Milk of the Word

Babies and Milk

1 Peter 2

1Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Haven't we seen that the Lord is good. He's shown us mercy and love above what we deserve. He shows us a better way than our natural selfishness which causes us to get bogged down in all sorts of destructive things. He shows us a way of love and serving others.

Verse 2 talks about craving pure spiritual milk. When we see how much milk a baby craves milk. Even still, Sean drinks it like he needs it more than air sometimes. I'm just amazed at how much milk he drinks. Probably more than I do. Paul was thinking about this craving when he wrote this example. Babies are born this way and it's an instinct. All they need to live when they're born is mainly milk, so it seems to be all they think about at first. We ought to work on being this way toward the bible. Instead of putting off reading the bible to do other things, we put off other thing to read the bible. We ought to make it a priority. We sometimes forget the importance of it. It sustains us as Christians.

A passage that emphasizes just how important the word is to us is in

John 1

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Psalm 33:6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,

their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

What was one of the first things to exist in the universe as we know it? God's words. His words created us and everything around us. This should remind us of how privileged we are that he doesn't leave us in darkness, but he has it all in writing for us in the bible. That should be a great treasure to us. Job talks about this as he ponders wisdom in

Job 28

12 "But where can wisdom be found?

Where does understanding dwell?

13 Man does not comprehend its worth;

it cannot be found in the land of the living.

14 The deep says, 'It is not in me';

the sea says, 'It is not with me.'

15 It cannot be bought with the finest gold,

nor can its price be weighed in silver.

You notice there that Job realized that people often don't realize the value of wisdom...especially the wisdom of God's word. This is still true today. People dismiss the value of the bible in the world, but we should be different. We should treasure it as being greater than any worldly riches.

I'm reminded of the Popeye movie. All throughout the movie everyone is looking for the Captain's treasure that he's hidden somewhere. You get to the end of the movie and it turns out his treasure was just some canned spinach buried in a chest. Everyone else is really disappointed, but he's really happy to see his treasure again. Not what you expect, but it was precious to him. Hopefully, if someone were to go digging for our treasure chest, it'd hopefully turn out to have a bible. Most of the world considers it worthless, but it's a great treasure for Christians.

Jesus, himself, knew the importance of God's words.

Mat 4

1Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

I don't know if, after 40 days of not eating, I would have this dedication that Jesus had. But you can see how single-minded he was in following his Father's will. He would rather starve than give in to Satan. He would rather have God's word than food, itself, even as he was starving. If he was the son of God and knew the scriptures enough to teach them in the synagogue, how much more should we who have sinned value God's word?

Things Other Than Milk

More recently, another thing I see about Sean is that, given the chance, he'd be happy to drink soda without end. He'd just keep asking for it and asking for it even more than milk. Likewise, if we don't feed on the milk of the word in our lives, what will happen? We have to drink something. We have to take in something. It can be the milk of the word, helping us to be strong spiritually, or it can be soda...the ideas that the world has to offer us, with no lasting value, making us spiritually sick in the long run. Malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind come from this. It involves selfishness and putting yourself above others rather than the other way round.

Zophar talks about what the wicked man consumes in

Job 20

14 yet his food will turn sour in his stomach;

it will become the venom of serpents within him.

15 He will spit out the riches he swallowed;

God will make his stomach vomit them up.

16 He will suck the poison of serpents;

the fangs of an adder will kill him.

17 He will not enjoy the streams,

the rivers flowing with honey and cream.

18 What he toiled for he must give back uneaten;

he will not enjoy the profit from his trading.

19 For he has oppressed the poor and left them destitute;

he has seized houses he did not build.

20 "Surely he will have no respite from his craving;

he cannot save himself by his treasure.

21 Nothing is left for him to devour;

his prosperity will not endure.

22 In the midst of his plenty, distress will overtake him;

the full force of misery will come upon him.

23 When he has filled his belly,

God will vent his burning anger against him

and rain down his blows upon him.

We know that an evil person may get through life without many physical consequences for it. But that's not always the case. There might be prison and bad relationships and other consequences for an evil person. But worse than all of this is the eternal consequence...to be separated from God.

Advancing as Christians

Back to the analogy of a baby drinking milk. It'd be quite strange for Sean, to continue living mostly on milk when he's 15 years old. Babies move on to other foods. More solid foods. And yet, in Hebrews, we read of an example of people still spiritually living on milk when they should have advanced to other more solid food.

Heb 5

 11We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12In 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! 13Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Likewise, today, we may begin our Christian lives with teaching about Christ and how he rose from the dead and how that all came to pass. But we need to move on and learn about how to work in our lives as Christians, to teach others about Christ and to have self control and to allow God to change us. We need to learn to become different than the rest of the world, not just lapse into going along with the world. We need to be different, rather than being stubborn and backward and holding on to our lives before we became Christians, continuing to need milk. There are better things to move on to.

There was another case like this that Paul wrote about in a letter to the Corinthians.

1 Cor 3

1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?

You can hear the frustration in Paul's voice. “Why aren't you guys studying and moving along? Why do we keep having to go over the basics? Why are you still bogged down in these petty squabbles instead of moving on to the greater things that Christians are capable of?” You can probably guess that a lot of their problem came from tradition and ego and selfishness and admiration of men. “Well, surely Apollos is better than Paul so we follow him.” “No, Paul is better than Apollos so we follow him.” But as a man, Paul said that he counted his reputation as nothing. His main value was as a servant of Christ. It was Christ that these people should have been following, not just men. Even today, factions can cause us problems. When we follow after the word of a person rather than understanding for ourselves what God's word means, we get into this dangerous position. Certainly, it's much easier to just say, “Yeah, I'm with Bob.” But it takes more work to read for yourself and find that maybe Bob had forgotten some scriptures in the things he's teaching.

We jump down to where Paul concludes this chapter

...

21So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

We've talked about craving the word as a baby craves milk. In our lives, we must realize the need for the spiritual milk of the word. We can't live lives as Christians without it. We've talked about the danger of replacing that milk with useless things and distractions and putting them above it. This leads to our foundations crumbling as Christians. We've talked about the need to advance our diets as Christians and move on from the basics to doing the work of Christ, whether that's teaching, helping other people, showing love, being an example, or the many ways in which we ought to stand for Christ.