The Voice of Our Creator - Kyle Yule

Well, good morning. Um, the message—or the title of my message today is "The Voice of Our Creator." Uh, and I would—I'm going to be looking at, um, the aspect of, um, gentleness. And so what is—what is the definition of gentle? It is free from harshness, sternness, or violence. It is soft, delicate, and kind. Um, I thought of gentleness as a mother's hug or a father bending down and listening to the story of his child, no matter how crazy and wide off it is.

It's the laugh of a grandparent, the flying of a butterfly in the wind. Gentleness is all these things, and it's all around us in each and every part of our life, because I believe gentleness is the voice in the heart of God.

And so this morning, I'm—I'm going to be looking at possibly one of my favorite accounts in—in Scripture, um, that shows this aspect, and it's 3rd Kingdoms or 1st Kings, chapter 19, verse 10. 3rd Kingdoms, 1st Kings, chapter 19, verse 10.

And so it says, "There he went into a cave and rested. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him and said, 'Elijah, what are you doing here?' And Elijah said, 'I have been—I have been very zealous for the Lord Almighty since the children of Israel have forsaken you.

They tore down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.' Then he replied, 'Go out tomorrow and stand on the mountain before the Lord. Behold, the Lord will pass by. Before the Lord, a great and powerful wind will be rending the mountains and shattering the rocks.

But the Lord will not be in the wind. After the wind, an earthquake; but the Lord will not be in an earthquake. And after the earthquake, there will be a fire; but the Lord will not be in the fire.

And after the fire, there will be a sound of a gentle breeze, and the Lord will be there.'" And I love this—this passage for many reasons, because I think it shows a lot about the character of God. But today, I'd like to look at just three aspects and attributes that we can apply to our life as Christians today.

And so the first one is, how does God speak? And I find it interesting that the word of the Lord tells Elijah that—that before the Lord, there's going to be a bunch of things that he is not in. He's not in the great and powerful wind. He's not in the earthquake. He's not in the fire. And after all of these things have passed, God is in the gentle breeze.

And it stirs something up inside of me to know that—that God is not one who's showing off his power just to show off this power.

But he shows it off in a way that's gentle and loving.

He has the spirit of gentleness. And I think God does work in the other ways. Right? He works in the ways of the great and powerful wind when he moves the mountains and shatters the rocks.

When he moves the mountains in the—the heart of an unbeliever, and he shatters the rocks of the life and heart and heart of the lost. He works in the earthquake to shake the foundation of sand that the foolish build on, so they can start new on the solid rock of Christ, his kingdom.

And he uses the fire to show those of a life of disobedience what it's going to end in.

But God lives in the gentle breeze.

It's interesting because all of these things pass before, and then the Lord is there.

And it makes me wonder that if God lived in the others, we wouldn't have to change. We could just let God do and, you know, live our sinful lives. And when he shatters the rocks, then, oh, I know I'm doing something bad. So then I'll just alter my life, and I'll just wait again till he—till he shatters the other rock. Or I can just build on this foundation of sand and foolishness until God shakes my life, and then I'll just build on it again and keep going.

But if God has to break the heart and heart, that means the person is continually hardening their heart, in turn pushing God away. And likewise, if the fool keeps building his house on sand, God's going to let him have what he desires.

And next, we see that God is not in the fire. And so often I hear that people comment about what they think about Christianity, and the first thing that comes to mind is the hellfire and brimstone preachers on the street corner.

And while, yes, that has brought people out of a life of wickedness and shaken them to see the fear of God, but if we live a life full of fear of what God is going to do to us, if we mess up, we're never going to experience the great love that the Father has for us.

If a life of fear is what drives us to follow God, in turn, we will not see the love behind his commands.

And finally, we see that God is in the gentle breeze. This is where God builds his house. Gentleness will soften a heart that is growing hard. It will humbly tell us when we are being foolish. And finally, it changes our look on God.

If we listen to the gentle breeze, it will walk us to a life of deep love with our Father.

And I believe once we realize that God's character is one of a gentle spirit, we will grow in our relationship with God and with others.

We can see this in the life of Jesus and how he cared for the sick and poor, how he told the Pharisees that he desires mercy and not sacrifice. And after his resurrection, when he eats breakfast on the beach with his disciples, the same people that left him to die and rejected him, Jesus shows us that even in the hardness of life, gentleness is what he expects from us.

But gentleness also has another aspect to it, and that's quietness.

