It is wonderful to see everyone here. It is great to get together for this post-Christmas gathering. Some of you are probably wearing things you received for Christmas, huh? But it is wonderful that we can come together, fellowship, see our friends once again, and rejoice together, even if it is only for this brief time.
How long does it take for you to come into the presence of the Lord? As long as it takes for you to acknowledge in your heart that He is Lord and confess with your lips that you have come home to Him. That is how wonderful it is to walk with the Lord.
It is not as some religious systems have it, where you have to do penance and somehow work your way back through a series of steps. You know, we have the thirty-nine steps up here. In some religious practices, they would say you should crawl up those steps: “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, if I can make these steps, You receive me.” All you need to do is open your heart and say, “Jesus, I come to You,” and it is done. It is amazing, isn’t it?
Some of you have come here all excited, pursuing the Lord and praying about this time. Some of you were dragged here. Some came because your parents expected you to come. Some came because other Christian brothers and sisters expected you to come. Some came just to see your friends—and forgot your Bibles.
But whatever reason brought you here, this is your time with the Lord and with one another. We have to keep that combination straight.
Let us begin by singing that little chorus: “The love of the Lord is a marvelous blend of the gift of His Son and the hand of a friend.” Because that is what we have. What a combination. This is better than a McDonald’s sandwich: the gift of His Son and the hand of a friend.
We need both of those to get on in the Christian life. That is why we have come together here. This is like one of those marathon races—which I have never been part of, but I have watched. There are people standing around with cups of cold water. The runners take a cup, drink it, toss it aside, and keep going.
You have been running since September, right? Going to school, doing your stuff, and here we are at one of those little rest stops. You can take the cup, take a drink, say, “Thank You, Jesus,” and keep on running. That is all we have here: one day to do that. So let us take advantage of the cup. Let us drink deep. Let us have a good draft, and then keep on being faithful.
Sometimes we are lonely and need a good friend. There is no one like Jesus; He is there to the end. But His infinite wisdom includes in His plans a brother or sister to give you a hand.
It is so easy to slip and fall. Once you get down, you can stay under it: “Oh, what is the use?” But then a friend comes around—someone who has already been there—and turns you around with counsel and prayer. See, I cannot even remember the words anymore. I need a friend.
Sometimes we have problems we cannot understand. We walk in the desert, dry as a desert. We call out to Jesus and ask for some help: “Jesus, please.” Then the telephone rings, and our friend is on the line.
Now you can go and hug your friend right there, and then sit down.
Does your friend need that much comfort? Kind of like they are a good puppy dog.
We were at the conference at Kenbrook this summer, and I went crazy. My Irish roots came out. I do not know if I am really Irish, but I eat a lot of potatoes.
Here is the song:
You ask me how I can walk this way
When things are looking down.
You ask me how I can talk this way
With problems all around.
You ask me how I can sing
When everything is going wrong.
But ever since Jesus came into me,
I have been singing a brand-new song.
I am singing a song of victory,
Redeemed, redeemed.
He touched my heart and He captured me.
I live because Jesus lives in me,
And now I cannot help singing of victory.
If you are really in the victory, you may even smile. It is a possibility today.
Let us have a fire check here. Have you still got your incense burning on the altar fire of the Lord? Do you still have prayer in your heart? Do you still have a burden? Does the Lord’s love and life manifest through you? Keep the incense burning.
I do not think that was always such an easy job. Samuel, as a little boy, had one of his responsibilities in the temple: keep that incense burning. This is so pleasing to the Lord when we offer sacrifices.
Keep the incense burning
On the altar fire.
Let thy heart’s petition
Rise as sweet incense
Before God’s own throne,
Till His will among us
Shall be fully done.
Keep the incense burning
On the altar fire.
Every key to my heart, Lord Jesus,
It must be that You see
Every secret hidden.
Always enter in;
Cleanse me, fountain,
Fill me with life,
Life and power.
Prayerfully I give to You.
As we walk with You, Lord, we often find there is another key yet to give to You—something we held on to. We did not realize it was getting in the way, but it was something You had always seen. You have been patiently working with us by Your Spirit.
Lord, this day, as a sacrifice to You, we give You again our hearts and every key belonging to our hearts. If we have had any controversy with You, we confess that You are true, even if it makes us liars, and we give You that key.
