Hearing
God: The
Voice
(John
10:1-6)
10:30
am, Sun, Sept 29, 2013 Windsor UBC, J G White
Call to your dog,
and it may well come to you, gladly. Call you cat, and it may just
stare and walk away. Stories are told of old, retired, circus
elephants, reunited with a former trainer. They recognize the old
master's voice, and on command, will do the old routine of tricks,
after many, many years. An elephant never forgets, we are told.
Hebrew prophets of
old spoke this way:
The ox knows its
owner, and the donkey its master's crib; but Israel does not know, my
people do not understand.
Is. 1:3
Even the stork in
the heavens knows its times; and the turtledove, swallow, and crane
observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the
ordinance of the Lord.
Jeremiah 8:7
Isaiah and Jeremiah
spoke these words of the Lord in the 8th
and 7th
centuries, B.C., when the Hebrew people were a nation about to fall
to the Babylonian empire. They warned: God's own people don't even
know their God anymore!
It could be scary to
have a Jeremiah or Isaiah arise in our midst today. The warnings
could be just as fierce. The story of God's own people forgetting
God's own voice is oft repeated in history. And some today would
warn that many Christians are weak when it comes to knowing the
Master's voice.
We just heard some
of Jesus' own words, rather gentle words, about knowing His voice.
He is the Shepherd of sheep who know His voice and can be called out,
and led. Almost seems ironic that Jesus' pastoral figure of speech
is not even understood, and He has to go on to say more to make it
clear!
This Jesus can yet
be our Good Shepherd, though His voice comes by the Holy Spirit, and
the record we have in the Bible. We who are redeemed by Christ, are
filled with the Spirit, the presence of God with our spirits.
Anointed
is one of the Bible words for this. The first letter of John says:
As
for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and
so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches
you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it
has taught you, abide in him.
1 John 2:27
Abide in Him. Stay
with Him. Do not forget or let the fellowship fade.
When it does fade,
it is time for renewal, reunion, re-acquaintance, relearning the
Master's Voice. Some believers have not been well-taught about the
Voice in the first place.
One of the classic
lessons about knowing the will of God for your life, or for any
particular moment, is to use the Three Lights, three things to guide
the way: circumstances, impressions of the Spirit, and the Bible.
What happens and is
happening gives us definite clues about God's plan and path for us.
But, of course, not everything that happens is what God wants. I'm
not a fan of the cliche, “If the Lord want's that to happen, He'll
make it happen.” That's sort of true, but we could easily say this
about something the Evil One wants to happen; then, when it occurs,
it's the devil's work. Ephesians 2:2 warns of the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons
of disobedience.
Next Sunday morning we'll walk with Jesus through His own desert
temptations with the Accuser.
Along with sensing
God in our circumstances, are the impressions of guidance or truths
from the Spirit of God. I shall never forget a dear lady from
Cumberland county who told her story of being assured of salvation
and the presence of God. She remembered an old TV commercial for Mr.
Clean, who waved a wand and everything went sparkling and bright from
floor to counter-top to cupboards and windows. She said she felt
like that one day in her own body, from her toes sweeping up to her
head: the thrilling cleansing and beautiful presence of the Spirit of
God.
And along with
circumstances and our spiritual moments is the witness of the Bible.
Dallas Willard wrote: “It cannot be stressed too much that the
permanent address at which the word of God may be found is the
Bible.” (Hearing
God, p.
183)
But recognizing His
voice is not simply a matter of matching these three up. This is not
enough. We recognize a message is His voice because
we are familiar with His voice.
We can suppose that
sheep know the shepherd by getting to know the sound of his voice,
the attitude and way he speaks, and what the guidance actually is.
So it is with the Good Shepherd. There can be said to be these three
factors in the Voice of God: the Quality, the Spirit, and the Content
of what we are being told.
A main Quality
in God's voice is the
weight of authority.
What God speaks is clearly and simply right and true and strong.
Jesus spoke as one
with authority. This was the comment of the people who heard Him
teaching.
The plain authority
of an idea that comes to us can help us know it is of God. Many of
our own ideas and thoughts are less secure, and more sneaky in their
quality. E. Stanley Jones wisely wrote: Perhaps
the rough distinction is this: The voice of the subconscious argues
with you, tries to convince you; but the inner voice of God does not
argue, does not try to convince you. It just speaks, and it is
self-authenticating. It has the feel of the voice of God within it.
