Acts 9:1-9 – Do You Hear What I Hear?
A man was having difficulty communicating with his wife and concluded that she was becoming hard of hearing. So he decided to conduct a test without her knowing about it.
One evening he sat in a chair on the far side of the room. Her back was to him and she could not see him. Very quietly he whispered, "Can you hear me?" There was no response.
Moving a little closer, he asked again, "Can you hear me now?" Still no reply. Quietly he edged closer and whispered the same words, but still no answer.
Finally, he moved right in behind her chair and said, "Can you hear me now?" To his surprise and chagrin, she responded with irritation in her voice, "For the fourth time, yes!"
It’s funny: we accuse God of not hearing what we say, what we pray. We figure He’s up there not listening to anything we say. In fact, the opposite is true. As we holler up, “Can you hear me?”, He hollers back, “Yes! But can you hear me?” Folks, we’re the deaf ones, not God.
As we wrap up our 9 weeks of the words of Jesus – what he said to His followers after His resurrection, we come to Acts 9. Now, Jesus has already been raised from the dead. He’s walked on earth in a glorified body for 40 days. And He’s been taken to heaven. The disciples have waited on the Lord for 10 days, and the Holy Spirit has been given to every believer. The church has been growing, and opposition has come. A young man named Saul has been wanting to stomp out Christianity, because in his mind, it is a cult, a perverted form of Judaism. And Saul has been going around putting followers of Jesus in jail, even having some put to death. We pick up the story in Acts 9:1-9.
This passage is Luke’s version of what happened. We will also be looking at Acts 22 and Acts 26, where Paul is telling his testimony of how he found Jesus, or rather, how Jesus found him.
Today, although there’s so much wealth in this passage, we’re just going to glean some insights of how the voice of the Lord comes to us. How does God speak to us? What does His voice sound like? If you are hollering at God trying to get His attention, this is how God might be hollering back at you. How does God speak to people?
1) God’s voice came when Paul was trying to do what God wanted. We look back and see that Saul was wrong. Hunting down Christians was clearly not God’s desires. But Saul really thought he was right. Writer Eugenia Price says: ”Saul believed himself to be serving the Lord God of Israel when he persecuted the disciples of Jesus. His service had become an obsession.”
So even though he was wrong, he thought he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do. God calls you, not when you’re sitting around doing nothing for Him, but when you’re trying to follow Him. Moses and Amos were tending sheep when God called them. Samuel was helping in the temple when God spoke to him. Nehemiah was doing his job when God called him. Folks, if you aren’t doing what you already know God wants you to do, if you’re already holding out on areas in your life, if you know you cling to something that displeases God, don’t expect new messages from Him. Listen to what He’s already saying to you.
2) God’s voice caused him to change direction. Saul got a total change in his life that day. The voice from heaven showed him that the life that he knew would be over, because God had singled him out for a brand new thing. Folks, although at times the voice of God comes only as an encouragement to lift us up, the most important reason is to transform us. God wants to make us like His Son, Jesus. Romans 8:29 says: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” It’s the 2nd purpose of our church: to increase in the knowledge and image of Christ. To know more about Him and to become more like Him. Folks, if you and I really listened to God’s voice, we would not always like what He would tell us. It wouldn’t always be John 3:16 or Psalm 23. It would involve attitudes. It would involve actions. Beware of the voice that says you’re OK, that says you don’t need anything else. My favorite singer, Steve Taylor, wrote 20 years ago: “So you say it’s of the devil and you’ve got no choice, cuz you heard a revelation from a still small voice. If the Bible doesn’t back it, then it seems quite clear: perhaps it was the devil who whispered in your ear.”
3) God’s voice shows us our sin, despite our sincerity. This flows out of the last one. Saul was sincere but was still wrong. Just because he wanted to be right, he wasn’t. He was off by a mile. In our Christian lives, we can hope that God doesn’t judge our sins because we were sincere. But sin is sin. Sin is still wrong. You can be doing everything else right in your life, but your sin will still eat you away like a cancer. We want God to look at our lives and say, “Well, you’re doing most things pretty well. I’ll just ignore the other stuff.” But that’s not who God is, and that’s not who we are meant to be. He is holy, and He requires it of us too. Holy means set apart. Holy means completely devoted to Him. Holy means the power to rise above sin. Holy means not having to sin every day in thought, word and deed. Holy means different from what you were. God wants to change your heart to give you clean motives in all you do. Has God spoken to you about your divided heart?
