Hearing the Voice of God

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good to see y'all. Blessing to be here.

As Justin said, the title of my message is, uh, "A Book Which Is Now Speaking." It's funny when you start to study sometimes, uh, where you end up, and then sometimes, I don't know, it's one of these subjects that I feel like I—the more I studied, the more I had questions. So anyways, we'll see how it goes here.

I'd like to start with a verse in, uh, 1 John 1:1.

It says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the W—and the Word was God." That's in John 1:1. And I—and the title of my message is this idea: "A Book Which Is Now Speaking." I wanna think about the voice of God. Now, as David said, God didn't tell me to preach this message this morning.

But one of the great realities that we have to face is, or, or come to terms with is, what do you do with the voice of God? How do you hear the voice of God? What is the voice of God to you?

We hear a lot about it, the voice of God, and it's interesting.

Uh, people go all over the place with the voice of God, what it means, and how to relate to it.

I believe a new world would arise out of the religious myths if we approach our Bible with the idea that it's not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking.

Sometimes I wonder if much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of, or a wrong feeling for the Scriptures. It's almost like we have this idea that a silent God suddenly began to speak in a book, and when the book was finished, he fell back into silence forever.

And now we just read this book as a record of what God has said when he was for a brief time in a speaking and talking mood.

If we have notions like this in our heads, then how can we believe?

The facts are that God is not silent and has never been silent.

I would argue that it's the nature of God to speak.

Might there be a reason that the second person of the Trinity is called the Word?

Could it be possible the Bible is the outcome of God's continuous speech? Could it be the declaration of his mind put in familiar human words?

The universal voice of God, by the ancient Hebrews often called wisdom, was said to be everywhere, sounding and searching throughout the earth, seeking some response from the sons of men.

The eighth chapter of the book of Hebrews begins, "Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice?" The writer then pictures wisdom as this beautiful woman standing on the top of a high place.

By the way and the places of the of the past, she sounds her voice from every quarter so that no one may miss hearing it.

"Unto you, O men, I call my voices to the sons of men." Then she pleads for the simple and the foolish to give ear to her words.

It's a spiritual response for which this wisdom of God is pleading, a response which she has always sought and is but rarely able to secure.

The tragedy is this: that he—that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing, and too often we have trained our ears not to hear.

So my goal this morning is to impress upon you with two thoughts.

One, God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. And two, there are many ways that we can hear God's speaking voice, but what value do you place the Scriptures in the lineup of God speaking?

You know, the voice of God is an awesome thing. Who can get ahold of it? It's powerful. It's intimidating. It's speaking everywhere, and it's almost elusive.

I believe that the voice of God is the most powerful force in nature, in the universe. And be—indeed, maybe it's the only force in nature.

The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written, it is confined and limited by the necessity of, of ink and paper and leather. The voice of God, however, is alive and free as a sovereign God is free.

He says, "The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life." The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe.

Think about that.

It is the present voice which makes the written word all-powerful.

Otherwise, it would be locked in slumber within the covers of the book.

How do you hear God's voice?

I think there's two primary ways. One is through the Word, and the other is through worship.

But hearing seems to be our problem, as someone has said, "Hurry is the enemy of hearing."

I think when you read the Scripture and when you—when you read it, I think the, the very nature of Scripture is speaking and hearing. And I wanna give some examples. In John 1:5, he says this: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." So we have this shepherd and thieves and robbers, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls him, and he calls his own sheep by the name and leads them out.

And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, and they know his voice. So we have shepherd, we have voices, we have the sheep following and, and listening to the shepherd.

So we have hearing, and we have speaking.

"Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers." So what voice are you following?

John 10:16 says this: "The other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, they also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd." So he's calling out from the Jews into the Gentiles, all people. If he hears the vo—if you hear the voice of God, if you hear the shepherd, you can follow. But you have to hear. Are we hearing?

John 16:13: "However, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he tell—and he will tell us things to come."

Do you hear—do you hear the hearing and the speaking in the Scriptures?

The voice of God. Even nature is portrayed as speaking. And think about this. Um, this is an awesome thought. I don't—it's a really hard thing to comprehend. In Psalms 2, it says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge." It's an ongoing thing.

The word of God—the word of God is quick and powerful. What's that mean? "In the beginning, he spoke to nothing, and it became something. Chaos heard it, and it became order. Darkness heard it, and it became light. And God said, and it was so." I think about this verse in John. Have we—have we given attention—attention to this—to this thought? "This was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The word of God affects the hearts of all men as light in the soul. In the hearts of all men, the light shines. The word sounds, and there is no escaping them."

Something like this would of necessity be so if God is alive and in his world. And John says that it—that it is so. Even those persons who have never heard of the Bible have still been preached to with sufficient clarity to remove every excuse from their hearts forever.

How's that possible?

The voice of God through nature. How many of you guys have a Bible? Like, just massive amounts of Bibles and books and internet and all this. And yet, it's through nature they have—they're without excuse. Like, how is that possible? "Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts, the meanwhile, other excusing or else excusing one another.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." I hear a lot today about people wanting to hear the voice of God.

And yet, we have nature speaking and telling us we're without excuse. Do we compute? How do we understand and comprehend this?

I think knowing the voice of God can be difficult. And we got—actually got a fair amount of, um, people in the Bible that talk about it. I'll give you three. Do you ever think of Samuel? The voice of God spoke to him. What did he do three times?

He didn't know who it was. He was like, "Who is it?" He was, "You thought it was Samuel." Or no, Eli. Eli. He got the wrong guy. Samuel thought it was Eli. Three times he said that. I think the voice of God is—do we know it? Are we familiar with it? Think about Gideon.

