BEHOLD! Week 4: God is Speaking, Am I Listening? I Kings 19:11

At the beginning of his book, Whisper, How to Hear the Voice of God, Mark Batterson tells the story about a French physician named Alfred Tomatis.

Tomatus was an ear, nose, and throat doctor, and his practice was over six decades in the city of Paris, France.

And the story that Batterson tells centers upon one particular day in the life of his practice.

On this day, Tomatas is seeing patients in his clinic, and it just so happens that one of the patients on his schedule that day is a world-renowned opera singer.

So Tomatas enters the exam room, and as I was reading this story, I just imagined him asking that all-too familiar question, the question all of us have heard at one point or another in our life.

What brings you in today?

Why are you sitting in my office?

The opera singer begins to explain his condition and his ailment.

He tells Dr.

Tomatis that he's reached this point in his life and point in his career where he is now no longer able to hit certain notes.

He can no longer sing them, even though they are well within his vocal range, the vocal range he has known for his entire professional career.

He's seen multiple doctors.

He's gotten one opinion, two opinions, three opinions.

And all of those doctors, he tells uh Dr.

Tomatis, have said this is a vocal condition, and they have prescribed some treatment, but none of it has worked.

And so that's why I'm coming to you on this day.

And Dr.

Tomatas he listens to his description of his problem and he takes out this sonometer out of his cabinet, this instrument that could uh measure the decibels of this man's singing voice.

And so, in this very small exam room with its hard walls and hard surfaces, he just says, let her rip.

Sing as loud as you possibly can.

The opera singer does just that.

And that instrument that the good doctor is holding, it registers the sound of 140 decibels.

Just how loud is 140 decibels?

It's slightly louder than the sound produced by a fighter jet taking off from an aircraft carrier.

That's how loud that man's voice was in the exam room, the single voice of that opera singer.

That discovery led to a totally different diagnosis of the problem.

That opera singer didn't have a vocal affliction, he had a hearing problem.

Dr.

Tomatis determined that this man, because of the length of his career and the volume at which he sang, he had deafened himself to those notes that he could no longer hit.

He had sung so loud and so often, he could no longer hear those notes and no longer sing those notes.

Hearing was his problem.

Dr.

Tomatis put it this way: he says, the voice only contains what the ear can hear.

The voice only contains what the ear can hear.

This is our fourth week in our current series, Behold.

The foundation of this series is a single phrase found in Psalm 27, verse 4.

Psalms 27:4

To behold the beauty of the Lord.

This series is all about learning to pay attention to God so that you and I can be transformed by God.

To pay attention to God so that he can take our faith, which is so often mediocre, and turn it into something miraculous.

And at the midpoint of our series, I actually think it's a good time for us to walk into our own little exam room and to take a little diagnostic of ourselves, to try to locate ourselves on that scale between somewhere between mediocre and miraculous.

Let's revisit just some key ideas from weeks one through three.

First, this.

Answer this question for yourself on a scale of one to ten.

Do you give more attention to the beautiful things of this world, people and plans and possessions, than you do to the beauty of the Lord?

Do you spend more time thinking about those beautiful things than upon the beauty of your creator?

Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten.

From week two.

Do you seek personal holiness?

Do you seek to live according to the Sermon on the Mount and to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit?

Again, score yourself on a scale of one to ten.

And then week three, do you experience the nearness of God in the simple and in the sacred moments of life?

Do you experience the nearness of God in the laundry room and in the kitchen?

And when you're gathered with Christian friends or gathered with your church family for worship.

Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten.

As I wrote those diagnostic questions this week and I asked them of myself, it was clear I've not arrived.

Maybe all of us or many of us feel that way.

Maybe some of us feel as if our faith has turned a corner, but there are still miles to go.

Or maybe you've turned the corner, but now you've stalled, or you never turned the corner in the first place, and so now you actually find yourself sliding and going back in reverse.

And it could be, in your opinion, your diagnosis of the relative health or unhealth of your faith.

Maybe you think it's just the result of poor time management.

My problem is I just don't organize my day effectively and efficiently.

Or maybe your problem is relationships.

The health or unhealth of my faith, it's connected to the toxic people in my life.

Or maybe it's because circumstances, you know, your plans never go as planned.

But what if those problems, what if that self-diagnosis is actually only um scratching the surface?

And there's actually a far bigger problem at work.

