Trusted with God’s Words III: When God Won’t Speak

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Teddy James. And we're looking once more at the theme that is so really important for us today. The theme of what kind of person can be trusted with the Word of God.

It's not just having good books. It's not just having a computer with software programs where we can tell people what specific words mean. We can go to our libraries and we can take, you know, the books from other men and kind of, you know, sum up what they say and say, well, so-and-so says, and it may be true and you may be, you know, your heart may be in it, but it's something more than that.

It's something more than having a correct interpretation of scripture or believing, you know, that this is the Word of God. There is a dynamic between the living God and the reader. There's a dynamic where God will or will not trust a reader with His Word.

Not that we don't have the objective Word on the page, but the Spirit teaching, you know, illuminating, causing the Word to be effective in us, and then trusting us with that kind of authority as we share it with others so that the Word is effective in others.

So what kind of a person can speak to this world in a way that's effective? Well, it's the person that is the best of listeners. So, Teddy, we looked at some other passages already. We looked at two, Psalm 111, 10, where those that do God's Word, those who keep His Word are those that understand His Word.

And we also looked at the necessity to constantly keep our hearts receptive or to plow up the fallow ground of our heart so that when the seed falls on it, it falls in a receptive life and produces real fruit, real response, real obedience.

Heart Idolatry Keeps God from Speaking

So this week, we're going to be starting out with a negative example, which is very helpful, but it's found in Ezekiel 14. We're going to start with verses one through three. So I'm going to read that really quick.

Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me, Ezekiel, and sat before me, and the Word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces.

Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? Great question. So the setting is the exile. The Jews are, most of them are in Babylon, and so is the prophet. And so the leaders, the elders of Israel come to the prophet.

They've come to the right man, the right church at the right time, and they sit down and say, we've got some questions. We really need to know what God has to say about this. And God's question to Ezekiel is, should I say anything to them?

Should I let myself be consulted by them at all? Which is a shocking question. When we think of how God is typically taught, the character of God is typically taught today is, okay, as soon as you turn and you say the prayer, God's like, okay, let's go.

Well, God, there's a relationship there, and that's what we've been talking about here. If there's idols in your room. Yeah. Yeah. I almost feel like we get the picture that God is like a spiritual psychologist who has just set up shop, and he put the sign out in front of the little building, and he is just excited if anybody shows up.

He's just ready. And if you just even show up, he's thrilled. Or if you say, hey, I want to be on your team, God. I'm team God. Then God says, yes, come on. Right. And so here, the situation, of course, is not that God is unwilling to give of himself to unveil truth to humanity.

We see that we belong to the God who speaks. We have this book. He has given it to a people who are all born enemies. So it is a gracious God that we're dealing with. And you talked about that in our last episode, willing to, you know, as we turn our hearts to him to meet us and to, you know, to restore us.

So why is he so playing, you know, hardball with the elders and the answers in the text? They have idols set up. Now, they're not set up in their homes. They're not set up at the church. It used to be that way before the exile.

They had replaced the worship of God under different kings. I think of King Ahaz, Hezekiah's dad. You know, he just takes the altar that was used for the worship of the living God and he puts it around behind the back of the building and he puts an altar that's based on, it's an exact replica of the altar that he saw in Damascus, a pagan altar.

And so he says, man, that, you know, that looks so impressive. So let's put that at our church. And he worships the sun and the moon and the other, you know, all these other things other than God. But that's not happening now.

This is heart idolatry, but it is just as offensive to God. There's coming to the right church and sitting down and opening their Bibles and looking really earnest at this conference. And yet God looks and says, your life is so full of these idols.

Why should I say anything to you? I think we should probably stop and ask, what are idols that could be heart idols? What, you know, not just a list of specific things, but principally, what is a heart idol?

How would you explain that to your kids if your kid said, well, dad, do I have a idol in my heart? You know, what would that look like? Yeah. And we have had those conversations and the kind of the simplest way that I have been able to explain it to them is to say anything that has taken the priority of your life that should belong to God.

That is the thing that is an idol. Now, does that mean that you can't love mommy and daddy? No, clearly not. You're commanded to honor your mother and father, but it is anything that takes away from and distracts you from things that are rightfully God's.

So, you know, we have family worship and we sit and everybody kind of has their assigned seats in the living room. And dad has his chair. And I have a two-year-old who is very particular about what belongs to who, and that is daddy's chair.

And nobody sits in daddy's chair, but daddy, she'll kick the dog out if the dog gets in my chair. And as I talk with the kids, and this came about primarily when my kids were reading and they read the passage where God says, I am jealous.

And they said, God, why could God be jealous? And as I explained to them, well, things that are rightfully God's, and they're given away to anything else, that thing is an idol in the same way that I have a right to my house.

