Whose Voice Do We Listen To?

How easy it is to listen to the voice of humans instead of listening to the Word of God? There are a plethora of writers claiming to have the answers to understanding God’s Word. Many of them I have never even heard of. And… wait a minute! Isn’t it the job of the Holy Spirit to enlighten?! So why look to some guy named John or Peter, or some other “disciply-sounding” name to tell us what God’s Word says when we can get it ‘straight’ from the Word of God? I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of valuable aids to studying God’s Word, and that we should not help and encourage each other in our quest for truth. (If that were the case, I’d be a hypocrite in writing this). I’m saying there is no substitute for the real thing. I am a big advocate of discipleship. I myself have the awesome privilege of an older woman who is discipling me and teaching me things straight from God’s Word. I must admit, when I was a kid, all the Thee’s and Thou’s and Begets that used to sound so “holy” to my ears - because that is what the preacher spoke from the pulpit and he told us that this is how God spoke - could be a bit confusing. (He was the preacher after-all; I figured he must surely know). I remember friends asking if God is so big, couldn’t he just speak plain English? One such friend put it this way 'Do I have to learn to speak ‘Shakespeare’ to understand God, or to pray so God can understand me?" (I am not ditzing the KJV; it is a splendid translation in and of itself, and I personally quite enjoy Shakespeare). Of course, God is indeed fluent in all languages! And the Bible wasn’t written in English in the first place, and what we have is just a translation, so there is certainly a lot to study if we want to understand the word-roots, and the context and the culture, and therefore the relevance to life today. (Okay, in my first adventure in college, one of my majors was anthropology, and one of my minors was linguistics, so I think in these terms to understand my world. I have interlinear Bibles and a Strong’s Concordance and I know how to use them!). Anyway, I thought, certainly the people who were alive when the Bible was written didn’t have a problem with wanting some human to interpret God’s Word for them. But I was wrong. Right in Exodus 20:19, the people, who had just heard God speak the 10 Commandments to them (we’ll address that in a moment) were so freaked out that He was going to strike them dead at any moment, they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself, and we will listen; but let not God speak to us or we will die.” (NASB) I missed that part in the movie version! I guess I was looking to some man’s interpretation to tell me a story that was available for my own reading! I was no different than the children of Israel! Okay, so some people want to throw stones when they hear it said that God spoke to all the people before they said stop and then Moses went up to the mountain to get the God-written tablets. I’m sure no one here has any stones ‘in-the-ready’ but just in case, put them in your pocket and pick up your Bible. Go to Exodus 19:9 “Jehovah said to Moses, ‘Behold I come to you in a darkness of clouds so that the people may hear My speaking with you.” (Interlinear Hebrew/English; Green). He told Moses to tell the people to sanctify themselves in preparation for this event. It is confirmed again in Deuteronomy 5. Moses recounts the events from Exodus 19 & 20. In Deuteronomy 5: 22 “These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire…with a great voice (Exodus 19:19 “…God answered him with thunder” Here, thunder is the Hebrew word for voice) Deut. 5:26 “…for who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of fire, as we have, and lived?” (NASB) Shema! is a Hebrew word. It means hearing with understanding, and then acting upon it. It is an action verb! That requires spending time in God’s Word and God’s presence. Fortunately for us, the Holy Spirit came to make that possible. It is very exciting to me that Exodus 19 begins the third month, and that this is the time of the Feast of Weeks, or in Greek: Pentecost. God came in a cloud of fire on the mountain at this time-frame in Exodus, and in Acts 2, we learn that the Holy Spirit came in tongues of fire at this same time. The more I study the culture and the Feasts from Leviticus 23, the more evident it is that all the major events (Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, coming of Holy Spirit) all fell on already established feasts of God. It is likely His return will too. I guess since the old and new testaments were written in different languages, this fact sometimes escapes the translation. That time in history when the Gentile believers separated from their Jewish brethren to avoid persecution, and they halted feast observances may have had a lot to do with it too. But I believe the time has arrived for a new awakening of all the Gentile believers. I challenge everyone not to take my word for it, but to dig into His Word and discover the layers and layers of understanding that lead to Shema!