Who are you listening to?

Scripture:

Mark 1:21–28 NLT

Jesus and his companions went to the town of Capernaum. When the Sabbath day came, he went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority—quite unlike the teachers of religious law. Suddenly, a man in the synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, “Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” But Jesus reprimanded him. “Be quiet! Come out of the man,” he ordered. At that, the evil spirit screamed, threw the man into a convulsion, and then came out of him. Amazement gripped the audience, and they began to discuss what had happened. “What sort of new teaching is this?” they asked excitedly. “It has such authority! Even evil spirits obey his orders!” The news about Jesus spread quickly throughout the entire region of Galilee.

The Masked Singer

People come out in full body costumes and sing songs while a panel of judges tries to guess who they are under the mask.

Some are difficult because the celebrity contestants are not normally singers.

Those who are professional singers have the difficulty of trying to disguise their voices enough that they are not easily guessed.

Even then, some have such a unique voice that you can tell who their are by voice alone.

The Phone call

Pastor Paul Wier used to teach us that God had a unique voice, and the more we listened to Him, the more we would come to recognize it.

He taught us that it was like the way you can recognize your mom or dad’s voice on the phone, or other loved ones, no matter what phone you are talking on or how good the signal may be.

Back in the days before caller id and cell phones, that teaching example meant more to us.

Even with different phones, or masks, we can still recognize one another by the sound of our voice.

And it is still the same with God. When we hear His voice, we hear it more often, and we begin to recognize it more easily.

The Noise

The bigger trouble we have is that there are other voices pretending to be God in our lives. Other people trying to speak for God, other people trying to write for God. Some are trying to explain God or explain Him away. Others, a lot of others, are there trying to distract you away from God altogether.

Sometimes we pick up that noise with our ears and some of it we pick up with our eyes. Sometimes we get overwhelmed by feelings and are not able to figure out what is from God and what is not.

When we get distracted from God, those counting on us to help them draw close to God get distracted as well. The more we listen and follow the noise and other voices, the more difficult it can be to hear God clearly.

Thesis: If we are going to follow Jesus, we need to learn to recognize His voice above all the other noise in our lives.

A Voice of Authority

Jesus vs the Teachers

The Pharisees

Of all the Jewish groups at the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were the ones most hopeful that God would save His people. Many of the ruling priests belonged to the Sadducees, who believed in preserving the Jewish culture, but had given up on God as an active part of their life. There were small prophetic movements, like the Essenes that John the Baptist was likely connected with, but they moved outside the cities and, like Jonah, were waiting for the wrath of God to fall on everyone else. The Pharisees were the teachers and scribes who most closely believed that you could live in the world but not be of the world.

The Pharisees believed that God spoke to people, they just had not heard Him in a long time. They began to think that God only spoke to people who were righteous, who were spiritually clean. In their eyes, the world had become so spiritually soiled that there was no one left for God to speak to and through. Their efforts were focused on helping everyone clean up their acts so that God would speak to His people again and save them.

That meant they, just like all the other groups, put a particular spin on the way they taught the Bible. If you appeared to be a good person, they wanted to teach you the scripture so you could show God and help make everyone else even more righteous. They taught people how to beg for God’s attention.

Jesus

Jesus did not teach people how to get God’s attention. He taught us that we already have it. He taught that the big visible acts of worship don’t matter if the small, daily acts of love for God and one another aren’t there. Not only was it different concepts in the teaching, Jesus taught as if He knew God personally and could speak for Him.

In a world that believed all phone service to heaven was down, Jesus walked onto the scene and told folks they could borrow his phone. Can you imagine the response of the crowds? Do you have a question you’ve always wanted to ask God? You don’t have to wait for the end of the world, you can sit down and ask Jesus and He will patch you through… The crowds flocked to Jesus.

And the Pharisees, and other teachers were ticked. They had taught these people as faithfully as they knew for generations, and now their services were no longer needed. They had been holding up the Jewish religion and now they were just another face in the crowd, easily forgotten.

Resurrecting Failed Teaching

The Pharisees would try to come back and re-convert everyone that Jesus brought into relationship with God.

It would start out with, “what you’ve seen and heard, perhaps even done is all well and good, but if you really want to be worthy of God’s love here are a list of things that you need to do.”

They followed Paul through the Roman empire, long after Jesus had returned to heaven. Those voices follow us today.

They are not wrong that being in relationship with God means we are going to do things. There’s nothing automatic about relationships of any kinds. What they are mistaken about is their idea that God is holding the scissors to the phone cord, looking for a reason to cut us off.

We are the ones holding the scissors, trying to decide if we want to continue to hear what God has to say.

Responses to Authority

Jesus vs the Demons

The next group of voices who contribute to the spiritual noise in our lives are the forces of evil and darkness. Everyone had their mind blown when a demon showed up in one of the members of this synagogue. With all their focus on spiritual cleanliness and keeping the bad folks out, this was the last thing they expected to see in the middle of their worship service.

So not only was their idea that God was avoiding them because of their spiritual state wrong, all their work to clean up everyone’s acts had not worked. A demon had slipped through the barriers and had come to worship with them.

The demon did not get past Jesus though. He called it out and cast it out of the man and the whole synagogue. Why did it even show up at all?

It said, “Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are - the Holy One of God!”

Somebody, maybe even the whole synagogue, maybe even the whole community, was under the oppressive thumb of this evil spirit, and it became apparent when Jesus started speaking to the people. Darkness cannot hide in the presence of the light. Evil cannot stand the presence of Jesus.

A Transforming Message

The powerful message of the Gospel, which was new to those people in the first century, was that they were not evil themselves, they were people with evil in them. If they were willing to empty that evil out of them, they could sit and talk with God all day long.

In fact, even if they didn’t get rid of all that evil and wickedness, God was still going to come to them. They just may not be able to tolerate God for very long.

God is not the one who has an allergic reaction to sin. Our sinful nature has an allergic reaction to God. Those voices of evil and darkness try to convince us that we are just like them, while Jesus tells us that God sees us as his lost children, like sheep being led astry.

How can you tell which voice is God’s voice?

God leads with love.

That means He has authority. He speaks truth, whether it is truth we want to hear or not. He tells us what we need to hear.

When He speaks, there is an invitation to respond. Sometimes the response is simply “Thank you!” Other times it is “I’m sorry.” Most every time, there is a way we can respond with our words as well as with our actions.

When God speaks, the noises in our lives often feel threatened and will try to drown Him out. But they can’t. You will always be able to hear God’s whisper, even when the world is screaming around you. You just have to listen.

Seek, and you will find. Pray, and Listen, and you will hear Him.

Naming the Noise

Identify the sources of those trying to influence you.

That goes beyond fact checking. It is motive checking.

Check your own motives.

There may be something in you fighting against God. Most of the time it is not a demon, but it may be a desire that we are unwilling to surrender.

Look at where God is working.

Good times and bad, God is always working in and around those who seek Him.

Scripture: a testimony of Who God is and what He sounds like. Better than TV. Better than Social Media. Reading scripture helps you recognize God’s voice in the noise around you.

Name the noise and put it aside. Follow God’s voice