God Doesn't Whisper part 3 Answering Objections

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In this final installment of God Doesn't whisper, Jim Osman answers objections that have come in regarding the past two episodes! For all of Jim Osman's resources please visit

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Welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Justin Peters. I hope that you and your family are doing well today.
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I want to thank you for watching this video. If you have not yet seen the first two installments of our series,
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I, along with Jim Osman, author of the book, God Doesn't Whisper, the title of the series,
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I would encourage you to watch the first two installments before you watch this one, because without having done so, this one won't make a whole lot of sense.
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But in this program, Jim, so we've been talking about your book, God Doesn't Whisper, how
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God does and does not speak to us, and we've been laying some of that groundwork. But I did a video on my
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YouTube channel some weeks ago, making the same argument that you do, and there has been some pushback, as I fully expected there to be.
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And so I want us to answer some of the common objections that people will raise when we make the argument that God has spoken to us in his word, and that is the only way that he speaks to us.
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There's going to be some objections to that, and so I want us to talk about some of those objections and walk through them a little bit.
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How's that sound? Yeah, that sounds great. And I think we should start by pointing out that one of the reasons that people object to this or push back on this doctrine is because it can sometimes feel like a personal assault when
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Justin and I would say that God's not speaking to you through whispers and nudgings and promptings and visions and dreams and signs and circumstances and all these other means.
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That's not how God's speaking to you. It's not authoritative. It's not his voice. Sometimes that can feel like a personal assault, and especially if you have grown up in an environment where you have been trained to think that your relationship with the
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Lord and your maturity and the intimacy of your relationship with the Lord is measured by your ability to hear his voice, to have someone come along and say what you thought was the voice of God was not
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God speaking to you in a personal, individual, private sense. Sometimes that can feel like a personal assault, as if I'm taking away from you something that you cherish, something that is a sign and a feeling of your own intimacy with the
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Lord, and it can initially make people feel as if, well, you're suggesting that God is distant and detached and impersonal and apathetic toward everything that I do, and that's not what we're doing.
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What we are saying is that God is intimately involved in every decision you make, in everything that you do. He's intimately involved in working out his plan of providence.
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What he is not intimately involved in doing is telling you and directing you through nudgings and promptings and still small voices and signs what to do every step of the way, that God is working out his plan of providence, and he's doing it in ways that you don't even discern, so many that you're not paying attention to.
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He's accomplishing all of those, and he's doing so far more on hands than you might even at first expect.
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He's just not doing it in the way that you've been trained to think that he is doing it. Yeah, absolutely. And when you critique that, it feels as if you're taking something precious from people, and so they will instantly push back, sometimes in a hostile way.
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I've experienced both kind as well as hostile pushback to that suggestion.
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Yeah, and so we're not trying to rob you of any kind of experience that you think you may have had.
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We just want to get you to examine it biblically and caution against creating a way of God speaking that just is not found in scripture.
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We're creating a whole new method or methods of God speaking that is just out of whole cloth.
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It's not found in the Bible, and it's very dangerous to rely upon experiences as the arbiter or foundation of truth because lots of people have experiences.
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I mean, Muslims and Hindus have experiences. Mormons have experiences.
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Mormons talk about the burning in their bosom. Yeah, that's right. And so lots of people claim to have experiences.
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So to quote myself from my own teaching, Clouds Without Water, we cannot interpret the
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Bible by what we experience. We must interpret our experiences by the
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Bible. Yeah, by what is revealed in scripture. Right. And another thing I've said, I can't, you can't exegete experience.
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I can't take something to somebody who's experienced and build doctrine on that because that's not how we build doctrine.
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Experience is not the foundation and the pillar and foundation of the church. Scripture is. Peter was there at the
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Mount of Transfiguration, saw Jesus transfigured along with Moses and Elijah, and yet Peter himself, in reference to that exact event, in 2
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Peter 1, he says, we heard the voice from heaven, the majestic voice.
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He said, but we have a more certain word of prophecy, a more sure word, more certain than that experience.
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And he, of course, is referring to scripture. Yeah, and he's there critiquing his own experience, which is more fantastic than anything any of us have ever had.
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Right. So whatever experience you think you may have had, I promise you, I promise you, it does not rise to the level of what
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Peter, James, and John experienced in Matthew 17. So if they thought the written word of God was more authoritative and more sure than that, it certainly is for any of us.
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But I want to, there's a man named Mr. Bill, and he gave a comment on my
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YouTube video, and I thought, there's so much in here, I thought we'd just kind of walk through, and this is no offense to Mr.
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Bill, but we're just going to keep it there. Yeah, it's online, so. It's online, so it's not like he's trying to remain anonymous, but I want to read through his comment because there's a lot of common objections here.
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Yeah. And just, Jim, as I read, Let's read through, let's have you read through all three paragraphs real quick so people can get kind of the gist of where he's going.
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Okay. And that way they will know when we go back and start at the top, we work our way through it, they'll be able to know what's my comment and what are his comments, so.
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Okay. Give everybody kind of the gist of it so they see where he's going, where he's coming from, what the objections are, and then we'll just try and dispatch with all of them point by point.