4) God’s voice comes in a recognizable form. I like the passage in Acts 26 where Paul looks back and remembers that the Lord spoke to him in Aramaic. That was Paul’s mother tongue. He probably knew Hebrew, Greek, Latin (the language of the Roman empire) and Aramaic, which was a dialect of Hebrew. Jesus chose the exact way to get the point across. God chooses different ways to speak to different people. A friend of mine who was struggling with a heavy issue in his life was driving one day several years ago when he saw two butterflies fly into his path. One hit the windshield and the other missed it. Instantly God spoke to him and said, “If you don’t get over this sin, that’s what will happen to you and your wife.” The message stuck with him. God uses all kinds of ways to speak to people. Don’t say that God can’t use that particular way to speak to that person, just because it’s not how He speaks to you.
5) What was God’s clear voice to one wasn’t clear to others. The men with Saul heard the sound (ch.9), but didn’t understand the voice (ch.22). They saw the light (ch.22), but they didn’t see anyone (ch.9). This is why 2 people can come to church, and have 2 totally different experiences. One can say, “Well, that was a good service,” and the other say, “I didn’t get anything out of that at all.” Another time I’ll tell you why there are a lot of deep problems with both of those – how worship is not about us and what we like, but it’s about giving our lives over to God. But still, some people listen when God speaks and some don’t. What breed of person are you? Do you listen or do you daydream?
6) Following God’s voice may lead to being alone. This part isn’t nearly as fun as the idea of God having a message for you. Saul was singled out hearing the clear voice of the Lord, and it also led to a life of doing what he felt God was calling him to do. Listening to God’s voice didn’t lead to a life of ease. Paul was beaten, whipped, shipwrecked, abandoned, nearly stoned to death. God didn’t call Paul to a life of ease, but Paul still responded in obedience, no matter the consequences. Some of you are right here today. Doing what God wants could cause problems and so you hold back. Some of you should say, “I love you honey, but I love God more. That’s why I need to go to prayer meeting.”
7) Others will affirm God’s voice in your life. This ties in with the previous one. A disciple named Ananias got a vision from the Lord to go to Saul, to pray for him and baptize him. Ananias at first wondered if he should, but he went anyway.
Listen: if what you think is God’s voice telling you to do something, He will provide something else to back it up. But be careful. Satan will do the same thing: send someone to agree with you that this particular sin would be OK.
8) And finally, God’s voice is a sudden and gradual revelation. The Lord spoke to Saul that day, and told him some of what he would face as a believer in Jesus. 26:16-18. But that was not the last time God spoke to Saul. He continued to give guidance and direction for the rest of his life. Paul told later of how the Spirit guided him to go this way or that. He told later of God’s answer to prayers. Paul listening to God’s voice happened that first time, but it continued until the day Paul met Jesus in heaven.
So how about you? So you’ve responded to God’s voice. You came to the Lord, or you obeyed, or you followed his guidance. What about lately? When was the last time you listened for the voice of the Lord in your life? Have you let the Lord speak to you lately?
Before refrigerators, people used icehouses to preserve their food. Icehouses had thick walls, no windows, and a tightly fitted door. In winter, when streams and lakes were frozen, large blocks of ice were cut, hauled to the icehouses, and covered with sawdust. Often the ice would last well into the summer.
One man lost a valuable watch while working in an icehouse. He searched diligently for it, carefully raking through the sawdust, but didn’t find it. His fellow workers also looked, but their efforts, too, proved futile. A small boy who heard about the fruitless search slipped into the icehouse during the noon hour and soon emerged with the watch.
Amazed, the men asked him how he found it. "I closed the door," the boy replied, "lay down in the sawdust, and kept very still. Soon I heard the watch ticking." Will you be still enough before God to hear His voice, speaking words to your soul?
NOTES FOR BULLETIN INSERT:
Acts 9:1-9 – Do You Hear What I Hear?
We accuse God of not hearing us; maybe it’s that we don’t hear Him.
We’ll see how the voice of the Lord comes to us.
How does God speak to us? What does His voice sound like?
If you are hollering at God trying to get His attention,
this is how God might be hollering back at you.
How does God speak to people?
1) God’s voice came when Paul was trying to do
what God w___________________________.
2) God’s voice caused him to change d____________.
3) God’s voice shows us our s_____________, despite our sincerity.
4) God’s voice comes in a recognizable f______________.
5) What was God’s clear voice to one wasn’t clear to o____________.
6) Following God’s voice may lead to being a__________.
7) Others will a_____________________ God’s voice in your life.
8) God’s voice is a s______ and g_________ revelation.
