F4F | Rick Warren and Mark Batterson on Hearing God's Voice

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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 and this is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. Now if you've ever been told that you have to hear the voice of God and it's like tuning into a radio station and you've got to learn how to tune your heart to hear

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God's voice, yeah go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below.

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Don't forget to ring the bell so that you can be notified when we update the channel you've been taught something false.

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Case in point, we're gonna be heading over to Saddleback Church. We'll also throw in a little

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Mark Batterson to boot to kind of show the confusion that is taught within evangelicalism today about hearing the voice of God.

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We'll also do a little fact -checking with the Word of God itself, so make yourself comfortable.

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Let's get to it. Here's Rick Warren from a sermon he delivered a couple years back on hearing the voice of God.

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One of the basic tenets of Scripture is that God has revealed himself, that God has made himself known to us, that God speaks.

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All through the Bible we see this phrase, and God said, and God said this, and God said that, and God said this, and God said that.

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God speaks and you were created to have a relationship with God. Now, note what he's doing here.

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He's not beginning with a biblical text. Instead, he's beginning with the fact, well, yeah,

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God speaks. True. But second point is based upon a major axiom within evangelicalism that is not well -defined, and that is that you are to have a relationship with God.

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Now, this is most certainly true, and that Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross, has restored our relationship to God by reconciling us to the

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Father through his vicarious penal substitutionary death for our sins on the cross.

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This is most certainly true. But what ends up happening is that people hear relationship talk, and they go with their experience of relationships to define what their theology is, rather than letting

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God and his Word define how our relationship to God works.

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So that's what Rick is doing here. God made you to love you, and he wants you to know him as well as he knows you.

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Now, in order to know God, in order to have a relationship, you got to talk to him, and he's got to talk to you.

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Okay, let's just work that out a little bit here. Sure, God does talk to me.

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In fact, there isn't a day that goes by that God does not talk to me, and yet I have yet to hear his voice at all, and I've never learned how to tune into a

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God radio station. No. Instead, it goes something more like this.

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The Apostle Paul, writing to young Pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3, says to him, "...will

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be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

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But as for you, continue in what you've learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, gramata, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ.

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All Scripture," and here it's grafe, all grafe, all

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

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Yeah, that's right. God speaks to me every day, and he speaks to me through the written

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Word of God. There is not a day that goes by that I do not hear from God, okay?

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But I always hear from him through his written Word. Now this is why

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Paul then goes on to charge young Pastor Timothy, that, "...I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearance in his kingdom, to preach the

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Word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching, for the time is coming when people will not endorse sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to soothe their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths."

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So you'll note here, God speaks indeed. He speaks to us through his

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Word, and through his written Word, we are equipped for every good work that we are to do as Christians.

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Now, what kind of dog pile onto this? I want to take a look at John chapter 17.

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This is Jesus Christ High Priestly Prayer, and there's something interesting that Jesus says in this text as it relates to, shall we say, hearing the

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Word, the voice of God. And so Jesus here says, "...I'm praying for them," his disciples, "...and

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I am praying not for the world, but for those 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. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.

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I am coming to you, 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 the

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

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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." Now watch what happens. "...I have given them your

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Word," Jesus says. So Jesus speaks the Word of the

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Father. How do we hear the voice of the Father? Through Jesus Christ.

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Where did which books did he write? He didn't write any, okay? So you'll note then, there's kind of a hierarchy in how this all works.

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"...I have given them your Word. The world hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

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So 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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So sanctify them in the truth. Your Word is truth.

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As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world."

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And this is key. So the Father sends the Son. The Son speaks the words from the Father.

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The Son calls His disciples, and He speaks the Word of the Father to them, uh -huh, and He sends them into the world the same way

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He was sent into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, Jesus says, that they may also be sanctified in the truth.

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So I do not ask for these only, Jesus says, but now also for those who will believe in Me through their

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Word. And their Word is the Word of Christ, and their Word is being the

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Word of Christ is the Word of the Father. So you see how that works. So I not ask,

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I do not ask only for these, but also those who will believe in Me through their Word, that they may all be one, just as you,

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

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Me. So how then do we believe? Jesus didn't write anything. We believe through the writings, the

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Grammata, of the Apostles. We are those who believe through their words, and their words were given to them by Christ, and Christ's words are given to Him by the

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Father. That's how it works. So you want to hear the voice of God? You're gonna hear it through their

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Word, through the apostolic Word written in the Scriptures. This is most certainly true.

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So we come back to Rick Warren. You've got to have a communication. Without communication, there is no relationship.

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Uh -oh. So are you saying, Rick, that if I'm not hearing the audible voice of God, I'm not a

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Christian? Now the problem is, communication can be easily misunderstood. Would you agree with that?

