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If You Will Hear
Heb 3:7-8
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not
harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, (NIV)
For the last few weeks
we have been teaching on the concept of God speaking to us.
Now we want to talk to you on the importance of hearing from
him.
The writer of Hebrews takes the story of the exodus and the wilderness experience and the entering into Canaan to
tell us how important it is to hear from God. If you look at the story as an analogy instead of just a history lesson you
see that God went to great pains to teach us that it is extremely important to hear from him. In fact the real lesson of this
whole experience of Israel of which Saint Paul says
Rom 15:4
4 For whatever things were written before were written
for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. (NKJ)
The lesson for us
in this whole thing is lots of people have the blood applied to their hearts in Egypt but the never enter into what God really
has for them.
As you look at the story you see a group of people eating manna, drinking water from a rock that followed
them, enjoying the refreshing of the cloud and the warmth and protection of the fire and all the time becoming hard hearted.
It says volumes about human nature when you travel with a group of people where every bite of food you eat and every drink
of water you take is a miracle and all the time you are doing it you are loosing sight of God and becoming hard hearted.
God
rained manna from heaven for them to eat and they complained about the taste of it.
Num 21:5
5 they spoke against
God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is
no water! And we detest this miserable food!" (NIV)
But I can give you one better than that.
That was only the type
or shadow. That manna was a picture of Jesus Christ himself. The son of God come in the flesh who would be our living bread.
Who knew no sin neither was there any guile found in him and they siad the same about him.
One day the Jews said to Jesus
John 6:31
31 Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to
eat. (KJV)
John 6:35
35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger;
and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.(KJV)
And listen to the response
John 6:41
41 The Jews then murmured
at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.(KJV)
What is God saying to us. He is saying that
he is real to every generation and to every people but it is real easy to miss seeing him and as the result stop hearing him
and then become hard hearted.
And what is really amazing is the people who get the hardest are people who are often found
in relegion.
The way you get hard hearted is although God is at work in your life every day you either fail to see him
or when you see his work you complain about it.
All that complaining they were doing as they walked along in the wilderness-
Num 11:4-6
4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, "If
only we had meat to eat!
5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost-- also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions
and garlic.
6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!"
(NIV)
Num 16:3
3 They
went to Moses and Aaron and said, "We have had enough of your presumption; you are no better than anyone else; everyone in
Israel has been chosen of the Lord, and he is with all of us. What right do you have to put yourselves forward, claiming that
we must obey you, and acting as though you were greater than anyone else among all these people of the Lord?"
(TLB)
They
complained about Gods provision, his protection, his leadership and every other aspect of Gods purpose.
But all the time
they were complaining their hearts were getting hard. And the harder their hearts got the less they seen of God and the more
they seen of their own problems.
Heb 3:8-9
8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time
of testing in the desert,
9 where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. (NIV)
10 That
is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.'
(NIV)
What God is saying here is , your missing the whole point
I am in your life every day but instead of seeing
me you are just complaining about life in general.
I want you to see the text the way it is written. It does not say today
if you can hear his voice but if you will. The message is not so much can we hear from God as do we want to hear from God.
Because if you study the text in numbers that the writer is referencing its all crystal clear.
Ten saw a big problem
without seeing God in the middle of it and two saw a big God with a little problem around him.
Heb 3:12-13
12 Take
care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
13
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.(RSV)
What does he say is the secret.
The secret is very simple. It is so simple we all miss it.
The secret
is seeing God in your life today.
The poet said:
I took a day to search for God
But found him not, whereas I trod,
In valley still , in woods untamed,
Just where one scarlet lily flamed
I saw his footprint in the sod
Until
you can get up in the morning and see God in the mirror, until you can see him at the breakfast table in his great provision
and on the way to work in those you pass and the country you live in. Until you can feel him in the air you breathe and taste
him in the water you drink . Until he becomes you provision ,your protection and you leader you will not see him in the tests
of life either.
If you cannot see God in all the obvious places dont try to see him in the tuff spots.
Caleb and Joshua
walked into the land and every grape they tasted, tasted like Gods provision. Every brook they crossed sang gods praises and
every bird that sang was a reminder of the caring keeping power of an all wise all loving God and they couldnt wait to get
back into that land and claim it for themselves.
Num 13:23
23 And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down
from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates,
and of the figs.(KJV)
If you think Im too mystical and not real enough listen to the words of Jesus.
Matt 6:26
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
(KJV)
Matt 6:28-30
28 And why take ye thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? (KJV)
Its
what you see in everything every day that determines wheather you will have a heart to see and hear God or a hard heart that
will only see problems.
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