Luke 22:54-65

Okay, we're gonna be in Luke 22.

Luke 22, you can stand.

We're gonna stand together for the reading of God's word.

We are in verse 54, and we're gonna read up through verse 65.

We have a few people out this morning as well.

Albert's um not feeling well.

Scott was um definitely not feeling well.

Maybe you saw that on Slack.

He was um hospitalized for an infection, but he's feeling better, but not good enough to be at church.

Um one guy's cars busted down, Barry couldn't make it out.

So let's we'll we'll read God's word, we'll pray, we'll try to remember to pray for them as well.

It says this, starting in verse 54.

Then seizing him, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest.

Peter followed at a distance, and when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.

A servant girl saw him seated with him, or seated there in the firelight, and she looked closely at him and said, This man was with him.

But he denied it.

Woman, I do not know him, he said.

A little later someone else saw him and said, You also are one of them.

Man, I am not, Peter replied.

About an hour later, another asserted, certainly, this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.

Peter replied, Man, I don't know what you are talking about.

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.

Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, the word the Lord had spoken to him, before the rooster crows, today, you will disown me three times.

And he went outside and he wept bitterly.

The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him.

They blindfolded him and demanded, Prophesy, who hit you?

And they said many other insulting things to him.

Let's pray.

Lord, we want to open up our hearts to the work of your spirit in our lives through your word.

And we recognize that these are the words on a page, Lord, that were recorded thousands of years ago.

But we believe, Lord, that you inspired the author, Luke, to record this account accurately and not just as a historical record, but something that you can use in our life to reprove us, to correct us, to instruct us in righteousness.

And so, God, right now we want to give you permission to work in our lives.

We have our own story.

We came into this room with our own psychology, our own personality, our own baggage, Lord.

We have a story from this past week as well as just a whole history.

And we need divine intervention.

Lord, we cannot produce a good life, a full life, without your help.

So Lord, you just be right in our midst, Lord, in the midst of this gathering, Lord, that you would be healing, that you would be correcting, that you would just touch us, that we would experience the work of God in our lives.

And God, we want to pray for those that are absent.

We just ask, Lord, that you would touch, that you would be with those that are ill this morning.

We want to lift up to you Scott.

We pray for your touch upon his body, that you'd continue to heal him.

We pray as well for Barry, Lord, that you'd be with Barry and bless him.

Take care of Scott and Liz.

Um, Lord, we just ask that you would be so gracious in your work in our midst.

Lord, um, as there's students, Lord, that are working and stressed out about schoolwork at Hopkins or the other schools around here, Lord, we pray that you would just give peace this week in the midst of life that's going on.

Lord, speak, be in our midst.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

You may be seated, and let's let's begin to work our way through the text here.

This is some good material, and um, I'm excited to go through this with you.

We lost some lights there.

Okay.

Um, I'm excited to go through this material with you.

So the disciples, they have gone through the uh Passover Supper together.

Um we've covered that two weeks ago.

Um, Jesus has been giving his um uh just some crucial teachings.

Many of you that have been reading the Bible for a while, you know how rich the material of John 14, John 15, John uh 16, how rich that teaching is.

And then John 17, there's this prayer that Jesus prays for his followers.

All of that has taken place already before we come to this scene.

It's happened within the hours just preceding this, right?

Jesus has given that famous teaching to his disciples about abide, that you need to abide in me like a branch abides in the vine.

That you need to serve.

He's given the teaching about how the Holy Spirit is our comforter, that the Holy Spirit has been given by the Father to, he says, He's gonna come.

Once I leave you, the comforter is gonna come, he's gonna be with you.

All of that teaching took place there as Jesus is going to the cross.

And then last week we saw this garden setting, right?

Jesus crossed over the Kidron Valley into a private garden called the Garden of Gethsemane on Mount Olives.

Yeah, the Mount of Olives there.

And uh he tells his disciples, he says to them, You need to watch and pray.

You need to pray lest you fall into temptation.

And um instead of heeding that advice, they keep falling asleep from exhaustion.

Jesus is praying, and this is where he's praying, and he's sweating, as it were, great drops of blood.

Um, but the disciples are asleep, and then at the end of last week we see Judas leads the chief priest, the elders, and then their thug of their gang of thugs, right, to the garden.

Um we found out in Luke 21 that this was a common um place where throughout the week leading up to Passover, Jesus would go to this garden.

Probably the garden uh was maybe a follower of Jesus.

It was owned by a patron that maybe Jesus knew.

