F4F | Hearing the Voice of God Part 1

Fighting for the Faith

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F4F | Hearing the Voice of God Part 2

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseboro. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God.

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Now, have you ever heard somebody, a pastor, a preacher, teacher, conference speaker, self -proclaimed prophet, prophetess, apostle, or apostolate tell you that, well,

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Christianity, it's not a religion, it's a relationship. And because it's a relationship, you have to have two -way conversations with God.

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And if you're not hearing the voice of God, then you should question whether or not you're even a Christian.

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If you've ever heard that, yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below. Don't forget to like the video and ring the bell so that you can be notified when we update things here like that.

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We're gonna be doing a series on hearing the voice of God, and we're gonna prove definitively that what is meant by hearing the voice of God is not you hearing the still small voice or some audible voice or God speaking into your heart or things like that.

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And this is gonna be a multi -video segment, so it's gonna take us a few episodes to kind of tease this all out because the biblical teaching behind this is extensive.

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So if you're looking forward to a deep dive, you've come to the right place, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna start off by setting up the problem, if you would, by listening to three different false teachers.

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It doesn't matter who they are, but each of these you should put on the mark and avoid list. It doesn't matter who they are, because the goal here is to teach you this regardless of the pastor or preacher or prophet or apostle who's teaching these things.

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By the way, there are no modern -day prophets or apostles. Just want to make that clear. So let me whirl up the desktop here, and yeah, by the way, that's a photograph of a church

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I shot in New Mexico. It's a derelict church now since that trip I took back in September of 2020.

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We were social distancing. Anyway, let me let me pull this up, and we're gonna start off. We're gonna head over to Awaken Church.

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Awaken Church. They are formerly C3 Church San Diego. This is Becky Heindricks, and we're gonna listen to her talk about hearing the voice of God kind of anecdotally as she relays to us a story that took place in her family, and we'll note that what she's saying is kind of standard fare within evangelicalism, and again, we're setting up the problem right now, so let's listen in.

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I know Pastor Ann was just sharing this at our cherish nights this last week, and she had shared this with me a while back, and so we've started to implement this in our household.

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Now, we always sit down for family meals. We're actually really good about that, and we always, how was your day? How was math?

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What was this? What was that? And you know, you always get like the one word or like one -liners with like zero expansion, and you're just like pulling teeth to get information from your children.

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So Pastor Ann recommended a while back, why don't we start asking our children, like, what is God speaking to you about?

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What is he encouraging you with? What is he challenging you on? So note, she's assuming that God's going to speak directly to you.

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Does the Bible teach us that God's going to speak directly to us? We begin to make our children aware that God is a part of their daily lives, that he is actually speaking to them so they can develop a relationship with him.

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So that they can, quote, develop a relationship with him. Now, a little bit of a note here.

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The phrase, Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship, was originally coined as a phrase that distinguishes

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Christianity from works -based religions. The issue is, is that the relationship that we have is not best exemplified by comparing it to a romantic relationship or even a friendship.

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Instead, the proper way of understanding a Christian's relationship to God is one of father and adopted child, who used to be under the dominion of darkness and a slave to sin.

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But what has happened is, is that in our day and age, when evangelicals talk about hearing the voice of God and developing a relationship with him, oftentimes the way they describe

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God turns Jesus into like a bearded girlfriend who gets angry if you don't text him to let him know that you're going to be five minutes late for Bible study.

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That's a problem. That's a huge problem and a lot of confusion. And the way it's being used today, this idea,

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Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship, the way it's being used today is a far cry from the way it was originally being used to distinguish it from a religion by which you do things in order to be saved by your obedience, your good works, or fill in the blank.

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You get the idea, but that's not how it's being used anymore today. They can learn God's voice and start applying things in their life.

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And so we sat down this... Now I'm going to back this up, and I want you to note here that she is not expecting her children to hear the voice of God in Scripture, at least not primarily the way she's describing it here.

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She does recognize that God does speak in Scripture, but here she's talking about, in the context here, she wants her kids to hear

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God speaking to their heart. So let me back this up. Listen again. It's a part of their daily lives that He is actually speaking to them so they can develop a relationship with Him, so they can learn

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God's voice and start applying things in their life. And so we sat down this week and I started the conversation.

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So what's God speaking to you about? What is He encouraging or maybe challenging or convicting you on? And my middle son says,

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God's been speaking to me about being brave. I said, oh, that's awesome. Why do you think that is? And he said, well,

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I've been reading lots of Bible verses and stories where all these people were so brave and they did such awesome things for God.

