You Ought To Be Teachers
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Jeremy Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 18 October 2026
- Hebrews 5:11-14
All right, so, but we're going to go into Hebrews chapter 5, Hebrews 5, 11, Hebrews chapter 5, 11, 11, 14.
We'll start in verse 10. Actually, Hebrews chapter 5, verse 10, called by God as high priest according to the order of Mechizildek, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. You have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. So we had been talking about the qualifications of priesthood that every priest needs to meet these qualifications in order to be a spiritual representative between God and man. If an individual trusts in a spiritual priest, an individual who guides them spiritually, and they do not meet these qualifications, they are disqualified.
I had a talk some a couple weeks ago, maybe I mentioned it, I can't remember. But the individual said, you know, I don't really care if the spiritual priest of this religion was right or wrong, whether he's a, you know, basically a liar, a fraudster, selling something to gain money that wasn't real. I don't really care. All I care about is whether I'll have friends.
I'm going to say it is important who you trust spiritually. If they don't meet these qualifications. This individual knew the individual who started this religion was a fraudster. He knew it. He said it.
This particular religion is trying to distance themselves from their founder. But he's new. It said, but that's not important to me. I just want to have people close to me when I die. Well, it's important that when you die, you have a high priest who succeeds, insist successfully navigate for you.
And here we saw that Jesus meets all four of these qualifications. It says, and having been perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him, that he successfully can take people who were in opposition to God's commandments, enemies with him, and he can successfully navigate their cause before a holy judge. He does it legally and righteously, and he does it 100% of the time. All who come to him will by no means be cast out. Okay, so he transfers from there Jesus meeting these qualifications, and now he's going to bring us back to the idea of the high priesthood of Melchizedek.
Could you hand me White Modern Micah? I think I'm going to need it. The high priesthood of Melchiseldec. And I'm sure this is something that consumes your spare time wondering who is Mechiseldec?
Well, the author of Hebrews feels that you should be consumed with this idea.
It says, called by God as high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain. This idea of Melchizedek. The author has a lot to talk about. He's going to get into it a little bit later, but he's going to have to cut himself short. This idea of who Melchizedek is and what he has to offer you and I is described as being something hard to explain.
Hard to explain. This is something that should affect you and I. The author, at least, feels that your inability, your and I's inability to understand these things has a great impact on the direction that we go. People, you and I, who cannot comprehend, who don't understand these things, will end up in a different position than those who can. This is what he says, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
Here. He blames the problem, not necessarily, not necessarily on the difficulty of the curriculum, the deepness of the subject matter, you know, the depth of the wisdom required. He places the blame on not being able to receive the structure that we should have based on a condition that you and I possess called dull of hearing. Dull of hearing. If anyone has been around an individual dull of hearing before, sometimes it is something we welcome.
I'm getting to the spot of, you know, been around power tools most of my life. And to understand what some people who worked in construction enjoy in their own home. Having dull hearing, selective hearing. Right. They only hear what they want to hear.
I didn't even hear what you said. Right. And an excuse to get out of certain things. Well, spiritually, there is a condition of dull hearing, not being able to hear what is spiritually needful for us. In many occupations, it is not what you see that is so important.
Take welding, for example. You think that you're looking at that puddle. But oftentimes it's what you hear happening in. In the well that really tells you whether it's a successful well. And in so many other things, what we hear is actually more important than we realize.
Spiritually, there is no exception here. Here, the ability to hear leads us to a place this condition Called dull of hearing impacts us spiritually. Now I don't necessarily thinking he is saying that it is only the character McKizzle deck that we should concerned about. I think we should know about Melchizedek absolutely. But I think it's pointing to a far broader biblical picture and I think Jesus, one of my favorite scriptures.
In the end of Luke, when the two disciples left Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus, Jesus met them on the way and he began to converse with them. And he said he began they speaking about this walking with Jesus. He said he began to open the scriptures to us regarding the things spoken about himself. They said, did not our hearts burn within us when we understood that the scriptures which we always comprehended one way when Jesus began to explain them, our hearts burned because we realized that they were really about Jesus.
