Has God lost His voice?
I called Ruth Rupprecht on Thursday afternoon. “I hear Dave’s heart is OK.” “That’s right,” she replied, “There were no obvious blockages discovered during the angioplasty. God healed him.” You might have thought my immediate thought would have been, “Praise God.” It was, but there was another parallel thought, also running though my head, “Perhaps the physicians were just mistaken the first time when they found blockages in the blood vessels on the back of his heart.”
Frequently as I meet with people, I am impressed in my thoughts to ask certain questions or to offer a specific kind of advice. Sometimes the thoughts I am having don’t even seem to be connected with the conversation I’m having. But when I ask the question, often it startles the individual. “How did you know about that?” they ask. One explanation is that the Holy Spirit is operating in me with His gifts so that I can be an effective minister but some would say I’ve just learned to be a good counselor who picks up well on emotional cues from people.
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Why do we have such a hard time believing God acts, that He speaks?
Largely it is because we are products of a rationalistic world view. We are trained to think without reference to the supernatural.
∙ Time is certain; eternity is possible.
∙ The physical body is certain; the soul is possible.
∙ I exist; of God’s existence I cannot be certain.
∙ Our reality is the material world, that which can be weighted, measured, touched, and seen; is real and can be trusted.
Our experience is bounded by time, explained by science, and given meaning only in self-expression. In schools of philosophy this is called Existentialism. That which EXISTS is that which gives life meaning.
Trained to be rationalistic, we have lost our sense that God is at work in the world. God, if He is, is far removed from us. There is nothing, no one higher that we can aspire to reach. This world is all there is. What does it matter that we are existentialists? It effects us in powerful, yet unseen ways.
Existentialism changes the rules of life. If we are soulless animals, living by the law of the survival of the fittest — if we are simply the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder — then there is no real reason for the most powerful person not to take from those who are weak. That is not cruel, it is natural! To the person who sees only this material world, whose only god is himself; power is real, love is not.
Existentialism brings us the idea of absolute freedom. Since there is no higher Person and no universal moral code, everyone becomes a law to himself. Sacrificing one’s self-interest for family, nation, or God is a ridiculous idea. Instead, the admired ideal is the courage to ‘do your own thing’ even if all are against you and even if it brings pain to others. After all, your needs are real and as such, demand expression.
If you begin to study the art, the music, and the movies that have been produced in the last 40 years, you will find a growing sense of despair, accompanied by increasing levels of violence and sensuality.
∙ John Wayne, playing an American hero, fighting for justice in a cruel world would be a quaint icon on the movie screen today. Instead, we have Pvt. Ryan, played by Tom Hanks. Pvt. Ryan does not see the cause for which he fights as noble and right. Instead is he overwhelmed by despair at the absurdity of death being forced on his men merely to implement the political aims of presidents, generals, and kings.
It is a sad re-interpretation of history that leaves us without the moral imperative that drove our nation to great sacrifice as we fought the horrible evil of Nazism.
It has been interesting to hear our President use language that reflects issues of good and evil, right and wrong in talking about the present crisis in our land. I thought that view may have been lost forever, but many Americans apparently still have the ability to recognize evil when it destroys thousands of innocents in a bizarre grab for power. Note the powerful effect of calling evil what it really is. Americans, in huge majorities, are supportive of military action, even long and protracted war, because they sense that there is a real reason to sacrifice.
∙ The orderly harmonies of Mozart and Bach which carried lyrics about the splendor of God to our ears reflected the sense of order and spirituality that characterized their time. Contrast that with the loud, abrasive, and enraged sounds of Marilyn Manson or the late Kurt Cobain. These young men are consumed by the hopelessness of existentialism, thrown into life without a clue about its meaning. And in the loss of meaning, they feel only rage.
Why am I talking about this?
Because existentialism has come through the doors of the church and
stolen vibrant, powerful, and life-changing Christianity from us!
Many of us have adopted the ideas of existentialism without conscious realization. We wonder why Christianity is so hard to live, why we have so little spiritual power and/or authority. Let me lay it out plainly for you.
