Last evening, we began by sharing what we called the imperative need of the hour. We dealt with the first imperative, which we called the need for an enlarged vision: living in the larger framework of what God is doing, and then allowing Him to expand the inner, that what we see might become inward reality.
I want to go on this morning with another imperative need that I sense among the Lord’s people. I call it the imperative need for hearing and understanding the voice of the Lord.
There are so many voices in the world today. Everybody is talking. And our proneness is to keep our ear tuned to the different voices, but to often miss the voice of the Lord.
It seems ever since I was on the East Coast, working up the coast last January, up to the States, the Lord has kept ringing just one simple verse in my heart, found in Hebrews:
Today, if ye shall hear His voice.
Now, for a long time I made that “today” the whole dispensation of grace, and it is that. But there is a sense in which the Lord seems to say, “Today. Today.” The long period is going.
I think it is interesting, as we were saying last evening, that to really know the Lord—to really know Him, and to come into a more intimate understanding of Him and His ways—is to realize that He has a different voice for different people or for different occasions. He does not always speak the same. There is a different voice.
You sense that when you realize that various of His servants speak with a different voice. Remember Paul writing to the Corinthians said, “When I come to you, what voice shall I use?”
You get back and listen to the various prophets as they are speaking. Sometimes it is a pleading voice. Sometimes it is like the voice of a clerk in the court, as Isaiah is saying:
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye the word of the Lord.
You see, our proneness is somehow to adapt our ears to a particular voice. We say of a certain servant, “My, I like the way he speaks. He just gets through to me.” The chances are he is not. He is just synchronizing with your temperament. He may not be getting close to the real thing that God wants to say.
I had better back up. He may be getting through. But we are so prone to adapt ourselves to certain voices, and this is why people in Christendom today are gathered into little camps.
One says, “I like the voice of Paul. My, the words of the Lord—how oratorious!” Another says, “I like Peter. He is down to earth and practical. He has been through all that I have been through. Peter is my man.” And others gather because they like a teacher. He speaks with that voice.
Well, I have been doing just a little background work, going into some of the Old Testament expressions. I am interested this morning, for a little while, in the different ways that the Lord speaks to get our ears—or whatever is necessary—to awaken.
It is interesting, when you look into your Testament, as well as you do, to remember that God takes and deals with those according to where they are. I am thinking this morning of what the Scripture calls the ungodly. Then I am thinking of those pictured as the sinner. Then you have what is pictured as the scorner. And we will take one more. For our purposes, we have to think of the wicked.
You know it so well:
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.
The term ungodly is used many places, especially in the Old Testament. We ask, who are the ungodly?
I think the ungodly represent those who say there is no God, either by their manner of life or by their words. Remember Psalm 14:1:
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
So the fool and the ungodly are the same thing. There is no God. The whole manner and pattern of their life is based upon the fact that there is no God. They are not awakened; they are not sensitive. They move on that basis.
What is God’s voice? How does He speak? What is His way with the ungodly? Well, I am not dogmatic in this, but I think He does this over and over again: to the ungodly, the fool who says there is no God, He just says, “All right. If I do not exist, I will ignore you.”
He does not say anything. He lets them go their own way. You read in Psalm 2:
Why do the heathen rage,
And the people imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord, and against His anointed.
The great majority of those who, in their initial state, begin to live as though there is no God—He does not exist—this is a matter of the heart. They are going their own way. God is largely silent toward them.
I am sure that this is our problem when we are trying to fellowship or speak to our next-door neighbor. In his ungodly, foolish condition, we can come with various experiences and various things, and he just sort of smiles back: “You poor fool.” He does not believe in God. It takes something to awaken him.
But in that category, God is very largely silent. I think before we get through, you will see why I say He is silent.
You have all heard of the atheist who stood on his little pedestal downtown in Chicago: “If there is a God, let Him strike me dead and prove that He is real right now.” And he kept on railing for many minutes.
We wonder sometimes, why does God not strike a man like that dead? Well, He cannot be moved by our silly, simple attitude. I am so glad of that. I suppose He looks down at that raving little fool and says, “I will not condescend even to recognize him.” Silence.
