Still on Milk? — A Sunday Worth Showing Up For

Do me a favor before you keep reading. Count the years.

How long have you been a Christian? Five? Ten? Thirty? Forty? Whatever the number is, hold onto it for a second. Then ask the question almost nobody wants to ask. What does that number actually mean?

Because years on the calendar and years of growth in Christ are not the same thing. You can be a Christian for forty years and grow forty years deep. Or you can be a Christian for forty years and grow one year, forty times over. Same calendar. Very different person at the end of it.

That gap, between time served and progress made, is what the writer of Hebrews wants to talk about in chapter 5. And it's where we'll spend our Sunday morning.

Hebrews 5:11–14 is one of the most pastorally honest paragraphs in the New Testament. The writer had set out to teach his church about something deep — the high priesthood of Jesus, the order of Melchizedek, big stuff. He stopped. He had to. Because the room couldn't follow him. By this time you ought to be teachers, he wrote, but you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God's revelation again. He calls them too lazy to understand. Slow. Sluggish. Ears that work fine, but attention that's gone soft. And the saddest word in the whole passage is one tiny word: again. Reverse growth. Going backward.

But know this. This sermon is a diagnosis, not an accusation. He's writing them up, calling them up to something better. The very next verse, the one that opens chapter 6, is the call: Therefore, let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to maturity. The diagnosis isn't the end. It's the start of getting better.

Sunday is the first week of a five-week series called Maturity in the Body. Across May, we'll ask one steady question together: are we growing up the way our Father longs for us to grow up? May 3 is where that question lands hardest. The next four Sundays, we walk the path of how it actually happens — pressing on (Phil. 3), the trials that grow us (James 1), what we have to put down (1 Cor. 13), and the body that displays Jesus (Col. 1).

Come hungry. Come honest. If the calendar's been moving but the growth hasn't kept up, this passage was written for you. We'd love to sit with it together this Sunday.

Sunday, May 3 · 10:30 AM · Cornerstone Church of Christ · Centerville, OH

1. Count it up honestly — how many years have you been a Christian? When you held that number this morning, what did it
feel like to look at it?
2. Where in your life right now do you feel most “stuck on milk” — comfortable with what you know, but not putting it in
motion?
3. Hebrews 5:14 says discernment is built by reps. Where is God currently giving you reps you’d rather skip?
4. “By this time, you ought to be teachers.” Is there a younger Christian — a kid, a coworker, a family member — God might
be asking you to feed?
5. Which of the three reasons we get stuck on milk hits closest to home (comfort, fake-ability, everyone else is too)? What
changes if you stop letting it run the show?

Those Serving
CALL TO WORSHIP/PRAYER
Greg Morrison
SONG LEADER
Drumand McLaughlin
LEAD LORD'S SUPPER
Randy Mullins
ASSIST LORD’S SUPPER
Mike Rosato
Tommy Ray
Justin Spargo
Billy Robbins
SCRIPTURE READING
Reggie Johnson
Hebrews 12:13
PREACHING
Matthew Allen
CLOSING PRAYER
Wes Grushon
CLOSING COMMENTS
Boyd Hastings
WELCOME CENTER
Pam and Jim Grushon
USHERS
Jeremy Price // Daniel Spargo
COMMUNION PREP
Wes Grushon
CLOSING THE BUILDING
Josh Childers