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Scripture · December 13, 2020
All right, well, good morning, everybody. Hope you had a good week in the Lord. Let me set my faithful timer so I don't Keep you guys here too long. Well, it's good to see everybody and welcome to our body that's also viewing live stream.
This morning we're going to be looking at Ecclesiastes chapter 5 in a lesson. We're calling Looking Up and Listening in. Couple of announcements before we pray. one is, is there are some Sunday school handouts over there.
It's not in our nice pretty little. display, but there is a, a handout for this morning that you can grab. next week is our Christmas service, so there is no Sunday school next week, nor is there Sunday school all the way through January 10th. We're actually taking a three week break.
This is both for adult and children Sunday school. We'll be back on January 10th, so we'll have some encouragements for you guys a little bit later on what to do, with this class, for the next three weeks, but, yeah, we'll take a three week break. Let's go ahead and pray. And then we'll jump into our time together in Ecclesiastes chapter 5.
Oh Lord, we thank you for this opportunity for us to hear from Your word both in Sunday school, and we think of being able to hear the preaching of Your word from Revelation 5 later, and we pray that You would open up our ears to hear. we Do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of your mouth, and we pray that your spirit would engage our hearts this morning. We pray this in Christ's name. All God's people said, Amen.
So if you're looking on your handout, the quote that I have is from First Samuel, and I have the Young's literal translation here because it brings out, the Hebrew word shamah or listen or hearken. Samuel says, and this is to King Saul, Hath God Or hath Jehovah had delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in hearkening to the voice of Jehovah? Lo, hearkening than sacrifice is better to give attention than fat of rams. What we find in passage like this is Christianity is a listening religion.
we hear first before we speak or do. At least that's God's ideal for us. We see that both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, one of the key passages in Deuteronomy 6, key instructions to Israel, is Hear, O Israel, right?
That's the great shamah, the great command or what Israel is instructed to do out the gate is to hear. And then in the New Testament we see the same concept. Remember when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain Transfiguration? You have Peter and the guys there, and, and what does Peter do?
He wants to get busy making some tabernacles for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, and the Father appears. Elijah and Moses disappear. And the father says, This is my beloved son. Hear ye him.
And then everybody's afraid and Jesus has to comfort them. And so we see in the Bible, both Old and New Testament, that Christianity is very much of a religion of hearing or listening. We even see this in the, the narrative of Martha and Mary. Remember Martha was so busy in Luke 10, but it says, the text says that Mary sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word.
And Martha wanted Mary to be rebuked, but Jesus says one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. When some people came to Jesus and said to Jesus in John chapter 6, what must we do to do the works of God? That's a very common question we hear that over and over and over today is what do we do? What is Jesus's response?
This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent. And when we ask the question, where does belief come from? Where does faith come from? Well, Paul tells us where faith comes from.
Faith comes from where? Hearing. And hearing comes through the word of Christ. It's actually through the gospel.
It's through hearing the word of Christ that faith bubbles up in our hearts. And so Christianity is a hearing religion. We've been hearing or listening to the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes, and through the preacher, the Lord has been wounding us from behind, as it were. You guys may remember that wisdom literature in Ecclesiastes fits in that genre, tries to get us to hear things in a new way, maybe things that our ears have grown dull to.
it's easy for us to tune out things that we hear again and again and again. And the book of Ecclesiastes wants to shock us, wants to defibrillate us, so to speak, to get us to hear things that maybe our hearts and ears have grown dull to. By way of review, up to this point, the preacher has reminded us that life is short, elusive, and repetitive. It's like a vapor.
Our life is very difficult to grasp. It just floats away like the smoke after you blow out a candle, and you will learn to live more wisely if you prepare for the certainty of your death. Part of what the preacher's trying to get us to do is to stop pretending that our life is going to be forever. Prepare to die will help you learn how to live.
And in order to do that, the preacher and our author David Gibson is trying to pop certain bubbles that we try to grab onto that we think are really gonna last for a while and gonna bring happiness and satisfaction to us. And he's tried to pop the bubble of wealth and education. Pleasure, prestige. You cannot hold on to these things as gain or surplus, but you can receive these blessings as gifts from God.
