Turn Down the Noise and Listen to Jesus
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Well, after you write a book and the book gets published,
00:00:07.720 | what follows is a season of travel.
00:00:11.080 | You get asked to speak at churches
00:00:14.000 | and speak at conferences on the topic of your new book.
00:00:17.240 | That's generally how it works.
00:00:19.460 | And I wrote a little book on life inside our media culture.
00:00:24.080 | It's called "Competing Spectacles" is the title.
00:00:27.040 | And once that book was out,
00:00:28.500 | I got asked to speak on the topic,
00:00:30.800 | to explain what it means to live out the Christian life
00:00:34.240 | inside this age of viral video, addictive gaming,
00:00:38.640 | blockbuster movies, and endless feeds of new social media.
00:00:43.220 | And as I labor to summarize my main points
00:00:46.560 | into one message, I returned over and over again
00:00:50.320 | to what has now become for me the most important verse
00:00:52.960 | in the whole Bible on why we have attention.
00:00:58.280 | Why did God make us to focus on things?
00:01:01.160 | Why do we have an appetite for media?
00:01:04.140 | Why are we the only creatures who can be glued
00:01:06.320 | to a screen all day long?
00:01:09.620 | The answer is in Hebrews 2, 1,
00:01:13.540 | a verse that follows right after Hebrews chapter one,
00:01:16.240 | an entire chapter full of the supremacy of Christ.
00:01:20.920 | And following that chapter on Christ's supremacy
00:01:23.340 | comes the first verse of chapter two, which says this,
00:01:28.000 | "Therefore," so in light of all the crisis for us
00:01:31.840 | in chapter one, "Therefore, we must pay much closer
00:01:36.840 | "attention to what we have heard,
00:01:41.300 | "lest we drift away from it."
00:01:44.620 | It's an incredibly relevant and important text
00:01:48.280 | for us inside the attention economy, as it's now called.
00:01:52.560 | Well, my friend Dan here at Desiring God
00:01:54.520 | was listening through the John Piper Sermon Archive,
00:01:56.840 | and he recently sent me Pastor John's sermon
00:01:58.760 | on Hebrews chapter two, verse one,
00:02:01.200 | a sermon I had not heard before until recently,
00:02:03.660 | and lo and behold, in his sermon,
00:02:05.640 | he connects Hebrews 2, 1 to our media diets.
00:02:10.200 | Here now is Pastor John.
00:02:11.840 | - It's a remarkable thing to me that in chapter one
00:02:16.300 | of Hebrews, there's no command to us.
00:02:19.160 | We are not told to do anything in chapter one.
00:02:22.920 | Chapter one is all celebration,
00:02:25.120 | all declaration to this effect.
00:02:28.800 | In former times, God spoke in a lot of different ways
00:02:32.640 | through the prophets.
00:02:34.600 | Now, in these latter days, he has spoken to us by a son,
00:02:39.600 | and then the rest of the chapter is to describe the son.
00:02:46.720 | He's the heir of all things.
00:02:51.240 | He upholds the universe with the word of his power.
00:02:54.480 | He created all things.
00:02:56.880 | He's the radiance of God's glory.
00:02:59.600 | He's the exact representation of the father's nature.
00:03:03.440 | He made purifications for sin.
00:03:06.560 | He sat down at the right hand of the majesty.
00:03:09.160 | He is over all angels, dispatching them
00:03:12.720 | to do his bidding among the saints.
00:03:14.920 | He is worshiped by everything in the universe
00:03:18.600 | except his father.
00:03:21.400 | He is God.
00:03:23.600 | That's chapter one.
00:03:25.480 | No commandments, no duties, just truth.
00:03:30.480 | Just glorious, Christ-exalting revelation
00:03:35.560 | of God's final decisive word, Jesus Christ.
00:03:40.520 | You remember a couple of weeks ago when I called it
00:03:43.800 | the final decisive word because it says,
00:03:46.960 | in these last days, he has spoken to us by a son,
00:03:51.120 | and that the reason it's the last days
00:03:54.960 | is because there's no third chapter of revelation.