And so if somebody comes to me and says, well, this is my house now. No, I am jealous for my house. Yeah. So anything in life that promises the things that God promises, that promises us, you know, real contentment, real completeness, wholeness, happiness, security, you know, a sense of identity, a reason to get out of bed in the morning, things that promise us this, but that are not God, are idols.

They always promise us these things more quickly than we think God would be willing to give them to us, shortcuts. Lower cost. Yeah. Half the cost. But of course, they never really deliver. And it's the things too that they may not in and of themselves seem to be promising that, but it's the things that we're putting our hope in for that.

Right. Yeah. So if the life that, if you can honestly look in the spiritual mirror of the scriptures and say, I do love the Lord, but I also, I just have so many other things right now that are very important to me and I would not be willing to lay them down for the Lord.

You know, the gifts that God has given us have risen in our hearts above the giver. We are not willing to go without. We're willing to cut corners to get these things. You know, those are things that are in the wrong place of our soul.

So it's interesting that God says he is not willing to share his people with idols, even though they aren't real gods. And even though they're only in the heart and thoughts of these leaders of the nation, he will not even speak to them.

They can come to the Bible. They can come to the prophet as much as they want. They'll get nothing until they deal with the false lovers that have crowded in. I think it's an amazing contrast that in human history, in the Bible, we see that idols are always willing to share their worshipers with other gods, or even with the true God.

You can worship Baal and Asherah and Molech and whoever else, and you can worship God also. You can make him one of the many, and you never find the idolaters rising up saying, how dare you add another God?

Because the idea is, you know, that different idols are beneficial in different ways. This is the idol. You know, this is the God of fertility, and this is the God of war. But then we have the God of the Bible.

So great. It's great. We just add another God. We'll have more benefit, you know, more gods on our team. And so idols, one of the marks of an idol, and one way we can tell whether we serve the God of the Bible or a Jesus that we have imagined, and we use cliches from the Bible to make them look like the Christ of the Bible, is this question, does your Christ mind sharing you with all the things that the lost person hopes in?

And you too are hoping in it. Not the foul things, not the embarrassing things, just the normal stuff that people hope in. And you hope in them just like an unconverted or, you know, an unbelieving person.

And your Jesus is fine to share you. If your Jesus is fine to share you with every other ideal out there, then you have a Jesus who is an idol and not the living God, because idols don't mind sharing, but God never shares.

So we want to be careful as we come to the Bible, if we're getting nothing from it, if we're getting nothing from the gathering with other believers and worshiping, it may be that we need to look at ourselves and say, is God saying, I don't intend to be consulted by you at all because you have idols in your heart and they're right in front of my eyes?

Treating God’s Word as Entertainment

Well, another, God will not teach those who treat his word as a sensual or stirring song. Ezekiel 33, verse 30 through 32. You want to find that? Ezekiel 33, verse 30 through 32. What in the world is the Bible talking about?

When God points out that the people are treating his word as a sensual or a stirring song, and how does that affect the way he teaches them? So Ezekiel 33, starting in verse 30, yeah, through 32. As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each one to his brother, come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.

And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say, but they will not do it. For with lustful talk in their mouths, they act. Their heart is set on their game and behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument for they hear what you say, but they will not do it.

All right. So the description there of this people that God will not speak to, and he tells his prophet, you know, don't, you're not to take their appearance at church seriously. They are not really here to listen, not to God, because they're treating Ezekiel's sermon as a sensual or stirring, or it says lustful song.

And it doesn't, lustful in this situation doesn't have to mean a twisted, wicked, immoral desire, just sensual. It's the word of God in a sermon, in a book, in a study is it stirs up the emotions, but it never is applied.

So it's treated almost like it's entertaining. It's thrilling. Now let's point out a couple things. First of all, the word of God is thrilling to the believer, but the difference is the believer is thrilled and out of love for the God that gives him or her the word, they want to do the word.

And these people are not interested. They're just going to a concert, man. I love hearing that, that person sing, man, their voice. It's just, you know, I just, I can't, I cry every time I hear him. Well, great.

Your emotions were moved, but you didn't do anything. So if you treat the word of God that way, it's, it's a big problem. Another thing we notice is it's not the prophet's fault. God doesn't say to the prophet, why do you preach such exciting sermons?

All you're doing is attracting people to yourself. He doesn't blame Ezekiel in this at all, but he says the people who come to you are coming to you as if you are an exciting song. And that's as far as it goes.

Uh, so Teddy, let me ask you, can you think of any preachers in our day? And the blame is not on the preacher that people will flock to because their sermons are thrilling, shocking, gripping, but they might be in danger of being thrilled and shocked and gripped like you would with a great song.

But God isn't really going to speak to your soul because you're treating those words as entertainment. Well, I, so I live, uh, you know, looking at a lot of YouTube stuff because our stuff is on YouTube.

So I'm watching it. And I can tell you that Paul Washer is that guy. But what is amazing to me is this, if you will go and watch the videos of his sermons, which I have done, and he is truly gifted by God to preach, love his preaching.

But if you'll look at the comments, it is one of the most heartbreaking areas in the world, because what you will see is there's a few comments here and there of people who are, you know, seem to be as much as you can tell from a comment, um, seem to be genuinely moved.

But there are so many that, yes, this is the fire and brimstone preaching we need, you know, and, and it is, they, they want, it's like they're searching for that shock jock value. And I mean, having known Paul, that's not what he's after at all.

Right. And it's not just the speaker. Um, it can be, uh, you know, it could be an author. So we could say, I love to read so-and-so, you know, Tozer, because he just, he lets him have it, you know, he, he doesn't hold anything back or Leonard Ravenhill would probably be a better one, you know, Ravenhill, you know, you're playing instead of praying, you know, he just, he, you know, preachers are staying up and they're mesmerized by a TV screen and not by the Bible.

And, you know, and, and it's easy to agree and to be stirred by those thoughts, but not apply them in your own life. So it's like the book or the preacher or the Bible passage. There could be favorite passages.

You know, I love that passage. Oh, that's, I love, I always love it when someone preaches on that passage. Well, because you're gripped emotionally, but you're treating it like a wonderfully moving song.

It moves the senses. It moves the emotions. It's entertaining perhaps, but you don't do anything about it yourself. And so God is grieved and says, you're treating my word in one form or another, like it's an exciting, sensual song.

And you're doing nothing that I'm commanding. And in, in reality, what you're doing is also, you are taking the word of God, you're taking the preaching of God, and it is, it has become about you and about what you want and what you feel.

Yeah. And really you become the center of your religion, which is always what happens with idolatry. You know, the idol really is not the thing you're devoted to. You're devoted to self. The idol promises to be devoted to self.

If you give it, you know, the payment. If you give, if you give, if I give you what, what you want, you're going to give me what I want. Yeah. So the idol really is all about you as well. Mm-hmm. Well, the last category of passage that we thought we might mention in this short description of people that can be trusted with God's word or cannot be trusted in a day where we so desperately need to have the words of God for our families and our neighborhoods, churches, our world is found in Colossians 3 verse 16.

And I'll read the verse. It says, let the word of God or let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. That's where we want to stop. Just that first part. It goes on to talk about some other things.

Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. So I think we can sum this up by saying, God trusts those with his word who don't limit that word in their lives. And so imagine a home because the use of the word dwell.

Dwell here means to permanent residents, not just, you know, come stop for a visit. Let the word of God come into you. Let it richly or fully or extensively set down its home in your life. And, you know, we've talked about this church many times, probably have in a podcast.

But if we imagine the different kind of people that will come to our home in the average year, and depending on whether you, you know, where you live way out in the country or in a town or little suburb, we have people that come to our homes and, you know, we let them have different degrees of access to our home.

Someone like a political a candidate, they come to your house when it's time for voting and they, you can see them, their truck comes up and it's got a giant flag on it with their name and the slogan.

And you realize this is a candidate for some local, you know, position and they come up and they have their card and they go to hand it to you. So sometimes I, I pretend I'm not home. I just hide. I do not want, you know, just leave your card.

I will read the card and I will vote one way or the other, but I don't want to have a conversation with the person. So sometimes I open the door and I see it's a political candidate and I think I should have looked out the window before I opened the door, but I don't want to be rude.

So there they are. I stand in the door. I don't ever let a political candidate into the house and say, why don't you just, well, you want some Coke? Do you want, you want a glass of tea? So I take their card.

I stand in the door. I kind of block. I got my hand on the doorknob because when I'm done with that conversation, I want to politely say, thanks for coming. I got your card. Really? It's got what I need on it.

Okay. Well, I'm sure you're busy. I'm busy. I'm going to shut my door now. Okay. Then there's other people. There's friends who stopped by. And when you see the friend, you don't stand in the door and block him.

You say, Hey, I didn't expect you. You know, and they say, well, I was just passing by. Well, come on in, you know, sit down. You want something from the kitchen? You let him in the living room. You let him use the restroom.

If they say, yeah, I just, I've got a little bit of time. Thought we'd catch up. Can I use the restroom? You say, sure. Right. There's the restroom. But you would feel a little strange. If that person, as they walked to the bathroom, then went beyond the bathroom, you know, the bathroom in the hallway that everybody uses, and they go into your room and they go beyond just your room, they go into your closet.

