The Cry of Praise

Luke 19:40 - And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out

           God will receive praise, He will get the glory due His name. His preference is that we would willingly lift up praise and adoration but if, for some reason we decide that we are not going to praise God then the rocks would cry out. The picture I get is when one would try to hold down water that is coming up out of the earth, if I press down in one place the water will squirt up in another. That is what is called hydrostatic pressure. It is when water is forced up out the ground because of the pressure created by water flowing from higher ground. This downward pressure creates an upward response. God is high above so, as long as we keep the relationship with Him in its proper place by acknowledging His loftiness, the water of praise will flow down from Him and will flow out of us. God by nature attracts praise, He does not need to force praise out of people, He will get praise; He will be praised. 
        In creation man stands at the pinnacle. He was created in the highest place of all created beings. However, if man does not take his rightful place of worship before God, then the lower levels of creation will fill his place. The rocks will cry out. The actual material earth senses the weight of the choice of the first man, Adam. It reels under the curse of sin and feels the burden of the fallen world. Romans chapter eight tells us that creation is groaning, longing to see the full and final redemption. All of creation was made to respond to its creator, even the rocks. Scientists tell us that material substances are made up of invisible molecules which in turn are made up of atoms. Amazing discoveries have been made regarding the tiny ‘worlds’ that exist in every molecule. God created these worlds and ultimately, they will praise Him. The rocks will cry out. 
         This cry is a cry of praise acknowledging God’s supremacy and it’s a cry for help, acknowledging man’s inadequacy.  It is a plea to the Creator God for deliverance. It is a cry of instinct. All of creation has an instinctive and innate desire to cry out to God. As we said, there is a groaning within creation. Man groans within, the animal kingdom groans, the earth also groans. That groaning is an inner longing, it is the built-in cry that will find expression no matter what may try to hinder it. Just as the branches and leaves of a tree will intrinsically grow toward the light so our spirits reach out to God and all of His creation reaches out for the light to touch the presence of God. We are created for interaction and communication. We are interactive spirits designed for relationship to our Father God; created for worship. 
         Don’t get replaced by a rock. Praise God!

Willingly Fall on the Rock

Luke 20:18 – Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

o   The stone is unchangeable. The stone or, the rock, to the Jew, represents God; steady, faithful, ancient, time-tested, always the same, secure, weighty. The Psalmist said ‘He is my Rock’. He is my Touchstone. The rock is always the same and is no respecter of persons or circumstance. The rock represents the laws or principles of God. In Stephen Covey’s terms, the rock is the unmovable lighthouse versus the approaching large vessel. We can choose to willingly surrender and fall upon the rock, lay our lives on it, and yield to its strength and unchangeableness. We have this choice now, but it seems that it will be removed one day; we will no longer have a choice. If we fall on the rock we will be broken. When something is broken, we usually see it as needing to be fixed, but in God’s economy, broken is a good thing. There are things in our life that need to be broken – our stubbornness, our selfishness, our sinfulness, our maliciousness, and many other things such as; hatred, strife, ego, pride, envy, gossip etcetera; these things need to be broken. But our text does not say that sinful things need to be broken, it goes much deeper than that, it says that ‘whosoever’ falls upon the rock shall be broken. We are to be broken. The self needs to be broken. The fallen identity, the invented meaning of our existence needs to be broken. I must choose to daily fall on the rock or one day it – God, His laws, His principles, His unchangeableness, will fall on me. The weight and weightiness of that rock will crush the life out of me; it will grind me to powder. So the question is, Will I be broken by choice, or ground to powder by force? To fall on the rock is to let go and let God, to stop striving and release yourself, your life, and your security, take it all and place it on the rock; the only genuinely secure thing there is.

Hear His Voice

Hebrews 3:7-19

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) 

   As the Holy Ghost saith – Verse seven through verse eleven is a quote from the ninety-fifth chapter of Psalms and by quoting it the New Testament writer divinely endorses the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who is speaking through Scripture. He inspired all of the writers of Scripture. Every Scripture is God-breathed and therefore not an ordinary document or book at all. It is a God-given revelation to us. When we hear the word of God read to us we must take the position that these are the very words of God speaking to me.

     Today if ye will hear His voice – Today. Do not procrastinate. He did not say, tomorrow if you will hear his voice. No! He said today. He did not say yesterday as you have heard his voice. No! He said today. The voice of God is the Word of God which we must hear today. Just as we cannot live on yesterday’s oxygen or store up tomorrow’s oxygen, we must have oxygen today, even so, we must have the word of God for today. Do not put off hearing the voice of God right now. Make sure that you don’t give in to the deception of thinking you are not capable of hearing his voice, or you are not worthy of hearing his voice. Maybe one day I will be spiritual enough to hear his voice. No!  This kind of thinking is a lie. It is not the truth. You are His sheep and as Jesus once stated, ‘My sheep hear My voice’. Believe that truth. Accept that fact. Say to yourself, ‘I do hear the voice of Jesus’. Do not relinquish the voice of God to the past only. He isn’t the God who once spoke; He is the God who currently speaks. He is the eternal and present speaking voice. ‘His name shall be called the Word of God’. Jesus said that Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. There is a word that is constantly proceeding from the mouth of God. He is always speaking a word to us.