What if you're like that opera singer?

What if I'm like that opera singer who sat in Dr.

Tomatis' office and I've given myself a diagnosis, others have diagnosed my problem, but my real diagnosis is I just have a hearing problem.

Remember those words?

What did Dr.

Tomatas say?

The voice can only contain what the ear can hear.

But in the case of our spiritual life, we exchange the word voice maybe with the word faith or with the word soul.

And so it's something like faith only contains, my faith only contains what the ear can hear.

Or my soul, the soul only contains what the ear can hear.

Think of it this way: you you come to church and you're uh walking into your life group or to another Bible study outside of Sunday morning to gather with a group of Christian friends, or maybe uh you schedule an appointment and you want to meet with me in my office, or you're gonna have a coffee with a Christian friend because you have something really important you want to talk to them about.

And the topic of that conversation is you want to talk to them.

You want to have a vulnerable moment where you explain to them and want their feedback and their diagnosis on why your faith is now just like this smoldering heap of ash.

You talk to them and you describe to them the time, that season in life when your faith was, what do we call it, on fire?

That season in life when you just hungered for more and more of Jesus, when you desired to know him more intimately?

You kind of explain your predicament and where you are in life, you understand mediocre faith on like a firsthand basis, and what we all do in the midst of those conversations, what do we do?

We start playing the blame game, don't we?

What can I blame for this state of affairs in my life?

So we blame our schedule again.

We blame friends.

There's even moments when we blame the church.

But that blame game, what it does is it only blinds us to the far bigger problem.

We're only scratching the surface.

You and I, we we have a hearing problem.

We've been deafened to the voice of God.

Listen, friends, your faith will only be miraculous when it hears God's voice.

Because it's only the voice of God that speaks miracles into existence.

Your faith will only be revived when it hears the voice of God, because only the voice of God can speak and bring dead things back to life.

You and I must hear the voice of God.

We must desire to hear the voice of God because the voice of God has a power that no other voice in our world has.

Listen to how Psalm 29 describes the power of God's voice.

And as I read these words, I want you to think: is this the voice I want to listen to and hear?

It says, the voice of the Lord is over the waters, the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty, the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness.

The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare, and in his temple all cry, glory.

Psalm 29 is this song of praise.

A song that in part praises God for the simple fact that he is a God who speaks.

He is a God who speaks, and when he does so, it is a powerful word.

It is a word that has the power to break apart the mightiest of trees.

A word that is so powerful it can shake all of creation.

A word that is so powerful and precise it can strip off the bark of a tree.

Psalm 29 declares for us that what?

But beneath the surface, it's also asking you the question, me the question.

Am I listening?

God is speaking, yes, but am I listening?

Today, in our fourth installment of Behold, together let's learn to listen for the voice of God.

We must learn to listen for the voice of God because his voice not only has the power to break apart the mightiest, the strongest, the greatest of trees, it has the power to break apart the hardest of human hearts.

We must listen for the voice of God because it not only has the power to shake all of creation, it has the power to shake your life and wake you up from your slumber.

We must listen for the voice of God because just as it can strip the bark from a tree, it can pull you and strip you of every idol in your life and every harmful habit and path of destruction that you are on.

See, today we are gonna behold another facet of God's immense, indescribable beauty.

We're just gonna remind ourselves again that what God is speaking, but we're also, listen, gonna force ourselves to grapple with this question, to ask and answer the question Am I listening?

Am I listening for his voice?

Am I listening to his voice?

And one person in the Bible who learned the importance of listening for the voice of God is this Old Testament prophet named Elijah.

So if you have your Bibles, join me in 1 Kings 19.

1 Kings chapter 19, I'm gonna begin reading in verse 4.

1 Kings 19 · chapter mention

It says this, but he himself, so this is speaking of Elijah, but Elijah himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree.

And he asked that he might die, saying, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my father's.

And he lay down and slept under a broom tree, and behold, an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat.

And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water, and he ate and drank and lay down again.

And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.

And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Hereb, the mount of God.

Verse nine.

There he came to a cave and lodged in it.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him and said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?

He said, I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only am left, and they seek my life to take it away.

And he said, Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire the sound of a low whisper.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave, and behold, there came a voice to him and said, What are you doing here, Elijah?

In 1 Kings 19, we meet one of God's prophets, the man Elijah.

