I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrew chapter 5.

Pastor John will be preaching from this text both this Sunday and next Sunday, versus 11 of Chapter 5 through verse 12 of Chapter 6.

About this we have much to say which is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again, the first principles of God's

word. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child.

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,

with instruction about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

And this we will do if God permits.

For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened,

who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted

the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come if they then

commit apostasy since they crucify the son of God on their own account and hold Him up to contempt.

For land which has drunk the rain that often falls upon it and brings forth vegetation useful

to those for whose sake it is cultivated receives a blessing from God.

But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed.

Its end is to be burned.

Though we speak thus,

yet in your case beloved we feel sure of better things that belong to salvation.

For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for his sake

in serving the Saints as you still do.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance

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