Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.
Reading: Heb. 3.
"Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts... 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" Heb. 3:7,12-14.
"Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering
into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." Heb.
4:1.
Everything in God's purpose is bound up with our hearing His
voice. I want to point out that the translation needs to be kept
very accurate here. Unfortunately the Revised Version does not
maintain its tradition of improvement at this point, and it should
not be: "If ye shall hear His voice", it should be: "If ye
will hear His voice". If you look at that very carefully
you will immediately detect the difference. If we say: "If ye shall
hear His voice" we put the onus on God, when really the onus is
not upon God. The context makes it perfectly clear about having
heard the Good News, and it is: "If ye will hear His
voice". God has spoken, the voice of God has sounded, and it is
sounding today, and it is a matter of whether we will hear.
The force of that "will" is suggested by the earlier part of
chapter 4. "Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being
left of entering into His rest, any one of you should be deemed to
come short of it." There is a tremendous emphasis upon our
responsibility in relation to the voice of God. It is not that God
will not speak, but that, God speaking, we shall not hear.
The word "consider" in the first verse of chapter 3 is a very
strong word. Our simple English word there does not convey the
force of the original language. The word really means "attentively
consider". It implies giving a fixed and prolonged attention to
the matter. So you see that the atmosphere of this part of God's
Word is all that which suggests to our heart the necessity for
attention.
In such an atmosphere there is this word: "If ye will
hear His voice". That means that we have to apply ourselves to
hearing what the Lord is saying. It is a matter of application, of
will, to hear His voice. Everything hangs upon that, as the whole
context shows. All the promises of the land, all that which was
presented to Israel as God's great and glorious purpose to which
they were called, were lost to that generation; and the
implication is that they missed it all because they would not hear
His voice.
That carries us to a very serious consideration. What was the
voice to be heard? What was the voice saying? What was it that the
voice was carrying with it? What was it that they would not hear?
What was it they did not earnestly apply themselves to hear? If
you look closely into the forty years' history in the wilderness,
you will see that everything called for application of heart, of
mind, of will to understand. It called for close attention,
because that which the Lord was doing with them had a meaning
which was not too obvious, did not lie on the surface, could not
be grasped instantly by any superficial glance. The dealings of
God with them, the ways of God with them, contained a voice, a
call, a message, a meaning, and it therefore required that they
should earnestly attend to and apply the will, to say, in effect:
"This means something more than we can see at a glance; we want to
know what God means by this! There is a voice in this that is
deeper than can be discerned by the outward ear; there is an
inward ear required for this: there is something here to be seen
which cannot be seen by the natural eye! The inner eye needs to be
opened to see what God means by this!" And because they would not
take that attitude and adjust themselves in that way, they missed
everything. They simply took things as they saw them, and allowed
them to become mere happenings, mere events, and judged by how
those things affected their own personal interests and natural,
earthly good. Chapter 3, verse 1 is the key to the whole thing.
"Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling"
- "Today, if ye will hear..."
A heavenly calling! That puts a new complexion upon everything.
What is the heavenly calling? A calling from above to glory and
honour. How does the letter begin: "For not unto angels did He
subject the inhabited earth to come, whereof we speak. But one
hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that thou makest
mention of him?" "But we behold Jesus... crowned with glory and
honour." "Thou dost make mention of him... wherefore, holy
brethren, partners in a heavenly calling..." a calling from
heaven, of glory and honour in association with the Son of Man, in
relation to the inhabited earth to come. It is dominion with
Christ that is in view. And today God is dealing with us in
relation to that, and there is a heavenly meaning in God's
dealings with us.
Now go through Israel's history. Not long after they had come
into the wilderness they found themselves short of water, and they
murmured against Moses and against the Lord. In effect they said,
"We have been brought out here to perish!" That is taking the
earthly point of view. There are two ways of viewing that. They
could look at it like this, and say, "At least we had water to
drink in Egypt, but here we are with no water to drink, and if we
were going to perish we might as well have perished in Egypt!"
They could have taken another view, and said, "Well, the Lord
marvellously delivered us from Egypt; marvellously brought us
through the Red Sea when it stood up like walls on either side;
marvellously overwhelmed our enemies before our eyes, and wiped
them out. He can surely provide water in a wilderness!" It depends
whether you look up or down, whether you murmur, or whether you
triumph.
Later they found themselves without anything to eat. Here was
another chance for them to take one of two attitudes. They could
take the downward attitude and say, "Now we are going to perish in
the wilderness; we are going to die of starvation out here. We
have been brought into a trap, all resources have been kept from
us, and now this is the end of everything!" They could take the
upward look and say, "God, who provided water, will surely provide
bread in the wilderness!" Deliverance would have come from heaven,
if they had seen the heavenly aspect of things.
