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!
Read 2 Timothy 3:16 with me…"The whole Bible was given to us by inspiration from God and is useful to teach us what is true and make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It is God's way of making us well prepared at every point." The Bible’s not just a good collection of wonderful thoughts and ideas of men, it’s more than just a nice collection of classic literature. Circle "by inspiration". The word literally means in Greek, "God breathed." In otherwords, this book is as reliable as the very words from God’s mouth. There’s no other book in the world like it. It can be counted on. It will guide you. It will correct you. It will comfort you. It will help you. Now, I admit that the Bible can be a very intimidating book. In the first place, how many other books do you own that are bound in leather? How many books that you know of have a # before each sentence? That's kind of strange! I've met some non-believers that don't even want to touch it! If you use an old translation you have all those thee's and thou's to contend with, as well as lots of words you don't understand and can’t pronounce. There are some strange names and places in this book…foreign words and customs that don't make sense. The Bible can be intimidating. But once you break the ice… once you ask Jesus to communicate to you through it’s words… you won’t be able to put it down!
But in order for that to happen…in order for me to hear Jesus’ words spoken through the Bible, I have to do 4 things. Here they are in order… #1 I have to…
1. ACCEPT it’s authority completely
My attitude towards the bible makes a world of difference when it comes to understanding it. It’s the reason that ‘believers’ get more out of the bible than ‘unbelievers’.
Read I Cor.2:14. What that vs. is saying is that unless you’re a ‘believer’ in the authority of God’s Word… unless you’re a Christian…unless you actually have God’s Spirit living inside of you…this book is going to be a total mystery to you! In fact, a lot of what you read is going to sail right over your head. That’s why the #1 complaint of non-Christians about the bible is… “I didn’t understand a thing I just read!” If that’s you…it’s not because you’re dumb… it’s because according to the bible itself…God’s thoughts need to be translated into our thoughts. And the only person qualified to do that… is the Spirit of God Himself… the HOLY SPIRIT! Without His Spirit in you, illuminating these pages, revealing it’s mysteries… you might as well be reading it in a foreign language! In otherwords, God’s ‘spiritual’ words, can only be fully understood by ‘spiritual people’… by that I mean, people who have fully repented of their sins, taken advantage of God’s gift of forgiveness for those sins, and then invited His Spirit it actually live inside of them!
Now read I Thess. 2:13 with me. Did you notice that the bible claims to be the very Words of God Himself? Accepting the bibles claim to the author Words of God… is a key issue!
One of the reasons there’s so much confusion in the world today is that people listen to, and accept too many different authorities. To the pt. that many are asking… “Who’s right?” “Who can we trust?” For example….
• In medicine… conflicting reports are constantly coming out as to what does and doesn’t cause cancer…Doc disagree!
• Economists disagree about what lifts a nation out of recession.
• Every politician I’ve ever heard claim to know the answers to our societal woes…but they all disagree!
Now everyone of us (whether we realize it or not) has an authority that we depend on and listen to in our life. For some people it’s the newspaper, for others it’s a professor at school, or maybe a doctor, a parent…and while all of those sources may contain some truth… for the Christian, God’s Word becomes that reliable source of authority.
For example… For yrs popular child psychologists told us that to discipline a child would somehow damage their fragile self-esteem, and that “negotiation” was the key to raising successful, well-adjusted children. Instead of forcing them to do what you want, we need to instead ‘verbalize’ our child’s feelings in a moment of conflict…
• ‘You want the water…but you’re angry because I brought it too late?”
• ‘You don’t want mommy to take the water back to the kitchen?”
• ‘You don’t like mommy because I make you take naps?’
• ‘You wish you could flush mommy down the toilet?”
The problem with that theory is… it doesn’t work! Kids raised under that false philosophy DON’T turn out to be well-adjusted and successful…they turn out to be selfish, spoiled brats! The bible had it right all along! Prov.22:15…”Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.” According to the bible, abundant love and firm discipline are the keys to raising successful, well-adjusted, productive adults. See, everytime we try to come up with our own ideas and stray from the authority of Jesus’ words as communicated in the bible… whether it’s in my personal finances, or in my relationship with my husband or wife, in child-rearing whatever… WE MESS UP ROYALLY! The problem with trusting “man-made” sources as the basis for your authority, is that they’re constantly changing, and most of us are unaware of the follow-up studies! See, these “changes” should be a sign to us that we don’t know what the heck we’re talking about!
