03212021 Are You Listening?

Are You Listening?

Oxford languages define listening as ‘giving one’s attention to a sound’, while the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries both define listening as ‘to give attention to someone or something in order to hear him, her’.

I find this distinction really interesting and important.

Listening as a word in the English language means to hear a sound, whereas the act of listening is so much more.

The act of listening involves thinking, understanding and sometimes empathy and engaging with the one you are listening to.

How well do you listen? What do you listen to? Whom do you listen to? Is your listening selective?

God has spoken to us through his Son, do you listen to him? How does your listening to him compare to your listening to other things?

When we want to listen to someone or something, we make provisions for listening...

If we want to listen to a musical group, we make sure that we have a cd player in the car and that we have the cd’s.

If we want to listen to the news, we make sure there is a radio in the kitchen or that we have a TV and that we have it turned on at the right time and the station.

If we want to listen to a missionary who is in a critical situation overseas, we make arrangements to have email and check our mail often during the day.

If we even listen to our favorite novelist, we have to make arrangements to have the book downloaded in an audio file.

On and on it goes. We all want to listen to something. And we make plans for our listening and we buy things and go places and make sure we are not distracted.

So how does all this compare to your listening to God's Word as He speaks to us through his Son?

Do you prepare for listening to that?

Hebrews is a sermon, really a sermon more than a letter, and a sermon that people had to listen to. Hebrews is a message with a single theme:

“fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith so we, people of the faith, might persevere through our faith as we trust wholly and completely in the one who is our great high priest as he intercedes for us even now.

This sermon (and this series) began with presenting a doctrinal statement summarizing in one long extended sentence the superiority of the one who is our Prophet, Priest and King, Jesus Christ.

It is he who has a name above every name. Through the one who is the Living Word, our God has spoken.

This summary statement we found was supported by Biblical texts that are the basis for the doctrine as the writer of Hebrews now begins to move from EXPOSITION to EXHORTATION - from PREACHING to PRACTICE - with these words - saying...”We must pay CAREFUL attention…we must listen...”

READ

Hebrews 2:1–2 NASB95

1 For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. 2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty,

Hebrews 2:3–4 NASB95

3 how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, 4 God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.

Prayer of Illumination

For This Reason...

“For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away...!”

In a little book entitled Quaint Sayings of Welsh Preachers, published in 1910, we read this.

“Many years ago, a Welsh minister, beginning his sermon, leaned over the pulpit, and said with a solemn air, ‘Friends, I have a question to ask. I cannot answer it, you cannot answer it, if an angel from heaven were present he could not answer it.’

Death-like silence reigned.

Every eye was fixed on the preacher.

He proceeded.

‘The question is this:

how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” [Hywel Thomas, 56-57]

We are no longer listening to a theological argument about the comparative glory of angels and the Son of God. Now the author has brought all these facts home to us as he says, “

“Are you listening? “If you’re listening are you paying attention.”

Because if you “neglect such a great salvation” there is only this expectation:

you will receive your reward at the hands of the living God (Heb 10:26-31) who is a consuming fire.

This is a message that this writer comes back to over and over in his sermon as he alternates between exposition and exhortation – doctrine and doing - preaching and practice.

As we go through Hebrews pay particular attention to the

“Therefore’s” in every chapter division but 2 (chapters 5 & 8)

The message of the gospel of salvation is a message of good news . . . and bad news.

The whole (entire) message of the gospel is a message that hardly anyone hears anymore and that includes the average church-goer who often quits listening when the message of the gospel turns from the blessings to the curses.

And yet here the message is over and over again.

We find it in the Old. We find it in the New. We find this message here given to a church group of people who were in danger of drifting away from such a great salvation because of a lack of perseverance - SO HE SAYS....

"Listen Up!”

The first duty, the first responsibility of those who have ears to hear is to listen, “pay much closer attention to what we have heard.”

The Art of Listening... communication involves one who speaks, but it also involves those who listen and not simply hear, but hear

Mk 4:23 “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

The writer here says (literally), Because of all this “It is exceedingly necessary that we give heed to what we have heard.”

This is not an option that you are to do only when you find yourself in trouble or facing difficulty. He’s not talking to those people who think that are especially spiritual. He’s not speaking only to those who have to prepare SS lessons or prepare sermons every week. He’s speaking to us – all of us.

Are you listening? Are you paying attention?

One of the great burdens of this message is that we who hear will see how serious it is that we should listen to Jesus, the Living Word of God, and consider him, and fix our eyes on Jesus.

This is the first commandment in the book. It is not a difficult command:

Listen! Consider! Look!

These are not hard things to do—unless we don't want to do them.

NOTICE: The first command of this book is not "do something for Jesus," but "listen to Jesus."

He is not commanding us to work for him, but to watch him – to keep our eyes fixed on Him and listen to Him.

Pay attention, because the gospel must be taken seriously.

Pay attention so you don’t drift away from it.

Pay attention so you don’t neglect such a great salvation.

Pay attention…LISTEN UP!

Hebrews 2:2–3a NASB95

2 For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, 3 how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard,

LISTEN UP - lest you drift away

This idea of ‘drifting away’ that occurs so many times in this sermon, is a word that only occurs here in the New Testament.

