Hearing From God

Darren Chitwood

Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Hebrews 3:7–19

0 ratings

· 13 views

God is speaking to us, do we hear Him?

Notes

Transcript

Sermon Tone Analysis

Emotion

Language

Social

View more →

How Do We Hear From God?

Hebrews 3:7–19 ESV

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ” Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Have someone dial my cell phone. Answer it, act like you can’t hear them, and then the call is dropped. Then act like trying to dial out but can’t get any signal. Walk all over twist and climb trying to obtain a signal.

Since the invention of cell phones we have become even more dependent on being able to instantly contact someone, anytime, and anywhere. The average american household pays around $60-$120 a month for cell phones. If your a family of 4 that is an average of $240-$480 a month for just the convenience of being able to instantly get a hold of each other.

My work place requires me to have a cell phone on me at all times so in an emergency they can call me in. I also volunteer as a chaplain for the Webb City Police department, where I could be called in at anytime. I am at any time day or night, just one phone call away from total disruption of my normal activities.

I, my family, and especially my wife are used to me being on call. All of my adult life I have been on call for either my job, or ministry. Back before cell phones I had to carry a pager on me. I also had to make sure I had change on me at all times so I could find a phone booth somewhere if the pager went off.

My point is, our need for communication has always been important. From smoke signals, letter carriers, telegraphs, telephones, to two way radios. For anything to run efficiently there has to be good communication between all that is involved.

Good communication is not only important for business, and society, it is important for the individual, the couple, the family. While our methods of communication have appeared to improve over time, when you study the effects of modern communication you find that people misunderstand each other more when they communicate electronically.

I remember when hotmail came out. I was a young backhoe operator and didn’t work in an office, but I overheard a couple office guys talking in the breakroom out at Atlas powder how this new computer thing was going to ruin how people communicate.

I remember when the internet first started and email

How true that statement was. I have since worked in an office for a large corporation where I have seen emails totally misunderstood, and taken out of context. To make things worse emails have been reduced to SMS messages which stands for short message service “texting”.

Relationships are not as strong as they used to be due to communicating by text messaging. A text message lacks the ability to hear the volume, and tone of the persons voice, you can’t see the facial expressions someone has when they text.

You can see how it’s sometimes impossible to know if someone is pleased with you, or if they are angry with you in an email or a text. I know they have added emoji’s to electronic communication but I wouldn’t have a clue what most of them mean.

Families in this country as a whole are also failing to effectively communicate with each other. Not all of them, there are still a few families that are an exception and still have a time alone as a family to share their lives with each other.

When I was a kid, mom would always have dinner ready at 5:00 sharp, we would all sit down for a nice big meal, and talked about how our day went. Families were stronger, and closer back then than they are today due largely because of the family time at the dinner table. There is a lot to be said about breaking bread together whether it be family, or the church family. Relationships grow, people get closer, and more personal with each other.

I apologize for getting on a soap box this morning. I know that the pulpit is not place to air a persons personal views, but I am just stating the facts as I have seen them in my 53 years on this earth, and I am leading into how important it is to have good communication with our Heavenly Father.

Good communication with God is so much more than just us throwing up a list of wants, and needs once or twice a day. It’s not asking Him to bless the food we are about to eat. Communicating with God, is even more than just praying, even if we pray right, good communication with God is so, so much more.

Let’s take a look at how we can communicate with God better. Let’s look at the different ways in which we should effectively communicate with God. We see the model of the human race effectively communicating with each other and how much closer we are to each other when we have effective communication, and the bond that a family builds when they spend time together, talk, and share experiences together, the good and the bad experiences.

The more we have good quality communication with God the closer of a relationship we will have with Him. The closer the relationship we have the more in love we will be with Him, and Him with us.

“The Holy Spirit Says”

The first way we communicate with God is through His Holy Spirit. Verse 7 in Hebrews Chapter 3 says, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says”. The Apostles, and Prophets are not the only people the Holy Spirit speaks to. The Holy Spirit speaks to us Christians as well.

What does the Holy Spirit say? In these passages He says Today, if you hear His voice. What does God’s voice sound like? He sounds different to every person. He made each and everyone of us unique. We all hear, and react differently to the voice of God.