00:03:59.960 | You got an Old Testament period of revelation,
00:04:03.640 | then you've got Christ in the last days,
00:04:08.260 | and then eternity in glory.
00:04:10.840 | There's no third era by which God does a new thing
00:04:14.320 | besides Jesus in speaking to the world.
00:04:18.520 | It does not mean that subsequent to Jesus,
00:04:22.560 | God can't communicate with us.
00:04:24.680 | It means all of his communication flows from Jesus,
00:04:29.100 | points to Jesus, is measured and proved by Jesus,
00:04:33.160 | orients around Jesus.
00:04:35.420 | Jesus is God's decisive word to the world.
00:04:39.120 | It's the last word that he has to say.
00:04:43.320 | Do you see the logical connecting link between chapter one,
00:04:48.160 | the revelation of God's decisive final word in Jesus,
00:04:52.160 | and the first commandment of the book,
00:04:55.080 | verse one of chapter two,
00:04:56.840 | we must more closely listen to,
00:05:02.760 | or take heed to, or attend to what we have heard.
00:05:06.520 | And the logical link is for this reason.
00:05:10.960 | All of chapter one is designed to buttress
00:05:14.600 | the first commandment of chapter two, namely listen.
00:05:17.960 | Everything he said about Jesus in chapter one
00:05:22.260 | was meant to say, "Wake up, listen, listen.
00:05:27.120 | "Don't drift, listen.
00:05:29.760 | "Take heed, look, zero in."
00:05:32.480 | That's why that little connecting phrase,
00:05:35.360 | and if you have an NIV, your little therefore,
00:05:38.080 | five words into the sentence or so, says the same thing.
00:05:41.160 | Therefore, that is because of all that you've seen
00:05:45.720 | in chapter one, for this reason,
00:05:48.800 | or therefore, we must pay closer attention
00:05:52.740 | to what we have heard.
00:05:55.600 | So if you boil down all of chapter one,
00:05:59.020 | and the first verse of chapter two
00:06:01.520 | into one simple sentence, it goes like this.
00:06:05.720 | Since God has spoken in these last days by a son,
00:06:10.720 | therefore, we must give close heed to what we've heard.
00:06:18.720 | The dignity, the majesty, the glory of the word spoken,
00:06:26.400 | Jesus, increases the sense of seriousness of the command.
00:06:32.320 | Listen to him, listen to what he has said.
00:06:36.720 | Now, it may seem strange to you, I don't know,
00:06:40.600 | where you are in your listening to Jesus,
00:06:43.880 | that so much weight would be put on the simple command,
00:06:48.640 | give heed to Jesus, listen to Jesus.
00:06:53.920 | Pay close attention to what you've heard
00:06:56.920 | in this final decisive word that God spoke in Jesus.
00:07:00.640 | But it isn't surprising to me,
00:07:02.720 | because I know my bent not to listen.
00:07:05.600 | Let me ask you this, what are you listening to?
00:07:08.320 | Everybody's listening.
00:07:11.520 | Even deaf people listen to something.
00:07:14.220 | Everybody's listening.
00:07:17.380 | If you wanna listen to a music group, you make provisions.
00:07:21.920 | You have a tape deck in the car, and you have a tape.
00:07:26.060 | If you wanna listen to the news, you make provisions.
00:07:28.920 | You have a radio in the kitchen,
00:07:31.040 | or you make sure the TV is on
00:07:32.760 | at the right time in the evening.
00:07:34.360 | You make provisions, you take steps,
00:07:36.300 | so you can listen to what you want to listen to.
00:07:39.120 | If you wanna listen to the latest tale told by John Grisham,
00:07:44.120 | think of this, 'cause I walked into the Gatwick Airport
00:07:48.500 | in London, and in the London Airport bookstore,
00:07:53.500 | there's walls of John Grisham novels,
00:07:57.400 | with big signs that says,
00:07:58.960 | "The most popular author in the world."
00:08:03.000 | So I saw every other person had Rainmaker,
00:08:05.640 | and on the plane it looked like.
00:08:07.240 | If you wanna listen, if you wanna listen,
00:08:12.080 | you buy, you move, you get, you position yourself,
00:08:17.080 | you take steps, you make provisions,
00:08:20.400 | so that you can listen if you wanna listen.