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I mean, with people, much less God. You know, when Kate speaks to me,

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A, I don't always hear, and B, even when I do hear, I don't always understand.

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Now we've been married 35 years. It gets better, but I still don't always hear, and I still don't always understand.

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Those of you guys who are newlyweds, let me give advice to some of you men. Guys, you need to understand that there are two things you must understand about women, but nobody knows what they are.

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So you're gonna be in the dark the rest of your life. Now I deeply love my wife, deeply, but I don't always hear her, and I don't always understand her, even when

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I do hear her. And so certainly, I should expect that in my relationship to God.

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However, I will tell you this, it gets easier. It really does.

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It gets easier over time. You know, after 35 years of marriage, when my wife calls, she doesn't have to say, this is

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Kate. I know her voice. Now again, this is all based upon experience, and this poorly defined concept of what it means to have a relationship with God.

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She knows my voice, and now after walking with God for a long, long time, for over 40 years,

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I want you to know, I know His voice. And it's easier to figure out now when it's just me talking to myself, or I got an idea off of a radio, or when it's really

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God. It's a lot easier now, yeah. It does get easier, just like in a marriage.

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Now I'm gonna point something out here. Evangelicals talk a lot about the importance of hearing the voice of God, and there is no uniformity in their teaching.

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Last year, Mark Batterson published the book Whisper, and he likens hearing the voice of God to learning a whole bunch of different languages.

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Yeah, I'll let him explain. Hear God's voice outside of reading the Scripture. Yeah, well,

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I mean, the good answer, the good news is the answer is yes. In fact, you know,

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Randy, there are people who say they've never heard the voice of God, and I get that, that maybe you haven't heard

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His audible voice, but in the beginning He said, let there be light, and everything that is is an echo of those four words.

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So really, everything is the byproduct of God's voice, so His voice is all around us all the time.

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Just because it's the byproduct of God's voice doesn't mean that it's a voice that we're supposed to be hearing.

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You understand what I'm saying here? But of course, what I talk about in this book is really learning to discern

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His voice and talk about seven different languages that God speaks in, and it's a process.

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It's like learning Spanish or French or German or any other language, you know.

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So God speaks in seven different languages, and now I've got to learn seven different languages.

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Which biblical text says that? By the way, I know

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English, I know some Spanish, biblical Hebrew, modern

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Hebrew, and Greek, but yeah, I use the biblical Hebrew and the

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Greek to help me understand the Word of God, the written Word of God in the original languages, but He's saying that God speaks to us in seven different languages.

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Where does it say that in the Bible? It's this process of learning to discern

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His voice and learning those languages. Again, I point out, if you go back to the teaching

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I did a couple weeks ago on Balaam, this was a fellow who was a complete pagan and a scumball, and he heard the voice of God, no problema, and knew exactly who was talking to him.

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Over and again, I have to reiterate this. The people who are saying that it's your responsibility to hear the voice of God and learn how to, well, now learn seven different languages that God is speaking.

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It's up to you. It's up to you to do this. This is nonsense. We're talking about an omniscient, omnipresent being.

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God, Almighty, Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the

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Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. If He's gonna be speaking to you, there's no way that you're gonna go,

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I'm not sure if that was my head or whether or not that was

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Jesus or not, you know? So the whole premise of this is off, and there's no biblical text to teach these things.

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Like I said, there is no uniformity in evangelicalism about how you go about hearing the

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Word of God. Now, remember what I asked Rick, because he said that if you have a relationship with somebody, you got to be talking to them and you need to be hearing from them.

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So my question is, if I'm not hearing from God, does that mean I'm not saved? I know my wife's voice, and she knows my voice.

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And you know, when the devil gives you an idea, we call that temptation. When God gives you an idea, we call that inspiration.

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When you get an idea, we call that stupidity. I'm just kidding.

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But people say, has God ever talked to you audibly? No. Why would He need to?

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He doesn't need to go through my ear. He can go directly to my mind. It's just like right now, there are radio waves and there are

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TV waves going through this air that are there. They are real. You can't see them.

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There are actually pictures going through the air right now. You can't see it. That doesn't mean it's not real. It's real. But if you have a tuner, a radio or a

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TV, and you tune in, you can get the message and you can see the picture. And the key is tuning in.

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Again, this is absurd. God's up in heaven. Hello, this is

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God. Does anybody hear me? Hello?

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I feel like I'm just talking to myself. Has anyone tuned into my channel yet?

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Hello? This is nonsense.

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Gobbledygook. So God's out there communicating on radio waves and it's up to you to learn how to tune in so that you can hear it.

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No biblical text teaches this either. It's a lot easier to just go, wait a second.

