The Voice – Part 16
Are we being fed … or entertained?
“I so love the way he speaks, don’t you!” As soon as I hear a recording of Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones’ preaching, I am drawn to it as a moth to a bright lamp. The Doctor holds me fascinated as he proclaims God’s Word in ringing tones that are unmistakable. His vocabulary range, his enunciation, that Welsh intonation … although long dead, he speaks through the years with an authority that appeals to me enormously! I love it!
I would know David Pawson’s voice anywhere. The clarity of his delivery and his personable style are truly memorable and eminently appealing. I love it!
I guess we all have our favourites. Gifted preachers have been given that ability by the Lord. We love to hear them and will travel miles in order to do so. But why has the Lord so gifted them as communicators? What am I listening for? A brilliant exposition to thrill my longing to be entertained or a clear declaration of God’s Holy Word to shake my indolence?
Wouldn’t you just love to have Charles Haddon Spurgeon return from the grave to come and preach in your pulpit next Sunday? A full house guaranteed! But what would we be there for? Entertainment or encounter with our Holy God?
As a preacher myself I know how beguiling it is when people occasionally approach me and say with glistening eyes, “Oh, I could listen to you for hours!” Sometimes they say it and I believe them, smiling benignly, thanking them and then sighing to myself, “Another assignment well done!” What a dangerous situation that is. It is almost certain to be entertainment rather than prophetic encounter: my pride in a good performance squeezing out any chance of divine revelation.
When visiting Christians in the entertainment business ‘perform’ in our churches they tend to be paid far better than visiting preachers. I wonder why? Perhaps congregations value entertainment more highly than the prophetic proclamation of God’s Word. In which case it is a serious and lopsided situation. But, then, I would say that, being a preacher!
“Just a song at twilight!”
A Scripture passage that scares me (and there are frankly many such) is Ezekiel 33:30-33. I am one that sits under the ministry of others and I also have the privilege of having people sit under mine. Consider the following you preachers and preached-to and see if it rings any bells.
The context is the Babylonian Exile of Judah to Babylon in 597 BC. Remarkably, our Father God allowed the cream of His people Judah to be taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. The unexpected result was that in the course of a few years the people of Judah were refined and became a people after God’s own heart. When they returned to Jerusalem led by Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah they were a chastened people: devoted to God’s Word and to prayer, having established synagogues and having dismissed idolatry from their lives. What appeared to have been an unmitigated disaster was the Lord’s extraordinary means of turning them into ‘good figs’ while those remaining in the land of Judah, under King Zedekiah, were neither repentant nor changed. They were unchanged and ‘bad figs’, having no experience of the refining work of the exile.
So those addressed in Ezekiel 33 were the Lord’s true remnant, and incredibly it is those very people who had received God’s almighty grace who were now indulging in a high-handed attitude to the Word of God. The Lord had favoured them with restoration and renewal but even so their attitude to the prophetic Word now left a great deal to be desired.
Are the bells clanging? The parallel is pretty clear. The Church of Jesus Christ – the redeemed community He died for – are favoured by Him in every conceivable way, and yet we adopt an attitude to God’s Word which mirrors Judah’s following the Exile. And surprisingly it appears to be true of many Evangelicals. “
… that’s entertainment!”
Popular music has the power to move people, but it tends to do so only fleetingly. It brushes over us at a superficial level and may touch our sentiments, but true heart-love rarely comes through hearing love-songs, however convincing the performer with his vocal and instrumental skills.
Here is Ezekiel’s graphic and poignant revelation of God’s heart:
“As for you, son of man, your countrymen are talking together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, saying to each other, ‘Come and hear the message that has come from the Lord.’ My people come to you, as they usually do, and they sit before you and listen to your words, but they will not put them into practice. With their mouths they express devotion, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain. Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love-songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but will not put them into practice. When all this comes true – and it surely will – then they will know that a prophet has been among them”. (Ezekiel 33:30-33)
You see what I mean. It’s scary isn’t it?
When the Lord speaks to Ezekiel about the people’s treatment of him as nothing more than one who sings love-songs with a beautiful voice and who plays an instrument well it amounts to high quality entertainment and nothing more. Might this be the reason why we see so little positive change in vast numbers of us believers? We are drowning in entertainment with an accompanying famine of hearing the Word of the Lord.
What now?
A well regarded preacher, Dr. Lehman Strauss, told about having “The Word of God” stamped on the spine of his rebound Bible. It’s a simple step but it is a powerful one. Somehow there needs to be a way of altering our whole approach to the Bible. The word, “Bible” simply means “a collection of books”. There is nothing particularly unusual about it. But make it plain that this collection of books is the unequivocal Word of God and it does something to you. You can no longer treat it at arm’s length. There is subtle yet profound difference between saying “I have the Bible in my hands” and “I have the Word of God in my hands”.
Paul reminded Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16). A person cannot utter a word without it being carried on his breath. No breath, no sound. So, if it is God-breathed, it comes out of His mouth. It truly is His Word uttered. This is what the Bible is, make no mistake about that.
That is genuinely awesome. But when Paul spoke of “All Scripture” he meant the Hebrew Scriptures. However, the books of the New Testament are equally God’s uttered Word. According to the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, would guide the apostles into all truth. He said, “He will not speak on His own, He will speak only what He hears and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you”. (John 16:12-14)
So if the Holy Spirit only speaks to us the things He Himself hears, from whom does He hear them? It can only be from the Father Himself. The Holy Spirit breathed God’s Word into the apostles and therefore what they received was the holy Word of God. They wrote the Word of God as the Holy Spirit moved them.
Peter wrote, “I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Saviour through your apostles”. (2 Peter 3:1-2)
Notice how Peter differentiates between them and yet holds both together. He speaks of the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets (that is to say, the Hebrew Scriptures: the holy prophets spoke but it was God’s holy words they were uttering) and the command given by our Lord and Saviour through your apostles (that is to say, the apostolic writings of the New Testament: the writing apostles wrote, but it was God’s holy words they were writing).
Let it live!
Hebrews 4:12 says, “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart”.
The Word of God is living and active. It does things to us. It exposes us. It ministers to us. Whenever we come to the Word of God, He starts speaking to us. It is what God is saying to me today: it really is living and active! The Lord is speaking to me.
We can mistakenly think of the Scriptures – God’s Word – as a library of dry and historical books provided mainly for academics to pore over. There they sit in their Studies, well away from the real world and they swap their great thoughts. That is not what God’s Word is for. It is not what God intends. Any academic study of God’s Word MUST go on to show what God is saying to us NOW in the real world.
It’s more like picking up a telephone and discovering the Lord on the other end of the line! The shock of it would certainly grab our attention! But this must be our approach when we open God’s Word. The Lord speaks through His Word very directly when we let Him.
A hunger to hear Him is the key. If we will submit to the Word of God, we can be sure He will take full advantage of our availability.
Recommended reading:
Living in Babylon by Clifford and Monica Hill £12.00
Dig deeper – tools to unearth the Bible’s treasures by Nigel Benyon & Andrew Sach £9.99
Unlocking the Bible by David Pawson £12.99