God is a communicating God who desires to speak to humanity, not a silent or aloof deity. It illustrates this through the biblical accounts of God speaking to Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, emphasizing that true understanding of God's will comes from actively listening to His Word. The message highlights the transformative power of hearing God's voice, as seen in the conversions of Isaiah and Paul, and the profound spiritual awakenings of Martin Luther and John Wesley. Ultimately, the sermon calls believers to prayerfully engage with Scripture, ensuring they are truly listening to God's message rather than merely possessing religious knowledge.
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The young doctor would not go into the Protestant Church building, and he was reluctant to go into the home of the Christian missionary. But he really wanted help in understanding more about the Bible. So Mr. Arthur Peterkin, who was the pioneer missionary from our country, to our country, came from Vancouver, Canada, came up with the idea, this man is bilingual. I will give him some literature in English." And he gave him one or two books, and he took them home, the young man, and in the quietness of his study, he began to read commentaries on the Bible.
And many of the questions that had come up in his mind, he was helped to understand more fully the message of the Gospel. As I told you, he had a Bible in English. He brought it back from Chicago. And there he did his postgraduate studies, but he would read his Bible in English, and then the books in English. And more and more he became convinced about the truth of the gospel. Then he found out that some of his colleagues in the medical world, and also some lawyers and engineers, even the governor of the province, would accept the invitation of Mr.
Peterkin and go to his home on a Wednesday evening for a cup of tea. After all, he was a foreigner, and he, in their eyes, belonged to a superior class, and they weren't going into any church building, so they'd come and have their tea and biscuits and their conversation. And then towards the end, Mr. Peter would stand up and he would say, now I'd just like to read a little bit from the Bible. And he would read a few verses from the Bible. He didn't preach. He simply would give a simple explanation of the portion he had read. And they would listen. And then sometimes they would ask questions and there were comments.
Well, the young doctor heard about this. And he thought, well, have others go into his home Maybe I should go along also. And he took his wife, and he began to attend those teas on the Wednesday evening. And he had questions. Now, then he would ask them. Mr. Peterkin would answer. And little by little, he began to really become convicted of his own sin and need of a Savior. But one night he went along to the tea, and here was another foreigner. He didn't know who he was. And this man was there. He could not speak the Spanish language. And after they had their tea, Mr.
Peter said, I have a friend here tonight. He comes from New York City. And I would like to introduce him to you. And he told the people his name, the name of the friend, and why he was there. And he said, I've asked my friend tonight if he would like to give a little reading and a few comments. He's going to do that. in English and I'll translate in Spanish. So the two of them stood up and the man from New York announced the portions he wanted red and then he began to speak in English and Mr. Peterkin translated in Spanish. And all of a sudden if you'd been there you would have seen the young doctor with that type of look and you would know inside There was a boiling inner humor.
He was laughing inside. But of course he didn't want to reveal this. If you'd watched closely, his stomach was shaking. And then he would grab the rails of the chair and hold on for dear life, trying to keep a straight face. He went as far as to bite his lip, but he really wanted to burst out in laughter. Nobody else was laughing. The two speakers, they were not laughing. Everybody in the room, none of them, they were not laughing. But the doctor had that inner deep laughter that wanted to get out. And I'll tell you what it was about tomorrow night. We all have very special friends, and Grace and I, we are no exception.
We have a very close friend. We brought her once to Park of the Palms many long years ago. Most of you would not be here, and I'm not going to mention her name tonight. She's special to us, and we love her very much. We were with her last year down in the Dominican Republic, and in her home, there were two or three friends. And one of the friends asked me a question. I don't remember now what the question was, but I was in the process of answering the question. When all of a sudden my friend with her booming voice just spoke right up on another theme, and it was evident she'd never heard a word that we had said, neither the question nor the answer.
She was in another world, and she was thinking, And all of a sudden she had something to say, and out came the booming voice. And of course we all stopped talking. She didn't even realize that. She's one of those people, and there are many of them in the world today, and they hardly ever listen. Oh, they can talk, and they can talk about many things, but they never really listen. The friend I'm referring to If she ever sits quietly, she simply goes to sleep. I was really surprised at the point of unbelief that when she was in the dentist chair with her mouth full of instruments and unable to talk, she went to sleep.