Let me ask you… How many of you believe everything you read in the newspaper? Okay…how many of you believe everything you read in the bible? So why do we spend more time reading what we DON’T believe than what we DO? Doesn’t make sense! There’s only one reliable authority for life… the Bible. The bible’s been in the business of giving people instructions and guidelines for living for more than 4,000 yrs. And it still works!!! If you really want to hear Jesus speak to you about the problems and issues you face everyday…accept the bible’s claim to have the answers for your life’s problems… trust it as the final ‘say’ for the challenges of life. See, before I can begin to hear and then reap the great blessings found in the bible, I have to give it total authority in my life. Reading the bible, without having confidence that the words I’m reading are true… robs the Bible of its power in my life.
Which leads to the 2nd thing I need to do in order to hear Jesus speak to me through the bible…
2. HUMBLE myself consistently
Read Lk. 8:13,18. The word for ‘receive’ in the lit. grk means, “to welcome”. Like you’d welcome a guest into your home, we’re to welcome God’s Word into our hearts with an open, teachable attitude. Listen… this room is filled with invisible radio waves this morning. You can’t see them and you can’t hear them… unless you have a radio receiver. In the same way, Jesus is transmitting too! Only you won’t hear a thing until you put up your “heart antennae”, and tune into what the Spirit of God is saying to you through His word today. That starts with a receptive attitude. What that means is…without a humble heart, you’ll never hear Jesus speak to you through the bible.
Have you ever stopped to think about how humble God is? I know you’re not supposed to talk about this subject except around Christmas…but think about the birth of Jesus for a minute. The bible tells us in Isa.57:15, that God lives in a “high and holy place”. In otherwords, He’s waaaaay beyond us…but instead of blowing us away and entering this world in a cloud of glory…He choose to make His 1st home on earth in the womb of a young woman. He made his 2nd home in a stable- not the nice warm manger scene you see at Christmastime, but a crude, 1st century, Palestinian stable complete with steaming piles of manure! The “light of the world” entered Bethlehem in the dark of night. The Word of God became a speechless infant. God allowed Himself to be born in a slimy, cow trough! Now if that’s not humility, I don’t know what is!
God’s humility is an amazing blessing, but it’s also a problem. See, God’s so humble, He doesn’t mind the shame of a stable…but if we’re proud, we won’t even come near it! Because He’s humble, it’s easy for us to reject Him, thinking He’s soft or something! It’s easy for us to miss Him, because He requires us to come to Him in the same way He came to us! Most people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to humble themselves and admit they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to living life. The bible says in I Peter 5:5, (and other places) that…”God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble”. Now you tell me how you’re going to hear Jesus say anything to you, if you’re too proud to listen! If you’re going to hear Jesus speak, you have to come to Him saying, “Lord, compared to You… I realize I’m dumb and stupid! Speak to me. Like Ross Perot…I’m all ears! I’m ready to accept and welcome your advise”. If you’ll do that, all of the sudden…when you start reading your bible, it’s going to come alive to you! Jesus is going to begin to speak into your thoughts…giving you advice, guidance, knowledge, wisdom, understanding and ideas. When that happens, you KNOW it isn’t coming from you!
The 3rd thing you need to do in order to hear Jesus’ words in the bible is to…
3. MEDITATE on them daily
For 1000 yrs in hist of the church, only the priests had access to the bible because each manuscript had to be “hand-copied”. So a priest would read it, interpret it and everybody else would just accept what they said. That was fine as long as the priests were men of God, but when they weren’t …trouble! Then, God gave a guy named ‘Gutenburg’ the idea for a printing press and the very first book he printed was … you guessed it.. A BIBLE!
And when the bible got into the hands of the common man… know what happened? Revolution! It was called the REFORMATION! All the sudden people were reading the bible and saying, “Hey… wait a min. here … what you’re preaching and what I’m reading are two different things!” As a result, the church split in half… those breaking off from the Roman Catholic Church were named, “Protest-tants” The “protested” the unbiblical traditions of the church like the selling of indulgences…little certificates you could buy that would guarantee your entrance into heaven.