Somehow he had access, and Judas knew that he could lead his uh these chief priests and those followers out to this location.

And uh Jesus is arrested and taken away.

So um that leads us into the series of trials that take place with Jesus.

Now, it's hard as you we know that we have four accounts of Jesus um leading up to the cross, right?

We have the synoptic gospels, which is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then we have the Gospel of John.

And each account gives us the story of Peter's betrayal, and it gives us the account of the trials.

And what we've got to do is these are different accounts from different perspectives, and we've got to kind of harmonize them, put them together.

And what we see is that there were six trials that Jesus went through between being arrested and being crucified.

Three Jewish trials and three Roman trials.

The three Jewish trials took place first, and they happened overnight into the morning, and then the three Roman trials took place through the morning of um, like the uh Friday morning, up through till midday when Jesus is crucified midday.

So a lot of movement.

Jesus is being moved around quite a bit, and in this particular text that we're looking at, um Jesus is um at uh Caiaphas's house.

Okay, at there are two high priests at this time, Caiaphas and Annas.

Annas is socially recognized as the high priest, but he was demoted or um removed from his office by the Roman government.

And his son-in-law, Caiaphas, held the official uh seat of the high priest.

But basically, Jesus is arrested and taken to Annas' house first, because he still had great influence amongst the Jews.

And then Anis, so it's kind of like a figurehead, sends him to his son-in-law, Caiaphas, and that is where this betrayal takes place.

Now, before we get too deep into the actual account, two weeks ago we skipped over verses 31 through 34 because we were we were kind of moving through the text really fast and ran out of time.

So in verse 31 of the text, Jesus is in the upper room celebrating the Passover, and he says to Peter, Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.

And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

But he replied, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.

Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times that you know me.

So notice that Jesus is telling Peter, uh, Satan wants to sift, excuse me, Satan wants to sift you.

Imagine Jesus like warning you that Satan is out to get you.

Well, that's really the warning that Scripture gives us.

That Satan is out for you, right?

He's compared to a lion that is out to get you.

When Jesus was baptized, right after he was baptized, the Holy Spirit, you remember, at his baptism came upon him, and then he was led into the wilderness.

And Satan was able to tempt Jesus for 40 days.

And Jesus is resisting the devil from that temptation, and at the end of 40 days, it says that Satan departed and he looked for a more opportune time to attack Satan.

And that's really how Satan works.

Satan never gives up on you.

He will never give up on you until you leave this earth.

You see, this is his kingdom.

This is Satan's kingdom, and he wants to destroy your life.

He would love to destroy your body, and more importantly, he'd love to destroy your relationship with God, your eternal destination.

He is absolutely opposed to you.

And so Jesus warns, Jesus warns the disciples, hey, look, you're going to be tempted.

And Simon Peter, you uh Satan wants to sift like wheat.

The language here, it's this picture of um when you go and you kind of get the wheat, right?

You know what wheat looks like where it's got the um, we usually see it in uh like decorative floral arrangements around Thanksgiving time, right?

Where you've got the husks and the little kernels or berries of wheat.

So what you would do is you would have basically those tops broken off with the um kernels of wheat, but you'd have to beat the wheat to get to separate the wheat berry from the husk, which we call chaff, right?

And then you would take and you would kind of throw the wheat up in the air and the wind would carry the chaff away.

And so what Jesus says is that Satan wants to sift you, this is that beating process.

Satan wants to beat you like wheat.

He wants to take you through that type of beating.

And Jesus tells Peter, look, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and when you turn back, strengthen your brothers.

It's really great to look at that because we know that Peter's gonna fail, right, in our text this morning.

And Jesus is already saying, when you turn back, there's room for repentance.

Jesus knows.

He knows that we are going to fail.

Right?

He knows this week, going into this week, that we're gonna fail.

And yet he's giving space for repentance and for even ministry.

He says, strengthen your brothers, strengthen your brothers.

So Jesus is praying for him and he's giving space for repentance.

Let's um look into our own passage that we're looking at this morning, starting in verse 54.

Starting in 54, we see that Jesus is going to, Jesus is going to Annas' house and then Caiaphas's house.

If we go over to John 18, there's a little, there's a few more details that were given in John 18.

He says, Then the detachment of soldiers with its commanders and the Jewish officials, they arrested Jesus.

They bound him, they brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas.

So if you want more like historical background on the text we're looking at, you want some more chronology as well, you can look at John 18.