When God came in to confirm that he was to go and fight. I actually don't recommend doing what Gideon did. I actually think it was a bad thing. But he tested God three times. Why? He wanted to be sure that it was the voice of God. That wasn't a good thing.

I have my reasons for that, and I have time to go into that. Elisha. He wanted a double portion just to be sure.

And yet, I think the voice of God is a friendly voice.

No one needs fear to listen to it unless he has already made up his mind to resist it.

I think that's important. I think it's okay to be a Samuel and not be sure. But he didn't resist it. He was willing to listen once he figured it out. Gideon took a while to get there, but he did follow through. Many people chase signs and flash to find God's voice.

And it tends to be either people fall on the side that they go down this road where God doesn't speak, or they go down this road that every waking moment, every second, God's speaking to them. And in John 14:21, "He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father." Now, most of us have heard that verse before, that first part, but have we ever dialed in on the last section? "And I will love him and manifest myself to him." If you want God to manifest yourself—himself to you, you have to walk in obedience and learn to—and when you do hear the voice, respond.

When you do read the Scriptures, you have to obey. And then you experience the manifestation. It doesn't happen the other way around. If we don't obey what the Bible has already spoken to us, how do we expect to hear more from God?

I hear so many people wanting to know what—hear the voice of God. And we have a thousand things I can put in their face, and they won't listen. And they wanna know more about God. I don't think it's possible. That's my personal opinion.

In fact, I actually believe that if you truly hear God speak to you, it changes everything.

I don't think God's speaking to you is this minute-by-minute walk, but rather, I think it would—it changes your identity. Look at Samuel. It changed his identity. Look at Gideon. He became a master leader. I think it changes how you look at the world.

I've had people ask me this question: Does God speak to you? Does he speak audibly to you?

And I would like to answer with this—with this answer. This is how I wanna answer him: No, much louder.

If God speaks to you, it is much more significant than simply God doing something for you. Do you hear what I just said? Much more significant. Everyone wants God to do something for them. But if you actually experience and listen to God and hear God's voice, it's much more significant.

It's much louder. I think it changes you permanently and how you approach the world and the things you do. When God spoke out of heaven to Jesus,

self-centered men who heard it explained it by natural causes. They said it thundered.

The habit of explaining the voice by appeals to natural law is at the very root of modern science. In the living, breathing cosmos, there's a mysterious something—too wonderful, too awful for any mind to understand. The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees and worships God.

The man of earth knows also but does not worship. He knows to examine, search to find the cause and the how of things. Just now, we happen to be living in a secular age, a modern age. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not of the worshiper.

We are more likely to explain than to adore. It thundered. We explain and go on our earthly way.

But still, the voice sounds and searches. The order and life of the world depends upon that voice. But men are mostly too busy or too stubborn to give attention. A.W. Tozer. Cherish what God has spoken to you. I'm not saying audibly, and I'm saying something he did. Make sure it's louder than that, but cherish what you know. Cherish the voice of God. Cherish what God has spoken to you.

You know what they are. Mark 4:24. "Then he said to them, 'Take heed what you hear, hearing and speaking in the Scripture. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you, and to you who hear, more will be given.'" Do you understand the significance of that verse?

The standard you use in hearing will be God's standard in giving to you. I think there's a direct connection, a direct correlation. People wonder why they don't—God doesn't give to them because they're not hearing. Whoever will listen will hear heaven speaking.

This is definitely not the day and age we live in. Men don't take kindly to exhortation to listen.

For listening is—is—is not today a part of popular religion. Many times, we're at the opposite end of the pole. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, sighs, and activity, and bluster can make a man dear to God.

Let's take heart. Be still and know that I am God. And still, he says, as if he means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence. Learn to listen. Learn to hear.

God did not write a book and send it by a messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a book and lives in his spoken words, constantly speaking his words and causing the power of them to persist across the years. The Bible will never be a living book to us until we're convinced that God is articulate in his universe.

To jump from a dead, impersonal world to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people.

They may admit that they should accept the Bible as the word of God, and they may try to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the words there on the page are actually for them. I hear it so often.

A man may say, "These words are addressed to me," and yet in his heart, not feel that and know that they are.

You can't think of God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book. You understand what I'm trying to communicate?

So when we think of the Scriptures, how do we think of that?

I repeat myself. I said this in the beginning. I think a new world will arise out of the religious myth when we approach our Bible with the idea that's not only a book which was once spoken but a book which is now speaking.

The prophets habitually said, "Thus saith the Lord." They meant their hearers to understand that God's speaking is in the continuous present.

We may use the present tense, the past tense, to indicate that at a certain time, a certain word of God was spoken. But a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken. Now, this is what helped me when I heard this analogy.

If God spoke the words and it's a continuous speaking, like, how do—what does that look like? And this—this helped me. As a child once born, continues to be alive. So when a child is born, he continues to be alive. When God spoke the word, okay, it continues to be alive.

And I think that's important to understand. It's not one and done. It's a continuing—a continuation. Or the world, once it's created, it continues to exist. So if God spoke it, it continues to exist. However, these are imperfect illustrations. For children die and words can burn out, but the word of our God endures forever.

So when we read the Scriptures, the word was spoken and it continues to exist or continues to live. If we wanna learn to know the Lord, open the Bible expecting it to speak to you.

Do not come with a notion that is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It's more than a thing. It's a voice. It's a word, the very word of the living God. And I'll end with this prayer.

It says, "Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears—my ears are weary with a thousand turbulent sounds which continuously assault them. Give me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to you, 'Speak, for thy servant heareth.'

Let me hear you speaking to my heart. Let me get used to the sound of your voice that it—its tones may be familiar when the sounds of the earth die away, and the only sound will be the music of your speaking voice."

Amen.