Saturday 20th
Hebrews 6:1-12
NIV (7-8) – ‘Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.’
ESV (7-8) – ‘For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.’
The Hebrew writer in these verses has continued the theme for the importance of moving on from milk (the elementary doctrine of Christ v1) to the meat (maturity v1). He has then considered the state of those who once believed but
have fallen away, saying that they have crucified once again the Son of God and holding him to contempt. (see also Hebrews 10:39) This leads to the verses we have for today which suggests that as those who have tasted or received Christ, we should be fruitful or productive in our Christian life. Receiving the rain is linked to our knowing the blessing of God, our hearts, our lives need to be cultivated once the seed of the Word of God has been planted, which in turn yields a harvest. The writer continues that we need to ‘show the same hope and earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end’ (v11). That is to persevere, the alternative is to be sluggish, this means, to be lazy or to procrastinate, put off or delay and this runs the risk of our lives becoming barren and unfruitful, bearing instead thorns and thistles which are worthless. In the context it could signify our desire to be content to stay on the milk and not progress spiritually with the meat, which would be spiritual laziness, therefore our lives / hearts will not become cultivated sufficient to reap the full benefits of all the blessings that God has stored up ready to pour out as spiritual rain upon our lives. We have chosen to have a small vegetable patch in the garden, and already we are discovering we have to work at it to enable it to produce a harvest, and once we have started to sow and to plant it will require even more hard work, unless we are willing to do it, it will be just a worthless patch that will become taken over by the weeds. May our hearts never become a ‘worthless patch’ because we have been unwilling to cultivate the seed of the Word of God.
These verses are also linked to the heroes of faith who through faith and patience inherit the promises, (v12b see also Hebrews 11:39-40) and we like them, that is the heroes of faith, are called to persevere in the faith, as well as to progress or grow in the faith and it requires work, it requires discipline, it requires a determined effort to ensure that come what may we will take the meat, moving on from the basics to that which is needed to bring maturity.
One of the parables that Jesus gave was about the Sower and the seed, in it he described that the different soils represented the different conditions in which the human heart can be found, of the heart that is like the good soil, Jesus said, that after receiving the seed of the Word of God, some produced fruit thirty fold, some sixty fold, some a hundred fold, can I suggest that the deeper we allow the seed of the word of God to be planted into our lives the more fruitful we will be, and this means that the more we grow in the Word, the more fruitful we will be. To do this we need to move from the milk to the meat! Maybe the milk only produces the thirty-fold, the milk with a little meat the sixty-fold, the meat a hundred-fold, just maybe! Finally, it was Jesus again who said that a fruitless branch is worthless and only fit to be cut off and cast into a fire! May we be connected to the Word, that is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us who is now the Vine and also be fed by the living and powerful sap of the written Word so that our lives will be fruitful.