Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight, is study #14 of Genesis, chapter 21.  I am going to read Genesis 21:8-11:

And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son.

We are going to go back to Hebrews 5.  We have been looking at this passage in our last couple of studies.  It has to do with coming off the “milk” and moving on to “strong meat,” as depicted by being “weaned.”  God was discussing Melchisedec, as He goes on to say in Hebrews 5:11-14:

Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

In our last study, we were discussing the “senses” that God gives His people, as He gives us eyes to see and ears to hear, which allows us to discern good and evil when it comes to the Bible.  If you have that gift of discernment, you are in a good situation.  The problem with the people of the world is that they cannot discern good from evil.  It is a judgment that has come upon man that goes all the way back to the beginning, when there was a test between “good” and “evil” in the command not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree.  God had said, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”  But Satan said, “Ye shall not surely die.”  You see, it was a matter of discernment for Adam and Eve.  What would they do?  Would they discern that God and His Word was right and true and good?  Would they discern that Satan and his word was a lie and evil?  They fell into sin, did they not?  How did it impact them?  It impacted them in their ability to discern or distinguish between good and evil.

Let us turn back there.  We will see the struggle they had with this.  It says in Genesis 3:1-7:

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which JEHOVAH God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

They came to know “evil” through experiencing it, but that is not what God is talking about when He speaks of having our senses exercised to discern good and evil; that is, we can know “good” and “evil” according to what the Bible says is “good” or “evil.”  What the Bible says is good is, in fact, good.  And what the Bible says is evil is, in fact, bad and evil.  God has restored His elect people by giving us discernment, once again, to hear His voice and to know the way we should go.  We will not follow the words of another, which was the failure of Adam and Eve.  They followed the voice of Satan and they became servants to sin and Satan.  God has granted His elect people, which is a remnant of the whole of the world population of almost eight billion.  There are, perhaps, only 150 million or 170 million elect (we do not know the exact number), so this leaves billions of people that are unsaved.  Look at the world.  What is the number one problem?  You might say it is war.  You might say it is man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man.  But the number one problem of the unsaved is their inability to discern good from evil.

Why do people get in trouble?  For example, there may be a man that had been under the teaching of Mr. Camping or under the teaching of EBible Fellowship, and he knows he should not remarry because he has been divorced.  And, yet, there is “another voice” out in the world, like there was in the Garden of Eden, that counters by saying, “Is that truly the way?  Is that just?  You are a still a young man!”  There are all those “voices” out there that try to justify sin.  They sound in our minds and they come forth from others, like family or friends or through the philosophy of the world.  The testing ground is always to discern good from evil and to follow the good and cleave to it, but to abhor the evil, as the Bible tells us.

But the problem is that the world no longer has this discernment.  Their consciences have been seared with a hot iron, as it were.  They cannot tell if it is right or wrong for a man to marry a man or for a woman to marry a woman.  They cannot tell if it is right or wrong to abort a child.  Or, they think they can discern and they say that a wrong thing is a “good thing” and a good thing is an “evil thing.”  This is the reason the Bible says in Isaiah 5:20-23:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!

Do you see how this touches on the teachings of the churches and congregations?  Even though the churches may have the natural sense or the natural morality that God wrote upon the hearts of all men, so they may recognize that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but when it comes to their doctrines, they are just as bad (if not, worse) than those in the world.

You see, God has given His people the ability to discern right from wrong and good from evil.  They can discern the truth from the lie.  Sometimes it is not always easy when we are not sure what the Bible is teaching in a verse or passage.  What do God’s people do?  We say, “I do not know.  I do not want to say one way or another because I am not sure.”  Then we back away and pray for wisdom, waiting upon God to show us the truth.

Again, it says in Hebrews 5:14:

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age…

The Greek word that was translated as “full age” is Strong’s #5046.  It is the same word that we find in 1Corinthians 13, where it is translated as “perfect.”  It says in 1Corinthians 13:9-10:

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

This word translated as “perfect” is the word translated as “full age.”  It has everything to do with what we read in Hebrews 5:14:

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

So, “strong meat” is moving on from the “milk” to a greater understanding of the Word of God.  That is how we are to attain unto “full age” or “perfection.”  Here in 1Corinthians 13, it has to do with knowledge, does it not?  Again, it says, “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.”  So, there was partial knowledge and partial prophesying of that knowledge, but then it says, “But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”  The “perfect” also has to do with knowledge.  So, “when that which is perfect is come,” then the partial knowledge shall be done away.

Then it goes on to say in 1Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Again, God is relating the church age to the time of being a child with partial understanding, and He is relating that which is “perfect” or of a “full age” to the time of the end when the partial understanding is put away like a child puts away his childhood toys.  When you are a child, you play with toys, and when you grow up you put them away.  You have matured. 