     If ye will hear – The condition of whether or not we hear the voice of God rests with us. We are the deciding factor. God is constantly speaking, the question is will we listen? S. D. Gordon once wrote that a man hears God through his will. If the will is surrendered to God then the ear is opened, and once the ear is opened then the sound of God’s voice can be heard. A stubborn will inevitably makes for a deaf ear and God is silent to a deaf ear. His voice – God has a voice. If there is a voice, then there is a personality behind the voice. There is volition behind the voice. A voice is the medium of communication from person to person. God is a personal God. He loves to interact with us as His creation. 

     Harden not your hearts – We can choose to harden our hearts or we can choose to not allow our hearts to harden. Life alone cannot make us hard. No individual person or situation can make us hard, we decide to become hard or not. Harden could mean any number of things. It could mean to be stubborn, or maybe to become closed in your heart. A person with a hard heart could simply be someone who has become guarded and feels threatened because of negative past experiences, so they do not open themselves up to new possibilities and friendships. It is possible that we may have become hard due to disappointment or failure in life. The important thing to realize is that we are in charge of our hearts. It is our heart; it is not under the control of any other person or circumstance. We can decide to keep our heart soft and open to the voice of God.  

     When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years – We must be aware of the propensity to follow our fathers be they good or bad. Because we live in a fallen world, most of us typically, take on the undesirable characteristics of our fathers. Your father is the one who imprints your heart and mind from your youth. As young children in a family and as new believers in the family of God, we are very impressionable and we are easily swayed by the influence of those older and more mature than us. The Bible speaks of generational curses which are a basic tendency to follow the negative qualities of your father; however, I think it is important to not over-emphasize the concept of generational curses because in Christ we are delivered from the power of darkness. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law; we are no longer under the power of any curse. We are now under the power of God and we are under His grace. In this case, their fathers’ negative qualities were issues of the heart. They were issues of attitude and posture before the Lord. They tempted God; they put Him under scrutiny in order to find a flaw. They proved God; they tested Him to see if He could stand up to the test. That generation of people was the one who experienced the Exodus from Egypt. By a mighty outstretched arm God miraculously delivered the Israelites from their slavery to Pharaoh, who was the most powerful dictator of the then known world. For forty long years God led them and fed them. He led them in the desert and He kept them safe from wildlife and poisonous snakes. He lovingly protected them from the elements and from enemies. He fed them with supernatural manna from Heaven. Forty years was plenty of time to know that God is faithful and completely trustworthy, however, that generation became hard and stubborn in their hearts and God responded to them accordingly.

     Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. God is passionate and deeply committed to us, and because He loves us so intensely, He can also be intensely grieved. The word grieved is a word which suggests the sorrow of a lover. We grieve when we suffer loss. We grieve as parents when our children make choices which bring them destruction and harm. We grieve because we know that there is so much more for them, if only they would make the right choices. We grieve much only when we love much. God is the supreme lover and so therefore He grieves accordingly. Err in their heart. The error is always on our side not God’s. Remember that we said that generation had a heart issue. I am sure that every generation has opportunities to submit their hearts and serve God or to harden their hearts and serve themselves. The Greek word translated err is a word which means to roam, to go astray, to be seduced, or to be deceived. There are people who always roam in their hearts. They are never content with where they are or what they have in life. They might be married to a beautiful lady, have a wonderful family and an excellent career, but they are never really settled in their heart and they seem to always desire to be somewhere else. They are roamers and wanderers, never completely settling down and establishing roots. One obvious cure for roaming is to put down roots. We must become planted. For a plant to be healthy, strong and reproductive it can never be a roamer, it must remain covenanted to the soil, the place where it was sown and where it has grown. ‘Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God’.  That generation of Israelites which we are speaking of, never truly accepted God’s deliverance, some of them actually wanted to go back to Egypt. That is the deceptive aspect of roaming in your heart; you actually think that the former life of slavery was better than the hardship you inevitably face on your way to the Promised Land. If we are always roaming in our hearts then we are demonstrating that we are not thankful for what we have. Thankfulness to God for the fact that He has rescued us and saved us is one powerful trait that will drive our spiritual roots down deep into the soil of God’s love. If we are a thankful people we will never be a roaming people. 

     They have not known my ways. We are responsible to develop in faith, to grow up and to acquaint ourselves with God and His ways. Apparently, God has ways of operating; He is a God of pathways and patterns of procedure. In one sense, if we may say it reverently, God is predictable because He has given us His Word to reveal His patterns and modes of operation. He is not a capricious, erratic and arbitrary God.  I am the Lord, I change not. He functions according to His self-established ways and patterns. That wonderful man of God, Edwin Louis Cole used to say that everything God does He does according to a pattern and based on a principle. Psalm 103:7 tells us that though the children of Israel may have known God’s acts, Moses knew God’s ways. If you know someone’s ways you know the way they think, the way they act, and what makes them happy or sad. If we know their ways we know them closely.

     God, our Father, wants to make Himself known to us. He is not hiding from us, we simply have to listen and hear His voice and that voice will lead us, and that voice will show us things that we have not understood, that voice will give us answers to questions an solutions to problems.