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October 3, 2004
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Hebrews
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Have you Heard Him Speak?"
Hebrews 3 - 4
- You have heard a long passage read -- a passage which "hangs" around the promise of God and the refusal of God's people to receive it.
The author says that God has something to offer us today.
When is that "today" the author speaks of?
Right now, right?
So God has something to offer us today, which we could miss out on if we refuse to listen, if we harden our hearts to His voice, just as, the ancient followers of God, the Hebrew children in the wilderness missed out on entering the promised land because of their disobedience.
What God offers must be received with faith.
"Don't harden your hearts today if you hear his voice," the author quotes from Psalm 95.
A passage the Message translates as saying: Drop everything and listen, listen as God speaks.
It is nothing new to be called to listen to God. Jesus said it this way:
"Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash" (Matthew 5: 24-27).
Travis Herinckx is rebuilding the Parmel house across the road here - the house Charlotte Bake was born in. At the start he dug down and rebuilt the foundation under the house before he began to work on the house itself. Travis knew that outward adornments mean nothing without a foundation. He knew the house had to be established on rock.
We need to have our lives likewise established upon Jesus, and the only way for that to happen is if we listen when God speaks, if we add faith to hearing.
- Hearing is what the Bible is all about. It is not a book to be read without applying the heart. You must read and listen. The letters of the New Testament were read aloud again and again to groups of people. Yes, the Bible is meant to be heard. In OT times all the people gathered to hear the Word as it was read aloud. Hence the command: "Today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts."
You see, one way God speaks is through the Bible, the written Word, as it is heard with faith. The word of God is not dead but living and active, the writer says in 4:12 "sharper than any double-edged sword piercing to the division of soul and spirit, bone and marrow, judging the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
Do not harden your hearts for that heart will be judged by that living word.
The first kingdom parable Jesus told was the parable of the soils. It is a parable about hearing. For how can the Word gain access to the soil of the heart except through the ear?
How well do you hear? How well do you listen?
Yesterday Grace was driving the two of us back to Banks after play practice and she noticed two front yards with signs of the opposing Presidential candidates. She was commenting on it, and I was a distracted listener. I was making a note on a receipt I had received. Suddenly I heard her voice go up and realized she had asked me a question. I thought of a plausible question based on the beginning of the conversation and answered "yes," and she said: "You are not listening to me are you."
"Nope, I guess not," I told her honestly. "Try me again." So, she said it again, and I looked at her, and listened.
Now on Sunday morning you are all here looking at me while I talk to you for about 20 minutes, sometimes you nod, smile, jot down a note or two. Sometimes you just nod off. Now Paul asks in Romans 10 how can anyone hear unless someone preaches, so God speaks through the preached Word, but how do you listen?
Do you listen indifferently? Yah, yah Brian talks week by week by week. He always says about the same thing.
Do you listen with interest when I tell a story, but think: "I'm outta here," whenever I return to the Bible?
Do you listen critically, counting the filler words like "um" or "and" or "you know"? Yep, that is number 28 "and," 15 "ums" and 25 "you knows" I can't wait to get home and call Matilda and tell her.
Do you listen skeptically - with arms crossed and a heart attitude saying with all you are worth: "show me" or do you listen cynically so that all your hear the minute I begin to speak is "blah, blah, blah".
Or do you listen actively, believing that week by week, imperfect as I am, God uses me to bring a message to touch your life: You seek to remember it, write a note or two, and ask God to plant it into your heart and life hoping to live what was said.
Remember the story of the new pastor who kept preaching the same message week after week and by week 7 the people were just really done with that message. When asked why he had not added to his sermon repertoire the pastor said, "When you begin to live the first message I can move onto the second."
One man from this congregation told me: "I sit there and what you are saying begins to work on my life, and I think, 'that applies to me,' but then I think, 'nah, it doesn't really' and just push the thought away."
That man's soul is missing what God wants to do. I wondered when he said it if anyone else is like him, doing the same thing.
- Hearing is what the Gospel is all about. Hearing with faith. Not just letting the word roll over you, but letting the Word be planted in your heart. The best example of this is Mary the mother of Jesus. The early church says that the organ of conception for her was the ear. She heard with faith. She says, "let it be done to me as you have said," and at that moment, it was done.
Can the living Word be rooted into your heart through the same organ?
Here is the warning from the Bible, not from Brian.
Listen today, for there is no tomorrow. You only have each today as long as you are alive and then there is no other opportunity.
Not once or twice but three times this passage warns: "Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…"
And the author is clear that those who missed the Promised Land because of their rebellion are ordinary people just like us - they'd experienced all God had to offer but they missed the goal.
And Hebrew Christians living in Jerusalem could miss the same goal if they just return to all the ceremonies and rituals of the Jewish tradition and turn from Jesus. Ceremonies and rituals so dangerous to them are as hazardous to us. Even good ones like coming to church, singing a hymn, listening to a sermon, taking communion, having a devotional time, praying a prayer can just be dead ritual and have nothing to do with seeking to hear a Word from God. Or these can be life-giving if we approach each in order to hear God speak.
"Encourage each other," the author writes in v. 13 so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.
Tell someone: "I'm here to help you be all you can be in Jesus". That's encouragement when you come alongside another's life.
Don't lose out on all God has for you. Your life as a Christian is not about doing the right things, it is about relating to the living God. Don't miss all He has for you.
In the Old Testament times of the people spoken about in Psalm 95, the place where God was speaking was through tough circumstances. It was not the Bible nor a sermon, but an event in their lives through which God spoke. They were hiking through the desert and God tested to see what was in their hearts. There was no water, and immediately their response was doubt, contention with Moses, disbelief of God. Immediately they wondered why God had brought them into the desert to die. They turned from being tested to testing God.
- Today we have all kinds of circumstances surrounding us - there are threats of hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, etc -- Is God speaking? There is the election, the measures, the threat to society with Measure 36. Is God speaking? There are these huge national issues, but then too there are the personal circumstances which cascade into our lives -- issues, problems, hardships, heartache, come in, broad-siding us.
Have you ever had a situation blast you? A situation to which you reacted instead of responded? I mean everything in you overheated? My car did that the other morning en route to be with Andy and Gail at the hospital, the "check gauge" light came on, and the temp was over in the emergency zone. Well, that time I just pulled over and turned it off, and it was fine when I restarted it after a prayer. We do not always recover so quickly, but such situations can be God speaking into our life a test revealing how overheated our hearts are. God may be saying: "See what is coming from your heart child, give it to me."
Now, I cannot convince you that everything I have mentioned is God speaking, but I can tell you the God who used weather, lack of water, and other physical tests to reveal the hearts of the desert wanderers in the OT is the same God we still worship now. God has not changed.
The question is whether you are listening for His voice.
And will we do better than our Hebrew ancestors and listen to him? Will we not doubt God in times of lack but trust? In a test, will holiness show forth from our hearts?
"If you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts," the Bible says, for you don't want to miss out on what God has planned for you. Now, we cannot discuss all that is meant by the offered "rest" in this passage today, but I shall return here next week.
Today, I have a question for you.
How well do you listen?
In Psalm 40 the psalmist realizes he is not hearing God, but just going through the motions of worship. In the 7th verse the Hebrew says, "God dug ears for me." What a phrase. Nothing on the side of the head but bone and God digs the ear canal so that we can hear.
Do you need ears dug today?
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