Give Me Meat, Not Milk

Recently I spent most of the day at a Ladies Conference at my church. I will admit that I have never really enjoyed these kind of conferences, for several reasons. First of all, I am not big on large crowds of people and these conferences can sometimes pull in large numbers. I am much more a one on one or small group kind of person. I tend to have a few very close friends that I can count on rather than a slew of fair weather acquaintances. It is just my personality to prefer it that way. A second reason is that these conferences are usually geared towards subjects that specifically apply to  ladies, most of which tend to not be the most stimulating from an intellectual scholarly point of view. While I have no objection to these subjects per se, I am and have always been a scholar and prefer a scholarly presentation on some deep spiritual or theological subject rather than hearing for the umpteenth time "How to be a Woman of God,"with lots of personal stories, visual props, crafts, and entertainment. It seems that this is the recurring theme at every conference. It only varies in the presentation. To me there is very little difference between being a woman of God and just being a Christian who does their best to walk in holiness, and I long ago learned what the requirements of doing that were. It is now my responsibility to work on that knowledge, not to have it drummed into me at every opportunity, as if I am unaware of the requirement.  If I haven't learned it in the 60 years I have been a Christian, then obviously I am not going to learn it. That's not saying that other younger Christians don't need this lesson, but it would be nice if once in a while they geared the messages toward those who are mature Christians who learned all this long ago. The last problem for me is that these things often tend to deteriorate to an elementary school level entertainment production, as horrible as that may sound.

To demonstrate what I mean with that last remark, let me share what I experienced at my latest conference. As most of these things begin, we started with prayer and singing a hymn. So far so good. The speaker gave us handouts on the topic, which was Jeremiah 18. She was going to discuss the potter and the clay and all the lessons that can be learned from that comparison as to God's relationship with us and how God molds us. This is not the deepest spiritual lesson one can learn, as it is a rather basic lesson that one should learn as a new Christian. I call it a lesson from Christianity 101. She went over the basics of receiving salvation, and then our need for ongoing repentance and allowing God to bring into our lives what He does for our spiritual growth. It is most definitely one that should be taught to new Christians, and as this woman is actually what I would call an evangelist by spiritual gifting, I would expect that this would be the basic lesson that she teaches, no matter what Scriptures she might use to vary the presentation.

As she also seems to do these presentations with young people or children much of the time (being a pastor's wife), she has developed a method which she uses regardless of the nature of the audience. So, even though probably 85%  of the audience constituted people over the age of 55 in this case, we were treated to what would have been a very entertaining show for elementary and possibly as old as high school children. She put on the costumes of characters such as an old woman, and a haughty British schoolteacher (I understand she has other characters she uses from well-known children's books as well) and in those personas presented us with some elementary school science tricks. With each trick there was a spiritual application. e.g. colored water made clear by the application of some chemical shows us that Jesus washes us clean of our sins.  A bar of Ivory soap in a microwave (do not try this) will greatly expand, because Ivory is the only soap that has water in it. The application being that when we are indwelt with the Living Water of Jesus, we expand  with His love and grace. There were a number of such science experiments.  We also did a craft. We painted one of our hands with white paint and made a hand print on a black piece of construction paper, then put a red dot in the middle of the palm to make it look like Jesus' nail pierced hand, then wrote something underneath it such as "Paid in Full." I remember my children doing much the same type of craft in Vacation Bible School.

Now, there is nothing wrong with any of this, and I am not criticizing using these things in the proper venue. What my point in all this is, this is neither physically or spiritually age appropriate for women who are basically senior citizens, who for the most part claim a Christian walk with the Lord of decades in length. This should have been nursery school stuff for them. In other words like baby's milk. It was New Christianity 101, not Mature Christianity 501. It would have been excellent as a Vacation Bible School presentation for children. It was not what women of this age and supposed spiritual maturity should have been satisfied with as a spiritual learning experience, yet that is exactly how they responded. They were thrilled with the day and felt it was a such a wonderful spiritually enlightening experience. As awful as this may sound for me to say this, it should not have been. They should have walked away feeling a hungry for spiritual food instead of full. What was taught should not have filled a person who was spiritually mature and looking to learn something that would push their learning curve even further. They settled for milk. And unfortunately they settle for it week after week in church as well.

What disturbed me was not that this wonderful lady presented this, for this is her thing, but that this is all that these women expect or want in the way of learning. They were all impressed, and uplifted by it all, none of them seeming to see that it was way below what they should have been embracing in the way of spiritual education. By now, they should have long ago moved on from this kind of milk. We are told in Hebrews 5:12-14, 6:1-2 " 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.  For every one that useth milk is unskilful 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; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." And in 1 Corinthians 3:2 "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.  I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able."

Continuing to teach Christians who are no longer classified as "new" Christians the same doctrines over and over of salvation, repentance, faith, baptism, the reality of a resurrection, and eternal judgment is not growing in the Lord. For some reason, pastors seem to think that these are the subjects that they should be teaching over and over and over instead of moving on to other things. These are the milk of our belief. These are the basic tenets which we should be taught at first, but then we should move on to other things. Scholarly things. When the Scriptures above were written, the New Testament was not formed. The epistles were merely letters that circulated among the churches. The gospel message was the milk. The meat of Scripture was the Scriptures which the people called the Talmud, or as we know it, the Old Testament. In other words, the Old Testament is the meat of Scripture. It is what, as mature Christians, we should be studying. The irony of this is that for the most part, a great many if not most of the clergy out there feel that the Old Testament is irrelevant and need not even be studied. As a side note, likewise they ignore the last book of the Bible, Revelation, as they also feel it is irrelevant to the Church as, at least in America, the Church does not think anything in that book applies to them. This despite the fact that God put a blessing on the book for those who read and heed it, so that they would be encouraged to study it.

