The Principles of the Oracles of God

The speaker is addressing the audience about the importance of focusing on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the principles of the oracles of God. He expresses concern about the decline of the church and the tendency to forget the fundamentals of Christianity. The writer of Hebrews is dealing with Christians who are struggling with their faith and are tempted to return to Judaism. The author emphasizes the superiority of Jesus Christ and warns against immaturity and the dangers of not listening to the Word of God. The passage mentions the priest Melchizedek and highlights the need for diligence and faith in inheriting the promises of God. The main idea is to encourage believers to hold fast to their faith and not be swayed by external circumstances. Man, if you have your Bibles, turn to Hebrews chapter 5, Hebrews chapter 5, and if you want to go ahead and mark it, the column 5 to chapter 6, we will be there for the next several weeks as we begin to look over the principles of the oracles of God, and really as we begin to look at the doctrine of Jesus Christ. I shared with the church Wednesday night, this year is going to really, in my ministry, I'm going to really focus this year on discipleship, and some of that has us to go back to the beginning and just make sure we know some of the fundamentals, and so that's what we're going to be doing on Sunday mornings this year. But how many of you, let me just ask you a couple of questions this morning as we get started, how many of you believe the church is stronger today than what it was 20 years ago? How many of you believe it's worse than it was 20 years ago? Make sure to see if we get some hands here at all. Do you think the church is getting better or getting worse? It seems to be following toward the worse, doesn't it? The writer of Hebrews is dealing with these Christians that have a lot of problems. When you look at the church today, I believe we have problems. I believe we're not too far off from what the writer of Hebrews was writing back in that day. If you go back in just a couple of verses to kind of highlight this morning, if you go back to chapter 2 and verse 1, the writer of Hebrews says, Therefore we ought to give thee more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. And so the author here was worried that the teachings, what Jesus Christ had taught, what the apostles had taught them, all of a sudden is just going to kind of go out of their ear and they're going to begin to slip away from their Christianity. And we see that today. I know that's a burden that's up on my heart, a lot of ministers' hearts. It seems like today we have forgotten the old-time landmarks. We forgot the fundamentals of what Christianity is all about. And then you get to chapter 3 and because they have forgotten what they have heard, the next thing that he says in chapter 3 and verse 1 is even scarier because he says, Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, Christ Jesus. They weren't even putting Jesus Christ in their thinking and in their ramifications of their life. And he's telling them, man, we need to get focused back on Jesus Christ. You go down to verse 8 of chapter 3 and he tells them there the problem of a hardened heart. He says, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness. And then you go from a hardened heart to verse 12. He says, Take heed, brethren, lest there be any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. You go to Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 1. He says, Let us therefore fear, lest a promise be in left us of entering into his rest. Any of you should seem to come short of it. You skip down to verse 11 of chapter 4. He says, Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. And then you come to verse 14 and he says, Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. And these Christians, and he's writing the book of Hebrews that's written to Christian Jews, Jews that have converted over to Christianity, they have tasted Jesus Christ, they have experienced Jesus Christ, but yet they were willing now for some odd reason to forsake Jesus Christ and to run back into Judaism and back to the Old Testament which was just a shadow and type of Jesus Christ. And the author of Hebrews is just blown away by this and he's trying through these urgent admonitions to help them to realize the superiority of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is very, very important. Without the Old Testament, we would not be able to understand a lot of the New Testament. But, we should not put the Old Testament higher than the New Testament with Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ is the fulfillment. Everything in the Old Testament pointed to Jesus Christ, either through shadows, through types, through illustrations, but in the New Testament, we find the fulfillment of Jesus Christ. And so he's telling the men, why in the world would you want to go back to a shadow or a type when you have experienced Jesus Christ in real? You know, I would not want to go and hang out with just a picture of my wife after living with my wife for nearly 30-something years. It would not be the same. But yet, these Christians were doing that. These Christians were wanting to go back into Judaism. And so the author tells them, here's the problem. And so he gives them these hints of what is going on, and you can see this decline. When you get away from the Word of God, it doesn't take long before you leave God. And we see that, and here's the problem that we have. In Hebrews 5 and verse 11, he says, "...of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing. For when the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God, and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. Everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." And so he says, here is the problem. First, it starts off with not listening to the Word of God, not paying attention to the Word of God, and before long you will forsake God. And he says, it is because of your dull of hearing. And so he uses this idea of immaturity and maturity. And that's what this passage is talking about. And he gives us some signs of immaturity. What does he say about this immaturity, these signs? He