The Voice behind you
Pastor Allan Kircher
Shell Point Baptist Church
Delivered on September 9th, 2012
"Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it."—Isaiah 30:21.
Opening story:
King Ahab/Jezebel killing off Lord’s prophets
• Obadiah/Godly man/hid/prophets
• Obadiah/met Elijah
• Elijah/meets/Ahab
• Ahab calls Elijah troubler
Elijah just defeated 450 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel.
• Puts prophets to death Kishon valley
• Jezebel after Elijah
• Elijah frightened/broom tree/voice of God came twice
• Eat/drank/strengthened him to journey
• Came to Horeb/ cave
Read Scripture 1 Kings 19:11b-12
God spoke to Elijah, not in the power of the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a still small voice.
• God wanted Elijah/know/He is much more than/storm god.
• He is powerful/controls all nature
• but often speaks in the quietness of the day.
It is not the fire, wind, and earthquake that show the power of God, but the truth of His Word. In the midst of the storms of life, we still find peace in the still small voice of His Word
• This hopeful morning we shall hear/same "still small voice"
• speaking a warning and teaching word
• we will see how it operates upon the sinner
• reaching both his ear and his heart.
God calls to the rebellious, and by his gentle word they are brought to his feet with repentance
• turned from their evil wandering
• and led in the way of obedience.
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God’s “word behind us” as He speaks of in the text is a covenant blessing
• No “if” “ands” or “but” are attached to it.
• It is an unconditional promise!
• Your salvation depends upon it!
The comforts of our own life depend on our own action and behavior.
• They are conditional. We make or break them.
• But the comforts of our new life are secured by God.
• Nothing is attached to them for God says,
• This is the way, walk in it!
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I ask you this morning to admire/free/sovereign/grace/God.
• He makes/promise/anybody
• Especially/people/He speaks here/”a rebellious people”.
• Lying children
• Children/that will not hear the law of the Lord.
He severely chastises them, and then in great patience he says to them, even to them, "Your ears shall hear a voice behind you."
• God's grace is marvelous in itself
• but its most marvelous in the way it in flows:
• It runs down into the Dead Sea of sin and makes the waters pure.
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I. I invite you to notice first of all THE POSITION OF THE WANDERER to whom this special blessing comes.
• Those who drift away a bit.
• How does God find men who wander?
• God declares they hear a voice behind them.
• A small subtle voice ringing in their ears.
First, he finds them with their backs turned to him.
• Perhaps you have been there? Walking your way.
• Gone away from God, but God calls after you from behind.
You have turned your back on your only true friend
• Your only best friend/only capable friend.
But that Friend doesn’t change His temper and resent the insult;
• No, he is provoked to a love more
• Pleading and persuading more than ever
• and calls you to come into the right way.
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But the wanderer continues to sin willfully/wickedly.
• And he distinctly turns his back on God and truth
• Turning his back on the law/gospel.
• Turning his back on mercy and on eternal life.
He turns his back on the adoption of the Father
• On pardon bought with the blood of Jesus
• He turns his back upon holiness, happiness, and heaven.
• He turns away from sunlight
• And wanders deeper and yet deeper into the night
• Striving to get away from God and holy influences.
Yet the Lord follows him, and with a voice of touching love and tender compassion he calls to him, "This is the way, walk in it."
• This word of warning/instruction follows the wanderer.
• You hear it in your ear, it begs of you to turn and live.
• Again/again this wise/personal voice assails your ear.
• Still, the wanderer doesn’t seek God, but God seeks him!
• You turn/God of love, but the love of God doesn’t turn from you.
What matchless grace this is that God should call after sinners when they openly renounce his rule, and flee from his mercy? ________________________________________
• Have you ever said to God in your sub-conscience,
• You say it and don’t even know it
• "Depart from me: I don’t desire the knowledge of your ways"?
• What if God replied, “Depart, your cursed, into the everlasting fire in hell,”
It would only be the echo of our own words.
When we said to him "Depart," suppose God turned around and said, "Depart, depart yourselves." ___________________________________________
While we turn ourselves deliberately away from God, He still calls after us; He will not let us go.
• We have a freedom of will
• but it is by that freedom of will that men are damned
• they chose not to come to Christ
• so they can live the way they want to live
• Following their own desires/their own heart.