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So now I feel like I can be more brave. I can lift my hands and not worry about what people are thinking about me.

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Oh my gosh, mom heart melt. And then my daughter, she's like, well, I still don't know what

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God's voice sounds like. Mm hmm. Does the

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Bible say that God's going to speak to your heart? And I'm like, okay, so we had to explain, you know, it's not necessarily an audible voice, but He speaks to your heart.

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Like when you want to be kind to that person or reach out or do this, like that's God speaking to you. She's like, oh.

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And then my oldest son's like, yeah, I got nothing. And then my middle son, you know, in the harassing things they do as siblings says, oh, well,

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God should start speaking to you about not raging on Fortnite. Now, by the way, the Bible says something very specifically about fits of anger and rage, that these are the works of the sinful flesh.

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I would point you to Galatians 5 as an example of that. So the voice of God has spoken regarding rage.

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And so it's weird that the expectation is that God's going to speak to his heart about rage rather than recognize

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God has spoken in his word about rage. And then he goes, yeah,

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I should probably work on that. And then Henley goes, yeah, but even if you don't rage out loud, you still rage in your head.

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And so it's like, oh, wow, that's actually a good point. Let's continue that conversation, Henley.

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Now, again, I've pointed out in the past, I'll continue to point it out, the voice of God has spoken very clearly that what

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Becky Hendricks is doing, she's not permitted to do. This is a command of Christ.

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I would point you to 1 Corinthians 14 in that regard. So she's clearly ignoring the voice of God in the scriptures.

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Next up is a fellow that you should put on your mark and avoid list if you haven't already.

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It's Erwin McManus of Mosaic Church in Southern California.

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And here's a sermon titled, Hearing God's Voice. And I'm going to note here that in the days ahead, we're going to release on the podcast version of Fighting for the

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Faith, a full sermon review of this sermon, as well as the sermon we're going to show you from Rick Warren from 2015 at the

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Hillsong Conference. So look for upcoming podcast episodes where we will tear this apart.

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And I'll kind of say it this way, is if God really expected me to hear

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His voice, why is it that both Erwin McManus and Rick Warren in sermons on hearing the voice of God had to twist the scriptures, and I mean badly, in order to make it appear like God's going to speak to me, speak into my heart?

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It doesn't make any sense. So we'll demonstrate the ways in which Erwin McManus twists

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God's word in this regard. We'll also note the ways in which Rick Warren egregiously twists

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God's word in order to make it appear that God wants to speak into our hearts.

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And he even twists the prophet Haggai, or no, Habakkuk, in saying, here's the five ways in which you can hear the voice of God.

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It's unbelievable what Rick Warren will do. But again, those will be in the podcast follow -up episodes to this video.

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So for those of you who want to go more in -depth, have a deeper dive, we're going to review this entire sermon on the podcast.

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But let me give you the setup for the sermon itself in this installment of fighting for the faith, and see if you can spot the problem.

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And even if you can't, don't worry, I'll point it out. Here we go. I think it's when I was in junior high. It was the first time we ever visited the mountains of North Carolina.

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I'm not sure why, but I've always had this romantic magnetism toward the mountains and that whole region of the

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United States, and where the Cherokee Indians used to roam. And my brother and I and our family were there.

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But one time we went out into the woods, and one of the most terrifying things in the world when you're a city kid is to get lost in the woods during sunset when you realize you're running out of light and you have no idea where you're going.

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Everything looks the same. I've lived in cities all my life. I am used to signs.

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I'm used to street signs and directions carefully written out so I can know exactly where I'm going and how to get where I want to go.

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But in the woods, it was different. And as it got darker and darker and darker, you hear a lot of eerie sounds, by the way.

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You hear a lot of things walking that you cannot see. And I found that it was so difficult not only to not be able to navigate where I'm going, but even to find someone through sound when someone would say,

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I'm over here, I'm over here. It was as if the sound was coming 360 degrees when someone was trying to guide me by their voice.

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I couldn't figure out if it was coming from the right, from the left, from north, from south, from east, from west. And I look now, and I think about how we have all these

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GPS systems, and we have ways and all these different ways of traveling our way through cities.

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It kind of drives me crazy sometimes because whenever you have someone under 35 driving you, they don't even look at the road.

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They just look at the map. And sometimes, hey, look, just look up the streets right there.

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You don't have to look at the map. But now it's not just a map that you see. Now you have someone explaining the map to you.

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Turn right in 400 feet. Okay, so note, he's making a distinction about how we see and hear.

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And the difference between visual and auditory learning instructions and things like that.

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That's the setup for this sermon on hearing God's voice. In 200 feet, in 100 feet, turn right.

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And if you're like, I think my son Aaron, he turns it into a British voice so that she speaks kindly to him and with a little bit of sophistication.

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And I wonder when you're driving, are you paying attention to what you see or are you paying attention to what you hear?

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Why is it either or? I say, yeah, I do. I pay attention to both. Because I think that there's a divide in some ways between being a visual learner, being an auditory learner.

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In fact, if I took a survey, I wonder how many of us would say, no, the best way for me to learn is I need to see it.

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I need to look at it. The best way for me to learn is I need to hear it. I need it explained or I need the sound.

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Because when you become a follower of Jesus, you almost immediately become a visual learner.

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Now, here's the turn. So when you become a follower of Jesus, you almost immediately become a, quote, visual learner, talking about the

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Bible. But watch what he says the Bible is for. You have a

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Bible. You're told to read it. You start diving into it, meditating on it, maybe even memorizing it.

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And so you become, in many ways, a visual learner. You learn by reading the Bible, taking notes, writing down thoughts, observing applications, and then applying it to your life.

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But the crazy thing about it, the crazy thing, is that even though as a follower of Jesus, you need to be good at being a visual learner.

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You need to dive into the scriptures, listen to what God is saying, write it down, apply— You need to be good at that, man.

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You've got to be good at that. —to your life. But really, the Bible is not trying to heighten your visual skills.

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What? So really, the Bible's not trying to heighten your visual skills. What's it there for then,

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Erwin? The Bible's trying to heighten your auditory skills. What?

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Because in the end, what you see in the Bible isn't what's going to help you navigate your life.

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Seriously, I want you to think about the magnitude of that quote. What you see in the Bible is not going to help you navigate your life.

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Now, this is where I think coming up with a little bit of biblical text is going to help us out.

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So we are going to go—let's see here. I've got so many things open here in preparation for our study today.

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I'm going to duplicate this tab, and what we're going to do is we're going to go to 2 Timothy chapter 3.

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We'll do a bigger in -depth study on 2 Timothy chapter 3 as part of the bigger portion of the teaching portion of this video.

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And again, this is going to be multi -segments. It's probably going to take us two videos to get this all out. So note here,

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Paul talking to young Pastor Timothy—yes, this is a pastoral epistle, and it's written to Timothy, who was a pastor of one of the congregations in the city of Ephesus.

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And here's what he says in chapter 3, verse 14. But as for you, young Pastor Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings—grammata in Greek—which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ.

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All Scripture—here we go, graphe is the Greek term here, graphe, writing—all

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Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

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So you'll note that Erwin McManus, what he just said, is a direct contradiction to what the

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Apostle Paul, who wrote this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said in 2

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Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17. That should alert you that if somebody is going to contradict

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God's Word straight on while teaching you to hear the voice of God, that they're not teaching you to hear the voice of God because he's directly contradicting the voice of God.

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So let me back this up and listen again to the quote in context.

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I'm going to go back 15 seconds. Heighten your visual skills.

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The Bible is trying to heighten your auditory skills because in the end, what you see in the

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Bible isn't what's going to help you navigate your life. It's not how you're going to figure out where God is actually guiding you, taking you, and moving you.

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The Bible is there so that you can become an auditory learner. The Bible is there so you can see what

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God has done, so you can read what God is saying, but in the end, it's actually there so that you can learn to hear

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God's voice. In other words, the Bible is there to teach you how to hear

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God's voice so that you don't need the Bible anymore. That's really what he's arguing for here.

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You can identify the voice of God. Uh -huh. So that you can identify the voice of God.

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And so if you're lost in the woods, God's not going to give you a written map to get you out of the woods.

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What God's going to do is he's going to call your name and teach you how to follow the sound of his voice to get where you need to go.

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Throughout the scriptures, there's this overwhelming theme of the power of God's voice.

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And as a follower of Christ, you cannot navigate the life that God is calling you to unless you learn to listen, and you listen well.

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So apparently, the Bible is not sufficient, and the whole purpose of the Bible is to teach you to hear God's voice so that you don't need the

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Bible. Really? Okay. Now, last example.

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This is going to go back in time a little bit, and you're going to note that this is going to go back to 2015.

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Rick Warren spoke at the Hillsong Conference back then, and he's going to use his message from the

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Hillsong Conference for his sermon, and this was on July 7th of 2015. You can find this on the

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Saddleback Church's YouTube channel. And I'll say this, 15 years ago, Rick Warren was like the pinnacle apex teacher of the moment in evangelicalism, not so much today.

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I mean, the runaway bestseller book at the time was The Purpose -Driven Life, and everybody had to be doing the

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Purpose -Driven Life Bible study, and a lot of people still believe that Rick Warren is a solid

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Bible teacher. In fact, I have known for a decade and a half, he is not a solid

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Bible teacher at all. He is an egregious twister of God's Word. And again, why would

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I learn how to, quote, hear the voice of God from somebody who is perverting and twisting the voice of God the way he does?

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But here's the setup from the 2015 Hillsong Conference, and again, I want to make this clear.

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We're going to do an entire sermon review of this sermon as well, and make that available on the podcast in the days ahead as part of the series that we're putting together on Hearing the

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Voice of God, so that you can do a deep dive on this. Now listen, here's the setup.

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The most important factor in your future is not your background.

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It's not your race. It's not your education. It's not the opinions of other people or what your parents told you.

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The most important factor in your future is hearing from God.

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Now, in a weird way, I would kind of agree with him, but he's not talking about reading your

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Bible. He's talking about something different. What does God say about your life?

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Now, the theme of this conference, Hillsong 15, is speak, Lord. We're listening.

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So last night, I just sat down and wrote out a few thoughts, and I want to talk to you this morning, and I actually want to invite

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Pastor Brian about halfway through this message. That would be Brian Houston. Come up and share as we talk about hearing the voice of God.

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Nothing is more important in your life than you learning how to hear the voice of God and distinguish it from Satan's voice, other people's voice, and your own voice.

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What biblical text says that? Nothing is more important than that.

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So it's a great theme. Now, the Bible is full of examples of God speaking to people.

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I agree. There are many examples of that in the Bible, but never is that example held up as something that we should consider normative that we would experience then as well.

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But we still get to hear God's voice, and I'll explain why when we get to the Bible study portion. So what's the problem today?

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Does God have laryngitis? Has he got a sore throat? Why can't you hear

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God speak to you? All right, so there's the question. Why can't you hear God speak to you? Watch what

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Rick Warren does. He's going to blame you for it. On a regular basis. The answer is because we're not tuned in.

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Yeah, see, God's talking, but we can't hear him. Now, I would point out just the absurdity of this.

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So God's talking to you, and you can't hear him because you're not, quote unquote, tuned in.

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What kind of powerless deity is this? Now, in the past, on the podcast, we have a voice that I use for the

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Holy Spirit, and we call it Vincent. And Vincent is the powerless

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Holy Spirit. He's really confused by technology, and he's never figured out how to communicate to most human beings, but he's figured out how to communicate with some.

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And so Vincent would say, Hi, this is the Holy Spirit, and I'm talking to you.

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Hello? Is anyone listening? I think

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I'm broadcasting on the right frequency. Hello? I have things to tell you.

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I want to reveal your purpose to you and things and stuff. Hello? Is anyone out there?

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This is nuts. So let me back this up, and I want you to hear Rick Warren say it again.

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That why can't you hear the voice of God? It's your fault. All right, so God is apparently talking, but you can't hear him, and it's your fault.

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Listen again. Has he got a sore throat? Why can't you hear

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God speak to you on a regular basis? The answer is because we're not tuned in.

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It's your fault. We're not tuned in. What I want to do in this time this morning is a couple of things.

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Quickly, just share the best example I know in Scripture of how to hear the voice of God through Moses.

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And then I want to invite Pastor Brian up, and I told him I was going to... Where did Moses teach us how to hear the voice of God?

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Answer is he never did teach us that, at least not the way that Rick Warren is going to intimate.

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If you pay attention to what Moses wrote, you will understand very clearly how to hear the voice of God.

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In fact, we're going to start in the Old Testament with Exodus chapters 19 through 24.

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Won't read them in their entirety, but you'll see the idea here. And I want to just discuss with him, how do you test an impression?

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How do you test an impression? Because a lot of you can't figure it out. Now, the longer you walk with the

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Lord, I've walked with Jesus Christ for over 50 years. I know the voice of Jesus Christ. I know when he speaks to me, there's no doubt in my mind.

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The Bible says that hearing God's voice and being able to distinguish it is important for three reasons.

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All right, so three reasons why it's important. First, it proves you are a child of God. Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice.

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Now, I want you to consider the impact of what he just said. He says that hearing the voice of God proves you're a child of God.

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And then he takes a verse from John chapter 10 out of context and says, my sheep hear my voice.

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Therefore, if you're not hearing the voice of God, and you don't know the voice of Jesus, you're probably not even a

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Christian. That's the implications of what he's saying here. Let me back it up, and then this will be part of how we tease this all out in our in -depth study.

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God's voice and being able to distinguish it is important for three reasons. First, it proves you are a child of God.

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Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice. Out of context. The Bible tells us in the book of John chapter 8, verse 47, he who belongs to God hears

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God's voice. Okay, we'll take a look at John 8, 47 too. He who does not belong to God does not hear it.

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Okay, I'm going to put a little time stamp here because I want to come back to this and note how he's twisting

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John 8, 47. Not only that, it protects you from mistakes. Job 33 talks about that.

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And not only that, it is the key to a productive life. So the key to a productive life is hearing the voice of God audibly?

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What I have been able to accomplish in my life is by the grace of God, and because I was able to discern what

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God was saying in that moment. Nothing is more important than you to be able to say, speak

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Lord, I'm listening. All right, nothing's more important than to be able to say, speak

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Lord, I'm listening. So there's three different teachers. It's not about the teacher, although I would say this,

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Becky Heindricks, Erwin McManus, and Rick Warren should be on your mark and avoid list.

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Mark and avoid. They are not sound Bible teachers at all, period.

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But here's the thing. If your pastor's teaching these same doctrines, he is no better than Becky Heindricks, Erwin McManus, or Rick Warren.

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That's the devastating part about all of this. This is not necessarily about warning people off from them.

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It's about warning people off from this false teaching. So let's open up the

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Scriptures, and we're going to embark on an in -depth biblical look at hearing the voice of God.

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We will also, along the way, look at what Jesus says in John chapter 10, my sheep hear my voice, and show what it is that he means by that, and definitively show you from Scripture that it does not mean that Jesus is saying he's going to audibly talk to you in your heart.

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Far, far from it, and the biblical texts make this clear. So all of that being said, let's go ahead and crack open a

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Bible, shall we? So let me see. Where do I want to go first? I really want to go into Exodus.

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That's where I really want to go. Let's see here. There we go.

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That's Exodus 19. It's all the way over there. Exodus chapter 19. This is the place where we're going to begin.

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If you were to do a biblical search for the phrase, obey my voice, and look in the

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Old Testament, this is where it begins. And so Exodus chapter 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24, they work together as a unit.

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And in Exodus 19 through 24, you have the creation of the

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Bible, the very, very first pages of Scripture that are written. And this is vitally important that you understand this.

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This becomes the foundation of everything else regarding how the Scriptures are built. And I want you to pay attention to what

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God says about obeying his voice and what it means in this context.

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Exodus 19, 1 says, Now on the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai.

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They set out from Rephidim and came to the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness.

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There Israel encamped before the mountain, while Moses went up to God.

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Yahweh called to him out of the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel, You yourselves have seen what

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I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

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Now therefore, if you will indeed, and here's the phrase, Obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.

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For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

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These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. So note,

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God is not speaking directly to the people of Israel. He's speaking to them through Moses, and the idea then is that what

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Moses is going to write down, God is saying, you need to pay attention to it.

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My voice is in those written words, and you are to obey my voice and keep my covenant.

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He's not expecting you to hear it inside of here. He's not expecting you to hear it while it's out there dancing on the winds, or a still small voice, or a radio station that you need to tune into.

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Nothing like that. It's in the written words that God gives Moses.

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So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that Yahweh had commanded him.

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And we'll listen to what their response is. And all the people answered together and said, All that Yahweh has spoken, we will do.

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So God spoke to Moses, Moses wrote the words down, Moses took the words to the people, and the people said,

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All that Yahweh has spoken, we will do. The implication is that the voice of God is in the written text.

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So we continue. So Moses reported the words of the people to Yahweh, and Yahweh said to Moses, Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when

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I speak to you, and that they may also believe you forever. And when Moses told the words of the people to Yahweh, Yahweh said to Moses, Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day.

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On the third day, Yahweh will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. All right, so this is the setup.

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Now, as you read through what happens next, the assembly gathers at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses alone ascends, and then this is where we get then the beginning of the writing of Scripture, and it begins with these words.

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And God spoke these words, saying, I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

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You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above and that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, and you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, Yahweh your

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God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

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You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

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What's the first order of business in the Scripture as it's first being written? The Ten Commandments, the law of God.

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I'm going to scroll through this so that you can see this then, is that what happens next in the subsequent chapters is that it continues.

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Now, these are the rules that you shall set before them, and so God gives them rules about slaves, about marriage, about selling your daughter as a slave, about one who strikes a man so that he dies.

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So there's rules about murder and manslaughter, curses, people who quarrel, people who strike a slave or a female with a rod.

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And so you know, these are the first words written in the Bible. That's what they are, and so you begin to get the rules, the law of God written down.

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Talking about what happens if a fire breaks out and catches thorns so the stacked grain or standing grain of a field is consumed.

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A lot of very practical things are discussed here, and all these words were given by God to Moses who wrote them down in a book and then brought them to the people.

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So this continues through 21, 22, 23, 24, and then in 24, things change a little bit.

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Verse 23, Moses came and told the people all the words of Yahweh and all the rules, and all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that Yahweh has spoken, we will do.

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Did they hear God speaking in their hearts? Nope. Did they even audibly hear the words that God spoke to Moses?

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No, they knew that God was speaking to Moses, but the words, they were all written down.

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So Moses wrote down all the words of Yahweh. And note here, this is dealing with inspiration.

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Moses wrote down all the words of Yahweh. They were all written down.

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He rose early in the morning, built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel.

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He sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to Yahweh, and Moses took half the blood, put it in basins.

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Half the blood he threw against the altar. Then the book of the covenant, he took the book of the covenant, and he read it in the hearing of the people.

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And they said, all that Yahweh has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient.

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And Moses took the blood, threw it on the people, and said, behold the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with these words.

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So, how do we hear the voice of God? Well, the voice of God is found in the

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Bible. These are the words of God. And you'll note that Christ, Jesus himself, the

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Son of God in human flesh, he has the same view of the biblical text.

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In Mark chapter 7, a text I go to with some frequency, usually in relation to the

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Pharisees, but in this particular case, we're going to emphasize Jesus's view of the written word of God.

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You can see it very clearly in this text. Now, when the Pharisees gathered to him, to Jesus, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of the disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.

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For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, which is a competing body of work claiming to be the voice of God.

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The tradition of the elders was the so -called oral Torah that the

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Pharisees claim that Moses received from God, as well as the written

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Torah that he received from God. And they claim that God is speaking through the oral

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Torah, otherwise known as the tradition of the elders, and Jesus is denying that God's voice has anything to do with the oral

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Torah, and he refuses to allow his disciples to obey the commandments of the oral

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Torah. Keep that in mind, because that's not the voice of God. For the

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Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders.

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And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash, and there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.

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And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk? Walk is like conduct their life according to the tradition of the elders, but they eat with defiled hands.

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And he said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, you hypocrites. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

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In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. So here

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Jesus makes it clear that the oral Torah, the tradition of the elders, these are not the commandments of God.

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These are the commandments of men. God's voice is not in the oral Torah. God did not give those words.

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Those were not words given by God to Moses at all. So and then he says this, you leave the commandment of God.

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Whose commandment? God's commandment. And you hold to the tradition of men. And now watch what

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Jesus says then next here in Mark 7, 9, and 10. He uses two phrases interchangeably.

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Then Jesus said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

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For Moses said, honor your father and mother. Now here's the question. Did Moses say honor your father and mother?

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Or did God say honor your father and mother? The answer is yes. Because God gave those words to Moses in Exodus chapter 20, honor your father and mother.

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And Moses wrote them down, but they were God's words. And remember, we will obey the voice of God, all the words that Yahweh has spoken.

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So commandment of God, Moses said. In this particular case, the two work together.

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And what Moses said, these are God's words. And this is where we hear the voice of God.

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For Moses said, honor your father and mother. Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

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But you say, which is a different thing altogether, a different set of words. These are not words from God.

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These are words coming from human beings. If a man tells his father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me as corban, that is a gift given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother.

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Thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down, and many such things you do.

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So you know, Jesus is very clear in this matter. God spoke to Moses. Moses wrote the words down.

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God is commanding. Moses said. It's all synonymous. Because what Moses said, he said with the authority of God, because he wrote the words of God.

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And that's where God's voice is to be heard. Now in the book of Jeremiah, I would note, we're going to take a look at a couple of chapters here in Jeremiah, at least for this installment of Fighting for the

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Faith. And we'll see the consistency of the concept of hearing the voice of God in the written word.

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Jeremiah, who was a prophet sent by God in the days immediately before Judah's apostasy would result in them being carried off into exile in Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar's campaign against Judah resulted in nine out of ten

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Jews being slaughtered by that campaign back at that time.

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This was all a punishment from God because of their persistent refusal to obey the voice of God.

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Jeremiah makes this very clear throughout his prophecy in the book of Jeremiah.

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We'll take a look at a couple of chapters to kind of highlight the fact. Jeremiah writes, chapter nine, verse one,

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Oh, that my head were waters, my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.

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Oh, that I had in the desert a traveler's lodging place that I might leave my people and go away from them, for they're all adulterers, a company of treacherous men.

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They bend their tongue like a bow. Falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land.

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And I would note there is a huge increase of falsehood.

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Falsehood has grown strong in the visible body of Christ. Truth has not.

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Truth has suffered terribly. Falsehood and not truth has grown strong in the land, for they proceed from evil to evil and they do not know me, declares

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Yahweh. So you're going to note here, they don't know me. How can they know

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Yahweh? I mean, isn't Christianity a relationship, not a religion?

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In one sense, you can say that it is. But here, note here, the Lord is complaining that nobody knows him.

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So how does one get to know God? So let everyone beware of his neighbor and put no trust in any brother, for every brother is a deceiver.

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Every neighbor goes about as a slanderer. Everyone deceives his neighbor and no one speaks the truth.

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They have taught their tongue to speak lies. They weary themselves committing iniquity, heaping oppression upon oppression and deceit upon deceit.

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They refuse to know me, declares Yahweh. Therefore, thus says Yahweh Sabaoth, the

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God of armies. Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can

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I do because of my people? Their tongue is a deadly arrow. It speaks deceitfully. With his mouth, each speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he plans ambush for him.

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Shall I not punish them for these things, declares Yahweh? And shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?

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I will take up weeping and wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard.

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Both birds of the air and the beasts have fled and are gone. I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals.

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I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant. So who is the man so wise that he can understand this?

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God has threatened them with severe punishment. Why? Well, we'll see this, what he says.

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Who is the man who is so wise who can understand this? To whom has the mouth of Yahweh spoken that he may declare it?

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Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness so that no one passes through?

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And Yahweh says, because they have forsaken my law, and here the

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Hebrew is Torah. They have forsaken my Torah that I set before them and have not obeyed my voice or walked according to it.

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Isn't that interesting? Obeying the voice of God means listening to, reading, and hearing the

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Bible, the written word of God, and obeying the voice of God that is in there.

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But they have stubbornly followed their own hearts, God says, and they've gone after the

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Baals as their fathers taught them. Therefore, thus says Yahweh Sabaoth, the God of Israel, behold,

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I will feed this people with bitter food and give them poisonous water to drink. I'll scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have consumed them.

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So you'll note, Jeremiah 9, 13 and 14 explicitly teaches that the voice of God is heard in the written word of God, and that people do not know

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God because they are inattentive to his voice in the scriptures.

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So if that's not enough, there's more. We'll go to Jeremiah 11. Jeremiah 11, same theme.

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The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh. Hear the words of the covenant and speak to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

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You shall say to them, thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, cursed be the man who does not hear the words of this covenant.

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So now you're cursed if you don't hear the Bible, that I commanded your fathers when

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I brought them out of the land of Egypt from the iron furnace saying, listen to my voice and do all that I command you, so you shall be my people and I will be your

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God, so that I may confirm the oath I swore to your fathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey as to this day.

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Then I answered, so be it, Yahweh. And Yahweh said to me, proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem.

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Hear the words of this covenant and do them. And what's Jeremiah pointing to? The Bible.

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The Bible as it was back then. It was incomplete, but the voice of God was clearly in it.

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And God is saying, hear my voice, obey my voice, and you're cursed if you won't listen to it.

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For I solemnly warned your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, warning them persistently even to this day, obey my voice.

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Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart.

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Therefore, I brought them up. I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not.

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Again, Yahweh said to me, a conspiracy exists among the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned their back, turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers who refused to hear my words.

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They have gone after other gods to serve them, the house of Israel and the house of Judah, broken my covenant that I made with their fathers.

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Huh, where's the voice of God found? Where the voice of God says it's to be found?

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In the scriptures. Daniel, Daniel, who was one of the fellows who was in exile in Babylon because of the refusal of the people of Judah to hear the voice of God and to obey his commands.

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Daniel chapter 9. Here you have Daniel searching the scriptures and ending up turning his face towards God and praying, and his prayer is quite fascinating.