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All scripture is, you know, Theodosius. God breathes. So that means that God's talking to me through, you know, his living active word.

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Right. Because that's how he talks to us. You got to know how to tune in. And this weekend, we're going to look at how do you tune in to hear

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God speak to you? I can have the finest Bose radio. Yeah, yeah.

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Again, this is not theology. This is just analogy. And it's not even based on a biblical text.

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But if it's not tuned into the channel, I'm still not going to hear the radio program, no matter how good the equipment is.

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Right. Yeah. Most of you don't remember this because you're not that old. But back in the seventies, there was a thing called the

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CB radio craze. Oh, yeah. I remember it well. Yeah. You want to get an example of the culture that was around that?

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I would recommend the movie Smokey and the Bandit. That's a good place to start. And first, truckers had these

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CB radios, citizen band radios in their car. And then people started putting them in their car. And there's a whole lingo about it.

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And they made a bunch of movies about it. And there were phrases like, put your pedal to the metal and 10 -4, good buddy.

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And one of the phrases of the CB craze was, have you got your ears on? And that meant is, are you tuned in?

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Are you listening? Well, that's not actually a new concept. Two thousand years before the CB radio craze,

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Jesus said something like that. Okay.

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By the way, there's an actual phrase for this kind of error.

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This is called a historical anachronism. This is an anachronism. This would be like me saying, you know,

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Jesus, his favorite food was microwave burritos. You're going, really?

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He liked microwave burritos? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, of course, there in Scripture too, you know, the disciples, they were into Hondas.

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Really? The disciples were into Hondas? Well, of course they were. They were all in one accord, you know.

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This is a historical anachronism. Okay. So for him to sit there and go, okay, in the

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CB radio craze, people would say, do you got your ears on, good buddy? Which is basically meaning, are you tuned in?

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So you'll note he began with the illustration, not the biblical text.

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So the illustration, the analogy now is governing the interpretation of whatever biblical text he's going to right now.

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However, it can't mean this because it's a historical anachronism.

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There were nobody, there were nobody back in the day, in Jesus's time, using any kind of radios at all, in any shape or form.

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That didn't come about until the first wirelesses with Marconi. So yeah, this is, so note, the thing that's governing the interpretation of this text is

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Rick Warren's analogy, but his analogy is an anachronism. So this is an invalid interpretation right off the bat.

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Notice there on your outline, if you take out your message notes in Luke chapter eight, it says, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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Why does anybody think that this guy is a solid Bible teacher? This is nonsense.

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He who has ears to hear, let him hear. You know, so let's just put it into context and see, you know, do you have your ears on good, buddy?

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So out of context, new international version, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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Man, this is bad. What's he saying? He's saying you gotta be tuned in. No, no, and he's not saying you need to learn seven new languages.

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He didn't say that either. Man, and today we're going to look at a famous story that Jesus told that mentions how to tune into God.

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I'm having a hard time holding it together here because this is so absurd. Jesus, how to tune into God and hear God speak to us.

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But before we do that, I want to just quickly give you three reasons why this is important. Would you write these down?

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You may think, well, it's not important for me to hear from God. Oh, yes, it is. Because number one, it proves I'm in God's family.

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I remember I asked the question, so if I'm not hearing the voice of God outside of the scriptures, am

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I a Christian? According to Rick Warren, no. So if you're not hearing the voice of God, you're not tuned in and hearing his voice, you're not even in God's family.

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Wow. It proves I'm in God's family. It verifies that you're a believer.

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It confirms your relationship to God. If you don't have any communication with God, you don't have a relationship with God.

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You got to have communication in order to have a relationship. You talk to him and he talks to you. I mean, this is the difference between having a relationship and knowing about somebody.

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I could say, I know Tom Cruise. Now, I don't really know him, but I could say, I know Tom Cruise.

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You say, well, what do you mean by that? Well, I write him all the time. Does he write you back? No. I call him all the time.

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Does he call you back? No. Have you ever talked to him? No. Then you don't really have a relationship. You're just a fan.

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Okay. You're just a fan. And a lot of people are fans of God, but they don't have a relationship with God.

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God wants you to be able to communicate. So if you never hear from God in your life, you have every reason to doubt that you have a relationship with him.

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Which means you're not saved. So if I'm not receiving direct revelation from God, I'm not saved.

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No biblical text says this. Again, this is a theology based upon a poorly defined concept regarding relationship with God and a twisting of God's word using a historical anachronism.

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Hey, good buddy, you got your ears on. And of course, if you're not hearing from God, you're not, you don't have a relationship with him.

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If you don't have a relationship with him, guess what? You're going to hell. Because if you've got a relationship, you communicate with each other on a daily basis.

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It proves I'm in God's family. Second thing, it protects me from mistakes. It protects me from mistakes.

