God Has Spoken

Introduction

Few things have evolved or changed more than the way we can communicate with one another. If you’re of any age, you can think of just your lifetime, of the different ways that have come into your life that you can communicate with people. In my extensive research that included my pen and notepad, I could think of nine general categories of communication. Now, if you broke these down into particular brand names and different means, you could probably get close to a hundred, but just thinking in broad terms, I was easy easily able to come up with nine different ways that I could communicate with you. There’s a standard phone call. I could pick up the phone. I wouldn’t remember your number because that’s all that’s been programmed in phones.

Now we don’t remember numbers anymore, but I could find you and I could call you.

That’s probably one of the favorite forms of communication. It’s certainly one of my favorite forms. I could text you. Similar to a text, but I put it in a different category. There’s all different types of ways to send an instant message to you. If we both had adequate internet access, I could video chat with you. And then there’s the two old forgotten standards. I could write you a letter. Or we could communicate. That’s not me calling, by the way. Or we could communicate face to face, another old standard that’s unfortunately forgotten. Now, if you can think of another broad category of ways to communicate, let me know and I’ll expand that list. I wanted ten, because ten just sounds like a better list, but all I could come up with was nine ways that we can communicate with one another.

If this was a different lesson, I would say that there’s no excuse for us not to communicate with one another, is there? We’ve got nine different ways that probably almost all of us have access to.

But this morning I don’t want to talk about our interpersonal communications, as valuable and as encouraging as those may be. But I want us to think of the highest form of communication that has ever taken place. And that is that God has communicated himself to us. I want us to just bask in that thought, the beauty of that thought, that God has spoken to us.

And then we’re going to talk about how he’s spoken to us. And we’re going to talk about the means of interpreting that communication with which God has spoken to us. Let’s just start with the concept. The marvelous, and maybe as Christians, we take this point for granted, but I want us to pause on it just a little bit this morning, to marvel in the idea that God would even communicate with us. Turn with me to the book of Hebrews, chapter 1. In Hebrews chapter 1, the Hebrew writer, in the unique way of introducing this epistle, speaks of God’s communication, both the old forms and the new covenant way of communicating with us, says this. Hebrews 1 verse 1, God, who at various times and in various ways spoken times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom all through whom also he’s made the world, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sin, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than thee.

Introducing us to Jesus, one of those means of communication that we’re going to talk about in a little bit. The Hebrew writer says, God has spoken to us. We need to understand the import and the implications of that, the power of God’s language. We understand that with God’s communication there comes power, there becomes might, there becomes rule, and we understand this basic principle from the creation scene. That nothing happened until God spoke. That should be our mantra for authority today. Nothing happens until God speaks. But God chose to not just create this world and the people within it, but he decided to insert himself into this world, to communicate to those people. And he has done that throughout history, piece by piece, revealing himself unto man.

And this marvelous thought that God would communicate to us should invoke within us at least two responses. Number one is it should just cause us to be in awe. That God, such a holy, powerful, infinite being, would humble himself. We speak of the humiliation of Jesus on the cross. That may be the apex of God’s humiliation to deal with man, but it wasn’t the beginning of it. The beginning of it is that he would very create us. And then it continued that God would even deem to communicate with such lowly, rebellious creatures as us. We need to marvel at that fact that God would speak to us. The second response should be our absolute reverence to the words he has spoken. I think of that scene of Ezra opening the scroll and reading before the people.

1. God Has Revealed Himself Through His Creation

Out of a sign of reverence. And a sign of respect. And I’m not saying we take that particular physical posture today when the word of God is read necessarily, but we need to have that spirit within us that here is the word of God being spoken. It needs to be treated with the respect, the honor, and the dignity that the word of God deserves. God has spoken. And he has spoken to us in at least three different ways. Number one, God has revealed Himself to us through His creation. Turn with me, you could probably guess where we’re going to go in Psalm 19. When God spoke, and all that we see and know came into existence. God was revealing Himself. And if we think about it, that’s the way we do those same things.

If I wanted to know something about you, I could just simply watch the things that you do. And I would learn so much about you by just what you do. And we learn so much about God by what He did, by what He has created. So much so that the New Testament writers would say that the most disconnected observer is without excuse in saying there is no God. Psalm 19, beginning with me in verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God. And the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

Do you see the language that is used there in speaking of the glories of God’s creation? He over and over again, the psalmist does, over and over again, uses the words of communication. That God has communicated himself through nature.

In our oversensationalized culture in which we live, in which we have nine different ways to communicate to one another, most of those being electronic and digital.

My little advice to you is from the psalmist to at least from time to time to unplug from that world. And observe nature. And by observe nature, I don’t mean to get your phone and open up the Google app and Google nature scenes. But really look at this creation. Get away from the noise, from the distractions, and just see this world that God has created. And listen to what God is telling you. But as powerful as that means of communication is, it’s by its very default, it’s limited, because there’s only so much we can know about God through creation. Even with all the ways God has spoken to me in creation, do you realize what I cannot learn from it? Number one, I don’t even know his name when I look at creation.