In the Old Testament, a prophet's calling in his entire career rested on the fact that what?

And it was the responsibility of the prophet to listen to the God who speaks and to receive God's true word and then deliver it to God's people.

Now that put prophets like Elijah in some very precarious situations.

Prophets like Elijah, they had to speak God's true word to corrupt kings and corrupt queens.

They had to speak God's true word to crooked priests and other prophets who themselves were also crooks.

Now, here's what we all know in life.

When someone who is corrupt or crooked hears the word of truth, what happens?

Do they react positively or negatively?

You don't know.

Good.

They react negatively.

And that explains why Elijah's in this predicament.

It explains why at the beginning of the passage he's all alone wandering in the wilderness.

Before then, he is again alone, huddled and hiding inside of that cave.

In the previous chapter, 1 Kings 18, Elijah had confronted King Ahab, corrupt King Ahab, and 450 crooked prophets of Baal.

Then after uh Elijah defeats those prophets of Baal after he has them put to death.

King Ahab tells his wife, Queen Jezebel, about what he's done, and that puts Elijah in her crosshairs.

She is angry.

I cannot believe he would do that to my prophets.

So Jezebel, she calls a messenger and she says, You go find Elijah and you tell him this.

You tell him, I'm looking for him.

My assassin is out for him.

And within 24 hours, he will find him.

The messenger leaves Jezebel's presence and goes and finds Elijah.

And when he hears that message, it just sends the prophet Elijah into a tailspin.

He's in a tailspin because in that moment the only voice he hears speaking is Queen Jezebel.

He does not hear God speaking anymore.

In that moment, he's in a tailspin because the only voice he's listening to is Queen Jezebel and not the voice of God.

And in that moment, he just puts everything down and he starts running.

He is going to run as far as he can to get away from that woman and her assassin.

He runs out of the northern kingdom of Israel where she and Ahab sat on the throne, and he runs all the way to the southern border of the kingdom of Judah.

He leaves the land entirely.

And he goes to the farthest reaches of the kingdom south of it.

He's like, I can't be anywhere near where that woman is, or she will find a way to take my life.

So he gets as far away as he can.

And do you notice what happens next?

He gets away from her, and then he gives up because of her.

He gives up.

He doesn't have anything else to offer.

He prays for God to take his life.

Oh Lord, take away my life.

Now think about it.

Think about how Elijah arrives at that moment.

Days before.

He had this miraculous faith, this faith that could stare the prophets of Baal in the eyes and look down the fierceness of enemies.

He had that faith just days before.

And now his faith is no more.

Now he's ready to give up.

Take my life, God.

And I wonder if the primary cause for that transition and that transformation in Elijah's life is just the simple fact.

Fact.

He stopped listening to the God who speaks.

In that moment, God is speaking, but Elijah's not listening to God.

At that moment, his life is filled with so much white noise.

So much is going on around him.

He has deafened himself to the voice of God.

Do you know what white noise is by definition?

White noise, by definition, it contains every frequency.

It's a noise that contains every frequency that a person can physically hear.

And with all of those frequencies playing at the same time, you're unable to focus and to listen to any one frequency.

There's so much going on, you can't focus on one thing at all.

As I think and I kind of reflected on Elijah's life and this moment in his life of the last week, I was reminded of kind of the white noise, these physical things going on in his life that would begin to deafen out and to dull the voice of God.

Those frequencies that are a part of his life in this moment.

The worry and the stress and the fear and the anxiety and the loneliness of his life at that moment.

All of those are overwhelming, right?

Have you ever had that season in life where worry and stress and anxiety and loneliness are mounting and mounting and mounting?

You can agree with a lot.

It's hard to hear and listen to the voice of God in that moment.

Maybe we just need to memorize a phrase from Psalm 55, 2 to cast your burden on the Lord.

That, of course, doesn't mean life won't be filled with worries.

There won't be anxiety-inducing moments.

There won't be moments when we feel lonely.

Those things will come in this world, I promise you.

If you experience them, it is not a testimony to a lack of faith.

It's just how the world operates until Jesus returns.

But there are ways that we can turn down that white noise.

And instead of running from God, we can run to God.

But so often what happens in life is this that single frequency of negative emotion, it's compounded then by what?

Unhealthy physical frequency, something else that's going on in Elijah's life at that moment.

Think about his physical condition.

