Good morning and a blessed Thursday morning to you.

Maturity: it is that which should be cultivated in all of us, right? And relatedly, there is spiritual maturity. Open up, please, to Hebrews the 5th chapter, because there it talks about the subject of spiritual maturity.

And picking up in verse 12, the author of Hebrews writes this: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the Oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food." That's a call to spiritual maturity, isn't it? There's a time for milk, but we are to move on to solids.

But doesn't the Bible say that we are to be like children? Well, certainly Jesus said in Matthew 18, He said, "Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." But there's a distinction here: we are to be childlike in our dependency upon the Lord, but mature in thought.

Well, how does that happen? It's interesting as one looks at survey after survey, and there is a growing biblical illiteracy in America. A couple of examples:

• Less than 50% can name the four gospels.
• 60% can't name half of the Ten Commandments.
• 82% will say that the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is from the Bible (obviously, it's not).

Now, when Christians are polled with regard to that, Christians do a little bit better on that by 1%. There's a chunk of people that believe that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. There is a growing biblical illiteracy in our land, and people are knowing less and less of the Bible.

There's a link, isn't there? There's a link between spiritual maturity and time in the word. Look with me, please, at verse 13: "For everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness." To one degree or another, we are all guilty of word abandonment. Thanks be to God for His grace in the Lord Jesus Christ that covers all our sins through His shed Blood on the cross—all of our sins, including our word abandonment. And thanks be to God that God is continually at work in our lives through the word.

When do we achieve spiritual maturity? Well, the more mature we become spiritually, the more immature we realize that we are. We realize our own immaturity the more spiritually mature we become. We are always, in other words, a work in progress, and God is always at work through His word, growing us in the faith.

Let's pray:

Gracious Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for this time in your word, for your word is truth. We give you thanks, oh Lord, that you forgive us for our word abandonment, and we give you thanks that you are at work through the word to mature us, to grow us in the faith. And so, Lord, lead us to greater and greater maturity in your word. We praise you for your work in Jesus' name. Amen.

God bless you this week. Encourage someone.

Pastor Eibel