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January 18, 2004
When God Speaks, Who Listens?
When God Speaks, Who Listens?
I Samuel 3: 1-10 / Acts 9: 1-9
January 18th, 2004
This morning I speak to you about a question. When God speaks, who listens? Asking this is a bit like asking who listens when EF Hutton speaks, as an old ad on TV put it. I don’t know if there still is an EF Hutton—but there still is a God. Investors wanted EF Hutton to speak, but does everyone really want to hear God speak?
I remember that the Book of Exodus tells us that God’s own people, Israel, did not want to hear Him speak. They told Moses, “You speak to us and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.” They didn’t realize that when Moses spoke to them, it was God speaking to them. We read the words of Moses in the Book of Exodus and say it is the word of God. When God speaks, who listens?
I think of the popular hymn, “In the Garden,” that folks in retirement communities love to sing, and maybe some of you wish we would sing too, “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.”
But I wonder who really hears God speak this way. Is it anything more than a songwriter’s poetic exuberance? We have just sung, “Lord, speak to me.” I wonder what we mean when we sing that. Is it more to you than singing a song?
You have heard two stories from the Bible this morning that tell us about God speaking to someone. Both times we see there was a life-changing response. I wonder IF Samuel and Saul did not respond would we be reading of these events in their lives? So that what we are to see is not just that God spoke to these two people, but that they responded. How many other times in Biblical times did God speak but nobody responded, so we don’t read that God spoke?
When and how does God speak today? Sometimes I hear zealous folk say that God spoke to them. I wonder what it was like and what they had in mind. Did they hear a voice from God, or was it only an inner voice, the voice of their imagination? Sometimes imaginative voices are mistaken for the voice of God telling people to do terrible things. Lunatics commit vicious crimes sometimes in response to a voice they believed was the voice of God.
Two weeks ago in our Bible study at the Work Release Facility, we read in the Book of Acts about Paul’s conversation with the Roman governor, Felix. Now, remember, when we read Paul’s words in the Bible, we call it “God’s word.” So when Paul spoke to this fellow about justice, self-control, and the future judgment it was the voice of God that Felix heard, though he heard the words directly from the mouth of Paul.
Felix thought it was only Paul speaking, but when we open the Bible and read about it, we read it as the word of God. Luke tells us, “Felix was alarmed and said, ‘Go away for the present; when I have an opportunity I will summon you’.” He was alarmed because God stirred his conscience. He didn’t realize that in putting off the voice of conscience he was putting off God.
Would he have done this if he realized he was hearing God speak when Paul spoke? We don’t read of another opportunity that came to Felix.
Though what you hear from someone’s lips will never make it into the Bible, you may well be hearing God speak today when you hear someone speak to you. I believe that the conscience is a sifting device God has put into you and me that lets us know when a voice we hear is more than the voice of an ordinary person speaking. What do you do with the voice of your conscience?
Henry Bullinger, an early Reformed pastor in the Church at Zurich, wrote, “The preaching of the word of God is the word of God.” He didn’t say this arrogantly, but with a feeling of high responsibility both as a preacher, and as one who listened to preaching. How do you listen to preaching?
You feel the collision between what is convenient, what you want to hear, and what is inconvenient and costly and points you in a direction you know in your heart you should go. But you don’t want to obey that voice. It is all so personal that you can ignore that voice and nobody else will know. But in that voice you heard God speaking to you only you didn’t realize it was God. In the reading from I Samuel we learned “There was no frequent vision” in those days. That is, even prophets and priests rarely sensed God was speaking so were not accustomed to the idea of God speaking. You will reap benefits if you respond to the insistent voice of conscience and pay a price if you don’t.
You may be like Felix speaking to Paul, “I’ll summon you another time?” But that “another time” may not come. It matters how you and I respond to heavy moments when we may not recognize that the voice that calls to us is not the voice of sentiment but the voice of God.
But let’s go back to Samuel and Saul who heard God speak and then responded.
In the first instance God speaks to the little boy, Samuel. In the second God speaks to an adult, Saul of Tarsus. Both Samuel and Saul heard a distinct voice in dramatic situations.
For little Samuel it was a voice in the night that he might have mistaken for a dream. He thought it was Eli’s voice, the old priest, speaking from another room. He ran to Eli’s bed and said, “Eli, you called me?” It happened three times. Then Eli, older and wiser, finally realized that God was speaking to this little fellow who had come to him in unusual circumstances. “When you hear the Voice next, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’.” The Hebrew word for listen also means obey.
