Hearing God’s Voice – 2
“A Feel for the Real”
Acts 17:27-28
“So that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 For in Him we live and move and have our being.”
I am so excited about this series. Last week was amazing. I believe God revealed some things to us that needed to be revealed before we get into the depth of what we are going to be talking about over the next few weeks.
Last week we started in the book of Genesis and ended when Jesus came on the scene in the Gospels. What a powerful time! I encourage everyone that wasn’t here to get online and download that sermon. We talked about the love/fear relationship between God and man. In the Garden, man and God talked in the cool of the day. Then man fell and a separation happened. Things got so bad that at the end of the Old Testament, God goes silent for over 400 years. The devil thought he had won until at Jesus’ baptism, the very voice of God speaks and says, “This is my beloved Son of whom I am well pleased.” It was the first time that anyone had heard that voice for over 400 years. From that moment on, God has set up a plan to be able to communicate with mankind again. So, from this week on, we are going to discover how to hear God’s voice and how to know it is Him. Over the next few weeks we want to discover how to discern the Lord’s voice in our lives. We need to develop “A Feel for the Real.” I want to be intimate with Jesus Christ. I want to know Him more and hear him more clearly.
I. A FEEL FOR GOD’S VOICE
I believe we had a very powerful time last week. We talked about the voice of God. I told you that this week we were going to get more personal. It is great to know that God still speaks today, which was last week’s message, but we really need to know how God speaks to “US” today. How do I activate this discernment of God’s voice in my life? How do I recognize the still, small voice of God?
I read about a U.S. Treasury officer who had the job of identifying counterfeit dollar bills. He said, “The key to identifying a false bill is to spend hours and hours handling the real thing.” In other words, you have to get a “feel for the real” if you want to identify the fake. There are all kinds of voices in our world today. The only way we can determine what is God and what is not is by spending more time with God then with the world. We wonder why we don’t hear from God more, this is probably one of the main reasons. We just don’t spend enough time with Him to know when it is Him.
As we spend time with God praying and studying His Word, we will automatically develop a feel for the voice of God. We will instantly begin to recognize when something doesn’t feel right in our spirit. We must be careful because it is so easy to be deceived by other voices.
A perfect illustration of this is found in Genesis 27. We don’t have time to read the whole story, but let me explain it to you. In Genesis 27, Isaac could have avoided being deceived if he had had a “feel for the real.” Jacob, Isaac’s younger son, wanted the blessing that belonged to his older brother, Esau. In order to get it, Jacob had to convince his father to speak the blessing over him. So, Jacob’s mother, Rebekah, came up with a clever idea to fool the aging father, whose eyesight was extremely bad. Jacob disguised his voice to sound like Esau’s and covered his arms with animal hair to be more hairy like his brother. Jacob deceived his father and received the blessing that was meant for the firstborn son, Esau.
Genesis 27:21-24, “Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not.” 22 So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, and he felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” 23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands; so he blessed him. 24 Then he said, “ Are you really my son Esau?”
I want you to notice in this story that Isaac could have determined the counterfeit had he only listened to Jacob’s voice and trusted his ears. If he had only not trusted his feeling, but his ears instead, Jacob would have never been able to get away with it. We must be careful because the counterfeit can look real and can be nearly identical to the real, but we must learn to trust our spiritual ears.
John 10:4, “The sheep follow him (the shepherd), for they know his voice.”
Isaac knew something wasn’t right when he heard Jacob’s voice. He felt Jacob’s arm and was deceived by his hairiness. We can learn that spiritual truth cannot be judged by outward circumstances. Isaac was old enough to recognize deception and he did recognize it, but did not pay attention to what he was hearing. We are never too old to be deceived. This is a journey that each of us are on and we are all still learning how to be led by the Spirit of God. Do not be deceived by outside circumstances and outside voices. We need to handle the Word enough to know truth from error. Just like the man handling the money. The only way you can tell the real is spending hours with it.
Pay attention to your spirit man. If you feel that something is not right, it could be that it is not according to God’s timing. Never be afraid to wait. The prodigal son would have received his inheritance without experiencing any sorrow with it if he had waited for the father’s timing. Remember our text:
Acts 17:27, “They should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.”
Jesus is near to us. He is not very far. He is still speaking, but we need to seek Him more in order to hear what He is saying. Just like the treasury officer, we can become so familiar with the voice of God that we are able to recognize the counterfeit voice of Satan immediately.