We don't need to feel guilty if the Lord gives us wisdom or wealth or pleasure, but neither do we want to grasp it as if it's going to last, forever. We've also been reminded that you and I live in time. God does not. And as such, we don't have the control that God has.
we have very little control when it really comes right down to it. And last week we were reminded that happiness is found more in we than in me. that life is not just about us being so frantically busy or selfishly lazy that we're either trampling on our neighbors or hating our neighbors with our laziness. Neither can we just check out and, and, and neither should we be disillusioned by the contradictions and hypocrisies and injustices that we observe in this life.
However, when we look at life from God's perspective in heaven, we see that there is a completion, there is a justice coming, but that is not yet. It's brief. There's a brief wait that we have, but things are going to get tied up by God in His timing, not necessarily in our timing. So again, to quote David Gibson, the preacher is out to shatter our illusion that we can be like God.
We want to have it all, know it all, be remembered by all for all time. No, says the preacher, life is a gift, not. Again So if wealth and education and prestige and being upwardly mobile won't bring you happiness, What about piety? What about religion?
What about making grand vows of poverty or sacrifices and surrenders that we can make for Christ? Perhaps I can surrender all or vow to give large portions of my income to noble causes. Perhaps making great sacrifices is the proper path, for our feet. Well, in this section of Ecclesiastes and in chapter 5 of our book, we see two kinds of worshipers or two kinds of religion, religionists, we'll say, these two particular types of people are contrasted.
And you are exhorted, and I'm exhorted to guard your foot. When not if, but when you go to the house of God, the implication is that all of us are going to go to the house of God. In Solomon's time, this would have been to go to the temple to worship. In our time, it's to gather together with the people of God.
The assumption is all Christians do that, all Jews do that, but when we do that, we should guard our feet. The prudent worshiper, we're gonna find out in this chapter comes as a listener, a hearer, a learner. The fool comes ignorantly as a talker and a maker of promises. We're gonna find this morning that worship is a gift.
It's a necessary part of our existence on earth and in heaven, but how we draw near to God cannot be underestimated. So we're going to look at basically two different types of approaches to our worship. And, and we're exhorted to guard our feet in how we approach the Lord. And so we're gonna basically make 4 different points from this text.
And the first point is really the main point, and that is #1 on your outline. Draw near to here. You can write that in. Draw near to here.
Our text says in verse 1 of Ecclesiastes 5, Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifices of fools. Why? For they do not know that they are doing evil.
The main exhortation here from the preacher, and this again is meant to be a sucker punch from behind to defibrillate us because the idea here is that really all good Jews come to the house of God every week and maybe more times, and good Christians go to church every week, but he wants to shock us into what we are doing this for, and he says guard your steps, literally protect your foot. There's something to watch out for, and this should be a little bit of a shock to us if we were to put this into our modern context showing up here for Sunday school or at Cornerstone is that we should approach our church attendance with some caution.
That we should come and guard ourselves, which I don't know about you, but I don't normally drive up to this parking lot on a Sunday and get out of my car very carefully and think I'd better be on guard. But that's what the preacher wants us to think about there really are some dangers to our worship.
As we look at these two different types of worshippers. So we guard our steps when you go to the house of God, not if. Again, the implication is that all people who would claim, stake a claim in the Lord or in Christ, do gather with God's people. They do come to the house of God, whether in the temple context or in the church context.
But there's something that is said to be better to draw near to listen is better. There are better types of worship than other types of worship, and what the preacher is telling us again is that our faith is a listening faith first and foremost. This word listen comes from the Hebrew word shamah. The idea listen or hear implies a recognition of one's need to learn.
If someone's coming as a listener, They're assuming there's something in their heart that says, I have things I need to learn. I am ignorant. I have gaps. I need to come to learn.
A me. There's also the desire to be taught in order that 1 may obey and find blessing, so to come with a desire to be taught so that we can learn and so that we can obey this being whom we love. And so listening is first, and then the listening is going to give us the instructions on what to do. And as our love wells up in our hearts, then we find ourselves wanting to do what we're being commanded to do.
Gibson says in the chapter that I hope you guys read this week, the ear is the Christian's primary sense organ. Listening to what God has said is our main spiritual discipline. When you wake up in the morning and you're thinking, what is the main thing that God wants me to do today, what, what should be the first thing on the list, it should be to listen. That is the primary thing we're called to do.
