Our hearts cry out this morning as one voice, as one body, as one church to our Savior Jesus Christ. We rejoice that we are able to come together as the community of God today. As we are here together as one body singing and praying there is a very real silence that begins to capture us.
This is not a silence created by the mere absence of sound, but a silence from the voices that clamor for your attention all week. A silence that is refreshing to your soul. You anticipate this silence every week. You long for a respite from the perpetual clanging of the voice of the world. Every day the world beckons to you. It starts by whispering to you about all the cares you have in this world. It gets louder and louder. The voice of the world is so confident. It has no shame. It is persistent. It wants you to hear. It wants you to pay attention to all it has to offer all its pleasures and all its riches.
Is the voice of the world still ringing in your soul this morning? It’s loud isn’t it? You hear it almost everywhere you go. Now you are here with the people of God: the one body, the one community, the one voice of the people God. This is God’s providential refuge for you. Brothers and sisters we have all heard the voice of the world this week, and we are all desperate for its clanging noisy tone to be silenced.
We want it to be silenced for one reason. We want to hear the voice of God.
We are ready and expectant. We want to hear the voice of God today. We have heard from the world and the powers of spiritual darkness long enough. We come together turning down the volume of our lives, and all the voices calling to us so that as one body we can hear God himself speak to us through His Word and through His appointed messenger.
Are you ready to hear His voice today? Hearing God is critical for your spiritual life as Jesus made clear when He said, “An hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” [John 5:25]. . . . “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish” [John 10:27-28].
Jesus compels us to give great attention to hearing the Word of God as he says, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you” [Mark 4:24].
The author of Hebrews joins the voice of Jesus himself when he warns us about our tendency to forget what we have heard. He says, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” [Hebrews 2:1].
Brothers and sisters the hour is here. Our individual voices are silent. Through the gracious working of the Spirit, the voice of the world is being silenced. We have come together as one body praising the name of our Father, boasting in our Redeemer, and now we wait to hear the voice of Christ speak to us through the Word.
Is the world still ringing in your ears? There is still time. There is still time for you to set aside the worries of your life, your preoccupation with money, and your desires for constant pleasure so that you can hear the Word. Set them aside so you can hear the voice of God speak into your life today.
Recommended Scripture Reading: Mark 4:1-25; Luke 8:1-21; John 10:1-30