Luke 10:13-16
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke chapter 10. Our reading today is Luke chapter
10, and we’ll be reading together in that passage of scripture,
verses 13 through 16. Luke 10, 13 through 16. Jesus and his disciples have
made their way from Galilee. They’re going into the area of
Samaria on their way to Jerusalem where Jesus will suffer and die.
And Jesus has met some opposition. People have rejected his word,
whether it comes from his mouth or from the mouth of those whom
he has sent. And so our passage carries on
in that that story. Hear God’s word with me. Jesus
says this, woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if
the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and in
Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth
and ashes. But it will be more bearable
in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you,
Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought
down to Hades. The one who hears you hears me,
the one who hears you and the one who rejects you rejects me
and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. Let us pray
together. Lord, as we sit here this day,
we want to be reminded by your spirit to know who is speaking. We remember in days of old that
when Moses met with you on the mountain, the mountain shook
and smoke covered flames of fire burned. It was a terror to the
people so much. So they said, let the Lord speak
to you. And then you speak to us. We
pray Lord that as you speak to us today, there would be fear. There would be terror, but there
would also be great joy for you. The God of the universe have
seen fit to meet with us. Let not our minds wonder, but
let us give our attention to your Holy word. by your help.
We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. How do you listen to a
sermon? For some of you, it may be the
hardest 20, 25, 30 minutes of your week. Others, maybe you get through
it through fits and through bits and pieces. Others of you, you’ve
practiced, you’ve self-disciplined yourself, you take notes, you
learn, and you are fed. Each of us hears sermons differently. All of us, I’m sure, could use
a good tune-up. And today’s passage, I believe,
gives us that great opportunity to tune up our sermon listening
skills. In verses 13 through 16 of chapter
10 of Luke’s gospel, we have the subject of hearing and rejecting
God’s word. Jesus says to the 70 whom he
has sent out, the one who hears you hears me. So God’s servant whom God sends
when he speaks, he speaks for God. And if you hear God’s servant,
you hear Jesus. He goes on to say, the one who
rejects you rejects me. So if you reject the preaching
of God’s word, you’re not rejecting the preacher, whoever he may
be. You’re rejecting Jesus himself. But Jesus goes on again and ups
the ante, so to speak. He says, the one who rejects
me rejects him who sent me. And so we see the logic of God’s
message. The father sends the son and
the son sends messengers. In our passage, it’s the 70 who
will go ahead of Jesus. But in the context of the church,
we remember that in Ephesians chapter four, that God says,
that when the Lord Jesus ascended on high, he gave gifts to his
church. Usually a king who is returning
to the palace after war is met by people on the road who cheer
him on and say, long live the king. He’s gone to battle and
he has won the victory. And so the kingdom will last
and they give him gifts. But in Ephesians four, the apostle
Paul says, no, Jesus gave gifts to the church and his victory
march. And so God and his A great gifting
to the church. He over the centuries has raised
up men to serve, to preach, to proclaim. And so we take the
same principle. The one who hears God’s preachers
hears Jesus. The one who rejects God’s preachers
rejects Jesus. And the one who rejects Jesus
rejects the heavenly father who sent. And so we have here in
our passage, Christ, the judge speaking. And he also pronounces
these woes, woe to Chorazin, woe to Bethsaida, woe to Capernaum. These were Galilean cities where
Jesus not only had called some of his disciples and followers
from, but he spent much time there. He lodged there. They
were witnesses, eyewitnesses to his miracles, his healings,
the casting out of demons. And no doubt many of them had
heard the proclamation of the kingdom from his mouth. These cities experienced Jesus.
