The Danger of the Milky Way« Back to Blog

4/24/2008

Posted By Pastor Jeff Noblit

The enemies of the church often do not attack the way that we expect.  They don’t just come in suddenly and abruptly, like dropping a bomb, and let their presence be known.  They are much more slow and seductive.  They often tend to take a gradual approach, much like a cancer in the body that grows undetected and far too often isn’t noticed until it’s too late.  Today I want to expose one of these enemies of the church to you.  I call this enemy the Milky Way.

When I say the Milky Way, I mean the idol of elementary or shallow principles of Christianity.  The Milky Way is when there is a glorying in shallowness, doctrinally speaking.  This is usually accompanied by a spirit of demeaning or condemning any attempt to go deeper into the doctrines of Christ.  You can search far and wide across the Baptist and evangelical landscape and you will see the dominance of the Milky Way.  There are milky churches that demand milky preachers, preach milky sermons to milky Christians who desire to have their bottles refilled with formula each week that they might nurse themselves back to sleep and satisfy their lactose dependency.  Christians who love milk and stay on milk, embrace milk, and, in turn, reject and even ridicule solid food is a perversity to God, even a sin.  This is a ploy of the enemy.  It makes churches weak and pathetic, and it dishonors God and the church.

What does God say about this?  Does God just say, “Well, it’s not the best, but it’s good”?  No, God says that it is wicked and it is a sin.  Hebrews 5:12-14 says, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.  For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.  But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”

This text teaches that the Jewish believers’ dependence on milk was without excuse.  They have had the teaching that should have led to maturity by now.  The Scriptures have a lot to say about the preachers that pamper and never take the people deeper in the things of God.  Equally the Bible places a weight of responsibility on the sheep to make sure that they are getting the food needed to grow in Christ beyond elementary things.  God does not just lay the blame on the preacher, but the duty is heavily weighted toward the sheep.  I have often said that God gives a congregation the preacher that they deserve.  If the sheep only want milk, then God will give them a pastor that will only feed them milk.  However, if the majority of a congregation desires to go further, I’m convinced God, in grace, will give them a pastor who will take them further into the glories of Christ.   In the case of Hebrews 5, the sheep are without excuse.  They have been taught the gospel and should be going further.  They had what they needed and their neglect adds to their sinfulness.  Sheep have the duty to receive the word, incorporate it, meditate on it, muse on it, pray through it, talk about it to your children, and grow in it.

Just as it is a perversity for an adult to continue on baby formula in the physical realm, so it is in the spiritual realm.  God forbid that shepherds keep a congregation in malnourishment by responding to their shallow cries for milky preaching.  Believers likewise must strive to use all their heart, soul, and minds to learn all that the Scriptures teach concerning Christ.