Hebrews 12:25

Hebrews 12:25

Refusing God's Voice.

I. We have here, first of all, the solemn possibility of refusal. It is possible for Christian people so to cherish wills and purposes which they know to be in diametrical and flagrant contradiction to the will and purpose of God, that obstinately they prefer to stick by their own desires, and, if it may be, to stifle the voice of God.

II. Note the sleepless vigilance necessary to counteract the tendency to refusal. "See that ye refuse not." A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptation around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle. "Blessed is the man that feareth always," says the psalmist. There is no security for us except in the continual temper of rooted self-distrust, for there is no motive that will drive us to the continual confidence in which alone is security but the persistent pressure of that sense that in ourselves we are nothing and cannot but fall. The dark underside of the triumphant confidence which on its sunny side looks up to heaven and receives its light is that self-distrust which says always to ourselves, "We have to take heed lest we refuse Him that speaketh."

III. Note the solemn motives by which this sleepless vigilance is enforced. The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience; the voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty and of the clearer utterances which are granted us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it. "See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh," for the clearer, the tenderer, the more stringent, the beseechings of the love and the warnings of Christ's voice, the more solemn the consequences if we stop our ears to it.

A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers,p. 135.