The direction of God’s voice is headed toward us, reminding us of a hope that cannot be drowned.
One challenge to reading the Bible is reconciling a God who regularly speaks to his people with the personal experience of rarely hearing God say anything at all.
In last Sunday’s lectionary texts we looked at four different passages from scripture that remind us that God speaks. And even though it may not seem he is speaking directly to us in those texts, we can begin to see how God’s voice is headed in our direction.
God’s Voice is a Descending Voice
God’s voice is a descending voice. Not merely in the simplistic sense of a booming sound in the sky dropping down to our wee little lives, but that the posture of God’s voice — regardless from the place it comes, or how audibly it projects — is always coming from a stooped down position.
Like a parent who lies prostrate to whisper into the ears of their infant, the Father in Heaven lays low to speak a loving word.
The conversation between last Sunday’s four texts remind us that what we hear the Father saying and what we see the Spirit doing is revealing a Word.
A Word that descends.
What is the nature of God’s descending voice and what is God saying as the voice stoops low?
The Voice of the Lord
In Psalm 29, we read about the voice of the Lord seven times in eleven verses. Among other things, the voice of the Lord breaks cedars, flashes fire and makes the mountains to dance. This voice in particular exudes its sovereignty over creation and its victory over the gods who clamor for creation’s attention.
The voice, the Psalmist speaks of, comes from the God who is greater than all other gods, specifically the gods of nature and the gods of chaos.
These alternative voices cannot compete. Their attempts to control the skies and seas are silenced by the voice that forever sustains the cosmos.
After describing the activities of the Lord’s voice, the Psalmist concludes with a summarized promise,
“The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!” – Psalm 29:10-11
The Lord sits over the flood as the forever King. This is an idea in scripture we often wade past but it’s worth going into deeper waters.
The more we listen to it, the more we hear the good news that God is over the flood because he went through it.
God is over the flood because he went through it.
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Jason Martin 