KNOWING The True God 

God Listens to Man

by

Keith Hunt

GOD SPEAKS TO ISRAEL The Lord had brought Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. He brought them to the mount Sinai. And it was there He decided to speak to them. "And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood far off. And they said unto Moses, Speak you with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that you sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus you will say unto the children of Israel, You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven" (Exodus 20:18-22). It really was God literally speaking to the children of Israel. We see this again proved to us in Deuteronomy 4:33,36. "Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived? Out of heaven He made you to hear His voice ... and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire." We have further evidence from Moses: "The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire ... And it came to pass when you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire) that you came to me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; and you said, Behold, the Lord our God has showed us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God does talk with man, and he lives ... For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?" (Deut.5:4, 23-26). God can indeed, if He wills it, SPEAK in a voice that can be heard by thousands upon thousands in any language or dialect that there is in the world. GOD CAN BE OUR BATTLE AXE If any nation will turn and serve the Eternal God, if they will OBEY Him, and worship Him in spirit and in truth, loving Him with all their heart and mind, THEN the Lord says HE will be the enemy unto the enemy of that nation who serves Him. It is God who can and then will CUT THEM OFF! "I will send my FEAR before you, and I WILL DESTROY all people to whom you shall encounter, and I WILL MAKE ALL YOUR ENEMIES TURN THEIR BACKS TO YOU (and run away from you). And I will send the hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, from before you" (Exodus 23:20-28). We see examples of God DOING THE FIGHTING for Israel or Judah as we read through the Old Testament. He is able to fight for His people in DOZENS of different ways. Through the unseen angels, through the forces of nature, through sending plagues to destroy the enemy. There are no nations on earth today to have decided to FULLY OBEY God, to stand and RELY upon His sure faithfulness as He has written it. There is no nation on earth today who have FAITH in the power of God to DELIVER them from the enemies, BUT the Lord says HE WILL DO SO, for any nation that will deeply follow His word and commandments. He is the power, the force, of the universe. If "the force be with you" (a line from some popular space movies of the last decades) NO ONE CAN HARM YOU !!! Think of all the money that could be saved by a nation, put to use in many other avenues of health and prosperity, if they did not have to spend a dime on having physical war machines and people trained to use them against their enemies. GOD'S SABBATH IS A SIGN A fundamental part of knowing the mind and nature of God is understanding the IMPORTANCE of the Sabbath day to God and to His people who call themselves after His name. The Sabbath day relates us to the CREATOR of the universe, the ONE who made all that is made, the seen and the unseen, from one end of the universe to the other end of the universe IF there was any ends to the universe. "...Verily My sabbaths you shall keep: for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations; that you MAY KNOW that I AM the Lord that does sanctify (set you apart) you. You shall keep the Sabbath therefore, FOR it is HOLY unto you: every one that defiles it shall surely be put to death ... Six days may work be done; but in the SEVENTH is the sabbath of rest, HOLY to the Lord: whoever does any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death ... it is a SIGN between Me abd the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the SEVENTH day He rested, and was refreshed" (Exodus 31:13-17). The Sabbath day, the SEVENTH day of the week, NOT the first or the fifth, or any other day, but the SEVENTH day is the day God made holy, sanctified it, set it apart, for on the SEVENTH day He rested from the work of creation He did from the first to the sixth day, as we can clearly see in Genesis chapters one and two. The SEVENTH day is the FOURTH commandment of the great Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment is very clear to understand, even for a child. I was once a child, going to a "church school" and attending regular "Sunday school" classes. Not one teacher every pointed out to me that Saturday was the 7th day of the week. In my simple child's mind of reading the Bible, I KNEW that the Sabbath day, the holy day of the week, to God, and for God's children, was the SEVENTH day of the week. In my simple child's mind I knew NO OTHER day of the weekly cycle was ever made holy or set apart by God. The mind of God, to KNOW it, to really come to KNOW Him, is to come to understand the simple truth that it is the SEVENTH day of the week that is holy and that it is that particular day that is to be kept holy by the children of God. It is a SIGN that we KNOW who the CREATOR and TRUE God of the universe REALLY IS!! It is NOT hard to understand God on this matter of which day of the week He has sanctified and made holy, and tells us to honor him by keeping that seventh day of the week holy, set apart to stop doing our work of six days, and to take the time to worship and communicate and fellowship with God on that seventh day. The Sabbath day is a wonderful BLESSING. A WHOLE DAY TO STOP AND BE REFRESHED IN MIND AND BODY! GOD'S PATIENCE CAN RUN OUT! The Eternal is VERY longsuffering, slow to anger, and very patient. BUT .... YES, the Lord's patience CAN RUN OUT, IT CAN COME TO AN END! And woe be to the person or nation that no longer has God's extension of patience given to them! It is written: "For if we sin willfully after that we have come to the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins. But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much more sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy, who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and has done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know him that has said, Vengeance belongs unto me, I will recompense, says the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a FEARFUL thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:26-31). The Lord had delivered Israel from Egypt. He had entered a covenant with them. He had given them His Ten Commandment. They had seen His miracles. They had heard His voice speaking to them. Now Moses is told by God that Israel had corrupted themselves. "And the Lord said to Moses, Go, get you down (from up the mountain, for your people, which you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way I commanded them; they have made a molten calf, and have worshipped it and have sacrificed there to, and they have said, These be your gods, O Israel, which have brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them; and I will make of you a great nation" (Exodus 32:7-10). We are given relatively few words here as to the anger of the Lord. But the words we do have make it abundantly clear that the patience of the Lord had run out concerning the children of Israel. God was ready to wipe them off the face of the earth and START OVER AGAIN with the descendants of Moses, his literal children, and make of them the great nation He had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God's longsuffering does not easily come to an end. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of the Lord and what He had done for Israel, then we will readily see why God had had enough with the children of Israel. If I may I will look at it from God's perspective and put in my words what would have been the overall thought of the Lord's mind, to make Him say what He said to Moses. "Moses, look what I have done, and what the children of Israel have seen. They must have heard than I made your rod a serpent that ate up the serpents of Pharaoh's sorcerers. They saw the rivers and pools of Egypt become blood. They saw plague of frogs. They witnessed the plague of lice. They knew I put a difference between them and the Egyptians with the start of the plague of lies. They knew about the cattle murrain I put on the Egyptians. They surely knew about the plague of boils, the plague of hail, the plague of locusts, the plague of darkness, I put on the Egyptians. Then I killed the first born of the Egyptians, while I spared those under the blood of the lamb all in Israel. I brought them to the Red sea and there I moved the waters so they went across by dry ground, and then in the sea I killed the army of the Egyptians. I provided them with food and water in the wilderness. I brought them to mount Sinai and there they heard my voice as I talked to them. What nation can claim God so worked such mighty miracles for them, as I did for Israel. But Moses I send you back down the mountain to them, for they have SINNED, they have REBELLED, they have so QUICKLY turned back to WICKEDNESS, to worshipping the work of their hands. This is a STIFF-NECKED people beyond words. Let me be now, I will consume them, destroy them from the face of the earth, and I will start over to fulfil what I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with your very children Moses. I will make a great nation from you and your descendants. My longsuffering and patience has come to the end with this group of people I delivered from the bondage of Egypt!" When you look at the whole context of what God did for the children of Israel as preserved in the first part of the book of Exodus, I think we can see why the Lord was quite justified in stating He would start over again with Moses and his family, and destroy that generation of the children of Israel. It is truly a lesson as to the deceitfulness and hardness of the human heart, as well as the deceptive power of Satan and his demons. In such a short time from seeing the hand of God in mighty miracles, the children of Israel returned to idol worship, and cast aside the very thought of the true God they had experienced. It is amazing how soon after the children of Israel HEARD the very voice of God talking to them, they could FORGET Him and turn back to false religions. It is no wonder the patience of the Eternal had come to its end! GOD WILL LET HUMANS REASON WITH HIM Moses was probably stunned by what God had told him. But vainness and self-ego Moses did not have. It is written of him, "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3). I'm sure Moses must have felt some kind of honor that God would want to start over again with him and his children, but that honor was not going to get in the way of him wanting the Lord to change His mind about obliterating the children of Israel. This not the first time we see a human willing to talk with God as friend to friend and asking Him to reconsider His thoughts. We first encounter it back in the book of Genesis, when Abraham talked with God and discovered why He had come to earth and what His thoughts were concerning the cities of sodom and Gomorrah. The account is in Genesis chapter 18. Read verses 23 to 33. The true God is someone you can talk to as a friend, not just as a Father. It also teaches us that the Lord is OPEN to allow people to talk to Him in the manner Abraham did, as recorded in Genesis 18. WHAT AN AWESOME PERSON GOD IS. HE IS FATHER TO US, BUT HE IS ALSO A FRIEND! True friendship is a two way street. Both sides of a true friendship with be willing to LISTEN to the other one. Abraham reasoned with God, actually struck a bargain so to speak, with Him. In the end it was that IF God could find only 10 persons in those even cities, the cities would be spared destruction. We all know the rest of the story. There were not ten righteous, there was Lot. He was taken out and the cities were destroyed from the face of the earth. Abraham was able to talk to God, to present his case, to give his thoughts on the thoughts that the Eternal was thinking. And so it was here also for Moses to do the same. "And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why does your wrath wax hot against your people, which you have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak like this, For mischief and evil did He bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to obliterate them from the face of the earth? So Lord, please turn from your wrath, and repent of this evil against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. AND THE LORD REPENTED (CHANGED HIS MIND) OF THE EVIL WHICH HE THOUGHT TO DO UNTO HIS PEOPLE" (Exodus 32:11-14). Oh, what a mighty and worthy to be praised, Lord God is the Eternal. He can be talked to as friend to friend. And even the clay vessel in His hands He will at times not only listen to, but that lump of dust from the ground can even get Him to CHANGE HIS MIND! So that generation of the children of Israel were not obliterated from the face of the earth. God appreciated what Moses had to say, and that man Moses changed the Lord's mind as to the evil He would do to His people. The two examples of Abraham and Moses we have just examined, should add one more piece to the real life portrait of the real life God. He is not a far away nebulous nothingness God. He is very real and personal, and He desires YOU to have Him not only as your Father and as your FRIEND! ..................... To be continued