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Vital
Issues: God Has Spoken By:
Daniel D. Shutt
Where in the world is God? Doesn’t it
seem as though the world has spun out of control, even His
control, in this crazy, breakneck 20th
century? After all, many Americans have more education,
more money, more leisure time than ever before, but
correspondingly, there is a vast and astonishing deficit
of love, morality, and righteousness. Doesn’t God
notice? And if He does, what is He thinking about
abortion, about nuclear disarmament, or about
"family values?" Is He concerned with
pollution, with urban crime, with teenage pregnancy? And
why does it seem as if He is silent, as if He has no
message for us today?
Over 2,500 years ago, the nation of
Northern Israel, with its capital Samaria, was in a
similar crisis. Like us, they were a confident,
self-centered society. One historian has written,
in words that sound eerily contemporary, "Moral
standards had crashed, little honesty was left in
business, poor people were badly treated, and
upper-class indulgence was a byword; but there was a
trade boom on, money was flowing into the country,
and...they never had it so good. How could anyone
be worried in such prosperity?
How indeed? But we are worried; we are
not sure that "be happy" is an adequate
philosophy for a whole life. Intuitively we know that
wealth has not brought wisdom, materialism has not
promoted morality, and commercial success has not
yielded a clear conscience. We have a deficit—we know
it in our deepest being—but we have few answers.
Well, what about God? In our enlightened
day, some simply say that there is no God, therefore He
cannot by default, care or speak. "Who needs a
voice from God?" they say. "Can’t we simply
apply our intelligence, our technology, our popular
psychology to the future and expect a bright result? A
society that can send men to the moon, after all, must
be able to find answers to the riddle of life!"
Alternatively, some may feel that God
exists, perhaps even cares, but is powerless to affect
our modern society. Big-hearted but toothless, He is a
fuzzy relic of our father’s religion, not a relevant
participant in our lives. Still others suppose that God
has the power, but not the will to intervene for our
benefit. To them, He is a force to be reckoned
with—like gravity or an earthquake—powerful but not
personal, loveless and ultimately unlovable.
These philosophies lead to one
inescapable end: utter and unrelieved despair. At best,
they yield a God with a big heart and no hands; at worst
they leave no heart, no hands, no hope. Human life is an
accident without meaning, history is a random joke, and
there is no future, no hope, no light.
The Christian, on the other hand, asks a
different and intriguing question: Is it possible that
God has spoken, but we have not listened? A prophet
named Amos had a stunning message for the ancient
kingdom of Israel: "The days are coming,"
declares the Sovereign Lord, "when I will send a
famine through the land—not a famine of food or a
thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of
the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander
from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it" (Amos 8:11 ff.).
Did God have a message for them? Indeed
He did! What’s more, He had been speaking to them for
centuries. Since the days of Abraham and Moses and
David, He had sent a series of instructions,
encouragements, and when necessary, warnings. God indeed
was speaking—the word of the Lord through Amos is
indisputable evidence of that; the danger was that if
they continued to refuse to listen, He would speak no
more.
The Bible teaches, all true Christians
believe, that God is alive, and that He is not silent.
It is important, therefore to understand how God has
spoken in the past and how He is speaking today. We can
explain this with some simple facts from the Bible:
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God has spoken generally through
creation (Psalm 19:1, Romans 1:20).
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God has spoken prophetically through
holy men of God (Hebrews 1:1).
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God has spoken finally and
completely through His own Son, Jesus Christ
(John 1:18, Hebrews 1:2).
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God is speaking permanently
in His written Word, the Bible (1 Peter 1:24-25).
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God is speaking universally
through the gospel, the good news about salvation
and eternal life (Mark 16:15).
The good news is this: In spite of
widespread abandonment of God and His Word, God is still
speaking! And more than that, God is speaking to you and
me!
God’s message to us from the Bible is
one of solemn warning and tender love. It is a call, on
the one hand, to repent of our sin; on the other, to
receive forgiveness of sins. It says that sin pays wages
of eternal death; it shouts that Christ offers eternal
life in Heaven with Himself. It is a message of the
curse we all bear, yet it is a story of a Savior who
carried our sins and our curse at the cross!
The message of good news is summed up in
the following words from God:
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"God commands all people
everywhere to repent. For He has set a day when He
will judge the world with justice by the Man He has
appointed" (Acts 17:31).
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"God commends [demonstrates]
His own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 3:8).
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"Faith comes from hearing the
message, and the message is heard through the Word
of Christ" (Romans 10:17).
And so, our restlessness, our emptiness,
our longing for a compass in the dark waters of life has
but one answer: We need God! We need to hear Him speak.
We need to meet His Son, Jesus Christ, who died for
sinners on the Cross. We need to rely fully on Him for
forgiveness of sins, to trust Him with our lives, our
souls, our all. It is only in Christ that the full
meaning of life is realized, the full potential of
human-hood experienced, and the full joy of eternal life
known!
A final warning, echoing the words of
Amos, is in order: "Beware lest He speak no
more!" Perhaps He has been speaking to us and
we have not been listening: "For God does speak now
one way, now another though man may not perceive
it" (Job 33:14). We must listen today, for God
says, "Today, if you hear [my] voice, do not harden
your hearts" (Hebrews 3:7).
God’s Word refused is God’s Word
lost. "Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the
day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2).
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