Hebrews 5 - Ouch

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I'm a whole lotta behind on the Hebrews Study, but since Suzanne kinda took a break for the holidays I'm not as far behind as I thought..#goodthing...

When we last parted with the study, we had just covered Hebrews 4, and our homework was to read chapter 5 in the New Living Translation.  Suzanne very kindly provided a link to Bible Gateway  Hebrews 5 NLT for those of us who don't have that translation on the shelf yet.  I don't, so I clicked my way over and read it...and one phrase pretty much stopped me cold.  It's verse 11, coming right after the glorious description of Jesus as the highest of high priests,  perfectly qualified, absolutely authorized, interceding on our behalf.

It's as if the author suddenly remembered who he was talking to.

There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen.  

Spiritually dull and don't seem to listen.

As someone who is involved in a job where training other folks is part and parcel of what I do, I get this.

I have spent hours documenting, step by step, with screenshots and explanatory text boxes with little arrows pointing to specific buttons to click, the process that we have used, reproduced the documentation and passed it around to everyone who needed it, only to find months later that nothing had been done as prescribed because, basically, no one wanted to take the time to read the manuals and follow the step-by-step.

I've just watched as that very thing happened to a colleague recently.  'I don't understand,' she lamented, 'I gave her all the step by step documentation that I made for that process.  Why didn't she do it that way?'

Insert emoticon of head banging against wall.

If someone has already made up their mind as to how something should happen, you can  wave the little screenshots with the arrows and textboxes all you want, but it isn't going to make a bit of difference.  Their mind is made up.  They know what they're going to do.  And it doesn't involve paying the least attention to the instructions.

They're going to do what makes sense to them.  Not what is efficient, or according to procedures or even right.  

How could it not be right if it's what makes sense?  

The complaint of a generation, right there.

Dull and not listening.

I get the author's frustration.  There is so much he wants to share, so many great truths to explore, but he can't do any of it because his audience is dull and not listening.  They've already made their minds up about so much of what God has to offer that they can't even hear what is really available to them.

...you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word... (verse 12) 

I'm right here with everyone else.  How often to I fall back on 'what makes sense' instead of what is plainly presented to me as instruction?  How many times have I circled 'round back to the beginning, to start learning the same lesson over again, because I just didn't want to give up what makes me comfortable to venture into the new, the better,  the stretching and growing zone of being sharpened into something no longer dull; to pay attention and heed instead of singing 'Lalalalalalala' so that I can pretend I'm not responsible for what I didn't hear?

Time to grow up.

If you want to go back in time to November (yeah, that's how far behind I am), Suzanne's challenging post on chapter 5 is here