If we have any doubts, guilt, or shame, we come openly, acknowledging these things unto You, from Whom no things are hid. We come unto Your Word to fellowship this day, praying that You would help us always to be surrendered to You, consecrated to You, that You might find us useful vessels in life and in service.
Help us to help one another this morning. We pray for the help of the Holy Spirit in our times together this day. We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Please open to the book of Hebrews, chapter 3, beginning in verse 1.
Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession;
Who was faithful to Him that appointed Him, as also was Moses in all His house.
For He hath been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by so much as He that built the house hath more honor than the house.
For every house is builded by some one; but He that built all things is God.
And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were afterward to be spoken;
But Christ as a Son, over His house; Whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.
Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith,
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation,
As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
Where your fathers tried Me by proving Me,
And saw My works forty years.
Wherefore I was displeased with this generation,
And said, They do always err in their heart;
But they did not know My ways;
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest.
Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God:
But exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called Today; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin:
For we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.
This letter to the Hebrews is an exhortation. The whole book is an exhortation. Within the book there are many exhortations, but first let us ask what exhortation means. It is a whole Latin word, and you notice nobody uses that word anymore except Christians.
Exhortation means to urge strongly. That is what exhortation means: to urge strongly. An exhortation given in the Bible always has two sides, like a coin. On one side there is encouragement and promise. On the other side there is warning.
This is true with every exhortation. The book of Hebrews is filled with promises and filled with warnings. We need to be exhorted. I need to be exhorted. We thank God for His precious Word that continually exhorts us. It does not condemn us; it holds forth a promise and it holds forth a warning.
For example, Hebrews 3:6 says that Christ was faithful as a Son over His house, “whose house we are.” That is a precious promise and a precious truth. Then comes the warning: “If we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm unto the end.”
At the end of the passage, Hebrews 3:14 says, “We have become partakers of Christ.” What a wonderful promise. What an encouragement. Then comes the condition: “If we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm unto the end.”
Exhortation is necessary in the Christian life because it is practical. It has to do with our experience. We already belong to the house of God. Whether you are a good kid or a bad kid in the house of God, you are still a kid, and God loves you because you are His kid.
But if we want to live in the good of the house, then we need to be faithful and hold fast to the things we have been given. Exhortation is practical, and it deals with our walk. Whenever you see if in the Bible, it is dealing with our practical walk.
This is not saying that if you are not faithful to the Lord, He is going to chuck you out of the house. But it is saying that He is your Father, and He offers you great encouragement. If you do not take that encouragement, then you are in for some discipline.
I hope the Lord renews our minds so we can realize that the Word of God is always a two-edged sword. It always has blessing, and it always has warning. Let us not be those who only believe in the promise box. If you have a promise box on your kitchen table and pull out a promise every day from God, then have a warning box too.
We must let the two-edged sword do its work. One side is sort of the good cop, and one side is the bad cop. We need to be willing to receive the truth in its positive aspect and in its warning, just as we see here in Hebrews.
At the beginning of Hebrews 3, we read, “Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.”
We are walking a new walk by a new life. We are called with a heavenly calling. Who knows how to walk the heavenly pathway? Your schoolteacher cannot help you. Your favorite biology professor cannot help you. He may not even know how to walk this heavenly way.
It is called a new and living way. That means science books cannot figure it out, and the world cannot give counsel concerning it. When the world finds out that you have found a heavenly calling, all your counselors will gather around you like Job’s friends—but they will only cause damage, because they do not know what you are talking about.
In Hebrews 11, the writer says, in effect, “Look at all these people who walked before us.” They give us a clue concerning how to walk the heavenly way. But even that is not enough. In the end, if we are to keep walking in this heavenly calling, we have to look at Jesus, keep looking at Jesus, and keep looking at Jesus.
When Hebrews speaks of Jesus, it often says simply “Jesus,” not “the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is the same Person, but the emphasis is upon the human Jesus. If you want to know how to walk the heavenly way, then look at Jesus—the human Jesus, the way He walked on earth.
He is the first Man to succeed in walking the heavenly path. He walked in His heavenly vocation. He was a human being walking on earth, with people saying all kinds of things and trying to distract Him, but all the time He was hearing a voice from heaven.
Turn to Hebrews 12. We know these verses well.
Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Who is this great cloud of witnesses? Some folks look a little cloudy here this morning, but that is not what the writer means. He has in mind those people mentioned in Hebrews 11—Abraham, Moses, and all the rest. They have gone on to their reward.