They had seen, as our passage tells us, his mighty works. His mighty works had been in
the presence of these people. And he says to them, if you won’t
listen, let me tell you how bad it is. If I had been in Sodom
and Gomorrah, if I had been in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
repented. So this passage has much to say
about our listening. This passage has much to say
about how we hear the voice of God’s servants. It has much to
say about how you listen to me. It has much to say about how
you listen to Jesus. It has much to say, it has everything
to say about how you listen to our heavenly father. So I wanna
take today’s passage and be very practical and give us some tips,
some practical things to think about, about a very serious subject. And that subject is this, listening
to the voice of Jesus. I have a handful of things that
I think will help and encourage you and give all of us a tune
up in listening to God’s word. The first thing that we should
consider when we listen to God’s word is to prepare. We should
prepare to meet with the king. We should prepare to come and
hear the voice of Almighty God every Wednesday in the church
office. Well, actually, it starts on
Monday, every Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, I start feeling
the pressure. What’s my next passage from Luke? What’s my
next passage from the book of Revelation? What’s my next passage
from Romans? What’s my Wednesday article going
to be about? What hymns will we sing? elements
in the worship service, can I best plan to to help us worship God
and be served well by the church’s worship the next Sunday? We put
that into paper form. Some of you receive it on Wednesday
by email. Others of you maybe Thursday
or Friday or Saturday by the U.S. mail. But in your package
every week you have the morning bulletin. You have the evening
bulletin. You have the text for the Sunday
sermons. You have the hymns. And so you
can begin to prepare for Sunday. Some of you on Wednesday or Thursday
or Friday, just by choice of your technology for receiving
information. We can take this information.
We can read our Bibles. We can mark our Bibles. We can
pray that God, by his word and spirit, would continue to work
in me to prepare to feed you all. But we can also take our
Bibles and we can mark them. We can read the passage and we
can pray that God would begin to work in our souls for the
message that is coming to us. You know, in the old covenant,
in the Old Testament, the day of preparation was the day before
the Sabbath and about Sunday on before Sabbath, the people
eased down. They began to think on the Sabbath
day. They began to prepare their hearts
and their minds for worship. They recited certain things.
They gathered with the family. They prepared. And it would be
good for us, in a sense, to detox from this world, detox from all
the things that have come our way, that our brains are overlooking. You know, this day and age we’re
living in, all of us have some handheld gadget or device. Many
of us at least do. And do you know, studies show
they have changed our brains. They have changed our brains
that we can’t live without touching our pocket or our purse. We we
think on a given day have over 200 We call it screen grabs. We whip the thing out of our
pocket or from wherever our phones are holstered and we look at
them because our brains think that we have some new piece of
information that we must know. And how much of it is pertinent? Another sale at Belk’s, another
coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond. They give those things out by
the dozens. I mean, all the information that
we have coming to us, most of it is meaningless, but we grab,
we look, we grab, we look and friends, our brains have changed.
If you don’t believe me, put your phone in a drawer and try
not to touch it for two hours. And you’ll call me once you open
that drawer and pick up the phone and say, preacher, you were right.
Studies have shown that our brains are hooked on these technologies.
We can’t live without it. And it affects the way we come
to church. It affects the way we listen. and our brains and
our lives and our hearts are overloaded. Another way we prepare
is our clothes. We get our Bibles by the door.
We get enough sleep. We get our bodies ready to come
and sit before the king and to listen to him. We prepare. It’s the second thing we ought
to do. This may seem obvious, but we
show up. We remember the Sabbath day,
the fourth commandment. We remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy. Isn’t it interesting when it
comes to the commandments? We don’t want to die, do we?
And so we say, oh, no murder. Definitely don’t murder, especially
don’t murder me. I love me. I love my body. No
murder. We don’t want our goods stolen from us. And so we’re
fine with thou shalt not steal. But why is it we begin to fudge
some of the commandments? We say, well, God won’t mind
a few Sundays here and there. God won’t mind. But when we are
commanded to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, we should
be reminded there are 52 Lord’s Days. And in our case, there
are 52 Lord’s Days with Sunday school, with morning worship,
with evening worship. And if you think about 52 Sundays
a year, Times three, that’s 156 opportunities to hear the voice
of the king speak to you. And don’t you know that just
as our retirement accounts, just as our investments, they accrue
interest, which compounds and grows. Don’t you think God’s
word as it dwells richly in our hearts, as we dwell richly with
the community of God, it will pay dividends in our lives. And so this, fault of just showing
up. It may not seem like rocket science
to us, but we’re hearing facts and statistics. We’re seeing
it with our own eyes. The church attendance in the
South of all places is declining at 7% per year. You do the math. How many 7%
before you’re at zero? We’re seeing church attendance
at best at maybe 50% by a majority of the congregation in America
this day and age. We have so many options. We have
so many weekend opportunities. And let me just say, we have
so many weak excuses as well. I don’t know what you guys would
do if I didn’t show up one Sunday. Just wasn’t here. I mean, you’d
figure something out, I’m sure. But there would be things like,
well, it’s his job. He should be here. Well, friends,
it’s the fourth commandment, isn’t it? Almighty God on the
mountain of Sinai with all the fire and the thunder and the
rumbling and smoke said, remember the Sabbath day and to keep it
holy. And so we would do well to show
up, to honor God, but to be together with one another. You know what
my number one job is as a pastor? It’s to feed you. It’s to feed
you a steady diet of God’s word. And just as your mother called
you to dinner and you didn’t show up periodically. We don’t
show up often to when God feeds his lambs. And so, dear brothers
and sisters, prepare, show up. A third thing is listen, listen. This may seem very obvious to
many of us. But it’s a good tune up, isn’t
it? Faith comes by hearing. If we don’t hear, our faith gets
weakened. It’s not as strong as it could
be. We see sometimes these I call
them cheesy church signs. There’s there’s one about a mile
this way. And never let a preacher have
a movable type sign or somebody armed with the book of cheesy
church signs to put up. But there’s one that’s out there.
It’s cheesy as can be, but it’s true. Seven days without God.
makes one week, W-E-A-K. I mean, it’s cheesy, right? But
isn’t it true? We starve ourselves. In fact, you remember in the
old covenant, in the old covenant, in the prophecies and the prophets,
it said there is a famine in the land for the hearing of God’s
word. What did God do when he was angry with his people? He
withheld the voice of his preachers. He raised up no prophet to come. among them. In fact, there’s
a proverb that we love to quote. It says without a vision, the
people perish. And we’ve come to make it believe
that our organization, our church, our business will perish if there’s
no vision cast. Well, that’s not what it means
without any prophetic vision. Without an Ezekiel, without a
Isaiah, without a Jeremiah, without an Elijah or an Elisha, without
a Jesus, a John the Baptist. or a preacher of this day, there
will be a famine in the land of God. So while God’s word is
being proclaimed in your midst, we should prepare, we should
show up and we should listen up. How can we, the church who
say, oh, we love the great commission. Let’s give money to missions.
Let’s send people across the world to proclaim the good news.
What is the good news? What is the great commission?
Go into all the world. And as you go making disciples,
you baptize them and you teach them. What happens when God’s
disciples don’t come to class? You can’t teach. You can’t make
disciples. Friends, we are the only religion
in the world that emphasizes the spoken word. We’re the only
religion practicing today or yesterday or whatever day of
the week other religions have their rights, where a bunch of
you sit and listen. while one person speaks for God. It’s strange, but it’s the way
God has designed it. And so we must discipline ourselves
to be able to listen. You know, this day and age, I
think we all have the attention spans of my golden doodle. Golden
doodles are They’re wonderful dogs, but they can’t sit still. And once you get them to sit
still, guess what? They’re off to something else,
even though you said stay. We’re just like that. We have
the attention spans of these golden doodles. We have the attention
span of a dog that is sitting in a field of rabbits. trying
to listen to the voice of the master. It’s next to impossible
to listen today. We have our gadgets, we have
our audio visual, our minds, I think I’ve already explained
to you, are messed up by the technology of the world. It’s
a two-edged sword. Technology’s wonderful, but it’s a two-edged
sword. It has caused us to cease to
be able to sit and listen. And so in order to prepare, show
up and listen up, It takes great self-discipline. And the cry
of great need in our day and age is this subject we call parenting
in the pew. We train our children when they’re
little to listen. We train our children when they’re
little to listen. So guess what? When they get
big, they’ll listen. Because if a parent, if a child
can’t listen to a parent, how are they going to listen to a
police officer? or a boss or a president or a lawmaker or
whomever is in great authority. But learning to listen in the
home, learning to listen in the pew teaches us to do something
that will bring us everlasting blessings for the rest of our
lives. It takes great self-discipline
to listen to the word of God. The fourth thing after prepare,
and show up and listen up. The fourth thing is this, and
you’ll think this one’s obvious too, but it’s, it’s pay attention.
