There is something that is very much in my heart. About three nights ago, I woke up somewhere in the middle of the night. And then suddenly, in a few moments, it seemed as though the Lord was not there. It seemed as though the presence of the Lord had gone from me in those moments. It seemed as though there was a kind of a spiritual power cut, a spiritual blackout when all the lights went out. And in those moments, there came over me a sense of terrible emptiness, the feeling of being forsaken by the Lord. An experience I had never had before. In the flash of that moment, suddenly all meaning of life seemed to vanish. It suddenly became clear to me that without the presence of the Lord, without this living communication with God, life was suddenly, totally meaningless. Everything had gone blank.
And I say, this was a very unusual experience for me. And I shared this with Helen and with Yilin that day. A very fearful experience that was. And though it lasted only a few moments, it drove home this point very forcibly to me. That without communion with the Lord, without the sense of His presence, without that fellowship with Him, should He ever withdraw His presence from us, life would immediately lose all its meaning. I suppose that if I had never known the presence of the Lord, if I had never known the sweetness of the Lord, I wouldn't have noticed any difference. But in those few moments, when suddenly the presence of the Lord seemed to have gone, I woke up and said, "Where is the Lord? What's happened to my line of communication?" And suddenly a sense of utter emptiness and meaninglessness seized my heart. Meaninglessness.
I wonder how anyone can live without the presence of the Lord. And the Lord granted me this experience, I'm sure, for your sake. Because I've been meditating on this message for some time. And without that experience, I think I could not speak with the same depth of conviction on what I'm going to share with you today. Because it was that experience, brief as it was, for a few moments, as it seemed to me — it must have been only a few moments, though it seemed terrifyingly long — and the Lord gave me this deep realization: the actual meaninglessness of life without Him. It's an experience and a feeling very hard to describe. The Lord, as it were, withdrew Himself. He hid Himself for a moment.
And I remembered an experience I had as a child, when my father played hide-and-seek with me. And as a little boy, he hid himself for a moment, and I was searching for him, searching so desperately for him, wondering, "Am I forsaken in this place? Or is he somewhere in this countryside?" Not knowing that all the time he was stalking behind me. But because his movements were much faster than mine, much more agile, and I, being a small boy, took a long time even to turn around compared to the quick movements he could make, I couldn't find my dad anywhere. Not knowing that all the time he was somewhere right behind me, with his eye on me all the time. And when he saw that I was becoming somewhat frustrated and despondent and sad, he came forth smiling. "Look, I've been here all the time!" But I think that through that I learned to appreciate his presence and his care for me much better. And I think that the Lord was, as it were, teaching me how vital to my life was this precious presence of the Lord. You don't know what you miss until you lose it, isn't it? And I think in a way I have taken His presence oftentimes for granted — this convenience of communication, this ease with which we can commune with Him.
It's maybe also like the case that today you have, say, the 13 here. And any of you who need some help, oh, you can pick up the phone and you dial through, and there are those available at the other end, and you have a problem, you need counsel, you need advice, they are there, eh? But maybe in a few months' time, when you pick up that phone, you say, "Oh, you're not here anymore. I can't call them. I can't discuss this or that question anymore." Then you begin to understand my feeling that morning, a few days ago, when I picked up, as it were, my spiritual telephone — what happened? "I'm not getting through!" What happened to my phone?
There is nothing so vital, dear brothers and sisters, to the Christian life. I can think of nothing so vital to us as this communion with the Lord, this fellowship with Him. I find it inconceivable that it's possible in any meaningful sense to live the Christian life without this close communion with Him. And it is this message that the Lord lays upon my heart to share with you. I wonder if there is some back echo here. If you can, then this — oh, you can't do anything more with it, I think it's due to the video that's going on. So I hope you can bear with a slight instruction here.
How is your communion with the Lord? Would it make any difference to your life if you were not getting through to the Lord at all? Would it make any real difference to you? Would it, in any sense, affect your daily life? I wonder. Sometimes when I share my experiences of the Lord speaking to me, dealing with me, people seem very surprised. They sort of think, "Yeah, this is wonderful, but there are still people who experience these things today?" And I begin to feel as though I am some kind of a spiritual oddity around. Something out of some spiritual zoo. Some strange person walking the face of the earth that doesn't seem to belong here. "These things don't happen anymore. God doesn't speak to people like this anymore." And I'm beginning to wonder, and this is the question I want to share with you: Am I really some kind of a spiritual oddity? Some relic, some throwback to the spiritual past? Or are not the things which I experience meant to be simply the ordinary things of spiritual life? Why are these things so unusual today? Why is communion with the Lord something that seems to be almost a rarity? And I don't find very many people who can seem to echo with me when I share this or that.
But when the Lord spoke to me with such a clear and distinct voice, when He said to me, way back in China, "I am going to take you out of this country" — as clear as if He was standing in the room while speaking to me — the voice was so clear that it startled me, that I looked around behind me to see who was speaking to me. I mean, where was the one speaking to me? "You will hear a voice behind you, speaking to you, saying to you, 'This is the way, walk in it.'" Even in the Old Testament, the Old Testament saints knew that. And we are living in the New Testament, in the age when the Holy Spirit has been given to us, the age in which the Holy Spirit is poured out upon all flesh, so that there will be prophecies, there will be visions, there will be dreams, there will be communication with the Lord in a way that should be outstanding and remarkable.
And I must say, I have proved it so, that all through my walk with the Lord, He has communicated with me, spoken to me, in one way or another, sometimes with what seems to me an audible voice, and at other times with a deep inner communication. And when I look in the Bible, I see that this is the ordinary, the common thing in the Scriptures. In fact, it goes from Genesis to Revelation. There is nothing unusual about this, is it? And if there is something unusual about it, can it be that Christians are not living in the way they are supposed to live? And this disturbs me.
Now, either I am indeed an oddity — I can't see any reason why I should be. I don't see anything different in me, in terms of my relationship to the Lord. I simply see that these things are stated page after page in the Scriptures. And I am wondering, how can you survive as a Christian? How can you have the joy of walking with Him, living with Him, unless you are communing with Him?