The counsel of the ungodly—that is, those who by their manner of life, by their word, say, “There is no God.” Who are the sinners?
Nor standeth in the way of sinners.
I think we can realize through the Old Testament that when God is speaking of the sinner, and this term is used, it is an individual who acknowledges that there is a God.
He acknowledges that there is a Creator, One who has made all things, but he does not know His power or His delivering work. He does not know Him in any personal way so far as his life is concerned. He just knows that there is One who created.
But there is something about the whole cry that says, “Oh, I wish I could know His delivering work. I wish I could know Him in my life.” The sinner.
You notice now, when you read the Old Testament especially, how often this comes up. He knows there is a God. He is aware of it. He has seen His handiwork and some of His ways, but he does not know any personal relationship, any acquaintance in a living way.
The Lord has a voice to that individual. He has a way of speaking. It is a way of compassion.
I believe that when someone is awakened—I have seen on different occasions people in their ungodliness, their foolish heart going their own way—and God moves into a community and begins to awaken some people, something happens. Suddenly they are sinners. They begin to acknowledge, “Oh, there is a Creator.” God has a compassionate voice to that individual.
I think we see it manifested in the Lord Jesus. It said, “He was the friend of sinners.”
Well, who is the scorner? Who are the scornful?
Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
I think—I am open for correction—but I think that the scorners, those who are sitting in a certain place or position, are those who are religious.
Those who have arrived at some outward knowledge about God, and yet, in their scorning, have not really allowed Him to invade and work out His purpose, or anything He has for their life. They just know all about it. They use the terminology. They sit in the seat—in positions. The scornful.
I think when Jesus moved on the scene and He saw all the religious scribes and Pharisees of that day, His whole voice and attitude toward them was one of derision. They were scorning. They could not recognize His voice—that He was the One He claimed to be.
And the scathing words with which He spoke to those who were in religious positions, and yet had no real knowledge of God—the scornful.
We have a religious world around us, so to speak. Lots of people are both sinners and scornful, but they have gone a little further than just being sinners. The scorner is one who does not really want to go on.
So Jesus spoke with denunciating, scathing words: “Ye whited sepulchres.”
Beloved, I do not know, but I am inclined to believe that the closer we move into an intimate knowledge of the Lord and His mind, the more we share of His Spirit and His ways, the same Spirit that was in Him will begin to work in us in situations like that.
I hesitate to be this personal, but I have noticed for, I think, the last ten or twelve years, that I did not understand for quite a while why I could go along in a series of meetings—you know, the midweek crowd, those who have hunger, crying out, wanting to know more of the Lord—and it seemed like there was something of a flow of His voice and His word to that group.
Then Sunday morning would come. I would have myself prepared with what I thought would be a message for the same group. They were back, but added to that was a whole congregation—the Sunday morning crowd.
I could not understand for the life of me why, invariably on a Sunday morning, my whole spirit would seem to change. There would come a whole different note and a whole different tone to that Sunday morning crowd. I would try to accommodate and fit the front rows—excuse me, but that is about where they were sitting—and yet there was something of a sensitivity of the Spirit that kept warning, speaking that which the others needed.
After a few situations like that, I began to cry out at my bedside, “Lord, this is not me. I came with another burden, and I do not understand.”
Then it seemed as though the Lord began to say, “Look, if you are sensitive to My mind and My voice, the more you understand what it is to be identified with Me and My burden, you can expect that there will be a change of voice depending on who is there.”
Maybe I am wrong, but I do not think so.
We sat one evening, about thirty-five, maybe forty, in a fellowship in a home. The Lord verified this sort of thing in a way that I had not recognized. A missionary returned from Africa, home on furlough, sat in the midst of the service, fellowshipping with us.
Strangely, there came into the midst of that a great oppressing, confusing force. You sensed that the enemy was making a real invasion.
I saw this missionary, sensitive to the situation, suddenly shift from the theme that was then in progress. Right in the midst of it, she began to tell about a situation they had been in just a few months before in Africa, in which a spirit had been cast out of one of their own congregation.
In my amazement, as we were sitting there, I saw something rise in that missionary—the Spirit of the Lord rising to stand against, as she told the story. I looked at the expression and sensed something in the spirit of that missionary, and the Lord seemed to say to me, “You never deal with the enemy in sympathetic, quiet tones.”
Then came a great peace. I was looking at the outward and just observing, and then I realized, as the missionary went along and began to deal with the one who was in the room, there was a real clash. God’s voice for each situation may be different.
Now, we have the ungodly, and He is largely silent. They ignore Him; He says, “Go on your own way in rage. There will come a day.”
The sinner—oh yes, there is the acknowledging, but knowing not the power of God or His delivering work.
The scorner—religious, denying the power of God.
Who are the wicked?
“Well, they are all wicked,” you say. God does not use the term that way. He is quite precise. If I understand the wicked, it is those who are maliciously and deliberately aligned with the enemy against God.
Now, that may be true of the whole group, but I am saying that there is something more of deliberate alignment—really imbibing the spirit of the enemy, and an all-out thrust to dethrone or get rid of God.
It is this kind of wickedness that you see the Lord dealing with in various places in the Old Testament. He deals with it very severely. He does not speak to it so much.
What does He say? Well, one day He turned to Jonah and said:
Jonah, the wickedness of Nineveh has come before Me.
Was Nineveh the only city worthy of being destroyed? What about the other cities? I do not know, but there comes a ripeness. There comes a time when the ungodly or the sinners move on beyond scorn and come into a real alignment against God. That is, they are joining with the spirits of this world, the spirits of darkness, against God.
Now, I know there is a lot of that in the others, but wickedness comes to full privilege and harvest. And He says of the Ninevites, “Their wickedness has come before Me. Jonah, you go down and warn.” Jonah represents the warning voice.
Is it not interesting how Jonah turns to go his own way? He finds occasion for a boat going the other direction.
One chapter later, when he comes after his fish experience, he says, “What was it You said, Lord?” Well, My directions have not changed. Go to Nineveh.
I have pondered it so many times. I wonder if they would have listened to Jonah in the first chapter. But here was a man who came into their midst half-digested. I think there were marks all over him.
A man who was scarred in his whole being, plus a spirit and an emergency—something deep within—that began to cry. He was beginning to say to them, “God is going to send judgment.” So they began to listen.
They began to listen. The wickedness of Nineveh has come before Me.
You remember when He was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the dialogue that goes on between Abraham and the Lord. What is it? “If there are so many righteous among the wicked—so many righteous, so many righteous, so many righteous.”
Strange as it may seem, it is the mercy and goodness of the Lord that deals with men when their cup has become full and wickedness has reached its place. It is the mercy of the Lord that says, “We will destroy.” It may not seem so to you, but I will tell you, when lives become aligned with the enemy against God—
Well, I am more interested in the next category, which we will just call the righteous—the just, as Paul puts it:
The just shall live by faith.
What is the Lord’s word to those who are His own? Well, He calls them “My sheep,” Old Testament and New Testament.
My sheep hear My voice.
But even among the sheep, we have the tragic realization that there are those who, while they come into a covenant standing with the Lord—His Old Testament people, separated unto His purpose—or whether through the new birth they have been brought into a living relationship with Him and declared righteous, the just—God speaks even to those in their various needs.
We have, I think, two categories this morning. There are those who are righteous. The just shall live by faith; they walk, they hear His voice each day. Then we have those whom the Scripture speaks of as backsliders.
Who is the backslider?
The Scripture tells us, “The backslider in heart is filled with his own ways.” Filled with his own way.
One who has come into covenant standing, as it were; one who has come into birth relationship, as we speak now. God is wanting to lead him on into His full thought and purpose, but his heart is filled with going his own way. There is something deliberate about the backslider. He goes his own way.
He said in Jeremiah of the backslider—He looks down upon them and says, “I am married. I am married to Israel. I am married to them.”
Well, what is His voice to the backslider?
Backsliding can take on different characteristics. Sometimes our backsliding can almost get to the place of the fool who says there is no God. I have met lots of individuals who have come into a living relationship; something happened, they wanted to go their own way. A good job or mate came along; they got married.
You watch a period of time in their life in which, like the prodigal who asks for the inheritance that is his, he goes out to squander. He goes out his own way. The Lord just seems to have to say to them, “All right, go.”
But there is no word to you. There is a silence to those who want to live as though there is no God, even though they had known initially a relationship.
May I say kindly, there is a lot more than we might realize of that going on. Maybe right here. This going on from day to day without an aliveness to what God really desires, as though He does not exist.
Oh, Sunday rolls around; prayer meeting night. But the rest of the time, off in the far country.
And the prodigal came to himself. Coming to repentance—or coming to himself—he comes running back. What is the voice? What is the voice of the Father to the backslider?
It is that wonderful voice that says, “Oh, My son, who has been dead.” Dead to whom? Dead to whom?
But you say, “I have not been dead.” That is because you live in that little box I was talking about last night. “Lord, I am sorry. I just have not been—” Well, we will get to that in a minute.
“I am not dead. I am not lost.” But, you see, it is a matter of our interpreting things. In fundamentalism, and in our whole scope today, we only think of things as related to man: man’s own security, man’s own relationship to God for what he can get.
But, oh, when the Father speaks: “My son, who has been dead, who has been lost.” Lost to whom? Lost to God—off in the far country.
Well, His voice is the same. Sometimes there is warning. Sometimes there is a real attempt to get his ear. But to the one who is in a far country, he has to come to himself.
I have spent hours pleading, begging, warning with some who are in a far country, until the Lord just seemed to say, “That is enough. Let him go.” You have to wait ten years for them to come to themselves.
Somebody says this morning, “Brother, God does seem a long way—seems far away.” Do not get some issues confused this morning.
You may need an enlarged vision, as we were speaking last night. But while God is enlarging the vision, His first word to the backslider—the one who has been off on his own private binge, living his life up for himself—God’s first word, when he comes to himself, is, “Come back home. Come back. Come back.”
There is a place where the Father receives. Am I speaking—the Lord speaking—to someone this morning? He is drawing you back. All these wasted months and years, you have tried that little thing, but the emptiness of it all.
But I am more concerned with that which will include the greater portion of us. Maybe not too much deliberate backsliding, filled with our own ways, but I think the Scripture speaks of a more refined sort of backsliding. We would use another term: one who is out of fellowship.
We love this New Testament picture that John gives us:
If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship.
Brothers, sisters, there is a fellowship to which we are called. It is very wonderful.
First Corinthians says we are called into the fellowship of His dear Son. When does that happen? When this first calling into fellowship dawns on us and we awaken to a new relationship. He is my Father. I have an Elder Brother who goes alongside, One who is very close. We are called into fellowship with Him.
I say to us this morning, that is a very precious and wonderful thing. When we realize that God has called us to an intimacy in which we have a sharing, a mutuality—the blood cleanses the conscience, that we might really enjoy a sharing life with the Lord.
And you know when that fellowship has been broken. Something has come in.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But that first fellowship I am talking about fits into that little box I was referring to last night. For years, that is the only fellowship I preached about, the only fellowship I was alive to. It is all I realized.
Well, thank God, it is wonderful. I am not minimizing it. But do not stop at the gate. Do not sit down where you started.
That fellowship into which we are invited, in which the Lord in His initial stages speaks with such blessedness—“My little children,” He says. How wonderful.
Then the Scripture says we are invited into the fellowship of the gospel. The Lord does not stop. He is doing everything He can in your life to crowd you into an enlarged way: the fellowship of the gospel.
What does it mean? That which I have experienced—that fellowship which I have with the Father and with the Son—I have to what? Say it louder. I have to share it. I have to tell others.
And so we begin to announce it. We begin to gossip it, or we begin to fellowship with others—not only the fellowship that we have in living relationship, but fellowship with others. It is the fellowship of the gospel, the good news. Something has happened.
That is a blessed day when the Lord enlarges us and we begin to share. We know when there begins to be that flow, that enlarging flow, and we sense the Spirit of God working within. We call it the fellowship of the Spirit. You meet someone else who has just been awakened, and immediately you have a mutuality of fellowship because the same Spirit in you fellowships with them.