Some of us don’t hear Him at all. The scripture says today, IF you hear His voice. Some of us are too busy, or we are making too much noise in our life to actually hear what God has to say. For some He speaks in a still small voice, and we don’t slow down enough too pay attention enough to know that He is talking to us, and what He has to say.

Others he speaks loudly as He did to the Israelites. When He spoke to them it was loud enough the Bible says the mountains shook. He speaks loudly to some of us through circumstances in our life. We get so loud ourselves complaining about the circumstances we drown out His voice speaking to us.

there

Then there are those like the Israelites who could hear God’s voice shaking the mountain, and they straightened up for a little while, but they soon hardened their hearts and rebelled against Him. They were so selfish, so self centered they rebelled against God and did what they wanted to do. They tested God, and God does not like to be tested.

God commands that the Israelites not test Him. God only allows us to test Him when it comes to tithing. The word used in both scriptures that is translated test in our language is actually two different words. The word nachah is a Hebrew word that means more tempt than test.

You ever have your parents say “don’t tempt me there boy” tempt them to what, punish you severely of course. God is saying don’t tempt Me boy, I don’t want to lay my wrath on you. God was very angry with them. What happens when you are angry with someone, it’s difficult to talk to them, we don’t want or care to talk to them while we are angry.

Romans 8:1–6 CEV

If you belong to Christ Jesus, you won’t be punished. The Holy Spirit will give you life that comes from Christ Jesus and will set you free from sin and death. The Law of Moses cannot do this, because our selfish desires make the Law weak. But God set you free when he sent his own Son to be like us sinners and to be a sacrifice for our sin. God used Christ’s body to condemn sin. He did this, so that we would do what the Law commands by obeying the Spirit instead of our own desires. People who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves. Everyone who is ruled by the Holy Spirit thinks about spiritual things. If our minds are ruled by our desires, we will die. But if our minds are ruled by the Spirit, we will have life and peace.

Romans 8:1–8 CEV

Thank God, as Christians we receive the Holy Spirit to live in us to speak to us, to guide us on the right path. We don’t follow the law anymore to be saved, but with the Holy Spirit guiding us we will want to follow the 10 commandments if we listen to Him. The problem is we let our minds, our fleshly selfish desires rule us. These desires distract us from listening to the Holy Spirit.

How do we focus on hearing the Holy Spirit? We focus on the Spiritual things, we read our Bible, we fast and deny our body it’s earthly desires, and we pray unselfish prayers by praying prayers of praise to our most High God.

Verse 9 in Romans goes on to tell us we don’t have to be ruled by our own desires because as Christians we have the Holy Spirit in us, that is the perk of being a Christian, as belonging to Him. It says that non-believers don’t have that Holy Spirit in them to guide them away from their selfish desires. Let’s go on to read

Romans 8:9–13 CEV

You are no longer ruled by your desires, but by God’s Spirit, who lives in you. People who don’t have the Spirit of Christ in them don’t belong to him. But Christ lives in you. So you are alive because God has accepted you, even though your bodies must die because of your sins. Yet God raised Jesus to life! God’s Spirit now lives in you, and he will raise you to life by his Spirit. My dear friends, we must not live to satisfy our desires. If you do, you will die. But you will live, if by the help of God’s Spirit you say “No” to your desires.

Romans 8:9–11 ESV

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

We need to remember these words when we start falling prey to our own desires. We shouldn’t use our fleshly desires as a crutch to sin. We can’t use the excuse that we inherited sin in our flesh from Adam. Instead what we have inherited is the Spirit of God who lives in us to speak to us to help us to say no to our earthly desires.

We Hear From God Through The Church

Hebrews 3:12–14 CEV

My friends, watch out! Don’t let evil thoughts or doubts make any of you turn from the living God. You must encourage one another each day. And you must keep on while there is still a time that can be called “today.” If you don’t, then sin may fool some of you and make you stubborn. We were sure about Christ when we first became his people. So let’s hold tightly to our faith until the end.

Let’s move to

Ephesians 4:11–16 CEV

Christ chose some of us to be apostles, prophets, missionaries, pastors, and teachers, so that his people would learn to serve and his body would grow strong. This will continue until we are united by our faith and by our understanding of the Son of God. Then we will be mature, just as Christ is, and we will be completely like him. We must stop acting like children. We must not let deceitful people trick us by their false teachings, which are like winds that toss us around from place to place. Love should always make us tell the truth. Then we will grow in every way and be more like Christ, the head of the body. Christ holds it together and makes all of its parts work perfectly, as it grows and becomes strong because of love.