While so many think the Old Testament has nothing to offer, God tells us  "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Timothy 3:16-17. God considers the information in the Old Testament to be information which will 1) teach you correct doctrine, 2) offer reproof when needed, 3) correct your errors of behavior and understanding, 4) instruct you in righteous living 5) furnish you to be able to do the works God calls you to do, and as Hebrews tells us, also teaches us 6) how to learn to be discerning of good and evil, 7) to be skillful in handling the Word, rightly dividing it,  8) to be strong in righteousness, 9) to be a mature Christian, and 10) to turn you into a teacher of the Word rather than a babe, all which 11) perfects your faith which 12) teaches you how to know God better.

Not only will studying the Old Testament do these things for you, the New Testament cannot be fully understood or rightly divided unless one studies the Old Testament, for many things in the New Testament refer back or reference things from the Old. We are told in 2 Timothy 2:15 " Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."  One has to study all of a subject to rightly divide it, and if you are leaving out the bulk of the information, how can one possibly divide it correctly? This is especially true of prophecy. Most of the end times prophecies are in the Old Testament. The book of Revelation cannot truly be understood without a massive amount of help from the Old. Not only the prophets, but even the Torah or Pentateuch as Gentiles tend to refer to it. These are Laws of God and Moses. The information contained in these five book, as well as the prophets, plays a large part in understanding Revelation. And prophecy is for the mature in Christ, not the babe.

In all the years I have attended church, and the many churches I have attended, including a number of different denominations, I find that with rare exceptions, the sermons always speak in some form or other of the milk of the Bible.  In fact, it is to the point of boredom. How many times can one go to kindergarten and get anything out of it? Once you learn 2 + 2 = 4, you need to move on to algebra and then geometry, and then trigonometry, and calculus, etc. You cannot just find a variety of ways to teach 2  + 2 = 4 and expect anyone to learn any more about math. Neither can you constantly teach salvation and repentance over and over, no matter how many stories, or ways, or Scriptures you vary to teach it and think that your congregation is going to grow in knowledge. God has a very serious warning about not growing in knowledge of Him and His Word. Hosea 4:6 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children." 

The story of salvation and the First Coming is what we are told to take out into the unbelieving world, so that they might be saved. But once saved, we are to move on and quit looking back at the First Coming and look towards the Second Coming, which should be the primary concern of the saved individual for his own learning and growth. The First Coming is for unbelievers. The Second Coming is for believers, and we should put our attention on that subject matter and learn all there is to learn about it. That is exactly why God put a blessing on the last book of the Bible. But without the foundation of a solid knowledge of the entire Old Testament, you will miss a great deal of what that final book contains. That is why so many people find the book so extremely hard to understand. Of course it is under those conditions. If you have only learned 2 + 2 = 4, you cannot do calculus, can you. The reason God put it at the end is because He expected people to read the Bible from the beginning to the end, but if interested in the end at all, people skip through the book and read only the last chapter, as it were, to find out the ending. The problem is, without understanding what is going on, the ending will make no sense.


God tells us that in the last days, there will be a falling away from truth, or what we call apostasy. 2 Thessalonians 2:3 "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;" He asks if He will even find faith when He returns. Luke 18:8b "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"   He tells us that people will not want to hear the truth of His Word, because they have itching ears that they want to tickle. 2 Timothy 4:3-4 "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." This is exactly why the Church is in such apostasy. They do not study God's Word and therefore they do not grow, and they are unable to discern false teachings, because they cannot rightly divide God's truth.

The clergy for generations has been guilty of not teaching the people God's entire Word, and as a result, we now have a Church which does not even know what God's Word really says. Man has corrupted His teachings with all sorts of lies and perversions and nobody is the wiser. And the Church has watered things down to not just milk, but skim milk and that milk is sour. We treat mature adults as if they are kindergarteners, having them do finger paintings and watching elementary science tricks to teach them the basics of Christianity, which they should have learned the first year they were a Christian. What are we thinking? Not only do we do it, but if I have to judge from the response of the women at the conference I attended, we revel in it and think it is the utmost in spiritual heights. We should be attending the equivalent of college lectures, not vacation Bible school. How did we get so lazy? Why don't we even care?

My pastor made a comment in our Bible study that he has heard many pastors say that they are just too busy to spend time on sermons, so they throw them together on Saturday night. This explains a lot of why the teachings coming from the pulpit are milk. I know that most of them also get their sermons from reading commentaries rather than studying the Bible. And lastly I have heard that being so "busy,"  many pastors are now downloading pre-written sermons off the internet and giving them. Given that this is the state of a great amount of our clergy, does it not behoove us to get into the Scriptures ourselves to mature in God's Word, since you are most likely not going to get it at church? Technically aren't we commanded to do that anyway, so we can be Bereans? Pastors are not learning God's Word, and therefore they cannot rightly divide it and so are adopting all these New Age teachings, all these false doctrines, and allowing Satan into the sanctuary in a variety of ways,  The people don't study the Scriptures, instead letting the pastors teach them what they think they need to know, and so they have no discernment and are led into apostasy. Then, because they have no maturity themselves, they let the church train up (or more accurately not train up) their children. Now instead of merely adopting the lifestyle of their parents with an immature Christian life as in past generations, they are leaving the churches in droves, because they don't have a vital growing relationship with Christ, and so the problem isn't just perpetuating itself from generation to generation anymore, it is deteriorating to the point of no return.

So in conclusion, while it might seem that I am being very harsh in my criticism of a ladies conference, it is a symptom of a much bigger problem. A problem which is killing the Church. If we don't start getting into the Word, again as God warned in Hosea,  "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children."  Not only will we be destroyed, and no longer be priests for Him, but He will forget our children. And the way our children are leaving the churches, this prophecy is coming true.