Chapter 6
The Speaking Voice
John 1:1
An intelligent plain man, untaught in the truths of Christianity, coming
upon this text, would likely conclude that John meant to teach that it
is the nature of God to speak, to communicate His thoughts to others.
And he would be right. A word is a medium by which thoughts are
expressed, and the application of the term to the Eternal Son leads us
to believe that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God is
forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation. The whole Bible
supports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking.
He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His
speaking Voice.
One of the great realities with which we have to deal is the Voice of
God in His world. The briefest and only satisfying cosmogony is this:
`He spake and it was done.' The why of natural law is the living Voice
of God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought all
worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not
a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God
spoken into the structure of all things. This word of God is the breath
of God filling the world with living potentiality. The Voice of God is
the most powerful force in nature, indeed the only force in nature, for
all energy is here only because the power-filled Word is being spoken.
The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is
confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather.
The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is
free. `The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life.' The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can
have power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe. It
is the present Voice which makes the written Word all- powerful.
Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.
We take a low and primitive view of things when we conceive of God at
the creation coming into physical contact with things, shaping and
fitting and building like a carpenter. The Bible teaches otherwise: `By
the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by
the breath of his mouth. ...For he spake, and it was done; he commanded,
and it stood fast.' (Ps 33:6,9) `Through faith we understand that the
worlds were framed by the word of God.' (Heb 11:3) Again we must
remember that God is referring ere not to His written Word, but to His
speaking Voice. His world-filling Voice is meant, that Voice which
antedates the Bible by uncounted centuries, that Voice which has not
been silent since the dawn of creation, but is sounding still throughout
the full far reaches of the universe.
The Word of God is quick and powerful. In the beginning He spoke to
nothing, and it became something. Chaos heard it and became order,
darkness heard it and became light. `And God said - - and it was so.'
(Gen 1:9) These twin phrases, as cause and effect, occur throughout the
Genesis story of the creation. The said accounts for the so. The so is
the said put into the continuous present. That God is here and that He
is speaking--these truths are back of all other Bible truths; without
them there could be no revelation at all. God did not write a book and
send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke
a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and
causing the power of them to persist across the years. God breathed on
clay and it became a man; He breathes on men and they become clay.
`Return ye children of men,' (Ps 90:3) was the word spoken at the Fall
by which God decreed the death of every man, and no added word has He
needed to speak. The sad procession of mankind across the face of the
earth from birth to the grave is proof that His original Word was
enough.
We have not given sufficient attention to that deep utterance in the
Book of John, `That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.' (John 1:9) Shift the punctuation around as we
will and the truth is still there: the Word of God affects the hearts of
all men as light in the soul. In the hearts of all men the light shines,
the Word sounds, and there is no escaping them. Something like this
would of necessity be so if God is alive and in His world. And John says
that it is so. Even those persons who have never heard of the Bible have
still been preached to with sufficient clarity to remove every excuse
from their hearts forever. `Which show the work of the law written in
their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts
the mean while either accusing or else excusing one another.' (Rom 2:15)
`For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his
eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.' (Rom 1:20)
This universal Voice of God was by the ancient Hebrews often called
Wisdom, and was said to be everywhere sounding and searching throughout
the earth, seeking some response from the sons of men. The eighth
chapter of the Book of Proverbs begins, `Doth not wisdom cry? and
understanding put forth her voice?' The writer then pictures wisdom as a
beautiful woman standing `in the top of the high places, by the way in
the places of the paths.' She sounds her voice from every quarter so
that no one may miss hearing it. `Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice
is to the sons of men.' Then she pleads for the simple and the foolish
to give ear to her words. It is spiritual response for which this Wisdom
of God is pleading, a response which she has always sought and is but
rarely able to secure. The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends
upon our hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear.
This universal Voice has ever sounded, and it has often troubled men
even when they did not understand the source of their fears. Could it be
that this Voice distilling like a living mist upon the hearts of men has
been the undiscovered cause of the troubled conscience and the longing
for immortality confessed by millions since the dawn of recorded
history? We need not fear to face up to this. The speaking Voice is a
fact. How men have reacted to it is for any observer to note.
