degree of responsibility to discern. And that ability to discern is sharpened by actual obedience to the Word. It only makes sense.
-----Am I saying churches should start kicking out lots of people? No. I’m saying that, for the most part, churches obey the Bible less and religious clichés, philosophical fads, and social perceptions of the Bible more. Consequently, there is not the reliable level of discernment available to deal properly with much of the sin in the church. The levels of knowledge and understanding have systematically dropped with the sinking levels of obedience. Much of the church is left needing milk because they‘ve choked on the beef.
-----I am sure the complexity of the situation is beyond my ability to devise a solution. Besides, I have a strong aversion to solutions. Every solution I’ve seen has eventually become an abusive process. People are highly biased and therefore prone to mishandling policies and procedures and protocols of solutions. So, I am attracted to processes, since everything winds up merely being those anyway. All of the behaviors and principles of understanding presented to us in the Bible are processes, for example, obedience leading to knowledge and understanding, and fearing the Lord leading to wisdom. But so also are kindness, gentleness, perseverance, faithfulness, etc. processes, right on down to lovingly confronting your neighbor over his sin you’ve rightly discerned. Nobody does all the processes well. Everybody does some well. But two seem to initiate the rest more aptly when done sincerely: desiring to know the truth and to do right accordingly. I think the more a church inspires its people to those two processes, the more beef its patrons will eventually order with their milk.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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