Take Care How You Hear
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
September 17, 2017
We believe that God has spoken to us clearly and infallibly in the Bible, which is why each week we teach from one passage to see what it says about God and how we can know him and follow him.This week, however, is going to be a little different. If you were here last week, in a humorous way, Jason made mention of what it might mean to preach a really, really short sermon. This week I’m not going to preach a really, really short sermon, but I am going to preach a short one.But we are not necessarily getting out early. Many of you know we are in the process of moving church buildings. What I want to do is give about a 15-minute sermon and then a 15-minute update on where we are at in our building moves.
Scripture Reading
If you have a Bible, please turn with me to Luke 8:16–21. If you are using the brown Bible’s on the end of the row, it’s on page 982. After I read, we’ll pray and then study this together.16 “No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 17 For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. 18 Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.” 19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” 21 But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
Introduction
We often tell children to listen to what’s being said. “Hey, you’re not listening to me! Look at me when I’m talking to you!” These are things you say to your kids, but things I’ve never said to mine. There are also times as adults we are told to be careful how we hear. Sometimes we listen, and sometimes we don’t.When you hear a flight attendant say,
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the crew I ask that you please direct your attention to the monitors above as we review the emergency procedures. Should the cabin experience sudden pressure loss, stay calm and listen for instructions from the cabin crew. Oxygen masks will drop down from above your seat. Place the mask over your mouth and nose, like this. Pull the strap to tighten it. If you are traveling with children . . .
How does that sentence finish? The flight attendant tells you to put your mask on first. You’ve heard that before, some of you many times. But do we really listen to this? If I was sitting next to you on the plane and asked you, “Wait, so where is the floating device?” would you know? I wouldn’t. I heard, but I didn’t really hear, didn’t really pay attention.But there are times we do listen very carefully. When a boyfriend gets down on one knee and looks up into the eyes of his sweetheart, she’s listening very closely.If we listen to what Jesus has to say in this passage carefully, we’ll hear him say something wonderful. We’ll hear him say that if your relationship with God is real, then you will have increasing joy forever. If, however, your relationship is not real, well, he talks about that too.
1. The Sermon, vv. 16–19
Let me re-read the three verses again.
16 “No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 17 For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. 18 Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.”
In the previous passage Jesus spoke of different kinds of soils, and he drew out spiritual meaning from that, which is that a parable is. He’s doing this again. The point of his words here are to say that God is putting his truth in a place where it can be seen, in fact, not only be seen but shine. And not only is God’s light now shining in the person of Jesus but one day the light will shine so bright that everything will be disclosed, even the things that now seem hidden.For the sincere believer, this is a beautiful, encouraging thing. It means the joy and pleasure we have as being part of God’s family will only continue to grow!But there is a warning here, too. Note the phrase, “from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.” Thinks that he has. For those who presume that they have really heard, for those who presume that they are in a special relationship with God, for those who presume that they’ve heard all the sermons and read all the Christian material, but they don’t actually know the gospel, even what joy they have will be taken away. This is why Jesus says, “Be careful then how you hear.”Presumption was one of the key spiritual battles of their time, but also in our time. In Jesus’s time they said, “We have Abraham as our father. Our parents were born from the right nation, the nation that knows about God.” Earlier in Luke’s gospel a preacher named John answered this presumption by saying, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (3:8).Today our presumption looks a little different. I go to such-and-such a church, or my parents brought me to such-and-such a church. “Yeah, yeah, yeah don’t give me your spiel about airline safety. I know this stuff.” But do we?
2. The Illustration, vv. 19–21
If this is Jesus’s sermon, in the next three verses we have an illustration of the point of his sermon. Let me read vv. 19–21 again.
19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” 21 But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
Here Jesus focuses on hearing and doing. The real family of God, he says, are those who hear the word of God and then do it. This is what it means to truly believe. True belief hears the words of God in such a way that it produces action. Think how radical this must have sounded to the crowd—even how radical it must have sounded to his family!The way we listen to Jesus and respond to him—really, truly listen—is something of a spiritual thermometer. Jason made this point last week, and I’m making it again. A thermometer doesn’t create the temperature, it just measures temperature. If we hear and do, then it means we are in a special relationship with Jesus. If we hear but don’t really do, then we aren’t. Our “doing” is not what makes us in a special relationship, but it is what displays that relationship.There is a passage in the book of James that speaks to this.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. (1:22–24)
Then in the next chapter we read:
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (2:14–17)
It’s not that our works save us, but the faith that does save us always produces works. Saving faith is hearing in such a way that it produces doing. As a pastor for the last ten years, I’ve listened to a hundred Christians explain the gospel, yet what I can say is that often Christians struggle to do so. When I ask what it is that saves a person, what it is that Jesus was accomplishing on the cross, and why it was necessary, many individuals who claim to be Christians struggle to explain the message that saves them. This is deeply concerning to me.If you are a Christian, it’s because Jesus died on the cross, taking the punishment for your sins, and then he rose on the third day. When you turned from our sins and trusted him, you were changed. So often when I hear professing Christians talk about what makes a person a Christian, what I hear from people is that they go to church or read their Bible. But it’s church and it’s the Bible that point us to the gospel, the thing that saves us.
Conclusion
So there is a heaviness to this passage. I agree. We must be careful how we hear. Yes, we must be those who do. If we don’t, in the final judgment we will be shown for what we are: false converts, those who thought they had but didn’t actually have. This is all very, very heavy.Don’t miss the encouragement Jesus gives. Don’t miss the gospel encouragement that Jesus is offering. To have Jesus as your older brother is to be in a special relationship with him. Maybe you’ve never had a brother, or the brother you have is not perfect, which is every brother by the way.But what if your older brother was strong and kind and caring? What if he looked out for you? What if you could talk to him at any time you liked and he would listen and encourage? What if he would challenge you too, in the best ways possible? What if your older brother wanted you to be happy forever with the deepest and most satisfying joy you could ever imagine, and what if he had the power to accomplish it?Now that would be something. Jesus says that you don’t have to be from the right family. You just have to know him and love him and see that Jesus is the light of the world.Earlier I quoted the verses from James about faith and works. What makes those so interesting in light of our passage is that James was one of Jesus’s brothers. When Luke writes about the brothers trying to get to Jesus, James—we presume—was one of the ones there. We know from other places in the Bible that before the cross and resurrection, the brothers of Jesus didn’t believe in Jesus, that is, they didn’t believe Jesus was the light of the world (John 7:5).But the cross and the resurrection changed things for James. They made him a hearer and a doer. And his joy in God that he came to know in his earthly life will only to increase—forever. The same offer is for us.
Building Update
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