The Creator Speaks

"The Creator Speaks" – Hebrews 4:12 To know this life we must love the word. The more able you are to come to know God, the more you must do battle: it is not that things get easier, it is that we must fight more. The sword must be kept sharp, and it is the power of the word; and one must have a life of prayer, because that is what sustains us. Our Creator speaks: He speaks through the Scriptures, He speaks by the Holy Spirit, He speaks through circumstances and He speaks in the silence. God is not silent, and that is the beautiful thing about Him.

I. We are warriors, not common people.

A. Conquest implies a war.

1. When one seeks the Lord more and more, he must take up the challenge of entering the spiritual areas.

2. And the more able you are to know God, the more you must do battle; it is not a defeat, but more strength is needed every day.

3. If we stay as children, we will never learn to fight all that must be fought.

4. If we waste life on trifles, we forget that there must be righteous men on the earth who deliver it from so much evil.

5. We think that as the years pass things quiet down; it is the reverse: the more years pass, the more we must fight.

B. The sharpened sword and the life of prayer.

1. The sword must be kept well sharpened, and it is the power of the word.

2. And one must have a life of prayer, because that is what sustains us when we speak with God.

3. So as to face everything around us that would destroy us, lay us waste, or take away our courage.

4. The kingdom of darkness is at every corner, and there is no target it likes better than the righteous who love the Lord.

C. The example of David.

1. I imagine the body of David, how many wounds it must have had.

2. It is said he died at about seventy because his body had endured so many wars and so many battles.

3. So much war and so much sword in hand wore out the flesh; he was a fighting man.

4. The church is not what we think: people look at it with fear because they are cowards and do not know how to fight, and this battle is only for the brave.

II. God is not silent.

A. The Creator speaks in many ways.

1. God speaks through the Scriptures and speaks to our life by the Holy Spirit.

2. God reveals Himself to us in dreams; sometimes we have a strong sense that we know is not our own impulse.

3. The Creator is the one who saves, who corrects, who comforts, who guides and who reveals Himself to our life.

B. God delights to reveal Himself.

1. We think we come to church merely to come, or out of obligation; but the privilege is ours.

2. He seeks a relationship with you, personal, with every care and every perfection, for God works each one exactly as he is.

3. The question is what your life is full of: anger, vexation, wickedness?

4. For what fills you today, tomorrow you do not know; what gives you contentment today will not do so tomorrow.

5. God cares to be our comfort and cares to correct us, for today we think a thing is one way and tomorrow another.

C. We cannot afford to lose days.

1. If the minister loses days of his life, it affects the people.

2. To live twenty-four hours seeking the voice of God and what God wants is a privilege.

3. The great rewards are in heaven, where there will be no tears nor pain; those here gladden you today and no longer tomorrow.

4. While the people sleep quietly, the minister is in full war, not with angels, but against the powers that want to destroy the work of God.

5. The day you have God in the first place of your heart, that day you will be blessed.

6. Everything you hold great you will one day lose; Him you will never lose, and when you need Him most He will be with you.

D. How God speaks to us.

1. The most spectacular means is the Bible: read the Scriptures every day.

2. God is always ready to speak to us; it is not always with an audible voice, but it is always clear to the heart that is willing.

3. If you come to church with a willing heart, God speaks to you; if you come in as you came and leave, there is no growth.

4. He who gathers the word grows, and it shows: it comes out through the pores, in the face, in the look, in the sighing.

III. Sharper than any twoedged sword (Hebrews 4:12).

A. Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.

1. That is the power of the sword when God speaks: it enters your soul and divides it.

2. When that voice reaches your ears, it must divide your soul and your spirit.

3. God does not work with us gently: God goes with force.

4. And the more you seek Him, the more forcefully God will work with your life.

5. A moment will come when the air of your existence is no longer that of this earth, but that of loving God with more strength and more power.

B. A discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

1. To discern is to separate good from evil, right from wrong.

2. God does not discern what we put on with our talk, with a smile or with a look.

3. We can play a part day after day, according to the circumstance or according to the person; but that is living a life on the surface.

