You Need Milk, Not Solid Food

By Tom Kingery

You Need Milk, Not Solid Food is about six fundamental and essential issues every believer needs as a foundation from which to launch on a voyage of faith.

Tom Kingery looks to the basic tenets of faith suggested in the Letter to the Hebrews 6:1-2 as well as 1 Peter 2:2 in this book that encourages you to move toward perfection. He does this by exploring six issues that will help you make your boat seaworthy before you leave the shoreline.

To succeed on your voyage, you’ll need a good solid hull that won’t leak, an anchor, maps, and lenses that help you see what’s ahead. You also must sort through your cargo, secure the ballast, raise the sails, and catch the wind.

None of these things can happen, however, until you know the basics. In other words, you need milk, which is nutritious, easy to swallow, and your first food.

Join the author as he leads you on a relearning of the basics of the Bible so you can move forward on a journey of faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781973685647

Tom Kingery

Tom Kingery retired from the United Methodist Church in 2017 and lives in Durand, Illinois. After serving 7 appointments in the Northern Illinois Confrence, he is blessed to continue in ministry as the preacher at The Church By The Side of The Road in Rockton, a non-denominational congregation with a close family spirit. He has published several other books concerned with faith and spiritual growth, all grounded in Scripture and relevant with respect to the journey of a believer. Tom grew up in a suburb of Chicago and went to the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. A daughter, Emily, lives in Davenport and teaches at St. Ambrose University. Tim, his son, lives with Jen and their son and daughter in Deerfield, Illinois.

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Copyright © 2020 Tom Kingery.

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Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8563-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-8564-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020902916

WestBow Press rev. date: 2/19/2020

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Repentance

Chapter 2 Faith

Chapter 3 Baptismal Instruction

Chapter 4 The Laying on of Hands

Chapter 5 Resurrection

Chapter 6 Judgment

Conclusion

Therefore let us go on to perfection,

leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ,

and not laying again the foundation:

repentance from dead works and faith toward God,

instruction about baptisms,

laying on of hands,

resurrection of the dead,

and eternal judgment.

(Hebrews 6:1–2)

INTRODUCTION

Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need

someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles

of God. You need milk, not solid food. (Hebrews 5:12)

Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching

about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead

works and faith toward God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of

hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1–2)

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk,

so that by it you may grow into salvation if indeed you

have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:2)

Y ou need milk (Hebrews 5:12). We all need milk. Milk is the first food each of us has. It is nutritious, easy to swallow, and easy to digest. It is simple, natural, and healthy for us all. Though there may be exceptions for some individuals, milk is good.

If our mothers were healthy, their milk met our needs when we were infants. But Paul seems to be a bit condescending when he says, You need milk, not solid food. It seems as if he is actually looking down on the people for whom the Letter to the Hebrews is intended. But it is more like a warning or an admonition. He just thinks they might need to relearn the basics of faith.

The letter seems to be written for the benefit of believers, either Jewish Christians or Gentile proselytes (God-fearers) who have become converts to Christianity, or both. I believe both, though the emphasis is on understanding Christianity in the light of the Hebrew faith. Consider the less condescending temperament of 1 Peter 2:2, where Peter tells believers, Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

It is a much more encouraging tone, but still, it implies a need for emersion in the sweet and simple nourishment of the basics of faith in order to be refreshed. Sometimes, it is good for us all to reconnect with our fundamental foundations, to visit the experiences and thoughts that set us on our current courses.

That’s what this book is about: the basics, the foundations of our faith.

The people addressed by the Letter to the Hebrews are seen as slow to learn, and therefore it is hard to explain (5:11) what the author really wants them to know. Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s Word all over again (5:12a). I wish Paul had actually done that: taught (or retaught) the basics. But he doesn’t. A few verses later, as he begins chapter 6, Paul says, Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about Baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment (6:1–2 NIV).

If all this is involved in the elementary teachings, that’s some heavy stuff. But that’s faith. The nature of faith involves very deep and meaningful truths.

So these six issues will provide the framework for the chapters that give us the milk we need: (1) Repentance; (2) Faith; (3) Baptismal Instruction (the creeds); (4) the Laying on of Hands (authority); (5) the Resurrection; and (6) Judgment.

