Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis.  Tonight, is study #12 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 have been discussing the information the Bible gives us regarding “weaning.”  We saw that Hannah weaned Samuel and then took him to minister in the house of Eli.

We also went to Isaiah 28:9-11:

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. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.

We were discussing this passage in our last study.  When God asks the question, “Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understanding doctrine?”, it has everything to do with learning the Bible properly in discerning truth about what the Bible has to say.  Of course, God is the one who is the teacher.  The Holy Spirit teaches when we compare spiritual with spiritual, according to 1Corinthians 2.  We are not surprised that as God is speaking of teaching knowledge and understanding doctrine, He says, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.”

This is a nice way of saying to compare spiritual with spiritual, precept upon precept and line upon line – here a little and there a little.  This is the Bible hermeneutic.  Forget what the churches say or what any man might put forth regarding how to interpret the Bible and understand the Bible.  God lays it out for us.  He is the one that makes it known how the Bible must be studied.  This is how knowledge is attained and how right doctrine is reached, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, harmonizing them with everything the Bible says.

If you follow that hermeneutic and guideline that God Himself has given us, you will be safe in your conclusions.  You will find you are coming to truth.  Of course, it does not guarantee truth in every attempt at Bible study, but it will certainly keep us where we need to be in our approach to Bible study.  The Holy Spirit also needs to be involved in this process because He is guide not only in the methodology, but He is a guide to the person searching the Scriptures. 

We should never underestimate the ability of a man to deceive himself and others, if he is unsaved, even if he might follow the proper Biblical hermeneutic.  It is very probable that he will misinterpret things even when he compares Scripture with Scripture and tries to harmonize things with the whole Bible.  It goes without saying that a person must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, but he must also be born again to come to truth and to hold onto that truth.  An unsaved person might come to some truth, but we are living in the time when God is taking away truth from some that seemed to possess it.  Some of these people had “hitched their wagon” to Family Radio under Mr. Camping’s teaching.  Now neither Mr. Camping nor Family Radio are here to guide them faithfully, and since these people lack the Holy Spirit as a guide, they are like “wandering stars” going every which way.  They never truly had the inner guide of the Holy Spirit.  And as the Lord is testing and trying all that profess to be true believers, many are failing the test.  Now we must ask, “Where is that understanding they seemed to possess?  Where is that excellent spirit of wisdom we thought was in all those people that listened to Mr. Camping.  You see, they may have sensed that Mr. Camping was a faithful man, so they said, “Let me listen to what he has to say.”   But now the Lord has taken Mr. Camping out of the picture and they must follow the Holy Spirit because there is no one else to follow. 

Someone might respond that there is EBible Fellowship and me to follow.   But, you know, we are about as lowly an organization and teacher you can imagine, so there is nothing here to “attract” others outwardly.  I am not an engineer (like Mr. Camping) and I am not someone that has taught for fifty years.  So, these people do not recognize us.  And that is good because I do not want anyone to follow me – God wants His people to follow Him.  Yes – we can follow a teacher as far as the teacher is following the Lord, but we must check out and verify everything that is taught against the Bible.  This is what God would have everyone to do. 

In our present circumstances, we have seen that many people have fallen away and gone back to the world or to the churches or to former doctrines.  Many of them followed the teachings of Mr. Camping for several years, but that is not salvation.  Salvation is something that God must work out in a person’s life.  There is no substitute for it and “close identification” with the truth is not the same as salvation.

So, God asks whom He shall teach knowledge and make to understand doctrine, and then He links true knowledge and doctrine to those that are “weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast.”  It is only for those that have come off the “milk” of the Word of God.  Here, we can see God is tying together that greater truth from the Bible requires one to come off the “milk.”  The implication is that if you stay on the milk, you will not gain further knowledge and you will not understand doctrine.  That is because you are going to refuse it because you cannot follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

God warns about this, for example, in 1Corinthians 2.  I want to read this because I just mentioned it earlier, but it says in 1Corinthians 2:10-16:

But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

I wanted to read this because we see, again, that when we compare spiritual things with spiritual the Holy Ghost teaches, just as we saw in Isaiah 28:9-10:

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. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept…

Now notice that in the next chapter, it says in 1Corinthians 3:1-2:

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

Once again, God is connecting these things, the comparison of Scripture being the proper Biblical methodology to learn truth.  The spiritual man is able to use this tool or method to come to truth, but the natural man cannot do so.  Remember it said, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.”  It is the Spirit of God that teaches the elect child of God when we compare spiritual things with spiritual, but the natural man cannot do that.  He does not have the Spirit of God within him.