It’s pay attention. And we’ve already said a number
of times in 2019, it is so hard. There are four or five times
a year where I’m not the one preaching. And you wonder, well,
how does the preacher who’s telling us how to do it today listen?
It’s really hard. I mean, I fill in the Bs and
the Ds and the zeros on the bulletin just like you all do. I’m tempted
to whip my phone out and look at it. I’m tempted in all sorts
of ways to be like my sweet puppy dog who has the attention span
that is about that long. It’s hard. It is difficult to
pay attention. Our brains have been altered
by gadgets. And so maybe some of us ought
to leave the gadget at home. Maybe when we remember the Sabbath
day and keep it holy, we ought to take a Sabbath day from the
thing which causes us the most trouble and sometimes could keep
us from being holy. You say, well, I need my phone.
Okay, fine. Leave it in the car. You say, well, I might need it
in church. My Bible’s on it. Recognize one of these. Bring
that, put it in your lap, go old school, whatever it takes
to help you listen better, pay attention better and give attention
to God’s word. I’m going to show you something
else up here that you probably don’t recognize. There’s an old
pencil and look, a piece of paper. Take your Bible. Take your pencil
and take notes. If you take notes, if you sit
on the front row, guess what? You’ll be the best student in
the class. And so we take great strides
and efforts. When the voice of God is speaking,
we put our eyes on the preacher. We put our fingers on the scripture.
We put notes to paper, whatever it takes to listen and pay attention
to God’s word. There’s a fifth thing. It’s going
to get a little easier, I assure you. The fifth thing is this.
Learn. We prepare, we show up, we listen
up, we pay attention, but we learn. Ask yourself during the
preaching, during Sunday school, ask yourself during the worship
service, what do I learn about myself? This past week on Tuesday,
I spoke at the chapel at Burlington Christian, and it was a passage
about, what was it about? I’ve forgotten already. Oh, the
Good Samaritan. There was the robbers who beat up the man who
was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. There was
the priest who passed by and didn’t help. There was the Levite
who passed by and didn’t help. Then there was the Samaritan,
the racially charged and loaded character of the story. He’s
the one that stopped and helped. And so I said to them, which
one are you? And I said, before you answer, let me remind you
of this. Anytime there’s a Bible story and there’s a good character,
you’re not it. But anytime there’s a bad character,
that’s you. And if there’s two characters
who are bad, guess what? You’re both of them. And if there’s
a hero, guess what? It’s never you. It’s always Jesus.
Well, what do we learn about ourselves in the Bible? Sometimes
we learn we’re the bad character. Sometimes we learn of our sin.
That’s a difficult thing. Sometimes we learn to trust God
more. Sometimes we learn about the character of God. We learn
about the nature and purpose of his church. We learn more
about Jesus, something we never heard before. We learn about
our own errors. We learn of the truth of the
gospel. We learn our duty before God
and neighbor. We learn a theological point
that we never knew before. We learn to worship God better. What’s the purpose of preaching?
It’s to save sinners, yes, but it’s to teach you truth about
God so that you can better live in the world where Satan attacks
where the world is tempting you to live this way or that way,
and where your own remaining flesh is screaming at you saying,
forget God, love yourself. And so we can learn much as we
sit under the servant of God’s holy word. There’s a sixth thing
that I think we can learn from this passage. Yes, we want to
prepare. Yes, we want to show up. Yes, we want to listen up.