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Okay. So Mr. Bill says, we see throughout the scriptures that God speaks to us in many ways individually, not just through the
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Bible, but through the Holy Spirit directly and immediately. As an example, Acts 16, verse seven, when they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter
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Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. It's the Holy Spirit that will impress on you specific direction like don't marry that person or don't go there, dangerous.
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That's his fundamental job. And it can be in a variety of ways. God has that prerogative.
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Anybody who has walked a close communion with God should be able to attest to that continuous fellowship of conversing with the
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Lord. If you rely only on your Bible to read at that moment, you may very well be quenching the
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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit directly speaking to us in varying degrees of clarity is how, quote,
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God's sheep hear his voice, but it won't violate scripture. That is how the word and the spirit work together.
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The scriptures give us principles and some specifics, example, commands, but can't cover the zillions of instances that we come across.
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That's why the Holy Spirit is vital to fill in those informational blanks. For example, when we are out witnessing, the
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Holy Spirit will tell us who to witness to. Example, go talk to that guy in the red cap. No, listening to the voice of God is not adding to scripture, but it is in line with scripture with many examples.
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Thank God he is a practical God able to speak to us every moment. Okay, so let's break it down.
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So to work our way through this, he says, we see, I'll just read until you want to stop. We see throughout the scriptures that God speaks to us in many ways individually, not just through the
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Bible, but through the Holy Spirit directly and immediately. Okay, stop there. So he says that God speaks to us individually, not just through the
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Bible. What he's doing, there's a false assumption going into that objection that if God has given to me the
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Bible, that that is not individual enough. The scripture itself is not God's individual revelation to me.
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Why should I think that God, before the foundation of the world, if he loved me, if he set his affection upon me, if he has given me scripture, he has written it, he has preserved it, it's infallible, inerrant, that that itself is not an individual communication.
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How come I cannot pick up the Bible and say, this is God's word to me personally, individually? As if the Bible is
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God speaking to other people, and it doesn't, it's not personal, it's not individual to me. That's God speaking to people 2 ,000 years ago.
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But to me, I need something more. See, now we're back to the sufficiency of scripture again. So he says
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God speak to us in many ways individually, not just in the Bible. Well, the Bible is in communication to me individually.
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When I read in the scripture that I should not steal, that I should love my wife as Christ loved the church, that I should pursue sanctification without which no one will see the
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Lord, that I should come to the Lord and bring my request to him, that I should resist the devil, he will flee to me.
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All of those commands and information in scripture, all of the wisdom contained in scripture, that is to me individually. I can't, even if I were the only person alive on the face of the planet who is a
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Christian, that book would be communication to me individually, that is God's word to me. Just because it is
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God's word to Justin as well does not mean that it's not God's word to me. It is individual communication to both of us, but he's set up a false dichotomy that if God has written something to every believer, that he has therefore not written his book to this believer.
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And that's a false assumption that you've got to destroy right at the beginning. Why would you not think that the commands of scripture are to you individually when they are to you individually?
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Yes, they're also to other people. Yes, some of those commands were given to other people in another time, in another location, but those commands are directed to you as a believer in Jesus Christ.
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We are just as much under the authority of those commands as any Christian who has ever lived. Mr. Bill continues, as an example,
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Acts 16, 7, when they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
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Yeah, okay, stop right there. So at the beginning of that paragraph, Bill says that we see through the scriptures that God speaks to us in many ways.
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No, we don't see that. Actually, what we see in scripture is that God spoke to Elijah and Noah and to Daniel and to Abraham and to David and to Paul and to Peter and to John and to Elijah and Elisha and Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the other prophets and apostles.
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He spoke to them in many ways. In fact, Hebrews talks about that. In the past days,
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God spoke to in many portions and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his son.
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So the Bible doesn't say, nor do we see there that God speaks to us in many ways. We see that God did speak at those times to those people in many ways, but there is nothing in scripture that says that because God spoke that way to them, that he will therefore necessarily speak to us in that way.
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Because if you believe that, then God spoke to Balaam through a donkey. So I would expect you have a donkey in your backyard and you're constantly waiting to hear
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God's revelation through the donkey. Since he spoke to Balaam that way, he must be speaking to you that way. So then he quotes
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Acts 16, seven, which is describing the missionary journey of the apostle Paul, where Paul was going through Asia Minor, heading east toward the
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Aegean Sea. He tried to go north, and because that's past, that scripture, that verse is not the only one that describes this.
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Excuse me. He tried to go north to preach the gospel and the spirit of God prohibited him. He was forbidden from going south.
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Paul found himself at the eastern edge of the Aegean Sea, prohibited in some way by the
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Holy Spirit from going north and south as he was heading east. What is not described in that passage is the means by which the spirit of God prohibited
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Paul from traveling north or south. The way in which Paul was prohibited was a divine revelation, or was it just circumstances did not allow, or did
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Paul face persecution? We don't know. Luke doesn't reveal that. He just attributes that to the sovereign hand of the spirit, but he attributes that to the sovereign hand of the spirit only because in the very next couple of verses, it says that Paul that night had a dream in which he saw a
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Macedonian man crying out to him saying, come help us. And Paul discerned that that was the will of God for him to cross the
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Aegean Sea and go into Macedonia, to Philippi then, and to preach the gospel in the city of Philippi.
