“Press On to Maturity”: Hebrews 5:11-6:8 (Sermon Recap)

Speaker: Pastor Troy

Opening Context

• The service opened by honoring Veterans Day. Veterans and active-duty members stood, and those seated near them extended a hand or laid a hand on their shoulder as Pastor Troy prayed a blessing of gratitude, honor, and protection over them.
• Before the text, Pastor Troy offered brief reflections on the recent election, reminding the church that its hope is in a personal Savior and not a political system.

Reflections on the Election

1. Elections remind us we trust in a personal Savior, not a political system.
2. We are not home. No state is home. Christ is home, and heaven is home.
3. We need to tie our hope to Christ, who never changes (Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”). He cannot be voted in or voted out.
4. We keep praying, sharing Christ, and discipling people, especially the next generation. We also need to keep explaining to Christians why voting matters.
5. We are already and always victorious, not because of our politics, but because Christ is risen.
6. God wants Democrats saved and Republicans saved, and He lets both sides experience disappointment so that they will turn to Him in their pain.

The Central Picture: Arrested Spiritual Development

• Pastor Troy asked the congregation to imagine walking into the nursery thirty years from now and finding the same babies grown up, still in diapers and drinking from bottles. A baby with a bottle is adorable; a grown man with whiskers drinking from one is not.
• It is fine to be a spiritual baby if you came to Christ two weeks ago. But if you came to Christ twenty years ago and are still an infant, something is wrong.
• This perpetual infancy is the core issue Hebrews 5:11-6:8 addresses.

Scripture Walk-Through

Dull of Hearing (Hebrews 5:11-12)

• “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”
• “Dull of hearing” means sluggish, slothful, lazy, and careless with God’s word rather than careful with it.
• The author wants to go deep on Melchizedek and Christ as high priest, but the readers cannot yet digest it.
• “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.”
• Those who have followed Christ long enough should be instructing others, not still being instructed in the basics.
• A church full of people saying “feed me, feed me” and not contributing to feed others hinders the mission.

Unskilled in the Word (Hebrews 5:13)

• “For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.”
• Reading, interpreting, understanding, applying, and living out Scripture is a skill that blesses a marriage, a family, and a life.

Discernment Is Trained (Hebrews 5:14)

• “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
• Being unskilled in the word leads to being undiscerning in the world.

Press On to Maturity (Hebrews 6:1-3)

• “Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.”
• Pastor Troy walked through the six foundational doctrines every believer should be “locked and loaded” on:
  • Repentance from dead works: works do not save us; faith in Christ does.
  • Faith toward God: trust in the person of Jesus Christ.
  • Washings (baptism): it does not save, but it identifies us fully with Christ and declares we are unashamed of Him.
  • Laying on of hands: symbolic of prayer and seeking the Holy Spirit’s help.
  • Resurrection of the dead: death is not the end, and without the resurrection Christian orthodoxy collapses.
  • Eternal judgment: a day of reckoning and accountability is coming.
• Leaving the elementary teaching does not mean abandoning the foundation. It means building on it. You do not keep re-laying a foundation; you keep building the house.

The Warning About Falling Away (Hebrews 6:4-6)

• “For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.”
• Pastor Troy noted this is the passage many people have been waiting for. He shared that a friend’s thick binder of Hebrews teaching skipped this section entirely, and he chose to take it on.
• Three interpretive views:
• The hypothetical warning view: the passage is only a threat to keep Christians from falling away. Pastor Troy finds it unconvincing because the author describes apostasy as a real danger, not an imaginary scenario.
• The loss of salvation view: genuine Christians can walk away from their salvation. This leaves one fluctuating between “God loves me” and “God doesn’t love me.”
• The covenant view (Pastor Troy’s view): those who fall away were never true believers. They had exposure to the gospel, the church, and the truth, and may even have espoused Christian values, but over time they walked away and turned against Christ.
• Why he holds the covenant view: the whole of Scripture affirms the eternal security of the believer, so Scripture is interpreted with Scripture.
• Judas had access to Jesus, was close to Him, and served alongside Him, yet Jesus knew he would fall away, proving he was never truly on Jesus’ team.
• The parable of the sower (Matthew 13:5-6): “Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away.” Many people start on fire, fizzle out, and fall away, revealing they were never rooted in Christ.
• Believers are sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).
• Those who left were not truly of us (1 John 2:19).
• It is impossible to lead the elect astray (Matthew 24:24).
• Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him has eternal life (John 6:40).
• “I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
• The progression of someone who apostatizes:
• They experienced extraordinary spiritual privileges (Hebrews 6:4-5): enlightened, tasting the heavenly gift, sharing in the Holy Spirit, tasting the goodness of God’s word.
• They decisively repudiated God’s Son (Hebrews 6:6). Like the mob at the crucifixion, they trample the only remedy for sin, which makes repentance impossible. There is no higher revelation than Christ, no second Savior, and no alternate gospel left to rescue them.
• Their fruitlessness exposes them to judgment (Hebrews 6:7-8).

