SUNDAY 18th
Deuteronomy 30:20
NIV – ‘and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life and he will give you many years . . .’
ESV – ‘. . . loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, . . .’
Today we continue with our second point from this verse which is that:
We obey his voice.
Our love toward God is further demonstrated by our willingness to listen to (NIV) and to obey (ESV, KJV) the voice of God.
Obedience is a key word in the life of the people of Israel, and likewise for us as the Church, the body of Christ. Taking from the NIV and the ESV we see that we need to listen and obey, that is we need to become sensitive to hearing the voice of God in the many ways that we can hear it and act upon it once heard with obedience. (Remember Samuel in 1 Samuel 3)
God speaks in many ways, first and foremost through the Scripture which is the Word of God, as we read it and meditate upon it we need to hear God speak, secondly he has spoken to us through his Son, Jesus, (Hebrews 1:1-4) and we hear God speak through the words, life and ministry of Jesus, thirdly I am a firm believer that God speaks through the preaching of his Word, that is why I believe the preaching of the Word of God is still vitally important in the life of a local Church and because of its importance sufficient time must be given over for its proclamation. Fourth, I believe God speaks through the gifts and ministry of the Holy Spirit, speaking through what we would call the voice gifts as found in 1 Corinthians 12, and then I believe that God can speak into our lives with a still small voice, an inner conviction that we can clearly sense as being the voice of God. In the book of Deuteronomy we see how God chose to speak to the people of Israel through Moses, and as Moses spoke God’s word to them, whether of instruction, warning, or guidance they needed to not only hear but also to obey.
We also need to hear the voice of God, whether it be a word of guidance, instruction, warning or direction, we need to be willing to obey him for the way of blessing is through obedience. We can all recall the story of Jonah, how God spoke to him and he chose to disobey and go his own way, if only he had listened and obeyed the first time he could have saved himself a whole lot of trouble, the same goes for the people of Israel, because of their stubbornness and disobedience they went around in circles for forty years, may we never wander in the desert or have to go through unpleasant circumstances because we choose to ignore the voice of God, but may we be determined in our hearts to respond positively to what he speaks to us, individually and corporately as a local Church.
Obedience (obeying his voice) is a loving submission to the one we love, because we trust him.