We want to pay attention. We want to learn. And this sixth
one is a little bit odd, but hang with me and I think you’ll
get it. And it’s simply enjoy the afterglow. What do we mean by that? Well,
I’m going to get to this by a roundabout way. In our larger catechism,
which you can find in the back of the hymnal, it asks this question
after the Ten Commandments are explained. It says, are some
sins more heinous or more wicked in the sight of God than other
sins? And the answer is simply put this way, all sins are equally
heinous in God’s sight. It’s sin, right? Sin’s an affront
to the character of God. But it says some sins, by reason
of their aggravations, are more heinous than others. And so the
aggravations are listed out. One, like who commits the sin.
If I, if I, as your preacher commit a sin, that’s usually
a little worse than say, Joe, who sits in the pew. Why is that?
It’s because I hold a position. Much more is expected of me in
that position. And so if I sin in the position
I hold, or maybe I hold it as a parent, a father, and you see,
you see the connection. So sometimes the person, Because
of the position they hold, their sin is aggravated. So it’s persons. Sometimes it’s who is the sin
committed against? You know, is it that you disrespected
mom or you disrespected Almighty God? Well, they’re probably pretty
close in our estimation, aren’t they? But at the end of the day,
God deserves more than our mothers. And he is a holy and awesome
character. And so you see there. But there’s
this phrase in the Larder Catechism that says the sins we commit
on the Lord’s Day, the sins we commit in worship or before worship
or after worship come with these aggravations that make them more
heinous. And so I want us to take that
thought, that principle and say this, that when church is over,
God considers it a special time that we’re to take as sacred
and holy. And part of our listening to
the word of God, part of our listening and responding to sermons
is that we take special care that after worship is over to
linger in the moment. To linger in the wonder that
God has met with us. A couple of weeks ago, a family
friend gave us some tickets to the professional tennis event
that was in Winston-Salem. And so we went over there and
our kids are into tennis at the moment. We got some autographs.
Andy Murray was there. His brother was there. Coco Golf,
the 15-year-old tennis wonder was there. You know, they were
a week away from the U.S. Open. Ash Barty, the Australian
who’s such a, I think she’s number one in the world and got their
autographs. We talked about it for days.
The moment wasn’t over. It lasted, it lingered. We go
to a ball game, we go to the NBA, we go to the NFL and we
talk about it for days. We get the t-shirt and we wear
it. But for some reason, when it comes to church and we’ve
met with Almighty God, out the door, moment over with. My encouragement
is let the afterglow, let the moment linger. Talk about what
went on in church over lunch and not how the preacher aggravated
you. Please don’t do that. Talk about
what he said. Talk about what we sang. Talk
about what you learn. Talk about how you grew. Talk
about what you can do to better love God and serve neighbor. It’s a special day. God has spoken. and let it continue for a little
bit more of the day and not cease and end at the doorway. Dear
friends, in this passage, Jesus sends out 70 people to preach
in his name. He ascended back into heaven
after his work of the cross at Jerusalem, and he gave gifts
to the church, pastors and teachers. And how you hear God’s servant
is extremely important. And Jesus pronounces judgment,
woe to those who hear and reject. It would be better off if these
things had been done in the midst of pagans. They would have responded
better. How does that apply to us today?
Some of us have sat in church all our lives. We’re like these
Galilean cities. We’ve had Jesus in our midst.
We’ve seen his work. We’ve heard his word. We don’t
want it said of us what Jesus says of those. It would have
been better off if I had spent my word on a pagan town than
on yours. We’re churched. We are the church. We’re evangelical. We’re reformed.
We’re Bible believing. In your midst here, there is
lots of Bible, lots of Jesus. The mighty works of God have
been in our presence. And so if you hear me, Insofar
as I’m faithful, you hear Jesus. And if you hear Jesus, you hear
the Heavenly Father. May this day, if you’re listening
to the word of God needs a tune up, by all means, do what it
takes to listen up for the King speaks. Let us pray together.
We come to you, Almighty God, our everlasting Father. We come
before you and we understand this moment. We understand the
weight of it. And we pray that we would hear
and not reject. but receive the son sent by the
father through your servant. And having heard your voice,
may we go from this place this day and live obedient lives for
our good, for your glory and in service to our neighbors.
Hear us as we pray in Jesus name, amen. Let us respond to God’s
word as we sing from our hymnals number 439, come ye sinners poor
and needy.