MILK & MEAT

2018
This year actually started, for our local Christian community, on meaty topics, like this.
Todd taught, on New years eve, as 2017 moved into 2018, a deep teaching on Melchizedek. And Elohim; sons of God. Its all connected with our identity and destiny, heavenly calling, and goes deeper than I can repeat here.

So we started the year with this.

So here’s a challenge: no-one need be leaving, to be blown away by the new wind, to get more on say 'righteousness teaching', when this heavy duty equipping is happening here.

Now I’m not even slightly concerned with where people go, and I put it like that for emphasis, to provoke the question - are we are focusing on milk or solid food?

Do we even know the difference?

Hebrews 5 and 6 says lets aim to move on from the basics.

“But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

Let me frame that.

The MILK

As Christians we’re meant to grow. Peter says: drink up … in order to grow up.

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (2 Pet 2:3)

The message of righteousness – God takes away our sin, and changes us - is a healthy foundation. 

Those who drink a lot of it, will grow.

Some will say “I thought righteousness was the latest and greatest revelation to be revealed to the church – the new and powerful insight that we’re not sinners but saints?

Well. Its healthy foundations. And refreshing. But no, its not new.

Yes, the church might need to hear it again or more deeply. Its good content. And thank God for those serving that teaching.

But the scripture is clear: needing to hear another teaching on righteousness is actually a definition of infancy; its meant to be the basics.

"In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness". (Heb 5:12-13)

For others, the same message of righteousness – we’re not sinners any more, but saints of full inheritance - may feel like a fresh wind blowing over the land, a liberating wind of teaching from legalism or confused doctrine. A good wind, by and large.

But again, those who are tossed around by new winds of teaching, are also, by definition, infants. We're meant to be more stable.

"Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching" (Eph 4:15)

It doesn’t say the wind of teaching has to be bad or false to do this – just a breeze of teaching that picks people up and moves them, like a buoy without enough mooring. (The verse goes on to add “and the deceit and craftiness of man” – but that’s actually another, different, force).

I’m not, to be clear, implying the message of righteousness is somehow bad or crafty. It’s a clean and good wind. I've found the new wind moderately helpful, including grappling with some parts.

Nonetheless, how easily we are moved by these basics, shows how well we were grounded, how mature, or not.

 And its ok to need the basics again, if we need them, but we need to keep growing.

  I notice, that one of the things that this can do, for those drinking deeply, is to bring people into a season of intimacy. Thats also generally good.

I’m all for luxuriating in His goodness. Lying in green meadows, feasting with Him. I sense that as a fresh invitation as well.

 But we don’t stay here. The idea is we also grow, and there are further realms to master and even to be rulers in. We don't outgrow it - but we come and go from there.

A heartier meal

 We don’t always need the milk. We’re meant to move on. The Hebrews verse above has a note of frustration about that. I’ll get to what he wanted to teach as more substantial, meatier stuff, in a moment.

 One of the main ways we grow is via a fully functioning church. We’ve heard a bit on “5 fold” models in the last while, but its still coming online, still early days in recovering this model. So again:

 "Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching"

Once that has been established and done its work, we’ll be stronger. And yes, the righteousness teaching can be part of that.

So we need to go from being “milky” to “meaty” – to solid food, as Hebrews says. Now, what did Hebrews want to move on to?

Well, consider, tṣedeq means righteousness in Hebrew.

And melek speaks of a solid position of authority - it means king.

So together: melek tṣedeq means King of righteousness

That 'melek-tṣedeq' - is translated as Melchizedek.

Who, actually, is this Melchizedek, King of righteousness?

A deep and mysterious figure,. Appears in Genesis 14 - as priest of God Most High.

And as king of salem (peace) and so founder of Jeru-salem

He’s a mystery for us to seek out. Only mentioned in Gen 14, and Psalm 110.
And then finally in Hebrews 5,6,7.

He’s a king and priest of God Most High,. And has the the power of an indestructible life.
Jesus himself is “designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”

So, in Hebrews 5, its this topic the author wants to get to, and says there is “much to be said” on the topic, but says they’re milky, so its hard to get them to hear or teach it. They need basics again.

And this Melchizedek, King of righteousness,  turns up in one more place – Psalm 110 and there is something important to note here

It’s a famous messianic prophecy that Jesus – who is “of his order” quotes., and it hints at the plurality of heavenly figures, and sounds like battle:

The Lord says to my lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”
The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.
The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord is at your right hand;
he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead
and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.
He will drink from a brook along the way,
and so he will lift his head high.

it shows that the young of heart and faith, as well as luxuriating with Jesus in intimacy, can be ruling in the midst of hostile enemies, willing in the day of power, engaging in battle, end times judgments.

Melchizedek, King of Salem, is a contested figure, surrounded by warfare. He first appears, to Abraham, after a battle. The author of that battle Psalm about him, which speaks of ruling in the midst of enemies, King David, was also the first conquer Jerusalem as part of the promised land. Josephus, Jewish historian, knows all this, and recounts the subsequent contested history of Jerusalem, as it falls again, in the terrible destruction of AD 70.  

And thus was Jerusalem taken, in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the eighth day of the month Gorpeius [Elul]. It had been taken five times before, though this was the second time of its desolation; for Shishak, the king of Egypt, and after him Antiochus, and after him Pompey, and after them Sosius and Herod, took the city, but still preserved it; but before all these, the king of Babylon conquered it, and made it desolate, one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight years and six months after it was built. But he who first built it was a potent man among the Canaanites, and is in our own tongue called [Melchisedek], the Righteous King, for such he really was; on which account he was [there] the first priest of God, and first built a temple [there],  and called the city Jerusalem, which was formerly called Salem. However, David, the king of the Jews, ejected the Canaanites, and settled his own people therein

(War of the Jews, Book XI, Ch 10)

(And we might add, after Josephus saw it fall in AD 70, when he estimated a million Jews died, and then one final desolation in AD 135, it was never a city of the Jewish people again, for nearly 2 millennia, until the end of another war, WWII, after another, worse, holocaust.  And even today, merely acknowledging this site as the capital city of Israel is controversial. Thats not to unconditionally endorse every policy of Israel -  although it is bizarre how often that nation is censured for even daring to exist, among nations pledged to destroy it -  its to point out the topic is always contested.) 
  

I heard someone say they aim to develop disciples along two main tracks : “intimacy” and “responsibility/rulership” - and it hit me. We need both in order to not be milky.  

And so, is it not time to take all the intimacy and peace, and grapple with the responsibility and rulership element, ruling in midst of enemies?  Not, to be sure, in that sort of war, but in the spiritual ones that matter even more..

  All this should frame the year, and in many ways it has. We started here, on the order of Melchezidek.
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There is more implied here.  In so many ways we have barely scratched the surface. Lets not, as individuals and movements, be infants needing basics again, lets add responsibility and rulership to intimacy. We don’t want to lose intimacy – but be like David, both poet and warrior. More than the OT. Not less.
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Some want religion to the be the private possession and consolation of the individual, and to mean, basically, 'play nice' - like they imagine yoga, with a bit more commitment maybe.  Anything else, anything that looks like religion as foundational interpretation of history or reality, is dismissed as fundamentalism. But in the end, a map of reality has to deal with all of the data, and while this may be deeper in than some want to go, its nonetheless on the map.