Free-will, held in chains/evil lustings/deceitful ways, become the most destructive agency in the world;
• but, blessed be God, He has freedom of will too
• that freedom of sovereign grace will not have its hands bound
• nor its lips closed
• But it will act and speak in omnipotent love.
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So when the Lord sees us wanting our wickedness, dead in trespasses and sins
• His great love still seeks us out
• His tender lips of love bids us return to God
• Saying, "This is the way, walk in it."
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Sometimes/wanderer not only turns/back/God
• But/continue to go further/further away/Him.
Of course once they’ve turned their back, the further they travel the more wrong they become.
• They want to know God, but don’t want to be near God.
• Even with their back to Him, they continue in that way.
Like the prodigal, they are not satisfied till they get into "a far country":
• They speed away on their journey.
• The greater the distance/between them/God/the more at ease they are.
• In forgetting God they find horrible peace
• The peace of death
• A peace that will stupefy them into eternal destruction.
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Now, it is while they are hurrying away from God,
• further and further every day
• madly rushing along the downward road
• Never satisfied with the sin to which they have attained
• Continuing in a spiral of an empty well.
Even then! Even then! The voice sounds behind them.
• They are startled to hear it.
• The powerful voice says
• “Turn, Turn, This is the way, walk in it.”
• The way you are now pursuing is not the way to peace and safety;
• return at once,
• For this is the way, walk in it."
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Here again don’t you admire/overflowing riches of/grace of God
• That He should call men to himself when they are altogether taken up with other things
• When every thought/every word/every act is in rebellion against Him.
• When man is desperately set on wrong doing
• determined to destroy himself
• God is yet more determined to save him.
Glory be to God that even when the sinner is still rebellious
Even when:
• Show no signs of repentance
• Don’t care to turn from the error of your ways.
• even then, while your heart is black as night
• your spirit is choke-full with rebellion
• God still calls to you, "Return, O backslider, return."
"You will hear a voice behind you, saying, this is the way."
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God’s Word tells us/when we go further from Him, we will be warned.
The 20th verse says, “Your teachers will be hidden no more.”
This means people placed in your life by God to warn you.
• There they stood, good men, right in the way
• Pleading there hearers to cease provoking God.
• Haven’t you had a friend like this?
• Pleading you to the will of God.
The wanderers hear, “Turn from you sin, for this way leads to death, turn, turn.
Couldn’t you see your friends stretching out their hands with eager opportunity?
• Pleading with boiling tears.
• Persuading you to turn from the way and wages of sin.
Still, you push on, as if eternal destruction were a prize to win.
Rather than a doom of destruction.
Was it not so with many of us in the days of our unregeneracy?
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Perhaps our mother/father endeavored to block the evil road?
• In them we saw our teachers
• How they taught us: how they prayed with us:
• How they labored if possible to turn us from the error of our ways!
• But we persevered with obstinate resolve.
• It’s hard going to hell over a pleading mother
• and equally hard to destroy one's self by pushing aside an earnest father's good advice;
• But we seemed resolved to do so.
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Then perhaps followed Sunday-school teachers, full of intense love to us; and how they pleaded!
How wisely they set the case before you, how tenderly they pleaded:
• You saw your teachers
• but your eyes would not see the right way
• your heart desired it not,
• You still loved the wages of iniquity
• the pleasures of the flesh
• the pride of life
• the conceit of self-salvation
• you loved anything better than our God;
• and though your teachers were before you,
• Ready to help and eager to teach
• you made small account of them.
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The wanderers each week see the pastors.
• Who could not preach dull, dead sermons
• The pastors that won’t let you sleep yourself into perdition.
• They cried aloud and spared not
• They were in anguish about you
• They gave themselves no rest until you turned from their iniquities.
Yes, you could see your teachers; you had loving respect for them.
Yet you cast their word (the voice) behind your backs
• It was of no use to you.
• You live in the world and all its reality.
• Next week, you say, I will turn back to God!
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Even though you were despising all this Word/warning,
• Lord was still loving you
• looking after you, crying after you, saying,
“This is the way, walk in it, come back, come back, come back, you are destroying yourself, return to your Father and your God.
Why doesn’t God throw the reins on our necks, and say,
• “I’ll leave them alone
• they have stiffened their necks/hardened their hearts
• Therefore let them reap the result of their sins”?
Not so, for God had made His word an unconditional promise of His covenant, "They shall hear a voice behind them."