Let's start at the beginning. Go to the beginning. And let's ask this fundamental question: Why did God create man at all? Why did He create us at all? Why did He create you and me? Well, look at the Scriptures and the answers there. There is nothing mysterious about it. Right there in Genesis, chapter 3, we find God communing with man. Indeed, walking in the very garden where Adam and Eve were. What was He doing walking in the garden? Why did He create man at all, if it was not for fellowship with them, to commune with them? And we saw in the earlier series in the messages on regeneration and renewal that we were created in God's image so that He can communicate with us. That we cannot communicate with beings at the same level unless they are in our own image. So that we can talk with a dog, but the dog cannot very well talk with us. We can communicate with the dog up to a certain level, but because it is not in our image, we can communicate only at a very limited level. But God made us in His image for what other purpose but that He might communicate with us at the fullest possible level.
And as we go through the Scriptures, in fact you can make a study of this. From Genesis to Revelation, everywhere you see that God is more eager to communicate with man, and man seems to be indifferent to God. I wonder why. Is it that we have not yet seen the attractiveness of the beauty of God? We have not yet discerned the longing of His heart? I really want you somehow today to capture the vision of this matter: the longing of God's heart.
On Christmas Day we saw that God revealed Himself so fully to us. He is declaring Himself to us. He is making Himself known to us through the prism of His Son. And also the Scriptures, we saw, according to this remarkable conclusion, that in fact we can know more about God than anyone else in this world. Look how thick the Bible is. Every page He is revealing Himself to us. I said that suddenly you can't write very much about your wife. Maybe all you can write about the nearest and dearest one is on a few pages, and you would exhaust all you have to say about your wife or anyone dear to you on a few pages. But God has revealed Himself page after page. We can know Him. We ought to know Him better than anyone else in this world. He has revealed Himself to us. What for, if it is not to draw us into a close communion with Him?
The whole Scripture speaks of this. We have the first recorded conversation between God and man in Genesis 3, verse 8. Unfortunately, that was also a breaking point when man so speedily lost what he had in God — the privilege of communion. And yet, let us not use this word "lost" too casually, because it was not lost in the sense that it could not be continued or regained through repentance. And in fact, the whole history of the Old Testament was God's communication. As we have seen, He communicated with the nation of Israel as a whole. There was one point — I wonder if you know — in the history of Israel that God spoke directly to Israel as a whole nation. And we will see what spiritual lessons we can learn from that.
But if this is true in the Old Testament, how much more in the New Testament? Let me read to you one verse in 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 10. 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 10. And you have a glimpse into the Lord's heart, and a glimpse of why it was that He came into the world to die for us. Not only why it was He created us, but why did He die for us at all? 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 10: "He, Jesus, died for us so that whether we wake or sleep, we might live with Him." Think of it. He died for us for what reason? That we might live, not for Him, not merely for Him, but with Him. Certainly for Him, but especially with Him. How can you live for Him unless you live with Him? Because if you live for Him without living with Him, it means you are going to live for Him in your own strength, without the necessary communion with Him.
Did you ever realize clearly the fact why Jesus died for you and for me? Not just so that we can have a place in heaven. Not just so that we can enter into eternal life. But much more: He died to remove every barrier of communication between God and us, so that He can have fellowship with us, so that we can live with Him. The expression "live with Him" is very interesting, because in Mark chapter 3, verse 14, it says that He chose twelve disciples that they might be with Him. He chose twelve to be with Him. That was not limited, as you see from 1 Thessalonians 5:10. It was not meant to be limited only to the twelve apostles. We are His disciples too. And He died that we might live with Him.
Or not go into the technicalities of the Greek texts. Of course, there is a distinction. Because these twelve were chosen to be with Him physically, and in the Greek text we have "meta." While in 1 Thessalonians 5 we have this powerful little word "syn" — "together with." We are with Him in a much deeper sense than being with Him physically. The twelve apostles were with Him physically, but one of them was not with Him spiritually at all, for sure. And many of them were not really with Him spiritually from the beginning either, until much later in His ministry, and some not at all until Pentecost. So to be with Him physically is not by any means the closest type of communion we can have. But this "syn" in 1 Thessalonians 5, this "together," this little Greek word meaning "together," in the deep spiritual sense of togetherness — that is something in a sense even more powerful, more significant than merely the physical presence with the Lord. In a sense then, Judas was "meta" with Christ physically, but not "syn" with Christ spiritually. Remarkable, isn't it?
Our brother Jeffrey preached to us another Sunday on Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 and 29: "Come to me. Come to me." Do you see the power of those words? How He longs that we will be with Him. What's the point of coming to Him if it's not to be with Him? How the Lord longs that we will come. "I have stretched out my hands to you," the Lord Jesus said. "How I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks — you wouldn't come. You wouldn't come." I preach to you that you may sense the heart of God in the whole purpose of creation and the whole purpose of redemption — His longing to fellowship with you. And did you think that God was hiding Himself? Did you think you sought His face and couldn't find it? I will show you some principles, which of course, if you don't fulfill these spiritual principles, you will not find His face. You will not be able to commune with Him. There are conditions. And we shall come to those in a little while.
But before we come to that, I would like to base today's whole message on Revelation chapter 3, verse 20, as a kind of a focal point, together with 1 Thessalonians 5:10. Revelation 3:20 is a most precious word, but it's often used by evangelists as though it is talking to non-Christians. And I have pointed out to you before, this is not speaking to non-Christians at all. Revelation 3:20 is directed to the church. And it is not at all speaking to non-Christians. It's addressed to the church at Laodicea. And the problem with the Laodicean church was this terrible business of lukewarmness.
And I suspect, brothers and sisters, that one reason why so few Christians today experience the closeness of communion with God is because you are lukewarm. Face it. You want eternal life, but you don't want to face the cross. You want to commune with Him, but only when it's convenient to you. When you are in need — when you are not in need, you don't need Him. When you don't need Him, you don't commune with Him. God doesn't exist to be used, and whenever you need, you can exploit Him, as it were. He is there to commune with those who really live with all their heart. "Seek after Me. You will find Me," the Lord says, even in the Old Testament. "You will find Me when you seek for Me with all your heart."