Even when we pray, we come to prayer, not merely to express our words, but we also come to hear from the Lord. In fact, listening to what God has said, informs our prayers. we listen to what how Christ taught us. Remember, the disciples said, Teach us how to pray just as John taught his disciples, and then Jesus gives them words.
He says, Here's how you should pray. Our Father, call him Father who art in heaven. He's up there, you're down here. There is a difference between you and God.
give us this day our daily bread, or hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. So we're hearing. How to speak. Even in our prayers, we've listened first to what Christ says and how to pray, before we just start flapping our gums, so to speak.
We're informed by the Lord. Someone, I love this quote in our chapter. Someone has said that when we pray, we tend to think it's like talking into a spiritual microphone with God listening on the other end through a set of heavenly earphones, but in fact, when we pray, God is listening to us with a spiritual stethoscope, just like a doctor who says, let me hear you breathe. He, and he listens in to what we cannot see and so learns the truth about us.
That's a wonderful image of prayer, that it's not just me speaking to God who's like, yes, come in, Mike. It's him putting the stethoscope on my heart and, and on my lungs to listen to what's going on inside of me. And, and then our, the final phrase of verse one is, is we, it is better to come and listen than to offer the sacrifice of fools. Now in this context, let's talk about sacrifice and fools.
The idea of a sacrifice would be to come and bring your your animal or your grain offering in the original context. For us it could be coming and bringing our sacrifices of praise. It could be coming and bringing our offerings. There's lots of things that we could bring to the Lord.
But in this context, the preacher's telling us it's better to come to here than to bring in the sacrifice of fools, and then he's going to spend basically the rest of this paragraph talking about what the fool is and what a fool looks like. And so the fool in this context is contrasted with the one who hears. In fact, I want you to notice I'm gonna put my jacket on because I actually am getting cold. I want you to notice.
That there is only one time. That hearing is mentioned in this paragraph right here in verse 1 is the only time that it says it's better to listen, and then the rest of the paragraph, there's like I think 13 to 15 words that refer to mouthing or uttering or speaking or vowing. And so in the poetry of this paragraph you have lots and lots of speaking and only one word of listening. To put on demonstration really the contrast of what we should be doing with what is actually happening in this poetry, in this poem, does that make sense?
There's a lot of lip flapping in these seven verses to set against the one word of listening, which is really what we should be doing. And so there's some irony even in the way that this poem is developed and so. So the fool is contrasted with the one who hears the The one who brings sacrifices and vows with many words, the hearer comes to hear and receive. It's the difference between the one who sees their need to learn and the one who thinks that they need to perform or that they have or that others have a need to hear them talk.
So there's a difference between the person who comes and says, I need to hear. And the other person who comes in and says everybody needs to hear me, or they need to see my performance as I come to offer these sacrifices. Fools give more attention to their own earthly words and works than to the words and works of God in heaven. That's what we're going to see here.
And so let's, that's our first point. The main point that the preacher is making is draw near to here when you come. to worship as one who recognizes, that you're not gonna find your satisfaction in wealth, you're not gonna find your satisfaction in your wisdom or your prestige, neither are you coming to church just to gain piety and to up your status as a worshiper of God. We're not primarily coming here so that people will say, wow.
What a holy guy he is. Boy, Pastor Mike, what a man of God. What a teacher. That's, if, if that's really what it's all about, I'm missing the boat now.
We're going to get sucker punched in a second here again, realizing that, by the way, that's what all of us do in some respects is we all struggle when we come. before God and before other people, we want to put our works and our words forward, and we'll talk about how to deal with that problem as well in a moment. So draw near to here. But secondly, in contrast, let your words be few.
Let your words be few. Look at verse 2. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God. Anything and everything comes up into the mind should not be uttered before God is the idea.
We don't just come and just whatever happens to come to mind. a lot of times we come to worship. And we get excited. People wanna make promises.
They wanna make vows, and the preacher is saying, don't rashly vow. Don't just utter whatever comes to mind. Come and, and listen. Come and hear.
From me. why is this? For God is in heaven, and you are on the earth. That's an odd rationale.