4. God knows what in you is true and what is false.

5. To tell the true from the false is to see what is hidden behind the words and the actions.

6. The word does not only look at what we do, but at why we do it: everything done is done because it is wanted.

C. The intents speak of our life.

1. In heaven there are mansions; Jesus said: I go to prepare a place for you.

2. For God knows who will always be able to hear the word and keep adjusting and tightening.

3. In the end, the ones who must tighten are ourselves.

4. On earth, vanity of vanities: here there is nothing that will reward you.

5. There are conversations carefully arranged; and afterward everything that was arranged comes out through one's pores.

IV. The word of God is quick and powerful.

A. It is living.

1. The word is not a dead letter: it has power to act and still speaks today.

2. This sacred book is living word; it is not the life, for the life is God.

3. How it comforts us, how it encourages us, how it gives us strength; sometimes we happen to read exactly what our soul needs.

4. Do not wake for gossip or for knowing things: let your waking be to go first on your knees to God, for time cannot be lost.

5. Because it is living, it produces a real effect: it transforms you, it guides you, it wakes you.

B. It is powerful.

1. It is effective, able to do what we need, even in things you have not been able to change or overcome.

2. To be faithful to your spouse, faithful to the church, faithful to your neighbour: a faithful word.

3. When your eyes look, it reaches the brain; from the brain, the heart; and the heart pumps it through the whole body.

4. And where does the word come from, if not from the Creator who speaks, who made us and planted us on the earth in these times?

C. It pierces without deceit and without appearance.

1. It reaches where no one else can reach, because it is sharper than a twoedged sword.

2. When you read the Bible you feel it enter and pierce, and go on tearing your heart open.

3. And if we need anything, it is that God tear our heart open, because where everything is hidden is the heart, and it is easy to hide things.

D. The Holy Spirit discerns what we think.

1. Do not say again "that is not what I meant": what you must say is "forgive what I said."

2. For then the Father sees that there is humbling in you, and the Father must see our humbling.

3. The accuser will say: look at what he did, though you have given him eternal life and salvation.

4. And Jesus, at the right hand, says: Father, I died for him, my blood is there, forgive him.

5. Through Christ who intercedes continually, we must be men and women of prayer.

6. We live on earth under a judgment, and we escape it by seeking God, gathering, praying and reading the word; for you do not fight another person, you fight yourself.

V. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path (Psalm 119:105).

A. A lamp unto my feet.

1. The word lights us step by step, in what is near and in the daily round.

2. If you opened the word, you would be one who knows; we are children when we ought already to be teachers.

B. And a light unto my path.

1. It also lights the whole course, the purpose and the direction of your life.

2. You need to know whether what you are doing is right or wrong; if you read it, you will know what to do with your life.

3. Many times all we have in our mouth is lament and complaint.

4. If we decide to have prayer and the word, on the evil day prayer covers us, because it strengthens us.

5. You need not talk to someone to tell what is happening to you: go to God, who is the best place; everyone has enough of his own.

6. If you are without the word and without prayer, everything that comes will come as a blow, to carry you away.

C. Conquering with the word.

1. We are busy settling trifles; what we must learn is to bring God all our prayer and to be wise through the Scriptures.

2. For you speak according to your heart and according to how vulnerable you are.

3. Do you want to win your family? Win them with the word.

4. In a house where the Bible is read together every night, the children become disciples.

5. It is not arguing the verse: it is making it plain; and that leads those who by nature would have another temper to become gentle and meek.

VI. When the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth (John 16:13).

A. For the Holy Spirit to speak to you, you must be a person of prayer.

1. If you are in sin, do not think the Holy Spirit is in you: He cannot be.

2. Christ gave His blood and the Father gave the order; but the Holy Spirit comes to you to do all the work the Father wants for your life.

3. If one is able to defile this body, the Holy Spirit is not there: that is why nothing reproves you, there is no revelation and you have no interest in praying.

