How Jesus Speaks Through The Bible Series

For past 8 months now we’ve been studying the life of Jesus… (birth, death, one-on-one, relationship principles, things I wish never said…)… Some might say, “All that is fine and good…but where is Jesus today?” If He’s still alive…how can I hear him speak in my life? Now, when we talk about people listening to God and God talking to us, a lot of people believe that if you’re hearing from God, you’re some kind of crazy freak! They think that when Jesus talks to a person it's something unusual or extraordinary. But the fact is, He does it all the time. I remember a number of years ago Time magazine came out with a headline that said, "God is Dead". The next day reporters lined up at Billy Graham's home and asked him, "Is God dead, Dr. Graham?" He said "Are you kidding? I just talked to Him!"

Any of us can talk to God and God wants to talk to us. In fact, according to the bible. When He created you He gave you with the ability to hear Him, to listen to Him, and to converse with Him. It’s the way He wired us. It's nothing unusual and all of us have the potential to do it! Job 33:14 "God does speak, sometimes one way and sometimes another, even though people may not understand it." Job is saying the problem isn’t that God isn't talking. The problem is that we’re not listening. Jesus wants to have a personal and intimate relationship with us, but how many of you know that you can't have a relationship with someone without communication? Right? SO… How DOES JESUS TALK TO US? Well, 1st of all you need to know that He’s not limited to any single way. In fact, there are a lot of different ways he chooses to get through to us, and we’re going to discuss each one in this series. In fact, the Bible describes some really spectacular ways He chose to communicate with His people in the past….

• One time God spoke through a burning bush.

• Another time He spoke with the use of a cloud.

• Sometimes He spoke through angels.

• One time He spoke through a pillar of fire.

• Still another time, (almost as a way to prove that He can get a hold of us whenever He wants too)… He spoke to through a donkey!

The bottom line is… when God wants to get a hold of you… He will! He can do it in supernatural ways like dreams and visions…sometimes He’ll speak to you through others. He can use my experiences to talk to me (and we’re going to explore each of these in the next few weeks)… but today we're going to talk about the #1 most common way that God speaks to us. The #1 way Jesus speaks to us today is through the bible. Jesus made it very clear, that the bible would be His primary mode of communication in Luke 24, while walking with his disciples on the Road to Emmaus. After His death, the disciples went into hiding and deep depression. At one time they believed that He was the prophesied Savior and Redeemer of Israel, but after his death, they’d lost total confidence in Him. Even though He’d told them over and over that he would die and then be resurrected… they just didn’t believe Him.

Now it was 3 days after his death. There were rumors that some women had seen him alive, but they figured they were seeing things. They probably thought… “You know how emotional women can get!” All the sudden, as 2 disciples were walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a man joined them and struck up a conversation. He asked why they were so depressed, and they responded, “Where in the world have you been? Didn’t you hear about Jesus being crucified?” He listened to their tale of woe up until the point where they mentioned the empty tomb, and then spoke up…READ Luke 24:25-26. Now at this point, you’d think that Jesus would simply reveal Himself and get it over with, but that’s not what He did… instead… He preached a sermon to them… READ Luke 24:27.

Here it is, the 1st Easter morning and Jesus is preaching one of the greatest sermons ever preached to only 2 people! Using the writings of Moses and all the prophets from the O.T., Jesus went on for hours showing them all the verses that spoke about Him! So here’s my question…Why didn’t Jesus reveal Himself to them at the beginning of the walk and be done with it? Why did he take them to the scriptures? Answer: Jesus was telling us from the very beginning of the churchs history, that the primary way he can be known is through the scriptures. See, the bible is good for more than just teaching us theological truths…but in it we can find the person and voice of Jesus!