00:08:23.480 | And everybody's listening to something,
00:08:24.960 | and I'm asking you, what are you listening to?
00:08:27.360 | If you wanna listen to a missionary,
00:08:30.880 | who's in a hard place, like Liberia,
00:08:34.600 | or Sierra Leone, or Zaire, or Congo,
00:08:39.600 | you buy a computer and get on email,
00:08:42.440 | you download a couple times a day
00:08:44.160 | to make sure you don't miss it
00:08:45.520 | more than a couple hours worth.
00:08:47.440 | You take steps, if you wanna listen,
00:08:50.000 | you take steps and you listen,
00:08:52.120 | and everybody's listening,
00:08:53.680 | and I'm asking, what are you listening to?
00:08:57.280 | What are you listening to?
00:08:58.600 | The first commandment,
00:09:02.760 | the first commandment in the book of Hebrews is listen.
00:09:08.680 | Listen, please listen to Jesus.
00:09:13.600 | Don't drift away.
00:09:16.280 | Don't turn the radio up so loud.
00:09:18.520 | Don't turn the TV on so long.
00:09:20.840 | Don't read the novel so consistently
00:09:23.400 | that you don't tune in over and over and over
00:09:26.960 | to see and consider and hear Jesus.
00:09:30.360 | That's what he's pleading,
00:09:31.600 | and that's what I'm pleading this morning.
00:09:34.280 | The whole first chapter is written without any command
00:09:39.320 | in order to make the command light and easy.
00:09:44.600 | This is not hard, folks.
00:09:49.760 | Listening is easy.
00:09:52.440 | That's why we do it all day long.
00:09:56.000 | It's easy.
00:09:57.640 | Having the radio off in the car
00:10:00.080 | is harder than having it on.
00:10:02.760 | Test yourself.
00:10:04.200 | Listening is easy.
00:10:06.080 | God is not a meanie.
00:10:09.480 | God spent 14 verses
00:10:14.760 | describing the spectacular superiority
00:10:19.480 | of his final word, Jesus Christ,
00:10:22.040 | over all angels and all television and all radio
00:10:25.960 | and all novels and all business and all commerce
00:10:28.840 | and all leisure and all education
00:10:31.520 | and everything in the universe
00:10:33.040 | so that when we get to this easy command,
00:10:35.760 | it would feel easy.
00:10:38.400 | Only one thing makes it hard,
00:10:40.120 | if you don't wanna listen.
00:10:41.400 | - Having the radio off in the car
00:10:43.960 | is harder than having it on.
00:10:46.400 | There's a need for silence for sure,
00:10:48.160 | a relevant point for the digital age
00:10:49.960 | drawn from Hebrews 2.1
00:10:52.040 | in a clip taken from Pastor John's sermon
00:10:53.760 | on April 28th, 1996,
00:10:55.800 | titled "The Danger of Drifting from the Word."
00:10:59.720 | You can find it online at desiringgod.org.
00:11:03.240 | And if you have a sermon clip to share,
00:11:06.320 | email me, give me your name, hometown,
00:11:08.240 | the sermon title, the timestamp
00:11:09.600 | of where the clip happens in the audio,
00:11:10.920 | and make a note of what stands out to you in it.
00:11:13.640 | Put the word clip in the subject line of an email
00:11:15.720 | and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:19.120 | Askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:22.680 | Well, speaking of a culture as pop media,
00:11:26.360 | the Apostle Paul was opposed
00:11:28.200 | to the cultural myths of his day.
00:11:31.320 | So in light of what Paul said against ancient mythology,
00:11:34.480 | how do we view our current cultural myths today?
00:11:39.120 | Are captivating novels and superhero movies
00:11:42.360 | and long running TV series,
00:11:44.280 | does Paul's concern apply to the fictional media
00:11:47.400 | of our culture today or not?
00:11:50.680 | I'm your host Tony Renke.
00:11:52.480 | We will find out on Friday.
00:11:54.320 | We'll see you then.
00:11:55.280 | (upbeat music)
00:11:57.880 | (upbeat music)
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