Later on, just a couple page, half page further, it says he opened to them the scriptures regarding the prophets, the Psalms and Moses, the things regarding himself. The scriptures were opened to the individuals. They had the impact that was needful. That was where they were intended to go. The scriptures were open when they realized that they were written about Jesus Christ.
It is not that you need to know so much about Melchizedek that you need to know you and I need to know that. Mechiseldek gives us a picture of who Jesus is. And understanding that picture brings us to a spiritual place of understanding that an individual who is dull of hearing cannot grasp.
Not being able to hear in certain situations puts you at a disadvantage. We were in Alaska and of course you have all the bear stories and you know, there's the guy with his loaded magnum walking down the path, but he had a problem, he couldn't hear.
And being in bear country at certain times it's a disadvantage not to hear what's behind you, especially if it's a big bear. And even though he should have been able to fight off this bear, he was surprised by it because he didn't hear it coming. Being able to hear is astonishingly important for you and I. I might go into this just a little bit later, but as we were going through, the thing that we taught on in, in Alaska was Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomons and Lamentations. Six books in five days. And I'm here, you know, we're trying to just sludge our way through Hebrews week after week, year after year.
It was very difficult and I don't know how we did, but we tried. So being dull of hearing has spiritual implications. It says because of certain individuals. Dullness of hearing. The there are certain things that are true about them.
Individuals who can't hear are impacted by the things that they take part of. That's kind of a bad way to put it. Not being able to hear impacts your life. Not being able to hear spiritually impacts your spiritual life. Not being able to hear things clearly impacts you.
Verse 12 because of your dullness of hearing. Now I'm just going to say, because of our dullness of hearing. It says in verse 12, for by this time you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food.
And as a result of your inability to hear the sounds as they actually exist. I'm not asking you for you to hear something that doesn't exist. I'm not asking you to hear voices in your head. I'm not asking you to go crazy. I'm asking you, hey, is there reasonable sound speech that is being spoken that you are not hearing?
I'm not asking you to go crazy. I'm asking you. Wisdom calls out. She has set her seat on the highest places of the city to call to those who pass by, who go straight on the way. Come listen to me, I will fill you with the finest of wheat.
I will do these things if only you will hear me. Not being able to hear puts us at a deficit spiritually. This says the deficit that comes from not being able to hear is you are not a teacher.
I have said over and over, I firmly believe as I've looked at occupations and held two of the best ones in this world. I am a carpenter, have deal with cows.
Sometimes I just go out there and I just, I just, you know, there's business, other business, but I'm just like, I just want to, I just want to lay in the field and have the cows sniff around my head sometimes I just want to hug them. I just want to watch them. Yeah, the house needs painted every. All these responses. I just really just want to be with the cows.
I relate to them.
But even though that may be the best profession there is, it does not compare to preaching and teaching. There is no other occupation that can demonstrate a life changing impact over teaching and preaching. You can do a lot of things and you're a talented individual. I believe in you. But still, whatever you can do, do still can never change a person's soul.
Build them a house. You could do all sorts of things, but it has no real lasting impact. We look at the great things that change society. We were looking at England a little bit and the difference between it and France. Well, in England, at a time when it may have went in the same direction of France, we were just.
Someone was talking about France has a culture of revolts, rebellion, demonstrations, and they're saying, you know, this happens all the time. They just go and break into buildings and set them on fire and, you know, do all sorts of things. It's their culture. It went way back to, you know, when King Louis was there. Well, it might be their culture and it might be normal for them, but it does not necessarily make it right.
England was in the same position and yet there arose a few people who made it their desire to preach. It is absolutely the most known person in America at the time when America was separating or founding as a nation before became, you know, declared itself a nation. The most famous person was not George Washington, but it was a preacher from England. And he preached days and days on end, wore himself out preaching in England and in America. Died at 58 years old, but was the most well known person in America.
In England, John Wesley and his brother Charles were doing the same thing. Coal miners that lived horrendously ungodly lives would get up before their 12 hour shift in the coal mines in the thousands, tens of thousands people daily in the rain before work just so they might hear the words of John Wesley. He changed England. Preachers did you and I should be teachers by now, but because we're dull of hearing, we're not. I want to go to Ephesians.