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But it was only because of the dream that the apostle Paul received that he, Luke, and the traveling companions discerned that was the will of God.
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That must be why the Lord did not want them to go north or south because the Lord was leading them into Philippi to have
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Lydia be the first convert on the continent of Europe. So yes, the spirit of God did direct
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Paul, but that does not mean that the spirit of God is going to direct you and me in the same sense, in the same way. Just because the spirit did that to Paul is not a promise or a guarantee that the spirit of God is going to direct us in the exact same way, or that we can lay claim to such direct revelation as if that is indeed the work of the spirit of God in every
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Christian's life to that degree. Paul is an apostle. And this had to do, I mean, honestly, this direction of the spirit of God has to do with the worldwide spread and advance of the gospel from the continent of Asia Minor, from the area of Asia Minor into Europe.
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Can you honestly tell me that that event is the same thing as God telling you which Thanksgiving turkey to buy, which subcontractor to hire, which landscaping crew to hire, what color to paint your walls, where to go out to lunch after church?
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That type of revelation is not the same. So people try and point to this and say, well, the spirit of God's constantly speaking to me about, as he says later, the zillions of instances, the zillions of decisions that we have to make.
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And then he quotes a unique thing that has to do with the spread of the gospel worldwide under the apostolic ministry, as if these two things are the same and they are not the same.
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So, paragraph two. Paragraph two, Mr. Bill continues. It's the Holy Spirit that will impress on you specific direction like don't marry that person or don't go there, it's dangerous.
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That's his fundamental job. Actually, it's not his fundamental job. Amen. It's the spirit of God. The spirit of God's fundamental job is not to whisper in our ears and there's nothing in scripture that says that that is the fundamental job of the
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Holy Spirit. The spirit of God regenerates us. The spirit of God gifts us. He empowers us for service.
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He sanctifies us. He illuminates the word to us. He guides our step. He draws us to the son. He conforms us to the image of Christ.
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He helps us in our giftedness and service to serve him with power and with ability so that we are able to minister to other people.
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The Holy Spirit does all of those things. To take all of the ministry of the Holy Spirit and say his most fundamental job is to tell you where to have lunch on a
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Sunday afternoon or which person to marry. Scripture does not promise that the spirit of God is going to tell me which person to marry or who to witness to or what car to buy.
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The spirit of God, that's not his fundamental job, to not go there. Now, I may have a hunch. I may have an intuition.
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I may have a really strong sense or a feeling that walking down a dark alley in South Central LA at nine o 'clock at night is not a good idea.
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I wouldn't call that the voice of God. I would call that, it could be human wisdom, common sense, it could be intuition. We all have hunches and even unbelievers have hunches, which tells me that it's not the voice of the
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Holy Spirit that is doing that. And to call those at that activity a hunch that I might get as the spirit's fundamental job is to ignore the vast amount of things that the spirit of God does do.
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People who use language like this, no disrespect intended to Bill, have a, I would say, a very low view of the work and ministry of the
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Holy Spirit, that they boil everything down to just this thing.
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This is what the Holy Spirit does, which is why people get offended when you suggest, no, the Holy Spirit's not whispering in your ear.
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They take umbrage at that because they feel like you have just taken the whole Holy Spirit from them. And then they're wandering around looking for, well, then what else does the spirit do?
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I mean, if he's not whispering which Chinese restaurant to go out for lunch at, if he's not telling me which car to buy, then what is the work of the
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Holy Spirit? They have a very under -realized pneumatology, a very low view of the spirit, a very low view of his work, that when you tell them
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God's not whispering in their ear, they can't imagine what else the Holy Spirit would do. That's just his fundamental job is to give me these intuitions and nudgings.
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No, it's not. The spirit of God is doing dozens or hundreds of other things in our lives. And that's the one error that people that raise objections like this make.
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The other error, which is similar, and it's kind of the opposite, but it's in some ways the same, is that they take everything that the spirit of God does and they call all of it his voice.
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So, you know, the Lord laying upon my heart to serve in my church in a certain way, that's the voice of God.
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The Lord empowering me to serve in that capacity, giving me a spiritual gift, that's the voice of God.
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My strong desire to share something with somebody, to communicate the truth or to share the gospel, that's the voice of God.
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Well, they either take everything the spirit of God does and they lump it all under this, it's the voice of God banner, or they take all the work of the
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Holy Spirit and they say that the only thing that he does, his entire work, is just whispering in my ear. And so it's an over -realized, under -realized pneumatology at the same time, an over -developed and under -developed pneumatology that are all kind of wrapped together.
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And it doesn't matter which side of that you fall on, it's an abusive view of the Holy Spirit that neglects really what his work in us is.
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If you think the fundamental job of the Holy Spirit is to whisper in your ear, you need to get a pneumatology text and start reading up on what the
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Scripture says about the Holy Spirit. Amen, amen. I tell people often one of the great ironies in dealing with the
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Word of Faith, New Episodic Reformation, charismatic movement in general, is that people in that camp would look at people like you and me,
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Jim, and they would say, well, you don't believe in the Holy Spirit. You don't believe in the power of the
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Holy Spirit. And they would say, we have a small view of the Holy Spirit. I would say, to the contrary, to the contrary.