When God spoke out of heaven to our Lord, self-centered men who heard it
explained it by natural causes: they said, `It thundered.' This habit of
explaining the Voice by appeals to natural law is at the very root of
modern science. In the living breathing cosmos there is a mysterious
Something, too wonderful, too awful [i.e. `awesome'] for any mind to
understand. The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to
his knees and whispers, `God.' The man of earth kneels also, but not to
worship. He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how
of things. Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought
habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are
more likely to explain than to adore. `It thundered,' we exclaim, and go
our earthly way. But still the Voice sounds and searches. The order and
life of the world depend upon that Voice, but men are mostly too busy or
too stubborn to give attention.
Everyone of us has had experiences which we have not been able to
explain: a sudden sense of loneliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe in
the face of the universal vastness. Or we have had a fleeting visitation
of light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quick
flash an assurance that we are from another world, that our origins are
divine. What we saw there, or felt, or heard, may have been contrary to
all that we had been taught in the schools and at wide variance with all
our former beliefs and opinions. We were forced to suspend our acquired
doubts while, for a moment, the clouds were rolled back and we saw and
heard for ourselves. Explain such things as we will, I think we have not
been fair to the facts until we allow at least the possibility that such
experiences may arise from the Presence of God in the world and His
persistent effort to communicate with mankind. Let us not dismiss such
an hypothesis too flippantly.
It is my own belief (and here I shall not feel bad if no one follows me)
that every good and beautiful thing which man has produced in the world
has been the result of his faulty and sin-blocked response to the
creative Voice sounding over the earth. The moral philosophers who
dreamed their high dreams of virtue, the religious thinkers who
speculated about God and immortality, the poets and artists who created
out of common stuff pure and lasting beauty: how can we explain them? It
is not enough to say simply, `It was genius.' What then is genius? Could
it be that a genius is a man haunted by the speaking Voice, laboring and
striving like one possessed to achieve ends which he only vaguely
understands? That the great man may have missed God in his labors, that
he may even have spoken or written against God does not destroy the idea
I am advancing. God's redemptive revelation in the Holy Scriptures is
necessary to saving faith and peace with God. Faith in a risen Saviour
is necessary if the vague stirrings toward immortality are to bring us
to restful and satisfying communion with God. To me this is a plausible
explanation of all that is best outside of Christ. But you can be a good
Christian and not accept my thesis.
The Voice of God is a friendly Voice. No one need fear to listen to it
unless he has already made up his mind to resist it. The blood of Jesus
has covered not only the human race but all creation as well. `And
having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile
all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth,
or things in heaven.' (Col 1:20) We may safely preach a friendly Heaven.
The heavens as well as the earth are filled with the good will of Him
that dwelt in the bush (Ex. 3). The perfect blood of atonement secures
this forever.
Whoever will listen will hear the speaking Heaven. This is definitely
not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for
listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the
opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous
heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.
But we may take heart. To a people caught in the tempest of the last
great conflict God says, `Be still, and know that I am God,' (Ps 46:10)
and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and
safety lie not in noise but in silence.
It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we
get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us. Then if we
will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our
hearts. I think for the average person the progression will be something
like this: First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a
voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy
moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that
which had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an
intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear
friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see
and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and All.
The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that
God is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal world
to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit that
they should accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try to
think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the
words there on the page are actually for them. Aman may say, `These
words are addressed to me,' and yet in his heart not feel and know that
they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of
God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book.
I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong
conception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent
God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished
lapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as the
record of what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood.
With notions like that in our heads how can we believe? The facts are
that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God
to speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the word. The
Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the
infallible declaration of His mind for us put into our familiar human
words.
I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we
approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which was
once spoken, but a book which is now speaking. The prophets habitually
said, `Thus saith the Lord.' They meant their hearers to understand that
God's speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the past tense
properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God was
spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as a child
once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continues to
exist. And those are but imperfect illustrations, for children die and
worlds burn out, but the Word of our God endureth forever.
If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible
expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a
thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a
thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God. Lord,
teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the
thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Give me the
spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, `Speak, for thy servant
heareth.' Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart. Let me get used to the
sound of Thy Voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of
earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy speaking
Voice. Amen.