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.

 

Joy! Death is not the end . . .

Rhetorical question: How many times does God have to say something before it is true? Because there is no Hebrew word for RESURRECTION and very little in the OT that describes it, a NT religious group called the Sadducees said there is no resurrection. Some have punned “this is why they are ‘so sad you see.’”

The OT does say more than one thing about the afterlife. Daniel 12:2 says, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Job said in Job 19:26, “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”

David also declared in Psalm 17:15, “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness” and the prophet said in Isaiah 26:19, “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.”

Four OT people were raised from the dead, not many yet this shows the power of God to do it. Not only that, Jesus’ statement to the Sadducees in the NT refuted their idea by saying that the OT saints were not dead but still alive!

Mark 12:26–27. “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

The NT echoes the words from Daniel:

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.”

The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of this marvelous truth. While spoofed, denied, and mocked, there is no other Christian doctrine so vital. Without this, we have no hope or ultimate purpose for living!

1 Corinthians 15:12–19. “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Much is said in the NT about the resurrection of Christ and how that affects all who believe in Him. It is a demonstration that Christ is God the Son. It also forms a picture of our relationship with Him in dying to sin and being raised to new life as Romans 6:5 confirms: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” As God’s resurrection power works in us, we are changed and filled with hope, not only in this life but for our eternal life with Him.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. When I see a video of a transplanted heart from a donor put into the body of another person and that heart begins beating all by itself, it is one more declaration of the power of God regarding life over death. When I look at a photo of my sister, I am certain that she is more alive than ever. This is not wishful thinking; the Spirit of God puts in me a deep awareness that she is with Jesus. When I watch the news of whole towns burning up and apartments collapsing, and hear about Christians being persecuted and killed for their faith, I know that all who die in faith are not destroyed — they have gone to glory — because of the power of God and the promise of resurrection, of life after death — just like Jesus.