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Our view and understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit is far more comprehensive and robust than to reduce it to say, oh, the real work of the
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Holy Spirit is making angel feathers fall out of the sky and gold dust, and telling you where to go to have lunch one day.
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No, if that's your view of the Holy Spirit, then it is, with all due respect, it is you who have a very small diminished view of the
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Holy Spirit. Correct, yep. All right, well, back to Mr. Bill. He says, after that's his fundamental job, and it can be in a variety of ways,
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God has that prerogative. Correct, he does have that prerogative, and it is his prerogative, and we're not saying that God cannot speak to us.
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We are saying that God doesn't speak to us through whispers, impressions, nudgings, promptings, feelings, circumstances, signs, open and closed doors, dreams, visions, and all the other nonsense that is typically called
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God's voice. It is, God can speak to us. My argument is not that God couldn't speak.
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My argument is that the typical things that people say is God speaking is not God speaking at all. I believe
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God could speak to me right now through a leprechaun in my refrigerator if he wanted to. I have no reason to believe that he will, a whole bunch of reasons to believe that he won't, and I say that in the book, and my view is that God right now, if he desired to, he could appear right now in front of me and speak to me audibly just as he did to Elijah, to David, to Solomon, to Samuel, to any of those men.
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I believe that God can do that. That is his prerogative, but what is also his prerogative is to speak to us in his word and then to not speak to us.
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That is also God's prerogative, and that, I think, is the prerogative that God has chosen. What guys like Bill are trying to do is to say that if any one of us says that God is not speaking to us today, they say, well, you're saying
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God can't speak to you. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not making the argument that God cannot speak to us. I'm saying that if God wants to remain silent and only speak to us in his word, is that also his prerogative?
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Do you also give God the freedom to not speak to you through any means other than scripture? And if you are not gonna give
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God that prerogative, then who really is telling God who is God and who should be speaking how they should be speaking? Right, amen.
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Anybody who has walked in close communion with God should be able to attest to that continuous fellowship of conversing with the
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Lord. Okay, I'll stop right there. That goes back to the expectations, or the, sorry, the assumptions that we talked about in the last program.
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I should expect to hear from God. I need to hear from God. I can learn to hear from God. And this is exactly what Bill is saying here.
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He's saying that anyone who's walked in close communion with God should be able to attest to this conversation, but I've never had a conversation with the
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Lord. I have spoken to the Lord in prayer, and the Lord has spoken to me through his word. I read his word, and I hear the voice of God speaking to me through the pages of scripture that I've demonstrated that every day.
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That's a two -way communication. There are people who say that that's not two -way communication. That doesn't count. Reading scripture doesn't count as God speaking to you.
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Only when you hear the whispers is that God speaking to you, and that we should pray to God, and he will speak to us through impressions, et cetera.
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No, not everybody who walks with the Lord in close communion with him should be able to attest to that two -way conversation, because you're assuming that I need to hear from God, and you're assuming that I should expect to hear from God, and scripture simply does not teach that.
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I can attest to walking closely with God and seeing things in scripture, hearing his voice in scripture, knowing in my knowledge of scripture, growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ and in sanctification and holiness.
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I can attest to all of that. I can attest to praying and asking God for certain things and seeing him answer those prayers.
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I can attest to all of that, but I cannot attest to having any kind of an audible, quotable conversation with God where he speaks to me in a quotable sense, and I speak to him in a quotable sense.
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I can't attest to that, and I would be willing to bet that most Christians cannot attest to that either, even though they use the language that suggests that they can.
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And I would note, too, just the heavy -handedness of this. So if you're not hearing
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God speak to you in still, small voices and dreams and hunches and visions and promptings and nudgings and all that. You don't have an intimate relationship.
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You don't have an intimate relationship. This is Gnosticism. Yeah, it is. It's a modern -day version of Gnosticism, so haves and have -nots.
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So anyway, that's my little contribution to that statement. Okay. All right, Bill continues.
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If you rely only on your Bible to read at that moment, you may very well be quenching the
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Holy Spirit. I don't understand what theology would suggest that in trusting in the
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Scriptures, in relying upon the Scriptures and reading the Word of God, that that would be quenching the Holy Spirit. Who do we think wrote that book?
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Right. And if the Holy Spirit wrote that book, and it is timeless truth and it is the living Word and it is the enduring
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Word of God, if it was good enough for the apostles and the prophets and good enough for the early church, why would I think that by reading that, trusting that, believing that, and obeying that, that that's quenching the
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Holy Spirit? That is a whole different view of, that goes back to the view that the fundamental work of the
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Holy Spirit is whispering nudges, and if I'm not getting the whispers and feeling the promptings in my heart, that that then is quenching the
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Holy Spirit. If the Bible, Scripture does not promise that I'm going to be spoken to outside of Scripture, so if I'm just trusting in Scripture, I'm not quenching the
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Holy Spirit. Mr. Bill continues. He says, the Holy Spirit directly speaking to us in varying degrees of clarity is how
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God's sheep hear his voice. So for a reference to that passage, you get to look at the last episode that we did, that deals with John 10, 27, that is an abuse of the passage of Scripture.