But basically, what we've talked about, what you need to know, that Caiaphas is the son-in-law of Annas, and that it's at Caiaphas's house, the second trial where this betrayal takes place.

And John sets it up.

He says that John, as the author, says that he knew, or there was an unnamed disciple that knew or was related somehow to Caiaphas.

So John, the apostle, was the one that got Peter in the door in this setting.

And so Peter's there.

He's warming himself by the fire, and sure enough, what does he do?

He's true to form.

What Jesus said is, you're going to be true, deny me three times, and that's what he does.

He denies Christ three times.

And then the rooster crows.

Then we see that Jesus makes this look straight at him.

Can you imagine how that felt?

I mean, have you ever felt guilty for sin?

But then imagine Jesus like looking at you, having told you you were gonna do it.

Oh gosh, the guilt that he must have felt.

And then he goes out and he weeps.

You know, he has his moment of just weeping in deep regret.

But here's, as I was praying about this text, there's a phrase here in our text that I really felt like I wanted to zero in on.

And it says this Peter remembered the word of the Lord that he had spoken to him.

Peter remembered the Lord.

Essentially, what I want for us in as followers of Jesus is to never experience this place where Peter is at, even though it is a universal experience, right?

Peter encounters God's word, but after he's failed.

Do you see that?

He encounters God's word, but after he's failed.

God's word becomes real to Peter at a very very tragic moment.

And what God wants for us is he wants his word to be real to us before we get to that point.

Right?

Before we get to that point.

So what I want to do is just kind of look look at um a few things.

First of all, Warren Wearsby, he says this about the text.

I don't know if you have experience with reading Warren Wearsby, but if you ever want to go find, you do, thank you, Yvonne.

I'm glad you do.

I love Warren Wearsby.

He's, isn't he a good brother?

Yeah.

I think he's passed away, or he is like close to it, you know.

He's close to heaven.

But he has got some great things to say.

He said this.

How did Peter get to this point?

He said, How did it happen?

To begin with, Peter did not take the Lord's warnings seriously, nor did he watch and pray, right?

So at the Passover table, Jesus warned Peter.

And Peter, rather than taking to heart the warning, what did he say?

Oh, I'm gonna be with you to the end, right?

He didn't take seriously the warning.

Then they get into the garden, and what does Jesus say?

You need to watch and pray, lest you fall into temptation.

But they don't.

They don't watch and pray, as Jesus instructed in the garden.

For all of his courage and zeal, remember he's the one cutting off ears?

For all of his courage and zeal, the apostle Peter was totally unprepared for Satan's attack.

He was completely unprepared.

So let's um let's just kind of go through a few things here.

First of all, I just want to point out basically that God speaks.

God speaks.

The second thing I want to look at is I want to say that God speaks to you.

And I'm gonna show you a couple scriptures for this.

So you may want to be ready to just take a few notes, and then I'm gonna explain to you here how to hear God's voice.

I'm gonna give you four ways to hear God's voice, and then I want to talk about how to respond to God's voice, and then what to do if we fail to listen to God's voice.

Okay, so we're gonna move through this quickly, but I'm gonna give you a number of scriptural references.

The first is this idea that the God of the Bible is the God who speaks.

Where do we go to see that?

Right?

We go back to Genesis.

Genesis 1.

The first three verses of the Bible says this In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep, the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, and God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

Do you see that?

God said, Let there be light.

So the God of the Bible is the God who speaks.

If you go to Hebrews, Hebrews is in the New Testament, and actually you may want to just stick a finger or a piece of paper in Hebrews because we're gonna we're gonna keep going back to Hebrews a lot.

But the very beginning of Hebrews says this: In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he is spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

The first point here is that God, the God of the Bible, is the God who speaks.

Now, God could have created the world and been completely removed, right?

He could have been transcendent, that's the theological term, from completely separated from what he's made.

Right?

There could be a place where we would be just groping around in the dark and have no idea who God is, right?

God could be completely silent and create, but yet it says that he was actively involved in creating and communicating by speaking.

So the Bible, the God of the Bible is the God who speaks, but not only does he speak, but he speaks to his people.

He speaks to his people.

In fact, the whole Bible is God speaking.

What happens with Adam and Eve, right?

God's speaking to Adam and Eve.

What happens with Abraham?

God speaks to Abraham and calls him out of the land of the Ur of Chaldees.

What happens with Noah?

God speaks to Noah and says, Go build a boat.

What happens to uh David?

God says, I've called you to be the king of Israel.

He's speaking to David.