God has chosen to speak to us through each other. He speaks to us through the apostles, and prophets by inspiring them to write His Holy word in the scriptures. He speaks to foreigners through missionaries who speak, teach, and act out His Holy word. And He speaks his word to us by calling some of us to be pastors, and others He calls to be teachers.

New Christians are still considered to be babes in Christ. They don’t know how to hear from God, they don’t know what God sounds like, so they can be fooled by false teachers. That is why we can’t allow spiritually immature Christians to teach in our churches.

We may be able to hand them some DVD, and written material, to teach from. We think how can they get this wring the material teaches it for them; but in the classroom, discussions will come up, and false teaching may come out of the discussion. It happens in churches all over the country because so few are willing to help out, many times it is the new Christians wanting to do something, because the mature Christians are burned out, and feel like they just cant do it all anymore.

We need more mature Christians, who are sound in their faith to stand up and answer their call as to how God wants them to speak for him. We can still use these willing spiritually young Christians in the classrooms, but as helpers so they can learn from the more mature how to speak Gods word.

But God also speaks to us through others. Not just Pastor Lance, not just the Sunday School teachers, not through just any ministry leaders. God can speak through the average church member. They can be the encouragers, the workers, they can speak through Gods language of love.

Lets go back to

Hebrews 3:12–14 CEV

We should assemble as a church so that we can not only teach each other about God’s word, but so that we can speak words of encouragement to each other. So that we can hold each other accountable for our actions. Any one in the church may be used by God to speak the words of truth to others.

When we see a fellow brother, or sister in Christ sinning, it is our duty to call them out on it. Maybe they are making too much noise, or moving too fast to see that they are sinning. God will call on us as an outsider to their sin to see what they are doing wrong, and tell them about it.

When God calls us to speak for Him in this case their are specific ways to handle it. First of all we have to approach it in a loving manner, we are to love the person enough to tell them the truth, and to do it privately and discreetly. Just a one on one conversation with the person.

If they continue to sin then we bring in a couple other mature Christians to approach the sinning person. If they still continue in the sin then they are brought before the whole church with the sin. Finally if they don’t stop they are to be excommunicated from the church. These specific details on church disciple are laid out clearly for us in

Matthew 18:15–17 CEV

If one of my followers sins against you, go and point out what was wrong. But do it in private, just between the two of you. If that person listens, you have won back a follower. But if that one refuses to listen, take along one or two others. The Scriptures teach that every complaint must be proven true by two or more witnesses. If the follower refuses to listen to them, report the matter to the church. Anyone who refuses to listen to the church must be treated like an unbeliever or a tax collector.

Matthew 15:16–18 ESV

And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.

Following these verses is

Matthew 18:19–20 ESV

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

These two verses are often taken out of context. You will hear people sometimes when they pray in a group that since two or more are gathered in His name, and agree on what they are asking for of God that He promises to grant it. As you can see in the full context of scripture here what God is honoring here is the decision on church discipline, not on any prayer that is prayed by more than two at a time. I used to be guilty of claiming that false promise that God is going to make our wish come true since more than one are praying about it.

The context of the verse means that if more than two people agree, after much prayer about the situation, that the sinner in the church who is caught in his sin, and will not change, or do anything about it to get right before God, that God will honor their decision to discipline them, even by asking them to leave their church.

God Speaks To Unbelievers

The Holy Spirit speaks to unbelievers about their sin. He is the one who convicts them about being a sinner, and their need for Christ. We can’t judge whether a person is going to Hell or not, but we can judge their actions and determine they are sinners. We are to be gracious in our dealings with them. They need to hear the truth, but that truth is that we are all sinners, that sin will send us to Hell, unless we believe that Jesus Christ came to this earth as a perfect man, died as a sacrifice for our sins, and then conquered that death by being raised from the dead.

If we back to Romans

We read earlier in that people who do not have the risen Christ in them, that they are dead both physically and spiritually. We are all going to die physically, but if we have Christ in our heart, if we believe in Him, and trust of His Death that is our only death.