In the lack of water, and in the lack of bread, and in every
circumstance, no matter what it was - and the circumstances were
numerous: adversity, want, hardship, weariness - there was a
heavenly resource, but it required a heavenly faith, a heavenly
aspect, a heavenly look. God was speaking in it all. What was He
saying? In the absence of water, in the absence of bread, in these
various and numerous situations, where nature and the world could
make no provision, God was speaking, and He was saying continually
through the forty years: "I am your resource! I am your portion! I
am your life! I am your strength! I am thy sufficiency! I have
brought you out here, not to let you perish, not to make you the
victim of circumstances, but to teach you that for you earthly
things at best could never be satisfying. And finally, your life;
but in Me you have that which will not only maintain you here from
stage to stage, but will be your everlasting portion, and bring
you at last into My whole fulness." God was seeking to say, "Here
is another circumstance in which you can make a new discovery of
Me, but if you look at the circumstance itself, you will go down!
If you listen to My voice in the circumstance you will make a
discovery, and that discovery will become your deliverance, your
life."
In His mercy they did make discoveries, but they never allowed
the discoveries which they made to be permanent lessons. When
every fresh trial came they forgot the Lord, because they were so
centred upon their own interests. They could not, they would not,
escape from themselves. As a thing came up before them, they
immediately regarded it in the light of their own present personal
interest: "Here is a bit more trial! That is a new blow! That is
one more trouble to add to all my troubles!" That is one way of
viewing things. There is another view. They could have said, "This
is another lesson the Lord is trying to teach! What is the measure
of the Lord that this trial will lead into if taken hold rightly,
if viewed rightly?"
That land to which they were going was a great type of Christ in
heaven, over the other side on resurrection ground, and they were
brought through these trials in order that they might learn how
now to live a heavenly life on the earth, by heavenly resources,
here in the wilderness. But so set were they upon their own
comfort, their own enjoyment, their own pleasure and satisfaction,
that they could not detach themselves to listen to the voice; and
because things were always regarded in a personal light, from the
standpoint of personal interest, when troubles came they hardened
their hearts against the inner voice.
It was, "Today"! What a tremendously impressive word that is,
viewed in this light. Today! What does that mean? That
text has been almost always used for Gospel sermons, and we do not
do wrong in making an appeal by it to the unsaved, because the
truth applies that there is a "Today!" when God's voice is sounding
to the unsaved, and God does not offer a tomorrow. This word is:
"Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts!" His
voice heard in your heart will not give you a tomorrow. Let this
day go, and you have no tomorrow for responding to His voice and
doing what you have failed to do now in the presence of the voice
with the heavenly calling. That is quite true.
But this text was never written for the unsaved, with all its
value and application to them. It was written to the Lord's own
people, and it is tremendous when you hear such a word to the
Lord's people. That says to us that today God is speaking; in
adversity, in trial, in suffering, in affliction, in all manner of
difficulties into which He Himself has allowed us to come. He has
brought us out into a place where all nature is cut off from us,
where we are helpless in ourselves, and He allows us to come into
the fires of trial and difficulty, and in them all He says, "My
voice is the voice of a heavenly calling, the voice which is
calling you up, ever higher, to know your heavenly resources, to
know what there is for you in Christ even here, in order to
prepare you for that dominion over the inhabited earth to come,
for glory and honour with Him Who is now crowned with glory and
honour." We are become partners with Christ, if we hold fast.
"Today, if ye will..." What does that say to me and to
you? It says, "Here is a trial, a difficulty; here is an
adversity, a sorrow, a suffering. How am I going to view it? Am I
going to say, Oh, more trouble! One thing after another! Or am I
going to say, Yes, more trial - we feel it - and yet always
there's some new knowledge of the Lord, some new discovery, I must
hear the voice in this! It is going to lead into some greater
fulness, where we have never been before." Harden not your heart.
In other words, do not become bitter because of the trial, the
difficulty, the suffering, but listen! The Lord is speaking, this
is a great 'Today'! I venture to say that when this 'Today' is
past, and all that it was intended to mean to us, and we see its
meaning, we shall be sorry that we did not adjust ourselves more
wholeheartedly to what the Lord was saying to us here in the very
difficulties into which He brought us. We shall say, "Oh, if only
I had been more attentive and less self-occupied, I should have
seen that in that particular experience the Lord was speaking to
me, but it came and it went, and I regarded it as a bit of
suffering and no more, and it led to nothing. It may be even that
I became bitter, I rebelled and I hardened my heart because of the
suffering."
God forbid! "Today, if ye will hear... Wherefore, holy brethren,
partners in a heavenly calling, today if ye will hear His voice,
harden not your hearts."