2. God Communicated Himself Through His Written Word

If he requires anything of me, and so God has communicated himself another way.

3. What God Showed Us: The Word Became Flesh

Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The New Testament writers would echo that theme. The Apostle Paul, in particular, in 1 Corinthians and the book of Ephesians, would say, God has communicated to me, and so I have put down into words so that you can know what I know about the will of God. God communicated himself through his written word. And that’s really the focus of our study this morning. But there’s a third means of communication that John speaks of in John chapter 1. And maybe the highest form of communication is not in what God created, not in what God spoke, but in what God showed us. In the beginning, John 1, verse 1 says, was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. If we have any doubt who’s being talked about here, that doubt can be erased by jumping down to verse 14, where it says that this word became flesh, and to John and those other witnesses, he says he dwelt among us. The word spoken of there, the means of communication, was Jesus Christ Himself. God showed us who He was. We can read these gospel accounts, and you might say, yes, but I didn’t get to see Him, but through the eyes of these verified eyewitnesses who were given perfect recall by the aid of the Holy Spirit, we can see Jesus.

And in seeing Jesus, John says, they and we can see God. And so if you want to know what God would do with a leper or with the lame or the blind, look at Jesus. If you want to see how God feels about those who have lost loved ones and are in deep sorrow, just look at every Bible class student’s favorite memory verse. Jesus wept. If you want to know how God feels about each and every one of us and the sin and the judgment and damnation that we’ve brought upon ourselves, all you have to do is look at the cross. And in all these ways you see God. Because God communicated Himself to us. And so God has spoken to us. What a marvelous idea.

4. God Used the Normal Rules of Communication

God has spoken to us in three ways. And because God wanted this communication to be effective, God spoke to us through the normal means and rules of communication. God used human language to speak to us. Because he knew that was all that we could understand. And a means of using human language that was not new and invented by God’s new revelations, but the language and the means and the rules of communication that were already in place.

Let’s think about how we communicate. And apply that to how God communicates to us. And I want to use the illustration this morning of a standardized test. I’m sorry to use that example for those of you who have just recently gone back to school. And I did not research this much like that I did the telegram. I assume this is still maybe being used today.

In education.

Little bubble forms, and he, to his delight, and my chagrin revealed to me that when he ran these test sheets through the test grader, that every time a question was missed, it would make a little popping sound. Because that machine would pop and hit the right answer to let you know that yours was wrong, here’s the right answer. Dummy. And my professor told me when handing back one of my test papers, he says, that machine sounded like a popcorn popper. When I put your sheet through it. But these standardized tests, and let’s just imagine the way we communicate is imagine a teacher in front of a classroom and she is giving one of these standardized tests. How is she going to communicate how that test is to be taken?

She’s going to use three means of communication. She’s going to tell them certain things, isn’t she? She’s going to give certain instructions and say, here’s how you take this test. Here’s how you do that. Particularly maybe if these are younger students, and this is the first time they’ve taken that kind of test. But maybe even for older students, she’s going to give some kind of verbal instructions. Here’s what you do, here’s what you don’t do, here’s the rule. She’s going to tell certain things. But she’s also going to show.

Here’s how you don’t do it. These are the wrong ways, and these may result in you not getting credit even if you knew the right answer. And so there’ll be examples given or something shown. But also in that teacher communicating, there’s going to be certain implications, aren’t there? It may be on this particular day in giving the test. She gives those instructions of what you do. She talks about grading that test, and how much weight that test will carry for that semester or that course. But she may not have ever actually verbalized that you had to turn those test sheets back in. But you kind of got that, didn’t you? You knew that before she even said she was going to grade them. Because it’d be the cruelest of teachers to give a test just for test sake and not actually give you any kind of grade on that.

And so that was just kind of implied. There were other implications, are other rules of communication that are just normally, and by the way, these rules of interpretation or rules of communication are so basic and so fundamental and so often used to us that we don’t even stop and think about them, do we? We don’t sit there and say, here’s what I was told, shown, and implied. Here’s the command example and necessary inference. You’re just so good at communicating, you do that without even giving pause or thought to it. But there are other rules of communication that was implied. I’m not asking for you to answer this question out loud because I know all of you’d get it right. But what writing instrument do you use to take these tests?

A number two pencil. I want to start a petition. By this time in American history, that should be the number one pencil. Now it gets the number two ranking still. I don’t know. It needs to be upgraded. But the number two pencil is what you use to fill in. And so she says, take out your number two pencil. And that’s what you’ll use to take this test. Now that included some options, didn’t it? She didn’t say what brand of number two pencil. She didn’t even say where you would get that pencil from. Maybe you brought that one from home. Maybe there were some that you found and laying in the hallway. Maybe somebody gave you one of those pencils. That was that was all part of the include.