says, first of all, in verse 11, of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing. If you go back and you look and you read the context of what is taking place, in chapter 4 he introduces us to a guy by the name of Melchizedek. Now how many of you have ever heard of Melchizedek? How many of you know who Melchizedek is? How many of you knew Melchizedek was a priest? How many of you knew that Melchizedek was a priest before there were priests? In other words, Melchizedek was a priest before Moses, and Aaron we say was the first priest, but guess what? Melchizedek was in the days of Abraham, which was before the priesthood was ever established, before the sacrifices was established. And so he was in Abraham's day before Moses. As a matter of fact, if you go back and you read, Melchizedek came and appeared to Abraham, and Abraham actually gave Melchizedek a tithe from the offerings and the spoils of what he had just got from conquering four kings that had taken his brother Laban into captivity. You say, wait a minute, tithing was not until the law, right? Well, guess what? Guess what? Tithing was before. Priests was before. And so what I want us to understand is the writer is writing Hebrews and he is telling them about this, and he goes to start talking about the priesthood, which what did the Jews look for the priesthood? They looked to Moses. They looked to Mount Sinai when God gave them the law and established their worship and gave them the outline and the design for the tabernacle where they would come and make their sacrifices and stuff. That's where the Jew went. But he says, let me tell you about this priest Melchizedek that you all know that Abraham talked with. And then all of a sudden he gets sidetracked. He says, man, I want to tell you and explain this to you, but there's no way that you can understand this because you're immature. In other words, you think that the law was established in Moses. You think that sacrifices was established with Moses. And so they were immature. They had heard, they had talked, they had experienced, but yet they really did not know. And he uses the phrase that you are dull of hearing. The first sign of immaturity is dullness of hearing. Dullness of hearing. You go over to Hebrews 6 and you look down at verse 11. It says, And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end. And then notice this next phrase. That you be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Now I underlined or I bolded there that phrase, you be not slothful. That word slothful is the same exact Greek word that we have in chapter 5 verse 11 that the writers translate dull. In other words, dull, slothful, lazy are all three perfectly fine translations for this Greek word. And so he says you are dull of hearing. You are slothful. You are lazy when it comes to your hearing. Do you have full assurance of hope? See, the whole reason that we are saved, we are saved by grace through faith, because there is a hope that is out there. And we're going to talk about that later. The next two weeks we're going to talk about this hope through repentance and through faith. But hope is something that we have not seen or we have not experienced. We are all looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ. Amen? Man, we are looking for Him to come back. That is our hope. But what was happening is the Jewish Christians, because of persecution, because things were not going just exactly the way they thought it ought to go in their mind, for being a Christian, guess what? They wanted to go back to the shadows and the types. They had lost their hope. And I think today, and you all agreed with me when we started this message this morning, that we honestly believe the church is worse off today than what it was 20 years ago. What makes the difference? Why is it happening? And I remind myself all the time, we serve the same God. Amen? The Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. God never changes. God cannot lie. It is against His nature. So if God is not the problem, then who's the problem? We are. We are. And I think a lot of our problems in churches today is because of our hope. We've lost hope. We're kind of like Peter reminded us. He says in the last days, there will be scoffers that will come about that will say, haven't you preachers been preaching that Christ is going to come back for 2,000 years? Right? Haven't you been preaching this for over 2,000 years that Christ is going to come back? We see today that because of this attitude, because of this loss of hope, we see people that doesn't have good priorities with Jesus Christ. We've got plenty of time to get things right with Jesus. We've got plenty of time to serve Jesus. We have individuals that church is not important. You know, so many people today think they can worship anywhere and everywhere, but it just kind of shocks me in Ephesians and Colossians that it says that Jesus Christ shed His blood for the church. If the church was important enough that Jesus Christ gave His blood for the church, then how important should the church be to us? But yet we find that, you know what, we see so many churches today that are not having more services, but what are they doing? They're taking away services. They're doing away with Sunday nights. They're doing away with Wednesday nights. They're away from prayer meeting and Bible study to times of fellowship and getting together. And what we are seeing is now, unfortunately, Sunday morning in most churches is the only time that the Word of God is proclaimed. There's no time to go deep into the Word. There's no time to sit down and explain and talk and discuss. We have a society today that is not eager nor diligent to embrace the promises of God and turn them into faith and patience. We have a take-it-and-leave-it attitude when it comes to the Word of God. Right? If it's there, I'm going to listen to it, but you know what, I can go to church and listen. It doesn't matter if I don't go to church. It's not that important. Our Sunday school, if you begin to look at our attendance just here at Kentucky, forget about everywhere else, our Sunday school has very little attendance. People just don't think that studying is that important. Do you realize the hours and time of study our teachers put in?