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That is not what hearing the voice of the shepherd is referring to there. So Bill is simply abusing the passage of Scripture, the clear written
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Word of God. So I would ask him if he can't get the clear written Word of God correct in understanding that, why should
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I think that he has correct, unclear, with varying degrees of clarity, the still small voice of the
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Spirit that is whispering in his ears. He's admitting here with various degrees of clarity that some of these whispers are unclear.
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The written Word is clear, and Bill's not getting that correct in dealing with the meaning of that passage.
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And if Bill can't get the correct meaning to the clear meaning of Scripture, the clear voice of God, which is in John 10, if he can't get that correct, what makes you think that he can properly interpret the other whispers and promptings and nudgings that come in varying degrees of clarity?
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Right, right. He continues, but this won't violate
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Scripture. And that kind of goes to what I was saying earlier, one of the programs that, just because it may not directly violate
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Scripture, for example, me saying to a young man, God told me to tell you, you're supposed to spend the rest of your life as a missionary in Mozambique.
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That doesn't necessarily contradict Scripture, but I could do a lot of damage to that young man's life if he thinks
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I'm hearing from God, and God doesn't want him to go spend the rest of his life in Mozambique.
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So that's a very dangerous thing. It's a red herring, a straw man argument a lot of people raise. So Bill continues, that is how the
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Word and the Spirit work together. The Scripture gives us principles and some specifics, example commands, but can't cover the zillions of instances that we come across.
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Stop right there. So again, the assumption that I need to hear the voice of God because there are so many decisions that we make and things that we are asked to do that we need clear direction on.
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I reject the premise of that, and I reject the assumption of that. Scripture does not say that we need anything other than Scripture to make those decisions.
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We are given everything that pertains to life and Godliness. The Scripture, the inspired Word of God is able to equip us for every good work.
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Everything that we need is revealed in Scripture. Yes, it gives us principles. Yes, it gives us commands. And where God has not revealed what we are to do in the zillions of instances where we come across in our day -to -day lives, where He has not revealed those things,
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He doesn't expect us to have special information in order to make decisions to honor, to please
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Him. If He did, He would give us that information, but we don't need that. He has given to us everything that we need, and He asks us now to walk in faith and obedience to the revealed
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Word of God, trusting Him that in the decisions that we make in the, as Bill says, zillions of instances we come across, that what
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He has revealed in Scripture by way of precepts and moral commands that we are able to live God -honoring, God -glorifying lives for the glory of God in this world with Scripture and Scripture alone.
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He says, continues, that's why the Holy Spirit is vital to fill in those informational blanks.
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For example, when we are out witnessing, the Holy Spirit will tell us who to witness to. Example, go talk to that guy in the red cap.
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No, listening to the voice of God is not adding to Scripture, but is in line with Scripture's many examples.
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Okay, stop right there. So He says that there are informational blanks that we have that we need the Holy Spirit to fill in those informational blanks.
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So again, what He is doing here is He is putting the Spirit of God, the work of the
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Spirit of God, and the role of the Word of God in opposition to one another. Yes, we are given the Bible, but that is insufficient.
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So we need the Spirit of God to do what He was not able to do in giving us Scripture. So the
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Spirit's fundamental role, according to Bill, is to fill in where Scripture lacks. And I want you to hear that language of lack and insufficiency and not enough so that we clearly understand exactly what we're describing here.
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We're describing a lack in the sufficiency and the ability of Scripture, the completeness of Scripture. There is information that we do not have that we need that God has not given to us.
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So that tells us that God has either been negligent to give us what He should have provided to us in Scripture, or the
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Word of God is lacking in some way, and we need the Holy Spirit to fill in the details so long as it doesn't contradict
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Scripture. That's Bill's point, so long as it's not in violation to Scripture. Well, I would say that there is no reason for the
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Holy Spirit to reveal to me any of those things. Who to witness to? Why do I need a special command to go witness to the guy in the red hat?
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Why do I need that special command? Is the command in Matthew 28 not sufficient? Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature?
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Is the example of Paul and Peter in the book of Acts in witnessing to people out in the streets not sufficient example to motivate me?
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Is not the command to Ezekiel about being watchmen on the wall and warning people against the sin that is there, and are those commands not sufficient?
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Why do I need the Holy Spirit to tell me which Thanksgiving turkey to buy, or which subcontractor to hire, or which house to buy, or what landscaper to buy, or what college to attend, or what city to live in, or what church to go to, or what ministry, or how to give, or to witness to the guy in the red hat?
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Scripture gives me all of the principles and commands that I need to make all of those decisions. There are no informational gaps from the perspective of God.
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He has filled in all the information that we need, and we are to make decisions within the parameters that he has given to us.
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He has given to us all the information that is necessary, so there are no informational blanks. I reject at the outset the assumption behind that statement.
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There are no informational blanks. Yes, there are things not revealed to us. That is true. But those do not constitute blanks, because I have been given all the information that I need in order to make decisions in what
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Bill is calling the informational blanks. I think I can honestly tell you that I have witnessed,
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I have shared the gospel in my travels and just day -to -day life with thousands of people, but I think
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I can honestly say I've never sensed God telling me or impressing upon me or whatever to share the gospel with this specific person.
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It's just as I have an opportunity to share the gospel with people, I share the gospel with people. I don't need to be told, share the gospel with a guy in the red cap, because I have a great commission that tells me to share the gospel, preach the gospel.
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To everybody. To everybody. That includes the guy in the red hat, just in case we're all curious as to whether it includes guys in red hats. and the blue hat, and the bald guy in the back row.
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A few weeks ago we had, Kathy and I needed some work done at the house, and there were two guys that came out to do the work that we needed, and they were coming in separate trucks, and one of them got there before the other one, so I was outside just talking to him, and the other guy was late, and I was like, well, as long as we're waiting on this other guy,
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I'm going to take this opportunity to share the gospel with him, and I did. Did I feel a prompting to do that?
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No, I don't need a prompting. Yeah, that's right. I had an opportunity while we waited for the other fellow to show up to begin a conversation with the first guy to share the gospel with him, and I did it, and I didn't need a prompting.
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I have a great commission. That's right. So it's, yeah. And the other thing that Bill said there, he said, no, listening to the voice of God is not adding to scripture, but it is in line with scriptures in many examples.
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Laying aside the difficult construction of that sentence, I think I know what he's saying. He's trying to say that if God speaks to us outside of scripture, it's not on par with scripture.
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That is typically how people like that say it. It's not adding to scripture, so we're not extending the canon.
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We're not adding a 67th book to scripture with personal revelation, and I would answer that by saying, how is it possible that God can speak and it not be authoritative, inerrant, or inspired?
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Do we believe the scripture is authoritative, inerrant, and inspired because it's old revelation or because it was given to prophets and apostles or because it was written down?
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People who believe this would say, look, you need to look to scripture. That's the example. When God speaks, it'll look just like that, but then they'll turn around and say, but when he speaks today, it's not just like that.
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It's totally different. It's not authoritative. It's not inerrant, and it's not inspired. So it can't be those three things. So it's
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God speaking, but it's not authoritative. Well, how can God speak a non -authoritative word? Or they'll say it's
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God speaking, but it's not inspired scripture. How can it be not inspired? How can God speak an uninspired or errant or unauthoritative word?
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Every time God speaks, it's inspired, inerrant, and authoritative. It must be because this book, our
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Bible, is inerrant, inspired, and authoritative, not because it's written down, not because it's old, not because it was given to apostles, but because God spoke it.
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And by virtue of the fact that God is the author, that's what gives it those qualities. So how can God be speaking with lack of clarity?
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And that's what God doesn't whisper is all about, is not lack of clarity. If God is speaking, it is those things.
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And there's no way that you can say that God speaks on one occasion, and it's scripture, and God speaks on another occasion, and it's potentially errant, it's potentially uninspired, and it's potentially non -authoritative, and it's potentially unclear.
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That is fundamentally a wrong and errant, unorthodox, borderline heretical view of scripture and the voice of God.
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So you can't get away from this. You can't argue for God's continuing revelation outside scripture, and at the same time, argue for scripture's uniqueness.
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That's right. It's like Sarah Young, the author of Jesus Calling. She claims that Jesus speaks to her, and she writes down what he says.
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And she actually says in the introduction to her book, she says, I knew that these writings were not as inspired as scripture, but,
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I don't have it in front of me, but they were helping me grow closer to God, something along those lines. So she says that, so the claim is that Jesus speaks to her, and she writes down what he says, and it's almost like she knows the kind of, what she's implying there.
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Yeah, she's dancing right next to the edge. Right, and so she says, well, they're not as inspired as scripture.
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Well, why aren't they? God cannot speak less authoritatively on one occasion than he does on another.
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So they claim that God speaks to them, and it's like they understand the implications of what they're saying, and so they try to have their cake and eat it, too, and say, it's not as inspired as scripture.
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Well, why isn't it? Yeah. You're making a false dichotomy there.
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It's just, it's a nonsensical position. Yeah, if the God you worship can speak in a non -authoritative, uninspired, and errant fashion, then the
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God you worship is not the God of scripture, period. Amen, absolutely. And then
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Bill's last sentence, thank God he is a practical God, able to speak to us every moment. He's able to, that's not our argument that he's not able to.
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Our argument is that he's not, and he's not speaking to you through all of these means which are not revealed in scripture, which people typically associate with the voice of God and call the voice of God.
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God's not speaking through those means. He doesn't need to speak to you through those means. He has given to you everything you need for life and for Godliness.
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Okay, dear ones. So the little hamster fell asleep at his wheel and we ran out of recording space on our phone, unbeknownst to us, until we went through the editing process.
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So picking up where the video left off. Jim, we hear a lot of reports.
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I know you have heard this. I've heard this from many people. People will say something to the effect of, well,
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I woke up in the middle of the night, three o 'clock in the morning, and for some reason I was thinking about my friend,
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Bill, and I just had this burden to pray for Bill. And turns out, found out the next day,
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Bill was in a car accident in the middle of the night and I had no way of knowing. And so how do you explain this if this is not
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God speaking to us outside of scripture? So what would you say to things like that, stories of that kind of a genre?
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Yeah, so we're not making the claim. I'm certainly not making the claim that God is not ever at work in any way in people's hearts or minds, or that God cannot impress upon our hearts and minds things for us to do.
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I believe that God is intimately involved in providence in guiding all of our steps to the accomplishment of his word or his work.
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So if the Lord wants to cause me to be awake in the middle of the night for some reason, and I happen to be thinking about somebody, and it's just,
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I can't get that person off my mind, and so I decided to pray for that person. And that happens to be the series of extraordinarily providential events that God uses to cause me to pray for somebody who needed prayer at that time.
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Then I attribute that to his moving in extraordinary providence, but I don't attribute that to revelation.
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You can't say that God spoke to me and told me, or that God was impressing upon my heart.
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That's language that we wouldn't use for that. We wanna be theologically precise and careful with the language that we do use, and instead we could say that, we could just explain it in the language that we just did.
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I woke up in the middle of the night and this person was on my heart and so I prayed, and as it turns out, it was exactly what the
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Lord wanted me to do at that time. And so those series of extraordinary providences that unfold in all of our lives is something that we would expect from a
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God that we believe to be involved in all of the details of our life, in every last detail of everything that we do.
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We would expect him to be able to guide our footsteps in that way, and that we would respond to those movings of the
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Holy Spirit or promptings of the Holy Spirit, if we call it. But what I can't say is that, what
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I can't know for sure is that in that moment, God was speaking to me. We need to be careful that we're not using language that scripture doesn't use to describe some of these phenomena.
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Does that make sense? Yeah. And I would even go further and to say that in explaining these things, we need to be theologically precise and we need to give credit where credit is due, but we need to be careful that we're not claiming that these things are revelation.
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There certainly, these things happen to unbelievers as well. For some reason, unbelievers also have strong impressions, strong inclinations.
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They sense danger at some point and they stay away from something. And it turns out later on that had they gone that way, it would have been completely unfortuitous for them.
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So since these things happen to unbelievers, that's proof positive that it's not the voice of God. Since according to the hearing from God proponents, you need to have this close relationship with the
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Lord in order to hear that voice. And yet they will say that the very thing that unbelievers have is an evidence of hearing the voice of God, but only when
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Christians hear those or experience those things. So that's a bit inconsistent there.
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If unbelievers are having the same experiences, then I have no reason to think that this is private and personal revelation.
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We could just chalk it up to coincidence. It's possible that it could be coincidence, but in the circumstances of believers,
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I would chalk it up to God's extraordinary providences. And I think we need to get used to thinking in terms of providence, because it's a very neglected and underappreciated doctrine of scripture.
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Right, absolutely, yeah. And I think all of us can think back in times of our lives where we can, with a little bit of hindsight, we can see that how
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God orchestrated events and for our betterment, for our protection, for our sanctification, any of these things.
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And we give credit for that to the providence of God. It's a kind providence of God.
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And so, yeah, all right, well, that's helpful. So what about this?
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And this is some pushback that I have received when people hear my teaching on this subject as well. Well, Justin, how do you know you're called into the ministry?
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If God doesn't speak to you outside of scripture, what makes you think you're called into the ministry?
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So Jim, I kind of toss that question to you. If God doesn't speak to you outside of scripture, how do you know you're supposed to be the pastor of Kootenai Community Church?
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What about this notion of a call? Yeah, the word call is used in various ways in scripture, but let's go back to the premise.
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Let's dissect this from attacking the premise of the question. What would make us think that I need a special call, a special divine summons in order to know that I am qualified to be in ministry?
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When I look at the qualifications for being an elder in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, nothing of special revelation is mentioned there.
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Paul doesn't say, you know, the closest thing to that would be the internal desire to do the work.
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If a man aspires to the office of an overseer, it's a fine work that he desires to do. So there must be a desire to have that office, but not the desire to have the office because of the prestige, but a desire to do the work.
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That's why Paul makes it almost synonymous. If any man aspires to the office of an overseer, it's a fine work that he desires to do.
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It's the work of an overseer that is synonymous there with the office. And so that's the closest thing you could call to any kind of an internal nudging, but it's an internal desire to do that work.
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So that, but that's not revelation. And why would we think that I need anything other than the biblical qualifications in order to know that I should be pursuing this ministry?
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We have in our church, we have four elders. I'm the only paid elder. The other three are lay elders.
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We all meet the biblical qualifications. We all have a desire to do the work. We all aspire to that position. One of us is set aside to be a paid elder.
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The other three don't feel the burden to pursue that work for paid remuneration.
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And instead they have vocations outside of the church. Well, I feel compelled to give my entire life to this and I love it in that way.
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And so that is the internal compulsion that I have to pursue that ministry. But I would just go back and say, why would we assume that, that I need some sort of a special call to that position?
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If I meet the qualifications, I'm called to that position. That's it. If I'm, if I desire the work, if I'm above approach, a husband of one wife and prudent and temperate, et cetera, et cetera, not addicted to wine.
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And I meet those biblical qualifications and I'm able to teach and to refute those who contradict, then that to me is sufficient evidence, is sufficient calling or evidence that I should pursue this.
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And some men may look at those and say, well, I'm qualified to pursue this. And I want to give myself fully to this full time, in which case, why do they need
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God to whisper to them? Why is the instructions in scripture not sufficient to answer that question?