Existentialism denies the spiritual, the eternal, and the miraculous. A Christianity lived without these is a dead philosophy. In many churches, the influence is obvious. The Bible is not read as a historical book telling us the stories of God’s work. Instead it is read as a collection of myths and legends that illustrate human values and truths. The result is DEATH.
In churches that adopt a more conservative view, the Bible is still read as historical and true, BUT the same underlying unbelief still has the same effect. What is it?
Even many Christians who profess to believe the Bible make a clear disconnect between the God of the Bible and their own God. They believe that the Bible teaches about what God did thousands of years ago, but do not read it as a guide that teaches how to experience His power today. Many modern Christians attempt the impossible: confessing a deep love for God, yet living with full control of themselves. Reading the Bible as a existentialist has two immediate results according to Jack Deere:
1. We experience little of God’s supernatural power because we have no faith to pray for miracles to happen and little confidence that God is speaking to us today about His will.
2. We have a moralistic version of Christianity that believes that discipline is the key element of a spiritual life. Mix that discipline with a little help from God and it makes us better people while we are on our way to heaven... Beyond taking us to heaven, we don’t really expect too much from God and we usually get exactly what we expect.
Jack Deere tells the story of John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard Church Movement. As a 29 yr. old musician with no religious training, John was converted. He and his wife, Carol, began attending a Bible-preaching church near their home. Wimber was astounded by the drab hymn singing he heard compared to the freshness and energy of the music he played in the nightclubs. The sermon was a passionless presentation of knowledge that was apparently disconnected with the present world. But because he was told that Christians went to church, Wimber kept attending. He also started reading his Bible instead of just carrying it to church like most of those who attended the church he attended. Week by week, John began to notice that there was a gap, a huge one, between the Christianity he read of in his Bible and the Christianity he found at his church. When he questioned church leaders, he found little enthusiasm for his faith. Instead, he was gently told not to expect too much. So in his early weeks as a new Christian, John Wimber was taught to read the Bible with a disconnect
– That was then, not now. Those events were real, but are not real now. They are recorded to teach us spiritual truths.
God be praised that John Wimber did not believe that line. He read in the book ( Hebrews 13:8) that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And Wimber went on to lead a church renewal ministry that has introduced thousands of people to a living, powerful, and life-changing real relationship with God!
∙Do you believe that God speaks today?
∙What have you asked Him for in bold faith?
∙Have you asked specifically enough so that you would know IF and/or WHEN He answered?
Turn with me this morning to I Kings 19: 9b-18.
At this reading we find Elijah, a prophet of God, has just experienced a great victory over the pagan priests that were deceiving the nation. In a post-victory depression, he ran off to a deserted area. Let’s read....
Why is this passage included in the Bible?
Is it just a cool story about a man who hears voices in his head? No, friend, it isn’t.
It is a story that teaches us about hearing God’s voice. IF we read it with that disconnect that I spoke of earlier, we miss important truth. IF we read it bringing the bias of our modern minds to bear, we also miss the point.
The questions that I want to stir up in you this morning are these:
∙ Do you hear from God?
∙ Do you recognize His voice?
∙ Do you even LISTEN for His voice?
Hearing from God makes the difference between Christianity as a religion of disciplined morality and Christianity as an experience of walking intimately with the Lord that has great fulfillment and that satisfies the deepest needs of our hearts and minds!
∙ IF you are not hearing from God, you trapped in a system, a philosophy of life based on regulations and traditions without great joy or abundant hope.
∙ IF you are hearing from God, you are truly alive with an all consuming hope of living for eternity.
God SPEAKS! But all too often, His voice falls on deaf ears.
Jesus told a parable of shepherds going to the sheep pen. As the sheep were let out in the morning to go their
pastures, the shepherds called to their sheep and they followed the voice they recognized. Applying this to us,
he said, John 10:16
I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen
to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
God, through the prophet Isaiah, promised Isaiah 30:20-21
Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 21 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.”
