And when Moses went
into the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he heard the voice speaking to
him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from
between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him. (Bemidbar / Numbers 7:89; ESV)
Did you know
that Moses heard voices? Well, a voice actually. Or I should probably say The Voice. Judaism is founded on the
claim that the creator God revealed himself by speaking to people, especially
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. It’s not as if they were tuned in to the
spiritual world. The Torah doesn't teach that God's voice emanates from behind
the veil of the material world and some people possess a special ability to
pick up the sound of his voice. Rather it was God who initiated communication
with them.
We read in
this week's portion that Moses heard God clearly speak on a regular basis as he
entered the special tent which contained the sacred chest called the Ark of the
Covenant (Hebrew: aron' habberit'). Some people attempt to extract the moral
elements of Torah, while rejecting any notion that God can or does speak. But
it isn't intellectually honest to attempt to honor the Torah as a great moral
work while rejecting its own assertion to be divinely inspired. Either we
accept it as a whole, including that it is a record of God's communication or
reject it as a dishonest fabrication.
But what
about other religions and their sacred documents? Don't most of them also claim
that God or gods inspired them? Sure they do. And like the Torah it is
dishonoring to other religions to reduce their sacred writings to collections
of wise sayings. Either God inspired these writings or he did not. If he did,
then we are well advised to listen. If he did not, then we should completely
reject the claims of those religions.
As a student
of the Bible (both the Hebrew Scriptures and New Covenant Writings), I have
good reason to believe that it is the only authorized, inspired revelation of
the one true God. This is not the time or place to explain my reasons for that.
What I am trying to get at is at its core, the Bible is a record of people
hearing the voice of God.
According to
the Bible knowing God is more than adhering to a set of principles. It includes
an essential personal and relational component mainly expressed through
intimate communication with God, both speaking to him and hearing him. In the
Hebrew Scriptures we read of individuals who possessed various levels of
intimacy with God with Moses being the one who heard him the most in terms of
quantity and clarity.
The prophet
Joel anticipated a time when all God's people would experience a greatly
increased level of communication with God:
And
it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions. (Joel 3:1-2; [English 2:28-29; ESV]).
The festival
of Shavuot (English: Weeks or Pentecost) begins this week (evening of May 14,
2013). God chose the observance of this festival, fifty days after Yeshua's
death, to fulfill Joel's prophesy (see Acts 2). Yeshua's perfect sacrifice
satisfied God's requirements and opened up the way for this new level of
communication between him and us.
As we
receive the gift of God's Spirit, we shouldn't be surprised when we begin to
sense communicative nudges from him. Will we hear The Voice like Moses did?
Perhaps. God speaks in so many ways. But speak he will.
No comments:
Post a Comment