It is like a big stadium. They are watching us as we run the race. Moses says, “Take my example. I followed the Lord, and I found Him faithful.” Abraham says, “I followed the Lord, and I found Him faithful.” But they are not cheering for you exactly—sorry. They are cheering for Jesus.
Jesus is watching over us and caring for us while we run the race. We are to lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles us. Untie your shoelaces if they are tied together, put your shoes on properly, and run with endurance the race set before you, fixing your eyes on Jesus.
There it is—not “Jesus Christ,” “Lord Jesus Christ,” or “Holy God Jesus Christ.” Just Jesus. Keep your eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith. He ran the race. He knows all about the entanglements, the curves, and the blind alleys. He has been there, and now He says, “Come on, come on. I will run in front of you. Look unto Jesus.”
There is something very practical about the race of faith: it is hardest to get started, and it is also hard to finish. That is why He is the Author and the Finisher.
You say, “Okay, I want to go.” He says, “Do you really want to go?” You say, “Yes, I want to go.” Then He says, “Here you go.” He gets you started. He is the Apostle. He paved the way. He has done it all, and He has given you grace so you can begin the race.
Somebody may have started the race in September and already dropped out. Their shoelaces are tied together again, and they are falling beside the track. But He is the Starter. The amazing thing about Jesus and the new covenant is that He is always starting us over again. He says, “Okay, come on. Let us go. Time to get up. This is December 28. Stand up and get started again.”
Some people have started, but it is awfully tough to finish. Look around the track. There are folks who started out pretty well, but now they have gone over to the broad jump and stopped running. They need to be called back to the race. They need to finish.
Everybody has some kind of cramps when they are running. But Jesus says, “I am the Finisher too.” In order to get started in the race of faith, you need to see Jesus the Apostle, the Builder, the Starter. In order to finish, we need to know Jesus the High Priest.
The Apostle gets us started; the High Priest gets us finished. Actually, both of them do both, but the emphasis is in that direction.
To run this race and keep on running it, you have to keep looking at Jesus, because He is the Starter and the Finisher. He will start you out, and He will finish the job.
On an even more practical level, Hebrews exhorts us to run the race faithfully by learning two things. To know Jesus as the Apostle, we must be absolutely connected to the Word of God. To know Jesus as the High Priest and finish the race, we must know Him by His blood.
If I were to title my two exhortations for this morning, I would say that we need to walk the walk of faith—walk in the new and living way—by His Word and under His blood. It is just that simple, and just that profound.
Sometimes I say, “Brother, look at Jesus,” and you say, “Well, I am trying. I read the Gospels this morning, but I did not see Him in it. I am having a hard time seeing Him.” Here is the first part: I do not think you can run the race and be faithful if you are not a student of the Word, if you are not living with the Word.
Let us look briefly at the beginning of Hebrews. The beginning speaks more of the Apostle and the Word; the end speaks more of the High Priest and the blood.
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
Hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds;
Who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Hebrews begins by saying that Jesus is the final Word. If you want to follow Him, you must get hold of His Word.
Hebrews 2:1 says:
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away from them.
Our walk has much to do with the Word—hearing the Word and hearing what was spoken. Even in the Old Testament, when people did not listen to the commandments, they suffered because of it. How much more must we care for this Word?
Then in Hebrews 3 we read, “Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” The Word is so vital to us—absolutely vital.
Hebrews 4 speaks of Israel receiving good news at Kadesh-barnea. Joshua and Caleb said, “Come on, let us go in and take the land. The Lord will be with us.” But the people did not mix the Word with faith. They said, “No, we cannot. The giants are too big. The cities are walled.”
We can have a Word, but if we do not mix it with faith, it does not profit. The Word must be received with faith.
Hebrews 12:25 gives another strong encouragement and warning:
See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not when they refused Him that warned them on earth, much more shall not we escape who turn away from Him that warneth from heaven.
The writer is saying in every conceivable way: we have to listen to the Word. This is vital to our walk and vital to our faith.
I want to talk about living in a place, a time zone. This time zone is called today.
Hebrews 3:7 says:
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
There is something wonderful about this. In the kingdom of God, if we want to live today, we must hear His voice and obey His Word. If we neglect either one, we may be here today, but we are not in today.
Faith has a limited time. You have faith now, or you do not have faith. Hope is what you believe will happen tomorrow, but Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is.” I like those two words together. Faith is now.
What do you believe now? Remember two years ago when you got saved? Great. What do you believe now? How are you living today?
Some people are here, but their brains are still back home. Others are here, but their minds are on the paper due next week at school. You may be here in body, but not really here because you are concerned with something else.
If we want to live in today, we need to be listening for the Lord’s voice and obeying the Lord. Then we live in today.
A young person once asked me, “What is the kingdom of God anyway?” I knew they did not need a big definition; they needed practical help. So I said, “The kingdom of God is when Jesus is Lord of your life now.” When He is King in real life, you are living the kingdom life.
There is so much to know about the kingdom, and it is wonderful. But if you do not live under the Lord now, listening to His voice, then it is all theory.
Today, if you hear His voice.
Brothers and sisters, this is so wonderful that it is hard to believe: the Lord speaks to us every day. This is our right and privilege as children of God.
There are religions that do not even believe the Lord speaks. You have to guess what He wants. You look for signs in the sky or signs in nature, but He never speaks directly to you. But the whole Christian life is based upon this: our God speaks to us today.
Remember how Jesus walked. He walked upon the earth, but all the time He was listening to heaven. He said, “I do what the Father tells Me. I say what the Father tells Me to say. I judge what the Father tells Me to judge. When He works, I work.”
You can see it in Jesus’ life. Why was He out on the mountain so early? Communication. All the time, communication. His ministry was so living because He was so today. He was not worried about tomorrow.
Even one day before His execution and crucifixion, He was still living today. He was helping people. He was not preoccupied. He was always hearing, always fellowshipping.
Now He has died on the cross, risen again, ascended, and sat at the right hand of God. Through the Christian life, every day, we can live today by hearing His Word. It is the privilege and right of every Christian. It is part of the covenant He signed with His blood.
Hebrews 8:10-11 says:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, saith the Lord;
I will put My laws into their mind,
And on their heart also will I write them:
And I will be to them a God,
And they shall be to Me a people:
And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
For all shall know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
As a Christian, you can know the Lord. As a Christian, you can receive these communications from heaven. The fact is that He is speaking. The question is the if clause: are we listening?
The Lord is creative, and He speaks in many ways. Sometimes He even uses a mule to speak to someone. That is me today.
Sometimes you hear a message, and it speaks to you. Sometimes you hear a song, and it speaks to you. Sometimes a friend says something, and it speaks to you. Sometimes you see a verse on a wall and realize that God is speaking to you.
God can speak through a tract. God can speak through the radio. Your parents may be driving you to school, and there is a preacher on the radio. When he stops asking for money, he may say something—and the Lord speaks.
The Lord may lead you to read a book at just the right time. Have you ever had that happen? You see a Christian book on your parents’ shelf, one you have seen a hundred times, and suddenly it pops out: “Maybe I should read that.” Then, just in the nick of time, it is the perfect book.
The Lord works in many wonderful ways to speak to us. But let us settle this issue right now: the number one, most important discipline in the Christian life is reading the Bible every day.
Brothers and sisters, let us take our lofty songs out of the ivory tower. We sing, “I want to know You.” He says, “Here I am.” Then we say, “No, I do not mean that, Lord.”
We say we want to hear His voice. He says, “Okay.” His voice is as close as your desk—the Bible gathering dust there.
I give you the testimony of all those faithful witnesses who have gone before: we live by the Word of God.
Man shall not live by bread alone,
But by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Listening to the Word of God is a discipline. It is not automatic, and it is not easy. You know that is true. You can pick up a book and read the whole book. You can pick up the Sunday paper and read the whole thing—the comics, television column, Hollywood column, and all the advertisements. Pick up your Bible, and thirty seconds later you fall asleep.
Do you think the Bible is neutral territory? It is a discipline to hear from the Bible. That is why the exhortation is addressed to Christians: “Today, if ye shall hear My voice.” Did you listen to Him today?
Thank God that someone comes and preaches to us on Sunday. Thank God we go to meetings and sometimes the Word touches us. But we only have one daily source of manna, and it is this Word of God.
You may have many Christian friends right now, but at some point in your life you may only have one Friend. You must get to know Jesus through the Bible. Jesus is all through the Bible, but He is hiding just beneath the page.
If you only get to the letter, you may miss Him. If you only read it as a duty, you may miss Him. But one day, for some period of time, everything may be taken away from you, and you may be alone in some isolated place. At that point, you will find your Friend.
I have found a Friend. I do not read the Bible merely because I am supposed to. I need the Bible because I need to hear from Him. I do not know what to do a lot of times, but He speaks to me. I need this.
You know what this is? This is manna. What happened to the children of Israel after they ate manna for sixteen years? How about twenty-four years? Thirty years? Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, and roasted manna for supper.
Barbecued manna. Cajun manna. Chinese manna. How many ways can you fix manna? It is still manna.
Sometimes our spiritual experience gets so idealized that we think some kind of magic is going to happen. We open the Bible and say, “Oh, Holy Spirit, open my eyes,” and suddenly—well, it does not always happen that way. It is something for us to eat.
He comes to speak to us through this Word, but it is a discipline. One of the chief disciplines is simply to listen.
We love to talk. Our natural life loves to talk. Someone comes to me and says, “I have a problem. I need some advice.” They come over and start to talk: “I have this problem, and this problem, and this problem.” I start to say, “Well, I think—” and they say, “And then I have this problem.”
Finally I say, “Do you want to hear what I would suggest?” They say, “No, I want to talk about my problem.” If they do not listen, what happens? I end up listening, and all I can say is, “You have a problem.”
The problem is that you are so wrapped up in your problem that you do not listen. Oh, how we love to talk.
The world loves to talk too. Television has decided that a person cannot look at one image for more than a few seconds. Everything has to flash by. That is the way the world takes things: only what is exciting, only what is interesting, only what happens fast.
But the Spirit of God brings a restraint. When we gather to worship, what do we sense as the sweet Spirit of God comes upon us? A restraint. The Lord says, “Shh. Now listen.”
We enjoy seeing our friends, and that is good. But we have to hold together our love for the Lord and our love for our friends. If we get too excited about seeing our friends, we miss the Lord—and then we miss the real friendship too.
Part of the beauty of the body of Christ is that when you are focused on the Lord, you have great fellowship together. If we are focused on one another, we miss the Lord. But if we are first on the Lord, all these other things take their proper place.
So it is with the Word of God. There are many things to do and pray about, but if we do not listen to the Word of God, we do not have what we need. He is speaking, but we must come to the Bible day by day. Others are speaking all the time, but the Bible is our daily manna.
There is a liar loose, even out here among us. This liar says, “I cannot read the Bible. It is difficult.”
Some people do not read the Bible because they say it is too difficult. Maybe they are reading the King James Version. Maybe they are reading the simplest version. It is still too difficult because, to be fed by the Bible, there is a discipline of taking what is in the mind and getting it down into the heart.
Some people say, “The Bible is boring.” That is another lie. The Word of God is not boring; it is life. But as you go through the discipline of hearing His voice through the Word, it may seem like work.
Others say, “I already know it. I memorized it.” But unless you go through the discipline of reading the Bible, you do not know it as you ought to know it. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
I am an old fish now. There are a couple of people older than me here, but I will not mention names. I have been reading the Bible for a while. Yet if I go through the discipline, it stays alive and fresh. Ephesians is still pretty chopped up in my Bible because I read it so much. It is fascinating. There are always new things.
It is fresh manna, not last year’s manna. If we go through this discipline, the Word stays fresh.
Some people do not read the Bible because they neglect it. Basically, they neglect it because they do not respect the Bible as the Word of God. It has become too familiar.
In the early days of the church, a person would have given their life to get hold of something like we have. They did not have the Bible written and bound like this. In someone’s house there might be a manuscript of one of Paul’s letters, and people would pour over it. Many could not even read, but they wanted to hear the words.
Now we have Bibles everywhere. How many have more than three translations at home? You can read it backward, upside down, in Hebrew, Greek, or any which way. We have the Bible so much that it becomes common, and we do not respect it.
If you say you love Jesus, I believe you. But if you love Jesus, you will love His Word—from Genesis to Revelation. This is Jesus, hiding on every page, saying, “Seek Me, and ye shall find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.”
Do you love Jesus? Here is the clue: did you have to blow the dust off your Bible to bring it to the meeting?
Every Word of God is true and will come to pass. Every warning will happen to me, whether I read it or not, whether I believe it or not. Every promise and every warning is there for us.
Sometimes when I fall into a pit or trap of trouble, the Lord says, “It was right there in the Word. You did not believe Me, did you?”
Our old man does not believe the Word of God. He does not really respect it. But as we go on in the Christian life, we begin to tremble at the Word of God.
Turn to Isaiah 66:1-2.
Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool:
What manner of house will ye build unto Me?
And what manner of place for My rest?
For all these things hath My hand made, and so all these things came to be, saith the Lord:
But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word.
Isaiah 66:5 says:
Hear the word of the Lord, ye that tremble at His word.
God is a jealous God. We have gathered together for fellowship, fun, prayer, and Bible teaching, but God has a purpose in gathering us: He is jealous to keep you on the living way. He is jealous to keep you pure. He is jealous to keep you from the enemy. He is jealous to keep you as the apple of His eye. He is jealous to keep you loving Him.
When you open the Bible, you see how jealous He is of you. If you put an idol before the Lord, He will take away that idol. Let me put that in common terms: if you love some person more than you love the Lord, He may take that person away. I do not mean He is going to kill them. I am talking about romance.
If you want the Lord’s best, you had better not have an idol. He is that jealous. Look in the Bible and see how jealous He became when someone began running after something else and became preoccupied with something else.
Our God is a jealous God, and when I say jealous, I mean He has jealous love. Jealousy is a love word. It is a lover reacting in anger at the unfaithfulness of the one they love.
The more I live as a Christian and observe, the more I tremble at His Word. When it says, “Take care that you do not drift away,” I say, “Uh-oh. Maybe He is talking to me.”
If we want to live in today, we must hear His Word. But if we want to live in today, we must also obey His Word. If we hear His Word but do not obey, we soon lose today.
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
If you read the Bible and do not obey it, you become hardened to hearing His voice. After a while you can read it casually, and it has no effect on you. That is because you are not obeying.
The danger for young people who hear the Bible all the time and sing these songs all the time is that, if you do not sing with your heart and do not read the Bible from your heart, you can become hardhearted.
You can fool around with the words, twist the words, say profane things, sing the choruses with silly words, and have a ball doing it. It is because the heart is getting hard.
There is nothing more precious to me than being with young people when their hearts are open. There is nothing more dreadful than speaking to young people and seeing that they are not listening—when they are hardened and say, “Yeah, I have heard it before. Not interested.”
That is hardness of heart, and our jealous God has to do something in the end. We have to obey the Word of God that He speaks to us.
The Word of God comes to us so that we may live by faith. Faith comes by hearing. We have to hear the Word of God in order to live by faith.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. How do you get conviction about something you do not see? You hear from God, and you believe it.
Faith is when you hear something and that hearing becomes substance to you. It becomes as though it were already done. You believe it and stand on it, even though you do not see it yet. Faith is absolutely connected to hearing.
Israel heard the promise: “Go in and take the land.” But ten spies said it could not be done, and the people listened to the wrong voice. Joshua and Caleb said, “We can take it.” Rest comes when we hear a Word and obey it. That settles us into rest.
Hebrews 3:18-19 says:
And to whom sware He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that were disobedient?
And we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.
What is the difference between unbelief and disobedience? They are two sides of the same coin. Unbelief says, “I will not go.” Disobedience says, “No, I will not go.” They heard the Word, but they would not take it to heart, believe it, or enter in.
Hebrews 3:12 says:
Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God.
That does not mean someone who looks like the devil or is wearing black lipstick. An evil, unbelieving heart can be hidden deep inside a Christian. It is a Christian who has stopped listening.
If you live today by hearing His voice, you are living with a living God. If you have not heard God’s voice today, how alive does He feel? A living God is speaking to us today if we will hear His voice and not harden our hearts.
Then Hebrews 3:13 says:
But exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called Today; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
When a person no longer comes to the Bible and reads, God sends in His second battery of helpers. Who is that? You and me.
We exhort one another day after day, while it is still called today. You say, “My friend, I have been praying for you. I feel like you are not listening to the Word anymore.” We have to help our friends before they are out of today and in some other kind of zone where they are no longer alive to God.
God also has a third line of defense: the Word of God hidden in our hearts.
Hebrews 4:12 says:
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.
If you will not listen to your friends, then when you go to bed at night, the Word of God within you will say, “Come back. Listen to My voice. Why are you doing that? Why are you turning from Me? What have I done wrong to you?”
The Holy Spirit works in your conscience through the Word of God. He begins to separate the world and the flesh from you. What a faithful Lord. He speaks to us on three levels: through the Bible, through brothers and sisters, and through the Word hidden in our hearts.
I want to finish in a practical way by talking about how we can be in today with the Word of God.
We are closing down 1996 and going into 1997. I hope you will make a consecrated decision. On New Year’s, people make vows: “I am going to lose weight. I am going to get an old job. I am going to do better in school next semester.”
Take all the vows you want. By God’s grace, I hope you keep them. But here is one I would like you to really consider:
Lord, by Your grace, I will read Your Bible every day in 1997.
One verse, or whatever. It is the most important discipline of your Christian life. We do not realize it because it is just manna, but what a difference it makes if He can speak to us once a day.
How many of you have a “Through the Bible in One Year” Bible at home collecting dust? Make 1997 the year you use it. You may have started in January and stopped when Leviticus came up somewhere in February.
Listen, this is a discipline, but I think you should do this. As a young person, you should read the Bible through in a year. It is not too difficult. It is less than fifteen minutes a day. If you are a slow reader, spend more time and get the thing down.
No more mañanas. Today. How busy is today going to be? “Oh, it is going to be very busy.” Today, open the Bible. The Lord will bless you so much.
Our fellowship back home read through the Bible together two years ago. What a blessing it was in our prayer meetings when people had read the same thing that day. The Lord had given us a promise, and we took it together. We found ourselves one in the faith so many times because we were reading the Bible together.
Not all the saints made it all the way through, but the point is not to be legalistic. We did not give badges or rewards to those who completed it. The point is that people were in the race trying.
If, for some reason, it is impossible for you to read on February 10, do not quit. Do not get yourself all backed up. Read today. This is what the Lord wants to get at.
Read the Bible when you feel like it. Read the Bible when you do not feel like it. Read the Bible until you do feel like it. But read the Bible.
The second thing is to respect the Word of God as the Word of God. I want you to think of Jesus when you see the Bible. He is the living Word, and He comes to us as we read the Bible.
The Bible often comes to us as a father, and that can be difficult, especially for teenagers. Teenagers often come full-blown into omniscience. We like to talk to our parents: “No, no, you are wrong. I am right.”
But our heavenly Father, when we open the Bible, speaks. The Word of God is like a father to us. Sometimes it reveals us. Sometimes it convicts us. Often it teaches us. Sometimes it guides us.
Every day you will not open the Bible and find a verse that tells you exactly what page to study for your history test. But you will receive a little word to take you through the day—a little nugget, something to hold on to.
He is a Teacher, a Guide, a Friend, an Encourager, a Corrector, a Convictor, and a Light. Sometimes He makes us uncomfortable.
That is part of wrestling with the Bible. Sometimes you feel uncomfortable when you read the Bible; later you will feel tremendous comfort. It is because you have been wrestling.
The Word of God is sometimes like the angel who came down and wrestled with Jacob. You say, “I cannot do that.” He says, “I am not going to let you go.” The Word of God is living and coming to you. It will prevail.
Third, come to the Word of God by faith. That means expect Him to speak to you. Expect Him to speak to you somewhere in the passage you are reading that day.
Listen. Get your listening ear tuned. It is a discipline.
Psalm 119:9, 11 says:
Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to Thy word.
Thy word have I laid up in my heart,
That I might not sin against Thee.
Here is the discipline within the discipline. The first discipline is to read the Word. The second discipline is to get the Word from your mind into your heart.
It is a very short distance, but there is a lot of globulation that has to take place to get it down through the nerve endings and the aorta into the heart. We are not really talking about the physical heart, right? But we have to get the Word from our mind into our heart.
Sometimes you read the Bible, and it does not say anything to you because you kept it all upstairs. “Okay, got it in the attic. See You later, Lord. Off to school.” But how about getting it from the mind down into the heart?
The Word becomes faith when it gets into the heart. That is where you hide it, treasure it, and act on it. That is where faith acts.
How do you get the Word into your heart? Very simply: you interact with the Word you are reading.
They have discovered interactive learning because the zombie method of passivity does not work. When I went to school, it was the zombie method: “Here is a slideshow. Click, click, click.” You sit there and take it in by some kind of osmosis.
Now they say, “Here is the fact. What do you think about this? Why do you think that?” Now you have to interact. You learn much more by interaction.
So take the Word in the morning and interact with it in fellowship with the Lord. You read:
Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to Thy word.
Then you say, “Oh, Lord, how wonderful this is. You mean a young man can keep his way pure? How can he do that? By keeping it according to Your Word. Lord, I want to treasure Your Word in my heart.”
You may ask, “What does it mean to treasure Your Word in my heart?” Then you look up “treasure.” You do a little study. You interact with the Word. You talk to the Lord about it. You come to that little point where you say, “Oh, I see. That is for me.”
Do you interact with the Word? Do you talk to it? In order to listen to the Word, you have to talk to the Word. We are back to talking, but that is how you do it: talk to it, listen to it, and wonder about it.
Then do not stop there. This becomes the basis of your devotion to the Lord for the day. You can come to the Lord and talk to Him because you have something to say.
Usually we say, “Lord, I do not feel like going to school. I have a test. Help me, Lord.” But how about coming to the Lord and saying, “Lord, You have given me a treasure in Your Word. Thank You. Put this Word in my heart. As I walk along today, make me sensitive so that I do not sin.”
That is a living prayer, and now you are living in today. He is liable to use the very Scripture you read that morning sometime during the day.
How many of you know that has happened? The Word you read in the morning gets used during the day. Now you are using the Word and acknowledging the Word.
Sometimes you read the Bible and do not receive a specific instruction. But you can still acknowledge what God has shown you. “Thank You, Lord, for showing me that You are a jealous Lover. Thank You for showing me You are faithful in the life of Zacchaeus. Thank You for showing me that You are the Good Samaritan who reached down and helped someone by the side of the road.”
Often a passage reminds us of the Lord’s goodness, faithfulness, judgments, truths, or some lesson to be learned. When we think about the passage we read, we should put it somehow into the first person.
Do not merely say, “Thank You, Lord, for being the Good Samaritan.” Also ask, “Lord, am I the priest or Levite who does not have time to help someone because I am preoccupied? Do I go through the day without noticing people who need help? Help me, Lord. Forgive me.”
When you read about the Pharisees, do not only say, “Jesus really got those nasty hypocrites. I am glad I am not a Pharisee.” Wait a minute.
When I read such a passage in my morning devotion, I assume He is talking to me. I say, “Lord, forgive me for my self-righteousness.” Every sinner mentioned in the Bible has some part of me in them, or some part of them in me. Even if it is only a warning, I take heed of it.
Assume the bad guy Jesus is talking to is you. It cannot hurt you. I am not saying you should go around guilty all the time: “That is me. I am Judas.” No. But say, “Lord, I come to Your Word and tremble, because I know that if I do not stay in today and hear Your voice, I can betray You.”
You do not have to feel guilty. Bring the Word in a living way back to God. Talk to God. This brings the Word from your mind down into your heart. Because you have interacted with it, you will remember it. It will not be snatched away.
Some of us have to admit that we read the Word this morning, and already we cannot remember what passage it was. What happened? It went through our gray matter, which is rather cloudy, and it did not get down here.
That takes discipline. It takes a little time. But here is what the Lord says: “Brothers and sisters, today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”
If He says to you, “Read the Bible every day,” what do you say? “Yes, Lord.” Not, “I cannot.” Say, “Yes, Lord. By Your grace, help me, Lord.”
I hope many of you in this coming year will grow, even in times when you are all alone, because you have found a Friend. Jesus is the Author of our faith, and He offered this Book exactly for you.
You will get beyond just the words. He will speak to you day by day—some manna to give you strength to keep running the race.
Think about your commitment in this coming year to the Word of God. When we say, “We want the Lord. We want to follow Him. We want to know Him,” let us realize what we are saying: “I want to read Your Word more and more. I want to understand Your Word more and more. Holy Spirit, help me.”
We want to know You. We want to hear Your voice. You have given us Your voice in such a precious way: You have given us Your holy Word.
Oh, Lord, I pray that out of this group of young people You will raise up many who will study to show themselves approved unto God, workmen who know how to rightly divide the Word of truth.
Oh, Lord, I pray that You will raise up seekers and searchers who find in Your Word their manna every day. Lord, we pray that we could live in today, as our privilege is, hearing Your voice day by day and walking in the way as we hear Your voice.
When we go out of the way, please send us a brother or a sister to encourage us and say, “Stay in today.” Maybe even today this message would encourage somebody to get back into the daylight, to get back into the day.
Lest our hearts become hardened through the deceitfulness of those little robbery sins that take us away from You, Lord, keep us in You. Keep the incense burning in our lives, with a desire to know You through Your Word. We pray in Jesus’ name.