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One more thing/ungodly condition of those God would call.
• they had many ways in which to wander
• they roamed to the right/roamed to the left
• But they never turned around to hear that voice.
• “the small still voice”
• you turn this way, you turn that way
• you turn any way except to God.
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Some men think they have respectable sins.
• They’re not thieves, not licentious, not drunkards
• But their sins take a quieter form
• They mock God with their self-righteousness
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Others plunge into the sins of the flesh;
• No vice is too black for them.
• When they have burned their finger in the candle they will hold their arm in the fire;
• They find a delight in it and they will not…
• They cannot give it up.
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But God continues to call in that voice behind their backs.
• God voice proclaims/unrighteous/ungodly.
"The well have no need of a physician; only the sick"
• Christ has come after the sick
• calling, not the righteous
• But sinners to repentance.
• Mercy is full of patience
• it bears and forbears, and still it cries,
• "This is the way, walk in it";
who would be so cruel/ungrateful to close his ear against its pleadings
I have spoken sufficiently upon the position of the wanderer.
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II. Now, for a little while, we will dwell upon THE CALL OF MERCY. "Your ears will hear a voice behind you."
A call that is altogether undesired, and comes to the man who has gone astray.
The word comes, at first, rather softly—"Return."
• You hear that inward call/don’t you? "Return"
• You look for a moment, and then put your foot down to pursue your own journey.
• "Never," you say, "will I alter my course," and you boldly continue
• You persevere in your ruinous course…..
• We run a little faster….the voice follows saying, “Return.”
• So we stop a minute, desperate in our sins.
• We hear “Return, return, return, return.
Jonah to pay/Tarshish
Perhaps the voice of warning will not reach you there.
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God’s supremacy has servants everywhere, they are all charged to warn you of your peril.
• a voice that comes unasked and undesired
• but it does come.
• "A voice behind you";
• it is the voice of an unseen caller whose existence has been almost forgotten.
It will come to you mysteriously at all sorts of hours crying, "Return, return, return."
• It will sound often at dead of night,
• Or right at the time of thinking of that sin.
• This call of mercy is the voice of a hidden One:
• Sometimes it is a glance by someone just as Jesus glanced at Peter on that fateful morning.
• You cannot see who is speaking the voice
• yet you cannot shut your ears to his admonitions
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That voice always comes at the most opportune time.
Even though we steadily continue in our ways of ungodliness
When temptation comes we hear that voice giving warning. "Return, return."
• Even if we don’t return right away..
• We slowdown in our speed against the almighty God.
• In time, we command to hear that voice clearly again.
Blessed be God for the opportunity of the word of mercy.
We delay it to come, but God does not delay to call.
You have seen the position of the wanderer, and the grace of God in the call of mercy.
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III. But what was THE VOICE OF THAT CALL?
It is stated at full length, "This is the way, walk in it."
• That is the voice of the call.
• It contains specific instructions.
• "This is the way."
The Lord lays down a definite pathway, and he says,
• "This is the way."
• "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved;
• This is the way.
• Repent and be converted, every one of you; this is the way.
• To leave sin, to quit self, to trust in Christ: this is the way."
When the voice behind says, "This is the way,"
• It means the opposite path is not the way.
• there is only one way to heaven
• there never will be two;
When men hear a voice saying, "This is the way,"
• It means turn to the right way
• Let falsehood be slain within us
• Let truth reign forever.
• Leave the other roads
• The Lord says/one road/”this is the way.”
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It is also a word of sure confirmation. "This is the way."
When we hear it so many times,—"This is the way," "This is the way," "This is the way;"
• We are strengthened in that conviction.
• Hearing the mysterious voice declaring again and again, "This is the way,"
• we grow to believe the truth of God's word
This is a great mercy, to hear the same thing many times
• to hear the voice proclaim again and again and again,
• "This is the way," "This is the way."
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This is followed up by a word of personal direction. "Walk in it."
Do not merely hear about it, but "walk in it."
Gal 5:25
Don’t be content to be critics, thinkers, and considerers, but become doers of the word.
• "This is the way," is the doctrine:
• "Walk in it,"—there is the practice.
The Lord/speaking to us/telling us/what to do/what to believe.
• then he makes the way and the walk to be present
• "This is the way, walk in it" without delay.
• Don’t just sit looking at it, “Walk in it!”
