RECOGNIZING THE VOICE OF GOD
Talking and Listening to God -- Part 2
Isaac Butterworth
November 28, 2010
John 10:1-6 (NIV)
1 “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
We’re in the second part of a series on ‘Talking and Listening to God,’ and what we’re saying in this series is that our life is a laboratory in which we discover the faithfulness of God and in which we develop our own. Last week, we looked at prayer as a kind of lab project, and, of course, one thing we discovered is that communication with God is not a one-way street. We don’t just talk to God; we listen as well.
So, how do we do that? How do we listen to God? We can’t literally hear him speaking to us, but we believe he does so all the same. How can we recognize his voice? How can we know what he is saying?
First of all, we must understand one simple truth: We hear ‘voices’ all the time. We are inundated with messages from within and from without. If you watch TV or listen to the radio, if you log onto the internet or pick up a magazine or newspaper, or if you simply drive down the street, you absorb thousands of visual images and sound bytes and sense impressions every day. And, taken together, they tell you who you are to be, what you are to do, and why that’s important. They shape your identity and define your understanding of success. They create your expectations for life and offer you feedback on how you’re doing in meeting those expectations. In many instances, these ‘voices’ are programmed to distort your humanity and perhaps even destroy your soul. Jesus says of his sheep, that is, us, his followers, that they will not listen to such voices. ‘They will never follow a stranger’ he says; ‘in fact, they will run away from [the stranger] because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.’ But it’s not for lack of opportunity to hear the stranger’s voice, is it?
So, how do we hear God’s voice among all the competing claims on our attention? How do we distinguish it from all the other voices out there? As we explore this question, I’d like to begin by asserting that there are three conditions for hearing God’s voice, three conditions for recognizing the voice of God.
And the first one is this: You have to want to hear it. Hearing God’s voice begins as a matter of affection. We have to listen for the voice of God the way a lover listens for the voice of the beloved. During the year before my wife and I were married, I lived in a remote city, and what I discovered is that there is no pain like the pain of longing for someone you love. I went to the mail box every day, and the only reason I went was to see if there was a letter from her. If there was no letter, I moped about through the course of the day, but if there was one, my heart was filled with joy. I carefully opened it and read it the same way a man dying of thirst drinks water. Then I would carry it about with me as though it were a rare and precious jewel -- and, to me, it was -- and several times during the day I would open it and read it again, weighing each word. In the Song of Solomon, the beloved says that, even in her sleep, she was on alert for the sound of her lover. ‘I slept but my heart was awake,’ she says’ (Song of Solomon 5:2). If we love God, we will yearn to hear his voice. The first condition for recognizing the voice of God is that we have to want to hear it.
The second condition is that we know we need to hear it. Jesus says, ‘The sheep listen to [the shepherd’s] voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.’ The Lord is our shepherd, and, as our shepherd, he makes us lie down in green pastures, he leads us beside quiet waters, he restores our souls, he guides us in right paths. If we are lost, he leaves the ninety-nine other sheep safe in the fold and comes looking for us, calling to us, and when he finds us, he carries us back to safety. He is the good shepherd, and we are safe only when we follow him. In order to hear his voice, we must know that we need to hear it.
We have to want to hear it -- that’s the first condition. We must know we need to hear it -- that’s the second. And the third is: We know we have to hear it. There is always the stranger’s voice, and it is always alluring and captivating. We easily become mesmerized by the stranger’s voice. But that voice belongs to what Jesus calls ‘a thief and a robber.’ The stranger’s only intent, Jesus says, is ‘to steal and kill and destroy’ (John 10:10). Only Jesus comes that we ‘may have life and have it to the full.’ So, if we are to hear the voice of God, there are these three conditions: we must love God, we must want to follow where God leads us, and we must not listen to the other voices that demand our attention.
So now, with these conditions in place, we are in a position to recognize the voice of God when we hear it? But how do we do that? For me, the best way to hear God is by reading the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the Word of God, and when I read them, I have every reason to believe that God will speak to me through them. So, what I do is, whenever I read a passage from the Bible: I look for what’s behind it, I look for what’s in it, and I look for what’s in front of it. Let me explain what I mean.