What happens to Moses?

He he calls Moses like out of Egypt to lead his people out of Egypt into the promised land.

The whole Old Testament shows a God who speaks to his people.

Right?

But then we get into the New Testament and Hebrews chapter 4, the writer of Hebrews says that the God of the Old Testament is your God.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

Right?

The God of the Old Testament is the God that you and I follow.

Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1 through 7 says this.

Hebrews 4:1–7

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short, right?

So in verse 1, it's the God who promises, right?

He's the one who promises that there is rest that we can enter into.

Verse 2, for we also have the good news proclaimed to us.

That's the activity of speaking going on, just as they did, but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.

Right?

So he says, Israel was given, had a good news proclaimed to them.

We have a good news called the gospel proclaimed to us.

Verse 3.

Now we have, we who have believed, enter rest, just as God has said.

There he is speaking.

So I declare by an oath, in My anger.

They shall never enter my rest.

And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world.

Verse 4.

For somewhere he has spoken, there he is again speaking, right?

Verse 4.

There he is.

He says, For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day.

On this way, on the seventh day, God rested from all of his works.

Verse 5.

And again, in this, in the passage above, he says, They shall never enter my rest.

In fact, do you know the famous verse that where it says that God's word is like a sword?

Do you know that verse?

That it's like a sword that cuts between bone and marrow.

Those of you that are are um in the medical field, do you like that text?

Because it's surgical, right?

Is how God's word is.

It's able to divide between something, between bow and bone and marrow, between heart, you know, heart and motives.

God's word gets in there.

Where's that verse found?

Right here.

Right here.

Chapter 4 of Hebrews.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

Chapter 4 is all about God speaking to his people as followers.

And I want you to see this.

At the very end of verse 7, at the very end of verse 7, the writer quotes from the Old Testament this today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.

Today, if you hear his voice, in other words, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament.

He's the God that has spoken to all these people, to his people.

And today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts.

We have as an example what happened to Israel when they hardened their hearts to the to the word of God being spoken into their life.

Don't harden your hearts.

So the God of the Bible speaks, and he speaks to his followers.

He speaks to us.

So then the question is, well, how do I know what God's saying?

What do I know?

How do I know what is how God what God is saying?

There are four ways for you to know this morning what God is saying to you.

To you.

There are things that God wants to speak into your life.

Let me give you these four ways that God speaks.

First of all, God speaks to you through the Bible.

Okay?

So you take your Bible.

Where's my Bible?

Right here.

So I take my Bible in the morning, and I'm going through Jeremiah in my morning quiet time.

And right now I've been doing about four chapters a day.

I'm reading these big chunks.

Which, if you're new to reading the Bible, I wouldn't encourage you to do it.

I'd read eight verses, two verses, three verses.

Start small.

Start really small.

Okay?

So I'm going through Jeremiah, and what I'm doing as I'm reading God's word is I'm praying and I'm listening for God to just kind of cause one of those verses to really stick out.

What I call like the Holy Spirit highlighter, right?

And and you may, if you're new at reading through the Bible on a regular basis, you may not know why one verse stands out over another.

But it's just like, hey, I like that verse.

That's okay.

It's okay to just like that verse.

That's good enough.

And what you want to do is when when that verse is lit up, is like, well, maybe that's God speaking to you into your story through that verse.

So you just want to respond to it and just say, Lord, how does that apply to my life?

Help me understand it and then help me to apply it to my life.

The Holy Spirit highlighter.

Sometimes God speaks to you as you get to know God's word more and more.

Sometimes God will speak to you through his word by causing you to remember a phrase.

The first time God ever spoke to me in my life was when I was about 13 years old, and I was in a hotel room at like a missions conference that my parents had taught me brought me to, and somebody was trying to write a paper.

I can't remember why.

And they were asking for help.

And as they were asking for help, all of a sudden this phrase just popped into my mind.

And it just kept going through my mind, and I was thinking, like, what is that phrase?

Like it has nothing to do with this paper that this person needs help writing.

And then it dawned on me.

I thought, maybe God put that verse in my head.

Maybe, maybe, maybe God put it.

And as I got to know God's word better, I realized that that phrase that was in my head, that was actually a scripture.

And the Holy Spirit was causing me to remember that verse.

And it was this truth that look, God's never gonna leave you.

That was the phrase.

Lo, I'm with you to the end of the age.

And here I am as a 13-year-old.

Why, what, what's lo, I'm with you to the end of the age?

Why is that?