II. THE INNER PERSON
There are so many voices in the world. There are the voice of God, the voice of the devil, the voices of people, and your own inner voice. How do you discern between God’s voice and all the others? How do you know the difference between a word from the Lord and too much pizza the night before?
I Corinthians 14:33, “God is not the author of confusion.”
In the Old Testament it was easy to follow God’s voice. Whenever God wanted the Israelites to go in a certain direction, He just moved the cloud and guided them. When the cloud moved, they moved. When the cloud stayed, they stayed. (Numbers 9:21-22).
It is a little more complex today. The cloud of the Old Testament has moved within.
Proverbs 20:27, “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart.”
The way God speaks to us today is through our spirits, our inner man. We have to be spirit-conscious in order to hear God’s voice and receive His direction.
I Thessalonians 5:23, “May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We are a spirit, living within a body, and we possess a soul, which is our mind, will and emotions.
➢ In the Old Testament, God dwelt within a temple with an outer court, an inner court, and a Holy of Holies.
➢ In the New Covenant, He has a people for His temple.
➢ Our body is the outer court, our soul – or mind – is the inner court, and our spirit is the holy of holies.
➢ God now dwells in a three-room house; body, soul, and spirit.
When God leads us now, He does not do it through your body or your carnal mind, but He leads us through our spirit. When you are born again, your spirit is born again.
Ephesians 3:16, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.”
I Peter 3 speaks of the hidden person of the heart.
I Peter 3:4, “Rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”
Each one of us has this hidden, inner person that no one else sees but God. It is your eternal spirit. Because your spirit is born again, it is more in tune with God’s spirit than your flesh is. You cannot make your spirit enjoy sin. When you stumble, it is your spirit that convicts us, that is God’s spirit letting you know what you are doing wrong. When you do something wrong, there is something (called the inner man) that says, “Hey, I don’t like that, what are you doing?”
God has placed some indicators, almost like a spiritual alarm system, within us. This is all part of hearing God’s voice. We need to learn to listen to this voice rather then the voice of the flesh. Some of us don’t listen to this voice and we do what we want anyway, and then we wonder why we don’t hear from God concerning the direction of our life. We need to listen to every part of His voice, not just the part that we want to. Listen to this inner alarm system on the inside. In conclusion I want to leave you with 4 indicators we need to recognize in order to discern God’s voice.
1. YOUR SPIRIT CAN BE STIRRED
Acts 17:16, “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.”
Notice, it wasn’t Paul who was stirred up. It was his spirit.
2. YOU CAN BE LED BY YOUR SPIRIT
Romans 8:14, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”
Sometimes God will give you a leading within your spirit. When your spirit is led, the Holy Spirit is trying to get your attention and trying to get you to do something. Pay attention to it.
3. YOUR SPIRIT CAN HAVE PURPOSE
Acts 19:21, “When these things were accomplished, Paul purposed in the Spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem.”
Paul purposed, not in his mind or in his flesh, but “in the Spirit.”
John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
➢ Purpose: “The feeling of being determined to do or achieve something.”
When God gives us a promise, when He speaks something to our spirit, we must purpose in our spirits, not our minds, not our flesh, but purpose in our spirits to obey the voice of God. We can’t let our flesh tell us what we are going to do, we can’t let our mind tell us what we are going to do, we must purpose, determine in our spirits to do what God wants us to do.
4. YOUR SPIRIT CAN GIVE YOU PEACE ABOUT THE RIGHT DIRECTION
II Corinthians 2:12-13, “Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened to me by the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit.”
We can learn a lot from this one Scripture. Paul determined his direction by the peace or lack of peace in his spirit man. Just because a door is open, does not mean that you are supposed to walk through it. Paul said, “I have no rest in my spirit.”
Sometimes, determining God’s will is this simple: If you do not have peace or rest in your spirit, don’t do it. A lack of rest or peace in your spirit is usually God’s way of saying no.
If you don’t have peace in your spirit about a relationship or a major decision that you are about to make, then I encourage you to wait.
Isaiah 28:16, “Whoever believes will not act hastily.”
I have learned that God is always right. He never makes mistakes and if I can learn to follow His urging, He never misleads me. God desires for you to hear His voice, now we just have to listen and obey when we do hear it in our inner man.