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Yeah, right. Absolutely. Excellent. And you're exactly right. It's what James said. If you desire to do this and you meet the biblical qualifications, then do it.
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You don't need to hear from God in order to know that you're qualified to do that. You can look at the biblical qualifications and say that therefore
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I'm on the basis of scripture, I'm qualified to do this. And it may be that God uses circumstances or providential ways to guide you to not give yourself full time and take a check for that, to take remuneration for that, which is free to do that.
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There's no reason that every elder who serves the church should be financially remunerated, but there's no reason that no elder who serves the church should be financially remunerated.
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So scripture gives qualifications for an elder, but doesn't require that all elders receive compensation from the church.
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The one thing that every elder is required to receive from the church is the respect and the honor and the submission of those whom they shepherd, but not necessarily remuneration, though Paul makes it possible for elders to be remunerated.
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So I've heard pastors and some people try and say, well, you're not a God called elder, you're just an elder, but then the
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God called elders, the one who sensed the special inclination or the special whisper of the voice of God to make them the guy whom
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God puts in charge of the entire church. And I think that that is a distinction that's entirely unbiblical and it's without warrant in scripture.
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There's nowhere in scripture where you see distinctions made between elders. That's right.
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That's right. And that's one of the things as a former member of Kootenai, of course, we had to move and under church disciplines we're moving, but anyway, it's one of the things that I really appreciated about Kootenai when we were there is, as you said, there's four elders.
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And even though you are the only paid elder and you do the vast majority, not all of them, but the vast majority of the preaching and teaching, of the elders preaching and teaching, but typically on Sunday morning, you're the one behind the pulpit.
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But you don't have any more power. You don't have any more authority, any more say so in the affairs of the church than any of the other elders, any of the other three.
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And so, yeah, it's just very, very well done, very well modeled there. You know, and I hear sometimes that distinction is made by people.
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And I think that when we allow this distinction to be made, that, you know, I heard a still small voice, or I clearly heard
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God speak to me and tell me that I should be the pastor here. I needed to be in pastoral ministry. For me,
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I'll tell you a little bit about my own journey in coming to this decision. I resisted pastoral ministry for most of my, all of my life up until the time
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I was asked to do it. People said to me, you'll make a great pastor someday. And I said, nah, that won't be, I'll never do that.
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People would approach me and say, would you be willing to pastor if you were asked to? And I said, no, that's really not for me. It's not my thing.
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And I really shouldn't be the guy to do it. And so I kind of resisted it. And I didn't really feel compelled to do it until I was asked to do it.
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And then I kind of looked at my life and thought, you know, through a series of frustrating circumstances and afflictions that God brought into my life,
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I could look at my life and see providentially how he had prepared me for this ministry.
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And even though I didn't know that that was what he was doing. And when I stopped to really analyze it myself,
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I thought this is really what I desire to do. It's not, I desire to teach,
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I desire to preach. And when I started to understand biblically what eldership is, I realized that I had this inner desire to do this and I had the opportunity to do it.
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And I believe that God had gifted me for it. Looking at my life, I felt that he had prepared me for it. And so I thought, given now the opportunity, this would seem to be the wisest and best use of the gifts and talents that God has given to me.
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And so I should probably pursue this. Well, that sounds horribly unspiritual to some people because they think, well, you didn't hear a still small voice,
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God didn't whisper, he didn't tell you to do that. I don't need God to tell me to do that. He prepared my life for this and he gave me the desire to do it.
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And I don't need special revelation to confirm that. I just simply need to be obedient to what the
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Lord has given me and look for the best way of leveraging the time and talents that he has given me for his purposes.
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And so when we buy this notion that a pastor has to hear a special revelation to follow
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God's calling in that way, I think we're buying a false notion of some sort of superior calling to pastoral ministry that's not available to other people who are called to do the same work.
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Yeah, exactly. And that kind of brings us back to what we had discussed before.
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It's kind of like a modern day version of Gnosticism, the haves and the have nots. Yeah, very dangerous.
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All right, well, I love biblical clarity and just simplicity and common sense.
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And it just removes all of this mystical, the mystical element out of the
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Christian life. Not the supernatural element, but the mystical. Yeah, and again, we're not denying that the spirit of God is working in those ways.
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We would both affirm that the spirit of God was working and preparing me for the work that I do from my childhood.
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I mean, as early as I can remember. And God is providentially guiding our steps, but what we need to do is just walk in obedience to him day by day and trusting in his word and not worrying about hearing special revelations in order to get special guidance because we don't need that special guidance.
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We just need his word and his spirit working within us. And we can trust those to guide us in his paths.
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Yeah, amen. All right, well said. Thank you. Thank you, brother, for bringing that understanding.
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Hey, thanks, man. I appreciate the time. Absolutely. And again, dear ones, this is my first Zoom meeting, so I don't know if I should look at the camera or look at Jim.
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The title of the book is God Doesn't Whisper. And Jim, once again, people can get
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God Doesn't Whisper where? On amazon .com is the best place to get that.
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If you want to see the other books and other things that I've done, you can go to jimosman .com. Okay, yeah.
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He's got three other books, right? Yeah, three other books. And so, all right. Jim, brother, thank you very much.
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Thanks, brother. Talk to you later. All right, okay. Dear ones, until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of his