But they came at a price! If you didn’t have the money… that’s your problem! Want to revol. your life? Want to “reform” your old ways of thinking”? Want to get out of the rut of living? Get one of these books and read it! They’re available to anyone who wants one now you know!
Heard story of an Irishman who had a conversation with his priest. When the Priest visited him one day, he found him reading his bible…he said…
Priest: “What reading?
Man: “The New Testament.”
Priest: “The N.T.? That’s not something for an ignorant man like you to read. That’s for pastors who go to college and learn it’s real meaning, so they can give it to their people.
Ignorant persons like yourself will just get it all twisted and confused in their mind.
Man: But I read I Pet.2:2 where it says I’m a babe in Christ, and I need to read it, so I can grow up.
Priest: That’s true in a way, but God wants the priest to be the milkman and when you want the milk of the Word, you should come to me!
Man: Really? Know what? I keep a cow in my shed out back, and when I was sick, I hired a man to milk her for me. Later I found out that he was stealing ½ the milk and filling the other 1\2 of the bucket with water. So, I fired that man, and now I own my own cow and I’m getting the rich cream all of the time. When I depended on YOU for milk, it turned out to be the milk and water stuff. Now I milk my own cow, and my soul feeds on the rich cream of the Word of God everyday!
Now folks, I didn’t tell you that story to give you any ideas about firing me! To the best of my ability, I’m trying to give you the cream of the cow every week…without watering it down! But believe me… it’s much richer when you read it yourself! There’s nothing that would excite me more than a church full of people who can milk their own cow! In Hosea 4:6, Hosea cries out… READ. Chances are, every person here this morning is suffering needlessly in some area of their life because of their ignorance of some truth revealed in scripture (including me!). It doesn’t have to be that way! I don’t want to live my life, and at the end of it realize I could have done it better, if I’d only known!
I know some Christians who are more faithful at reading the sports page, or keeping up with the gossip columns and comics than they are at reading God’s Word! Did you know that there are more words in Sun. edition newspaper than are in entire N.T.?? A lot of people wouldn’t think anything at taking a Sun. afternoon and reading the entire Sun. paper.
But if you’re going to hear Jesus speak to you, you’ve got to go a step beyond just reading… the bible calls it MEDITATION. Read II Tim.2:7 with me…What’s meditation? It’s reflection. It’s seriously thinking about scripture. It’s mulling it over in your mind. In fact the word the bible uses for ‘meditation’ comes from the Heb. “ruminating”. It’s what a cow does when it’s ‘chewing it’s cud”. It’s ‘thought digestion”.
Let me ask you this? Have you ever worried about something? Anybody here this morning who does not know how to worry? If you know how to worry, then you know how to meditate, because worry is simply, ‘negative meditation’!
When you worry, you take a neg. thought, and go over and over it in your mind, and the more you go over it… the bigger the prob gets… Right? Well, instead of meditating on your anxious thoughts… what if you meditated on positive thoughts? That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul instructs us to do in Phil.4:8 (Read). Instead of chewing on all the garbage we are used to feeding our minds on, what would happen if we chewed on the good thoughts that come from God’s Word? It will change your life! I mean, what could be more true and good and right than God’s Words? Huh? Chewing on the words of the bible in your mind, and asking yourself, “What does it mean to me? How would this vs apply to my life? As you do that, Jesus will lit. begin to “seed” your thought life with new attitudes, encouraging words, ideas, solutions to your problems, ways to solve your financial problems, ways to help others… it’s amazing! (I’ve told some of you this, one of my favorite teachings…LOGOS vs. RHEMA, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the “WORD” of God”. –Romans 10:17 It takes the raw material of “logos” to get “rhema’!)
In Joshua 1:7,8 God promised Joshua that He would give Him success in leading His people into the promised land. Read with me what He promised him…Do you know what the key to his success was? Meditate and do what the book of the law says to do! Don’t JUST read it…meditate on it! Listen… the only people who will ever have the divine success the Lord wants them to have in this life (and the next) are the ones who meditate day and night on His holy Words! And the greater the responsibility God gives you, the more you need to meditate on His word!