At his moment of greatest despair, he is exhausted physically and he's very hungry.

He needs something to eat.

He doesn't feel like he can go on any farther because he has run so far.

Can't take another step.

He's gone so long without having any food inside of his mouth.

Isn't it true that sometimes the reason we struggle to focus and to listen to the voice of God is because we don't take care of ourselves.

We just don't take care of ourselves.

We don't sleep, we don't eat.

And when we do sleep, it is scattered and sporadic.

When we do eat, it's not good for us.

We feel worse after we eat than before we ate.

And there's like this big wall between them, and they don't have anything to say to one another.

When in fact you are one person.

You are one united person.

And so your relative uh health physically will either negatively or positively impact your spiritual life.

It will.

And it can create just a feedback loop in your life.

You don't take care of yourself physically, you don't take care of yourself spiritually, you don't take care of yourself spiritually, you don't take care of yourself spirit uh physically, and it just loops back and forth on each other.

And that's really what Elijah is experiencing in this moment.

He's got the emotional fatigue and the physical fatigue.

He's done.

He doesn't have the strength to focus and to listen for God's voice.

I think it'd be really helpful for all of us just to remember whether it was when you were a parent of elementary school-aged kids, or you were that elementary school-aged kid, and you was standardized test time.

And every year during standardized test time, um, the teacher would send home a note, and the note told your parents, hey, tests are coming up.

And then what else did the note say?

Make sure your kids get to bed on time and make sure they have a really good breakfast.

As adults, we don't take that advice seriously at all, do we?

Like that is just for our kids to like focus on their third grade standardized test.

To listen to those instructions.

What if that same wisdom apply to listening to and hearing the voice of God?

To just take care of our physical bodies and not act like we are some machine.

That we sleep and we eat well and we exercise and we take care of ourselves.

And you can even notice kind of the order of operations in the story.

God really doesn't speak to Elijah again until the angel, right?

Until the God, the one God sends first what?

Gives him food to eat and a time to sleep, and then food to eat and a time to sleep.

God speaks to him again once those primary needs are first met.

Because God knows he can't focus.

Maybe the final frequency then of white noise in Elijah's life is that of the other voice.

For Elijah, the other voice is the voice of Queen Jezebel.

She is the loudest voice in his head at that moment.

And all too often, we only listen to the loudest voice, isn't it?

We listen to the loud voice where we are our own worst critic.

We listen to the outside voice that points out everything we do wrong.

We listen to the loud voice of the enemy speaking judgment and condemnation on our life.

And when we listen to the loud voice, we run and we run and we run and we run.

What we need to realize is that the loudest voice is rarely the most important voice.

See, so often in life, the most important voice is the quietest voice.

In the life of Elijah, that quiet voice is actually so quiet that it's called a whisper.

God is speaking.

Am I listening?

Am I listening for the whisper of God?

Soon Elijah, what he does is he learns to listen for God's quiet voice.

Again, that angel takes care of his physical needs and then he travels to the mount called Hereb.

He huddles and he hides in the cave.

Again, he is all alone.

He's still not in a really great place.

But Elijah should have known, and we should know that if you're gonna go to Here and you're gonna huddle and hide in a cave, listen, um you can't huddle and hide at Hereb.

Here is a place where what?

God is speaking.

Another name for Mount Horeb is Mount Sinai.

Like Elijah goes to the mountain where Moses first went.

And Moses first realized God is speaking.

He is speaking in this moment, and Moses listens and he hears God speak those Ten Commandments and the entire law of the Old Testament.

Elijah goes to that same mountain, so he should not be surprised that God is still speaking at that place.

And God says, this word of the Lord comes to him.

Why are you here, Elijah?

What brought you here?

He tells him about the last few days.

He tells him about the death threat.

And God says, Okay, okay.

I'm gonna speak now, and I need you to listen.

Go outside and wait.

Go out and wait.

Soon enough, this howling wind blows through, and the mountain and its rocks begin to crack and fall apart.

Elijah thinks, oh, this is it.

No, that's not it.

There's no God in that loud, loud wind.

Soon enough, the earth beneath his feet begins to shake and tremble.

Certainly this has to be no, that's not God either.

Then a fire.

Oh, the fire, that has to be God.

No.

The flame, it's soon as a flicker.

Still, God has not spoken.

Elijah stands still outside of that cave in that very same place.

And then he hears a whisper.