The gentle breeze is something that is almost inaudible if you're not listening for it.

And I'm convinced that this is how God speaks the majority of the time, quietly. He desperately wants us to listen, but it's up to us if we want to or not.

And it reminds me of, I don't know if you enjoy to listen to the wind, but I do. And I'm not talking about the huge gusts that go across and make everything shatter and move, or the harsh winds, but the wind that you almost have to hold your breath to hear.

You get to hear that peaceful breeze that blows by. And I imagine that's similar to what Elijah would have experienced.

When I was searching through the early Christians, most of them, when they referred to this verse, used the term "a scarcely audible voice."

And it's interesting because a lot of times when I think of God, I think of this booming voice that comes and makes things so clear. And while I don't want to say that that's not how God speaks, I think God speaks in a way that we need to block out all the noise of life and focus on just the word of God.

He speaks in a way that we need to block out all the distractions, the busyness, so easily creep in and become noise that's louder than God.

For most of my life, I had always thought that that was something that will come naturally when I'm older, when I'm wiser and have a couple more years under my belt in maturity. Hearing God—hearing from God just becomes so easy. It's—it's just natural.

But like all other things in the kingdom life, it's a discipline that requires devotion. It's not something that comes naturally. We get and have to tune our ears to hear the voice of God. And why is this important? It's important because we have to understand that God speaks quietly. He does not force anyone to talk with him.

Now, my hearing isn't the greatest. When—when there's a lot of people around and there's background noise, my hearing with conversations is very bad. I oftentimes have to lean in and ask people to repeat themselves a couple of times. And I know I'm too young to have hearing problems, but in this instance, it works out very well because now I am forced to listen intentionally to every person that I talk to.

And I have to really focus in on what they're saying and listen very intentionally.

And that's how God wants us to listen to him, very intentionally.

So that brings me to my next question. How do we listen?

And I've often wondered about the prophecy that Jesus quotes, Matthew 13:13-16, which is, "Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, 'Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive. For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed.

Blessed they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears. Blessed they should understand with their hearts in turn, so that I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.'" Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand. And their ears are hard of hearing.

We think about it, and Jesus is revealing the mysteries of the kingdom of God to these people. He's literally telling them how heaven is—is going to play out here on earth, and he's calling us to live that now, not to start when—when we die, but to start now, so that in turn, we can inherit the kingdom in full when it comes.

But only some were willing to listen.

The scribes and Pharisees and many of the Jews had made pride their earplugs. They could not hear the quietness of the Christ.

To understand the heart of God is to hear his quiet voice.

And I also thought to have a quiet spirit is to be plain. Now, I love the fact that the Anabaptists have this term, plain people. But I want to ask, what is the reason for being plain?

What if we're plain because we have a quiet spirit? What if we do things out of humility and to not draw attention to ourselves with our things, but with our godliness?

I like what 1 Peter 3:4 says. It says, "Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle spirit, gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God." And Jesus says in Matthew 5:15, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

If our lives are too loud, we will not be able to hear the quiet voice that God speaks in. And so what is loudness? How do we listen to this quiet voice?

Well, I believe loudness is—is who we let influence our lives. Who are the people that we're listening to? Who are them that are talking into our ear?

Loudness is not being content. It's always searching for something greater.

And loudness is having constant entertainment.

I remember the first time that I had went to a Mennonite church, the service was on contentment, and the man at the front had said that something along the lines of, "Are you content with just staying at home?"

And coming from a life that I was constantly on the run and going to so many different things, it really challenged me, and I had found a blessing in it.

Loudness isn't—loudness isn't that our lives aren't busy.

It's what we're filling them with. Are we filling them with kingdom duties that are godly, or are we filling them with things that don't matter? That in the end, when our lives die, they will die too.

I find it interesting that Elijah is in a cave.

He's in this secret place, and he hears from the Lord.

And we can see this paralleled when Jesus tells us to go into our closets to pray, where we have a space that we can walk into and let all the distractions of life fade away, that we have a space when we talk to the Lord, we will be able to hear his quiet voice.

I thought it was interesting in Exodus 33:7, where Moses sets up his tent outside of the camp, and everyone who sought the Lord had to leave the camp and go out to the tabernacle of meeting.

Isn't that something?