4. For the one who works both to will and to do, who carries our lives, is the Holy Spirit.

B. He will guide you into all truth.

1. If it is not easy for you to come to all truth, it is because the Holy Spirit is not there, and so you go from blow to blow.

2. To touch the Holy Spirit with a word: it were better not to have been born. It is the one sin that is not forgiven, which is blasphemy.

3. Christ promises that the Holy Spirit will come and that He is the one who will act.

4. The more He works in your life, the more He perfects you, takes away and makes you strong.

5. He directs us to understand rightly the word and the will of God.

C. He shall not speak of himself.

1. The Holy Spirit is in complete unity with the Father and with the Son.

2. The Father gives the instruction, the Son joins in the same mind, and the action goes in the Holy Spirit.

3. The three are one: it is the Godhead.

4. The Son, at the right hand, intercedes for us; the Holy Spirit is upon the earth, working in the believer washed in the blood of Christ.

5. For the manifestation is when the Holy Spirit sees the blood of Christ upon your head.

6. Let us read the word and it gives us light; then we pray, and then the Holy Spirit reveals and sets in our life the will of the Father.

VII. A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps (Proverbs 16:9).

A. A man's heart deviseth his way.

1. We all make plans, decisions, goals and routes; it is natural to plan, it is proper.

2. But we can be very skilful at doing what we want, what we intend and what we covet.

B. But the LORD directeth his steps.

1. God is the one who opens and shuts doors, when you decide that God should carry your life.

2. There are doors God should not open because it is dangerous, and He shuts them; do not force them.

3. For when that door opens, first, God is not there; and second, you will have to suffer.

4. If God shuts doors to you, it is so you do not suffer, because you would not be able to bear it.

5. And if He opens doors, you will be able to pass the tests, but you go by His hand.

6. Let God be the one who opens and shuts; so you will become a man or a woman of prayer and of seeking.

C. He moves about us.

1. You think you are alone; if you seek God and have loved Him, He is there with you.

2. When it falls to you to weep, He will be there; when it falls to you to ache, He eases it.

3. If God is my Creator, He knows where my need comes from, what pains me and what saddens me.

4. And He knows He will have to cover me more, because the struggle will be harder.

D. Circumstances do not govern the believer's life.

1. Life is a war: today you hear good news and tomorrow bad; today it seemed you had conquered everything and tomorrow it fell to the floor.

2. Tell someone? No, because you would cause another great pain; so one carries it, one bears it and one faces life.

3. What we do not understand here, we will understand when we reach heaven.

4. Sometimes you have not noticed that you are surrounded by a circumstance, because it looks natural; but there comes a time when it sharpens and chokes you.

5. Circumstances may be health or sickness, prosperity or need, peace or conflict, secure work or uncertainty, joy or trial.

6. What matters is not the circumstances, but who directs our way: we see what is happening, and He sees where He is taking us.

VIII. And after the fire a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12).

A. God speaks in the silence.

1. Not in the noise of the moment, but in the stillness of the soul.

2. That is the greatness of God: that He knows our soul.

3. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him.

4. When your house is calm and your heart humbles itself, He speaks to you.

B. Elijah needed to hear God in the stillness.

1. He was weary, discouraged, fleeing, feeling that all was lost.

2. He had seen great miracles, like the fire from heaven on Mount Carmel.

3. God does not always speak in the spectacular, in the loud, in what impresses.

4. He was not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in a still small voice.

5. A soft, quiet, intimate, clear voice, speaking to the heart.

C. When circumstances shout, God speaks low.

1. With His soft voice He calms our weariness.

2. And He does not speak low because He is far off, but because He is near.

3. If you are speaking with someone beside you, you need not shout; and God is in every place.

4. Do not look for God in the uproar: look for the silence where He whispers.

5. It is easy to go to God when one is shouting, complaining, rebellious; but when a noble spirit upholds you, you speak with God in a whisper.

6. The miracle is not that God speaks loudly, but that you can be silent enough to hear Him. For if He came in fire and flame, we would all die.