Caught in Midair

By John Piper

Hebrews 5:11-14; 6:10-12

Suppose you are a gymnast. You are doing a floor exercise and have made a good beginning. In the middle of your routine, however, you start to get a little wobbly in your arms and legs. Then, as you begin a double back flip, a terrible uncertainty comes into your mind. You lose your bearings. As you ascend and begin to tuck, you hear a shout from the side of the mat, and you recognize it as the voice of your coach.

What I am picturing here is the people to whom the Epistle of Hebrews was written. They are the gymnast in this picture, and God is their coach. Our text for this message, Hebrews 5:11-14, is what God shouts to them as He catches them in midair. If they hear Him and follow His instruction, they will land on their feet. Otherwise, they are liable to come down on their head and break their neck.

A good start. Before I go into Hebrews 5:11-14, let me show you where I get this idea of God catching them in midair. Consider first Hebrews 6:10: "For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister."

This verse surely suggests that these people have done all right, doesn't it? They have work of love done in the name of Christ, and they have been serving the saints. With that good beginning, look now at verses 11 and 12 of Chapter 5:

Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For
when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye 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.
Despite their good outward appearance, God catches them floundering in midair. They need urgently to be corrected.

The observation

The first problem that God detects is that they are slow in learning and therefore have not shown much spiritual growth. By this time, they should know enough Biblical truths to teach others, but they don't. Instead, they need to be taught the elementary teachings about Christ over and over again.

This is the problem many churchgoers today have. They know something about the gospel and consider themselves Christians. Knowing that believers are supposed to live a life of love and service, they are active in the church, and minister lovingly to other members of the church. But all this does not necessarily mean that they are saved. God likens them to spiritual infants who are still sustained by milk.

There is nothing wrong for new believers to crave for spiritual milk. In fact, God tells them in I Peter 2:2, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word..." A young Christian ought to have a craving for truths. But note the second part of that verse: "that ye may grow thereby."

You see, Christians are all expected to grow and bear fruit. Jesus warns in Matthew 7:19, "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." In a sense, this warning is also implicit in verse 13 of our text, which reads:

For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.
A person can participate in all kinds of church activities, singing in the choir, teaching Sunday school, and caring for the sick, but if he is unskilful in the word of righteousnessthat is, if he is not acquainted with the gospel that explains the righteousness of Godthen he most likely does not have saving faith. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Understanding. God's salvation plan requires that we hear the gospel of the Bible and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, understand what it is all about. For a new Christian to grow and bear fruit, moreover, he has to be weaned from milk and be nourished by advanced teaching, or strong meat. Thus, we read in verse 14 :

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.
A true believer is one who has a resurrected soul that wants to do the will of God. And to do the will of God, he needs to be able to distinguish good from evil. Such maturity is attained only by learning from the Scriptures truths beyond the basic gospel message.

Even having such knowledge is not enough. It says here that to attain full age, one has to have his senses exercised to discern good from evil. (The
Greek word for "exercised" here, incidentally, is that from which we get the English word "gymnast".) Notice moreover the phrase "by reason of use". The things we learn from the word of God must be put to practical use in order for us to gain true insight to distinguish the difference between good and evil.

The diagnosis

Coupling 5:11-14 with 6:10, we can see why these Hebrew people have remained spiritual infants, not ready to move on to more advanced teaching. Yes, they have worked, loved and served the saints in God's name, and they are still serving. But they cannot make the moral distinctions that come with training and practice in the word of righteousness. If they continue in that state, they will end up in destruction.

Like them, there are believers, as well as professed Christians, who find themselves in desperate situations because they have strayed from the word of God, failed to be vigilantly obedient, or let their immediate circumstances overshadow their faith in Christ. Now, they feel as though they are hanging by their spiritual fingernails and could drop any minute.

It takes a good coach to tell when an athlete is in trouble. In our example, the coach knows that the gymnast is floundering in midair and needs some immediate help to get himself down safely on his feet. He knows that panic is the worst enemy in the midst of a dangerous routine. And panic comes from a mounting sense of weakness and uncertainty. The gymnast needs to get his bearings straight; he needs to find the floor on which to land.

The instructions

Likewise, our text in Hebrews may be catching us in midair. God sees some good works, love and service on our part. But He also sees evidence of complacency, a lack of commitment to live an obedient life or, worse yet, sheer unbelief. So, our Supreme Coach shows us how to find our bearings. He "shouts" to us in Hebrews 12:2, "(Look) unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith."

Jesus is the one sure thing. He is the rock, the foundation. Get him in view when everything else in your life is swirling and you will land safely. But if you are truly a child of God, you'll find that focusing your eyes on the Lord Jesus is exactly what you need to regain your sense of direction.

God further says in Hebrews 12:12, "Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees." This advice applies literally to the floundering gymnast in our analogy. He needs to immediately reposition himself for a safe landing. In the spiritual sense, it is saying that we need to strengthen our faith so as to know that we have an absolutely secured hope in Christ.

Building faith. But how do we do that? This brings us back to Chapter 6, where we read in verses 11 and 12:

And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Notice that the alternative to having full assurance is being slothful or lazy. So if we could find an antidote to slothfulness, we would have a prescription for assurance. Well, that antidote is precisely what our text gives
us.

You can't see the clue in English, but in the Greek the word "slothful" is the same word that is translated dull in 5:11. "Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing."

So, the antidote to this dullness would be the prescription for assurance. And that antidote, as we've already learned earlier, is found in verse 14: "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."

They are dull of hearing because they have not trained their faculties with regular practice in the distinguishing of good and evil. This means that the faith they claim to have in God's word and in the doctrines of Christ is not being exercised in the thing it was designed for, namely, a life of joyful holiness.

We all know what happens to a limb of the body that is not exercisedit becomes atrophy. So it is with faith. It grows strong with use and it dies with disuse. And the use for which faith was primarily designed was what? A new life of willing and joyful obedience.

If God says don't lie on your income tax form, then we must put faith to work and trust that God will meet all our needs as we obey Him. If God says, flee fornication, then we must put our faith to work, and trust God that life will be fuller and relationships deeper and eternity sweeter because I have been obediently chaste. And so it goes.

In closing, I might note that some of us tend to regard the commands of Scripture as burdensome. We shouldn't feel that way. We should think of them as the shouts of a coach who wants us to finish the routine of a righteous life and inherit the crown of glory.

If you obediently exercise your faith it will be strengthened. You will make progress toward maturity, with your moral faculties well trained in distinguishing good and evil. And the full assurance of hope will in turn make you ready for the toughest routines your coach may ever push you to try. o

Dr. John Piper is the Senior Pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, 720 13th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55415.

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