God Has Spoken

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INTRODUCTION

This morning we’re beginning a new series working our way through the wonderful Letter to the Hebrews, so please open the Bible to Hebrews 1.1-4. That’s on p1201. My title is God Has Spoken, and I want to ask three questions, which you can find on the back of the service sheet. They are, first, Do we want to listen to God? Secondly, How can we hear God? And thirdly, Are we going to listen to God?

Those can be difficult questions. But the key to the answers is there in the first words of Hebrews:

In the past God spoke…

But that first question is a vital one. In fact this whole letter is really dealing with the double danger that either we won’t listen to God or we’ll stop listening. So:


First, DO WE WANT TO LISTEN TO GOD?

The fact is that for some of us – and for many, many people who we’ll run into in the coming week – the idea that God has spoken just seems irrelevant. Maybe we see people with Bibles lying around their houses. Or we hear about them getting together in little groups to read the Bible together and learn from it. We may find them sufficiently curious-making that we go along to church every now and again to keep an eye on what they’re up to. We may even get to the point of leafing through the Bible ourselves when no one’s watching, trying to figure out what they see in it. Because to us, it just seems so irrelevant.

It seems like the equivalent of doing jigsaws of eggs in a white bowl on a cream cloth. It may be some people’s idea of fun, but it’s clearly a total waste of our time. We have better things to do.

The trouble is, listening to God isn’t a hobby that we can take or leave. Our lives depend on it. A man may be dying, but if he doesn’t think he’s ill, talk of needing treatment seems irrelevant to him. A teenager set on a course of self-destructive drug use won’t have the slightest interest in listening to his father telling him the truth of his situation. A husband relishing the illicit excitement of an adulterous affair will shut his ears to his wife’s pleas.

We’re very expert at being deaf when we want to be. And that, says the Bible, is how we are when God speaks to us. We’re wilfully deaf. And we’ve been holding our hands over our ears when God speaks to us for so long that we’ve convinced ourselves that we really can’t hear him.

Look at the description of our condition in 3:12. Just turn over the page to find that.

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

Do you see the nature of what the Bible calls sin? It is a deliberate turning away from the living God who loves us. Sin is refusing to listen. It’s regarding God’s voice as irrelevant.

So do we want to listen to God? We don’t. We’d rather turn our backs on him, and shut our ears to him. Our only hope is if God in his mercy breaks into our lives and changes us. He alone is able to cure this self-inflicted disease of selective deafness that accepts any foolish nonsense and filters out the voice of God.

And curing our spiritual deafness is what God loves to do. So maybe you find the idea of listening to God no longer seems irrelevant to you as it once did. Maybe you’ve discovered within you a longing to hear the voice of the living God speaking to you.

If God in his grace has unblocked our ears, then we’ll be ready to listen to what he has to say. Do you want to listen to God? If you do, then come with me again to the beginning of Hebrews. There, we’re given the answer to my next question, which is this:


Secondly, HOW CAN WE HEAR GOD?

Let me read verses 1-4:

1In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 4So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

The only way that we can get to know God is by God revealing himself to us. There are various reasons for that.

For one thing, he is hidden from our view. “No one has ever seen God…” says John 1:18. And 1 Timothy 6:15-16 stresses the same thing. God is:

the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, who no-one has seen or can see.

So not only is he hidden from our sight, he is hidden from our minds as well. For us even to think that we can work him out, that we can understand him with our own puny unaided brains just goes to show how absurdly over-inflated our egos are. As 1 Corinthians 2:11 has it:

… no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

All the intellectualising and all the centuries of religious speculation and all the contemplation of all the most revered mystics do not amount to a can of beans when it comes to hard facts about what God is like, unless he reveals himself to us.

And even if we could come up with some reliable information on our own, which we can’t, information about someone is a very different thing from actually engaging with them. Knowing about someone is very different from knowing them personally. Come to that, how do we even know that God is personal? How do we know that he’s there at all? Why couldn’t he (or rather, it) be some kind of Star Wars force? Or why shouldn’t there be a whole squad of gods, all battling it out for places in the first team? How are we to know? We can’t - unless God tells us the truth about himself.

And the good news is, that is exactly what he has done. And that’s how we know that he is personal. Because persons communicate by speaking, and that is what he does.

When you meet someone new, even seeing them tells you very little about them. It’s only as the other person begins to open up, and tells you about what’s going on inside their minds, that you really begin to know them.

Isn’t that why women often find men so frustrating? In general, men are not very adept at talking about the things that matter most to them. A silent man is hard to get to know. What is he thinking? Fortunately for men, the obvious conclusion is not always drawn - which is that there’s nothing going on in his brain at all. When I was getting to know Vivienne, who’s now my wife, it was the hours of talking that forged our friendship.

We can know God because of all the talking that he has done. So how has he spoken to us? In three main ways.

