You and I are living in a world going down. It is headed south in so many ways. Dr. Tony Evans says complacency will cause us to be carried along with it. So all you have to do is stay still and you're gonna go down with it.
You don't have to decide to go down, just don't go up. This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, and founding pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas. Neglecting your faith is like leaving a garden untended.
Weeds will eventually take over and what was once vibrant and thriving will become barren and lifeless. Today we'll look at how believers can nurture and tend to their faith and why that's so crucial for overcoming life's challenges. Let's join Dr. Evans as he begins. Priscilla, my daughter was telling me the other day about the fact that my grandson, her son Jude, was on an escalator that was going down. He was standing on the escalator and standing on the escalator because it was going down. He was going down even though the goal was to go up. So the goal was to go up, but he's on an escalator going down. So the escalator was going to naturally pull him down unless he continued to climb up.
The goal was up, the escalator is going down, and unless he persisted in going up, he would go where the escalator is taking him. In other words, when you're on something going down, you better be climbing up or it'll take you down with you. You and I are living in a world going down. It is headed south in so many ways.
Every direction we look in and look at, things are deteriorating. So all you have to do is stay still and you're gonna go down with it. You don't have to decide to go down. Just don't go up. The world, the flesh, and the devil are going to take you down because we have a world going down.
When you have water that's stagnant, it's not flowing, it's going to accumulate dirt because it's not moving. The author of the book of Hebrews is concerned. He's concerned that the Christians here is writing to that they are stagnant, that they're not moving forward in their spiritual progress. And because they're not moving forward, the danger is that they're going to go down. Again, you don't have to try to go down.
You just have to be on the wrong escalator and it's gonna take you down if you're not climbing up. So over and over again throughout the book of Hebrews, he's encouraging them, challenging them, warning them, keep going. Keep going. Don't quit. Don't give up.
Don't throw in the towel. Because if the truth be told, sometimes you can get weary in your Christian pursuit, Christian commitment, and Christian life. And so he wants to challenge and encourage them, as he says in verse 1, press on to maturity. Keep going in your faith.
He says this over and over and over and over again in various ways throughout the book of Hebrews. You're going through a rough time. Some of them were. You just keep going. You're discouraged, as some of them were. You just keep going.
You're being attacked from outside forces that reject and challenge your faith. He says, keep going. You'll get up and go has gotten up and gone.
Get it and keep going. He says, I want you to press on to maturity. Now, exactly what is he asking us to do? If you go back a few verses in chapter 5, he tells them in verse 11, you become dull of hearing. Mule-headed is what the Greek word means. Stubborn.
This stubbornness, by this time, you ought to be teachers. Some of these believers in the book of Hebrews have been saved for 30 years. And he says, having been in church this long, having been saved this long, you ought to be able to help somebody else. But instead, he says in verse 12 of chapter 5, you have need for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. He calls them in verse 13 because you are an infant, but solid food is for the mature. He contrasts at the end of chapter 5 leading to chapter 6, people who were up to 30 years old still eating pablum, baby Christians still sucking on milk bottles, because they have not matured. They have not grown up spiritually. Even though they've been saved long enough to be a spiritual adult, they're functioning as spiritual infants.
If I were to wave a magic wand over us today, and your physical age would reflect your spiritual age, how many folk here would be wearing diapers? Because spiritual maturity or spiritual adulthood has not yet occurred. You're still a spiritual infant. How do you determine maturity? What is spiritual maturity?
At the end of verse 14 of chapter 5, but solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Maturity has to do with discernment. Maturity has to do with spiritual preceptivity.
Maturity has to do with judgment calling. It has to do with your ability to see the spiritual nature of a thing and not just the physical nature of a thing. It's your ability to give heaven's read on it, not just earth's read on it. It's your ability to see beyond what you see to see what you do not see so that you know what's really going on.
It is the ability to be tuned in the heavens network in order to pick up God's signals even though you're living on Earth's territory. Spiritual maturity has to do with discernment or judgment. All of us know people who regularly make bad judgments in normal everyday life due to a lack of maturity. Well, when it comes to spiritual maturity, babies, those who are confined to milk, are limited to their five senses. Mature Christians have a sixth sense, another sense, another pickup where they can perceive from heaven so that they can function on earth. And one of the reasons Christians give up throwing the towel, don't keep going, is because they don't see except what they see. And rather than being able to grab heaven as they deal with the realities of earth, they throw in the towel, they fall away because all they saw was what the five senses told them. But he says for the mature, the ones who eat solid food, if I had a baby here and I put shiny marbles on one side and diamonds on the other side, most of the babies are going to gravitate toward the marbles because they are impressed with the shine even though the value is over here with the diamonds. They're gonna gravitate to the insignificant because they don't understand the value of the significant. Many Christians gravitate to the shine.
