He Speaks . . .

 

After moving here, we only began knowing the couple next-door when they decided to move closer to their son. They were gone only a few days when we were shocked to hear she was hit by a bus and died. So sad. She had a distinctive way of talking and for weeks, I could hear her voice.

I thought about her this morning when the next word in my concordance turned out to be VOICE. This word is translated from a Hebrew word qôl that appears several hundred times in the OT. It refers to literal speech from vocal cords, but is also used in figurative ways such as animal sounds, cries of joy, the noise of thunder, or battle or an entire body of communication such as a letter. It is also used to describe God speaking.

What about the voice of God? Many claim to hear it and say, “God told me . . . .” when what they heard was contrary to anything God has ever said before and sounds more like wishful thinking. That error does not mean that He never speaks, only that discernment is necessary!

Theologically, qôl is significant in prophetic passages where the prophets proclaim His voice and operate as His mouthpiece. For example, Deuteronomy 18:18–19 says: “I will raise up for them a prophet like (Moses) from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”

When God speaks, those who hear Him are expected to do what He says, and if not, they can expect judgment. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 tell of blessings for obedience and curses for refusing His voice.

In the NT, the word is phōnē and can be translated as “sound, voice, language.” It is used more than one hundred times, sometimes for the words of Jesus and sometimes in the way voice is used in the OT.

Skimming many verses, I noticed that when God spoke, not everyone heard what He said, only those who believed in Him. At Jesus’ transfiguration in Matthew 17:5–6: “He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified.”

Jesus explained that only His sheep would hear and know His voice, yet a time would come when everyone would hear Him. Jesus said in John 5:25–29:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

He told those who did not believe in Him, “His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.” (John 5:36–38)

When God’s voice came publicly, “The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered.” Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” This is similar to Saul’s conversion experience when he became Paul. He said, “Those who were with me saw the light but did not understand the voice of the one who was speaking to me.”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. That God speaks to human hearts is amazing, yet Hebrews 3:13–15 makes clear that hearing God’s voice always requires obedience. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “’Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’ ” The same idea is repeated in Revelation 3:20 where Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” To gaze at God’s glory changes my life, but not if I close my eyes and plug my ears. He must remain my focus and I must do what He tells me to do, always matching what I hear in my heart with what He has put in black and white on the pages of His written Word, thankful that He keeps teaching me how to listen.

 

The Power of Spoken Words

 

When at Bible college, one course was about communication. We read a book called “The Humiliation of the Word” by Jacques Ellul that examined how visual reality has superseded verbal truth. In applying it to Scripture, the bottom line is that divine and human words declaring divine truth are sinfully dominated by all sorts of idolatry, which is visual. In other words, sight replaces faith. In simple terms, seeing is more convincing to the sinner than hearing or reading. Because “faith comes by hearing” this is a disastrous departure from the salvation offered by God.

While this was a difficult book to read (it can be found as a free download) it has stayed with me, partly because our assignment was a book report that did not use words! This made me deeply aware of the truths Ellul writes about and how even written words can become pictures or images in our minds, such as stop signs, the letters on public bathroom doors, and thousands of emojis that take the place of entire sentences.

Why is this important? For one thing, God speaks in words, not with graphics, paintings, or symbols. His book is called the Word of God for a reason. This book is a result of God breathing or speaking truth into the hearts of human authors and also into the hearts of readers:

2 Peter 1:20–21. “First, no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

2 Timothy 3:16–17. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

While written so we can read it, those who truly listen can testify that in the reading it often seems as if God is standing nearby saying those words. They are verbal and deeply affect the listener’s heart and life. He says:

Romans 10:17–18. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for ‘Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.’ ”

Those who hear Him speak are dramatically affected. For one thing, we repeat what we hear because hearing God and faith are like that — what we hear from God must be shared.

1 Thessalonians 1:8. “For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything.”

1 Corinthians 9:16. “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”

Not only did the words of God become printed pages and our Scriptures, the Word of God also became flesh and lived among us, our Emmanuel. He knows our propensity for the visual, our desire to see before we believe, so He gave us Himself in a form we could lay our eyes on and know that He is who He says He is.

John 1:1–3; 14. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made . . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

1 John 1:1–3. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. God could have thundered His words from the sky or wrote them on the sides of mountains, but He did not do that. Instead, in love, He became one of us so we could see Him. He is no longer walking this earth, but He gave us Scriptures so we have a record of our creation, His dealings with us, and how we can have a rich and eternal relationship with Him. Our part? Read it and hear Him speak with intention to believe what He says.

Satan does much to humiliate God’s Word. His tactics put it on a shelf gathering dust so the owners have no idea that the God who made them is speaking to their deaf ears, revealing Himself and ready to change their lives. Like Samuel, how important to read it and say, “Lord, speak for your servant is listening.”