Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3440
“Hear you Him.” Matthew 17:5.
WHEN our Lord Jesus Christ was transfigured, there came a Voice from the bright, overshadowing cloud, which said, “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear you Him.” It was the Voice of the Father concerning His Son—a testimony to His Person, a notification of His office, an announcement of His authority to teach and to legislate. You can understand how imperative it then was for those who heard it to heed Him. But now He is gone up from us. He has entered into the excellent Glory—He no more teaches in our streets, yet still, as though present with us, He speaks to us. By the written Word, His sayings are handed down to us Infallibly. Often times, when the Holy Spirit rests upon God’s servants, they become as the voice of Christ to us, and when that same blessed Spirit, as the Comforter, brings to our remembrance the things of Christ, does it not seem as though Jesus, Himself, spoke to our souls? The admonition is not out of date—it has not lost its telling point or its vital force. Still does the Father say to us concerning His well-beloved Son, “Hear you Him.” Let us proceed to meditate on this sacred charge. The three little words may give rise to four short questions. Why? What? How? When?
I. Why Should We Hear Him?
It might serve for a sufficient answer, had we no other reply, because God, Himself, commands us! This injunction comes of the Father, “Hear you Him.” Over and over again are we enjoined to listen to the voice of Christ. Every messenger from God ought to have our respectful attention—how much more the greatest of all messengers—that Messenger of the Covenant, the Messiah, the Sent One, the Apostle and High Priest of our profession? Did not Jehovah, Himself, say, “This is My Son”? It seemed reasonable that the Son should receive more reverence than any of the servants. If senators and patriots, counselors and Prophets, had been stoned and cast out of the vineyard, deference might yet be paid to the Son! If their perverseness had refused Him homage, their scruples might have sheltered Him from indignity. Surely they would not go so far as to cast out the Son, Himself! There is a willfulness, a defection of heart, an enormity of sin in refusing to hear the Christ of God, for which it is difficult to find terms. Appointed, anointed, commissioned of the Father to speak to us, to confer with us, to make known among us the mind and will of our great and gracious Sovereign, it becomes treason and blasphemy of the highest order and the deepest dye for us to refuse to heed His Presence or listen to His words!
Why hear Him? do you ask? Does not our lord Jesus Christ, Himself, deserve to be heard?Peerless among the princes of Heaven, is He not very God of very God? And immaculate among the children of men, is He not Man of the substance of His mother? Here is a double claim upon our attention. Beaming with Divinity, instinct with Humanity, He speaks as never man spoke, clothing the highest oracles in the most familiar parables. And will you not hear what this God-Man has to say? Is He not perfect in wisdom, pure in motive and undeviating in truthfulness? To whom should we listen, if we turn away from Him? He has all those high sanctions which should claim our allegiance and all those sweet traits of Character which should attract our regard. If we will not listen to such an one as Jesus of Nazareth, the gentle, and meek, and lowly, yet the truthful, the honest, and the brave—to whom will we ever lend an attentive ear? O sons of men, there was never mentor or orator so worthy of your regard as Jesus Christ! Never philosopher who had such maxims to deliver, or such mysteries to unfold as this Man—the Son of God—the Incarnate Wisdom!
Why will you not hear Him, when the message He has come to communicate concerns yourselves, your present and future welfare, your most solemn interests? The tidings He brings are, indeed, laden with ten thousand blessings for us, if
we will but incline our ears and listen to them. He comes to redress our grievances, to retrieve our disasters, to redeem our souls, to secure our prosperity, to effect our salvation! As an Ambassador from God, He comes, not to treat upon small matters, to settle petty disputes, or to advise upon local or temporary affairs, but with supreme authority to show how sinful man may be reconciled to his Maker, how the foul stains of transgression may be washed away and scarlet sins become white as snow! He comes to tell us how we may escape the impending doom of Hell and how we may attain an inheritance in Heaven! To fit us for that high estate, and that blessed society, He comes to cleanse us from our corruptions and to endow us with a nature that is Divine, and faculties that are suited to the celestial Glory! Such a message as this should enamor our very selfishness and compel our ambition to regard it with favor. Hear you Him! O you sick and wounded, will you not listen to the Physician? O you bankrupt debtors, will you not listen to the Jubilee trumpet that proclaims your debts paid and your forfeited rights restored? O you outcasts, wandering all forlorn, in climates uncongenial to your health, your peace, your homely joys—will you not heed the voice of a Guide who comes to conduct you in safety to your fatherland? O you despairing souls, He sets before you an open door! You famished poor, He invites you to a banquet—a banquet richly provisioned with all the dainties of eternal love! With such words upon His lips, such blessed news to bring to such needy creatures, our Lord Jesus Christ may well claim to be heard!
There is a further argument which ought to have thrilling force among full many of you, my Hearers. With what zest should we, who profess to be His disciples, hear Him. Years ago some of us took His easy yoke upon our shoulders and we bless His name it has never galled us—neither are we weary of the load. He is our Master and our Lord, and if He is so, surely our proper place is at His feet. It is an ill thing of us, and untruthful, if we call Him Master, and yet will not believe what He teaches! If we say to Him, “Rabboni,” and yet turn aside to hail some fellow creature—be he a noted saint long since dead, or a party leader who still survives among us, as our captain and commander-in-chief. If Peter is our master, let us call him so! If Calvin is our master, let us call him so! And if Wesley is our master, let us call him so—but if we are disciples of Jesus, then let us follow Jesus—and follow Him with other men only so far as we perceive they followed Christ! Hear you Him, O you disciples, if you are His disciples. Will you enlist as His soldiers and shrink from His lead? Will you engage to be His servants and yet violate His orders? Will you who declare that He is your Chief and wear His uniform, cede your homage to other masters? No, by all that is honest and just, pure and comely, and of good report, the shame would fester in every Believer’s conscience! You call Him, “Master and Lord,” and you say well, for so He is— but prove yourselves to be truly His disciples by listening to Him!
To the rest—(I am grieved at heart that I should have to speak of the rest, but we know there is such a remnant here)—to those who are not His disciples, there is an argument, that if it counts not now, will count hereafter. You must hear Him in the Day of Grace, or else you shall hear Him in that Day of Judgmentand perish forever! Do you refuse to hear Christ? There are not any tidings of mercy to be heard elsewhere! “See that you refuse not Him that speaks, for if they escaped not who refused Him that spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him that speaks from Heaven.” O Sinners, hear you the Savior’s voice! O wanderers, hear your Shepherd’s voice! O you dying, hear your Physician’s voice! I will add, O you dead, hear you the voice of the Great Quickener, for the time is come that they who are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man—and they that hear Him shall live! “Do you Hear
Him?”
Thus with general arguments suitable to all and with special arguments suitable for those who have believed—and for those who have not believed—we leave with you a few of the reasons why. Our second catch-word is—