May 2, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

THE PERSONAL VOICE OF GOD
Isaiah 61:1-3
Fourth in series: “Are You Filled?”
May 2, 2010

[Call children up for Children’s Sermon]

One of my favorite stories from the Old Testament comes from the 3rd chapter of the book of 1 Samuel. Samuel became a great leader that God used in tremendous ways, and it all began when he was a boy. He had been a miracle baby—born to a woman who had been unable to have a child. His mother Hannah was so grateful to God for her son that she committed to God that her son Samuel would serve the Lord all the days of his life. Her way of carrying that out was for Samuel to grow up at their center of worship—the temple, offering assistance to the priests day by day even when he was a child.

Eli was the priest in charge, and he was getting up in years. One night, when little Samuel was lying in his bed, the Lord called out to him. Samuel assumed Eli was calling him, so he went to where Eli was and said, “I heard you call—here I am!” Eli responded, “I did not call you, Samuel—go back to bed!” Again, Samuel heard the Lord call out to him, but he still hadn’t figured out that it was God speaking to him, so he went again to Eli, saying, “I heard you call—here I am!” But again Eli said, “I did not call you, son—now please go back to bed!” But a third time Samuel heard the Lord call out to him, and again, assuming it was Eli, he went a third time to Eli’s bedside saying, “I heard you call—here I am!”

Now we have a granddaughter who stays over at our house sometimes—and helping her learn to stay in her bed has been a real trick! And at first glance, you’d think that Eli was probably getting pretty perturbed by little Samuel’s middle-of-the-night interruptions, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead, it suddenly hit Eli that maybe God was calling out to the boy. And so he told Samuel to go back to bed, but if he heard someone calling out to him again, to simply stay there and say, “Speak, Lord, for I’m your servant and I’m ready to listen.” Samuel went back to bed, and, sure enough, he heard someone calling out to him again—“Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel did as Eli had told him, and said, “Speak, Lord, for I’m your servant and I’m ready to listen.” And it was then that the Lord began for the first time to spell out some things for Samuel—things that he was to share with others, things that would have a big impact not only on Samuel’s life, but on the lives of others. This was the beginning of Samuel’s ministry as a leader—and it would have huge impact upon many people as Samuel continued to listen to the Lord!

There have been lots of people who have somehow sensed God calling out to them—and a lot of them first heard God calling out to them when they were children. This morning we’re going to be talking about how God sometimes speaks to us personally through His Holy Spirit—and how each of us needs to learn to listen. Oh, I think few people have heard an audible voice, like you’re hearing my voice right now, but it’s almost as clear. And if and when that happens to you, don’t be afraid of God’s voice to you, and don’t hesitate to do what God asks you to do. Samuel’s response wouldn’t be a bad one for each of us—to simply say to the Lord something like, “Speak, Lord, for I’m your servant and I’m ready to listen.”

[Prayer for the kids; then have them sit with parents]

This is the fourth Sunday now in our sermon series, “Are You Filled?” on the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Today we’re going to look at another Old Testament passage—this time from the book of Isaiah, chapter 61. The book of Isaiah is one of the books of the prophets—one of the means by which God spoke to His people many years ago. In this particular book, the writer proclaims that God is sick and tired of the people’s hypocrisy. It was clearly a message of correction! In a stinging rebuke, God reveals their fate, but the latter part of the book turns the corner and declares that God will hear the cries of His people and proclaims that there will eventually be a brighter future—and Isaiah begins to speak of the Savior Who will be sent to them—the Messiah.

Let’s read Isaiah 61:1-3—
[Read Isaiah 61:1-3, NIV]

Let’s talk about this passage. What does it mean? Who is speaking? Was it about himself that Isaiah said, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me”?

In most of Isaiah’s prophecies, as is the case in most Old Testament books of prophecy, there is a primary and a secondary meaning. Another way of saying this is that there is something far off spoken of that is illustrated by something that is near to them, taking place before them, in their place and time. In this case, the prophet is speaking of God’s personal call upon him—to proclaim good news of hope and encouragement that God will eventually turn the tables on the circumstances of the Israelites. God has not forgotten them and He will redeem them from their captivity in Babylon and return them to the land they love.

But if we fast-forward several centuries, it becomes apparent that in an even greater sense, Isaiah was looking ahead to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. In fact, it’s evident from Luke 4:18 that Jesus identified Himself with these exact words. When Jesus preached His first sermon in Nazareth, the text He read was the first couple of verses of Isaiah chapter 61! He went into the synagogue, chose this passage of scripture and began to read it out loud—
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19, NIV)
Then Jesus rolled up the scroll and began to speak to them, saying, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus certainly believed that this passage was ultimately about Him. He saw in these words His calling and His purpose—the mission entrusted to Him, the mission for which He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. So while the original speaker may have been Isaiah, in another sense Isaiah was looking ahead to Jesus, who would bring Good News to the people. Our passage from Isaiah 61 was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

But the more I have studied this passage, the more convinced I am that it goes even further than that. If this describes the Spirit-anointed mission of Jesus, would it not also describe the Spirit-anointed mission entrusted to every follower of Jesus Christ? If these words define the mission of Jesus Christ and if Christ’s Church is devoted to following Jesus, then these words define our mission. And if I am personally devoted to following Jesus, this becomes my personal calling in life too, right? And I might note that our local church’s mission statement isn’t a bad summary of this: Passion for God—Compassion for People.

