Hearing His Voice 1977

I'd like to read a few verses from 1st Kings chapter 19, verse 9 and following. Elijah has had this issue with the prophets of Baal and the fire came down from heaven and lit his sacrifice. Queen Jezebel is out to get him and she's going to kill him.

And so he flees back down into the very mountain that Mickey read about when Moses went up on Mount Horeb. Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai are the same mountain. And now Elijah goes there and he's really, really discouraged.

There he came to a cave and lodged there and behold, the word of the Lord came to him and said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with a sword. And I, even I only, am left.

I'm the only one left. Just me. I'm the only Christian in the world.

And they seek my life to take it away. And he said, go forth and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by.

And a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake.

But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire, a still, small voice, the voice of a gentle stillness. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. This was undoubtedly the most discouraging, depressing, confusing hour of Elijah's life.

And yet, although he was hassled in his mind and wallowing in self-pity, Elijah nevertheless still was able to distinguish clearly what was noise and what was truly the voice of God. He still understood. He could tell immediately that God was not in the wind.

He was not in the earthquake. He was not in the fire. But when he begins to hear the voice of a gentle stillness speaking in his heart, he knows that that is the voice of God.

The most precious gift given to man is the ability to know God's voice. And it is given to every single follower of the Lamb and to be able to tell the difference between the voice of God and all the other voices that speak in our minds and hassle us all the time. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.

Books are coming off the presses these days by the ton. Teachings are given all over the place, including all over Detroit and the suburbs, often in a very, very pious whisper that purport to be able to show you how to know the voice of God as if it's some kind of skill you develop. And the more you read those books and the more you listen to that teaching, the more confused you're going to get and the more vulnerable you will be to every flaky spirit that comes drifting down the road because you will then be trying to make a science out of a faculty you already have.

You will be complicating something which is meant to be and ever remain simple. My sheep hear my voice. Notice he doesn't say, have to learn how to hear my voice.

Go to 15 seminars to find out how to do it. And I know them and they follow me. But how do I hear his voice? With this ear.

Sometimes this ear hears words, perhaps from a friend, sometimes from a stranger, which I can know immediately have come directly from heaven. But if I expect to hear with this ear or this one. Some rumbling voice in the middle of the night telling me that I'm God's man for the hour.

I'm going to be in trouble. Well, then do I listen with my mind? Undoubtedly, there are times when into our minds come a sentence or a paragraph, words which we know have come straight from Christ, an idea which we know is sheer Jesus. But if I start playing games with my mind, asking the question, you know, and then waiting for the answer, pretty soon I'll be getting some really nutty answers.

No, I hear the voice of the shepherd with my heart, with my will. Begins by naturally committing myself, fixing my attention on the lamb of God. And if I have my attention fixed on Jesus, praising him for his goodness and his mercy, worshipping him for his glory, for being who he is, thanking him for his death on the cross, then in any one of a million different ways.

And it will be in the way of his choosing, not mine. Jesus will make me to know what the next step is. But if my mind and heart, my will are fixed upon Jesus, I don't have to have a voice telling me to forgive.

I don't need a voice that has to tell me to pay my bills, get up and go to work, make right those wrongs, stop being a pig at the table. Be thoughtful of the people I'm with. And if it should be that there is something I need to know and don't, some change I need to make in my life and I still haven't caught on, surely the lamb will make me to know in some way he will cause me indeed to hear his voice.

But it will almost never be an audible voice. Almost never. Rarely will it be one of these many, many, many voices that scream and whisper in our minds half the time, maybe all the time, waking and sleeping.

But if it should be that he wants to speak through your mind, then the voice that you will somehow distinguish in your mind will be as different from all those other noises that rattle in your head as the voice of a gentle stillness different from the wind and the earthquake and the fire. And always the Lord will continue to change his mode of speaking to us so that it remains a mystery in order that we can never develop it into a technique, a system so that you learn how to get a message from God like you dial the weather or like you conduct a seance. Now, these things need to be said, especially at this hour, because all over the place and perhaps even including among us who are so rarely wrong, it happens that there are people who start out, you know, just overflowing with joy for having been delivered from the pit.

You know, they really come to know the Lord and their lives are transformed and wisdom begins to visit their mind. Marvelous wisdom. It's awesome to see the knowledge of the will of God that comes to people in a matter of months after they come to know the Lord.

You know, and these people begin to serve him and encourage their brothers and sisters and really go out there and proclaim the word. Marvelous things take place. Then comes a time of trial and it seems like things start to dry up and these people begin to feel confused, you know, and nothing is clear anymore.

And they so long for that clear cut relationship they once had. And they begin to long for that so urgently that a strange thing now happens. One day they hear a voice somehow, quite clearly, that claims to be the voice of the Lord and tells them to do some innocent thing.

Well, they do it. And as they do this thing, everything clicks in place. It's marvelous.

Then the voice comes back and tells them another innocent thing to do. Seems logical enough. They do it.

More blessing seems to come. And then imperceptibly, without even realizing what's happening, the voice begins to ask for rather strange things. But by this time, they're so deeply into it, they don't realize what's going on.

And then the voice does another strange thing. It splits and becomes two voices. And then those two voices split and become four, five, 50.

Who knows? By this time, our believer is way out there someplace. You know, by this time, the believer is on a fast for some grandiose purpose, or he's locked himself in a room and won't talk to anybody, or they're out in the middle of the jungle and they don't know what to do next, or they're on their way to Jerusalem to take their place as one of the two witnesses of Revelation, or maybe they're just in some strange prayer group that operates an awful lot more like a seance than it does the kingdom of God. And you say, well, how can such things happen? How can God let things like that happen to somebody that starts out on the right track, truly listening to the Lord? They're sincere.

