| John's Index | Greater Emmanuel | Email John |
What's Spoken vs What's Heard
By John R. Gavazzoni
There's an aspect of the exercise of divine sovereignty that is rarely addressed: the matter of the difference between what God says and what a man hears Him saying. There's a necessity for inspired listening as a complement to inspired speaking. God is the source of both. If He does not grant listening- inspiration, we assume things about the speaking that set in motion a divide between the mind of the Speaker and that of the hearer.
What I'm getting at is that at the heart of all of God's speaking is the element of promise as being assuredly reliable. But without the accompaniment of inspired hearing, that element of promise, to the hearer, remains hidden beneath a surface of what appears to be an imposition of requirement; of demand; of obligation. The hearing deficit leaves the hearer on a different wave-length than the Speaker.
From the Book of Hebrews, we learn that for the Word of God to be effective, it must be mixed with faith (Heb. 4:2). That calls for considerable in-depth explanation since, if we misunderstand the matter of who does the mixing, the real, true, faith that is intrinsic to a living relationship with the living God will not be the result. Folks; listen: God does the mixing; God is the Mixer, and He does that by inspiring the hearer to hear within the inspired Word, that core factor of assuredly reliable promise. All true faith is rooted in, grows out of, promise. IF promise is what is inspirationally-heard, faith will be the result.
I am explaining how it is that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing BY the Word of God" (Rom. 10:17). The Word of God must come to us mixed with faith from its Source; mixed with that faith that is born of promise, for faith has no foundation other than the promise of a completely reliable God. When scripture, on the subject of faith, includes a conditional factor, a careful reading of the text in its context, both immediate, and within the larger context of the whole body of scripture's presentation of what faith is, and how it works, such a careful reading reveals that it is God who supplies the conditional factor.
That factor of the promise-constitution of God's Word is so uniquely evident in God's relationship with Abraham---as fundamentally representative of God's relationship universally with mankind---that it became a major paradigm for Paul in understanding God's way with man. From beginning to end, divine promise was the initiating and fulfilling factor made plain in the nature of God's expectation from that relationship.
From out of love comes promise; from out of promise proceeds faith, and by THAT faith comes the fulfilment of promise, and it is God who does the mixing, as in, from Jesus, in answer to the question, "what must we do to do the works of God," our Lord summed up "works," (plural) as a singular work: "this is the work OF God, that you believe in Him whom the father has sent." Faith is God's work.
Contrary-wise, when the Word of God is heard, not as promise, but as an imposition of requirement, resentment, whether conscious or unconscious, results; and from out of that resentment proceeds rebellion, and from that rebellion, God-designed catastrophe, since that latter scenario only sets the stage for---all the while waiting in the wings - the displacement of obligation with promise.
I believe we can trace this complex at work all the way back, of course, to Adam and Eve hearing God say, "be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it" as an obligatory commission. Also, likewise, regarding keeping (guarding) and dressing (cultivating) the garden in which God placed Adam, with Eve following. They failed to hear the Word as totally the self-fulfilling operative. That God-designed catastrophic failure awaited, and set the scene for, the only thing that could, and would, bring restoration and fulfilment: the dispensation of promise from love, and grace from promise.
So it is likewise with the decalogue (the 10 commandments). Do we hear legally-imposed obligation, or do we hear the word of promise in each "thou shalt" and each, "thou shalt not"? The grace-deprived flesh hears an onus of obligation placed upon it. The quickened spirit hears promise. The issue at heart is promise or law. The promise-element is hidden from us until we're GIVEN an ear to hear promise.
As an institutional church father (note the qualifying, "institutional"), Augustine was a hugely mixed bag. But he was not without insight on the matter how to understand what is involved for a man to please God. From his pen comes this gem: "Give what You command, and command what you will."
| John's Index | Greater Emmanuel | Email John |
