Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome, guys. This morning. Good to see everyone.
[00:00:04] It's nice to be excited about church.
[00:00:07] I wasn't always excited to come to church, but I certainly am these days. And it's a good thing, isn't it?
[00:00:17] So the title of the sermon this morning is how to Hear from the Lord.
[00:00:26] And I think what prompted this is in the last couple of months, a few people have said to me, I'm not hearing from the Lord, or I battle to hear from the Lord, or I'm struggling with direction in my life and I'm seeking the Lord and I'm not hearing.
[00:00:45] And so I think, yeah, it's a worthwhile study this morning just to go through how we hear from the Lord. Not so. And there's two main ways we hear from the Lord, unless we Moses and the Lord appears to us in a burning bush.
[00:01:04] Anton says the Lord appears to him through the bride.
[00:01:08] There's some truth in that. It involves a fire.
[00:01:13] But the two main ways that the Lord speaks to us is through the verse and through the voice.
[00:01:21] In other words, through the word of God and through his holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:01:30] And so we're going to look at those two things this morning, and we're going to start with the word of God.
[00:01:36] The Lord obviously speaks to us through his word, the Bible, which is our manual for living on this earth, day to day living. Not so.
[00:01:46] And we're going to look at a scripture this morning, our first scripture in Psalm 119, verse 105.
[00:02:00] Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
[00:02:05] That's such a descriptive verse, isn't it? It's such a good analogy of how the word helps us.
[00:02:13] Who here has tried to walk down a path at night without a lamp, without a torch?
[00:02:20] Am I the only one?
[00:02:24] So this. This illustration was brought very closely to me the other day when I was leading a trail ride. And I'm glad Mr. Callum's here, because he was there.
[00:02:37] And it was dark before we got in. It was dark and we had to get through one last challenge. And that challenge was there was a stream to cross, the bridge was down, and so we had to go around the side. And there was three small streams to cross, and we basically had to. On one of them was quite a ditch. Had to carry the bikes across.
[00:03:01] And then once we crossed the final little stream, there was about 20 meters of path through the jungle before we rejoined the road.
[00:03:11] And I was the. My bike was the first one, or the bike I was riding was the first one. To get back onto the road. And it was all fine until I switched the bike off and then the headlight went off and then I turned around and it was pitch black. And I could see the guys in the distance there, but I couldn't find the path.
[00:03:33] So, as with life, the path was there, but it wasn't well defined, it wasn't well lit, and there were obstacles in the way outside Callum.
[00:03:48] And I was on my way back and there, as. As is the road of life, there are many pitfalls. And sure enough, I fell into one.
[00:04:00] And there was someone. I think it was Chase Ross, Chase Martins.
[00:04:05] He was watching me. And suddenly I disappeared into this hole. But luckily I was wearing my.
[00:04:11] My full kit. You could call that the. The armor of God. Hey, I mean, we could get, you know, this. This analogy. We could. We could keep going on it, but I think there was a good. And he just watched me. I mean, he didn't come to try and help me. I noticed that I climbed out of this bank and he was still there watching me.
[00:04:28] But it was a good. It is a good description of how without the word of God to light our path, how we can very easily get lost and find the pitfalls. Not so.
[00:04:47] So just read the Bible.
[00:04:49] Sounds easy, doesn't it?
[00:04:54] But you know, what's so difficult about that?
[00:04:57] So some of the things I hear is, well, I don't really understand the Bible. There's lots, there's lot. Many parts to it which I don't understand. And so therefore I really don't read it.
[00:05:10] So I remember when. When I got saved. It was before the age of the Internet.
[00:05:16] And soon after that, I became a COM leader and I remember preparing for COM in the afternoon and I'd have three Bible versions open and a study guide to try and understand some verses which weren't clear to me.
[00:05:32] So that was then. We don't have that excuse today.
[00:05:35] You can type in a verse and ask the Internet to explain it to you and you normally get a very good description.
[00:05:42] So we can. There are AIDS today. We are in the age of technology, and there are aids today which help us to understand certain things which we may not understand.
[00:05:53] We can also ask the Holy Spirit, but we'll get to that a bit later.
[00:05:57] So we have technology that can help us.
[00:06:00] The next thing, the next excuse you hear quite often is, I don't have time.
[00:06:06] You know, hey, reading that Bible, do you think I've got time for that? I'm a busy day. I work often. Get that? I work a full day.