As long as it was a number two pencil, you’re good. But the normal means of communication excluded some things, didn’t it? Without her having to verbalize. Saying a number two pencil meant that you could not use, although she didn’t have to say it out loud, you couldn’t use a blue crayon or a red magic marker. Stating what instrument was to be used excluded all other options without having to enumerate those.

Not to insult anyone, but I think this is so important that it needs to be stated so emphatically and so clearly. That when the teacher says use a number two pencil, and someone instead uses a blue crayon or a red magic marker. I can only see two options for that student. Number one is the possibility that maybe they don’t have the mental capacity to understand normal means of communication, and they might be otherwise excused from taking this test, or the grade results of this test. The other option.

Who would use a blue crayon and a red magic marker, and when the teacher informed them, they would say, Well, you didn’t tell me I couldn’t. We would say of that person, you’re just being a smart election. You’re just being a rebel.

He did not invent a new language to communicate to us. He used the language of the people to whom he was speaking. He didn’t invent a new means of communication, command, example, necessary inference, or tale show and imply. He used the normal rules of communication that were already in place. Rules that are so innate within us we don’t even think about them or balk at them until it comes to establishing authority by the scriptures. And then all of a sudden we get exercised by this and say, I don’t know. Just apply the normal rules of communication. God’s going to tell you certain things, He’s going to show you certain things by example. And there’s just some certain common sense implications and inferences that you need to make in those implications that you can apply, like you always do.

Jesus communicated this way. Look with me at some examples here in Matthew chapter 19. There were times in which Jesus used what we might call the most direct means of communication, and that is he just told people certain things. Matthew chapter 19. And in verse 3, the Pharisees came to him testing him and saying to him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? And he answered and said to them, Have you not read? Now our point’s not necessarily to talk about marriage and divorce and remarriage and the reasons for that and exclusions. But the point this morning is, how did Jesus answer that question? He told them something. In fact, he says, you go read it yourself. What did God’s word say?

And Jesus so many times used that direct form of communication. He just told people something. He gave direct commands, he gave statements of facts. He just told them. But at other times, Jesus would show people something. Stay with me in the Gospel of Matthew to Matthew chapter 12. Jesus used this form of communication. It’s not something we’ve invented.

Matthew chapter 12, verse 38. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, Teacher, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered and said, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Jesus says, You want to see the proof, you want to hear the proof, you want to know the proof that I am who I claim to be. Watch. And I’m going to show you some. I’m going to give you a sign. The sign was of his resurrection.

And so Jesus sometimes uses that means of communication and just showing us. In fact, you could argue that that’s what John is argument in John 1, verses 1 through 4 of what Jesus was doing. He was showing us God. But then Jesus also implied things. Look in Matthew chapter 22. In Matthew chapter 22, Jesus is asked a question by the Sadducees. Matthew 22, beginning in verse 23, it says, The same day the Sadducees, who say there’s no resurrection, came to him and asked him. And we know the story. They give him this ridiculous scenario. Here’s a woman who ends up with seven different husbands in her lifetime. In the resurrection, who is she going to be attached to? And they thought they’d come up with such an outlandish hypothetical that it would stump Jesus, and he’d have to reject the resurrection.

But how does he answer that? What about the resurrection? What about life after death and what’s going to take place there? Notice, skip down to verse 41 how he answers this. Matthew chapter 22. Or excuse me, verse 31, not verse 41. Matthew chapter 22, verse 31. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And then Jesus states this God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

He was implying something. He was implying that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are no longer dead. Hence the resurrection. Jesus taught by telling men things, by showing them, and by letting them infer from statements what he was wanting to impart to them. That’s how he communicated. We won’t take the time this morning, but in your own private study, go to the book of Acts, chapter 15 and look at the question of circumcision. Should Gentiles be circumcised and keep certain parts of the law? And the apostles and the elders there answered that question by the three normal means of communication. James got up and told them something. He read the scripture to them. Peter got up and showed them something. He showed them what had happened with Cornelius and his household.

Paul and Barnabas let them infer something from the fact that they had been preaching the gospel among Gentiles, and God was performing miracles with them while they were preaching to the Gentiles. What do you think that means? And so they told, they showed, and they imply.

Conclusion

Communicate to us in a way that we could understand and obey His will. Will you pray with me? Our dear God and Father in heaven, we’re so thankful yet so humbled at the fact that you would communicate to us. That you would humble yourself to speak to such lowly creatures. That you would tell us about who you are and who we should be. That you would tell us about your love and mercies to your people in times past and give us the hope and the assurance of your love and mercies in our life. May we respect your word, Father. May we treat it with the reverence that it deserves. Help us, Father, as we open your word to open our hearts and to seek to know your will and to make it a part of our lives that we might truly be your children.

Bless us this day as we worship you. We pray that you’ll be pleased by our offerings. We pray that you’ll be with those that we love and miss this day. All these things we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.