Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end.  As it is said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."  Now who were they who heard and yet were rebellious?  Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses?  But with whom was he angry forty years?  Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?  And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who were disobedient?  So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.  Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it.  For indeed the good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

The Word teaches us about ourselves, about our own hearts.  We are warned that hearing and listening are two different things.  Nearly the whole world today has heard God's Word.  But to listen to the Word means stripping off the old man and radically realigning oneself to Christ by a complete change of heart and through repentance, belief and obedience.  "Remember then what you received and heard; obey it and repent."  (Revelation 3.3)  "Some hear the word and receive it with joy but in a time of testing fall away for lack of root.  Some hear the word and hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance."  (Luke 8.13-15)

The invitation comes through hearing, communion comes through listening.  "Listen!  I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me."  (Revelation 3.20)  The one who hears but does not listen is the one whose life is built on sand.  The one who listens acts on God's word and has a life built on rock.  (Matthew 7.24-27)  "But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves."  (James 1.22)  The one who listens is anxious to persevere and hold the Word fast and pay great attention and reverence lest he backslide.  "We must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it."  (Hebrews 2.1)

"Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"  (Luke 11.28)