And in the same sense that it was “the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord”—the Holy Spirit—Who compelled Isaiah and Who defined Christ’s mission, so it is the Holy Spirit Who guides us and keeps us on task with our mission! And it is His anointing that we seek as we endeavor to carry it out. Does that make sense? That’s why Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to the Early Church as Jesus anticipated His ascension into heaven and His Church being launched to carry out His work in this world. Jesus knew that His Church would need the anointing of the Holy Spirit if they would have any hope of carrying out His mission in this world. So the question I want to get to this morning is this: What might it mean for you and me to have the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord upon us?

In many ways, we experience the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord upon us as the thumb of God in our backs, prompting our service and our ministry to others. Whereas last week we talked about the disturbing role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, convicting us of sin, this is the personal voice of God sending us out on the mission God has for us. In this way, the Holy Spirit commissions us for our work and guides us in carrying it out.

It’s like the scene from Acts chapter 9, where we read of the Lord speaking to a follower of Christ named Ananias. And like Samuel learned to do years before, Ananias recognized that it was the Lord speaking to him and simply said, “Yes, Lord!” The Lord had a special assignment for Ananias—one that wouldn’t make sense initially to Ananias and likely wouldn’t make sense to a lot of other people either, at least not at first!

The Lord directs Ananias to go to a specific house where he will find the man named Saul. Ananias knew about Saul—he had become the ringleader of those who were persecuting the men and women of the Early Church, imprisoning many and aiming to have them put to death. But Ananias was to go to Saul and pray for him—for his sight to be restored but even more for Saul to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ananias was understandably hesitant to confront Saul—even when the Lord Himself had called out to Ananias in a vision! I’m guessing most followers of Christ were simply trying to stay out of Saul’s way in those days! But what Ananias didn’t know was that the Lord had miraculously and dramatically gotten Saul’s attention, and the Lord had in mind that this man named Saul would become the great leader of the Early Church we know as Paul! God was about to transform Saul’s life—and Ananias was going to have a significant role in that happening!

And when God clarified His instructions to Ananias, Ananias headed toward where Saul would be found, determined to carry out his Spirit-given mission. God’s thumb was clearly in his back! Despite the risks that appeared on the surface, Ananias trusted the Spirit of the Lord and stepped out to do what the Lord was instructing him to do.

Not long after Saul’s dramatic conversion, Peter experienced a vision from the Lord. Up to this time, they had devoted their attention to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ only with the Jews. But Peter’s vision from the Lord was clear: the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon all people, and the work of the Early Church was to be broadened to include all people. If you understood the special relationship that the Jewish people felt they had with God, you’d understand how the Spirit’s words to Peter seemed to defy all their expectations! However, Peter was obedient to the Spirit’s prompting—and it helped the Early Church turn a significant corner for the fulfillment of God’s plan for them to reach all people with the life-changing message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have you ever sensed God was speaking to you about something? Many of us have experienced “the Spirit of the Lord upon us” as He has prompted us to serve others as Jesus did, to go where others do not want to go, to bring hope and joy to those who seem to have neither. We’ve experienced it when the Spirit has prompted us to give money out of our wallet to help someone in need; or when we’ve been pressed to go out of our way to call someone or email them or go see them when they were needing a word of encouragement; or when we’ve taken on the challenge that others thought we were idiots to do—but we have done it because we somehow knew that God’s thumb was in our backs! It’s a missional call—to reach others, to serve others, to love others in the name of Christ.

Sometimes in our humanness we resist the personal voice of God to us—because sometimes what He asks us to do doesn’t seem pleasant and may certainly not be the easy road. But as a friend of mine expressed to me recently as he shared the challenge the Lord had laid before him—
“Why not me?” he said. In other words, “Someone’s needed in this challenging role! Why shouldn’t it be me that does it?” In talking with him, it was clear to me that God was calling him to this task.

We experience God’s personal voice and His calling in different ways. For me, and for many others, it’s been a vocational calling. Early in my life, God called me into ministry. I was 14 years old—a freshman in high school. I didn’t hear the audible voice of God, but I knew that He was calling out to me—as surely as if His voice had been audible—and I knew that He was calling me into ministry. I wasn’t sure all of what that would mean—but I knew that it would be the central focus of my life. For several years I thought that my calling would be lived out leading music in a church part-time as I made my living as a school teacher. Gradually I came to understand that His calling upon my life was to be my primary vocation. It was still years later before God revealed that my ministry was to include preaching—but when He made it clear, I determined to be obedient to His calling.