No lukewarm person is going to find communion with God. He doesn't speak to people in those terms. You've got to know God's character if you want to commune with Him. You want to commune with Him? And if you want to play around with the world, and you want to play around a little bit with God, you want to mess around a little bit with religion and you want to mess around a little bit with the world — such people will never commune with God. And I wonder whether this is the disease of the church today: that even those who say they are totally committed discover that they are not that totally committed. And after all, there is a large place in their hearts for the world, for the flesh, for money, for position, for pride, for educational status. And when you do these things, when anything but God is dear to you, you're going to find that communion with God is impossible. And that means you're not going to long survive as a Christian. You can't survive.
But face it honestly: you either are going, once and for all, to be utterly serious about the matter of communing with Him, searching for Him, seeking Him with all your heart, or you are simply not going to find Him. That's the way it is. And if God doesn't commune with you, don't blame Him. Because there are some vital principles that you must fulfill. But He still longs — He always longs to commune with us. "Behold, I stand at the door." Look. "If anyone hears My voice and opens the door" — of your home, of your heart — "I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me." That's very beautiful. "I will eat with him, and he with Me." There is a two-way communication. It's not one-sided. It's not "He will talk with me," but "I will also talk with Him." It's not just "I will talk with Him," but "He will talk with me." It's not just that "I will eat with Him," but "He will also eat with me." Both sides. This wonderful fellowship — it's two-sided. Not a one-way street fellowship. Not a one-sided fellowship. But this two-way fellowship. It's so marvelous being stated here.
And then there is this word. There are two stages. I hope you notice clearly. First, there is the stage of hearing His voice. We think that's the higher stage. Notice here, that's only the preliminary stage. The hearing of His voice is only to prepare us for the opening of the door so that He may sup with me and I with Him, so that He may sup with you and you with Him. Because if you don't hear His voice, He's not going to be able to sup with you. The supping — this eating together, this meal fellowship, this fellowship at table, this relaxed, joyful, pleasant fellowship. We think of a meal as a pleasant time, do we not? A time of relaxed fellowship. There is the sweetness of fellowship with Christ that is called supping with Him. It is not stiff, formal prayer, tedious and exhausting. But it is the relaxedness of fellowship with Him over, as it were, a casual meal. And you will feel it. But no way are you going to experience this until you hear His voice. And when you hear His voice, and then you open wide the door, your life to Him, and then He comes into your life, and then there is the sweetness of fellowship. If you haven't even come to the point of hearing His voice, where are you going to be able to sup with Him?
The word "voice." We need to study a little while before we go on. The word is very, very familiar in John's Gospel — God's voice, and particularly in the Revelation. The Revelation is a key word. In the whole New Testament, this word "voice" — "phone" in Greek — occurs in the New Testament 137 times. Out of this 137 times, it occurs 53 times in the Revelation. More than one-third of all the occurrences of this word "voice" in the New Testament — more than one-third — occurs in the Revelation. The second most frequent use of the word in the New Testament occurs in Acts, which is 27 times. That is only half the number of times of the occurrences of this word in Revelation.
Revelation is very remarkable. It begins with a great voice, in chapter 1 and verse 10, where the Apostle John says, "I heard a great voice speaking to me behind me." And then it closes, chapter 21, verse 3, with a final great voice speaking all the way through, coming right up to the end of the book. Another great voice. It begins with a great voice. It ends with a great voice. And even the final words of the Revelation is what? It's the Lord Jesus speaking to us: "Behold, I come. I come quickly." Isn't that wonderful? Everywhere is the voice of the Lord speaking to us, if only we have ears to hear.
In John chapter 10, we have this voice again, occurring five times in one chapter. "My sheep hear My voice. They know My voice, and they follow Me." "My sheep hear My voice." It's that constantly repeated statement in John 10. If you don't hear His voice, in that case, you really have problems. Are you His sheep? You see, I come back to this point. Is it something unusual for me when I share about hearing the voice of the Lord, way back when I was a young Christian, when He spoke to me so distinctly? Even in recent days, even in recent times. Quite recently, as I shared with you, some of you too, how my life was saved when the Lord stopped me at a junction, at a crossing. When He told me, "Stop, don't step on the accelerator" — so it was my turn to cross. And that voice, "Stop, don't move." And in the next moment, a huge bus — God — missed the bus stop, missed the stop sign, everything, went tearing through the junction. It would have hit me right amidships. It would have completely destroyed me. I mean, how can you stand the force of a bus coming at maybe 35 or 30 miles an hour? The voice of the Lord. It's normal Christian life. What's so unusual? What's so remote about these experiences — how God speaks to us?
If all these things in the Revelation, all these things also in John's Gospel, are summed up in here: "If any man hear My voice and open, I will come in to him." Now let us move on quickly to ask the question: How do we hear His voice? Wherein do we hear His voice? Hearing His voice is the first step, rather than the higher step of fellowship with Him. It's important to know how a Christian hears His voice. And here there are a number of points. I will start with this first point, and there are five of these points here. Five points I want to share with you very quickly.
God is so concerned, so eager to speak — not just to the individual, but indeed to anyone who is willing to hear — in case you think that God has some hard-to-get game with us. He is more eager to speak to us than we are willing to listen. And when I looked into the Gospels, I saw a remarkable thing: that there are three occasions in which God spoke publicly. In three of these occasions, He spoke to a gathered multitude, straight from heaven. They heard the voice of God speaking straight from heaven. Oh, that is some experience, isn't it? They are standing there and the voice of God speaks. Do you think God wants to hide Himself? He is so anxious to reveal Himself that He speaks to a gathered multitude, a crowd there.