Doesn't God promise that he will instruct us and teach us in the way that we should go, that he will guide us with his eye? Doesn't Jesus tell us that if we ask our Father for bread, we're not going to get a stone? Well, then how can this be that people who sincerely start out by listening to the voice of the Lamb end up hearing voices that drive them literally out of their minds? Well, the same Lord who promised that his sheep would hear his voice also tells us that we are to beware of false prophets who come to us in sheep's clothing. That is, they dress up like another sheep, just like we are. They're following the Lamb.

And they're really close to Jesus, and they love the Lord, and they seem so sincere, and they seem to be getting such light. And now they're sharing the light with us. But inwardly, they are ravening wolves.

They're out to destroy. Or the Spirit that's directing them is out to destroy. And Jesus makes you and me individually responsible not to get sucked in by that.

You know, he doesn't say, I'll give you a father confessor. I'll give you a spiritual advisor. See your pastor.

He'll be able to tell you. He says, you know. You beware of false prophets.

And the same Spirit that spoke through Jesus and has directed the body of Christ down through these 20 centuries warns us that we are to try to test the Spirit and not just listen to everything. To see whether the Spirit is of God or whether it's coming out of the pit. And that's up to us.

The responsibility for knowing where that Spirit comes from is yours. Not your spiritual advisors. Not the sister or brother who brought you to the Lord, but you.

Now what are these false prophets and these flaky spirits doing? Time and again, what they do is simply this. They bring us into the trap where we suddenly find ourselves more concerned about hearing the voice and hearing voices than we are about doing the will of the Lord, which has already been revealed to us. Our Lord Jesus has already made clear the will of God, which is mercy.

So, but instead of doing that, see, instead of doing the will of God, which is mercy. And instead of going out and proclaiming the word, which is Jesus Christ and being crucified. We wait around.

You hear that voice that tells me what shirt to wear today. And that's not farfetched. People are being taught all over the Detroit area and all over the country and all over the world.

Don't get out of bed unless the Lord tells you to get up. Don't go to Farmer Jack's unless the Lord tells you to go to Farmer Jack's. Don't do anything unless the Lord tells you.

Well, my friend, the Lord has already told you. To follow him in the doing of the merciful and gracious will of the father. Told you to show mercy, to proclaim his name.

You already know that. But instead of doing that. We're waiting for that hollow voice.

It's going to say, now, my child, you can get up. Not Farmer Jack's child, Kroger's. Really, you know, you listen long enough and you'll hear a voice like that.

And it'll tell you even what socks to wear. Everything. But will that spirit be the spirit of the living God? Beloved to the apostle John, first John, chapter four.

Do not believe every spirit. But try to see whether they are of God. For many false prophets have gone out.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is of God. Now, what does that mean? That means that Jesus Christ, the Christ of God, the son who was with the father from all eternity, came into the real world of flesh and blood. Died on a cross in a real body of flesh and blood.

And in this life of flesh and blood, he will never, never lead you off into a realm of sheer spirit. And when you hear a message from anybody. Or read a book that offers to take you up into the rarefied atmosphere of the spirit.

Where you're in sheer spirit, you're up in the outer space realm of the spirit. Come up higher, my child, into the realm of sheer spirit. You are listening to the voice of the antichrist.

Jesus does not call you or me to listen to voices. He calls us. He's already made his voice heard.

And he calls us to follow in what he has revealed, which is very simple. It's the doing of the mercy of God, which has already been done to us. Mercy, loving kindness.

Justice, repentance, forgiveness, love. His kind of love, not ours. And if we're having trouble knowing how to translate that mercy into day by day living.

We can be sure that the spirit of the Lord will show us. Indeed, in specific instances, what that means and how to do it. He will show us.

We don't have to worry. Somebody says, oh, but I don't know what the Lord wants me to do today. What do you mean you don't know what the Lord wants you to do today? Surely you know that the Lord wants you to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.

Jesus has already told you to pray without fainting. He has told you to trust the Heavenly Father. Told you to forgive.

Told you to give to him who is in need. You know, to proclaim his name, to humble yourself, to become a servant. You know those things already.

What are you waiting for? To hear the voice of the Lamb. To hear the voice of the Lamb is not to hear voices, but to acknowledge that the words of the living God that have already come to us through the lips of his Son are true by believing them and doing them. My sheep hear my voice.

And I know them and they follow me. And I give to them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one shall ever snatch them out of my hand.

If you find your heart drawn toward the Christ of the New Testament, you are hearing his voice. And you are known by him and you will follow him. And he is giving you eternal life and you will never perish and no one will ever snatch you out.

Let's pray. Lord God, we just pray that you would give to us the heart that is set to walk with your Son. Help us day by day to again come to that place where he is and to be poor in spirit that ours may be the kingdom of God.

And deliver us from the vanity, the pride, the self-centeredness, the self-righteousness, the attitude where we have all the answers, the critical spirit, and all these things that blind us to your glory and deafen us to the word which our hearts have already heard and will go on hearing as long as we walk with your Son. Help us, Father, this day to walk in your way and to turn aside from these detours that are leading us to nowhere but trouble. And Father, we also ask that our brothers and sisters who may be having difficulty in the area of guidance, may this day an answer to our prayers for them be corrected and helped and brought to where they will once again find peace in their hearts from you.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.