God’s Voice

If someone asked me where to start reading the Bible, I’d recommend John’s gospel. It opens with the most informative prologue in the New Testament. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created. In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it“ (John 1:1-5).

John’s principal subject is Jesus so several fundamental truths about Him are revealed in these five verses. Being the Creator of everything, He is eternal. He’s always existed. He is part of the Trinity Godhead in that He’s with God. Yet He’s not to be considered anything less than God Almighty. He’s the God of Genesis 1:1. He is life itself. And He is, as He publicly announced, “the light of the world“ (John 8:12); the hope of our fallen planet that’s cursed because of sin’s darkness.

But He is foremost “the Word.” A.W. Tozer explained, “A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed, and the application of the term to the Eternal Son leads us to believe 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. …He is the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things.”

J.I. Packer wrote, “The Word is a person in fellowship with God, and the Word is Himself personally and eternally divine. He is, as John proceeds to tell us, the only Son of the Father. John sets this mystery of one God in two persons at the head of his gospel because he knows that nobody can make head or tail of the words and works of Jesus of Nazareth until they’ve grasped the fact that this Jesus is in truth God the Son.”

The Word has a voice that speaks to us clearly. R.C. Sproul wrote, “The zenith of God’s self-revelation is the person and work of Christ, the ‘Logos,’ who is also called ‘the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word‘ (Hebrews 1:3). God’s supreme revelation of Himself was His incarnation, the Word becoming flesh and speaking to us at our level of understanding.”

I’m not downplaying the vital importance of the Bible. Heavens no. But God’s voice isn’t limited to pages of chapters and verses. Rather, it’s as alive and free as He is. Jesus said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life“ (John 6:63). Tozer wrote, “God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s word in the universe. It’s the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful. Otherwise, it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.”

Contemplate the immense power unleashed by that voice! “By the LORD’s decree the heavens were made; by a mere word from His mouth all the stars in the sky were created. …Let the whole earth fear the LORD! Let all who live in the world stand in awe of Him! For He spoke, and it came into existence. He issued the decree, and it stood firm“ (Psalm 33:6,8). Never forget that Christ, the omnipotent One who literally spoke the atoms we’re made of into existence, willingly came to earth to suffer and die a criminal’s death in our place. Our magnificent Savior loves us that much.

The tragedy is that “He was in the world, and the world was created by Him, but the world did not recognize Him. He came to what was His own, but His own people did not receive Him“ (John 1:10-11). The Israelites had been taught for centuries that the promised Messiah would be a fierce, supernatural warrior rather than the Prince of Peace Jesus was. They chose to ignore what the prophet Isaiah had heard from God:

“He had no stately form or majesty that might catch our attention, no special appearance that we should want to follow Him. He was despised and rejected by people, one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness; people hid their faces from Him; He was despised, and we considered Him insignificant“ (Isaiah 53:2-3).

God spoke then and He still speaks now. Tozer wrote, “God is here and He’s speaking – these truths are back of all other Bible truths; without them there could be no revelation at all. God didn’t 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.”

This doesn’t mean God has revealed “everything about everything” in the Bible. What He’s revealed is all we need to know. It is sufficient. Cornelius Van Til wrote, “The existence of all things in the world are what they are by the plan of God. The knowledge of anything is by way of understanding the connection one has with the plan. The sin of man is within the plan. Its removal is within the plan. The facts of redemption, the explanation of those facts, are together a part of the plan. And man’s acceptance is within this plan.”

Evidence that false teachings abound is obvious whenever one hears from a pulpit the phrase, “God told me….” The words God has already spoken remain relevant. He doesn’t change and neither do His utterances recorded in Scripture. The revelator warned, “If anyone adds to them, I’ll add to him the plagues described in this book“ (Revelation 22:18). Beware.