You can see this in Matthew 3, verse 17, that at the very beginning of the ministry of the Lord, and then indeed at His baptism, a voice spoke from heaven: "This is My beloved Son, listen to Him." The voice of God speaking audibly to the gathered multitude. And at the end of His ministry, the Lord God spoke again to the gathered multitude. You see that in John chapter 12 and verse 28 following, where the Lord Jesus was now facing the events of the cross. He was about to lay down His life. And as He confronted this final crisis of His life, suddenly the voice of God spoke again. Remember the Lord Jesus said, "Glorify Your name." And suddenly the voice of God answered from the heavens, "I have glorified it before; I will glorify it again." And that was spoken in the presence of all the multitude. And remember the Lord Jesus said, "This voice came for your sake, not for Mine." Testifying to the Son. God spoke directly, audibly, to the multitude.
He did this very same thing way back in the Old Testament, when He spoke to the multitude of Israel gathered at Mount Sinai. You can notice that He spoke directly to Israel, to all these people. They heard the voice of God speaking to them. You can read the account in Exodus chapter 20 at the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai. And when He spoke to Israel, the people were so terrified by His voice speaking to them, that they said to Moses, "You go and speak with the Lord, but don't let Him speak to us, because we are going to die if we hear His voice anymore." I'll come back to this again a little while further on. This is not unusual for God to speak thus audibly to an entire nation, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. So eager is He to speak.
But we see right at the beginning of the Lord's ministry, right at the end of His ministry, God speaking to the whole gathered multitude. And right there in the middle of His ministry too, at the Transfiguration, you remember, the voice of God spoke out from the cloud, from the Shekinah glory. Matthew 17, verse 5. In this case, there were not the gathered crowds, but only the three disciples. But it is interesting that there should be a public speaking at the beginning in which God speaks, then a speaking to the three disciples, and then at the end of the ministry, God speaks again to the nation. How remarkable this is. So the first point I'd like you to notice is that God's voice is not some mysterious hidden thing which He wants to conceal. But if the occasion warrants it, He will speak even so that all multitudes will hear.
Now let's come to the second way in which we hear the voice of God. The first way, of course, seems rather uncommon — some select occasion in history. But let's come to the more common instances. The second way in which we hear His voice is that His voice is expressing His word. It is His word that speaks. It is His voice which delivers His word to us. Turn for a moment to Deuteronomy chapter 4, which is the very instance I mentioned when God spoke to all of Israel. Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 12 and 13, which refers to the account in Exodus chapter 20. And here, Moses is speaking to Israel about that occasion in Exodus chapter 20, when God spoke to the nation of Israel as a whole. And this is what he says, Deuteronomy 4, verses 12 and 13: "The Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire, but you saw no form. There was only a voice." And what did that voice declare? Verse 13: "And He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments. And He wrote them upon two tablets of stone."
Now notice here the close connection of the voice and the word, the word that is being declared. Where do we hear the voice of the Lord Jesus speaking to us? It is through the words that He has already spoken to us there in the Gospels. And it is those who have ears to hear who will discern His voice and His words. Now clearly there is also a distinction between voice and words. The voice carries the words, but the voice is also more than the words. Because the voice, the very intonation, expresses something which the words on their own do not express. The seriousness of the tone, the power with which those words are delivered, come across, of course, quite differently in a voice than when read off the printed page, or when you read it without any emotion.
And therefore you can understand the terror of the Israelites, because what they had was not just the words, but a voice coming with the words. When God spoke in thunderous tones, with power, with majesty, with seriousness, the people were terrified. Not by the words, notice, but by the voice. It was the voice that terrified them. So although there is a common ground between word and voice, there is also something more in voice than in words. But let us begin, nevertheless, with the recognition that the voice delivers the word, and therefore the word is at least the substance of that voice. And we hear the voice of the Lord Jesus speaking to us in His teaching.
So if you want to commune with God, if you want to commune with the Lord Jesus, you must start by listening attentively to His words. Many people want to hear the Lord Jesus speaking to them, but they don't even start with what He has already said. You must start with His words, and meditate therein day and night, as the psalmist says. Feed upon it as your food. Eat it. Devour it, if you like, with eagerness and enthusiasm, until your ear is attuned to the kind of things that He says. You know the style of His voice, the substance of what He says. When He speaks to you in verbal form, in audible voice, you will be able to recognize that voice by the very substance of the kind of things He says.
What I mean is this: if somebody came to you and said, "I said this and that," and you know what it is that I teach, you would listen to that and say, "No, no, I'm sure He never said that." And he said, "How can you know?" "Because I know His teaching. He wouldn't say a thing like that." Familiar experience? Somebody says that your friend said this and that, and you say, "No, my friend wouldn't say this and that. I know him or her too well. He wouldn't say that." You see, you can distinguish the substance of what is said. You know the voice by what is being said. If you were not prepared in the hearing of His word which He has already taught, then when He will speak to you one day, how are you going to discern whether that is the Lord speaking to you or not? How will you tell? One way to tell whether it is the Lord speaking or not is by looking at the substance of what He says. You will discern His voice by what He says. And you will know that no matter how convincing, how earnest, how strong, how powerful the voice is, it may not be the voice of the Lord. And it will certainly not be His voice if the substance is not the kind of thing He would say.
And "hears My voice" means you must be able to discern His voice. "My sheep know My voice." How do they know it? Because they have already meditated in the kind of things He says. And one of the ways they know is because they know whether this is the kind of thing my Lord would say or the kind of thing my Lord would not say. That's very important.
Let's move on quickly to the third point. There is another way in which we hear the voice of the Lord. He speaks directly, we saw. He speaks through His word. But He speaks also through His servants in Scripture. And this is also a remarkable thing. In 1 Samuel chapter 15 and verse 19, Samuel says to Saul, "You have not obeyed the voice of the Lord." Notice the word "voice." And I am concentrating on a study of the word "voice" as used in the Scriptures. "You have not obeyed the voice of the Lord." But when did Saul ever hear the voice of the Lord? Well, he heard the voice of the Lord through Samuel. In verses 1 to 3, we saw it there. The voice of the Lord was communicated to Saul through his servant Samuel.
