How many times have you eaten roast-preacher for Sunday lunch? These kinds of banal banquets tend to consume the preacher, not the sermon. Much like the crowd who listened to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and were amazed because He spoke with authority, but failed to heed His message (Matt 7:28–29), church-goers today focus on the style of preachers when they should be concerned about the content of their sermons.
Every sermon we hear
increases our culpability because every sermon demands action. Ken Ramey provides a helpful insight: “Let’s say you came to Christ
at age ten and you live to be seventy-five. If you average two sermons a week,
you will listen to over seven thousand sermons during the course of your life.
And at end of your life you will stand before God and give an account for every
sermon you heard.”[1]
That’s a sobering thought! On that day, our Lord will not be interested in our
thoughts about our preacher’s preaching style. When we stand before Him, He’ll evaluate
our actions, not our feelings about our pastor’s speaking abilities. He’ll look
for appropriate responses to the preached Word of God. The claim to be a “Christian” will not suffice on that day, because
Jesus Christ will be interested in the evidence
that backs up that claim.
Most Christians are
familiar with the parable of the wise man who built his house on solid rock and
the foolish man who built his house on unstable sand, but not all take the time
to consider the lesson of that parable. Here is what Christ said:
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will
enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in
heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in
Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many
miracles?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me,
you who practice lawlessness.” Therefore everyone who hears these words of
Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house
upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded
upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act
upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And
the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against
that house; and it fell, and great was its fall (Matt 7:21–27).
The point of the
parable is to say that a wise person will act upon God’s Word, putting it into
practice. The consequences of listening without appropriate action are
eternally dire.
This is the difference
between Greek wisdom and Hebrew wisdom. To an ancient Greek, wisdom was
the accumulation of knowledge. It was measured by a person’s intellect. Not so
for an ancient Hebrew. To a Hebrew, the most foolish person in the world was
the person who knew what to do, but didn’t do it. And the wisest person in the
world, was the person who knew what to do, and did it. Wisdom was measured by
action, not mere knowledge alone.[2] That is why Psalm 111:10
says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding
have all those who do His commandments. . .” The fear of God, wisdom, and
obedience go hand-in-hand. Do you want to be wise? Don’t just listen and learn,
but listen, learn, and be obedient.
Listen to sermons in order to put into practice the things Scripture instructs
you to do.
Scripture says, “By
this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The
one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is
a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the
love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him” (1
John 2:3–5).
We cannot afford to put
off obedience till another day. There ought to be an urgency to our
sermon-induced action. Psalm 95:7–8 says, “. . . Today, if you would hear His
voice, do not harden your hearts . . .” If you listen to a sermon and identify
some change of mind, some change of lifestyle, some change of action that needs
to takes place in order to become more obedient to the gospel of Jesus Christ,
tomorrow will not do. Today is when that change ought to be implemented. Sin is
deceitful. If you put off obedience till another day it will result in the
hardening of your heart (Heb 3:13). That’s why every sermon is urgent. That’s
why we listen with eternity in mind.
James gives a very
important instruction in this regard:
But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not
merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and
not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for
once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what
kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law
of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an
effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does (Jas 1:22–25).
Do you want God’s blessing? The key to that
blessing is to hear God’s Word and
act on it. In his challenging little book, Stop
Dating the Church, Josh Harris writes, “Don’t think that listening is
enough. That’s a deception. . . . Hearing truth doesn’t change us. We have to
take action.”[3] So
ask yourself right now: How am I going to take my pastor’s sermons seriously?
What routines will I put in place to ensure no sermon goes by without
deliberate action?
Christopher Ash counsels us: “Every time
the Bible is preached, we ought to repent again and trust in Christ again. The
Bible doesn’t just call non-Christians to repent and believe. It calls
Christians to repent and believe; and it does so today. . . . When we become
Christians, we do not leave repentance and faith behind; on the contrary, we
enter a life which consists of daily repentance and faith.”[4]
We’ll probably hear thousands of sermons in
our lifetime. That just makes us more answerable before God. Christopher Ash
explains it this way: “To hear a sermon and not respond is worse than not
hearing it at all; it makes us more guilty than we were before. As Jesus said
about the unbelieving Jews: ‘If I had not come and spoken to them, they would
not be guilty of sin’ (i.e.: not as guilty). ‘Now, however, they have no excuse
for their sin’ (John 15:22).”[5]
Let’s determine today to listen to every
single sermon with action in mind.
[1] Ken Ramey, Expository
Listening (The Woodlands, TX: Kress Biblical Resources, 2010), 5.
[2] John MacArthur, How to Study the Bible (Chicago: Moody
Publishers, 2009), 80.
[3] Joshua Harris, Stop Dating the Church (Sisters, OR:
Multnomah Publishers, 2004), 116.
[4] Christopher Ash, Listen Up!:
A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons (New Maiden, Surrey, England: The
Good Book Company, 2009), 20–21.
[5] Ibid., 22.
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