This Is My Son - Listen To Him!
Written by John Maulella
Sunday, 24 January 2010 09:00
We're all losing our hearing!
Today we're going to talk about listening, specifically listening to what God says.
- PERIL: We'll be looking at the peril of not listening
- PROTOTYPE: We'll look at an object lesson--the nation of Israel as prototype of the church
- PROMISE: What happens when we do listen? The promise of Rest
- PLACE: Where this can happen
We're going be looking at some passages in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament today. It might help us to set some context for our readings. The 'Hebrews' were a group of Jewish believers in Jesus who were under strong temptation to give up their new faith and return to old ways of relating to God. They had made a living connection with God through his messiah, but were under pressure to drop that connection. And the writer--anonymous--is going to give them a sermon. That's really what the book is--a long sermon with a central message of Don't give up. At first glance we may think that we do not have much in common with these 1st century believers, but I think we do, and I believe there is a word in here specifically for Gateway.
As overview Chapter one is a recitation of OT testament scriptures showing how God's Messiah is greater than the angels. Some Jews of the first century had a whole hierarchy of angels, the point here is that Jesus is greater than all of them--if you've seen Jesus, you've seen God himself.
And then we come to our first warning of this book
Peril
What happens when we don't listen to what this Jesus has to say? the first point is--we drift. How do we turn away from God? We drift. Is the writer saying that it is possible for a born again believer in Jesus Christ, saved, connected to God, to turn away from God? That's exactly what he's saying. We've got to get rid of the idea that turning away from God is a single dynamic moment in which we fold our arms, turn our backs, and in one heroic effort of we cast off the shackles of our faith and purpose in our hearts to have nothing to do with him. I believe this picture is largely false. The image we have here is a man on a boat, drifting--if I can go back to Ed's boat analogy of a few weeks ago, we've got the rowboat over here--representing how hard we work in our walk with God, its all about us--and then we have the sailboat, where we watch for the wind, and steer along with it, and then we have the drift boat--oars removed, sails down, at the mercy of the current. If you're there today, our writer tells us, it is because you haven't listened. And if we're drifting aimlessly as a church, it is because we haven't listened.
If this isn't heavy enough, the writer gives us a warning. Now we americans, we don't do well with warnings! we make fun of them, we get offended at them, and we don't seem to be moved by them. Look at the warnings they put on cigarettes. The surgeon general has determined...can you recite the rest:
There's actually 4 warnings:
- Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.
- SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.
- SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight.
- SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.
I had a friend in New York, I'll call him Fred who used to buy cigarettes and request certain warnings--give me a pack of Marlboros, low birth weight.
The warning we are looking at today is not about smoking, its about ignoring...ignoring God's words. You and I live in a culture that opposes God by ignoring Him. In the clutter of our culture, in our schools, government, entertainment and arts you can search in vain for signs of Jesus.
But the writer is not talking to the culture he's talking to you and me. How have I ignored Jesus? By not paying attention to what I have received through him. We are like Johnny Moon Sr, who in 2005 died on a dirty mattress on the floor of a small home near Tampa's College Hill district.
Moon, who looked far older than his 56 years, died of pneumonia brought on by malnutrition. He left behind a watch, a flashlight and a wallet containing a solitary dollar bill. He also died owning more than 600000 dollars in real estate.
We are like homeless people who have been given mansions, but prefer to live on the street. We are like hungry people who have been given a permanent table at a five star restaurant but would rather sift through the dumpster for our supper. We are spiritual billionaires who live like paupers.
But I have the best news for you today--you don't have to keep drifting. You can come back! And it doesn't matter what made you drift --maybe you got tired of rowing--if so, you have to know, it was never all about you and what can do--maybe you got weary of trimming the sails, or you took your eyes off of the GPS coordinates, or --You can come back today!
How? We read the book, we pray, we meet with others who love Jesus and want to follow him. When we first moved here I was working a new job, working lots of Sundays, my shift started too early for me to get up and spend time with God, and I found myself starting to drift...but we found a small group, and I tell you I didn't even have spiritual reasons for going all the time--one of our main motivations was that our oldest son had found his best friend there! But this group kept me anchored in Jesus when the rest of my life was pulling away. And I suspect some of you have similar stories.
Prototype
Now to hammer this home, our writer has given us an object lesson...our prototype is the people of Israel. Listen to what he has to say in chapter 3:7-11.
The meat of the quote goes back to Psalm 95, which is describing what happened to israel when she was delivered from Egypt. Some of you know the story--God brings Israel out of 400 years of slavery with a mighty arm, and an outstretched hand, and they are in the desert on the way to canaan, and he is with them--they can see him! He is a pillar of cloud during the day, and a pillar of fire at night. And he feeds them, he rains down bread from heaven to eat, and he give them water from the rock to drink and they complain.
We're going to pick this up in Numbers 13--Israel is perched on the edge of Canaan, the promised land, and Moses sends in the spies--12 handpicked men, 1 from every tribe, leaders amond their peers, and their mission is to do some reconnaissance--scope it out, tell us what you see. So they go off, and 40 days later they come back. They're carrying some of the produce of the land--we get an idea of the fruitfulness when it says in Nu 13:23 it took two men to carry a single cluster of grapes, that's how big the fruit was--but there's a problem "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey--here is its fruit! But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even SAW descendants of Anak there." Now two of the twelve, Joshua and Caleb, said let's go, we can take them...but the other ten said no. we can't and in v 32 it says "they spread amond the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "the land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak) .We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." And what's worse, the text tells us that they spread this report through all Israel!
This passage illustrates a critical truth about life in God--we can easily be deceived by what we see. I'll say it again, we can easily be deceived by what we see. This is a theme all through the bible: here are some passages, almost taken at random:
- Gen 3: 6 in the Garden "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye...she took some and ate it."
- Ex 14:10 on their way out of Egypt, Pharoah changed his mind and decides to chase the israelites and cut them down "As Pharoah approached, the Israelites loooked up, there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD, They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die???"
- Matt 14:39 "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"
If I understand the scriptures correctly, listening to him is going to violate some laws of our logic. (unbelief and disobedience--a vicious cycle)
Promise
Which brings us to the promise. What if we do listen? 4:9 "there remains then a Sabbath Rest for the people of God, for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work."
What an odd promise! If we listen, he'll give us rest? Yes,--his rest. What is this? Tons of stuff written about this--of course, its salvation, having your sins covered over, but it is the full realization of that, God's rest spilled into every area of our lives. It means the death of my busyness, the end of my hurriedness, life lived out from the center where God gives his rest to those who trust him. It is God's eternal life lived out in the now.
I want that! Don't you want it? So the passage tells us make every effort to get it. What? Make every effort to enter--his rest? What this is telling us to do is--recalibrate. turn your energies in the direction of listening to Jesus.
So how do we do this?
Place
Also, there's Place. 3:13 says "Encourage one another daily, as long as it is Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness." There is no such thing as a lone Christian. I thank God for my group, because I don't have to put on a show, and I know that they will tell me the truth.