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Which biblical text says that? Now, here's a cool thing. If you actually do listen to God on a daily basis, you'll tune in to his radio station because you got your ears on.

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You'll find that he's going to warn you some potholes, some traps, some bends in the road, and you'll save yourself a lot of time and energy and frustration and failure if you do it

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God's way. He will warn you in advance of traps. Look what the Bible says. Proverbs 3 verse 6.

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Listen for God's voice in everything you do. From the message. Paraphrase.

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Let's take a look at that. Proverbs 3. All right. Let's see here. We got to do this in Hebrew. All right.

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Proverbs 3. All right. Let's see here. Trust in the

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Lord. We'll start in verse 5. The Proverbs are pretty pithy, so you don't need a super lot of context with them.

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Trust in Yahweh with all your heart. Lead not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

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That's the ESV translation. What is he reading from? Listen for God's voice in everything you do.

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Yeah, see, the message isn't a translation. It's a really awful paraphrase. You should avoid it like the plague.

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So the message, this is not what it says. Notice he started with the NIV. Now he's into the message.

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Why did he go to the message? Because the message is, he can manipulate the biblical text to make it look like it fits the theology he's spewing.

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Yeah. And everywhere you go, he's the one who will keep you on track.

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I couldn't count the number of times that God has. Let me read that again.

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Trust in Yahweh with all your heart. Lead not on your own understandings. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

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So note now he's exegeting from the message and using it to say, well, see, this, I mean,

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I hear the voice of God all the time, says Rick Warden. And like the message says in Proverbs 3, 6, it's, oh, he's protecting me from stuff and stuff.

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Spared me from a failure, a mistake, or a major embarrassment when I just got that little word.

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And sometimes God only says one word to me, don't. And that's all he needs to say, don't.

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Or no. Sometimes it's two, watch out. Sometimes God will save you the time and the money and the energy of making, going down the wrong path if you will listen to him.

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That's the third thing. Not only protects me from mistakes, it produces success in life.

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Now I'm not talking about the way the world defines success, if everybody's supposed to be... So it produces success in life.

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Yet he can't go to a single biblical text that exhorts Christians to tune in to K -G -O -D.

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Nope, not a single biblical text teaches this. And every time he's handled a biblical text, he's twisted it and taken it out of context and made it say something that it doesn't.

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So folks, if you want to hear the voice of God, and you should, you're going to hear God's voice in the written word of God.

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That's exactly what Jesus' point in John 17 was. When Jesus was on earth, he spoke the words that he received from the

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Father. The Father sent him and he spoke those words and his disciples were kept in that word.

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Now he sent his disciples out as the apostles and they were sent with the words of Christ and that we believe through them.

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And even the apostles as they're finishing up their course, are pointing us back to the written word of God.

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Let me give you one more text before we wrap up for today. And we're going to take a look at 2

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Peter. 2 Peter. And you know, this is the last written communication we have of the apostle

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Peter. And as he's getting ready to finish his course and go to his death, he is instead of pointing them to people, to experiences and things like that, he is pointing them to, well, the written word of God.

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And here's what he writes. 2 Peter chapter 1, starting verse 16. We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the

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Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son with whom

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I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

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So this is him recalling the account of the transfiguration of Christ on the

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Mount of Transfiguration. He even heard the voice of the Father. So, I mean, and note, as he's finishing up his course, he's not pointing people to seek after these types of experiences and to hear the voice of the

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Father in that same way or anything even like that. And here's what he says, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart, knowing this, that first of all, no prophecy of scripture, graphe, comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. And so you'll note the Apostle Peter, the great Apostle Peter, as he is finishing his course, you know, shortly after this, he was taken to a cross and crucified, and he protested the fact that he was not worthy to suffer the same death as Christ himself, and they listened to his protestations, and they ended up crucifying him upside down.

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It took him a couple of days to die. But you'll note, as Peter was finishing up his course, he pointed people not to experiences or to expect to hear the voice of the

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Father, instead pointing them to the written Word of God, the graphe, and noted that this is not produced by the will of man, but men spoke as they were carried along by God.

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The very voice of God is now recorded for us in the living active Word of God. That's where God speaks to us, and you will be wise, as Peter says, to pay attention to that light shining in a dark place, the written

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Word of God, which is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. What Rick Warren is teaching, what

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Mark Batterson teaches, this is all nonsense that takes you away from the real voice of God, to chase after voices that are like the sirens.

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These are voices that lead you to your destruction and to a shipwreck. You want to hear God's voice?

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Open up the Word of God and read it. You want to hear God's Word? You want to hear God's voice audibly?

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Well, then read the Word out loud while you're reading it. You get the idea. Hopefully you found this helpful.

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So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.