It is a very common principle, in fact, in Scripture, that God speaks to us through His servant. Moses, in speaking to Israel, was the means by which also Israel heard the voice of the Lord. Let us look at this in Deuteronomy 13, verse 18. That is one example, because there are simply too many examples of this. Deuteronomy 13, verse 18. And notice what Moses says to the nation of Israel: "If you obey the voice of the Lord your God, keeping all His commandments which I commanded you this day." Notice: "which I commanded you this day." Do you notice that? "If you will obey the voice of the Lord, keeping the commandments which I commanded you." You see, Moses was the voice of God to Israel. In fact, he was the voice of God to Pharaoh as well. We see this in Exodus chapter 7, verse 1. Let me read also Exodus 7, verse 1, please. A remarkable verse. And the Lord said to Moses, "See, I make you as God to Pharaoh. And Aaron your brother shall be your prophet." I make you as God to Pharaoh. That is, what you say will represent what I think.
# Communion With God (Part 2)
We represent what I say. When he hears your voice, it is as though he has heard the voice of God. I make you as God to hear. If he rejects your voice, then he has rejected My voice. There's nothing new about that in the New Testament either. We see the same thing in the New Testament. In Matthew 10, verse 40: "He that receives you, receives Me. And he that rejects you, rejects Me." He that rejects your voice has rejected My voice. Because your voice is My voice. And today, the mediocre type of Christianity we are used to — we hardly dare to think of such a thing. It boggles the mind. Because why? There are so few genuine and faithful servants of God around, isn't there? And unless you are a genuine and faithful servant of God, you dare not ever suggest that your voice is anything like the voice of God, in any way representing Him. But that is what the Lord said to His disciples.
There is yet another way in which we hear His voice, as we see in the Scriptures. And that is that His voice is heard or seen in the vision. And in our mediocre type of Christianity, such experiences are regarded as beyond imagination, almost. And yet so common — so common in the book of Acts. Common even in the Old Testament. Maybe the word "common" is not quite right, but at least it is far from being unknown. In Ezekiel chapter 1, verses 24 and 25, Ezekiel describes what it is like when he heard the sound, the voice of the Almighty speaking in the vision which he saw. In Acts chapter 9 and verse 10, we find that God is speaking to Ananias in a vision, because there is a task to be done, and He must communicate that task. The task for Ananias was to lead the apostle — who was later to become the apostle, as at that time Saul, but later the apostle Paul — to lead him to the Lord. To lead him to repentance and to baptism, to recover his sight, and to lay hands upon him, that he might both receive his sight and also receive the Spirit. All this was communicated to Ananias in a vision.
Visions and dreams. Often a night vision is called a dream, or a dream is a night vision. In Acts chapter 18, verse 9, we find the Lord speaking to Paul in a night vision. Very clear voice, communicating with him in this night vision. And on another occasion, in Acts chapter 22, verses 17 to 22, we find that Paul is communicating with the Lord, or the Lord is communicating with Paul, in what is called an ecstasy or a trance. Now these words are not very satisfactory. But what it seems to be describing is a situation in which Paul has lost all awareness of his immediate surroundings, and he is communicating with God verbally, but without a vision. This kind of communication without a vision, without a visible vision, is here described as ecstasy or trance. It is a verbal state of communication. Then we see there is nothing new about this type of communication between God and His people and His servants.
Let's come to the fifth and last of this type in which we hear the voice of the Lord. And this one should be much more common. It is that He communicates with us through His Holy Spirit. There are those who hear the voice of the Lord speaking to them through the Holy Spirit. We see that in Acts chapter 13, verse 2. In Acts 13, verse 2, we read that the Spirit says, "Separate out from Me Barnabas and Saul." Now the voice of the Lord was probably communicated to the gathered church through a prophet. And there again the voice of the Lord then comes to one of His servants. But there are also instances in which the voice of the Lord speaks directly to us.
Take for example the fact of our assurance. In Romans chapter 8, verse 16, we read that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God. I wonder how you could possibly have any assurance that you are a child of God unless the Spirit of God is witnessing, speaking to you, that you are His child. But today the state of the church is so pathetic that they want to base their assurance on something else — on a dogma, on a doctrine. They don't want to depend upon a living relationship with God. They don't want to depend on what they regard as the rather insecure, maybe even — dare we say — unreliable connection of communication with God. They want to base it on a dogma so that even if you don't have a living relationship with God, you can have assurance.
This of course has been the point of conflict between myself, as you know, and many pastors in the Chinese churches today. They want to base assurance on a doctrine. There is no authority, as we have demonstrated, there is no authority in the word of God for so doing. Either we have a living relationship with God in which He speaks with us and we speak with Him, and in that speaking with us He gives us His assurance through the Holy Spirit, or we don't have assurance at all. And no amount of indoctrination is going to produce the right kind of assurance. And nothing is so dangerous as a false assurance. Because it lulls you into sloth. It lulls you into a false sense of security. You hear "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. Because the only kind of peace that any Christian really has is that fruit of the Spirit that comes through fellowship with Him, through a living connection with Him. And if you base your peace and your assurance on any other ground, let me tell you, you have walked into a pit and you have followed a blind guide right into a pit.
But the church feels today — apparently many churches feel — that to base assurance upon a living communication with God is very insecure. Why is that insecure? Why do we find it insecure? "Well, you might have communion today and not have communion tomorrow." But is that God's fault? Does He only want fellowship with you today and not tomorrow? And because you are weak and feeble, therefore you say, "Well, in that case, my assurance is not assured." Well, then learn. Learn, dear ones, to walk closely with Him. Don't seek security where it's not to be found. But seek evermore to draw close to Him and say, "Abide in me and I in you. And then you will bear fruit." And then you will have assurance. You don't abide in me, and you also want assurance? You want your cake and eat it too. You want to eat your cake and have it. What are we doing? If you want to build your life on false security, you are free to do it to your own destruction. I will not compromise, brothers and sisters, with false doctrine.