So there are some people, I'm speaking of an extreme case, and they never really listen. Now in Isaiah chapter six, which we are looking at in the evenings of this week, we have read about the vision of the Lord. We read the words of Isaiah, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. And then we drop down and we find out that when He saw the Lord, He knew what He was Himself. And in verse five, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips.
And then down in verse seven, he received the blessing of forgiveness. And then in verse eight, also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Now the vision of God in Isaiah six, is not like a silent motion picture. Now let me speak respectfully. Some of you are old enough now that you can go back to your childhood and remember the years of the silent motion pictures. You might have saved up your pennies during the week and on the Saturday afternoon you'd go to the theater to see a silent motion picture.
Now if your town was considerably large, and maybe quite a few paying customers, they might put a piano in the theater and someone would sit there and play the piano just so there would be some music, something in the auditorium, but the film was a silent motion picture. And as that developed, then they began to put captions on the screen. But I think for many people, these actors who were usually actors in comedy, so caught your attention that you never even read the caption. You didn't have to read to know what was going on. They were silent motion pictures.
Now the vision that this man had of the glory of the God was not that type of silent vision. There were people in olden times and there are people today who might say they believe in God but by their actions they really believe that God is silent, He is aloof, uncaring, and has no interest whatsoever in human beings. There's one good case in the book of the Psalms, and you read these words, For the wicked boast of his heart's desire, He blesses the greedy and renounces the Lord.
The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God. God is in none of his thoughts. His ways, the ways of the wicked man, are always prospering. Your judgments, the judgments of God, are far above out of his sight. As for all his enemies, he sneers at them. He has said in his heart, I shall not be moved. I shall never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue is trouble and iniquity.
He sits in the lurking places of the village. In the secret places he murders the innocent. His eyes are secretly fixed on the helpless. He lies in wait secretly as a line in his den. He lies in wait to catch the poor. He catches the poor when he draws him into his net. So he crouches. He lies low that the helpless may fall by his strength. He has said in his heart, God has forgotten.
He hides his faith. he will never see. And as far as that wicked man was concerned, the whole issue of God was like a silent motion picture. There might be a God, but he has no interest whatsoever in those of us who are human beings. Well, it's beautiful. One of the great, beautiful things of the Bible is to find out that God is not a silent God. He wants to talk He wants to communicate with human beings. You have it right at the beginning of the Bible, and you read that Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden.
Now, in our Spanish translations, they heard the voice of the Lord. I noticed that J.N. Darby in the new translation, he translates, and they heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim. walking in the garden. The American Standard Version, and they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden. So the thought is not heavy footsteps of God walking in the garden. We probably should not try to visualize this. But Adam and Eve, they heard God speaking. He wanted to talk to them. Where are you? And they answered, and came up with a lame excuse, they were in the bushes and they were hiding because of their shame.
I don't know what God spoke to Adam and Eve about in those days before the fall. I've spoken on this on other occasions. I sometimes would like to think that in view of what is written, when God said, Let them have dominion, that as He walked with them, He shared with them the type of dominion they should exercise over his handiwork. But we do know that after the fall, God regularly speaks with human beings. That awesome judgment of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, you find that God said, shall I not share with Abraham what I'm about to do?
Abraham was his friend and God came and he shared, he talked with Abraham. You have the beautiful phrase that God spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. And there's a beautiful Jim in the Minor Prophets. The Lord of hosts declares to man what his thought is. God speaks. He wants to communicate with human beings. And when we think of that this evening, and we go back to Isaiah six, here's a man, and he's seen the vision of God.
And now he says, also I heard the voice of the Lord. Now, God is not a recluse. He's not isolated, aloof from all of us here in this world. He greets us. He speaks to us. He loves us. So God is a communicating God. In the Old Testament, and I mentioned just one or two cases, God literally spoke to men and women. In the New Testament, it's not so much he speaks to human beings, it's the volume of what he wants to share with us. Now, I don't think anyone probably takes us deeper into the mind and the heart of God than Paul the Apostle.
And in epistles like Ephesians and Colossians and even Philippians, you stand with him and he moves into realms of understanding of God's heart and mind, and he shares them with us. Here's a good example in Ephesians, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling. What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints?
And it goes on and on. And you realize God has so much He wants to share with us. Let me read that portion in a contemporary translation. I pray for you constantly. asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you might grow in the knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future He has promised to those He called. I want you to realize what a rich and glorious inheritance He has given to His people.