I don't want us to escape the magnitude of the honor we have been given by Jesus Christ. This is something that was not available to all in every generation. But as a result of the work that he did, he has entrusted to humankind something which must not be minimized. It says in verse seven, chapter four. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gifts.
Therefore he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. The magnitude of the work requires that that comes from the work must be magnified. Also, if the work he did to get the gift was so tremendously difficult, we have to assume that the gift itself contained astonishing merit. We shouldn't overlook this. If Jesus Christ gave everything that he had to purchase something for you and I, we shouldn't treat it with contempt or scorn.
If it cost him so much to gain it, why should it be the last present we open under the Christmas tree? Oh bore a Gift from Jesus. He shed his own blood. He came from heaven. He is God's only son.
He became born of a virgin, suffered for three years, was crucified, nailed and died on a cross to give me a gift. Yawn. Is there a different present I can open first? The last one. Are you sure there's no other ones?
I want something better.
Now this. He ascended. What does it mean? But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.
He himself gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, some pastors and some teachers. In reality, all of these are an extension of the same thing. Teaching. Yes, there's different types of teaching, without a doubt, but they're all teaching. And the gift which God desires to give his children, which has more value than any other gift that has ever been given, is to allow you to participate in the teaching that he is doing.
There's different ways to do it. There's different. But all of us are called to teach, to teach. Let me go back to Hebrews.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food. As a result of this spiritual condition that is caused by deafness, you are placed in a position spiritually where you desire and need milk and not solid food. As I was. Even though we have some cases of this, I was thinking about this.
One of my favorite animals, the super wiener. Anyone know about the super wiener? It's not a well known animal. It's not actually a kind. It's a type of animal in a condition, a sea lion.
If I remember right, the super wiener and the super wiener is different than other wieners. The other wieners are put in a position at the time of year it is in. And they are forced to make a decision. Their mothers nurse them or with some of the richest milk known, they grow extraordinarily fast on this milk. They just like.
It's blow up sea lion time. And they're just like Dan, growing faster and faster. But there comes a time when the mother recognizes it's time for me to stop giving and to go and eat myself. And that time is a raucous time on the rocky sun filled shelves of California. The wieners don't like it at all.
And they cry something like that.
That was pretty good.
Sometimes that's how I feel too. Right. But at some point they Recognize my mother sea lion is not coming back. And they're forced to make a decision. I can either stay here and starve, calling out for milk and never get it.
And they're forced to jump into that cold ocean and there they have to learn to survive. They look for solid food and they become strong, they become adults, and eventually they have their own calves. But the super weaners are different. They don't go back into the sea. Every once in a while, one is so persistent that they don't stop calling out for milk.
And sometimes another. A lot of times a first year mom will have compassion on them, them and decide, you know what, those cries are breaking my heart. And she decides, no, I'm going to give up my need and I am going to suckle this wiener. At that moment, that calf becomes a super wiener. And he continues to grow to extraordinarily grotesque proportions as he gets fat on his mother's milk.
Some of us love to be a super weaner.
He's like, please don't make me go into that water. But there is a position it is necessary for us to go in. It says, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. You have come to need milk and not solid food. You should be in a position of having to enter that water, plunging in, chasing, exercising yourself, growing.
But instead you're basking, sucking on the resources of someone else because you're unwilling to look for them yourself. We have become a culture, I am sorry to say, of super wieners. The church. I would say if you had to split it down the aisle, if you had to put wieners on this side and super wieners on the other, it may be that we would be in a position that, hey, something needs to be done. This condition needs to be rectified in some way.
It says in verse 13, for everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. You and I are being called here by the author of Hebrews to address an area of our life that hurts, that is painful to address. But this says that those individuals who rely on others teaching and are not teaching themselves is unskilled in the word of righteousness. They have not gained a perspective of drawing something from it for themselves. They have relied on other people to spoon feed or to nurse them in this condition.