And so in this fifth point, we see that God gave us the Holy Spirit so that we can have this deep, powerful, secure inner link with Him. And whenever you feel that the communion is getting weak, why not repent? It only takes repentance to restore a deep fellowship with Him. Do you prefer to find your security in something else without the need of repentance? And do you think that God would grant you such security that does not require repentance and communion with Him? How have we been lulled to sleep?
In the Gospel of John, the Lord speaks very specifically about the Holy Spirit as the voice of God speaking to us individually. Let's look at John 16 and verse 13. That's how specific the Lord Jesus gets. A text which requires no skill for us to expound because it speaks for itself. John 16 and verse 13: "When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak" — notice the word "speak" — "for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will declare to you the things that are to come." He will speak to you the things you need to know concerning the truth, concerning our salvation. And He will declare to you — not for your curiosity, but for the sake of your knowing how to walk wisely before Him — the things to come.
I feel very wary about all this speculation about things to come and the Lord's approaching. He is coming soon. There is indeed the fact that He is coming soon. But let's not make this into some kind of a curiosity game in which we can play around with future things. Those things that the Spirit reveals to us are for our sanctification, that we do not fall into unseen pits, that we can avoid hidden dangers. They are not there for us to arouse our curiosity. But notice that the Holy Spirit speaks twice. We have in this verse: "The Spirit will speak," and then "He will also declare" through His speaking to us. Here we see it all.
In John 14, verse 26, the Holy Spirit also speaks to us. John 14, verse 26, it says: "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." He will teach. How do you teach without speaking? Is there some way to teach without speaking? In the previous verse, we already saw in John 16, verse 13, that He will speak. And here we see also that He will bring to our remembrance the words of the Lord Jesus. Have you ever had that experience where somehow, at some point in your Christian life, a particular verse becomes particularly precious to you, so that you want to write it down, you want to underline it? The Holy Spirit is bringing something to your remembrance. And I hope that this is a common experience to you. It's very common in my experience. At every stage in my Christian life, some verse suddenly stands out from Scripture and the Holy Spirit brings it to my remembrance. And that particular verse will be with me for some time until that particular spiritual need is passed. And then He will bring another verse to my remembrance, and that becomes a key word for me in the next period of my life. So wonderful that He highlights that verse and says, "Here is a verse for you," and that verse becomes a guiding light in the days during which He constantly highlights it for us.
But how do we know it is His voice? A certain woman was once challenged because she was teaching a group of other women with considerable effect and success in the Lord, so much so that strangely enough the church leaders — instead of being joyful about this — used to find that in those days, this being some 200 years ago, rather upsetting that a woman should be leading Bible studies and teaching other women. They thought this was the right only of the clergy in those days, it seems. And when she pointed out that in the closeness of her fellowship with the Lord she often heard the voice of the Lord, that it was the voice of the Lord that led her to do these Bible studies, they questioned her and said, "Well, how do you know it was the voice of the Lord speaking to you?"
And she quietly and humbly addressed this gathered panel of clergy who were there to judge her and indeed to condemn her. And she meekly asked them, "Can you tell me how Abraham knew that it was the voice of God speaking to him when God said, 'Offer up Isaac to Me'?" Could it be conceivable that God would ask such a thing? That He demands — no, more than all — that He demands not just everything that Abraham could give of his own life, that he could lay down his own life, but to lay down also the life of his son? And she asked this panel, "How did Abraham know that it was God speaking to him?" He could have said, "Well, God wouldn't say such things. He doesn't demand everything from people. He is usually One who demands very little, as the churches tell me these days. In fact, He demands nothing at all." And here is a God who demands not only everything but even his son, in whom all the promises were concentrated, as our sister Stephanie shared with us the other day.
How do we know the voice of God? Let me give you a few principles by which to distinguish this matter. The first principle that you must grasp clearly if you are going to hear the voice of the Lord: the purity of heart. You will not be capable of distinguishing His voice without purity of heart. Some two or three years ago I shared with you the case of a sister in England, in the church which I pastored in England, in Liverpool. And this sister, as you may recall, was prophesying in the name of the Lord. And she prophesied in a state of ecstasy, and she prophesied with such power that it terrified those who watched her and listened to her. And as she prophesied in this state of ecstasy, in a state of trance really, she would say, "Thus says the Lord," and the things she said seemed to be unobjectionable, to make good sense. And in her ecstasy and in her state of prophecy she would be able to quote passages of Scripture which in her normal state of mind she could never remember. She didn't even know there were such passages in Scripture, because this dear woman was barely literate. She could hardly read. And yet she was able to quote whole passages from Scripture, which later when she was out of the state of trance she didn't even know were in the Scriptures. Very impressive.
"Thus says the Lord," there she would give her prophecy. And this went on not for one or two days but for a whole period of time — several weeks, in fact, in the Liverpool church. And I sought the face of the Lord to discern whether this was from Him or not. From the substance, one couldn't tell. There was nothing in the substance that gave much indication whether it was from the Lord or not. But one day as I waited before the Lord, the Lord made it clear to me that this was not from Him. And so having discerned before the Lord that it was not from Him, I went to her and I spoke to her, and I said to her, "Sister, I have to tell you something. The prophecy with which you have prophesied in the name of the Lord through all these weeks is not from the Lord."
And when she heard these words she fell on her face — literally, bang, she went straight on her face upon the ground. And then later with tears she asked me, "Not from the Lord? What is the reason that I have been prophesying in this way?" I said, "Sister, there is some sin hidden in your heart, and that is why Satan was able to use you." I said, "Do you know what sin you have committed? Search your heart before the Lord right now and tell me, what sin have you committed?" And she thought and she searched and she couldn't think of anything. She says, "In all truthfulness I tell you, I can't think of any sin I have committed."
So I said — I looked to the Lord to discern the problem in her heart. I said, "Then I will tell you: in your heart there is impurity, because deep down in your heart you hate your husband." Truth — she came, as it were, awoke out of sleep, as it were, as it were truth. And then she told me why she had hated her husband, because of the way her husband had treated her before — treated her as a slave, misused her, treated her more or less as some kind of sex object. And she resented him because he had humiliated her, degraded her, treated her as a thing. And deep down in her heart she had hated him. But as time went on she knew it was wrong to hate him, so instead of dealing with this sin she simply buried it. And as she buried it, it went deeper and deeper into her heart until she forgot it was even there. But the poisonous root of that hatred was poisoning the whole system. Don't hide sin in your heart until you lose even consciousness — you become unaware of it — and that root will poison your entire system from its hiddenness deep in the heart.
So her heart being exposed to that impurity, she repented of her sin. She sought by the will of God to forgive her husband, to live a new life from henceforth. And as a result, of course, her husband — who was some kind of a nominal Christian — within the next two years was quite transformed to her, when once she had put all these impurities, the hatred, out of her heart and the Lord had cleansed it. And through it, learn this then, this vital principle: that if you want to hear the voice of the Lord and not confuse that voice with the voice of Satan, you must start with absolute purity of heart. The blood of Jesus must very practically cleanse away every stain of sin, every hidden stain of sin. And there are sins which, like in this case of this sister, were so hidden that she couldn't even remember them anymore, and it had to be revealed by a word of insight, by a word of discernment. May the Spirit of God reveal it to you if you have hidden anything, because sin — hidden or exposed — whichever will cut your communion with God. God is a living God. He will not stand for impurity. If you want to hear His voice, get rid of impurity.
Now one thing I want to say to you is this: we often think of repentance as something for non-Christians. That's a great mistake. Revelation chapter 3, verse 20 — if you notice, the verse before that says, "Repent. Be zealous and repent." It's speaking to Christians. "Be zealous and repent of your sins." It is Christians who need constantly to repent, not only the unbeliever. We have not graduated into a Christian life in such a way that we don't need repentance anymore. It's not a thing of the past. Repentance is a thing we have to live with all the time, because that's the only way we can approach a holy God.
Now repentance in the life of the Christian takes the form of humility and contrition. And you will notice that in Scripture, God delights in the contrite heart. We read that in Isaiah 57, verse 15 and following, Isaiah 66 and verse 2, that God delights to dwell with those who are of a humble and of a contrite heart. It's with this kind of people that He lives. We must not think that our sinfulness has to drive us away from God. No, no. Our sinfulness is the very thing that will draw us to God, if we will see that we are sick and we need the Physician. He is the Physician, and we are sick. How blessed to dwell in the presence of the Physician all the time. When you are sick, He's there all the time to attend to us, as we stay in His presence with humbleness and with a contrite heart. In that attitude, no matter how impure you may feel yourself to be, you can always stay in His presence. In fact, sinfulness becomes a blessing in this sense, if I may dare to say so, if it can be translated into an attitude of a contrite heart. At all times: "I am a sinful man, O Lord, but be merciful to me. Throw me not out of Your presence, but grant me, O Lord, to abide in Your presence, that You may heal me and cleanse me all the time until I be pure." Our sinfulness, our weakness, becomes a ground for a plea to remain in His presence, not a ground to flee from His presence. Can you see? Precisely because — who is a pardoning God like Him? If only we will repent.
Let us move on quickly. The second thing you need to know if we are to hear His voice is absolute commitment to the truth. To the truth — not to our church dogmas, not to this or that particular kind of view of theology, but to the truth, whatever the truth is that God has revealed to us in His word. I have constantly had to go through the painful experience to discover that doctrines I held before did not conform to His word, and I was saying, "How come I don't find this doctrine in the word?" And so I had to abandon my doctrines in order to be committed to the truth. In John chapter 18, verse 37, the Lord Jesus says to Pilate, "Whosoever loves the truth, whosoever is of the truth will hear My voice." That's the second point I would like you to grasp. Only those committed to the truth will hear His voice. Are you committed to the truth? Are you prepared to be pure in heart? That's the first thing. And are you willing to be absolutely committed to the truth? Those who are of the truth hear His voice. They come out of the darkness. They flee from falsehood. They pursue the truth.
The third thing — and I must move very quickly here — is the oneness of heart, which is not distracted by many things. I see Christians who cannot commune with the Lord because the heart is not one; it is not focused. And I have dealt with this in a previous message, so I will not spend much time on this now. But like Martha, so many Christians suffer from this. In Luke chapter 10, verse 41, the Lord says to Martha, "Oh, you are troubled about many things. You are distracted by many things. One thing is necessary." Martha was distracted not by bad things, not by sinful things, not by impure things. She was distracted by good things. That's the problem. So many Christians are so busy with so-called good things that the good has become the enemy of the best. We must, if we want to hear the voice of the Lord, give Him our undivided attention. And if you can allow yourself to be distracted by this and that, even by many good things, instead of concentrating on one thing, namely the Lord Himself, you are not going to hear His voice.
Quietness — the fourth point — the need for inward quietness. In this age of noise and busyness, there are few people who know what it is to be quiet within. Why is it necessary to be quiet? Because the Lord doesn't shout at us, as the prophet Elijah had to be taught. He speaks with a quiet, still, small voice. And to hear a quiet, still, small voice, you have to be still. When you are making a lot of noise, or you allow other noise to crash into the privacy of your inner being, you can't hear His voice — the deep inner quietness. Have you ever sensed, when you talk, if you talk to a man of God, that there is a deep inner quietness about him? It becomes second nature to be quiet within, because unless he is quiet, he can't at any moment hear when the Lord wants to speak to him. And so 1 Kings chapter 19, verse 12, is where Elijah learns the lesson that God speaks not in the whirlwind, not in the thunder, not in the earthquakes, but in the quiet, still, small voice of the Spirit.
The fifth thing is that we must be freed from the fear of death. This might surprise you. Why is it this point about fear of death? We read in Hebrews chapter 2 that Satan has kept people in bondage all their life long through the fear of death. What does the fear of death mean? It means that we cling to the world; we will not let go of this world. A person who has already let go of this world doesn't fear death. And therefore the fear of death is a sure sign that a person has not yet let go of this world. Why does death terrify us all if we have truly let go of this world? Why does it frighten us?