[00:06:17] And it's amazing that you always find people who don't have time to read the Bible always have time to do the things that they want to do that they really want to do. Time for fishing, they've got time for that. Time to go and bike riding or play squash or play tennis, there's always time for that. Play golf. But time for reading the word, you know, that's tighter.
[00:06:43] So to try and encourage you on that one. And this is a verse that I shared with a friend of mine just the other day.
[00:06:50] Matthew 13:44.
[00:06:56] It's such a good parable.
[00:06:58] The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.
[00:07:02] When a man found it, he hid it again.
[00:07:07] And then in his joy, in his joy, he went and sold all he had and bought that field.
[00:07:17] What is the treasure in the field?
[00:07:20] Well, the treasure is Jesus, isn't it? But the treasure also the word of God which shows us Jesus.
[00:07:29] So interesting story that I'm going to tell you that attached is attached to this is I read a book the other day by a guy called Victor Smith. He actually went to the same school as me, so he must have been a good.
[00:07:43] And it's called Open Cockpit Over Africa.
[00:07:48] Now this guy was a pioneer aviator and we're talking back in the 1920s, a hundred years ago.
[00:07:55] And you need to understand that at the time aviation was in its infancy. I mean just imagine the reliability of engines then wasn't so hot. Imagine a 1920s engine. It's all very well if it's in a car and it overheats, you just pull over to the side of the road and top up the radiator in the sky. It's not so easy. But most of them were air cooled at the time.
[00:08:17] But he, in the time in aviation, he was a South African and he took part. There were air races from Cape Town to London and there was very powerful newspapers at the time which would put out big prize money for the guy who broke the record from Cape Town to London. And it started off at 13 days. We started off at 20 days. Then it got down to 13 days, then seven. We're talking about the time this is open cockpit. These, these planes would be going. It's not like the speeds today, like 120 knots, eh, chugging up the up Africa.
[00:08:54] And so he took part in a number of these races. I think he took part in about five in total. And, and some of them, they'd all raced together like seven or eight planes. And some they would go individually because the guy would Start the clock when they, when he took off from Cape Town, and then they'd get a telegraph in London when he landed, you know, and they just calculate the time.
[00:09:13] And it was amazing, you know, in those days because you'd get quite a number of forced landings. They used to generally fly up the coast because if they flew in the interior of Africa, you'd either go down in the deep jungle and the jungle would swallow you up, or you'd land in the desert, no one would ever find you. So they generally flew up the coast.
[00:09:32] And on one such occasion, he had engine failure and he landed on the coast and was up in North Africa. But luckily it was about 50Ks away from a Foreign Legion, a French Foreign Legion outpost.
[00:09:46] So he knew, okay, despite he had whatever emergency water, I think it was 5 liters, he knew the 50Ks, he had to walk, he would make it.
[00:09:55] And so he started this journey and the things that he saw were unbelievable. This is parts of the world which were untouched by human at the time. So he came to a cove in the sea because he's walking next to the sea, comes to a cove, and it is full of massive fish.
[00:10:11] Clinton will enjoy this. I mean, it was literally, he said it was boiling with fish, some of them 2 meters long. They'd never been fished before. No man had ever fished those waters. And it was literally boiling with fish. He said he could go in and scoop one out, but he just, you know, he didn't have anything to cook it with or he wasn't actually hungry, but it was just amazing. And just imagine he used to fly over the Skeleton coast.
[00:10:38] And who knows what the Skeleton coast is famous for diamonds.
[00:10:44] So imagine he crash landed on the Skeleton Coast.
[00:10:47] And they say that the diamonds on the Skeleton coast at night, under a full moon, would glisten like stars in the sand. It was just full of diamonds.
[00:11:00] Now that is that not a treasure. And I would suggest that if he had done that, he didn't actually crash land there. But if he had and he'd realized what he'd stumbled upon, he would have rushed home, sold everything he had to buy the field for that treasure.
[00:11:18] So, folks, the point I'm making is if we realize what a treasure we have in the word of God, we would be motivated, incentivized. We'd find the time to read it and understand it and let God talk to us through the Word. Amen.
[00:11:38] We're going to talk about the Holy Spirit now, the second way that God talks to us. So we're going to look at John 14, verses 15 to 17, Jesus is talking here and he says, if you love me, keep my commands and I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.
[00:12:04] The spirit of truth.
[00:12:06] The world cannot accept him you, because it neither sees him nor knows Him.
[00:12:11] But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
[00:12:18] Isn't that amazing? So first of all, what's the definition of an advocate is genocide. Here are we speaking to us?
[00:12:26] So an advocate is one who pleads another's case.
[00:12:31] Isn't that amazing?
[00:12:33] So we like an advocate. When we get into trouble here on earth, we quickly run to an advocate. But amazing that in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, I will send another advocate. Who was the first advocate?
[00:12:47] Jesus.
[00:12:48] But he said, I will soon go, but I will send another advocate to be with you. Another. Another meaning for advocate is acting as a helper.
[00:12:59] Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as Parakletos. That's the Greek word and it means one who walks alongside.
[00:13:10] We've all heard that analogy of two footsteps in the sand.
[00:13:15] The one is you and the one is Jesus walking next to you. The Holy Spirit.
[00:13:20] So Jesus says, if we go back to that, I will send another advocate to help you and to be with you forever. Our helper here on earth. Who doesn't want that? The Spirit of truth.
[00:13:36] The world cannot accept him if you're not saved. You cannot have the Holy Spirit because it neither sees him nor knows Him.
[00:13:45] For he lives with you and will be in you.
[00:13:49] The Holy Spirit will dwell in us.
[00:13:57] As a believer, we already get a deposit of the Holy Spirit. The Word says it.
[00:14:02] If we look at 2 Corinthians 1, verse 21:22.
[00:14:10] Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ.
[00:14:15] He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit.
[00:14:24] So if we accept the Lord Jesus as our Saviour, we already have a deposit of the Holy Spirit in us. Not so.
[00:14:34] But in order for us, to the fullness of the Holy Spirit, we need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.
[00:14:40] And we're going to come back to that later. But I'm not going to go into that whole subject now. But those of you who've watched this is Church Mornay. That episode explains it very well. In fact, I re watched it in preparing for this sermon.
[00:14:59] Will the Lord give us the fullness of the Holy Spirit? If we ask us, Yes.
[00:15:11] Let's look at a verse that describes that if we look at Matthew 7, 9, 11, Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone, Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
[00:15:38] If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?
[00:15:49] Amen.
[00:15:56] Our God is a God who knows how to give good gifts. If we ask him to fill us with the Holy Spirit, he will do this.
[00:16:05] Who doesn't want a supernatural helper to guide us and lead us? 24,7.
[00:16:13] It's an amazing thing.
[00:16:21] If we go back to John 14 and look at verse 18, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.
[00:16:35] That's such a comfort, isn't it? Who's felt like an orphan? There may actually be some orphans here, but I think all of all of us who've been dropped off at boarding school at one stage or another, you feel for a day or two, you may feel abandoned and you may feel a little bit like an orphan. Not so. I know when I was dropped off at school and then I wasn't going to see my parents for three months, I certainly felt a bit like an orphan for a couple of days.
[00:17:02] But Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.
[00:17:07] The Holy Spirit will be with us if we carry on in John 14. Let's go now to verse 25 and 26.
[00:17:23] All this I have spoken while still with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything that I have said to you.
[00:17:37] Isn't that amazing? That is here, folks, at our disposal. The Holy Spirit in our hearts will remain with us, will teach us all things, and will remind us of everything that Jesus has taught us.
[00:17:56] We just need to listen to the Holy Spirit.
[00:18:01] Easy.
[00:18:06] It would be easy if the Holy Spirit just sent us a VN every morning. This is your plan for the day. And we listened to it and we obeyed and off we went. It's not that easy, is it?
[00:18:20] The Lord craves closeness with us. He craves a relationship with us. He wants us to spend time with him.
[00:18:30] We can't hear from God. If we in the daily rush, we may hear. He may give us a warning or something like that. I'm not saying. But to really hear from the Holy Spirit, to really have a hymn minister to us, we have to spend time.
[00:18:49] Let's go back to the Word for a second.
[00:18:52] In reading the Word The Lord will speak to us through the words which he has put in the Bible.
[00:18:57] And sometimes through those words, the Holy Spirit, if we are in the right frame of mind, if we are in the right situation, if we have time from the Lord, if we're not rushing, the Holy Spirit can minister to us through those words in a different way. I'll just give you an example. So 1 Corinthians 3:14.
[00:19:17] Love is patient, love is kind. It's a verse we all know. Not so.
[00:19:21] So that is prescriptive in that love. We need love in order to be loving. We need to be patient and we need to be kind.
[00:19:29] So that's the Lord speaking to us through His Word. Not so.