His vocational calling upon my life has taken me to places on the map and to situations I would never have imagined! I must tell you that God has far exceeded any expectations I had upon my life! And through it all, I have sensed that “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” There are some in this room who have been “called” into ministry in a similar manner. Some are in the early stages of that calling, trying to discern how and where and when…others can now look back at the unfolding of God’s plan in their lives and see His hand as you’ve sought to fulfill that call. Some of you may be feeling a bit like Samuel right now…not sure of what you’re hearing. And let me encourage you—if that’s where you are right now—to simply say “Yes” and let Him fill you in on the details along the way! Just keep saying “Yes”!

The truth is that I have sensed a clear calling from the Spirit of the Lord for every church I’ve pastored, including Valley Shepherd. I’ve gone to a couple of churches that seemed in my humanness to be pretty risky ventures! I’ll never forget what a pastor friend said to me once, upon hearing about the pastoral assignment I had just accepted—he said, “You’re an idiot! What do you think you’re doing?!” And he was right—on the surface of things—I was an idiot for accepting it, but there was clearly something deeper going on, for I felt the God’s thumb in my back and I knew it was what I must do! Once I even had already developed a burden for the church to which I was to be called—before anyone ever spoke with me about the possibility of me becoming their pastor. God was graciously preparing me for what was ahead.

And while for a few of us, the Spirit of the Lord being upon us has meant a vocational calling, for even more of us, it’s the reality that as part of the Church of Jesus Christ, we must respond to His mission! We must carry out our part in Christ’s work in this world! It’s our calling! We’re His Church! We’re His people! His mission is to be woven into every facet of our lives—being ambassadors for Christ wherever we go and in whatever we’re doing. The Spirit of the Living God has anointed us to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent us to comfort the brokenhearted, to share with them words of hope! He has called us to be His Hands and His Feet out in this messy world of ours—daring to believe that God can and will redeem lives; assuring them that God trades in hopeless, dead-end lives for those that are set free on open highways that will take them where they’d never dreamed they could go!

I do want to caution us all though to make sure that God is the One calling us when we step out into unchartered territory. The wise follower of Christ will seek assurance that it is God speaking to him or her before they launch out to do what they think God may be calling them to do. First and foremost, be assured that God will never call us to do something that contradicts His Word—the Bible. If you think God’s telling you to do something that His rules and principles for Christian living forbid, then you can be pretty sure it isn’t God speaking to you—and you need to ignore the voice!

We also need to make sure that we’re not somehow trying to impose our own ambitions and desires upon the will of God. The best example I can give you is that of a girl that I knew in college. We weren’t close personal friends, but I was always kind to her. I learned later that she kept my picture in her room, and had told some of her friends that God had told her that she was going to marry me. Now I have to tell you that God had never told me anything of the kind!—and she was not the woman that I later married! I believe that we do well to ask those who are spiritually wiser than ourselves to discretely help us filter out what is God’s voice and what are simply our efforts to spiritualize our human desires.

I also know that there are times when God speaks to us that we need to allow it the test of time. I’m reminded of the birth of Christ, and what Mary had been told before His birth, and how the shepherds came to the stable all abuzz about what the angels had proclaimed about this newborn baby, and then how Luke tells us simply, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

I told you a few moments ago that the Lord had given me a burden for one of the churches I would pastor before anyone ever spoke with me about the possibility of me becoming their pastor. It was the Bedford Church in the Cleveland, Ohio area—and Cindy and I ended up serving that congregation for 11 years. And it wasn’t that I was vying for the position! I didn’t want to go there. The church was in turmoil and had recently voted out their last pastor. We didn’t really want to take our three young children into a church like that! But through several means, God was slowly revealing to me that this was where we were going.

Now it would have been incredibly foolish for me, in the interview process, to have proclaimed to their church board when we were in the interviewing process that “God has told me that I’m going to become your new pastor.” They would have kindly but quickly shown us the door! But God’s direction and promptings and calling deep within my heart gave us assurance that the Lord was leading in this—we just needed to wait for Him to orchestrate His perfect timing. And that confirmation from the Spirit gave us great encouragement throughout the first few years of that pastorate that were less than easy!

I’m thinking again of young Samuel, who was learning to discern the voice of God—and how every follower of Christ needs to learn to listen for the voice of the Spirit in our lives. We need to learn discernment between His voice and all the other voices that will likely scream out to us. But when God speaks, we simply need to listen and then obey. It’s the way of blessing—it’s always been that way; and it always will be!

So what might the Holy Spirit be trying to say to you these days? Are you listening? Will you obey? There’s a wonderful old hymn that I’d like to sing for you in closing this morning—“Holy Spirit, Be My Guide.” I want you to make it your heart’s cry. Feel free to join me on the chorus if you’d like. Feel free to slip out to our altars if that would help you today. Let’s make this our prayer to the Lord…

Holy Spirit, my heart yearns for Thee;
Holy Spirit, abide in me.
Make me clean; O make me pure.
I must know the double cure.

Holy Spirit, be my Guide;
Holy Spirit, my heart’s open wide.
Make me to know Thy will divine;
Holy Spirit, be Thou mine.

Never my trust will be in vain,
Naught to lose and all to gain.
Take my life, my self, my soul;
Burn the chaff and make me whole.

(repeat chorus)