This fellowship of the gospel can be an enlarging thing, because it is good news—not just the good news of being saved. I am always amazed when someone comes up saying, “I have heard some more good news.”
This is where you find fellowship in your various experiences, whatever they are. I do not try to take them away; just get them aligned. You cannot take a man’s experiences away. You just say, “Praise the Lord, let us go on,” because there is more fellowship ahead. There is more fellowship ahead.
I used to spend quite a little time trying to take the experience away because I had not been in it myself. But you cannot. Just save your breath. There is the fellowship of good news, whatever it is—the fellowship of the good news.
Then there comes a time when somehow all that we have been sharing, all the fellowship we have been enjoying, God seems to take us through a whole different period.
There is a real cry within that says, “Oh Lord, if I just had more power to share what I know.” We have all prayed that way: “Oh Lord, for greater utterance, for greater power to share that which I already know.”
Of course, we thought He was going to send a package of power, or plug us in in a new way to some great resource or supply. But in our praying now for an enlargement, He begins to send the fellowship of His sufferings.
No wonder Paul is saying:
That I may know Him,
And the power of His resurrection,
And the fellowship of His sufferings.
May I say kindly, it is awfully easy at this point for the individual who has been accustomed to the voice of the Lord in a certain way, and a Father’s sharing in a certain way, suddenly to wonder where He is.
The fellowship of His sufferings—and the Lord is still speaking. No wonder, but He has changed His voice and He has changed His way: the fellowship of His sufferings.
I can see Jonah, because he finally finishes his mission to Nineveh with great expectancy. My, the man who has just had success goes off on the hillside now to watch the Lord send judgment.
There he sits waiting. Waiting. Has Jonah been in fellowship with God? Yes. He has known the fellowship in the whale, in which he cried out in repentance. Then he came back, and it says, “The voice of the Lord came unto me.” Then he went to Nineveh. He shared the good news. Well, it was good; it did not sound so good to them.
But there comes a time when you have shared the fellowship of the gospel, and you may be sitting where Jonah sits now. You know where he is—just waiting. “Now, Lord, rain judgment.” But He does not.
He does not. And Jonah has difficulty understanding. Jonah is going through the fellowship now which is some real suffering: murmuring, pouting, complaining Jonah, beginning to see an area within him he had never realized before.
Now, let us just be very open about it. Jonah is sitting there looking. Is he a backslider? No, I do not think so—not really. Is he in fellowship with the Lord? Well, it depends on what you mean. What fellowship? What fellowship?
God is pressing us to an enlarged fellowship. We are going to get to the next phase. What fellowship are you going through? What is your fellowship? What is the measure of your fellowship with Him?
I have always loved this pouting, complaining, murmuring prophet: “Lord, I wish You would kill me.” Until you have been through that stage, I wonder.
I used to really be hard on Jonah, but I cannot anymore. There has been too much of it in my own inner spirit that God has had to drag right out into the open. I could not understand Elijah when he wanted to die.
The fellowship of His sufferings. You see, our problem is that we get all confused with what we think God is going to do. We may see what He is doing. We may see the what—the what of God’s doing.
But He always has a how that requires the day-by-day voice of the Lord.
Today, if ye shall hear His voice.
May I go on just a bit in an enlargement? I was awakened with this a couple of mornings ago. It has been something that has seemed to press me in a whole new way.
I was reading—I copied down—the very verse that our brother started with in 1 Chronicles 12: there were men of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do. I have preached from that verse for a number of years, but the other morning, I must confess, something else dawned on me.
The great problem throughout the generations has been people who can get hold of the what. Abraham saw a lot. He saw what God was going to do. He was going to have a family. He saw what He was going to do.
That is God’s larger framework. But he did not see how He was going to do it. He did not see how He was going to do it.
I wonder about David’s consulting with these men who knew what God was going to do. That was all good and proper. The very first verse of 1 Chronicles 13 says, “And David consulted with” whom? With these captains.