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IV. According to our text "Your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, This is the way, walk in it."
Notice, THE SUCCESS OF THE VOICE,—your ears will hear.
• God not only gives us something to hear
• but he gives us ears to hear with.
• Oh, the mercy of God!
• He spreads the table, and then he gives the appetite;
• Nothing is left out: the catalogue is complete:
• He that sends the tidings also opens the ears.
• "Your ears shall hear."
• This is effectual grace.
• Teachers can’t make men hear.
They can appeal/external ear, after that they can do no more; but God can make men hear.
Without violating the freedom of your will God can get at your heart, at your consciences, at your understandings, and He can press the truth home to your souls.
• When the Lord does it, it is done.
• And what God does shall be forever.
• It will last throughout eternity.
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When I hear in the text, "your ears will hear," it means first
The message of divine love will come to your mind to create uneasiness in it.
• Perhaps your moving on/road to destruction.
• You have chosen that path, and you delight in it.
• It often looks to you the right road, a pleasant road.
So, you walk on it/your very happy on it/but you keep hearing:
"Turn! turn! turn!"
The voice continues throughout your life…clanging like a gong, Turn, turn, turn.
• For a moment you forgot it, but there it comes again
• "Turn! turn! turn! turn!"
• You stop up our ears; but it bombards your soul worse than cannon balls firing.
• as if the word of God pounded you with shells
• you hear the thunders of the cannonade
• "Return! Return! Return!"
• What can you do?
• You long to escape from the divine rebuke.
• The word has made you quiver and quake.
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Then, after a while there gets to be a desire in your heart.
• It may only be a faint and spasmodic desire,
• nothing very strong or constant—but it is there
• And it cannot be quenched.
At a point you say, “I wish I could get right somehow!
• In my present condition I’m an evil case
• I’m sailing in the wrong boat
• I wish I could land somewhere
• Well, take the return boat and get to my home.
• Whether its home for the first time or many…
• Get anxious to be forgiven.
• To be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
• To be a new creature in Christ Jesus.
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Then you will say, “That voice I tried to ignore!
• The voice that used to wake me up at nights.
• The voice that kept me out of my pleasures.
• It’s music to my ears now.
• I like to hear it.
Now it affects me so that I never want to go to the pit again.
I rejoice in the presence of the almighty king!
I rejoice in the presence of His tender voice!
You are improving; a great deal of the fever of pride has gone out of you;
You can’t rest now because you’ve heard much of that voice.
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You are just like the prodigal when he said, "I will arise and go to my father"
Can you see him running so fast to get back to the Father?
He smites upon his breast and cries,
• “I will return, for I cannot perish;
• I cannot let things go as they once did;
• No, I must have Christ or else I die
• and I must have him soon
• or else I shall seal my eternal destiny
O God, call again, call again; keep on calling, till I come;
• When you said to me, 'Seek my face,'
• my heart said to you,
• 'Your face, Lord, will I seek.
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So, what will be the last stage of this inner work?
Now, since you dare not to go any further in this wrong way, what are you to do?
• You can’t turn to the right or to the left, for God has hedged up your pathway with thorns.
• Your poor soul looks on him whom he pierced.
• now you see it all
• while your eyes begin to stream with tears
• you turn to Christ upon the cross
• and find life while looking at him.
Now you can enquire,
• "Which is my way?
• Speak, sweet voice; speak,
• Sweet voice; tell me which is my way."
And now the voice moves and speaks in front of you
• For shepherds go before their sheep.
You look and see the Crucified One with pierced hands and feet leading the way, and you delight to follow him:
And you will follow Him until at last you shall see His face in everlasting glory.
• Redeemed by blood and rescued by power eternal
• brought home to the great Shepherd's fold
• to go out no more on your own
• You will be filled with gladness.
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Listen, then, listen, you that have turned your backs on God!
• Infinite mercy woos you;
• Boundless compassion entreats you to be saved.
• Turn; turn as you are
• all black and filthy;
• but come to Jesus all unholy and unclean
• without a single speck upon your leprous frame
• Utterly lost and ruined.
• Christ died for such as you.
I say again, tarry not to improve yourselves, but come now
• while mercy's voice incites you
• while the Holy Ghost not only invites,
• But sweetly constrains.
Come and welcome, sinners, come.
The Lord bless you. Amen.