That Moses said, "I don't want my camp, my tent, when people want to go and seek the Lord. I don't want them to be able to do it within the camp. I want it to be," it says in the passage, "far away from the camp," that they have to take and leave their—the noise of their life, their home, their work, and all that stress that is accompanied with that, and they leave it behind to go far away from it so that they can hear from God. So I don't think God told or had Moses set up his tent far away so that the people could talk to God. They could—they could do that in the—in the camp, I believe.

But I think the reason that Moses had him, the reason that God had Moses put his tent far away from the camp, was so that the people could hear God, so that when God spoke, there wasn't a bunch of other stuff blocking out his voice.

So then how do we live? How do we live this out?

I remember when I had first come to the realization of kingdom life and this aspect of producing fruits of godliness. And sadly, looking back, I was not very gentle.

Most of my conversations with people were very defensive and usually trying to show them that they were wrong. And I wish I would have been more gentle. I think it produces more fruit in that aspect.

I find that Jesus never forces people into his kingdom. In fact, he tells us to count the cost of being a disciple. It's a choice that every person gets to make. You get to walk up to the gentle yoke, hook in, and start pulling with Jesus at our side. He doesn't force us to.

And I thought about our Sunday school lesson about the harshness of the Saul and what he did. And it made me think, looking back at the life of Jesus, there were a couple of times that maybe he would have been a little harsh when he cleared the temple with a whip, flipped the tables of the money exchangers, when he points at the scribes and Pharisees and calls them the vipers.

And I want to be clear that I don't want to put this aspect in the fullness of Jesus's life. I think there is a time and a place for—I think there's a maturity that needs to be there in order to do those things that obviously God has. And maybe it takes a lot of heart preparation and prayer before we engage into that.

But the majority of Jesus's life was gentle.

We can see that in the Gospels.

And so likewise, our lives should also be gentle, free from harshness, sternness, and violence. Be kind and soft with people when we're defending our beliefs and our actions.

We do a lot of things that are weird and offensive to a lot of people, to the outside world. And it's very easy to say something that strikes the wrong chord and has them move on. And while, yes, there are some things that we should be very stern and stand our ground on, we should be careful in how we word them.

And finally, I'd like to look at this aspect of quietness in the sense of prayer. I think it would be very hard to look at what quietness is without talking about prayer, because I think that's what prayer is supposed to be. It's a time when we commune with our Father, a time to silence our souls, to listen to God.

And I often hear the argument, "Can we really pray without ceasing?" as Paul tells us to in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

And maybe I'm going to be bold and say that not only we can, but I think that's what God is expecting us to do. There's a book that I've been reading for a while and picked up and put back down, and it's probably only this thick.

And when I finish it, I'm probably going to start it again. And it's called The Practice of the Presence of God.

If you have not read it, I recommend it. And if you have, read it again.

Because in the book, the man Brother Lawrence tells us that he does this every day. This is one quote from the book. He says, "I refer to this as practicing the presence of God, or perhaps to speak better, it is a continual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God. This constant communion with God often produces great joy and rapture, both inwardly, at times outwardly. In fact, this joy is sometimes so great that I am forced to hold it in check and to keep it hidden from others."

To pray without ceasing is to live a life of quietness within your soul.

I'm not saying God wants us to be voluntarily practicing muteness, but to be in a position that our lives are never filled with noise that blocks out our conversation and ability to hear from our Father.

Earlier in the book, Lawrence is a cook for a—I forget, it was a group of, I think, anyways, he's a cook for a bunch of people. And he says this, "For me, the time of work does not differ from the time of prayer.

Even in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, when several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at communion." And that was so beautiful to me.

The fact that in the busyness and the hurriness of life, he can find this sense of a gentle breeze, of a tranquility that God has given him, even in amongst all that.

And I think back to our passage where Elijah is being hunted down to be killed. And if you read a little bit earlier, he falls asleep and he's awakened, and he eats a meal, and he falls back to sleep, and he's awakened again to eat another meal, and then he goes, and he's always on this run, and then he finds this cave and he rests in the cave.

And when he rests in the cave, the word of the Lord comes to him, and he reveals all these things.

And I think that's—that is what Brother Lawrence, that is what the gentle breeze is. It's to find that rest in God, even in the hurry of life. And I don't think that we are going to be able to fully block out the noise of our lives.

But I think it's the fact that we should be able to hear God over all of that noise.

And so I'd like to end with a challenge.

And that challenge is, are we in our everyday life having a quietness in our soul that allows us to experience the tranquility of God? Are we living in the gentle breeze?