The Voice of Words

Exodus 19:1a In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt…

There are many things that God wants to be to you, but you must first come out of Egypt. He says, “I want to manifest Myself to My people; I want to meet them, but first they will have to come out of Egypt.” So, He begins bringing you out.

Exodus 19:1b …The same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.

You come out of Egypt and God leads you into a wilderness. “I thought God was going to meet me!” Well, that is what the wilderness is for. It prepares you for the meeting with God.

Exodus 19:2 For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.

Isn’t it amazing that the mount of God is found in a desert place in the wilderness?

Exodus 19:3a And Moses went up unto God…

That is also what you will have to do. If you want a meeting with God, you will have to go up to Him. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. James 4:8. We always have the responsibility of taking the initiative, and here we see Moses going up to meet with God.

Exodus 19:3b …and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;

Have you ever wondered why God refers to the same people as “the house of Jacob” and also “the children of Israel”? Jacob and Israel was the same person. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel when Jacob wrestled with the Lord in Genesis 32:24-28. Jacob was a supplanter, a deceiver. He didn’t seem to mind doing anything necessary to get what he wanted. God changing Jacob’s name to Israel was indicative of a change of nature. Jacob was a new man so God gave him a new name. The Lord speaking to “the house of Jacob” and “the children of Israel” reveals a principle of how He speaks to us. We have not become what we are to be as of yet. So God speaks to the Jacob we are and also to the Israel that we are going to be, creating something to come forth at a later time.

Exodus 19:4 You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.

Where is God trying to take you? He wants to bring you unto Himself. He bares you on eagles’ wings. In other words, He is going to teach you how to function in a heavenly realm.

Exodus 19:5a Now therefore, if ye will obey My Voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then…

There’s that “if, then.” If you will do this, then this will happen. Do you see the responsibility He places on us? Moses had to take the initiative to go up to God. If he had not gone up to God, this meeting with the Lord would not have happened. Listen, you don’t know how many other people will be affected by your going up to God. You take the initiative to meet with God and out of that a whole nation might be blessed because of it. You could affect the whole area where you live by your coming up the mountain to God. Of course, when you go up the mountain it is going to cost you something. I would not lie to you about that. There is a death involved. In the next chapter the Israelites told Moses, “Moses, you go up and talk to God and come back and tell us what He said. We’re not going up lest we die” (Exodus 20:19). So, Moses went up and talked to God. Then he came down and told the people what God had said. Listen, are you satisfied with that? Do you want somebody else to go talk with God and then come back and tell you what He said? Every one of those Israelites should have been running up that mountain. “But there is thunder, lightning, and great darkness on that mountain. We will die if we go up there!” That’s the whole idea! for the man of you to die so He can come forth in you. That is the reason many people don’t approach God. They are afraid they will die. That’s what it is all about. Let’s get up that mountain!

Exodus 19:5-6 Now therefore, if ye will obey My Voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for all the earth is Mine:
6 And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

He is speaking unto the children of Israel but not just to what they seem to be at the present – an old Jacob. The Voice of the Lord is coming forth to create. How many hundreds of thousands of years passed by until Peter’s epistle where he is speaking the same thing (I Peter 2:5,9). After all that time He is still trying to create that holy nation of priests.

Will you be a Moses and go up to God? Will you run up the mountain and not count the cost? We have to obey His Voice, but we can’t obey His Voice if we can’t hear it. Many Christians are still listening on a natural plane. They are trying to hear the Voice without going up the mountain. In John 6:63 Jesus said that it is not the flesh that profits anything but the Spirit. Then He said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are Life.” Spirit and Life are neither audible nor visible. You can’t touch it or see it with the natural eye or hear it with the natural ear. So the Lord is saying, “If you will obey the Spirit and Life of My Voice.”

Deuteronomy 5:27-29 Go thou near (the people speaking to Moses), and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it.
28 And the Lord heard the voice of your words, when you spake unto me; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken.
29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments, always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!

Moses told the people that the Lord heard the voice of their words. He didn’t just say, “The Lord heard what you said,” but He heard the voice of your words. In other words, He heard the spirit they were of riding on their words. He heard their heart. And God wants us to hear His heart. Obeying the Voice of the Lord is not merely doing what He wants you to do; it is the receiving of His Spirit. The Voice of the Lord transcends the words spoken.

The Lord has been speaking to us for quite sometime about prophetic utterance. Prophecy must become more than just information. It must become the vehicle for the Voice of the Lord, that which transfers His life to those who hear. I have noticed many times that prophecy, while accurate in information, was often lacking in life. There may have been a degree of anointing because the information was correct, but it was not a living Word. How much of God is in a prophecy is determined by how much of God is in the person prophesying, not by how scriptural the information is.

Just a couple of years after becoming a Christian I visited a church that was having what was then called Camp Meeting. There were three services a day for a whole week. It was there that I first heard sermons concerning sonship and the Kingdom of God. I was elated and spent the entire week there. The following summer I went again. The revelation of Kingdom truths was wonderful. Shortly after that I started a church in South Carolina. About the same time the Lord led me to a real apostolic ministry and it was under that ministry that I really learned how to walk with God. Anyway, about five years later I revisited the church where I first heard the sermons on sonship and the Kingdom of God. I heard again the revelational teachings, only this time I realized that something was missing. In the five years that had gone by there had been no spiritual growth in the people. It was then that I realized that an accurate interpretation of the Scriptures was not enough – there had to be life in it! A Word may have an anointing on it to some degree and still not transfer the life of the Lord that is necessary to create Christ in others. A revelation of spiritual truths and principles of the Kingdom is not enough. His life must be imparted.

I love the Scriptures. I love the types, shadows, symbols, and the mysteries that are found there. But all that is nothing without His life. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. I Corinthians 13:1-2. We must tap into His life. It is easy to get caught up in the outer trimmings – the teachings of precepts and concepts of the Kingdom of God. We don’t want to camp there. We want to reach through all of that and find the treasure of His Voice – the Voice of words, not the words only but the Voice that rides on the words. We want to become accustomed to the Spirit of His Word that we could hear someone speak and immediately know whether the Voice of the Lord is in it or not.

We will hear things that will sound so right. They will be factual. They will be spiritual concepts, but the Spirit of the Lord will not be in them, and we will need to know that. Paul said in II Corinthians 11:14 that Satan comes as an angel of light. What is an angel of light? An angel of light is one that brings revelation. One brother said to me, “I know so-and-so spoke a Word from God to me because he told me things that nobody else would know.” Sure, you can go to Psychic Friends and hear something like that. Correct information doesn’t mean it is a Word from God. Is there life in what is spoken? The same for us. Is there life in what we speak? Or, are we just ministering information. It is what we are that makes the difference because that is what rides on the words we speak. A real Word from God comes from a life that first went up the mountain to meet God and heard the Voice of Words.

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