Just try to talk to pastors about a verse and tell them, “Now this (same) word is used over here in this verse,” and they will interrupt you and say, “Hold it!  Why are you jumping all around?  Stay in the text.”   You see, they do not have spiritual understanding, but they have learned the natural methodology taught by natural-minded men: look for the plain, literal meaning of the verse and seek no other meaning.  They look at the historic or moral lessons.  It is like when people read history books written by men, but that is not what we do when we read a book written by God who is Spirit.  We must use spiritual tools, not natural tools: “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.” 

When it was still possible for people to come out of the churches, we told people that God was judging the churches.  They would ask, “How do you know that?”  We would respond, “Look at Matthew 24.  When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, that is talking about Satan in our day.”   They would respond, “What are you talking about?  That has to do with the first century A.D. and the destruction of Jerusalem.”  They have all these natural ideas floating around.  Then we told them, “It says, ‘Let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains.’”  We explained that Judaea is a figure of the corporate church, and the mountains point to God and His Word, the Bible.  We told them that they must come out of the churches and go to God, the Bible.  They would look at us like we were crazy or that we were speaking another language that they cannot understand.  Of course, we were speaking “another language.”  We were speaking the language of the kingdom of heaven, the spiritual dialect of God Himself, but they speak the language of the earth.  It is the natural language of fallen mankind in his rebellious state. 

The two cannot understand one another.   Yes – we can understand what they are saying.  We can understand the “wooden” nature of the things they are teaching.  We can understand the “meagerness” of what can be learned from that kind of teaching, because it is all surface learning.  You do not need a “pick ax and shovel” to understand what they are saying.  They are not the “deep things of God,” but it is strictly superficial.  If they had any understanding, they would have drawn it from some Reformers of old that did have the Spirit of God.  But because that Reformer was in a specific denomination, it somehow got thrown into their mix of things, so they may have some understanding to the degree that this Reformer could speak to these things.  But now you add to it all the things taught by our modern-day apostate corporate church.  It is a chaotic mess.  There was a time when we would say, “Oh, these poor people that are feeding upon these things,” but now the people are under the wrath of God because they “love to have it so,” and they have gotten their desire.

This is what God has in mind when He is speaking of the corporate churches during the church age from 33 A.D. to 1988, He is looking at them like a child on the milk of the word, for the most part, because He had stored up the “meat” for the time of the end.  As God told the Prophet Daniel, “Shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.”  Let me turn back there in Daniel 12:4:

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

How would knowledge be increased?  Whom shall God teach knowledge?  Whom will He make to understand doctrine?  It is those that are “weaned from the breast” and taken off the “milk.”  Then He gives us the methodology, as He says that “precept must be upon precept.”  You see, it was God’s plan at the time of the end to increase knowledge to bring people off the milk.  They had to be on milk throughout the church age.  I do not know why He determined to do so, but God is all wise and there are many things He does that we do not know the reasons.  But it was according to God’s perfect wisdom that He wanted the church age to be like a “nursery.”  He wanted the churches and congregations to only minister the “milk” of the Word to their congregations.  It was not until the time of the end that this would change, as it says in 1Peter 2:1-3:

Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

This is a significant statement.  First, God says, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word,” and, of course, every newborn elect child of God goes to the milk of the Word of God and feeds upon it.  I almost hate to use the word because of its connotation in the Bible, but it is natural for a newborn (babe) to drink milk.  

Then God says, “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”   Let us go to Hebrews 5.  I do not know if we can fit it all in to this study, but we will see how God speaks of “tasting” of the Word of God in association with moving on from the “first principals” and attaining to the “meat” of the Word.  For those that do not, they will be cut off and it will be impossible for them to be renewed to repentance.  This comes after a discussion of Melchisedec, but it says in Hebrews 5:11-13:

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.

We saw back in 1Corinthians 3 that it is not a good thing to be a “babe.”  The Lord related it to being carnal.  Then it says 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.s

Look at the New Testament era and church age as just a segment in the growth of God’s people where they are “babes” on the milk of the Word.  Then comes the time of the end and it is as though it is time for the babes to come off the milk and progress to the meat.  It is the time of “full age.”  Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will look at what God has in view regarding the language of being “full age.”  We will also see how Hebrews, chapter 6 will follow and build on the verses we just read, and how it relates to the time of the Great Tribulation and the time of the end of the world.