And then they open the drawers and your chest of drawers, and they're going through your, you know, your sock drawer and they're looking through everything and going through the wife's, you know, chest of drawers.

Oh, I didn't know she had this shirt. I like these socks. You would eventually go back there and say in an awkward way, what are you doing? You know, now friends come in further than political candidates, but then what if your kids come?

And if you're old enough, you have kids and grandkids and they come and the little grandkids, they go everywhere, you know, unless they're so little, you have to put the little gates up. But if they're able to go everywhere without hurting themselves, they go everywhere.

And they get into your room and they're playing hide and go seek. And they come out in grandpa's shoes. Yeah. You know, they're under your bed. They're bringing stuff to you. And you're like, oh, where'd you get that?

Oh, that's grandma's something. You got it in her closet. Well, let's take it back, you know, but you know, you don't get angry. When the word of God comes to us, do we treat it as the person that gets to come to the front porch and you say, wait, we're going to have a conversation.

I've got all the information in my hand and I'll tell you if I ever want you to invade further. And some people say, well, no, of course not. You know, we go to church and we let the word of God come in further.

We let it sit in the living room and it goes to our kitchen and our, it's allowed to use the bathroom. It's allowed to walk around our yard with us. But you say, but if someone says, is it allowed to go everywhere?

Do you let the word of God go everywhere? Do you let it go everywhere and affect everything? Or are there a few areas in your life that you've marked off a few cupboards, a few closets that you've locked?

You, you know, you say to the family, word of God's coming, word of God. And you run back and you lock some doors. I don't know. Shut the, shut the bedroom door. I don't want the word of God to see what a wreck that is.

No, shut your door, kids. Yeah, it's a wreck. Do you let the word of God through, go through every part of the family, every part of the church, every part of you. And do you let it just live there? If we do, then we are the kind of people that God can trust to send his word frequently.

But if we don't, why would we think that God would speak to us when we open our Bible? If he knows that our pattern has been to say, I like that verse, but it's only allowed to go this far because I'm not giving God, uh, the freedom, so to speak.

I'm not willingly letting him say anything about these areas. And Dr. Lloyd-Jones had a, a great illustration in this, because it is the type of thing that has to be done day upon day, day after day, because there's constant battles to be fought.

And Lloyd-Jones would say that there, you know, imagine that there's an aisle of man, an island, and you and the Holy Spirit go into this jungle island and you're fighting battle after battle until every cave, every tunnel, every tree is conquered and every enemy on that entire island is destroyed.

And it will never happen in this lifetime, but we continually fight. And if we fight and we will see those victories, God will continue to give victory and continue to fight. Yeah. Well, I want us to close down today.

Uh, next week we're going to look at a verse from Psalm 119 verse 43, where the Psalmist pleads, do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth. A great prayer for someone who wants to be used by the Lord to speak his word to people at home, neighborhood, church, work, wherever, in a way that is life-giving, life-changing.

God, don't take your word from my mouth. I want to have something to say to people. And we're going to look at some ways that that could happen and how to guard our hearts against that as we pray that ourselves.

But before we close down today, let me give you a quote from Charles Simeon, famous, uh, evangelical leader in England. Uh, he was starting to minister around the time that John Newton was ending his ministry.

So at the end, uh, of the kind of the, the great awakening men in there and those waves of influence Simeon in the 1800s, the 19th century was a pastor. He wrote this, and this is based on his comments on Colossians 3 that we just read.

He said, let us suppose that the Lord Jesus Christ were now to come among us and to teach in our churches as he once did in the streets and synagogues of Judea. Wouldn't we, if we knew him to be the same Jesus, listen to him with the deepest attention, you could say, wouldn't we crowd the church, but Jesus will be at our church this week.

If we could think of him now addressing us right now from the cross and appealing to his own sufferings as an unquestionable demonstration of his love and an irresistible argument for our adherence to him, wouldn't we be melted to tears?

Wouldn't we be ready to say, what have we anymore to do with idols? Or suppose that we saw the heavens opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of the father. Suppose he spoke to us with a thundering voice and the earth shook.

Wouldn't we tremble? Wouldn't we be ready to say as the Israelites did of old, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do, and we will be obedient. But were we to hear him speaking to us in any of these ways, the word would not more certainly be his than the word, which is, which we now possess in our hands, in our Bibles.

Therefore, whatever feelings of fear or love or gratitude that we would feel on account of such revelations of his will, we ought to feel them in reverence to that sacred book, which we now hold. Well, before we meet again next week, let's all determine that by the grace of God, we will respond to this book as we would respond if, if we found Christ speaking to us in one of those ways, uh, years ago.