God speaks through what He has spoken
When we think about someone speaking to us, we normally think of them standing in front of us, opening their mouths and saying words. Obviously that’s not what is happening with us and God when we are having devotions. But before we minimize what actually is happening, we should step back and think. Because, we all know there are different ways we receive communication from others. I can speak to my wife directly. Or I can write something down for her. Those are different forms of communication. But both are my words. In the Bible, there are different ways God speaks to people. And as one man has written, one of the most common ways we find God speaking to people is “through His appointed prophets, in words they utter in ordinary human languages.”
Let’s meditate for a little while on the process. When we read our Bibles we see something amazing happening. A person can speak to someone and yet somehow those words he is speaking are from God. You are hearing this man's words and yet they are really God's. This is called prophecy.
One of the first illustrations we get how this works is in Exodus 4. Moses is arguing with God. He doesn’t want to go and deliver God’s people. He tells God that the reason is because he’s not good at speaking. That makes God’s angry. And God says to Moses, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you he will be glad in his heart.” Now here’s the important part. “You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.” Aaron’s there speaking, but who is speaking really? Moses. Moses put the words in Aaron’s mouth. And where did Moses get the words from? God. So God’s the one speaking. That’s prophecy. You’ve got this human speaking, but it’s God putting the words in his mouth, which means, it is really God speaking.
Jeremiah is the prophet who illustrates this the most clearly. He makes a similar argument as Moses when God calls him as a prophet. “Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.’ But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say I am only a youth, for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.” (Jeremiah 1:6) Then he explains, verse 9. “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” So, Jeremiah is going to speak, but the words He is speaking are somehow God’s Words, and because of that they are going to actually accomplish something.
And that’s not just when Jeremiah was saying words either. It also includes when he was writing those words down. You see this if you look at Jeremiah 29. Jeremiah writes a letter from Jerusalem to the exiles in Babylon, and then gives it to someone to take to them and read it. That letter begins, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” (Jeremiah 29:4) He is writing to the exiles in Babylon. Jeremiah is not there. He is Jerusalem. But the letter is going to Babylon. And that letter is a word from God to them, just as much as if Jeremiah had been there speaking it himself. The prophet is not there, but as the letter is read, they are hearing from the prophet, and ultimately from God.
If you look at Jeremiah 36, you will see that it illustrates the process we’re trying to describe. A word comes to Jeremiah from the Lord. "In the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord.” (Jeremiah 36:1) And what does the Lord say? God says, “Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah, and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Judah until today. It may be that house of Judah will hear all the disaster that intend to do to them, so that everyone may turn from his evil way, and that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.”
God is commanding Jeremiah not just to proclaim the revelation, but to write it down. Then Jeremiah has Baruch write it down for him. And you know who writes it down then? It's not Jeremiah, but someone named Baruch. So, make sure you are tracking. First God speaks to Jeremiah, then Jeremiah says that to Baruch, and then Baruch writes down what Jeremiah said on the scroll, and then Jeremiah has him take the scroll to these people where he's going to read what Jeremiah told him to write and when he does, whose words are they hearing, ultimately? Listen to verse 8. It says, “And Baruch the son of Neriah did all that Jeremiah the prophet ordered him about reading from the scroll the words of the Lord in the Lord's house."So, it's Baruch writing and reading what Jeremiah wrote, but as he does, he is actually reading and writing, God's Word. Verse 10 and 11 make the same point. Baruch reads the words of Jeremiah from the scroll and check out what Jeremiah says is happening. "When Micaiah the son of Gemariah, son of Shaphan, heard all the words of the Lord from the scroll.”As Baruch read, they heard God’s Word. As one commentator explains, “The words inked onto the leather leave the scroll as Jeremiah’s words, but arrive as God’s words in the ears of the listeners.”
This makes the way people respond very important. In fact, if you keep reading that chapter, you'll see when the king discovers what is written on that scroll, he burns it. But that only makes his situation worse, because God has Jeremiah have Baruch write it down again. This time he adds though, that the king will be judged, because of the way he responded to what had been written. Why? Because it wasn’t just Jeremiah speaking. It was God's Word. It’s pretty beautiful, isn’t it? It’s man word and it’s God’s word. It’s a miracle.
And when turn to the New Testament, we see the same process all over again. Only, if possible it’s even more glorious. Because first, God sends His Son Jesus into the world. The Word. And what does Jesus do? He chooses, calls, trains and qualifies men to serve as his messengers, and reveals the Father to them. John 14:9. “Don’t you know me Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time. Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father.” And how does He reveal the Father to them? Through his actions. Through His Words. He speaks the Father's Words to them. “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment - what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me." (John 12:49,50) In John 17:8 Jesus says that he took the words the Father had given him, and gave them to the disciples. “For I have given them the words that you gave me.”