What a promise. God says He wants to speak specifically to us. But we don’t hear Him because we are much like the people to whom this promise was first given. They didn’t want to hear from God, nor did they want to trust Him. They wanted to live by their own wits and do their own thing!
Listen to the prophet....
“Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out plans that are
not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin; 2 who go down to Egypt without consulting me; who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection, ... 8 Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness.
9 These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.
10 They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” and to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!”
God tells them that their refusal of His voice will only bring them calamity and sorrow, but then He promises them His loving restoration.
Listen as I read on.... Isaiah 30:19-21
19 O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. 20 Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 21 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.”
Some of you are, at this moment, responding to this not with real faith; but with a longing.
Your thoughts are something like– “I wish I could hear that voice.” YOU CAN!
These promises were not just for people in ancient times. Nor were they given to an elite group. They are promises for all God’s people who will learn the language of the Holy Spirit.
In the book of the Acts, we read... Acts 2:17-18 17
‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
Don’t be thrown by that word, ‘prophesy.’ It simply means to speak on God’s behalf. It doesn’t mean to foretell the future. BUT how can we speak for God, IF we have not heard from God?
Jack Deere points out a divine pattern.
To be effective in doing the word of God, we must first hear from God.
Let me quote liberally from his thoughts for a moment....
It was normal for Jesus to hear from his Father before he did or said things. Jesus said his ministry was guided by this great principle: He did what he saw his Father doing (John 5:19). This way of living did not originate with Jesus. It has always been God’s ideal for his servants. Over fourteen hundred years earlier, God had taken Moses on a mountain where he showed him a heavenly vision of what the tabernacle was to look like. Then he warned him to make the earthly tabernacle according to the pattern he saw (Ex. 25:9, 40; Acts 7:44; Heb. 8:5). This has always been the best way to live and to minister-see it in heaven and copy it on earth. It is the essence of all sincere prayer-"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10 NASB). No one can do God’s will on earth unless God first reveals his will from heaven. He reveals, we copy. He initiates, we respond.
Jesus didn’t originate this pattern, but he fulfilled it on a far grander scale than anyone could have ever imagined. Moses constructed an earthly tabernacle according to the heavenly pattern, but Jesus has constructed a spiritual temple, the church, which will never be overcome by the powers of darkness. He did this by following one simple principle for all life and ministry: he only did what he saw his Father doing.
John repeatedly emphasized this theme in his gospel. In his humanity, Jesus claims he can do nothing of himself, so he judges as he hears his Father judge (John 5:30). His teaching does not originate with himself but with his Father (John 7:16). He speaks only the words of his Father (John 8:28; 12:49-50; 14:10, 24). In short, he does exactly what his Father commands him (John 14:31). In every instance, he presents himself as a servant under orders in unbroken communion with his Father. And he does all of these things- judges, teaches, speaks, obeys -- not out of his deity, but by the power of the Holy Spirit who rests on Him.
Even the Holy Spirit follows this pattern. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit, ‘ will not speak on his own; he will speak only that what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.’ (John 16.13)
Hearing God in order to serve God is the New Testament pattern. Shouldn’t it be the pattern for our lives?
IF we want to do the work of God and have real success at it, we will have to hear from God. To hear from God we need to confront our assumptions about life and see where we are reaching existentialist conclusions. Then, in faith, we must begin to learn a new language, the language of the Spirit.
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I close this morning with a story that illustrates the procedure...
I Samuel 3: 1-10
Note that opening line... “in those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions...” Might that not describe our place, our time? In a time of tremendous spiritual poverty, men and women are needed who speak for God, who turn the world back to His love and to hope.
God is speaking. It is time to listen.
This week, would you make your prayer a simple one – “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”
Then make spaces and times of quiet listening.
Turn off the radio or TV and pick up your Bible. Ask the Spirit of God to talk to you.
Begin an adventure of faith.
Next time I speak to you I will continue this theme with a message about the ways in which God speaks to us today. Amen.