Now that's just one of the many gems in the New Testament. In the New Testament I emphasize it's not so much that God speaks to us. You just stand in awe when you realize how much He wants to share with us. God is a communicating God. Now let's go back to Isaiah chapter six. And one of the most important things in this vision is not what he saw, but what he heard. God spoke to Isaiah. He's in the presence of God. This is not a conversation directed to Isaiah, but he's present and he hears it.
There's no restraint. You don't have the sense that God is whispering so that Isaiah will not hear. He's there in the throne room of God, and God speaks. And this man says, Also I heard the voice of the Lord. Now that's not the first sound in the vision. The first sound goes back to the chant of the seraphim. When they called out one to another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. Now, this would be what we would call booming voices, so strong and powerful that you read, and the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of Him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
A modern translation reads, The glorious singing shook the temple to its foundation. So right at the beginning of this vision of the glory of God, you have sound. It comes from the mighty seraphim as they praise God in that chant. Then you have that word that came from one of the seraphim directed to this man, Isaiah. I'm not sure that that was a booming voice. You have a man who's been broken. You have a man who knows the sinfulness of his heart and his mind. This is a man who, in view of the glory of God, is absolutely devastated.
And one of these powerful, angelic beings approached, and he says to this man, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken away. Your sin is purged. Now we've talked to some tonight about sweetness. I don't think there's any other sweetness that can compare to hearing the words, you are forgiven. The sins are gone forever. You are now part of God's family. It's then that this man said, also. That is, not just the chant of the seraphim, not just the message of one of them, but now also I heard the voice of the Lord.
This is very personal. It's not by proxy. I heard the word of the Lord. Now, going back to the seraphim, when they chant, the foundation of the temple was shaken. In the case of Isaiah, when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filling the temple, he, as a man, was shaken to the foundation of His being. That's when He's broken and contrite, and that's when He received the forgiveness, and that's the moment that He heard the voice of the Lord. I think there is a pattern there.
I'd like to emphasize it just for a moment this evening, because it's something that affects us all. You like to go back to the Old Testament and sometimes read into it our Christian vocabulary. I don't think we can always do that. I don't even feel tonight competent to say in our language that prior to chapter six, Isaiah was not one of God's people. I would like to think that he was, but he had not grown in his appreciation of who God is. until he had that great revelation. And in the revelation, you have a man who's standing in the presence of God, and he's not left on his own.
That is, he is not left himself to interpret what he saw. He's given the vision, but the interpretation comes with the vision. Now, you have to go back to the same portions we've noticed Already the chant of the seraphim, which we've read, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. That chant is a description or an interpretation of the glory of God that filled the temple. Isaiah didn't have to try and rationalize.
He didn't have to try and figure this out. He saw the vision. He sees the Lord in His glory, and along comes the interpretation with the seraphim, this is gone, in His holiness, and the whole world is filled with His glory. Then you have not only a revelation of His might and His power and His holiness, but you have a revelation of His love. There's no other explanation for what happened when one of the seraphim went to the altar and with thongs took off one of the live coals and brought it over and touched that man, bringing the full impact of the altar significance into his life, and then telling him his sins had been purged, his iniquity forgiven.
That's the love of God. Again, he didn't have to figure it out himself. It's after that that you come then to this beautiful phrase, also I heard the voice of the Lord. Now there's a practical lesson here. He knew who was speaking. I heard the voice of the Lord. Secondly, he knew what the Lord was saying. The message was, whom shall I send and who will go for us? The lesson is simple, but it is basic. Isaiah was listening.
He wasn't making comments. He wasn't asking questions. He heard, he knew who was speaking, and he heard clearly, distinctly what the Lord said. Now, the tragedy in the Bible and also in our contemporary life is that so few people listen to the Word of God. Paul deals with that in Romans when he says, Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So you take that phrase and you turn it around. God speaks. The only thing he asks is listen to what I'm saying.
And when you listen to what God says, When it comes to salvation, you know that's what you need. That's what you want. And that great yes that comes out of your being is faith as you listen to the Word of God. Well, Isaiah was listening, but so many others never listened. The Lord Jesus dealt with this over and over. Here's one example. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees. That should make someone like myself tremble. They were the religious teachers of their generation. They were the Bible teachers, but they never listened to the Word of God.