One of the most practical ways to meditate is to say a vs outloud and each X emphasize a different word…For example… Phil.4:13 (try it with me) I…can…do…all… things…through…Christ…who…strengthens…me. There! I feel better already! See…everytime you say it… you get a little different slant on the vs. Try it when you get home.
Some of you wonder, Pastor, where do you get enough material to put together a sermon every week? Simple. My messages are a result of my personal reflection in the scriptures each week.
Then, there’s one more thing I need to do if I’m going to hear Jesus words to me through the bible… I need to…
4. APPLY them regularly
We need to realize that the bible wasn’t given to us just to increase our knowledge…. The bible was given to us to change our lives! This is not just a ‘head trip’ we’re on here…
• “Hey, I know the middle vs of the whole bible!” (It’s Ps.118:8 by the way)
• “Hey, did you know the bible contains 3,566,480 letters and 773,746 words?
That’s great for winning ‘trivial pursuit’… but it doesn’t do a whole lot for making it in life! The ultimate goal of reading and researching and reflecting and remembering is so that we can APPLY it to my life! Read James 1:22. Isn’t it true that everybody in this room knows more than we’re acting on? Ask yourself this morning…”What has God told me to do… that I’m not doing yet?” Want to hear Jesus speak to you out of your bible? Do what he’s already told you to do! Don’t worry about what you don’t know…. Just begin to put into practice what you DO know! He says, “When you do that, you don’t deceive yourself into thinking your godly, just because you can quote a verse!” When someone says to me, "God never talks to me." I ask, “Well, do your read your Bible every day?” If you're not reading the Bible, it’s not that God isn’t talking to you…your phone is off the hook! He's getting the busy signal and He can't get through to you. If I told you that tomorrow the President of the United States wanted to meet with you at 6 a.m. at the courthouse in Martinez. It doesn’t matter what you think of the President, you'd get up and you'd go wouldn’t you? I would! When somebody who’s important wants to meet with you…
YOU GO!
Now even more important than that, God wants to meet with you tomorrow and you don't even have to go to Martinez! You don’t even have to leave your house, you can meet with Him in your own back yard, sitting at your coffee table with a cup of coffee. You can meet with him, sitting in your Lazy-Z-Boy with your P.J.s on! He’s waiting!! Think of it...the Creator of the universe wants to have a regular appointment with you everyday of your life! That’s why it's so important to have a daily quiet time where you sit down with God and talk to Him through prayer for 10, 15, 20 minutes and then let Him speak to you through His Word. If you're not doing that on a daily basis, you're missing the #1 way God wants to talk to you.
How do I get started in this book? Do I start at Genesis and just start reading through it? I wouldn't suggest that. Not if you're just getting started in the Bible. In the first place, you need to get a new translation. There are a lot of them, and I’d suggest you get the New International Version. There are a number of good ones. You might want to get a study Bible that will give you some guides and aids. My favorite is the Life Application Bible. It helps explain some of those customs and things you don't understand. If I were you, I’d start in the New Testament. If you've never read the Bible at all, I’d start with the book of James. James will give you some practical instructions to get you going in the Christian life. You need to get into God's word because that's the number one way He speaks to us.
Our denomination has a Pastor’s Retreat every year up in the mountains of S. Cal. As I was walking to breakfast one morning, I came across a monument that explained that when Billy Graham first started preaching, he was confused and had some doubts about God’s Word. While praying one morning, got down on one knee at this monument and said, “Lord, I don’t understand all that is in this bk, and there are a lot of different passages that I have my doubts about…. But, You say it’s Your Word, so by faith, I’m going to accept it as my authority and live it”. That prayer proved to be the turning point of his life! From that moment on God began to use Him in amazing ways. Would you be willing to pray that prayer this morning?
I’m going to ask you to make 3 commitments this morning…
1. I will commit myself to accept God’s Word as the final
authority in my life. Not going to go by what I feel, or by what everybody else does, or even what I think… but by what the Bible says.
2. I will begin a regular program of bible intake.
Did you know that if you read your bible for 15 min. a day, that you would complete the bible once every year? Just 15 min a day! That means if we cut out a 30min. program on T.V. each night… you could read through the bible 2x a year!
3. I will begin to be a DOER, not just a HEARER.