Jesus then gives His disciples the mission to take those words out to the world. John 17:8-20 explains how it was supposed to work. You can read it on your own. But one author summarizes,“For the Words the Father gave to God the Son, have been given by the Son in ordinary human language to his disciples. Now those words are to be passed on through the words of his disciples. Therefore everyone who never met the Word Incarnate directly, but who hears the words of Christ from the disciples, nevertheless encounters the words of the Father and of Christ.” You get examples of that even in Jesus' ministry. You remember when he sends the disciples out to preach? Jesus has so identified Himself with His disciples message, that to reject their message is to reject Jesus and thus God. He says, "The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me." (Luke 10:16)
After Jesus ascended into heaven, He promises the disciples that he is going to keep speaking to them, in John 16:12-15. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."
Which is what we have in the New Testament!
You've got these apostles and they are living with Jesus and talking with Jesus. They see Him with their own eyes. John 1:14, 1 Timothy 3:16. They saw His glory. "And we beheld his glory' (says he), 'the glory as of the only begotten of the Father’ And it was such a perfect representation of God the Father's glory, that when he taught, when was with people, when he had conversations, they were seeing the glory of God. Then Jesus ascended to heaven. But he didn't stop working. He sent the Holy Spirit who helped the apostles understand the full meaning of all he did and said. It’s like He came and turned the lights on so they could really appreciate His glory. After the resurrection it’s not worse for the disciples, it's better. They see Jesus more clearly because the Holy Spirit helped them remember what happened and what Jesus said and the significance. Then they went out and preached they good news by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven and as they preached something amazing happened. In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul says, “God used their ministry to give 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,' even 'the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God,' But of course, then they died. Jesus went to heaven. The apostles couldn't see Him the way they used to, but He sent the Holy Spirit and they actually saw His glory more clearly, which was great for those who were able to hear them preach. But then apostles who saw His glory like that went to heaven. Yet God's not done yet. The Holy Spirit had them leave a written record of the story of Jesus' life and death, and what it meant, and when we study these writings and the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to what they mean, we’re getting a kind of picture and image of Christ, and all His glories, who Himself is the image of the glory of God. And that’s such a powerful picture that Paul tells the Galatians when he preached Christ it was as if before their eyes Jesus Christ has been publicly portrayed as crucified. Galatians 3:1 check it out. Thomas Goodwin says, it’s like the Holy Spirit took them as he was preaching and put them down in Jerusalem by the cross, and “brought Jesus forth crucified before the very eyes of their faith, as really and expressly as if they had seen it done with their bodily eyes." Which we get to experience now as we study Scripture. In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul describes our experience as beholding the glory of the Lord, as in a glass, as in a mirror. It’s like we get to see the glory of God in a mirror. How? The Holy Spirit uses the gospel and the Word of God to shine a light on Christ so that we can see him like seeing someone in a mirror and seeing Christ's glory like this, means we are seeing the glory of God. The Spirit is able to take the things that are said about Christ and not only make them clear, but also make them REAL to the person hearing it - so real that while we don't see the glory of Christ as He is in heaven right now, we do see Christ in the truth of the gospel and have a real communion and fellowship with him.
And that’s huge.
It’s not everything, but it is something huge.
So huge that Paul says it requires a miracle. “For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6) When someone picks up this book and reads it apart from the Spirit they don't really see anything. Someone preaches and it just seems like words. But if the Spirit takes these words and preaches them to our hearts, they transform us and accomplish a miracle on the same level as the creation of the universe, which should help us understand the privilege we have as we are reading God’s Words. Because, yeah of course, we can't wait for the day we are standing in God's presence, and everything is the way it should be and right now we have this book written by humans. It is a human book. But it is NOT just a human book. There's something special going on here. God chose to speak through apostles and prophets. They wrote down what He said. And Timothy Ward explains that means, “When we encounter certain human words in the Bible, we are in direct contact with God’s words. This is itself a direct encounter with God’s activity, especially with His relationship establishing activity. And an encounter with God’s relationship establishing activity is itself an encounter with God.” In other words, God is speaking now through what He has spoken and we have what He has spoken written down for us here, in our Bible.
*(I can’t recommend Timothy Ward’s book “Words of Life, Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God” enough. Much of what I’m saying here is from meditating on what he said there.)
