Hebrews 5:11-14
"Concerning him we have much to say, and it is difficult to explain, since you have become poor listeners. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with 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 distinguish between good and evil."

When are we going to complete the "practice" and become the "doers" we were instructed to become?

And even more frustrating is the regression. Undoing the gospel. Twisting it around tradition and disobedience.

But we should be more understanding. These people come from a long history of tradition and a rich history of temple worship and prayer. They had a God-ordained history behind them. And so, it's understandable that they might regress back into what they knew before. They had centuries of temple worship, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the feasts, the prayers, the Scriptures they grew up on. For them, stepping fully into the New Covenant meant leaving behind visible, tangible, familiar structures that once pointed to the Messiah. It's fair to say they didn't have the stomach for this new covenant. They couldn't easily consume the strong meat of change.

When something has been beautiful, meaningful, and part of your spiritual DNA for years; or generations, it doesn’t just fade away easily. The old ways can feel like home. For the Hebrew believers, the temple rituals, the priesthood, the feasts, and the familiar prayers weren’t bad things; they were part of God’s earlier revelation. But they became a snare when they became the main thing again.

So what is the writer of Hebrews going on about?

What we're seeing here is a matter of religious focus.

The Old covenant system was a teaching ministry, a church that functions primarily for coming into the knowledge of the faith. But with the advent of the New Covenant the focus has changed from that nurturing of the traditions to the active evangelism of Christianity commissioned to go forward into the kingdom, no longer resting in the shadows of the temple but going out into the world and making disciples for Christ.

The core issue in Hebrews 5:11-14 is spiritual stagnation at a time when they should be advancing. The readers had received the gospel of Christ but were sliding back toward the familiar Old Covenant patterns. They were treating the new reality in Jesus like an optional upgrade instead of the fulfillment that demands everything change.

The Old Covenant centered on a teaching/nurturing ministry inside a sacred space. It used repeated sacrifices, rituals, and priesthood to instruct, atone temporarily, and point forward. It was preparatory. It was purely preparatory.

Under the New Covenant the emphasis moves from repetitive ritual and institutional maintenance to active faith, obedience, and mission. The New Covenant changed that focus dramatically. Too drastically for many. The assignment has changed. The High School students are supposed to be moving onto into higher education and vocational training, but they can't leave behind their familiar High School days.

The New Covenant is the dramatic launch into adulthood that we all had to face. For many of the Hebrew believers, this felt too drastic. ving its shadows for the substance felt like leaving home. Some wanted to keep repeating high school classes instead of moving into the harder but more fruitful next stage.

High school is safe. The next level demands practice; applying truth to messy, real-life situations where failure and accountability is relational rather than ritualistic.

Jesus warned about this attachment to the old when He said new wine can’t be put into old wineskins.

Mark 2:22
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins."

The New Covenant is explosive new wine. It bursts old containers.

Jesus spoke these words when the Pharisees and others were trying to fit His radical new ministry into the old religious wineskins of tradition, fasting rules, and ritual observance.

Sound familiar?

Have you ever had a conversation with some who want to tout the long rich history of the church? And how they believe that carried weight over the original New Covenant mission.

They point to centuries of tradition, liturgical beauty, institutional continuity, theological developments, and cultural impact. The underlying assumption often is; "This historic form has stood the test of time, so it should shape (or even override) how we understand and live out the New Covenant."

This mirrors exactly what we see in Hebrews and in Jesus’ words about new wine/old wineskins. Today, people do something similar with church history. They’ll say things like; "The early church fathers…" "This has been the practice for 1500+ years…" "Our denomination/tradition has preserved the faith…" "We can’t just go back to primitive simplicity; we’ve developed richer theology and worship."

There’s often truth mixed in. They're not technically wrong about that historical significance. The church has preserved Scripture in spite of the many heresies, defended core doctrines against many false teachers. Upheld the foundations (Trinity, deity of Christ, etc.), produced incredible saints, and built institutions that did do many good things. We should be grateful for their faithful transmission across many generations.

But here’s where it gets dangerous, and where the New Covenant pushes back. When history and tradition start carrying more weight than the original apostolic mission and the finished work of Christ, we’ve begun pouring new wine back into old wineskins. The explosive, outward, disciple-making, Spirit-led, "every believer is a priest" nature of the New Covenant gets domesticated. It even becomes viewed as a heretical outlier.

This is the same regression the writer of Hebrews was grieving. The original readers weren’t rejecting Christ outright. They were trying to keep Him plus the old familiar system. They wanted the new wine in the old wineskins. The result was spiritual infancy when they should have been mature.

In their age, in that time of the first churches, the tension had to do with regression that weakened the forward facing Christ-given commission. Today the tension has to do with regressing from what was learned from the Reformation.

It's a strange twist in the tale. The Reformation was really a restoration. A turning around, turning back again to the foundations of the New Covenant mission and away from the Old Covenant ways that had taken hold of the new church.

In the first century, believers were tempted to keep Christ + the old familiar Jewish system. In our era, many are sliding back from the hard-won recoveries of the Reformation into Christ + accumulated tradition and institutional layers that had developed over the centuries. And arguments being made are the same that the Hebrews had made.

"We can’t just abandon the temple and the priesthood; this is our rich heritage, given by God Himself."

"Take a look around at all this religious stuff!"

"Shouldn't this mean something?!"

These appeals feel compelling because they touch on something deep in our human nature. We love the visible, the beautiful, the historically impressive. We want our faith to feel substantial, rooted, and impressive. The grandeur of cathedrals, the solemnity of ancient liturgies, the continuity of rituals, the intellectual depth of developed traditions. It all looks like it really should mean something important.

And yet, this is precisely the tension the writer of Hebrews is confronting.

Yes, the Old Covenant system did mean something. It was God-ordained. It did teach, it restrained sin, it pointed forward. But once Christ came, its primary meaning became fulfillment.

The same principle applies today. Much of the "religious stuff" that accumulated over the centuries did serve good purposes in certain contexts. Yes God ordained these things, good and bad. He preserved truth during dark times, created order, producing beauty. But when we start pointing to all the accumulated forms of human endeavors themselves and saying, "Look at all this; shouldn’t this carry decisive weight?" we are repeating the first-century error.

All the Reformation tried to do was clear away enough religious layers so that the pure gospel and the priesthood of all believers could breathe again.

The writer of Hebrews would likely respond to both groups with the same loving but firm rebuke we started with in chapter 5.

"By this time you ought to be teachers…but you have come to need milk and not solid food."

Conclusion:
The "religious stuff" can be appreciated. But it must never be allowed to compete with or dilute the explosive new wine of the New Covenant. Maturity requires us to answer; "Yes, it’s beautiful; but is it carrying us forward into active obedience and mission, or pulling us back into comfortable shadows?"

So here we are again. Meditating on where we are again. Round and round we go.

Where will we find ourselves tomorrow?

Still circling instead of advancing?

The way out, according to the text we started with, is practice; repeated, deliberate obedience that trains our senses. Thinking deeply is good. But until some of that thinking turns into concrete doing in the areas we already know, the wheel just keeps spinning. 😵‍💫

The exit ramp is not more meditation. It’s deliberate, repeated obedience in the areas we already know. Do something with it!

Be Doers of the Word, not just Decoders.