Do not be rash with your mouth. Let not your heart utter, for God is in heaven, and you are on the earth. This is almost certainly what Christ is talking about when he teaches us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven.
The idea here is, is that God has a perspective by virtue of Him being God in heaven that you and I just do not have as creatures of the earth. There is a creator-c creature distinction. and it's, it's the perspective of someone who has the wisdom and the power and, and, and the knowledge to do things, to see things that, that we just cannot see. We don't even understand our own hearts.
if you were to, if you do any hiking, I like to go out hiking with my, my sons and. And when you get up on a nice ridge and you can look down, there's a, a very different perspective than if you're down in the, the weeds or the bushes. recently, my son bought an air rifle and we've been out looking for varmints, particularly rabbits, and when you're down on the ground level with the rabbits, it's very hard to see. what's happening, but if you can get up on a ridge a little bit and look down into the valley, it's very different.
And so, I'll have Sam go up and start walking through the bushes down the valley while I'm sitting up high on a rock, and the idea is hopefully is that he starts to scare rabbits down towards me and I'm able to look down on them. Well, God can just, he looks down upon us and he just sees things that we're completely unaware of. there's combinations of wills and, and desires that we don't even completely understand. God has a vantage point we do not have.
He can view it all. He knows the end from the beginning, and he can act with wisdom and power. We can talk. But we do not know a lot of times what we're talking about.
We can act, but how do we know that we have been taking the right actions? That's part of the preacher's perspective here. And so don't make rash vows. Don't let your heart be hasty.
God's in heaven and you are on the earth. Therefore let your words be few. is, is the idea here for a dream comes with much busyness and a fool's voice with many words. This is a difficult vision to understand.
We, I think we understand that a fool's voice has many words, but what does it mean that a dream comes with much busyness? It seems like we're meant to pick up the idea from verse 7 as well as we compare the whole paragraph in the multitude of dreams, in many words, there is also vanity or vapor grasping for the wind idea. The idea is almost like this, like a fool's words are as permanent as your dreams, when you get really, really busy with work, I don't know about you, but if you have a really super busy week at work on a particular project and you try to go to bed at night, what do you end up doing?
You're dreaming about everything that you've been doing.
Last night. What was, what was I dreaming about? I'm just dreaming about my 4 points in in Ecclesiastes 5, and I'm waking up in the middle of the night thinking about it. But those dreams, a lot of times you wake up and you're like, wow, this is an incredible dream, and your wife asks you what it was about, and you're like, I can't remember.
I just know it was, it was pretty impressive, and it's like a fool's words float away just like those dreams. A fool, a fool will come and make vows and sacrifices, and they have these warm emotions when they're in the worship service, and then they leave and then, hey, what did you vow today? What was it that you promised before God? Man, I can't remember what did Pastor Milton preach last week.
I don't remember. I don't remember what that was. And, and we just forget about it. And, and so the idea here is that we should let our words be few, come to listen, but let your words be few.
are you listening more than you're speaking? David Gibson says. In the context of this passage, the fool is the religious person who thinks he has all the answers. How are some ways in which, we could fall into this where our words are not few?
A, I, I'll just speak to all of us. I, I've fallen into these categories as we could come into a worship context and we, we can get opinionated. We can get very opinionated. You show up at church, you've got your idea, maybe ways that you are raised and how church is supposed to be done, and they're not doing it that way, and, and you have your opinions on how things ought to occur.
and then sometimes that can turn into gossip. We can start gossiping about ways in which we think things should be done, and they're not doing it the way that I would prefer to do it. even sharing praise reports or prayer requests with a view to exalt oneself. I have so many horror stories when I was a kid in youth group as a new believer, it was part of a regular part of our Thursday youth group meeting for everybody to share praise reports and as a young new Christian, I, I would hear all these things being said by other people, and I wanted, I wanted some skin in the game too.
I wanted something to share. I'm hearing this kid talk about how he's speaking in tongues, and that one's talking about how Jesus touched him on the shoulder and that one's got something else to share and And so I came to my meeting one time and I said, yeah, My mom told me to stay home from church for her birthday, and, but I snuck out anyway, and I went to church and I got home and I got in trouble, put on restriction. I'm getting persecuted for the Lord. Please pray for me.