When I first look up a passage of Scripture to read it, I want to know what’s behind it. Every text you and I read has its own history. Whether it’s an article in a magazine or a letter from a friend, a message in a bottle or a passage from the Bible, the text itself has a history. Aside from what’s in it -- aside from what it says -- it has a story of its own. Somebody wrote it at some point in time, from some specific place, for someone else’s eyes, for some important purpose. If we truly want to understand what God is saying to us in a passage from the Bible, we must begin by learning all we can about these things. So, the first thing I do is, I look for what’s behind the particular text I’m reading, and I ask questions like these:
> Who wrote the book or the portion of Scripture I am reading? To whom did they write it? Who were these people? What can I learn about them?
> Where was it written? Where did the first readers live? Is that important to know?
> When was it written? When did the events described take place?
> What was happening? What occasioned someone, whoever it was, to write this?
> What kind of literature is it? Is it poetry? Is it a parable? a narrative? a letter? What is the genre?
> What purpose did this passage serve? Why was it written?
What I am looking for is the historical context of what I am reading, and I can’t emphasize enough how important that context is. If we take a passage out of its context, it won’t be God’s voice that we’re hearing. It will be some concoction of our own mind, and we will distort God’s message.
So, the first thing I do when I read the Bible is: I ask what’s behind the specific passage I’m reading. The next thing I do is ask what’s in it. Any responsible approach to Scripture recognizes that the Bible contains several different types of writing, each of which has certain peculiar characteristics that must be recognized in order to interpret the text wisely.
Types of writing in the Bible include history, poetry, wisdom sayings, parables, apocalyptic writings, and so forth. An incorrect judgment on what kind of writing we’re reading will lead us astray as we interpret Scripture. So what type of writing are we reading? We need to ask that.
If it’s poetry, then what do we do? We look for images, we look for emotions, we look for what is stirred in us. Psalm 23 has been described as the greatest poem ever written. Consider how it moves your very soul to hear the words, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.’ Poetry, especially poetry in the Bible, helps us see things and feel things we couldn’t experience in any other way.
If the passage you’re reading is a narrative -- a story -- you look for characters and what they represent; you look for action and what it means; you look for what’s at stake and how things get resolved...or don’t get resolved. In a story, you have a character. In the best of stories, you have a character with whom you can identify. The character has a flaw -- like greed, in the case of Zacchaeus, or fear, in the case of the shepherds near Bethlehem, or selfishness, in the case of Herod the king. Or the character may have a challenge to face, like Elijah fleeing from Jezebel. The story presents a twofold problem: Will the character overcome the flaw or challenge? And will he or she become a different person -- for better or for worse? Overcoming and becoming: those are the two things we’re looking for in a story.
If the passage you’re reading is a letter, like Romans or 1 Corinthians, you look for the flow of the argument, for what you’re being told to believe or do; you look for comparison, contrast, repetition, summaries of the argument, explanation, causation. Again, you look for what’s at stake, the ‘so what’ factor.
If I want to hear what God is saying to me in the Bible -- and that’s the best way I know to recognize God’s voice, I look at what’s behind the text, and I look at what’s in it. And then I look at what’s in front of the text. I invite the Scripture to ask me two questions:
The first question is this: Who is the ideal reader of this passage? What kind of person does this portion of Scripture call me to be or become? What qualities, motives, desires, actions, attitudes, and so forth, do I need to incorporate into my life? What resistance will I face, either from within or from without? And what resources do I have to meet that resistance? That’s the first question.
The second question is: What kind of community does this portion of Scripture call me to help build? We live in a highly individualistic society and, because of that, we miss the emphasis the Bible places on community. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he didn’t leave behind a scattered assortment of isolated adherents to his teachings. He left a church, a community of people who, in their life together, were to embody his way of life. That’s why, when we read the Bible, we are wise always to read it in the company of the ‘communion of saints,’ the Body of Christ -- the Church -- throughout the world and through all ages. What kind of community will our Church be if we respond faithfully to the passage we’re reading, whatever it is?
The best way to hear the voice of God is by reading Scripture attentively. If we will explore carefully what’s behind a text, what’s in it, and what’s in front of it, we will find ourselves in a divine laboratory. It won’t necessarily happen over night, but if we regularly, consistently enter the pages of Scripture and listen for God to speak to us, over time, we will discover God’s faithfulness, and we will develop our own. ‘His sheep follow him because they know his voice,’ Jesus said. We will know his voice as we attend to his Word. And, as we attend to his Word, we will follow.