Outside Biblical writing this idea meant ‘to flow from alongside” – to let the current of the water carry you away from a fixed point through carelessness and unconcern.

Another possible way of reading the verb would be to think of losing something that slips from your grasp without your realizing it, like a ring from your finger.

It takes no energy to drift away – all you have to do is do nothing.

put your boat in the middle of the Mississippi River and if you do nothing you will drift downstream - If we are not intentional about putting into practice what we believe, then the world will carry us away with its ideas and practices.

The author of Hebrews is not so much concerned about someone who is going to just reject the gospel message outright. He is more concerned with those who have received the Gospel - with those who have made a profession of faith - who might drift away from it because of apathy or indifference to the truth – willful negligence in practicing the faith they profess.

And here he says if we do not vigilantly pay closer attention to the Word of God, we will float away – we will drift away from God’s Word.

And we all know people that this has happened to. There may be drifters right here in this room.

There is no sense of urgency.

No vigilance.

No focused listening or considering or fixing their eyes on Jesus.

There is no standing still in our Christian lives.

That is the point here: When it comes to the gospel - THIS GREAT SALVATION, there is no standing still. The life we live in this world is not LAKE PLACID. It is a ROARING RIVER. And its a river flowing rapidly in one direction.

If you do not listen earnestly to Jesus and consider him daily and fix your eyes on him hourly, then you will not stand still, you will just drift on by.

So…pay careful attention - listen up, lest you drift away...

LISTEN UP, So You Don’t Fall Into Neglect...

Here is a message that “was declared at first by the Lord, and it was confirmed to us by those who heard.

It was given to us by God as he showed us signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

He’s not asking us to trust and believe in fairy tales.

He’s asking us to listen carefully to the word that is living...

Hebrews 4:12 NASB95

12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Because...The gospel is serious BUSINESS !

It is a message of life and death, and so he knows that those who hear need some confirmation that we have some reliable information to listen to.

So he says, “Look at these people who heard it from Jesus, and who told it to us.”

This is a message that was confirmed by signs & wonders and by gifts.

Jesus verified their work by signs, by wonders, by miracles – recorded for us in the Scriptures to point to the one who is the author and perfecter of our faith, but also to give us proof with divine authority that Christ is who he said he is.

The signs and wonders were not the words, but they pointed to the living word as testimonies of the word of truth.

That’s why the author of Hebrews lists for us the credentials of the gospel message:

Hebrews 6:19 NASB95

19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil,

so he says....

Listen Up - Pay Attention...

“For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”

eg. of argument from lesser to greater

See Luke 11:9-13 where Jesus argues that if a human father being evil knows how to give good things to his children, how much more...), “What he’s not saying here is the word in the OT is inferior to the word in the NT. He’s not saying that the OT is the book of the Law and the NT is the book of grace and we shouldn’t confuse the two. He’s not saying this at all.

He’s saying that if the word of God’s grace spoken through the word of the law in the OT through the mediation of angels was valid, binding, and unchallengeable and that every infraction of that law received just just punishment, then how much more should God’s Word finally spoken through his Son, the living word be listened to and obeyed?

If under the Mosaic law’s penalties for disobedience were stringently enforced, then how much more should those same penalties be enforced against those who have heard the message of the Word through the living word and who are careless and unconcerned about the gospel, here described as such a great salvation.

Unlike the law which was, as it were mediated by word of mouth, the gospel is mediated by the Word-made flesh.

And Jesus himself said it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for those who turn away the gospel (Matt 10:14f).

And here is the message of the gospel that so many don’t want to listen to...

How will we escape if we go on ‘neglecting such a great salvation’ – drifting by in our apathy and our listlessness – listening to everything in the world except the one who is the most important – becoming distracted by every new theological doctrine – we, too, run the risk of drifting away – not finishing the race – of losing such a great salvation.

The salvation is great and the penalty for failing to persevere is just as great so “Listen Up!”...

Good News Without Bad News Is No News

The good news without the bad news is not good news at all.

In order to preach the Scriptures faithfully - preachers must address the Scriptures fully – the good and the bad – the blessings and the curses – the promises and the punishments - the Old and the New.

Rest Assured, The Righteous judge of all the earth will be absolutely just in all his dealings with each one of us his moral creatures.

It is true that those God calls as His children he will preserve to the end, but it is just as true that those he calls will persevere to the end as they attend to every means of grace that is available to them...

eg. means of grace…the things God has graciously given us that we might draw upon the grace he has poured out on us...

Reading & Listening to the Word

Participating in the Sacraments

Prayer...

This Great Salvation

This Great Salvation is an effectual work of our Triune God - by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but we must not forget that the Gospel also addresses the moral responsibility of those called by God’s grace:

“Don’t neglect such a great salvation.” (Heb 2:2)

Take care that there not be in anyone of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God” (Heb 3:12)

Hold fast our confession because we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God (Heb 4:14)

“Hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering (Heb 10:24).

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil 2:12)

The assurance of our salvation is not found in ourselves,

but in Him on whom we have our eyes fixed

and our ears tuned

and our hope anchored –

Jesus Christ – the author and perfecter of our Faith -

who is speaking to us these words of life...

Are you listening?