And yet the Holy Spirit here, he's taking that verse that I'd read somewhere else or somebody had preached on or spoken on, and it's coming to mind.

So, first of all, God speaks to us through his word.

In fact, this is the authority, right?

God's never gonna show you or speak to you anything other than what lines up with Scripture.

So therefore, you should be knowing your Bible, right?

If you're a follower of Jesus and this is the authority, then the primary way that you're gonna hear from him is by reading the Bible.

And if you're new at that, that's difficult.

We have a lot of friends here that come into the church or that spend time with us at the Compassion Center, and they say, I know the Bible's good for me, but it's hard to understand.

And it is.

It's hard to understand.

There's the language gap, the culture gap, the history gap, and the time gap.

And so that's why coming to church and understanding that they're, you know, is Caiaphas and Annas and kind of getting, having somebody else walk you through the text is important.

Or meet it and come into a small group, all of those are a good setting where you can learn to study the Bible better and then apply it to your life.

The second way that God speaks to us is through prayer.

This is the most subjective way that God can speak to us because there's no real authority, but it's a sense that God is just speaking into your life.

And this is the thing.

We often think of prayer as an opportunity to ask God for stuff, but really prayer is just a fancy word for the conversation we have with God.

And nobody, hopefully, hopefully, you're not having conversations where it's just you asking for stuff.

Those aren't good relationships.

I've been in a few of them.

They're not very fun, right?

No, a conversation, right?

We want to have a conversation with God where we're listening for him, where we're asking him questions, where there's a silence on our end.

That's a really difficult thing to do culturally for us, especially with this.

I mean, this is to me, this is the biggest distraction from the other side of the rel the conversation.

I'm good at asking God for stuff, um, but not good at um listening, right?

Um so prayer.

So, how does this work in prayer?

Well, well, this is the thing, is so when you pray, I would I would encourage you to have something to write stuff down.

And if you feel like God's speaking to you about something in prayer, you write it down, right?

Oftentimes, if God's showing you something in prayer, then he's also gonna confirm it in these other areas, right?

Uh, it's very rare for me to encounter people where God's just directing them only in prayer.

And that's it.

Now, um, as you grow in your relationship with God, that's that's fine.

But you want to probably be able to find some kind of scripture that lines up with the instruction that God's giving you.

Okay, here's the third way that God speaks to us.

He speaks to us through through circumstances.

Open doors and closed doors is another way.

So maybe you have a job offer or you get denied a job.

Maybe you have um a lack of finances, and God allows finances to be a circumstance that's closing a door.

Maybe you propose to somebody and they don't accept your proposal and they don't want to marry you.

Well, that's a closed door, and it's God speaking to you through that circumstance that this is not his direction in your life, right?

Um there can be all kinds of circumstances.

Now, so you've got a this is where we've got the Holy Spirit working in our life, helping us discern what's going on.

When I first came here, I thought the God's plan for me was to be bi-vocational, that I'd work 40 hours a week, and that um I'd pastor the church as well, that I'd be just really busy until we got the church up and going.

And so I ran with that for three months.

And I I put out, I think, six to eight hundred applications.

I thought for sure this is gonna work out, and kept getting um, I couldn't even get a call back.

Man, and I was depressed.

I found myself deeply depressed.

I thought, and I took it personally, like, how can I not even get a call back?

How I mean I've been the president of three colleges, you know, I had a high view of myself, and this was humiliating.

Like, how can I not get a job?

And then I decided to pray and and uh pray through it, and it's like, well, well, Josh, are you going off of somebody else's plan?

Are you going off somebody else's plan, or are you um listening to me?

Maybe these are closed doors, you maybe you're not getting a call back because I don't want you to work.

And I had to kind of change directions, and as soon as I changed directions, all of a sudden the church like grew, like our group that was gathering on Friday nights, it grew, and it was like, oh, that's what I was supposed to be doing this whole time.

Yeah, it was terrible.

It's a terrible experience not listening to the Lord's voice, you know.

And but but God had to get it through my thick skull somehow.

So we allowed this, you know, if I probably would have prayed and just thought about it, I would have avoided three months of pain in my life.

But God mercifully spoke to me through a circumstance of closed doors.

So we see that also through Scripture, God, God closing and opening doors through circumstances.

The fourth way that God speaks to us is through other Christians around us, through other Christians.

So this could be formal counseling where you sit down and you say, Hey, could you give me some advice?

Could you speak into my life?

But more often than not, God speaks into our life through other Christians without them even knowing.