God has an outside voice.

He has a voice that shakes the earth.

But so often in life, when God has something very important to tell us, He does it in the quietest of voices.

He whispers to us.

He speaks at a volume just above that threshold of silence.

God whispers, maybe, so that we're forced to lean in and to hear him.

We cannot hear God from a distance.

We have to get as close as we possibly can to the presence of God.

You see, the goal is not just to hear the words of God, it's to have an intimate relationship with God.

God is speaking.

He's whispering.

Are you listening?

God, listen, God, He whispers to us when we're out in our garden.

Pretty soon you'll be out in your garden.

Or God whispers to us when you go out for a hike or go on a jog.

God whispers to us for the heavens declare the glory of the Lord.

God whispers to us when we go to work or we go to school.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as unto the Lord.

God whispers to us when we see a person who is hungry or a child who is hurting.

Whatever you did for one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did for me.

God whispers to us when we prayerfully read his word.

Your word, it is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path.

There are moments in life when we listen for the voice of God, and that whisper of his voice, what does it do?

It guides us.

It guides us, like in those moments, to see the world differently, to bring about an end result, to help us make a decision when we're at a crossroads.

But there's another reason that God whispers to us, an even more gentle whisper that God speaks.

And the whisper is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You see, God's most gentle whisper is the word, become flesh.

Think about it this way.

When Jesus was born, he wasn't born into a royal family here on earth.

His birth wasn't announced and applauded by the crowds in the streets.

There was no shouting going on.

Jesus was born in that silent, quiet village of Bethlehem to parents who are not kings or queens, but to parents who are the working poor.

Jesus' birth, it wasn't in the wind or the earthquake or the fire.

Jesus' birth was just one of those whispers of God that you would miss unless you were paying attention.

You would miss the birth of Jesus unless you were so close to the Father that you could hear his voice even as it was as quiet and just above silence.

That's just one way that Jesus' life reminds us that God whispers.

But here's the thing: the reason we have to pay attention to the whispers of God is every time that God whispers, he points us to Jesus Christ.

Every whisper of God points us to the only Son of God.

We turn our eyes to Jesus, and then he whispers things like, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Or he whispers to us things like, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.

Or he whispers to us those words, it is finished.

God whispers to us, not just for guidance, God whispers to us to share with us the gospel of the kingdom of God.

And here's the thing: the white noise of our world wants to drown out the good news, the gospel news of the kingdom of God.

All those emotional frequencies that induce worry and anxiety.

They want you to believe that the world is falling apart.

It's coming apart of the seams that can never be put back together.

The gospel of the kingdom of God, it whispers to us that God is still on his throne.

Jesus will come again and one day he will make all things new.

Be faithful, my child.

Those physical uh frequencies of white noise that tell you there is no time to rest because everything depends on you.

The gospel says, No, it doesn't depend on you.

Do you truly trust your family to a God who gives every good gift?

Do you truly trust a God to meet all your needs out of the glorious riches of Jesus Christ?

It doesn't depend on you because the victory has already been won.

Jesus says it's finished.

Not I'm almost there, not I did an okay job, not I'm a C-level student.

Like it's finished at the cross.

It doesn't depend on you.

And then those other voices, those other voices that condemn us, those other voices that constantly just point us back to our worst moment in life, the moment we want to take back.

Those other voices that tell us we'll never be good enough, that we are not valuable, that we are not worthy, those other voices, Jesus says to them, be quiet.

Jesus says, You are a child, you are a treasure, you are my beloved, you are my friend.

And every time the gospel whispers to us, listen, it is this infusion of grace into our life.

An infusion of grace that helps us take one more step forward.

Away from mediocrity towards something that is miraculous.

Many of us, we remember the moment when we heard the gospel and we responded to the gospel.

But maybe we've forgotten.

Some of us have forgotten, we need to continue to hear the gospel on a daily basis.

We need God to whisper that gospel message to us on a daily basis.

That he will take care of us, that he is on his throne, that I am his child, all because of what Jesus did.

My friends, God is speaking.

Are you listening?

Are you listening for whispers of guidance?

Are you listening for whispers of the gospel?

Or is that white noise just turned up far too loud for you to hear anything at all?

Are you just drowning out the one voice that you need to hear?

The voice of God.

The voice of the God who speaks and so desperately wants each of you to listen to his whisper every single day.