The Field and the Rain (Hebrews 6:7-8)

• “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.”
• Both fields received rain. The difference is not the exposure but what the soil produces.
• Producing fruit does not save you, but it is an indicator that you are saved.

Key Theological Themes and Applications

1) Discernment in the World Flows from Skill in the Word

• Pastor Troy connected this passage to the election results. He noted that the world is full of lost people blinded by the enemy who call good evil and evil good, and that the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers.
• He also suggested that the church in America is largely unskilled in the word, which makes discerning what is what difficult. “When you spend more time on TikTok than in the Gospels, it doesn’t end well.”

2) Maturity Is Built on the Foundation, Not Instead of It

• Know the basics cold, then keep building. Do not settle for your current knowledge base, and do not become stagnant.

3) Fruit Is the Evidence of Genuine Faith

• Exposure to spiritual privilege is not the same as being rooted in Christ. What the soil ultimately produces reveals what is true.

4) The Warning Is Meant to Startle, Not to Despair

• The goal of the passage is not to drive believers into despair but to startle them out of complacency, so they will experience the full, deep, satisfying life found in knowing, following, and obeying Jesus.

Three Problems to Address

Problem 1: Spiritual Laziness

• Growth does not happen by osmosis. It happens through discipline and through openness to reading and obeying God’s word. Sleeping with your Bible under your pillow will not transmit truth into your brain.
• Read for breadth (through the whole Bible each year, retaining it and not just checking a box) or for depth (one book of the Bible every day for 30 straight days).
• Ask honestly: Are my spiritual muscles atrophying, or are they popping with veins and muscularity? There are two “you”s, the outer man and the inner man, and both must be fed.

Problem 2: Spiritual Immaturity

• Get the basics down, then build on them. A milk-only diet leaves you malnourished and vulnerable to deception, drift, and discouragement.
• You cannot live on sermons and podcasts alone. If you feed the inner you only on Sunday morning, you go six days without feeding it, though you would never treat the outer man that way.
• Sit down with God’s word, unplug, and ask the Holy Spirit, the master teacher, to help you understand the deep truths. Put the bottle down, pick up the fork, acquire a taste for meat, feed yourself, and then feed others. Reject passivity and pour yourself out in service.

Problem 3: Apostasy, or Falling Away

• “Impossible to restore them again to repentance” does not mean a person who desperately wants to return to Jesus is told “too late, too bad.” Repentance is impossible only for someone who continues in ongoing, total rejection and repudiation of Christ. A person who says “crucify Him” all over again has reached a spiritual point of no return.
• If you are grieved over your sin and want to come to Christ, you can.

Examples and Illustrations from Pastor Troy

• The grown-up nursery: adults in diapers and drinking from bottles, picturing perpetual spiritual infancy.
• The foundation and the house: you lay a foundation once and then keep building, not re-laying it.
• The binder that skipped the passage: a friend’s Hebrews teaching materials had nothing on 5-6, illustrating how often this text is avoided.
• Hypocrisy, authenticity, and apostasy (the jersey):
• Hypocrisy is wearing the Christian jersey without living the Christian life, but still acting Christian.
• Authenticity is wearing the jersey, falling short of living it, but repenting of sin and returning to Christ

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Sources & attribution

Sermon outline from Morning Selah.

Based on the sermon “Press On to Maturity”, Hebrews 5:11-6:8, preached at Grace Church by Pastor Troy on November 8, 2026. Watch the sermon.