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Here's what it says in Daniel 9. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, by a descent,

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Amid, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books, in the books, the number of years that according to the word of Yahweh to Jeremiah the prophet, pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.

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So whose words was he reading? The words of Yahweh. The words that Yahweh gave to Jeremiah.

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Daniel is listening to these words, believing he's hearing the voice of God. And he is, and he was.

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So then I turned my face to Yahweh, the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

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I prayed to Yahweh my God and made confession saying, O Lord, the great and awesome

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God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and your rules.

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We have not listened to your servants, the prophets who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

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So note, the reason why they sinned is because they refused to listen to the words that were spoken in the name of God, given by God to his prophets and his servants.

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To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all of Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, and all the lands to which you have driven them because of the treachery that they have committed against you.

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To us, O Yahweh, belongs open shame, to our kings and to our princes and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.

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To the Lord, our God, belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and listened to the charge and have not obeyed the voice of the

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Lord, our God, by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants, the prophets.

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All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice and the curse and oath that are written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us because we have sinned against him."

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According to Scripture, the place where God's voice is to be heard is in Scripture, and Daniel recognized it, and the reason why he was in exile is because Judah refused to read the

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Bibles. We'll talk more about that in the second episode, but let me go now here and let's take a look at John chapter 10 and take a look at a

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New Testament example and ask the question, is Jesus saying we're going to hear his audible voice inside of our hearts?

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Is that what he's saying? Here's what it says, John 10, truly, truly, I say to you, these are the words of Christ, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

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Notice he's speaking in an analogy here. To him, the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice.

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He calls to his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he's brought out all the sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

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A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech, and that's what that is, it's a figure of speech, this figure of speech

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Jesus used with him. You can't use this to say, oh, see, Jesus is going to speak to us directly.

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No, the question is, where is the voice of Jesus found? That's the question that's before us.

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In John 10, verse 16, Jesus says, I have other sheep that are not of this fold, talking about Gentiles.

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I must bring them also, and they will, quote, listen to my voice.

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And there will be one flock. How do we hear the voice of Jesus? Well, may

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I point out that it's not going to be any different than the way we hear the voice of Yahweh? All right, so Jesus in 10, 25, then goes on to say,

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I told you, you don't believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they will follow me. So true

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Christians who are the sheep of Jesus, they do hear the voice of Jesus. But the question is, where do we find that voice?

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And so we'll point out that the answer is actually quite simple. If you read the

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Gospel of John, chapter 17, Jesus prays something. This is part of what's known as Jesus's high priestly prayer, and this will tell us where we hear the voice of God, or the voice of Jesus.

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So when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and he said, Father, the hour has come.

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Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

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And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

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I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

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I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

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He's talking about his disciples. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them.

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Jesus gave his disciples the words that he received from his Father, and they have received them as the very words of God and the words of Christ, right?

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And they have come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

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I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

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All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them, and I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.

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Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

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While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost, except for the

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Son of Destruction, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these

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I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

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I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

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I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

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Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world, and for their sake

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I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you,

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Father, are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

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Where do we go to hear the voice of Christ? Jesus says that we are going to believe in him and receive the words that were given to Christ by the

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Father, because Christ gave them to the disciples, and that we are going to believe through the apostles.

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I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.

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You hear the voice of Christ, not in here, you hear the voice of Christ in the apostolic words written in the

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Bible. Now, we are up on an hour into this lesson, and we have not covered it in its entirety, and we're going to do a deep dive in this.

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So, note, there will be a part two to this teaching on hearing the voice of God, and on the podcast

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FightingForTheFaith .com in the days ahead, we are going to do full sermon reviews of Erwin McManus' sermon, as well as Rick Warren's sermon at Hillsong Conference on hearing the voice of God, to show you that they are twisting

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God's word, and that they are teaching you to listen to voices that are not the word of God, voices inside of your head, and Christ does not promise to speak to you inside of your head, or inside of your heart.

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Christ's words are found in the Scriptures. The voice of Christ is found in the biblical texts.

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That's what Christ says in John 17. So, hopefully, you found this helpful. I know that it was a little bit long, but like I said, part of the thing that we're changing up is we're going to be offering a lot more in -depth biblical teaching, and taking on many of the popular false teachings that are out there, not merely going after the false teachers, because the false teachers come and go, but the heresies that they're teaching seem to linger a lot longer than they do.

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So, if you found this helpful, all the information on how you can share the video is down below in the description, and until next time, may

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God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, his vicarious death on the cross, for all of your sins.