Discerning Good and Evil

People can be funny when it comes to food.  Everyone develops their own preferences about kind of food they like best, their favourite flavours, texture, spices, ingredients used or avoided.  Sometimes we eat out of necessity because we are hungry, and other times we can be more picky.  As people grow older they can also develop an ideology around the best kind of ingredients to use and urge others to avoid foods that are believed to be harmful.  How we prepare and eat food is very personal, yet the common ground all people share is our God-given need of adequate nutrition for our bodies.

Observing children learning to eat is quite an experience.  Babies are born with bodies sustained by milk from mum, and over time they are weaned from milk to eat solid foods.  At first, "baby" food is not very solid or flavourful at all!  When our boys were babies I remember feeding them Gerber mashed peas or carrots--and I recall some pureed meat that I never worked up the courage to taste based on the foul smell.  Finally the day came when the boys happily fed themselves and managed to work some of the food into their mouths after smearing it all over their faces, clothes and high chair.  The next task was to teach them polite manners and proper etiquette when they joined us at the family table.

The writer of Hebrews made an important point concerning the spiritual development of his believing readers who had become dull in Hebrews 5:12-14:  "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. ¹³ For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. ¹⁴ But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."  The author of Hebrews addressed readers who were "unskilled in the word of righteousness."  They were like a child with a full set of teeth and the manual dexterity to use a knife, fork or chopsticks, but were still dependent on milk from their mother's breast.  They were content to rely on their very basic and general knowledge of God and His word (and needed a refresher course!) because they were poorly versed in Scripture.

I heard someone say recently they have observed Christians who "decide what Jesus is like" rather than learning of God from His word.  Full of their own ideas and preferences, they run the risk of creating a fictitious god after their own image because they have not "by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil" by the study of God's word.  Think of the many faces and reactions babies have to new flavours--and they aren't always good!  In time children learn to enjoy foods they refused as babies, and their tastes continue to develop even in adulthood.  I have observed people who have been exposed to the expositional preaching of God's word learn to enjoy the flavour of sharp rebuke as well as the sweet promises of peace and rest in Christ.  God designed milk from mum to support the growth and development of their little infants, and God's word is milk to sustain a new believer.  At the same time God's word is meat for those of "full age," for those who, by exposure and practice of God's word, are able to discern good and evil.

The prophet compared God's word to delectable food in Jeremiah 15:16:  "Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts."  Even as food is chewed, swallowed and absorbed into our bodies, God's word supplies the spiritual nutrition we need to grow and mature as Christians.  It is telling Jesus commanded His disciples to remember Him and proclaim His death until He returned by eating broken bread and drinking of the cup.  God had done a spiritual work within them by Christ whose body would be broken and His blood shed, and Jesus Himself would spiritually fortify and strengthen them because they received Him by faith.  God's has provided His word so we would feed upon it--to read, heed it and be edified and changed by submission to it.  Let us not be as the Hebrews who were unskilled in the word of righteousness, but by reason of use may we have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil.