“Today, If You Hear His Voice”
Text: Hebrews 3:12-19
10-13-2024
In the name of our truly Good Teacher, dear friends in Christ. Here’s a little brain teaser to get your mind working this morning. Ponder this: Yesterday, today was tomorrow. And tomorrow, today will be yesterday. There is a deep truth contained in that. The main point is that we live right now in the present, which we call today. In fact, it’s the only time in which we can live. God, on the other hand, transcends time in such a way that He exists in the past, present, and future simultaneously. Whereas we humans are creatures bound to time. We can only live every moment in the present, in the time we call today.
And that’s why the writer of Hebrews admonishes us: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…” You see, it does no good to urge people to hear and receive God’s Word yesterday. It’s gone. Whatever happened then is over. We can’t bring it back or relive it again. Nor can you call upon people to hear and receive God’s Word tomorrow. We aren’t there yet. And the truth is we don’t know for sure if tomorrow will come. Today may be the last day for any one of us; or it may be the last day for all of us. No, we can only hear God’s voice now. The question is: What will you do with what you hear? Will you receive His Word in faith? Will you trust it? Will you apply to your life? Or will you harden your heart against it? And will that hardening cause you to resist and reject it?
You may remember an example of this hardening in last week’s Gospel reading. The Pharisees asked Jesus whether it was lawful for someone to divorce his or her spouse. Jesus responded that it was indeed allowed by Moses, but only because of the hardness of people’s hearts. It was never the Lord’s plan and will for marriage. So yes, there were arrangements in the Law for divorce; but if one happens it’s always because there is a least one person (and in most cases two) who is actively, persistently, and stubbornly hardening their heart against voice of the Lord.
And that, my friends, is never a good thing to do. It’s deadly dangerous. That’s what the writer of Hebrews is telling us. Not just about the question of divorce; he’s talking about any sin that might cause you to turn from the Lord’s will and harden your heart against His Word. It’s what we call apostasy, which literally means “to stand away from.” It’s like the church of Christ is over here. This is where the assembly of the faithful is. These are people who are hearing God’s voice and receiving what He says in faith. Those who commit apostasy are setting themselves at odds against the Lord’s Word. They are “standing over here,” refusing to believe what the Lord says. And by doing so, they are excluding themselves from the life and salvation the Lord gives to His people through Christ in the church. I hasten to add that this spiritual separation is not always visible. The person in apostasy may still be standing among the members of the church, still attending worship, still pretending to be faithful; but their heart is hardened. So, they are not receiving the gifts and benefits God gives them through His church.
And the thing to see is that apostasy always happens in the present. It involves the ongoing, active, willful rejection of God’s Word right now. We’ve all sinned in the past. But you know what to do about that: repent. You receive God’s forgiveness – the forgiveness He purchased for you by the blood of His Son who gave Himself as the atoning sacrifice for your sin. Then, having been forgiven and reconciled, you rise up and move forward, using the Lord’s grace and the strength of His Spirit to avoid falling into that sin again. Sometimes it’s a life-long struggle. The temptations keep coming back. Maybe you fall again and again but you keep on fighting. You keep on repenting and living in the forgiveness of Christ. But this is entirely different than staying in the sin and refusing to repent of it. Doing so is like saying, “I know what you said about this, Lord. I hear your voice; but I don’t care. Today I’m going to keep on doing it anyway.” It doesn’t matter how long you’ve walked with the Lord or how far you’ve come in the past; unrepentance puts you outside of God’s salvation in Christ today.
To prove this point, the author of Hebrews uses the example of the Children of Israel. They were all rescued from slavery in Egypt by the Lord’s mighty hand. They all saw the miracles the Lord worked through Moses. They all participated in the Passover and were protected by the blood of the lambs while the firstborn of Egypt died. They all went through the Red Sea on dry ground and saw the army of the Pharaoh destroyed. They all ate the bread from heaven, and drank water from the rock that Moses struck. They all saw the Lord descend at Sinai, and trembled when they heard His voice as He spoke His holy Law. These things happened to them all. They all saw and heard and believed. But you know what? Shortly thereafter, a different today came; a day when Moses was on the mountain receiving more instructions from the Lord and they all turned away from the one true God and worshipped a golden calf instead.
