JOURNAL 5 RESTORING HIS VOICE

RESTORING OF HIS VOICE

THE FIRST PENTECOST

                “Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenants, then you shall be My own possession among the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Ex. 19:5, 6a.

                After Yahweh delivered the children of Israel from Egypt, He gathered them together at the foot of Mt. Sinai with the intention of making them His covenant people there. Now this covenant had two parts: 1.They must hear His voice and 2. They must keep His covenants. And the first covenant He would make with them there at Sinai was the covenant of Law, called the Ten Commandments.

                So Moses called the elders together and told them what God had said and they agreed saying: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” Ex 19:8 So Moses went back to God and told Him that the people had agreed to God’s proposal.

                However, we know that when God spoke, the people were so frightened by it that they begged Moses to hear God’s words for them and to tell them what He said. Now, Moses himself was afraid also, for He said “I am full of fear and trembling.” Heb. 12:20. But Moses went up anyway to hear God’s voice on behalf of the people.

                So there was a double breaking of the covenant in those days. First they refused to hear God’s voice and secondly, they made for themselves a golden calf, effectively replacing the living God with an Egyptian god. Then Aaron was so bold as to tell the people that this Egyptian god was the one that brought them out of Egypt. No wonder Yahweh became angry with them.

THE SECOND PENTECOST

                So in light of what the Lord God gave Israel in terms of the first Pentecost, we know that the second Pentecost would contain the same elements, only now, because of the blood of Yeshua and the forgiveness of our sins, God could now write His laws upon our hearts by His Holy Spirit. So now our obedience would come from within rather than from without. Now, instead of obeying an external law carved on two tablets of stone, the law would now become a natural part of our constitution by the Holy Spirit and God’s voice would be heard in our spirit instead of booming down from Mt. Sinai.

                In Hebrews 12, Paul contrasts the Sinai covenant with the living covenant saying: But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel.” Heb. 12:22-24

                But in addition to this New Covenant, written on our hearts, Paul gives us a stern warning in light of Israel’s failure at the first Pentecost. He said: “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking.” Heb. 12:25a.

                We know that the early Messianic Jewish church heard God’s voice. They consulted the Holy Spirit about everything. They saw angels. They worked miracles. They had visions and dreams. They spoke prophetically. They spoke in tongues. They were a community completely set apart from the world and its economy and its pagan ways.

                But in time the church, just like Israel at the first Pentecost, began to reject the direct voice of God and they asked clergymen to “go up” and hear from God and then speak to them. Just as they had made Moses their Mediator, so the church set up priests and popes to speak for God on their behalf. So there is a very profound reason why this period of time was called the “Dark Ages.” The voice of God and the Covenant of God were both silenced as despotic church leaders changed the appointed times and laws and Sabbaths thus bringing in a pagan system right into the church even as Aaron had fashioned a golden calf as a replacement for God Almighty.

                So, with this background in mind, let us now try to imagine what God would want to restore to this final generation which He has designed to be the revealed sons of God for whom all of creation is waiting in eager anticipation.

                Revelation 12:17 says concerning this Remnant people: “And the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

                Well, what is the spirit of prophecy? Revelation 19:10 gives us the answer. The prophet that guided John on his tour of future events said, “I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold to the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

                So in these last days, we can expect that God is going to restore His Commandments as they are now written in our hearts, and He is going to restore His voice and we will prophesy… we will speak forth His Word as we do as Jesus did. He did only what He saw the Father doing and He said only what He heard the Father saying. He lived His life by divine appointment. He became a living oracle of God. He did the Father’s works and He spoke the Father’s Words.

                If then we would like to be a part of God’s last day remnant people we must hear His voice and we must walk in complete obedience to our Father.

                Nothing brings on more derision and scoffing than to claim that we hear God’s voice. Satan has set this up by sending out a bunch of loonies wearing tinfoil hats to “speak for God.” And believe me; the system of hearing God’s voice has been abused greatly over the past 40 years or so. Would be prophets have used God’s voice for financial gain, for fame and for fake power. But these are all smoke screens and we must understand that if there is a counterfeit of anything, then there is also a real.