It happened this morning.

I was sitting here with Will, who's um one of the waterfront partnership guys, and what Will, he shared with me his story about how he got born again when he was in prison.

And um, those guys, by the way, if you see them coming with a yellow vest, they're on their work break.

They only get to that we do short church with them.

We basically pray and bless them and send them out in Jesus' name, and they get to get some, they get to be warmed up, get some refreshment.

So anytime you see him, love on him, bless them.

Um, but Will is a new guy, and he's sharing with me his story about how God worked in his life.

He has no idea that God's speaking through him to me to encourage me.

But I'm just listening to his story, and he's talking about how he's in prison, and he comes to the Lord, and he says, I was born again, and I had these three things I prayed for, and and I and I I told my girlfriend, if God does these three things, I know God is real, right?

I know it'll be a miracle.

And he gets out of prison, and this is like really in the last like few months, right, that this has happened.

Gets out of prison, and God does all three things, you know, in his life, you know.

And he's just telling me this story.

And I'm listening, knowing I'm preaching on this.

I'm like, this is how it always works.

Like, this is how God speaks to us as we just share about what God's doing in our life.

And and what God was saying to me here was he was God, the word God had for me through my brother Will, who's 60 days sober, you know.

He's got his like teardrop tattoos.

God's speaking through him, right?

The word that God has is Josh, remember, I'm the God who is answering prayer.

I'm the God that's answering prayer.

Okay, I told you there's four, but there's actually a fifth one.

There's actually a fifth one.

There's a fifth one.

And we got a little bit of time because this one this is the one the Lord was just really, this morning, like I was just feeling upset.

And I was feeling, um, and I was not, I was feeling um uh just critical and unloving.

And I was just convicted about it.

And I was realizing as I was praying about that and just like saying, Lord, I need you to fill me with love.

Like I need, I don't want to feel like this.

I need you to feel me with fill me with love.

I was realizing, wow, another way, a fifth way that God really kind of speaks to us is through our conscience that I shouldn't be feeling like this, right?

I shouldn't be like something's off, like, and I need your love, God.

So those are the five ways that God speaks to us.

Now, of course, you're gonna say to me, but Josh, what about dreams?

What about visions?

What about angels?

Yeah, all of those count too.

They don't happen as often, right?

But it does say in Acts chapter 2 that old men will dream dreams, young men will see visions, right?

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So there's there's space, and we see some of the apostles were visited by angels.

Those are the additional three extra um crazy ways that God can speak to us.

They just don't just don't anticipate them that often, right?

Everybody dreams, not every dream is from the Lord, very few actually are from the Lord.

And if God wants to speak to you through a dream, one, you're gonna remember it, and two, you're gonna understand it.

Okay?

That's really important.

So um, and sometimes, sometimes God will give somebody, I think, like a gift of interpreting dreams.

And so it's worth um, you can share your dreams with other people, but in Jeremiah, Jeremiah says this.

He says, Let the dreamer tell his dreams, but then let the word of God be the word of God, right?

And he compares dreams to chaff.

He says it's kind of like um, yeah, it's chaff.

Like it uh God can use dreams, but it's not what we should base our life off of.

So if God, if God speaks to you through a dream, that's great.

Um, but something in his word is gonna line up with it, the circumstances are gonna line up with it.

Oftentimes in my own life of walking with the Lord, what I have found is that when God wants to get something through to me, all four and five of those things are clicking.

People are speaking these things into my life, his word is like the Holy Spirit highlighter is highlighting these things in the word.

As I'm praying, it's like he's leading me how to pray for these things.

So hopefully that's helpful in your own walk with God as you're kind of discerning his own voice in your life.

But it's not good enough to just know that he speaks to us.

Let's go to this next part, responding well.

Responding well.

And Galatians chapter 3, Galatians chapter 3 says this.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Paul is in the middle of rebuking the church in Galatia, which is a region in the middle of modern-day Turkey, and he says, I would like to, I would like to learn just one thing from you.

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?

Or by believing what you heard.

And maybe if you have a King James Version, it says, Did you have the hearing of faith?

The hearing of faith is the idea that the well, here hearing and faith seems like, because hearing is receptive, um, but faith seems more active, right?

Something that we do.

And yet he calls it the hearing of faith.

So how do these two things go together?

Here's what I think the hearing of faith is is that God's word comes in and there's this softness of heart and an eager responsiveness.

On um Friday, we got a new puppy, right?

And um he's eight weeks old, right?