You remember what happened. When Moses came down the mountain and saw what was going on he was furious. He said to the people, “You’ve got a choice right now. You can either repent of what you did and stand with the Lord, or you can continue to worship that idol.” Amazingly, several thousand of them chose the latter and they were killed without mercy. So even though they had begun the journey well enough, they never made it to the Promised Land. And this wasn’t the last rebellion that happened on the way – not by a long shot. There were many others. But by far their biggest rebellion was the one the writer of Hebrews refers to in today’s text. It was when the Israelites first came to the edge of the Promised Land not long after leaving Mount Sinai. They sent in twelve spies to reconnoiter the land and report back on its quality, its abundance, and the military strength of its inhabitants. Two faithful spies reported that the land was flowing with milk and honey, even as the Lord had promised. And they said that while the people living there were strong, they weren’t strong enough to stand against the Lord. They urged the Israelites to go forward and conquer the land. “With God on our side, we cannot fail.”
The other ten spies, however, were afraid. They didn’t trust the Lord to give them the land as He’d said. So they made up a bad report. They said it was a miserable land that consumed its inhabitants with hunger. Oh, and somehow, even though the land was so pathetic, the inhabitants were all massive giants who would squash us like bugs. Their report was self-contradicting; but it’s the one the vast majority of the people believed. So the next day, when Moses ordered the nation of Israel to move forward, they said, “No! We’re not going to do it. We don’t trust the Lord to defend and care for us. We don’t trust Him to give us the land.” And the Lord said, “Fine. Since that’s what you believe, that’s what you’ll get. Not one of you who rebelled today is going to enter that land. You’ll spend the next forty years in the desert. After that time, I’m going to give the land to your sons and daughters. But you will die in the desert because today you hardened your hearts and refused to listen to my voice.”
My friends, these things are recorded as warnings for us so that we don’t fall away through sin and unbelief. It’s possible to come the whole distance, to live in the one, true faith all your life, and then lose the goal at the very end. It’s also possible to fall anywhere along the way. All it takes is a certain today when you harden your heart against the voice of the Lord. It doesn’t matter if you have been faithful in the past or were planning to be faithful to Him in the future (after you’ve had your fling with sin or when you decide you’ll have more time to spend on spiritual matters.) No, what the Lord cares about is today.
I’ve seen this in my ministry. I’ve come across people who want to rest on their laurels saying, “Not to worry, Pastor. I was baptized and confirmed. I went to Sunday school or Lutheran day school. I memorized Bible verses. And I served on various church boards in the past.” What they’re saying is that they’ve paid their dues. What they’re really trusting in is not the Lord and His mercy in Christ, but in their own accomplishments. That won’t work. And if you think that your faith in the past gives you some kind of license to commit certain sins today, then you’re fooling yourself. With this attitude, you’ve hardened your heart against the voice of the Lord.
Sadly, we’ve all witnessed this falling away with many of our Confirmands. They stand here before the altar of God and promise to be faithful to what they’ve been taught, to continue steadfast in receiving God’s Word and Sacrament, and to suffer all, even death rather than depart from the faith. But it doesn’t take long until they stop worshiping regularly. Or perhaps they do attend for a while; but before long they drift into some sinful lifestyle or spiritual laziness and then they too fall away. And here’s the thing: for most of them, they really meant it when they made their promises. They sincerely wanted to follow through. But there came a day when they said, “No, not today. Today I don’t want to hear the voice of the Lord.” And afterward there came a lot of other todays just like that one, when they could hear what the Lord was saying but they blocked it out. They hardened their hearts. And over time the voice of the Lord became fainter and fainter, until at last they couldn’t hear it at all.
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen this happen to others. But it isn’t to the others that I’m speaking today. Today this message is addressed to you. And in view of our fallen nature’s tendency to stray, the question we need to always ask is: “Am I being faithful now?” Our text says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.” It’s a call to self-examination. It’s a call to scrutinize your thoughts, words, and actions in light of how the Lord says you are to live your life and to ask yourself, “Am I hardening my heart against the voice of the Lord today?”
Well, are you? If so, then hear the voice of the Lord calling you to repent – and don’t harden your heart against it. Repent today, don’t wait. Trust in Christ today. Receive His blood bought forgiveness today. Renounce your sin and live in His grace today. And living by His grace, exhort your brothers and sisters in Christ – especially those who may be in danger of stumbling or straying – to likewise not harden their hearts against the voice of the Lord. This is our primary calling while we live in the time called today. By keeping us faithfully in this calling, the Lord is equipping and strengthening us to accomplish His will, and enabling us to stand with Him on the Last Day when he will give to us His eternal Promised Land.
It’s true that God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness are unending. But He calls all sinners to freely receive it now while it’s still today. Now we know what the Lord has called us to do. So, let’s do it today and each today that follows, for this is how Christ keeps us faithfully in the fellowship of His church as long as it is called today. May God grant it unto us all for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!