                No one counterfeits $21 bills because they would be useless. Neither would we counterfeit $1 bills simply because they are of such little value. So if you are going to counterfeit money, you are going to go for the $20s, the $50s or the $100s.

                So if Satan is counterfeiting prophecy, counterfeiting tongues, counterfeiting miracles and healing and such, that means he is laying down a smoke screen to discredit the real thing when it comes.

                The same thing is true of hearing God’s voice. There is such a ruckus being made about it, but in truth God is speaking to us all the time. He speaks to us, not usually in an audible voice, but He speaks into our spirit. 1Cor. 14:2 So… if His covenant has been written in our hearts, so will His voice be written in our hearts.

                Our problem is we have become dull of hearing. His voice has not stopped speaking… we have stopped hearing. We have been scared off by Satan’s counterfeits. We have digressed from Spirit- filled Spirit- led lives to logic and human reasoning. We have chosen the ways of the flesh over the ways of the Spirit. We no longer listen. We don’t even know how to listen any more.

                We think 3 kinds of thoughts throughout the day.

1.       We think good inspirational uplifting redemptive thoughts

2.       We think evil thoughts, thoughts of temptation, lust, greed, or anger

3.       And we think also practical thoughts like grocery lists and jobs to be done and appointments to be kept and an oil change for the car.

                Our problem is we think that all of these thoughts come from our own mind. We do not discern the sources of our thinking. If we are spiritual…if we are born again and we believe that there is a Holy Spirit and an evil spirit at work in the world, then we must also believe that temptation enters our mind through the working of evil spirits. Likewise we believe that the Holy Spirit is producing inspirational uplifting redemptive thoughts in us. After all, HE dwells inside of us.

                As Christians we choose to reject the evil thoughts Satan puts in us. We fill our minds with the Word of God and the songs and thoughts of God.  We choose to live by the Spirit of God.

                If you will think of your mind as a screen upon which pictures can be projected, you know that evil and lustful pictures can suddenly flash upon you r mind and it is hard to shake them off. Likewise when you are planning your grocery list, groceries fill the screen of your mind. So would it be too hard to think that inspirational uplifting redemptive thoughts can also fill our screen?  Can we not realize that  these come from the Lord?

                What would happen if you spent time in God’s presence and you put thoughts or pictures of Him on your screen? What if you pictured yourself walking and talking with Jesus along a shore line or some other peaceful setting? What if you asked Him what He wanted to say to you and then wrote down whatever thoughts came randomly to mind?

                Your Body is a temple of God. He dwells in your spirit. Would it be too hard for Him then to tell you what He is thinking?

                This is how I write every morning. I spend time with the Lord and in His Word and then I begin to share with you the things He is teaching me. In this way then I am slowly learning how to operate out of my spirit, out of the Most Holy Place inside of me where God dwells.  Hebrews 6:19, 20. We can access this realm and learn to walk in it just like the apostles and prophets did. They saw miracles, visions and dreams. They saw angels and even saw Jesus and were caught up into heaven. John said he was in the spirit on the Lord’s Day, or Day of the Lord and He saw the things that would happen in our day. He wrote it down for us.

                David said in Psalms 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.” We have to still the clamoring of our busy minds to hear the still small voice. The Holy “Spirit is talking to us all the time. Even when we don’t hear Him, he is shaping and forming our lives with His Words. If we will be still and know, then we can hear His words and come into agreement with them. They will always be in agreement with God’s written Word but they will speak to us personally about our own personal situations, plans and aspirations.

                As we aspire to be God’s Remnant people… The sheep that hear His voice…we must have not only His Commandments restored to us, but also His voice… for it is His voice that transforms us into His image. Spend more time with the Lord and listen to Him. If we are to live by divine appointment as Jesus did, then we must be able to see what the Father is doing and hear what the Father is saying. Selah.