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SOURED MILK AND TAINTED MEAT
The Bible speaks of preaching the
Bible as being “milk” and “meat.” Peter told believers:
“As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the
word, that ye may grow thereby,” (1 Peter
2:2). Paul wrote to the carnal baby Christians in Corinth saying:
“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,”
(1 Corinthians 3:2).
But what if spiritual babes are fed spoiled
milk? And what if more mature believers are fed tainted meat? Just as spoiled
milk and tainted meat bring sickness in the natural realm, so it is in the
spiritual realm. Those who teach, preach write, etc. must be careful to teach
what the Bible teaches – no more and no less. They must not just select proof
texts – distorted verses – to try and prove their preconceived ideas. In fact,
those who are “masters” or teachers of the Bible will be judged more severely
than their hearers. We know this because James wrote:
“My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater
condemnation,” (James 3:1).
About other teachers and what they were doing
to Paul's writings, Peter wrote: “As also in
all his [Paul's]
epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be
understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also
the other scriptures, unto their own destruction,”
(2 Peter 3:16). Wresting or twisting out of shape the Scriptures not only harms
the hearers, but also those who torture the Word of God. Consider these two
things – (1) the more severe judgment of those who teach and (2) the ruin
brought by twisting the Scriptures that comes upon the teachers themselves as
well as their hearers. Some teachers are
“...deceiving, and being deceived,” (2 Timothy
3:13).
Only those regenerated by the sovereign work
of the Holy Spirit are able to understand the Scriptures rightly – i.e., in a
spiritually profitable way. We know this because Paul wrote:
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world,
but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely
given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things
with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned,” (1 Corinthians
2:12-14). Just being baptized, praying a one-time prayer for salvation, making a
decision for Christ, going to seminary, etc., will not do. To understand the
Bible the teacher and the hearer must have been regenerated. The Holy Spirit
must have birthed the spiritually dead sinner into God's family by His presence.
Apart from that the Word of God is foolishness and non-understandable to the
natural or unregenerate man. “...Ye must be
born again,” (John 3:7).
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