And, I felt pretty proud about that, that I was getting persecuted for the Lord. And one of my youth directors came, took me aside and very lovingly said, Mike, if your mom just wants you to stay home from church on one Sunday so that you can celebrate her birthday, that'd be a good witness, wouldn't it? And we're not gonna like think that you're a bad person because you stayed home from church one Sunday. It's probably a good testimony.
And I just felt this conviction, but I, I was very appreciative of how humbly my youth leader was just teaching me a very humbling lesson. that one, it's not about me just trying to cause rebel rousing trouble at home, but two, I think in a subtle way, he was probably telling me I, I didn't have to come in and try to one up other people in our youth group as far as their praise reports and That's not to say at all that we, there isn't a place. We, we want to be those that offer genuine praise to the Lord and we can't overly examine our hearts.
The, the fact is, is there's none of us that are gonna have perfectly pure motives when we're offering prayer requests and praise reports.
I want to be careful that I don't shut down your prayer times and your care groups. At the same time, it is, it's important for us to come as listeners first. I wanna hear what people are saying, right? I wanna hear what the Lord's doing in their lives and, and to ask the Lord to help us to make sure that we're not falling into gossip or opinionated or prideful statements meant to exalt ourselves.
So, do not, draw near to here, be few in your words. And then thirdly, we would say, to let your words be true. Look what it says in verse 4 and following. When you vow a vow, to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools.
Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?
And so this is a person that's coming in to make grand promises. Sometimes people come in as pretenders. Other times people come in and they make these. They want to make these grand promises, a vow.
We're not normally accustomed to this terminology, particularly in our denomination. Jesus does say just let your yes be yes and your no be no. Don't get so caught up in making vows, but we do make vows when we get married, right? We do make a, take an oath as it were, when we joined the church and we say, I'm gonna covenant to commit myself to this local church.
when you sign a contract to pay a mortgage or to pay for your, your car payment, you are making promises, you're making vows. When you tell your child, you're gonna take them to go golfing or this or that. You're making a promise, right? You're, you're, you're making statements.
a vow technically is a promise made before God and His people. It's when we, we come before God and His people and we say I want to do such and such. We've had people at Cornerstone that when they join the church, they sign a document. They say we want a covenant with this particular local church, and we agree to follow the covenant that's here at Cornerstone and to repent of sins and let people confront us and sin, and we're going to give to this church and try to use our gifts here.
We've actually over the years had times where we've had to confront people on sin and we've actually brought out their covenant, their church membership, and said, You signed here, notice what the covenant says, and we've had people tell us to our face, I didn't know it said that. I just signed it because you guys told me I needed to sign this thing so I could teach Sunday school. Well, that's a rash vow. You should read that stuff and know what this is saying.
And that doesn't mean because part of what you're covening to do is also to just merely repent of sin, right? We're not saying once you've signed this baby, you can't get out, but you just confess your sins. That's part of the covenant. Ask for forgiveness, and that's part of our covenant to one another is to forgive each other, right?
We ask the Lord to forgive us and we forgive one another. That's part of the covenanting. But be careful, as we come and we make our promises. Why?
Because we're not as wise and strong as rich as we think we are. You might think, oh yes, I can make, I can make this payment. Well, maybe you can. Oh yes, I can.
I can fulfill this duty. I have the wisdom to follow up on this. God hears your words and is powerful enough to hold you to your word. Because God is a promise keeper and we are made in His image, He does expect His image bearers to also keep their word.
by the letter of the law we are to keep our promises and to keep our words. A So, think about these, these types of things. God keeps His promises, and he expects us to do so as well. Fools worship themselves and their own works by speaking a lot of words and making a lot of promises.
And again, the big idea here is, is, is it's better really not to make vows and to come with an attitude of hearing, realizing that, it's hard sometimes to keep our promises, and so I'm going to come. I'm just gonna be quiet and listen for a while. It's one of the reasons why, by the way, with all the stuff that's been going on in our culture, both election-wise and I'll, I'll talk about just for a moment here the social justice issue and some of the stuff we've been seeing in our culture and racism.
