got milk?

John Piper continues to proves why he is one of the greatest preachers of our time. I just received this sermon from his library (September 1996). While many of struggle in an effort to somehow be relevant, he is able to to exegete Scripture and in a way that remains timeless.

By This Time You Ought to Be Teachers is based on He 5.11-14. The disease is dullness of hearing, i.e., hearing without faith and the moral fruit of faith. The remedy is to move to maturity with milk. The milk is what moves one from infancy to maturity and only then can the meat be enjoyed. The key as Piper explains is what you do with the milk of the Word. "The pathway to maturity and to solid Biblical food is not first becoming an intelligent person, but becoming an obedient person."

He then explains three steps to grow with milk to maturity.

1. Drink the milk. Babies are thirsty. You cannot keep healthy babies from milk. Who/what are you reading, watching and listening to? Do you long for more and more of God's Word?
2. Savor and swallow and digest and be satisfied. As you drink in the milk, is it good (Psa 34.8)? Take time to meditate on and enjoy the Word. As you do so you will be transformed by it.
3. With a heart satisfied with God now, discern good and evil. The milk of the Word becomes a "word of righteousness". Piper says, "Discernment is what you do naturally when the milk of God's promises is so savored and so satisfying that it gives you the mind of Christ.

Only then, as we move to maturity, i.e., obedience can we expect to understand the weightier matters of the Bible. The Word of God contains inexhaustible truth and we are foolish to think that we can discover the deeper things if we have not first allowed the truth we already have to transform us into His righteousness.

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