He consulted with the very men who had an understanding of what needed to be done. On the basis of that, he goes ahead. I expect, beloved, that they said, “Israel needs a gathering point. Israel needs the ark back in the midst. We need to be able to worship. We need this. This is what we need.”
And so he goes ahead to do the thing that seemed right. But he did not have today’s word from the Lord. He was out of fellowship.
How can I bring this home to us? Yesterday’s word is all right, but God has a word for today.
If there is any difficulty in Christendom this morning, it is right at this point: “How are You going to do it, Lord?”
Well, you know what David did. He rushed ahead with a brand-new cart, a Philistine cart, to do the what that the men of understanding had seen. That is as far as they could go.
Do not misunderstand now. We are not drawing a different conclusion. We are simply saying that men can go just so far. But David had to have a personal word that would take him further in the fellowship of what God was doing.
That thing exploded within my heart, and it caused me to cry out, “Oh Lord, oh Lord, we have seen something of what You are going to do, what we believe You want to do. Lord, how are You going to do it? How? Do not let us run ahead.”
Well, David went through some suffering. You know the story—great suffering. Abraham went through suffering, all those long years waiting for his son: the what of the Lord’s working.
I wonder if there is not something of that timing problem in a lot of us, maybe this morning.
Well, here we are in fellowship. You can say this morning, “Brother, the Lord is wonderful. I have had a precious time this morning.” I do not know how large your box is. I do not know how much the Lord has been able to take you into His fuller mind.
He is taking you through the participation, the fellowship of His sufferings, that He might really make known the measure of life-power, resurrection-power.
But I was reading last night, you remember, of another fellowship. What was that? In the third chapter: the fellowship of the mystery.
Oh, there go some more walls. The enlargement would come. The fellowship of the mystery.
This is the burden of my heart these days, as we were trying to say: “Oh God, oh God, would You bring us into the knowledge of Your Son in such a way that the eyes of our understanding can be enlarged, and we can really see that which He is working toward.”
Now, it is easy to stop and say, “It is a mystery, and therefore you will have to wait for the Lord to share it.” That is a way out. But that really is what it is.
I have tried for years, and the Lord keeps always shutting me up by way of saying, “Look, son, when you get it all outlined and they can get hold of it with their mind, that is just the trouble. They will have the what. I want them to know Him. I want them to know Him.”
Not only the fellowship of His sufferings, but the fellowship of the mystery. And our dedication, our seeing, will come into a whole new framework once that gets hold of us.
What is the voice of the Lord? What is the voice of the Lord? It is the way God communicates to you what He wants to share—whatever it is.
I thank Him this morning in a whole new way that there comes a sense that there is the still, small voice; then there is the blasting voice. There is the time of silence. There is the time in which He takes one into suffering.
There is the fellowship of having seen the larger things, or that which really is primary in God’s heart. And then, in awe, just having to say, “Oh Lord, only You can do it. Only You can do it.”
Maybe we can put this in a little larger way after this morning. As we were saying, when you are talking about being in fellowship with the Lord, I guess that is true. But what is the measure of it? What is the measure of it? God is moving on.
As we walk with Him in the new unfolding light, He keeps saying, “This is the increase in fellowship that I want to bring you into.”
I am concerned. Let me see if I can put it this way. We had a missionary, a former missionary friend, visiting us last week. I heard her laughing and just sort of praising the Lord in the other room. She walked in where I was sitting and said, “Read this.”
She stuck a book under my nose and pointed to a paragraph. It happened to be a book by Dr. Tozer, one of the editorials he had written. I cannot remember the title of the chapter, but I sure got the impact of it.
The place I started reading was like this: “There are so many of the Lord’s children hidden away out in the wilderness these days, who get together and they lament and moan and say, ‘Oh, if we just had a pastor who could really feed us. If we just had someone who could really share a word with us.’”
You can almost hear Tozer say, “Humbug.” That is kind of an abrupt word, but he meant it.
Then he went on to say, “You people who have that mentality and that attitude, and then you condescend and say, ‘But praise the Lord, we have got a library of tapes. We have Billy Graham and Dr. Rees, and we can listen to these and get our food’”—and you know what he said? “Somebody—”
I am after something.