As soon as things started getting hot and heavy, you just had people writing articles and publishing stuff on YouTube and being long seminars, and, and we had lots of people come in the corner saying, what is our position?
What are we gonna do? And I appreciate our leaders basically our message has been largely we ain't doing nothing but listening to God's word. We're gonna sit back and we're gonna read the word of God. We're gonna preach the word of God, and we're gonna listen and try to figure out what does he want us to do.
Because this is bigger than us, and God's in heaven, and we're on the earth in the weeds. When, when we're when we're in the weeds, part of what that means is we're in time and we don't always know how these things are gonna shake out in history, right? How many people, how many Christians in Germany during World War II had ideas on how things ought to operate and they just had no idea where this thing was all going to go? How about believers in Vietnam?
How about believers, all throughout world history where people make decisions and they make quick decisions and they make vows and they say, here's what we're going to do, and then they look back and, part of the message of 1 Kings, 2 Kings, and Chronicles is you do the best you can, but sometimes you're wrong. And you just trust. You wanna, you wanna do a lot of listening, a lot of worshiping, and then trust the Lord with the outcome. So a fool also believes that she can say whatever she wants to God because if she can't always see the meaning of the world, then her words have no meaning.
That's the other flip side to this thing. One side is, oh, we've got to get out there and speak really quickly what our position is on an issue. The other is we just throw up our hands in disillusionment. We say, well, it really doesn't matter anyway.
And we say nothing or we just flippantly say stuff as if we're not going to be held accountable for our words. But I wanna, I wanna kinda close things up. We've got about 67 minutes here. The big idea is that God wants us to come before Him as a hearer.
Let our words be few. When we do speak, let our words be true. But lastly, and this really ties into the first point, draw near to fear. Draw near to fear.
Verse 7 says, when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity. It's vapor, but God is the one you must fear. God's the one ultimately that we come to fear, meaning to worship and to bow before Him as the one who really is in charge. He's in heaven.
We're on the earth. We can make all kinds of promises, and we can pretend a lot of different things. At the end of the day, we have very little control over time and circumstances. And the main thing that we need to do, the main thing that will affect us and affect others through us, is listening.
Hearing, learning, and that's completely opposite of the way our world tends to think. Those who fear God worship God by listening to God. Christianity is a listening religion. It is a hearing religion.
Hear, oh Israel. This is my beloved Son. Hear him. One thing is needed, Martha.
Mary has chosen the good part. What was Mary doing? All she was doing is sitting at the feet and listening to the words of Christ. What can be accomplished by that?
What can really be accomplished by a woman sitting at the feet of a rabbi merely listening? Jesus, what are the works that we must do? And Jesus says, here's the works that you can do. Believe in me.
Believe in the one whom he has sent. Well, where do I get that faith? Paul comes along and says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through literally the word of Christ. It's when we hear the word of Christ, not just once, not just once in a while, but just like the shama says, when you rise up, when you go to bed, when you're on your way, you put it on your doorpost.
The idea is, is you are treating the word of God just like most people these days treat their phones. What do most people do when they wake up in the morning? They look at their phone and what do they do when they're heading out the door? They look at their phone and what do they do when they get to work, get to work?
They look at their phone. We just look at our phones all the time. That's the way we hear the word of God. We're always hearing it because we recognize 1, I need to hear it because Mike Barry is not as smart as he thinks he is.
I need to hear from the God in heaven. 2, I always need to be careful with my steps because I can stumble many times all throughout the day. So I need to hear the word of God all throughout the day. I'm not as smart as I think I am.
And but God's word is as powerful as He says it is. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by Every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God and listening has the impact of changing hearts. This is my beloved Son. Hear ye Him.
I wanna, there's a, a, a, a miracle that Jesus does where he comes to a, a person who is deaf and also cannot speak, and he comes and he puts his fingers in his ears. And he touches his tongue and then he looked up into heaven and he sighed and he said, Eephraha, which means be opened. Jesus has the power to come to people, deaf people, and literally open up their ears so they can hear. And that's not just meant to teach us that Jesus can heal deaf people.
It's meant to help us see that He can open up spiritual ears as well. How many times does Jesus say, Let him who has an ear to hear. Here. The idea is not everybody has spiritual ears, but Jesus can impart spiritual ears, and he imparts spiritual ears.