So you have these words, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a nat and swallow a camel. Please remember that both the nat and the camel were unclean animals, and they were so particular about the little insignificant nat.
At the same time, by ignoring the message of God, they were swallowing a camel. Here is a contemporary translation, how terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are careful to tithe even the tiniest part of your income, but you ignore the important things of the law, justice, mercy and faith. You should tithe, yes, but you should not leave undone the more important things. Blind guides, you strain your water so you won't accidentally swallow a nut, and then you swallow a camel.
And that happens when you don't listen to what God is saying. It's something that really touches all of us. The religious leaders, they ignored the great message of the Bible. I don't like to be negative, but the great classic example is the people who held in their hands and who retained in their minds the Word of God. Never listen to God. And when He sent His Son, they in part were responsible for his death by crucifixion. I want to take a moment to use as an example Saul of Tarsus.
I go back to Paul over and over, and in this matter he is the great example. First of all, you know that he studied at the feet of one of the most outstanding university professors of his generation. And this man who decided to be a Pharisee, he mastered the Old Testament. It would be a long period of study, and you would memorize great portions of the Old Testament. Paul graduated with honors. He tells us, not boastingly, that he was head and shoulders above his contemporary students.
you have a very, very learned man. And yet in all of those years and in all of those studies, he never listened to God. He knew the Bible, he could repeat it, but it wasn't until outside of Damascus when the glory of God shone round about him. And he saw the Lord Jesus standing in the midst of that glory. And when he said, who are you? And the answer came back, I am Jesus. And you're persecuting me. At that moment, in that man's heart, he knew if Jesus is standing in the midst of the divine glory, I am wrong.
He is the Messiah. Now he's blinded. They take him by the hand, possibly to the room that was prepared for him. And he's there three days and three nights. He doesn't eat. I can understand that. But Luke says he didn't even drink. That's a long time to go without moisture. Nothing is said about the three days. But I wonder what was going through his mind. And I wonder if mentally he was rereading the Old Testament. He had it in his mind. He'd read it.
He had studied it. But he never listened to the Word of God. You know the story, Ananias came. He didn't want to. God gave him a little push. And he came into that room and he said, Brother Saul. I'm sure at that moment Paul knew for the first time I belonged to a family. He was one in the family. And it was Ananias who, with God's grace, opened his eyes. Gales fell from his eyes. Paul stands up. He refreshes himself. He had something to eat. He spent a little time with some friends in Damascus. And then he went out. Luke says immediately.
And he went into the synagogues, plural, not just one. There was more than one in Damascus. He went to one and then the other and the other. He would come in. They knew who he was. he would be welcomed right up to the reading desk and there would be the scrolls and this man would stand there and he would say to them probably I'm paraphrasing the story but he would say I want you to know that I was wrong that Jesus is the Messiah that would be like a bomb going off in their minds you have these words in the New Testament Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues that he is the Son of God.
That's a messianic term. And then you read, Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ. Now we're talking about a very brief time. up until he stood outside of Damascus, he had never seen God's message. When he saw the Lord Jesus and in his mind when he went back over those portions, it all came into focus so that he could go into those synagogues and stand up and from memory prove that Jesus is the Messiah.
Now at last he had listened to the voice of God. Up until that moment, and there's a message maybe for all of us in this, this man knew the Scriptures mechanically, textually, grammatically, yet he never, never heard what God was saying, not until after he had seen the Lord Jesus in that glory. It's so dangerous in our world today. I come across this in the Dominican Republic all the time. You talk to somebody. and ask them, do you believe in God? Oh, yes, I believe in God. And as the conversation goes on, sooner or later they're going to say, I believe that God is like, and they give their opinion of God.
I sat last month in British Columbia, Canada, in the home of my son-in-law, who is a Christian school teacher. I was in a different part of the house. I was not trying to hear something I ought not to hear. But my son-in-law had a visitor, also a school teacher. And I must say, in quotation marks, a Christian school teacher. And they were talking about a particular issue that is clearly dealt with in the Bible. And this young woman said to my son-in-law, I don't believe that. And I think we should change that.
So my son-in-law said to her, but this is in the Bible. It's in God's word. It's what God is saying. No, she said, I know that, but I think we should change that. Well, my son-in-law was somewhat taken aback, and he said, well, if you do that, then you are changing God's word. She says, I know that. But when we do that, we make God bigger. And I sat in the living room listening to this conversation in another room and I thought, in whose point of view? In God's point of view or in our point of view?