(A
Song of Ascents,
1979, p. 190)
So the old cartoon
of a little devil on one shoulder, and a little angel on the other,
whispering into your ears, is not quite right. The still small voice
has a simple authority, He is not competitive with us or cajoling us.
Another aspect of
God's voice to us is the
spirit
of what is said. It's been called “a spirit of exalted
peacefulness and confidence, of joy, of sweet reasonableness and of
goodwill.” (Willard,
p.
177)
After Christ taught
about being the Shepherd and the Gate of the sheep, John 10 describes
the response. Many
of them were saying, "He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why
listen to him?" Others were saying, "These are not the
words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the
blind?"
John 10:20-21
The wisdom we gain
is from the Lord, and of this wisdom James says:
the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing
to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of
partiality or hypocrisy.
James 3:17. This is the feel, the spirit of what God says to guide
us. The still small voice is all of these things.
Thirdly, along with
the quality of authority in the Voice, and the spirit of peace and
mercy, is the actual Content.
What we are being told by God. Now, we will be told amazing things,
but the Holy Spirit's voice will speak things that are true and
right, for God is true and right. What God tells you or me or us
will jive with what the Bible tells us about who God is and what the
Kingdom is like.
Charles Stanley
comments: “God’s voice will never tell us to engage in any
activity or relationship that is inconsistent with the Holy
Scriptures.” (How
to Listen to God,
1985, p.51)
So, let's think
about a case study. Can we discover a vision statement to be a word
from the Lord?
Windsor Baptist
will be an intergenerational community of Christ followers.
We will continue to be, not a building, not an organized society, not
a series of religious events… we will continue to be a people, a
church family, a faith community within the larger area.
I believe this is
consistent with what scripture teaches us about God’s Kingdom and
God’s people on earth. I’m just now reading Andy
Stanley’s book, Deep
& Wide.
He speaks at length about the New Testament fellowship. The word that
gets translated “church” in the New Testament means gathering
of
people, and might just as well be translated as gathering.
Look at how many of
the epistles / letter greet the churches as gatherings: When
Paul, or others, send their greetings, they say, “greet the
church/gathering in their house.” It’s at the end of Romans
(16:5), of 1 Corinthians (16:9), Colossians (4:15), and the start of
Philippians (1:2). Romans 8:29 tells us: those
whom [God]
foreknew
he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order
that he might be the firstborn within a large family.
Galatians 6:10 actually has the phrase “the family of faith.”
And we want to be a complete
family. An intergenerational community of Christ followers.
...With
an intentional focus on youth and young families,
by
2017.
This narrows our focus, as we believe we need to do.
We think about this;
we react with our feelings about its meaning. We talk with others
about it. Something you say out loud, or someone says to you may
stand out as from the Lord.
I hope we do regular
praying about this: our conversation with the Lord. In that inner
thinking with Him, and the silence of our questions before the Lord,
we may hear a still small assurance of this vision, or some message
to correct it. He may speak silently thru something we see in our
community: an impactful glimpse of need out there that God impresses
upon us.
And we may even
search the scriptures about this vision statement. This too is
needed. The Holy Spirit will use chapters and verses to speak into
our Church vision this fall:
Recite them to
your children and talk about them when you are home and when you are
away, when you lie down and when you rise.
Deuteronomy 6:7
Train children in
the right way, and when old, they will not stray. Proverbs
22:6
Jesus
said, Go
into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.
Mark 16:15
Believe in the
Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
Acts 16:31
In all these
activities, we listen for the voice of the Spirit: human talk and
activity, the still small voice, the Bible. We tune in to the
messages we get that have the quality, and spirit, and content that
sound like Him. We want to recognize the Master's voice in our
thoughts about this vision for Windsor Baptist. And we want everyone
to be confident about the Shepherd's voice in every situation.
Of course, we can
err, we can be led astray. Next week is really part two about The
Voice. What is not The Voice? Even quotations from the Bible can be
from other than our God.
It takes time, I'm
sure, for a lamb to get to know the voice of the Shepherd. But
staying near the other sheep who already know the voice is a big
help. Let's stick together, as we develop our listening skills for
God. Let's help each other as we grow to walk with the Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment