Big Idea: God speaks his Son - a word of blessing

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Lionel Wood
5 years ago
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1 He Speaks Deuteronomy 5:22-33 Big Idea: God speaks his Son - a word of blessing Prayer: Father, you have spoken a word of life, A word of light, A word of hope, In the person of your Son. Help me to listen. Give me a heart of flesh, And a will that submits. Give me ears that heed, And eyes that see. May my life hang on your very word, And my soul long for your voice, As I love Jesus more. Amen 1

2 In late November last year News24 and the Huffington Post reported on a prayer meeting in parliament at which Angus Buchan prophesied that the dams in the Western Cape will be full by the end of March this year. In order for that to happen we will need over 1000 millimetres of rain. Cape Town s annual average rainfall is about 800 millimetres that means that if that prophesy is to come true, in the next two months, we are going to have a deluge of Biblical proportions. Instead of buying JoJo tanks and bottled water, instead of installing greywater systems you should be waterproofing your home, battening down your roof, cleaning your gutters and storm water drains, and perhaps even constructing a boat in the back garden. Now why would Angus Buchan say something like that? The weather forecasts seem in stark contrast to that prophesy as I 2

3 watch the long term weather predictions it seems to me much more likely that we are going to have two months of hot, dry and windy weather a typical Cape summer with very little rain. Now I can only assume that Angus Buchan would say something like that because he sincerely believes that God has told him that that is what is going to happen. He sincerely believes that God has spoken to him and revealed to him the future for Cape Town. And that is entirely consistent with his theological world view. By the end of March we will know whether God did speak to Angus Buchan or not. We will know whether his world view is correct or not. But Angus Buchan is not the only one who holds this viewpoint; people will often tell me of a dream that they had, that they are convinced was from God there is one floating around on social media at the 3

4 moment - I was sent it - of a man in the US who dreamt about Eminem the rather crude Rap star, and the dreamer is convinced that the dream was a prophesy about M&M - Musi Maimane: Still others will tell me of an impression or a feeling that they have that they are convinced is God s word to them. Often these impressions or feelings concern major life decisions like emigration or marriage or career moves. I knew a man when I was at university who had an impression and was convinced that it was God telling him to marry a certain woman. They weren t dating and God hadn t told her - how would you respond if someone came to you out of the blue and said God has told me to marry you? Still others will use the confirmation of events, the Gideon fleece, as a sign of God s leading and speaking. I will apply for that job and if I get it then I will know it is from God. We use the 4

5 language of doors opening and closing as signs of God s will and his speaking So does God speak? And if so how does he speak? And if he speaks how will we know it is him speaking? Well let s go back to the plains of Moab to see what we can discover about this subject this morning. Come with me to Deuteronomy chapter 5 again today Remember the scene. The nation of Israel is gathered listening to a sermon by Moses. It is his final sermon to them. They are about to enter the promised land. They have been wandering for 40 years in the wilderness - homeless nomads, stateless refugees. The events of the Exodus and Sinai are a national memory - a bit like World War 2 is a memory to us - they are Important but they are also 5

6 a long time ago and starting to fade in their memory. Moses is urging them to remember those events, to learn the lessons that their fathers learnt and he begins today by reminding them that 1. God is very great V22-27 Now let me introduce you to Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism. You have probably never heard of it but it describes most of our friends. Moralistic Therapeutic Deists believe in a god who wants people to be good and nice and fair. He values sincerity and the central goal of life is to be happy and to be true to yourself. God doesn t need to be particularly involved in your life except when he is needed to resolve a 6

7 problem. And all good people go to heaven when they die. But that is not the God of the Bible. That is Santa Claus. The God of the Bible is very great. The God the Israelites met at Sinai was terrifyingly great. On that mountain v22 there was fire and cloud and darkness the mountain was ablaze and their parents feared for their lives. We tend to shrink God down and make him manageable. After all who can visualise the size of the Solar System never mind a God who made the Solar System. We like a God that is just like us not a God who is immense and fearsome. The Bible describes a God who were he to decide to dump 1000 millimetres of rain on Cape Town in two months it wouldn t even be hard for him to 7

8 do. The God of the Bible can pick up Africa with a tweezers. He can hold the Pacific in his hand or use it to brush his teeth. God can juggle with the stars. His presence is like fire not a camp fire but a raging inferno. His glory is life consuming. His greatness dissolves people. It is typically human to think of ourselves as quite important and quite big, until a Tsunami hits us, at which point we realise that we are tiny and inconsequential and minute This earth is about kilometres around at the equator. If you could walk 20kms a day, which of course you could never do, it would take you 2 full years to walk around the earth but God can play ping pong with the earth. God has to lean down from heaven to see the great Burj Khalifa at 150 8

9 stories high. He has to lean down to see it, it is so small God is very great So great that when humans come face to face with God they are afraid; Adam was afraid, Isaiah was afraid, Peter was afraid and the Israelites at Sinai were afraid when out of the darkness and the fire they heard the voice of God. Here is our second truth today 2. The very great God speaks V22 Words are the medium of relationship. When God spoke, the Israelites knew that he 9

10 existed all doubts disappeared; and they knew that he is living; and they knew that he is very great; and they knew that they were in trouble. They knew that he was a fearsome God with a fearsome word and they were afraid But I don t want us to focus on that I want us to focus on the truth that our God is a God who speaks. He is a not dead idol that you can kick, and beseech, and kiss, and touch but who has nothing to say. We easily forget that because God does not speak as often as we want him to speak. We are tempted to think that he doesn t speak at all. And so we embark on an attempted life devoid of the voice of God. But that is a lonely existence; that is not relationship; that is not sonship. Instead God wants us to hear his voice; to know his call; to listen to his encouragement; to change at his 10

11 challenge; to repent at his urging. God speaks and he desires that his world hears. But there is another mistake that we might make we might forget that when God speaks it is a fearsome word. It is not a causal word. It is not a trivial word. And it is not a word about you. God is not going to speak about which socks you should wear or which parking bay you should take or which town you should live in or which job you should take or which school to send your kids to. He has given you a brain so just decide. No, when God speaks it is to reveal himself to us. When God speaks it is for the purpose of relationship. We don t need anything else but we do need him Be very careful of confusing the desires of your heart with the voice of God. Remember that your happiness is not God s 11

12 fundamental agenda. God s fundamental agenda is us knowing him. God s word to us is going to be about us and him. If you are hearing God say to you regularly that you need to change the way you speak, that you need to alter your thinking, that you need to repent of your actions; if you are hearing God say you need to be more generous or more joyful that is much more likely to be the voice of God than the impression that you should move to Sydney. Be very careful of confusing the desires of your heart with the Word of God. The Word of God is always fearsome and it is always about him and about our relationship with him. In fact, so fearsome is the Word of God that it always needs to be a mediated word Here is the third thing we see in this passage 12

13 3. The very great God speaks a mediated word V25-31 Poor old Moses. Talk about a horrible job. They Israelites cry out, This fire will consume us. We will die if we hear the voice of God anymore. You go Moses. You go and listen to God. Poor old Moses except that what they have said pleased God. So fearsome and great is our God, so awesome is his presence, so mighty and powerful is his word that it will consume us. And so we need someone to stand in the gap, to mediate. The Israelites ask for Moses to stand in the gap which is a shadow of the day when God will send his own son Jesus to stand in the gap for the world. Jesus is our mediator. 13

14 Africa is plastered with terrible stories. Amongst them is the astonishing genocides that took place between the Hutu and Tutsi peoples of Rwanda and Burundi. Rwanda s is the more famous and the more terrible. Millions were killed. But there was also a genocide in Burundi where about 300,000 people died. A civil war started when Tutsi soldiers murdered Burundi's first Hutu president. What followed was an exceptionally bitter conflict in which civilians were targeted largely on the basis of ethnicity. During that time Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, was ethnically cleansed of most Hutus. In rural areas, hundreds of thousands of Hutus were herded by the Tutsi military into concentration camps. But as the last century ended a peace deal was brokered by Nelson Mandela. Madiba spent two years in talks he called "alarmingly slow, painful and costly", but eventually he 14

15 mediated between the 19 warring parties cajoling them to talk to each other. We need a mediator to hear God s word to us. In an incredible Biblical twist the mediator is also the word. Jesus comes as both the mediator and the fearsome word of God to our world. God speaks to us of Jesus. It is not a trivial word. It is not a casual word. It is not a word about us. It is a word about God himself. God s Son is God s word to us. Everything you need to hear is found in Jesus. Everything you need for a successful life is found in Jesus. Do I need to emigrate? The answer is Jesus. I have marriage problems - the answer is Jesus. I have problems with parenting - the answer is Jesus. What about death? The answer is Jesus. What about my depression? The answer is Jesus 15

16 And so the book of Hebrews has one simple exhortation - listen to Jesus. Now 4. Listening to the terrifying mediated word brings blessing V32 and 33 Here is the promise of God. If we take his Son into our souls and our lives and our thinking and our actions and our hearts if we become sons of God we will find blessing and love and peace and light and joy and kindness and faithfulness and life. If your life feels like you need more of those then you need to turn your life towards Jesus. Turn your ears towards Jesus. If you 16

17 want to hear God speak more to you then you need to turn your ears towards Jesus. You won t find the word of God in a silent retreat. You will hear the noise of your head in a silent retreat. But you will find the voice of God in the person of Jesus. God s Word will grab your heart as you open the pages of your Bible and you meet Jesus. And the questions of life that we so need answers to, the questions of our daily struggle where we so desire to do the will of God well God has words to say about them found in the man Jesus. We may find the Word of God frustrating because he is not fundamentally interested in our agendas and so when we want to talk about emigration we will find him challenging us on what is going in our hearts. When we want to answers about parenting he will challenge us on our love for him. When we want to know who we should marry he will tell us to make up our minds 17

18 and that it is not who we marry that is important but how we do it that matters. We will find that God has very little to say about the things that consume us. What work should I do God says it doesn t matter what matters is the way you work. Where should I live, God says I don t care, you chose just make sure that when you chose you live for me. So choose somewhere that will draw you toward me not somewhere where you will be so comfortable and sop wealthy that you will forget me. Where should my children go to school. It doesn t matter so long as they are not in a school that will draw them away from me. And so the way to hear the voice of God is to open the pages of your Bible and give yourself to them. That won t come easy. We are going to need each other to help us stick at that And we are going to need time together in small groups to chat about these 18

19 things and chew on them and tease them out; and we are going to need trained men and women to teach us the meaning of the Bible and so we are going to need to put our money into gospel ministers; and then we are going to need to meditate on these words, and discuss them, and savour them, and listen to them, and apply them, and give time to them and memorise them and as we meet Jesus we will hear the very great God speak We have got to stop being too busy for the voice of God. Our phones consume us. We are busy with the inconsequential when the voice of God is within our grasp. Let s turn to him, let hear him, let s meditate on his Son, let s be enthralled by him, let s love him Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of this world 19

20 will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace. We have a very great God, who speaks a very great word let s listen 20

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