Now you may think, you know, I need fed, I need fed, I need fed. And we do, but it needs to lead us to a place where we learn to gather sustenance from God's word on our own. Because those who gather from God's word on their own are different from those who have to be spoon fed. They act different. The super wieners on the sun filled shelf, and he's just growing fat while his cousins, his brothers are out in the cold Pacific chasing down food.
There is a difference in where they end up. In my own farm, we have had at least one super weaner. This is a calf that refused to grow up.
When all the other calves were weaned, this one was not. And so even when this cow was an adult, it would always chase down the weakest of other cows, just waiting for it to stop just for a second, so she could latch on. When this super weiner had her own calf and the new cow had her own calf, the super weiner was still persistently chasing down that weak cow. And every time that the cow stopped, this mom would latch on to another cow. Well, she was getting.
You should. She was beautiful. You should, you should see super wieners. They are beautiful things. But something was the problem.
That cow's calf was starving.
I had to make a decision. This has got to stop. In farming, it's not about what feels good at times, it's what's necessary. That cow had to go to the butcher.
In a similar way in Christianity, you and I, who at times are just wanting to draw off other people, there is a spiritual result of that condition, that there is a superiority in learning to feed off of the meat, in recognizing that Jesus Christ is spoken of in the Old Testament. And when an individual sees it, their hearts burn within them with fire. And as a result, we became like Jeremiah saying, if I'm quiet, there's a fire that is in me boiling, that has to be released. I cannot keep quiet. Individuals who have learned to draw sustenance from God's word have to let it out.
It says, for everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age. That is, those who by reason of use has their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. We read Psalm 2. I'm going to close with this in Psalms.
I would say that you and I should recognize Psalms 2 as a messianic Psalm 1 spoken about Jesus. I think you would be right to say that it is speaking about his government that kiss the son, lest he be angry. But Psalm 1, we've mentioned and we teach our children to memorize this all the time, but sometimes I think we view it wrong. We think of it from our own perspective and not necessarily about Jesus from Jesus perspective. It says in Psalm 1:1, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. And we memorize that. And the goal is, a lot of times I think, hey, saying, look, child, son, if you try better to imitate these kinds of things, you will end up blessed. Is that reasonable?
Hey, don't be like the one who walks in the counsel of the ungodly. Don't do it. Stay away from those things. Don't be the one who stands in the path of sinners. Separate yourself from that which is sinful.
You need to pursue these things, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. But the problem is, is you and I have already done it. Think about this week. Think about yesterday. There's a possibility that some of us have already violated this encouragement.
We've already become them. We've already done it. It's already infiltrated us and become part of us. You see, one of these things we think is I need to try to do better. Another is to recognize I have not done better, I am guilty, and as a result I have forfeited the other.
It is not available to me. I have walked with the scornful. I have stood with sinners. I have already participated and defiled my nature.
But we look at another one who is not. And some of us are still trying to cling to the old ways, climbing to do better. Other recognize. No, it's Jesus. And I need to receive from him.
So my encouragement. To us as we read scriptures, there is something that comes from seeing Jesus there, from stopping our own push for righteousness within our lives, recognizing I don't deserve even the smallest kindness, but Jesus has freely given it to me. When that enters our soul for the first time, we can't help but telling others about it.
We may be very stuttery and shaking in our pants, but something compels us. I have got to say something. His kindness to me is overwhelming. I have to give voice, give some vent to the pressure building in my heart of my love for God. You are called to be a teacher.
We need to be pushed off of that shelf into the water and learn to seek our own sustenance. Not that this isn't good, but it should be encouragement for us to seek what is good.
God has given you a place to teach somewhere. Take it up. It's a gift. It's a privilege. It's an honor.
He's yoked up with people and he wants individuals working with him. Let's pray. Oh Father, we do just come to you asking forgiveness for looking down on what you value most for us with suspicion and regret, oh Lord, with that piece of us that holds on, Lord, encourage it, blow it to fire and raise up individuals who teach others. Lord, in this church, Father, in our homes, Lord, in our community, demonstrating your great kindness to us and through our words, we thank you. In Jesus name, amen.