Again, it says in 1Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.”  When we read theologians of the past, no matter how faithful or diligent they may have been, we must remember that the entire church age was like childhood, a time of “milk” and partial understanding.  Now we can see it in their writings and in their limitations in the things they were able to understand.  They lacked understanding of a great many things, like the “faith of Christ,” the end of the church age and the end stage of God’s plan for this world.  They came up with all kinds of ideas, like, Premillennialism, Postmillennialism and Amillennialism doctrines.  They were wrong in every case because that knowledge had not been given to them.  God had sealed up His Word until the time of the end and, therefore, they were like children that had not grown up.  That is what children must do.  They may want to be a man or a woman when they are eight years old, but they must wait until the time they are full grown.

So, too, it was with the information in the Bible.  It goes on to say in 1Corinthians 13:12:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

There would be not just a partial understanding, but a “full” understanding of the Word of God.  It was like God spoke to Moses, “face to face,” and not in dark sentences or parables, but plainly.  When God unsealed His Word, it was no longer so mysterious, because it was coming forth to the light and made “plain upon tables.”  That verse does relate to the world, in Habakkuk 2:2: “…make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.”  God’s people would read and run the way of God’s commandments.  That verse in Habakkuk had to do with the end of the world and, so, we declared to the whole world that Judgment Day would begin on a certain date and that the church age was over, and so forth.  These things were made “plain upon tables,” as God revealed them to us, just as the Lord said He would do through the Holy Spirit, in John 16:12-13:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

The Holy Spirit has done this.  This is a whole other area we could look at, including Mark 13:10-11, where it says that the Holy Ghost would “speak” (through the Word of God, the Bible) at the time of the end.  All that relates to the comparing of Scripture with Scripture and the Holy Ghost teaches, and this is how He guides His elect children into all truth.  I use the word children because God calls us His children, but we have been growing up in this world.  Ask any parents of children or anyone at all and they will say it is not an easy process to grow up.  It can be a painful and difficult process.  It can be grievous.  When your children are teenagers, they are no longer your little babies or toddlers.  They have advanced physically, but they may still tend to revert in their minds and in their understanding – they need to grow up more and mature to full grown.

Well, God’s children have been involved in that process, spiritually.  It has been under way since 1988 when the church age ended, and the Great Tribulation began.  God has been bringing forth many truths that have caused us to come off the “milk.”  We even had to come out of the churches and congregations because they were never going to leave the “milk.”  For the sake of our spiritual growth and our own welfare, God brought us out into the world, where there have also been difficult times and affliction, partly due to the growing pains in the spiritual realm as we came off the milk and growing as we took in the strong meat.  Again, these things are not always pleasant.

Let us turn to 1Corinthians 14:20:

Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.

What is malice?  It is evil.  In understanding, be “men.”  It reminds me of two Reformers that were about to be burned at the stake for their faith, and one said to the other, “Play the man, Master Ridley.”  But that is not really what is view here.  The word “men” is the same word translated as “perfect” in 1Corinthians 13 and the same word that was translated as “full age” in Hebrews 5. 

So, it is saying, “In malice be children, but in understanding be perfect or be of full age.  We can see why the translators translated it as men, because they were to be “mature” and no longer to be children in understanding. 

You see, this is the problem with those that are going back to the churches or back to old doctrines.  They are going back to their immature days as they go back to doctrines that they should have advanced from at this time.  It is like some young people in their 20s will revert back to the foolish behavior of teenagers, and you have to ask them, “What are you doing?  When you were 15, you did not know any better, but now you are 27 and you should know better.”  So, too, for people that are going back to the churches, they should know better.  Or, for people that are going back to doctrine like Christ having paid for sin at the cross in 33 A.D., they should know better. They should have discernment concerning these things.  They should have put away these “childish” things and grow up.  Of course, all this is predicated on the fact that one must have “life” in the soul to grow in knowledge and, tragically, this is the problem in many cases.  I hope it is not the case for everyone.  I hope some are just confused, but in many cases, tragically, it is because they are not “alive” in their souls, and they have no spiritual life within to grow and move on to “perfection.”  This is what God would have us to do, as it says in Ephesians 4:11-13:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man…

The word “perfect” is a translation of the same Greek word we have been looking at in the other verses.  Notice how attaining unto perfection or becoming a perfect man has to do with “knowledge of the Son of God.”  This is all wrapped around “knowledge” and “understanding,” like we read in Isaiah 28:9:

Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.

So, too, in Ephesians God refers to the perfecting of saints and the “perfect man.”  We used to think this had to do only with the formation of the body of Christ and that when everyone was saved, then there would be the perfecting of the saints.  But that is not what it is saying.  Again, it says in Ephesians 4:13-14:

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

Once again, to be “perfect,” we must not be children in understanding, but be “men” or “full age.”  This is related to the timetable of God’s program of times and seasons.  It has to do with the church age and then moving on to the time of the end of the world – the church age ended and, simultaneously, God began to open up His Word.  He began to spiritually nourish His people with the “strong meat” that they would need to feed upon to endure to the end.  We need to be strengthened with (spiritual) food to survive and to go about the tasks God has us to do.  So it is no wonder God says that at this time, “Feed my sheep.”  We are not at the last day yet.  In all probability, we have several years to go, but the sheep must be fed.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next study, we will come back to Hebrews 5 for one more study.