Should We Listen for the Audible Voice of God?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Ryland writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, do we need to be
00:00:08.560 | listening for God's voice to speak to us outside of the Bible? Does He desire to
00:00:12.560 | speak to us audibly like He does to certain people in the Bible? And if so,
00:00:16.000 | how do we know it's God's voice that we're hearing?" I really want to say
00:00:19.840 | something positive here and not just negative. In fact, most of what I have to
00:00:25.240 | say is positive. And the first and main thing is to say, "God really has spoken."
00:00:34.760 | And this word is living and active. It's not a dead word. He really speaks today
00:00:43.840 | through the inspired scriptures. He really, really does, Ryland. He really does.
00:00:50.960 | Not just with information, but with Himself, by His Spirit. 1 Samuel 3 21, "The
00:00:59.320 | Lord appeared at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh by
00:01:07.800 | the word of the Lord." That really happens. God stands forth from His inspired word
00:01:17.000 | as we read it prayerfully and dependently. And I would add this, that
00:01:25.040 | word in the Bible is more sure than anything you can hear outside the Bible.
00:01:32.480 | I base that on 1 Corinthians 14 37, "If anyone thinks he's a prophet or
00:01:38.800 | spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command
00:01:45.280 | of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he's not recognized." That's amazing.
00:01:52.840 | Paul is saying, "You can call yourself a prophet and get messages from God. You
00:01:58.520 | can call yourself spiritual and be tuned in to God, but if anything you say
00:02:04.120 | doesn't accord with what I say, you're not recognized." Which means that outside
00:02:10.800 | the Bible, we have fallible, uncertain impressions and messages. Inside the
00:02:18.080 | Bible, we have rock-solid, dependable messages. So there are treasures and
00:02:24.760 | wonders and glories and dimensions of God to be seen in the Bible that we have
00:02:29.880 | scarcely seen. It seems to me to be folly to crave the lesser authority and the
00:02:40.640 | lesser riches outside the Bible than the riches and the greater authority that
00:02:49.040 | we've barely tasted, let alone digested inside the Bible. Now, having said that
00:02:55.680 | positive thing about the Bible that I love, I just love the Bible so much and I
00:03:00.160 | know that after, what, 60 years of reading my Bible, I've barely scratched the
00:03:07.160 | surface of glories, so I kind of get ticked, frankly, at myself and others who
00:03:13.520 | are craving stuff outside the Bible as though there's something better to be
00:03:17.720 | had out there. Having said all that, I don't see anything in the Bible that
00:03:23.280 | would say God can't communicate with us in extraordinary ways outside the Bible.
00:03:29.240 | He can. And if he does, we should test it by his infinitely authoritative written
00:03:38.760 | Word, and we should commend it to those whose lives show a deep, long wisdom in
00:03:47.760 | Christ. There's this community dimension to testing all things. Like Paul said,
00:03:53.480 | "Don't despise prophecies. Test all things. Hold fast to what is good." That's just not
00:03:58.120 | a private thing. That's something we do with others as well. But I'll close with
00:04:04.160 | this. Beware, Ryland, beware of craving the sensations of a voice. Jesus warned
00:04:15.960 | against those who seek a sign. So here he is, he's standing there in front of the
00:04:22.420 | Pharisees and scribes, speaking, and they say, "Give us a sign." What does that mean?
00:04:31.320 | It means that the voice of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, wasn't adequate. They
00:04:39.080 | needed something more. They needed to feel more, touch more, seem more. They
00:04:43.560 | wanted more, and Jesus wouldn't give it to them. And I think we're in a situation
00:04:50.160 | today not unlike that. We hear more of the Son of God than anybody in Jesus' day
00:04:59.840 | ever heard, because we have all four Gospels, and those people got it in
00:05:06.040 | snatches. Therefore, we have the wholeness of the Revelation that Jesus meant to
00:05:12.200 | communicate, and it's speaking to us every time we read the Bible. And if we
00:05:16.760 | turn away from that and say, "But I need a sign, I need a sign, I need a voice, I
00:05:21.120 | need a tree to fall down in the woods when I'm talking, I need
00:05:25.320 | something," we're putting ourselves in the position of those who demanded a sign.
00:05:31.880 | Instead, I think our heart should be, "Oh God," this is the way Paul taught the
00:05:39.360 | Ephesians to pray in chapter 1 verse 17, "Give my heart's eyes sight. Open my eyes
00:05:49.000 | to your power. Open my eyes to your wisdom. Open my eyes to your inheritance.
00:05:54.000 | You say stunning things that should blow me away, and give me a sense of your
00:06:00.040 | worth beyond anything any message outside should give. So Father, if I'm
00:06:04.760 | not seeing, if I'm not hearing, have mercy upon me and open my eyes."
00:06:09.960 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your
00:06:13.760 | questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org, and visit us online
00:06:17.320 | at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and other
00:06:21.680 | resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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