As we hear His word, faith is imparted to us. He has the ability to give us faith. Now I wanna give you, leave you guys with some hope for us fools. We've been contrasting in this passage.
There's the person who comes to hear and there's the fool that comes to flap his gums. And I just want to be honest with you that I don't always fall into the category of the hearer and the listener. Many times I'm the one that is over here flapping his gums. That's why I love Peter so much.
When I read Peter in the pages of the New Testament, I feel like I'm reading about me. What's Peter doing there? the amount of transfiguration. Hey, it's really good that we're here, Lord.
We can build 3 tabernacles for you, Elijah and Moses. This is fantastic. All of a sudden, No Elijah, no Moses. The father says, this is my beloved son.
What does he say? Hear him. This is the one you need to listen to, Jesus. And we have to be reminded of that all the time.
One of my favorite passages in the book of Isaiah says this. This is Isaiah 35:8. And a highway shall be there. This is talking about probably the eternal state.
And it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, probably meaning, those who have not been saved by the blood of Christ. It shall belong to those who walk on the way. Even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.
I think the ESP and the New King James have this right that even the fools, even the simple, as long as they just stay on this path, they're gravy. That that gives me hope. Even this fool named Mike Barry, who doesn't always approach the house of the Lord the right way. If I just stay on Christ, I stay with Him, I just stay on the path of the gospel, and by the way, it's the Lord that actually keeps me there, right?
So many times like Christian and Pope of Progress, I'm flipping on that way and flipping on that way. What does the Lord do is He keeps bringing me the promises, the Spirit keeps putting me on the path, and this fool is kept going. So how How can we listen? How can we keep God's word in our hearts and come as listeners?
Well, just being here this morning and listening online, come into the house of God, even if you don't feel like it, and saying, I need to hear the word preached. By the way, sometimes we belittle the idea of inviting friends to church as if that's like second tier evangelism. I don't think it's secondary evangelism at all. Bring your, your friends and your family to church so they can hear the word preached because faith comes by hearing and the hearing is the word of Christ.
And so if your family just shows up on a Sunday, who knows what the Holy Spirit will do? Here other teaching. One of the things that you can do with your iPhone is listen to lots of podcasts. It's one of the things that when I'm driving around, I'll just be honest with you, I've, I've shut the news off.
I try to ignore all those people as much as I can. They just drive me nuts and I just listen to the scriptures. I listen to podcasts. If you come up and ask me on any given day, what's going on in the news, I'm probably gonna be like, I don't know.
You tell me. But I want to be filled up with what God's telling me in His word. Call me ignorant. That's OK.
family devotions. How about just wasting time with Jesus? Sometimes we talk about wasting time. What are we gonna do with our leisure time?
I love this concept that I was hearing about from a friend. He says, what, it's great just to sit back and waste time with Christ. Well, how can you waste time with Christ? Just sit back.
Don't, don't read your Bible like you're eating your vegetables. Don't throw on a sermon or a podcast as if it's some duty that you got to do or feel guilty. Just waste time with Jesus. Throw on some worship music.
Play your Bible, and, and then if you zone out like I do half the time while your Bible's playing. Then go back and listen to it again and be like, oh, OK, I didn't hear that whole last chapter because my mind was somewhere else. Just waste time with Christ. Get God's word in you.
Come to the house of God and, and, and not, not merely as someone that's there to flap their gums, but they're coming to hear because we're needy and we need to learn. If you have questions, come on up afterwards. I do have some coins for kids if there's any kids here, even adult kids, and I've got one more book to give away. If somebody can answer a trivia question, I'll make it up when you come up.
Lord, we thank you so much for this time for us to hear your word. And I, we thank you, Lord, that, it's really, it's, it's a simple thing that we just come, we hear from you as needy sinners, and you impart to us the gospel, and you tell us that your burden is easy, yoke is light, we just come to learn from you and, and you yoke up with us and, and you are so compassionate and we thank you, Lord, that As your word fills us, that you give us the strength. You don't give tell us to make bricks with no straw.
You give us what we need and then we can go out and do works in this life that will have an impact because of your grace.
but we pray, Father, that we would be listeners first and as true listeners that Your Spirit would work the doing. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.