He said, “When will you wake up to realize that you can have the voice of the Lord in your own heart?”
Now, I know that he was appreciating, as much as any of us do, those whom the Lord is using. But the good becomes the enemy of the better, and the better can get right in the way of keeping us from God’s best.
It has caused me to wonder if we ought to have any tape recorder. You know why? There are times when I believe God has had a specific word for that hour, and He wanted to say something to that group that was for them.
It does not fit the general situation out here, but we take it out and want to play it for everybody. I am concerned that God will give us wisdom and good judgment.
I think I have picked up books and listened to tapes when something within my own spirit kept crying out, “That is not general. That does not fit the general. That belongs to specific occasions.”
Well, you have to be—I mean, you have to know the voice of the Lord. God has a wonderful way of speaking, and of course it is all truth. But it finally gets around to whether it is His special, specific speaking to you at the point of your fellowship.
This was brought into sharp focus to my heart a number of years ago, when I was laid on a bed in a hospital after an accident. There was a lady missionary with seventeen fractures, given up to die; I likewise.
After I gained consciousness, about a week later, the daughter of this missionary, who was up on another floor, came in. She was quite disturbed and quite broken. She shared with me, “You know, poor Mother has really been through it this morning.”
“Two friends have come in and read some verses of Scripture to her, and in the name of the Lord commanded that she be healed, rise up, and get out of bed.” Well, if you could have seen a woman with seventeen fractures!
Reading a word of the Lord.
The daughter looked at me and said, “But Mother understands that there is a difference between God’s general word and God’s specific word for the situation.”
She said, “I tell Mother, ‘Look back and smile and say, “Well, if the Lord wants me to get out, He will break all these casts and help me. But in the meantime, I am not listening to you. I am listening to Him.”’” Amen.
You see, our problem as we move along in fellowship with the Lord is that we are prone—prone. I have been so prone to listen to someone who comes along and we are fellowshipping, but their measure of fellowship, and that which the Lord presently may be taking me through, is far different. Far different.
God is crowding you into a place where every last thing outwardly that you depended upon, He is bringing to naught, that He might teach you what it means:
Today, if ye shall hear His voice.
I have just started this. I want to go on tomorrow with it. But, oh, I am concerned for us this morning. I am trying to re-echo what has been said earlier.
It is so easy for us to get hold of a lot of things, a lot of things that the Lord has generally said. But He is wanting to speak in a very specific way:
Today, if ye shall hear His voice.
What kind of fellowship do we enjoy? This is a measure of our fellowship. Praise the Lord: a clear conscience, cleansed by the blood, called into fellowship of the Lord Jesus. It is wonderful. But He is going to walk on.
The fellowship, the fellowship, the fellowship, the fellowship. We are only in fellowship when we are in the full light of all that He has shown us, and living up to the full measure of it.
Lord, we thank You for Your voice down through all the generations.
Sometimes You have been silent when we have acted like a fool. You have come in compassion; You have been a friend when we did not know the real power, the working, the delivering work of God in our lives.
Sometimes we came close to scorning, even after we have known You. We have belittled others because they have gone on in a fuller measure of fellowship. Do not let us scorn anyone this morning just because we cannot understand, or because we have not arrived.
Oh Lord, do not let us get in the seat of the scornful. We are not looking at just the religious world out here, but there is so much scorn even among those who belong to You.
And Lord, even sometimes in our best desires and ambitions, there has been wickedness. We have gotten aligned with purposes, with things, for the enemy.
Lord, here we are this morning. We do ask that there will be the increasing, increasing fellowship.
Some of my brothers and sisters have been going through the fellowship of suffering. It is in these moments that it is so easy to question, like John did when he was in prison.
Lord, we believe that You are raising hearts and lives all over this country and all over the world, who are being expanded into the larger thing—the fellowship of the mystery, that which You are working to work. And we thank You.
Give us each one this morning a deep enterprise that says, “Lord, help me to hear Your voice. And help me to be Your voice. When I know Your Spirit, sense the Spirit, help me to be Your voice.”
We ask this in Jesus’ name, with thanksgiving. Amen.