[00:19:35] But if we're in the right frame of mind, if we're in a quiet place and we can hear from when the Holy Spirit is able to minister to us because of the position that we've placed our hearts, the Holy Spirit might say to us and convict us, but with your family, you're not being patient and kind.
[00:19:55] And that there, right there, the Lord is speaking to us in both ways. Can you guys see that? Through the Word and through the Holy Spirit. It's directly applicable to our lives.
[00:20:06] But folks, in order for that to happen, it can't be a rushed thing. We can't sit down and just read the Bible like a book and get up and forget.
[00:20:14] We have to meditate on the Word, read it slowly. It's not about the Bible reading.
[00:20:21] I used to try and read the Bible in one year, and then I failed at that. Then I used to try and read it in two years, and then I succeeded at that. And then I couldn't remember what I'd read half the time.
[00:20:31] But now I focus on quality, not quantity. If in your quiet time you only read two verses, that's fine as long as you understand them and as long as they've spoken to you.
[00:20:43] Rather go for quality over quantity.
[00:20:46] Amen.
[00:20:52] Just to demonstrate a little bit more about how the Lord speaks to us, let's look at 1 Kings. We go back to the Old Testament, 1 Kings 19, verse 11 and 12.
[00:21:05] In these verses, the Lord appears to Elijah and we pick up the story here. The Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.
[00:21:18] Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind.
[00:21:28] After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came A fire.
[00:21:36] But the Lord was not in the fire.
[00:21:39] And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
[00:21:43] The Lord spoke in the whisper.
[00:21:47] If we look at those verses preceding that, we just see what an awesome display of power and might.
[00:21:54] I mean, it must have been a terrifying thing to see. If you read that again and you understand these verses tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks.
[00:22:05] There was an earthquake. Imagine it must have been a terrible thing. You know, in Zim, we haven't really had proper earthquakes, but every now and again we get an earth tremor. And that's quite a frightening thing when the doors and the window frames start rattling and the very ground that you're standing on is shaking. Imagine a proper earthquake.
[00:22:23] And then there was fire as well. After that mighty display of might and power, the Lord came in a gentle whisper.
[00:22:31] Amazing.
[00:22:33] So the Holy Spirit will not force himself upon us. Often the Holy Spirit is described as a gentleman. Not so.
[00:22:40] But I looked. I couldn't find any reference in the Bible to say the Holy Spirit is a gentleman. But when we look at how the Bible describes the Holy Spirit as being gentle, as being kind, as being guiding and leading, we can see that all those collective descriptions will show us that the Holy Spirit is like a gentleman. Not so.
[00:23:01] But he will not force Himself upon us.
[00:23:08] The reality is we as saints all want the benefits of hearing from God.
[00:23:14] But in this instant age, this instant age of everything instantly, everything on your phone instantly getting information instantly, getting what you want, instant gratification.
[00:23:28] If we're looking for a WhatsApp or a VN from the Lord every day, sadly we're not going to get it.
[00:23:37] The world may have changed, but God hasn't. He still seeks us in that quiet place. He still seeks that relationship with us. And with that there's no substitute for time.
[00:23:51] Spending time with the Lord, seeking Him, reading His Word. He will reveal things to us through His Word and then through the Holy Spirit.
[00:24:08] If we look at our last verse today, Ephesians 5:18, Don't get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
[00:24:26] So like I said earlier, when we are saved, we receive a deposit of the Holy Spirit.
[00:24:31] But in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we need to ask the Lord for that, for an infilling of the Holy Spirit.
[00:24:39] And in this verse it says, instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. That also insinuates that sometimes we need a refilling of the Holy Spirit. Not so. It's not maybe a once off thing, but sometimes if we're feeling that, yeah, we're not feeling quite in touch. We're not feeling really full with the Holy Spirit, that we need a refilling of the Holy Spirit.
[00:25:02] So what I'd like to do this morning, folks, is just in ending, I'd like to invite those of you who maybe haven't been filled with the Holy Spirit before or maybe those who need a refilling of the Holy Spirit. I'd like to invite you up here this morning and we would love to pray for you for that.
[00:25:23] And so, yeah, I'd just like to extend that invitation and really would love to pray for you guys. I think, Simon, maybe you can close the service. Those who want to go and have tea and coffee, they're welcome. Those who want to come up for prayer and receive an infilling of the Holy Spirit or a refilling of the Holy Spirit, we would love to pray for you. We'll make it a private thing. Everyone's not going to be gawking at you. But really, guys, if you want to hear from the Lord, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Amen.
