Hearing from God
By Pastor Josh Wamble
If you are like me, you sometimes wish you had lived during the days of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) or the days of the prophets (Moses, Ezekiel, Isaiah, etc.). Wouldn’t it have been neat to have walked with Jesus as one of His disciples? In John 21:25, John tells us that Jesus did and said lots of things that did not make it into the gospel accounts. In fact, he says that if everything he did and said were to be written down, there would not be enough books in the world to contain it all. Wouldn’t it have been great to have witnessed and heard all that Jesus said and did?
If you are like me, you may sometimes think that life at those times was more connected to God and that he was communicating to his people much more commonly than today. I mean just look at some of the events of the Old Testament. God walked with Adam and Eve. He appeared to Noah and Abraham multiple times. He led his people with a could of smoke and a pillar of fire. He spoke to prophets like Moses and gave them messages directly to the people.
In the New Testament times, angels appeared to Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah. Jesus did many wonders and miracles. He spoke with very words of God authoritative and true. The Holy Spirit appeared in such a clear way that He was seen physically in a dove or in tongues of fire. He allowed people to preach and hear in their own languages so that the gospel message would spread quickly among the people and nations present at Pentecost.
We sometimes look back on these events from our vantage point with envy wishing we could have the same kinds of experiences with God that people of other generations had. Thinking like this shows that we misunderstand how God has worked throughout history. This misunderstanding goes in two directions.
First, we overestimate how often people heard the voice of God in the past. We often collapse the OT history into a much shorter time frame than it actually happened in. We think that God speaking was much more common than it actually was. In the first chapters of 1 Samuel, we read about God calling Samuel toward the end of Eli’s life. In 1 Sam. 3:1, it says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.” God wasn’t always speaking during the OT history. In fact, there were years and decades that passed between the times that God spoke to different leaders and prophets in the Old Testament. The period between the Old Testament and the New Testament lasted for about 400 years. In those 400 years, God did not speak once!
Secondly, we underestimate how often people hear the voice of God today. Samuel says that the word of the Lord was uncommon in his day. Today, it is so common that it is often taken for granted. Today God is continually speaking to his people from His word. If we want to hear a word from the Lord, we just need to open our bibles and start reading. We may be tempted to think that having a first-person encounter with God is better than reading a book that is hundreds of years old. Peter didn’t think so. He was one who walked with Jesus and sat at His feet as He was teaching. In his 2nd letter, he reminded his readers that he was there with Jesus. He says that he saw the Lord Jesus in the fullness of his glory on the mount of transfiguration, and he heard the voice of God the Father announcing that this was his Son and that He was pleased in Him. Peter says that he had this first-hand, eye-witness experience. But, Peter says there is something better than his own experience—the prophetic word which is even more true or more fully confirmed.
The word of God recorded in the words of Scripture are better than personal experience with God for several reasons:
- It is always there and always available. We can hear from God anytime we want to or need to. All we have to do is pick up our Bible.
- It remains the same. There is not a chance of misremembering what God actually said as with firsthand experiences.
- We can read it and study it together, each hearing the same message from God.
- We can trust that it is really God speaking. Satan can counterfeit experiences, or we can misunderstand our own experiences. We can trust that what is written for us in His word is really the Words of God preserved for His people.
May we value the scriptures as God’s very word. May we pay attention to them and treasure them just as we would if God were audibly speaking to us right now! May we trust that the written scriptures are even better than an audible spoken word! May we believe it to the point of putting it into practice in our lives!