They gravitate to shiny buildings, shiny sermons, shiny environments, and they miss the steak and potatoes because they like the shine of the milk. He says you are infants even though some of you have been saved up to 30 years because you still don't have spiritual perceptivity. You're still limited to the five senses. Manufacturers will tell you in a moment to keep your medicine out of the reach of children. And they put on these childproof caps that even adults can't open. And the reason why they do that is they know a child does not have the preceptivity to discern what's helpful versus what's harmful. So they say keep it out of the reach of children because they don't have discerning capacity. As you mature in your faith, your ability, my ability, and our ability to see what's going on spiritually and not just what our five senses partake of becomes critical for our being able to have God's involvement in life's decisions. He says because the mature are able to discern, but he says something back in chapter 5 verse 14.
He says they have their senses trained. They have to be trained to do this. You just don't wake up mature like a baby doesn't wake up as an adult. It's got to be developed into adulthood. Christians have to be developed from infancy to spiritual maturity. It doesn't happen automatically.
It's guaranteed, but it's not automatic. Things have to take place to train you to get used to operating in the spiritual and not just operating in the natural. And if you don't accept the training, you won't have the development so that you won't see the spiritual to apply it to the natural, and you'll be stuck on earth and be earthbound because maturity has not developed.
Dr. Evans will illustrate this point with a lesson from a popular old sitcom when he returns in a moment. First though, today's presentation is the initial installment in a short but powerful series called Pressing on to Maturity. The three messages in this collection will encourage you to nurture and grow your faith, persevering in God's promises regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey. Right now you can receive this collection of New Testament lessons on CD or digital download along with a copy of Kingdom Living, a book that will help you reaffirm your identity in Christ, teach you how to live by grace instead of fear, and help you discover God's calling for your life. You can get both of these resources together as our gift when you make a donation to help continue this outreach ministry. Visit tonyevans.org today to find out more or call us at 1-800-800-3222 where members of our resource team are available 24-7 to help with your request.
That's 1-800-800-3222 or online at tonyevans.org. Now let's get back to our message. I've mentioned before you remember Arnold and Willis, different strokes. These two boys from the hood are now living uptown with Mr. Drummond in the penthouse, but they brought their hood with them. And the humor of different strokes was Mr. Drummond trying to get these boys from the inner city to live at a higher level, to learn how to operate in this new environment. What brought us humor was they kept going hood on them, even though they were trying to be trained to live in this new environment. God is trying to train us to live in a heavenly environment, but we keep going hood on it.
We keep returning to the world, the flesh. We keep returning to that which does not reflect the values of the kingdom of God, and so maturity gets stifled because the training is not accepted. He says if you're going to be mature, you have to be trained to move away from the limitations of the five senses. You don't ignore them, but you don't limit yourself to them, so that maturity can take place with this sixth sense.
He said to them, verse 1 of chapter 6, therefore leaving the elementary principles of Christ. He says it's time for you to get out of kindergarten, the elementary principles. You know, kindergarten is easy. You got to go to school. Kindergarten is easy. No homework, nap time, you know, they're gonna they're gonna give you some cookies and juice and stuff. I mean, it's so easy, but the more you start going up them grades, and they got homework, and they got it, you got it, you're gonna be told to sit up, and you're gonna pay attention, and you know why? Because you're supposed to be mature. He says you need to leave elementary school. It's time for you Christians, some of whom have been saved up for 30 years, it's time for you to become mature, to be able to do the homework of life, to be able to deal with the test of circumstances, to be able to deal with, see, many people come in the church, come for kindergarten. They just want to be spoon-fed, not challenged, not corrected, not confronted, and Lord have mercy, don't give me no homework.
What is this difference between milk and meat? Well, these are some interesting principles. He talks about the fact of laying on of the foundation of repentance, dead works, faith in Christ, instructions and washing, and laying on of hands, the resurrection from the dead, eternal life. He said, why is that kindergarten stuff? Because he calls that the elementary school. He's literally calling Bible study the elementary school, because all those things are teachings that the Bible teaches.
And he says, I want you to leave elementary school. But in elementary school, he's got all these great truths of the Word of God. Why would he want me to leave the truths?
Why would he want me to move from the principles? Because the Bible is not simply to be information for you to know. It's supposed to be truth for you to use. The difference between milk and meat is not a difference of information.
It's a difference of usefulness. To have deep theological knowledge that you don't use in life's realities makes that information useless to you, even if you know it. God does not want you to know the Word. He wants the Word that you know to influence decision-making and discernment. And if it doesn't influence decision-making and discernment, it won't be helpful for you.
You will not be trained by it. You know, in Texas, we don't have basements here. You will rarely find a basement in Texas.
There's a reason for that. And that is the ground is so hard, so stony, and so rocky, it's too expensive to build basements in Texas. So because of the expense involved, rarely will you see a basement in Texas. Now you go up the road to Oklahoma, and you'll see more basements, or if they don't have basements, they have shelters.
And the reason why they have them is because there are a lot of tornadoes that come down Oklahoma, and so they have to have a place to hide when a tornado comes, and so they're much more likely to build a basement or to build a shelter in Oklahoma or Kansas than the hard rocky land here in Texas. When the twisters of life come, if you have not matured in your faith, you'll have no place to hide. You will be subject to the circumstances dictating your well-being and your stability when life does not work. God has a training program. It's called test. Those are adverse circumstances God allows in our lives for us to use the truth that we should have learned. So if you didn't learn it, you have nothing to use.
If you learned it but don't use it, you have nothing to use. So when the tornadoes of life hit, you find yourself being controlled by the winds rather than stable on the land because you found a place to hide in the application of the truth of God in your life. So maturity has to do with the ability to use the truth, not merely the process of knowing the truth. And as a result of that, maturity begins to take place.
But this requires something of you. Verse 1 of chapter 6 says, let us press on to maturity. Let us press on to maturity. To put it another way, you have to decide you want to be mature. God won't do the pressing for you.
He's not going to do the homework for you. You must press on to maturity. That is, you must decide I'm climbing up the escalator even though the escalator is going down. Even though the culture is going down. Even though the society is going down. Even though the worldview is going down. Even though the the framework of our whole environment is going down, I'm climbing up. I'm not gonna let it take me down with it. Which means that you have to press on to envelop and adopt and embrace a biblical approach to life if you're gonna climb up in a world going down. Far too many Christians are going down with the culture.
Why? Because they haven't pressed on to maturity. And so you'll find them acquiescing to the culture, illegitimately agreeing with the culture, submitting to the culture because they are following the escalator. You say, but I'm not climbing down with them. You don't have to. Just stand still.
It'll take you down. Just be a stagnant Christian and you will go right down there with it. And you see that all over. You see Christians succumbing to the culture by not doing anything because they're not pressing forward. He says press on to maturity. In other words, you have to decide I'm going to grow in my faith through the knowledge and application of the Word of God which is the process for becoming mature even though I can't get off of this escalator of the world I live in that's going down. I'm walking up even though you trying to take me down. And he says you must press on to maturity.
A warning today for all of us about adopting an attitude of complacency. Here at The Alternative, our goal is to bring you resources that will help build your faith, equipping you to live a life of fulfillment and significance for God's kingdom, standing strong as a conduit of God's hope and love to a world in need of His healing presence. That's been our goal for over 40 years and our website contains a huge collection of materials we have to assist in your spiritual growth. Visit tonyevans.org to browse books, Bible studies, and more. And don't forget the featured offer I mentioned earlier, our current three-part audio series, Pressing on to Maturity, along with the helpful book, Kingdom Living, both available as our gift to you and thanks for your financial donation to the ministry at this time. Again, that's tonyevans.org or you can call our 24-hour resource center at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help with your request.
The number again 1-800-800-3222. Simply standing in a gym won't build muscles. There has to be some sort of effort and commitment to a workout. Tomorrow we'll talk about being committed to a spiritual workout, actively taking steps to press on to maturity as God works within us, transforming us from spiritual infants to mature believers. Be sure to join us for that. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and it's made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.