So you have people in our world today there with the Christian umbrella. And here's one who believes we have the authority to manipulate the Bible the way we want. And when we do that, all that we're doing is increasing the stature of God. In other words, the Bible says we were made in the image and the likeness of God. In our generation today, we are making God in our image and in our likeness. It wasn't even like that in the pagan world of two thousand years ago. In Athens, historians tell us they estimate that a hundred and twenty days of each year, they were dedicated to religious festivals, a quest after God.
Most of the philosophical studies in Athens revolved around speculations about how to make sense out of life. There was one temple in Athens and regularly you would hear this common prayer. And it went like this, Hear, Lord, whoever you are. There was an awareness there is gone. We don't understand them yet, but wherever you are, whoever you are, the prayer was directed to gone. Not today, in our sophisticated world, and especially in the academic world today, We have fashioned God after our image, after our likeness.
In other words, we are not listening to what God says. Now we have to conclude our service tonight. It's a beautiful thing when you listen to God. Let me give you two classic examples. You know them, I'm sure, by memory. Martin Luther. The year is fifteen-thirteen. He's an Augustinian monk. and a professor of sacred theology in the University of Wittenberg in Saxony. This man is deeply perturbed because he's read in Psalm thirty-one something he doesn't understand. And these are the words, deliver me in your righteousness. Now Martin Luther up to that point always linked righteousness to the wrath of God.
to the eternal judgment of God. And now he's reading, deliver me, save me in your righteousness. And he could not understand that until he came to Romans chapter one and verse seventeen. You know the verse. Let me give it to you in a paraphrase by a scholar that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith, for faith, as it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live. And the man was stunned. And this is what he wrote, Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.
The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the righteousness of God filled me with hate, Now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway into heaven. Now it's two hundred years later, just up the coast from where we are, and that little island known as St. Simon's Island, that John Wesley and Charles, his brother, stood under the oak tree. Some of you have gone there and stood there also. and they preached, but it was empty preaching. John Wesley knew that.
He returned to England discouraged and on the journey met some Moravians and he knew they had something he didn't have. And it was when he was in London on that street that has become famous Aldersgate, and Grace and I walked that street just a few weeks ago once again and came back and remembered all of these things. One night it was Wednesday, May twenty-fourth, seventeen thirty-eight. He reluctantly went to an upper room and listened to a man reading Luther's preface to Paul's letter to the Romans. He sat there somewhat dejected, but as he listened, this is what he wrote about a quarter before nine.
While he, Paul, was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. And that was the moment one scholar has written, that moment perhaps more than anything else marked the birth of the evangelical revival in the eighteenth century. But I share the two stories with you.
These men manipulated the word of God. Martin Luther, well, he was a master theologian, but he had never heard the message of God. This man, John Wesley, preached in England and also on this continent, and he knew his preaching was vain and empty. He had never heard the voice of the Lord. Both men were brought to the place where for the first time they really heard what God was saying. And those two men, separated by two hundred years, they changed the course of history. They listened to the Word of God.
I want to speak gently to you in these last moments because we are so familiar with the Word of God. May I just gently ask the questions, are we really listening to God when we read His Word? Are we too familiar with God's voice? Is God's Word too much a part of our formal, cultural, religious life? I heard, God forbid, it is not true. that in North America today there are many evangelicals who pick up their Bible on Sunday morning and they go to church for an hour and they come back home and they put down the Bible and they never touch it again until the following Sunday.
We will not hear God's Word unless we read it. and read prayerfully and listen to what He has to say for us. I want you to take your hymn book as we conclude our service. We're going to sing a verse or two of five hundred and forty-nine. In a sense, it is a closing prayer. Five hundred and forty-nine. Lord, speak to me that I may speak in living echoes of thy tone. as thou hast sought, so let me seek thy hearing children lost and lone. We're going to stand and we'll sing the last two verses of five hundred and forty-nine.
Father, as we stand now quietly in your presence, open we pray our hearts to receive your word. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in our hearts For as members of one body, we are all called to live in peace and always be thankful. Let the words of Christ in all their richness live in our hearts and make us wise. May we use his words to teach and counsel each other. May we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.
And whatever we do or say, let it be as a representative of the Lord Jesus, all the while giving thanks through him to God the Father.