But think about how these basics might be like an anchor that is weighing us down. Although an anchor can keep us in place and keep us from drifting into wrong or distorted ways of thinking, we need to realize that we might actually have the wrong anchors in our lives.

These would be the preconceived ideas that become ingrained into our minds from our childhood, from our peers, or even from our class, color, heritage, or background. Our culture. For example, someone who may have been raised during the Great Depression (1929–1939) may have an inner disposition of scarcity and a fear (or extreme distaste) of poverty, while someone raised in the 1980s might have such a sense of abundance that they feel entitled and think everything should come their way easily.

Check your hull. That’s the outside part of the ship or boat. It sits in the water, but it also keeps the water out. The inside of the boat needs to stay dry. Problems happen when there are leaks. Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets into them.

So think about what may have leaked into your mind that shouldn’t be there. Are there any prejudices, any distortions of reality, any unhealthy fantasies that shape your attitudes? Do you have any opinions that are not based on reality or actual experience? Sometimes, such things are difficult to detect in ourselves; we can’t see the forest for the trees. Some examples: One Kingery was bad, therefore they’re all bad; one woman broke your heart, therefore all women are trouble (or vice versa); all rich people are greedy; all poor people are lazy; there was one bad cop, politician, lawyer, therefore all cops, politicians, and lawyers are criminals, corrupt, or liars. I could probably go on for paragraphs like this. We have a tendency to think that if someone is not us, they are not right or worth our consideration. The reason we think this way often has to do with fear or favoritism. But we need to face our fears or favoritism and rise above them with faith.

These are the sort of things that can enter the hull of our boat through leaks, or rough waves swamping the boat, and sink us. But sometimes we bring a cargo of distortions on board with our personal baggage. We may not even be aware of the baggage we carry. Sometimes, we’ve packed things away that go back to our early childhood, and we’ve forgotten they are even there. But we need to sort out what we are carrying as cargo.

* What If?

What if I don’t want to sort through my baggage? What if I don’t want to discover my distorted personal attitudes or socially influenced perspectives? What if I don’t want to work that hard? What if I like my life just the way it is? What if I don’t want to change?

It’s been said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Actually, Plato has Socrates say it in The Apology.

I can remember when I was about eight years old, and our family was watching an episode of Wagon Train on TV. It was often a cowboy-and-Indians plot. I asked, Why don’t they just want to live like us and get along?

My preconception was probably shaped by several earlier episodes of Wagon Train as well as other shows that often pitted the Indians as bad-guy savages, and European settlers as civilized good guys. Were all Native Americans bad? Not the ones who helped the Pilgrims.

Anyway, the answer I got from my mother was, They were here first. Good answer (to some degree), though a lot could be unpacked from that truth. But I guess my immature mind was satisfied. You can see, though, how my mind had been shaped at that time by television and Hollywood.

I have risen above my early perceptions because I’ve learned a great deal of actual history, compared to what I knew when I was eight, and now I see the larger picture of how things were back then.

I believe God created the universe. I can accept the biblical story of Creation in chapter 1 of Genesis. My God is big enough and awesome enough to be able to do it all in six days. There is too much evidence of intelligent design for me to accept a random evolution of creation. But think about children who grow up learning the Creation story in Genesis 1 and 2 who are eventually confronted by the idea of evolution in public schools. They need to see evolution as a theory; I believe it should be taught as theory, not as fact. Think about the white suburbanite who has been raised to think a certain way about people of color, who eventually makes friends with African Americans in high school or college, either through participation in sports or sharing classes and living arrangements. Our experiences often disrupt our earlier attitudes, or our earlier attitudes compel us to deny any new ways of thinking. Have you seen the movie American History X? (I don’t really recommend it.) A subplot has to do with where the main character received his distorted attitudes, and he grows a bit. He gains a new awareness.

At some point, we have to answer these questions: Why do I think the way I do? Why am I living the way I am? By what influences and by whose rules, values, and ideals am I anchored?

Are these the right anchors? Are they weighing me down? Are they holding me in place when I should have gone on to somewhere new? Is my life led by rational principles? What is the authority in my life? Is it my parents? School? Friends? A political party? An economic system? The church? The Bible?

Why am I liberal, a moderate, or