Let me pause for a few moments here to come back to Exodus chapter 20 and verse 19. Let me read to you this tragic passage. I call it tragic. When God was speaking to Israel from the mountain burning with fire, God's voice, as we saw earlier on, addressed the entire nation of Israel. And what do we see here? "And the people said to Moses, 'You speak to us and we will hear, but let not God speak to us, lest we die.'" They didn't want to hear the voice of God anymore because they were afraid of dying. Do you see the point? Can it be, my dear ones, can it be that you don't really want to hear the voice of God speaking to you because you're afraid that that voice will cost you — cost you your life in this world? So you want to hear His voice, yes, but you also don't want to hear His voice, because when you weigh the two things together, the voice of God speaking to you frightens you. He might call you to do things that cost you your place in this world. We don't want to die, do we? "Don't let God speak to us," they said to Moses, "because we're going to die. We're scared to die." Why not die? Why not, in all joy, listen to His voice, even if it means my death? Why is fear of death? Is it not a glory to die listening to His voice? Is it not wonderful to say, "Lord, let me die listening to Your voice"?
But the people of Israel didn't want to die. They didn't want to hear His voice anymore. "Don't speak to me anymore. You tell us what God wants us to do and we will do it. Yes, we will do it." Oh, that sounds good. And God says concerning this in Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 25 onwards, the very same thing there. They spoke rightly. It's good that they spoke, that they are willing to do whatever you command them in My name. But there's the fear of dying.
Until you come to this point — and I would say to those who are being baptized: what happens at your baptism? You die. If you think you are dying in some phony sense, you haven't understood baptism. Baptism is no phony game of pretend dying. In baptism you truly die to this world. And if you do not truly die to this world, you haven't gone through baptism in any meaningful sense. You think that baptism is some kind of a phony game of playing at dying, playing possum, pretend to die? And what can I say? What are we? We're playing games in the spiritual life. You either genuinely die to this world, or your baptism is not going to have much meaning. And if you are not afraid to die, why then are you afraid to hear His voice?
Come quickly to the sixth point. The sixth point is this: that you must be fully engaged in His service. Every true Christian should be fully engaged in the Lord's service, whether they are in full-time training or not is not the point. The point is that we have been redeemed with His blood. We have been bought with a price. We belong to Him. We are His servants. We are His slaves. And there are no part-time slaves. We all live full time for Him, whatever our job at this moment may be. But if you, as a Christian, are not living for Him, where are you going to hear His voice? If you have noticed all these examples in Acts and earlier on that I mentioned, you will notice that every time the voice of the Lord spoke to somebody in a vision, He was speaking to one of His servants engaged in active service, engaged in active spiritual military duty. And every time He spoke, it was not to satisfy their curiosity. It was to tell them that there was some task to be done, or to give His servants some encouragement to do something which was vital to the ministry of His church. He speaks for a purpose. He speaks to those who serve, and He speaks for the service of His church.
The last point, and we must close: He speaks to those who are prepared to be faithful unto death. To be faithful right unto death. This point is remarkably important. Ask yourself whether you are prepared to be faithful unto death. You know, being faithful unto death reveals a certain quality of a person. "He who endures to the end shall be saved" is a statement occurring two times, in Matthew chapter 10 and chapter 24. It is this kind of person that the Lord looks for: those who will take up their cross and follow Him to the death of the cross. Of course — faithful unto death.
We have all kinds of wishy-washy Christians in the church today who call themselves Christians. I wonder how many of them will dare to be faithful unto death. Indeed, that may be an intention — we might weaken at the last moment, but by the grace of God we shall stand. But at least we must have the intention to be faithful unto death. A sincere, genuine intention. And are there in the church today who wouldn't even have that intention? God knows our heart whether that intention is genuine or not. And if He finds in your heart, as He looks into your heart, the genuine readiness to be faithful unto death — to this kind of person He will speak.
We saw already the kind of people He speaks to. Abraham was willing to be faithful, not only unto his own death, but to the death of someone far more precious to him than his own life — the death of his son. Faithful unto death. Look at Elijah, the one who had close communion with God. Elijah — faithful. There was a point in Elijah's life when he did get frightened; he did weaken. But he soon overcame it, and he went back again to the ministry, to confront Ahab in a manner so daring as would cost his life at any moment. He went back ready to die. Instead, God raptured him. Moses — faithful unto death. When he said, "Lord, forgive them their sins. But if not, blot me out. Wipe me out. Destroy me, but forgive these people, I beg You." Faithful unto death. As for the prophets — everyone was faithful, as Stephen said: "Which of the prophets," he said to the Jews, "which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?" And the Lord Jesus constantly spoke of the blood of the prophets, for example in Matthew 23:31. The blood of the prophets. They sealed their testimony with their blood. It was true of the apostles. It was true of the prophets. It is to this kind of person — faithful unto death — that the Lord will speak.
Our time is gone. And to illustrate this point: though Stephen was communing with the Lord even as he was dying, being stoned to death — did you notice that it was precisely in the moment of his dying, faithful unto death, that the heavens opened and he saw the Lord Jesus? And he was communing with the Lord Jesus at the very moment of his dying. How is your commitment? What kind of commitment do you have?
And so as we close, we think of Revelation chapter 3, verse 20 again: "If any man hear My voice." I hope by now you know what it takes to hear His voice. There is nothing very mysterious about it. We now know the principles and the conditions upon which He will speak to us. But "if any man hear My voice and open his life to Me, I will come in and sup with him, and he with Me." It is a kind of communion that doesn't even require words anymore. It's so wonderful to be able to sit together and eat peacefully together without even saying a word. It's that sweet, quiet communion with one another which is the highest stage of communion with the Lord. It is to this kind of communion, where we don't even need to communicate verbally anymore, that this is the kind of close, deep, inner communion that the Lord wants to call us to.
I pray that those who are being baptized will be granted this experience of walking with God. I have said that the Christian life is utterly dependent upon communion with God, for that is what the Scripture says. You cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense without living communion with God. I pray that you will go forth today and meditate on these words, that you will hear His voice, that you will open your life to Him, and that you will walk with Him.