First, through the prophets. Hebrews 1:1 again:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways…

What is a prophet? A prophet is someone singled out by God first to receive revelation from him, and then to proclaim that revelation. Jeremiah is typical. He describes what happened to him in this way:

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

And he goes on to recall the searing experience of being given God’s words to speak:

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant”.

And Jeremiah discovered what we were talking about earlier: people do not want to listen to God.

The word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long

…he complains. But God persisted. In all kinds of ways he used human voices to speak his words, and God made sure they were written down and not lost. And that is what we have in the Old Testament. But that was not the end of it.

The second way that God has spoken to us is there in Hebrews 1:2:

but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son…

Jesus was a prophet. He too spoke what God the Father told him to speak. So he says in John 7:16:

My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me.

But he was so much more than a prophet. He revealed God not only through what he said, but through who he was and what he did. As he replied when Philip asked him to show them the Father:

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…

And to return to Hebrews (this is verse 3):

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.

Not a Madame Tussaud’s waxwork representation. An exact, living, human and divine, representation. So now, if we want to get to know God, the way we do it has been made clear by God himself: we have to get to know Jesus. He is and was and will be the divine King of kings and Lord of lords.

He was the agent of creation: verse 2 describes him as God’s Son “through whom he made the universe”.

It was he who opened the way for us to know God personally by taking the devastating consequences of our rebellion and refusal to listen to God’s word. That is, verse 3, he “provided purification for sins”.

He is the one who is in control of everything for ever - so, verse 3 again, “he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven”, which is to say he was enthroned beside God the Father. And how does he control everything? By speaking. Verse 3: he is “sustaining all things by his powerful word”.

And Jesus is the one who will inherit God’s kingdom when he returns to wrap up history, bring everyone to account, destroy evil, and gather God’s people around him in a new heaven and a new earth. He has been appointed “heir of all things” as verse 2 has it.

The angels are awesome beings. But Jesus is in a completely different league. Verse 4:

So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

More on that when we look at the rest of chapter 1. But it’s clear enough already that God’s revelation of himself in Jesus is comprehensive and it is final. Until the day comes when we do see him face to face, that’s it.

But do we have a reliable, God given account of who Jesus was, what he did, and what he said? If Jesus was a once for all revelation of God, that’s a crunch question.

One thing to be said about that is that the prophets themselves tell us a great deal about Jesus, in God-inspired anticipation of his coming. So when Jesus wanted to explain his own significance to the confused disciples after the resurrection, what did he do? He took them on a whistle-stop tour of the Old Testament. Luke 24:27:

…beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

And Luke also records how Jesus later said when he appeared to all the apostles:

“Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures…

And very significantly he added:

“You are witnesses of these things…”

That is the third way by which God speaks to us. First, through the prophets. Secondly, and supremely, in Jesus. And thirdly, through the apostles’ inspired witness to Christ and teaching about him. They tell us what happened, and what it meant, with God’s authority. So (if I may take a sneak preview of the next section of Hebrews) 2:3 says:

This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.

And what we have in the New Testament is the record of the teaching of the apostles.

God’s revelation of himself in Jesus is comprehensive and final, and God’s account of it is contained between the covers of this book. God has no more to say to us than he has said here. What more could we want? In these last days God has spoken to us by his Son. But that doesn’t mean that he’s stopped speaking to us. He has nothing more to say, but he doesn’t stop saying it! This is not a dead word. Hebrews 4:12:

The word of God is living and active.

So, for instance, right here in Hebrews, at 3:7, a Psalm is quoted - Psalm 95. Look at how it is introduced:

So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”

The message of the Bible is the living word of God which God the Holy Spirit speaks today to all who have ears to hear. This is God’s great living love-letter to mankind. Will we listen?

And that brings us to our final question:


Thirdly, ARE WE GOING TO LISTEN TO GOD?

What are we going to do with the message of the Bible - God’s word? Hebrews 2:1:

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard…

And 2:3:

how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?

Who are the people that we don’t listen to? They are those we don’t care about; those who we think might tell us to do something we don’t want to do; those from whom we think we can gain no benefit; or those who we think have no power over our lives. If we reckon God falls into any of those categories, we’re going to have a rude awakening when God’s patience finally runs out.

Who do we listen to? We listen to those who we know do have power over us; those who can help us; those we do love; and those we want to serve. Are we going to listen to God, or not?

We’ve seen how God in his mercy breaks into our lives and heals our self-inflicted deafness. He plants afresh in our hearts the desire to know him which we had stifled and suppressed. So we have ears to hear. And God is not silent. He has spoken and he speaks, loudly and clearly, in the Bible, and through Jesus. But it’s still down to us to use our newly working ears.

We must make it our lifetime priority to pay the closest possible attention to Jesus and to God’s word in the Bible. Those Bibles by the bedside or on our shelves must not gather dust. Those small group Bible studies must not degenerate into gossip. And as we gather together Sunday by Sunday, as we are this morning, we must not come just for the music, and the company, and the coffee.

We must pay more careful attention … to what we have heard.


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