Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.

Hebrews 1:1-2

God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways. And I believe that God still does – God still speaks to us, and in many and various ways. 

But it can be challenging to figure out what God is saying to us. And Christians don’t even agree about what God is saying. So, I thought it would be good today to dig into this idea, that God still speaks to us, and see what we can learn about it together. 

What are these “many and various ways” that God speaks? How do we know when it is God? What do we do when God seems to be silent? Is there anything that we can do to better hear God’s messages to us? 

These are the questions that I had in mind as I prepared this sermon. And with that in mind, let me start on that first question: What are the “many and various ways” that God speaks to us today? I want to offer five of these ways, beginning with the most obvious: 

God speaks to us through God’s Word. 

God’s Word

This is certainly not the only way that God speaks to us, but it is an important one. We believe that God’s Word is just that – it is a Word from God. It is “God-breathed,” as Paul tells Timothy. It is trustworthy, it is true, it is helpful, it offers us light for our path, it promises to guide us through the maze of life. It can be confusing, but on the whole it is clear. It shows us how much God loves us, invites us into a life-changing relationship with that same God, and teaches us how to live in response to all that God has done for us. 

Think of the countless Christians whose lives have been blessed by God’s Word. There really is nothing else like it, and it will always be one of the foundational ways that God speaks to us. 

Open your Bible every day, praying for wisdom and insight; read it with an open heart, and God will speak. If a passage is confusing, skip over it. If a passage seems to be speaking to you, stop there and hold that passage in prayer. Memorize it. Journal about it. Talk to God about it. And listen. For God is speaking through that word. 

The Word of Life

But God does not just speak to us through God’s Word. God also speaks to us through our lives. 

How does God do that? Well, often it is through one of two ways: Love and Pain. 

These are both experiences that open our hearts to new insights. Both love and pain tend to make us a little more pliable. If God is the potter and we are the clay, as scripture teaches us, then great love and great pain can make us a little easier to work with, a little more pliable. 

Think about love, for example. I know that for me personally, becoming a husband and then a father were two experiences in my life that really opened me up, and helped me to better hear God speaking to me. Great love like that gives us a glimpse into the perfect, infinite, eternal love that is God. Love is who God is, and so love is clearly a way that God speaks to us. 

But what about pain, or suffering? How does God speak through that? I don’t know exactly how, or even why, but I do believe that God often speaks to us through our pain. We have all seen it through shared experiences of suffering, like 911, or this recent devastating storm. We see, in the midst of tragedy, great acts of courage and sacrificial love, and we can’t help but see God at work. Painful events like these tend to open us up to hearing God in new ways. 

C.S. Lewis put it this way: “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

It is not that God causes this pain. I don’t believe that. But God speaks in our pain. It can amplify God’s voice. It can rouse us and encourage us to pay attention. 

God’s Still, Small Voice

But then there is yet another way that God speaks to us, which is almost the opposite of this one. Do you remember the story of Elijah and the “still, small voice”? 

Elijah was being persecuted for doing what God asked of him. He was on the run, and certainly suffering. But God did not speak to him through the suffering. Elijah was told to: 

“‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” (1 Kings 19:11-12)

And it was in that still, small voice that God spoke to Elijah. 

Sometimes we are looking for something dramatic from God, when we really should be quieting ourselves down, and paying attention to a much quieter message. 

Go for a walk, sit quietly on your porch, light a candle and open your journal, turn off your electronics, and then listen, listen to the sound of sheer silence. In this noisy, busy world, we can go whole days without doing that. This doesn’t happen spontaneously anymore, or even come naturally. And that makes it all the more important to do it. It is another vital way that God speaks to us. 

By the Prophets

Through God’s Word, through the Word of Life, in the still, small voice. And then there are two more ways that God speaks to us that I want to mention today. Both from the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews. 

“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” 

God speaks to us through the prophets. But who are the prophets? Well, some of the prophets are found in the Bible, of course. But a prophet according to the Bible is someone, anyone, who bears a message from God. And there are prophets among us today. Our friends and family, people near and far. 

Prophets are simply people like you and me given a message to carry to the world. And in many cases, this will be a message from someone close to us, and will not make the news, or be printed in a book. But it is no less important a message. Because it is one of the ways that God speaks to us still. 

In These Last Days

And finally, there is one more way that God speaks to us, and it may be the most important of all. 

“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” “But now,” the author of this book goes on to say, “in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.”

The author of Hebrews wants us to know that we are in the last days. And in these last days, God has decided to speak with a final, complete, and perfect Word. Whose name is Jesus.

He is God’s perfect Word to us. The perfect revelation of who God is, and of God’s love for us, and his plan for us.

It’s true that God speaks in many and various ways. But in these last days, God has spoken one final time. Through the one who is our way, and our truth, and our life; who is our hope and our promise and our future. Through the one who is “the reflection of God’s glory”, as the Letter to the Hebrews puts it, “and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

Jesus, the word made flesh, tells us all that we need to know about God. If you know me, Jesus said, you know my Father also. And from now on you do know him and have seen him. Because we know his son. And because we know his son, we know everything we need to know about God.

His Words and His Life

But how does Jesus speak to us today? In addition to all the other ways that I have been describing, there is one more way that Jesus speaks to us, and that is through his life. Not just his words, but his life. 

Read the gospels and consider closely how Jesus treats people. Not just what he says, but how he treats people. That is how he would treat you and me. Every interaction between Jesus and another gives us one more piece of the puzzle. When we put them all together, we get a beautiful picture of Jesus, not just from his words, but from his actions and relationships. All showing us how Jesus treats us. And how he wants us to treat others. 

Jesus did not just come to earth to die for us, but also to show us how to live. And God can speak a great deal to us simply through the life of his son. 

Closing

God can and does speak to us in many and various ways, even today. 

But I want to close with a very important reminder to us about all of this. And this comes from the Christian writer, Dallas Willard, from his classic book, “Hearing God.” He writes: 

“Generally speaking, God will not compete for our attention. Occasionally a Saul gets knocked to the ground and so on, but we should expect that in most cases God will not run over us. We must be open to the possibility of God’s addressing us in whatever way he chooses, or else we may walk right past a burning bush instead of saying, as Moses did, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up’ (Ex. 3:3).” 

God does speak to us, even today. But most of the time, God will not compete for our attention. So hearing God speak to us in our daily lives requires us to pay attention, to listen, and to be willing to turn aside when invited to. God still speaks to us in many and various ways. But a dialogue takes two – one who speaks, and one who listens. 

Our invitation today is to listen. Listen to God’s Word, to the events of our lives, to the still, small voice, to the prophets among us, and to God’s Son. Listen with the ears of our hearts to all that God wants to share with us. 

There is so much that God wants to say to each and every one of us. Let’s not miss it. Let’s listen faithfully, and be blessed by what we hear. Amen.