Introduction: I grew up in a home with hearing loss. My father had boils on the back of his ears as a child, so the doctor lanced them and in so doing, severed his nerves. Ever since I can remember, he has had a hearing aid. We had to speak directly to him and if there were too many voices in the room, he would call it “racket”.
I recall, in fact, that when I was looking at his hearing aid box, which was clipped to his chest shirt pocket, he would put the telephone receiver to the box and listen from there. That, coupled with the fact that I daily saw his false teeth in a glass, made me wonder if he was made up of spare parts. It reminds me of a song sung by George Younce, the late bass singer of the Cathedral Quartet: he sang about senior couple who had just wed.
On their wedding night, the wife took off her wig, pulled out her hearing aid, took off her glasses, unlatched her prosthetic leg, and such. At the end of the song he sang that the husband decided to sleep by the chair, because there was more of her there.
Hearing loss can be caused by a variety of things: injury, illness, medicine, physician error, as happened to my dad. There is another cause: continued loud sounds, which diminish the hearing. I knew a man who had worked at the Star Tribune in the printing press area for 20 years. He ended up with a hearing aid.
We concentrate on God not hearing us (He has no hearing loss), but the problem normally is that we can’t hear Him and it could be because we are listening to the loud sounds of “miracles, healings, etc.”, or viewing Him from the “earthquakes, natural disasters of life”.
Let’s focus on I Kings 19:11, when Elijah was fleeing for his life. He fled and hid in a cave and felt safe for a while. Then God started talking, so we’ll look at the three areas of what is occurring in this story: 1) The stance of listening; 2) The sounds we listen to; 3) The still, small voice we need to listen to.
The Stance (we need to be prepared to hear, just like a soldier who stands for orders).
A. Elijah is told to go forth (come out of the cave, that self-protection we make)-verse 9.
1. He is given a specific location, but no explanation.
2. We need to follow God step by step; let God fill in the empty spaces;
3. Elijah declares that he has been left alone in the fight. Sometimes we feel like we’re the only one there. God has to prove otherwise.
B. Jehovah passes by
1. This is Yahweh – the personal covenant name of God Himself.
2. We have God’s movement here, but not the voice yet.
3. God always prepares the moment before He speaks to it.
C. Reveals His personal sense; the way He feeds us daily.
Reveals His personal sense – The victory is not in theology, philosophy, rationality, or even prophetic declarations. The victory is in having a relationship with the personal name of God. We know Him as Jesus.
The Sounds: (Sony Walkmans, etc., put to the ear can cause deafness over time.)
In verse 11 there is a great wind. “Great” is the Hebrew word meaning, “great in force”. It rent the mountains and broke rocks. The Aramaic sense means to “bind or squeeze”. Sounds like a tornado or cyclone, where the atmosphere explodes and tears things in pieces.
The earthquake – in abstract means “quaking, shaking” and can be figurative of judgement. The earthquake at the time of the crucifixion of Christ caused a devastating earthquake, along with total darkness, revealing the ark of the covenant as gone (religion dead) and Jesus ultimately alive.
The fire – verse 12 – Elijah had called on God, who already sent down fire, so it wouldn’t be unusual to think that God was speaking this way. Don’t judge what God has said in the past by what He is doing now; He does unprecedented things, new things, and we need to see what He is doing right now.
These disasters or any personal crisis, is very loud in our lives and repeated exposure doesn’t necessarily soften us. It actually can cause us to be hard of hearing, because we are waiting for the “big boom”, “miracle”, etc. I knew a man named Marv who told me that he would give his life to Christ right before he died in an accident or whatever. I told him that because he is not God, he would not know the timing, nor would he necessarily be in the right frame of mind. Disasters can make us angry towards God, and while they can cause us to question our faith and look for His plan, they are not necessarily the messenger of God for personal relationship.
The Still, Small Voice:
The Hebrew word “still” means “low, articulate whisper”. You have to get very close to hear a whisper. God can yell, but He prefers to speak in close proximity. Elijah felt he was being picked on, kind of like Job (Job 4: 14-17). Notice that this is not a babbling; it is understandable, intelligent.
The word “small” is the Hebrew adjective “small, thin, fine”. The same word is used for the manna that fed the children of Israel in Exodus 16: 4 (NKJV). God is geometric in a sense, that He is big enough to fill the universe, but small enough to fill our hearts. We need to steer away from the “big booms” and listen to the way He feeds us daily.
Voice – is Hebrew word for sound or voice (not sounds of nature, but clear, voice of the Creator).
We need to hear, so we can change – Romans 10: 14-18.
1. faith comes by hearing – relationship oriented.
2. hearing comes by responding to the Word of God.
3. Greek word “rhema” is the creative Word – “God breathed”;
4. not just what we read, but what God breathes into us by the Holy Spirit.
5. In this text, the Jews didn’t hear – that Greek word “ekousan” is where we get our word “acoustics”. Listening to other sounds bouncing off the wall or the cave we’re in only obscures the message.
Only God can fit us with a cone of hearing and we hear through Him, not through experience, tragedy, or even ecstasy.
Conclusion: In 1989 my father had cancer surgery and when they wheeled him into recovery, someone either didn’t tell him or speak directly to his face that he was being put in a room with no other patients, no personnel or anything. So, when he awoke, he thought he was dead and in the morgue. All because he couldn’t hear and no one made sure he understood what was occurring.
God wants us to hear Him; paying more attention to the big sounds of life can deaden our hearing Him. It can also keep us in fear and terror, because we feel alone and uncertain. Don’t wait for the loud sounds, but develop the whisper of God.