And the puppy is this perfect picture of just responsiveness, right?

He's just like, I don't know, I can't, I can't act like a puppy, but he's hilarious.

You can follow me on Instagram, and I'm sure I'll post plenty of pictures on there.

But um, like they he's so uncoordinated, but so responsive, you know.

He's just like, oh, okay, you know, his ears are flopping all over and just kind of prancing, and he doesn't know what his back feet are from his front feet.

And but I think that that's like the here, in a sense, the hearing of faith, where God like speaks to us and and in us there's this just, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, I want to obey.

I want to obey.

Okay.

So uh in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 2, which we already read, but in the King James Version, um the writer of Hebrews says, For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto the Israelites, but the word preached didn't profit them, not being mixed with faith when they heard it.

Hebrews 4:2

So here's the thing is God can speak to you till he's blue in the face, which he never becomes.

But um, he can speak to you, he can speak to you, but if it's not mixed with faith, it doesn't profit you.

So God's speaking to Israel, his people, that he's delivered from Egypt, and yet it's not being mixed with faith, and so it's not profitable in their life.

Isn't that crazy to imagine that God could speak to you and I, and yet we don't hear it, the message doesn't get through, we don't believe it, and so we can't profit from God's word.

And what a shameful place to be at, but I think we're guilty of that type of thing.

The same thing is spoken of in Hebrews 5, 12, which is one of my favorite passages.

Let me summarize it.

The writer of Hebrews talks about how God's, he says, you guys should be teaching the Bible by now.

You should know the Bible so well that you should be teachers of the Word, but you're not.

Right now, you still, all you can handle is just the milk, not the meat.

Right?

Milk is for babies.

Meat is for the mature.

And so he says, look, you need to engage the scripture.

So in verse 13, 513, he says, anyone who lives on milk, being an infant, is not acquainted with the teachings about righteousness.

But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have their trained themselves to distinguish between good and evil.

In other words, when I was 14 years old, the doctor prescribed for me um either Ritlin or coffee.

And I went with coffee because I had attention deficit, right?

And sometimes you can tell when I'm preaching.

And um so and it was supposed to help me focus.

That was the point of the coffee.

Um, so I just started drinking instant coffee, right?

As a 14-year-old.

I couldn't have told you the difference between instant coffee and a, you know, third wave, single origin, good coffee, you know?

Um it was all the same.

But man, I drank coffee for that year and the next year, and now, now I'm super picky.

I'm like a coffee snob, is what they'd call me about my coffee, right?

This writer here is saying mature food is for those who have their senses exercised, right?

How come I know that I like like a light roast coffee and I don't want the pikes peak when I go to Starbucks?

I want light blonde roast, you know?

And sometimes they give me a hard time about that.

Never nick, never nick.

But yes.

No.

No, I want the light.

I want the light roast.

But so the reason um I know that that's the one I want is because I have drank it so much.

My senses have been exercised by reason of use.

So the writer of Hebrews says, use God's word, use God's word, use God's word over and over and over again so that your senses, your spiritual senses, are exercised so that you know how to discern what is right and wrong.

Hey, look, don't get to the point in your life where you need a word from God about your spouse, you know, or who you're supposed to marry, or where you're supposed to work at, right?

You should be using God's word on a daily basis so that your senses are exercised and you're like, you're accustomed to hearing his voice, right?

You know the good shepherd.

The good shepherd hear me and they respond to me.

They know my voice, is what Jesus tells his disciples.

That's not going to happen unless you, by reason of use.

Okay?

So we not only have the God who speaks, and not only do we have the God who speaks to us, but he speaks into our life.

And we've talked about the four ways, five ways that he speaks to us, and then we're supposed to respond.

We're supposed to use it and respond in faith.

Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, Lord.

There's a lot of easy stuff that the Bible says.

Um, well, forgive, it says, I, or be filled with love, or repent, or confess your sins.

Like, there's a lot of easy things that we can just like read and then do, right?

Be generous.

Okay, I'm gonna believe, and and I'm I'm exercising my senses by doing that thing, right?

That's not like doesn't take rocket science.

You don't have to like sit in like a sweat house, you know, or do like some walk in the woods to hear God's voice saying those things to you.

They're just right there on the page.

Do those things, you'll get accustomed to hearing God's voice.

Finally, what if I haven't been listening to God's voice and you feel regret?

Look, the Bible gives us plenty of stories of people that didn't obey.

In fact, the first story is a story of a man and woman that were told to do one thing and they disobeyed.

