Hearing God's Voice (1 Kings 19:9-21)

Today I would like us to think about hearing God's voice. Will Rogers once said, "Congress is funny.  Someone talks and says nothing.  No one listens and everyone argues about what was said."  Hopefully we can do better than that with God. Since God is a real God and a personal God, we must assume that He has a voice.  Now the most common way that a Christian hears the voice of God is through the Scriptures.  Every time I sit down to read the Bible God is talking to me.  I may not always sense that God is speaking but He is.  I may think afterwards that I didn't get any earth shaking revelations but God was there nonetheless.  Usually what I come away with are truths.  Theology is a systematizing of those truths.  Good theology is a good thing.  We should never disdain it.  I have heard some Christians say, "I don't need theology; I just need Jesus."  But the moment you say anything about Jesus you are speaking theology.  If what you are saying about Jesus is true, that's good theology.

However sometimes we need to know God's voice about things that are not found in a theology text book.  The answer to our every question is not always, "Jesus died for your sins."  Sometimes we need to know what God is telling us in reference to a specific issue in our lives or a question about direction.  It is not enough to have good theology and then do whatever we wish.  I'm not talking about doing sinful things but just choosing between two or more good options in our lives.  If we are a Christian we want to do God's will.  That's what the Lordship of Christ means.  He is Lord and I am not.  My desire should always be to follow Him.

In 1 Kings 19:9-21 we see Elijah running and hiding from Queen Jezebel.  It is here that Elijah learns to discern the voice of God. In this story we will look at 4 C's of hearing God's voice: the crisis of hearing God's voice, the characteristics of God's voice, the challenge of God's voice and compliance to God's voice.  

We begin with the crisis.  Elijah had just experienced a great victory in his life.  He had challenged 450 prophets of Baal, the heathen god of the Canaanites, to a sort of duel to settle the question once and for all as to who the real God is.  He told them to build an altar to Baal, put their sacrifice on it and then pray to Baal to send down fire to consume their sacrifice.  He himself would build an altar to Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  He too would pray and ask Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to send down fire and consume the sacrifice.  Being a gentleman he let the prophets of Baal go first.  They prayed and prayed.  Elijah told them that maybe Baal was sleeping.  So they cried out louder and louder.  They even cut themselves according to their custom and blood gushed out of their wounds.  But there was no voice of Baal, no fire from heaven.

Then Elijah had 12 jars of water poured over his sacrifice to the point where the water filled the trench he dug around his altar.  Then he prayed a simple prayer and Yahweh answered with fire, consuming the sacrifice.  The point was made.  Then Elijah had the prophets of Baal who had deceived God's people for years slain.  But that is when the crisis began.  Jezebel, Ahab's tyrant Queen, ordered that Elijah should be killed.  She was no patsy.  She made the wicked witch of the west look like an innocent bystander.  It was a fight or flight situation for Elijah.  He chose the latter.  There was now a price on his head and he ran like a dog with its tail between its legs.

You see, God's voice, usually comes to us in the midst of a crisis, when we don't know what to do.  It could be a serious illness, our own or member of our family, a crushing financial burden, someone we love making horrible decisions that we know will lead to catastrophe or like Elijah when we know that standing for God's truth will bring down criticism, rejection and outright hostility from some around us, some even within our own family.  It is then that we need to hear God's voice.

That brings us to the characteristics of God's voice.  Elijah did not know what to do in this situation.  But while he was hiding in a cave the Bible says, "[T]he word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  Of course, God already knew the answer to that question but Elijah tried to defend himself.  "God, I stood up for you and now I'm in real trouble."

Then he was told to stand on a mountain while God passed by.  First there came a strong wind that tore rocks apart but God was not in the wind.  Then came an earthquake but God was not in the earthquake.  Then came fire but God was not in the fire.  Finally there came a whisper and God was in the whisper.  That is the main characteristic of God's voice.  God is not silent but sometimes we have to listen real hard to hear Him. 

There is a disturbing movie entitled Silence, which is a fictional story based on a novel by Shusaku Endo about a Jesuit missionary in Japan who apostatizes from the Christian faith in a time of great and horrendous persecution.  It doesn't shock me that a Christian could do that.  Afterall Peter once denied the Lord.  But what disturbed me is that the author reflected his own experience of God being "silent" when he needed him.  It made me wonder how well he knew God's voice.

Sometimes God speaks and we do not recognize His voice because we do not know His voice well enough.  Jesus said in John 10:27, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."  If you do not know His voice well it's likely because you do not spend enough time with Him in His Word.  In a survey by LifeWay Publishers only 9% of Americans say they have read the entire Bible more than once, 11% say they have read it once, 12% say they have read most of it, 15% half of it, 30% a few stories, 13% a few verses and 10% have never read any of it.  That means over half of Americans have read very little or none of the Bible.  But what is even more interesting is that only 49% of reborn Christians say that they read a little bit of the Bible every day.  That's less than half.  If we are not hearing God's voice in normal times by reading His Word daily, how will we be able to recognize His voice in times of crises?  We need to spend time with Him in His Word so that we know what His voice sounds like.  When He speaks to our hearts it will sound like the same God we meet in the Bible.  Whatever He says about our current crisis will be consistent with what He has said before.

Thirdly, God's voice will often challenge us.  The Lord said to Elijah, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus."  Elijah had to go back and face his fears.  God's voice is not always sweetness and cream.  Sometimes it’s a hard pill to swallow.  But we need to be challenged.  Sometimes God tells us to be silent when we want to defend ourselves.  Other times God tells us to speak out even when it may lead to a break in a relationship we cherish.

Finally, we see Elijah come to a place of compliance.  As I said, He was told to return by way of Damascus.  He was to anoint Hazael as King of Syria, Jehu as King of Israel and Elisha as his prophetic successor.  Through these three God would bring His judgment upon Ahab and Jezebel.  In other words, Elijah would be part of a rebellion to overthrow their reign.  To assure Elijah that he would not be acting alone God told him that he had 7000 others in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

According to verse 19 Elijah complied with these orders.  Like many a father has said, God does not speak to hear Himself.  When God speaks He wants us to comply.  As a matter of fact in Greek the word for hear and the word for obey is the same word.  It is useless to say that we hear God speak when we don't do what He says.  An old Bible teacher, Bob Mumford, often told the story of how God was speaking to him one day.  God said to him, "Mumford, you and I are incompatible.  And I don't change."  When God speaks we should be ready to do whatever He says.  That's compliance.

During the Franco-Prussian War Pierre Barlot was a gunner in the fort of Mont Valerin during the Prussian siege of Paris.  The commander told him to set his sights on a small house next to the Sevres Bridge.  "That shanty is a nest of Prussians," he said.  Barlot began to turn pale.  The commander said, "Shell it."  Trembling he did what he was told.  The shell hit its target.  "Well hit," the commander said, "Well hit!"  But then he saw a tear rolling down Barlot's cheek.  "What's the matter, man?"  “Pardon me, General,” he said, “it was my house—everything I owned in the world.”  Now that's compliance.  It can cost you.

This is what Jesus did for us.  As we read in Philippians 2:8, "[H]e humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."  As Jesus was compliant to the Father's will for our sake, He asks us to now be compliant to His will for the sake of our neighbor and the mission of the Gospel.

Do we want to hear God's voice?  We will hear it in the midst of crisis, with the characteristics of a whisper, which will challenge us to the core and call us to compliance with the Father's will.

William Fischer