And Samuel did just that. And thus, this little boy found his high purpose in life as he began to follow the leading of this Voice that spoke to him that night. I take it seriously when I hear a child tell me of her experience with God.
For Saul it was no gentle call in the night but a knock on the head in broad daylight. Hell-bent on doing harm to the detested cult of Jesus-followers, as he walked the long road from Jerusalem to Damascus he saw a blinding light and heard a voice thundering from the skies. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
That’s how our translators put the question Saul heard. But the Greek word for “persecute” also means, “follow” or “pursue.” Saul thought he was following the will of God in hounding the Christians. I wonder if God said to him on the Damascus Road, “Why are you pursuing me?” What’s your motive? There is this risk for all religious people. We assume that because it is a religious venture we’re on that we’re doing the will of God. How easily our personal agenda may blur with an assumed Divine agenda. I remember the Proverb that says, “There is a way which seems right to a man but the end thereof is the way of death.” Paul’s way seemed not only right, but the way of God.
It was in Saul’s question, “Who are you, Lord,” that he identified this challenging voice on the Damascus Road as Jesus’ voice. His life began to turn around on a dime. Jesus answered Saul’s question, “I am Jesus whom you are pursuing.”
I think of the line from Francis Thompson’s poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” “I am He Whom thou seekest!” Saul thought he was doing the will of God, trying to stamp out the faith of Jesus. But then God turned him around. He began really to do the will of God in following Jesus, not persecuting His followers.
The one good thing about Saul was that he took seriously his commitments. At first it was a mistaken commitment, but no one can dispute Saul’s devotion to the cause he thought was right—though it was wrong.
In all cases that I know about where God speaks, it comes requiring some kind of action. To hear God speak is to receive a summons to act, not just to ecstasy, as the song put it. “When God is near, so near I hear him speak to me, my heart is filled with ecstasy.”
You and I are here this morning rather than at home or at Panera’s sipping coffee because we believe there is a benefit of some kind to being in this place on Sunday. What is this benefit? We hope to hear a voice. Maybe the voice you want to hear is, “Peace, be still,” quieting the storm of your life. Maybe the voice you want to hear is, “All is well,” when you feel the years slipping by, and you wonder about tomorrow. God may be saying to you, “Peace, be still,” and “All is well.”
But maybe God has more to say than that. There is another word God is saying to you to which you have not responded. You hear the insistent voice that says “Forgive the one who offended you.” But you have responded, “Lord, I can’t.”
Or maybe God has given you opportunity to do considerable good, and you hear that voice insistently, “Do it!” but you resist because you think the good you could do is too much. It is more than you want to commit to.
Maybe you have habits of life, or habits of thought to which you cling, even as you hear the voice of conscience saying, “Don’t!” “Stop.” But you keep on, proud to be more modern in your ethics than the out-of-date guidance of Holy Scripture. And as you resist the voice of conscience, you forfeit the peace your heart longs to have, and you feel a drift of your life in a direction you know is not right.
You try to soothe yourself by coming to church. That’s good. Many stop coming, hoping to drown out the voice of conscience/God. You are still coming.
The uneasiness you feel is for a good purpose. It is preparing you next time not just to hear a voice, but also to respond. It is said, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” Good intentions, never acted upon, clutter life with pointless sentimentality. You read of someone who did something very useful and pride yourself that you can feel good when reading about a good deed. God is calling you to do something not to feel good about what someone else did.
God rarely speaks with an audible voice. Instead, God speaks in the clear voice of your conscience, a capacity in you He created for a purpose. The purpose is not to afflict you with painful memories, or to soothe you with sentimental thoughts, but to stir you to action.
God speaks to you when you read the Bible. Something leaps out of the story at you and you realize it has spoken to your heart.
God speaks to you when an opportunity for doing unusual good leaps before you. The Bible says, “He that knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Interestingly, it was James, Jesus’ half-brother who wrote this, perhaps looking back at his own early life in which he rejected His half-brother, Jesus.
Sometimes God may speak audibly to people. Maybe even in church. But I doubt that God ever speaks only to produce warm feelings. In the Book of Genesis God uses such economy of words in creation. Just, “Let there be light.” “Let there be a division between water and dry land.” “Let us make man in our image.” God speaks to produce a response.
Don’t put off doing what you have reason to believe is the voice of God in the voice of your conscience. Instead, follow that Voice of God with all you have and are.
Let us pray: Lord we have sung, “Lord speak to me.” And we have pondered what it is to hear You speak. Speak to us, Lord. And by your grace, give us Your Holy Spirit to invigorate us to do what we have heard You say. To our joy and to the glory of Your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at January 18, 2004 09:30 AM