They ate the fruit.

And what does the God of the Bible do?

The God of the Bible is rescuing rebellious people.

He is Rescuing and making up.

So the whole world is in turmoil because people don't obey God's voice.

And the fear in our life, the regret that Peter had and we have when we fail to hear God's voice is oh, I've blown it.

I've blown it.

Think of Jonah, you know.

He had to learn a hard lesson.

I mean, getting swallowed by a whale is tough.

You know, that's that's no fun.

But yet it says in Jonah that the word of God came to him a second time.

And you need to know that in John 21, Jesus comes to Peter after he's raised from the dead.

He's walking on the water.

He repeats a miracle that he did early on in Peter's life.

He brings in a bunch of fish.

He's had a whole breakfast prepared for them on the shore.

And Jesus has a conversation with Peter where he says, Peter, do you love me?

And Peter now, he's not so bold and he says, Lord, I love you.

But he uses a word for like, I love you as a friend, but you've already seen that I don't agape love you.

And it's this three times.

Why?

Because Peter's denied Christ three times, right?

Three times, and then Jesus commissions Peter and he says, Feed my sheep, right?

Feed my sheep, tend to my sheep, care for my sheep.

Peter hasn't blown it.

He's not gone too far where he can't serve the Lord anymore.

He has plenty, plenty of redemption found in Jesus.

So this whole passage about Peter's denial takes place under the shadow of the cross.

Peter doesn't just hurt his master friend, but Peter fails to be the human God had made him to be.

He failed to pray and instead fell into temptation.

And that's the condition of us all.

We've all failed to be the humans God has designed for us to be.

And a sense of regret and despair is only a symptom of this fall.

Even more central to this moment is the justice of God, which demanded perfection from Peter.

You think Jesus, we know that Jesus, you know, we often think of sin as like killing people or committing adultery, or like we have our list of some immoral things that we can think of.

But this is a grievous moment because Jesus wanted followers and Peter stopped following.

And the justice of God demands a punishment for the wrong that Peter had done.

Peter's remorse and regret does not balance the scales here.

It will not satisfy the wrath of God.

A payment had to be made for the sin of Peter.

And that's what Jesus goes to the cross for.

So the remorse that Peter feels isn't good enough.

If all we do is feel bad for our sins, that doesn't fix the problem.

We needed the cross.

And Jesus goes to the cross for us.

In fact, in Hebrews 10, 22, it says, Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with full assurance that faith, that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled from and cleansing us from a guilty conscience, having our bodies washed with pure water.

Do you understand when Jesus goes to the cross, he cleanses our conscience.

Our guilt, our guilt of not following God's word, of falling short of the human design that God has for us, how he wants us to be fully human and enjoy his perfect presence.

He paid for that guilt on the cross so that our hearts are sprinkled and we can enter in before the throne, that we can enjoy fellowship with him.

This is one of the richest benefits of being a believer is the ability to speak and to hear God's word.

So let me encourage you.

One of the, we talked about the we talk often about the disciplines of like, okay, I'm a follower of Jesus.

I know I'm destined for heaven.

But what does that mean for me today?

Well, what does it mean this week?

One of the things that we're really keying on, the spiritual discipline that we're keying in on right now this morning, is the discipline of hearing God speak.

Hearing God speak.

He does it through his word, he does it in prayer.

I just encourage you, especially, especially one thing you may want to consider as you're just really trying to have your senses exercise is fasting.

You may really want to consider just even like intermittent fasting or like a fasting for like a few days.

Now make sure you talk with your doctor, make sure that like if you're hypoglycemic or you have any kind of like you're on insulin or anything like that, you got to work with a doctor.

But but we're made with five senses, and our taste is one of them.

And when you take away the taste sense, it kind of opens up a sixth sense.

Like it gives us the ability to really be receptive.

And um, and so if you're really feeling like I want to hear God's voice clearer, I would encourage you to um spend some time fasting as well.

All right, let's let's pray.

Lord, we um just are very grateful.

We are grateful for uh the opportunity um to know you and to have a relationship with you where not only do we get to do this where we're talking to you, but then like we can be quiet and you can speak to us.

And Lord, there's nothing like your word.

It like it just comes in and it just nourishes us.

And I just pray for each one of us this week that we could just experience your word afresh in our life.

Lord, whether it's conviction where we need to be convicted of wrongdoing or we need to be um just given instruction or wisdom, Lord, would you just speak to us in a special way?

We just pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.