Who Are You Listening To?
Matthew 17:5
While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
So many voices. “Follow me. I have the truth.” “I’m right. Trust me.” “Don’t listen to them. Listen to me!” Who are you listening to?
What do we even base that choice on? Paul warns in 2 Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” Those voices out there might be convincing; they might be charismatic. They might use what appears to be sound logic based on experience. But Paul tells us the reason we so easily follow these voices:
They tell us what we want to hear.
And if we ally ourselves with those voices because they tell us what we want to hear, it is not those voices that seat themselves on the throne of truth. Instead, we make ourselves the judges of what is true and what is false. From this bench, we may even at times come to the right conclusion, but we often reach these conclusions by a miscarriage of justice. The truth is not made true because it is what we want to hear or because it confirms our previously held beliefs. Under that practice, falsehoods and truths become neighbors on both sides of the fence of acceptance and rejection. If you act as though you are the decider of truth, you are setting yourself up for failure. Being wrong may have earthly consequences and may even have spiritual and eternal consequences if it leads you away from God's truth. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
There is only one cure to the deceitful human heart. It is the Good Shepherd whose voice says, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Unlike the other voices, even the voice of your heart, the Good Shepherd has the claim to the truth.
He has it by virtue of his nature: he is the Son of God; he is the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1,14).
He has it by virtue of his Father’s declaration: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5).
He has it by virtue of his purpose: “The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37).
He has it by virtue of his action: “I lay down my life for the sheep. … No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:15,18).
With his voice, he calls us to follow him. We follow him to the cross where he lays down his life for the sheep. We follow him to the empty tomb where he takes it up again. We will follow him to where he has gone that we also may be where he is.
Listen to his voice. Other voices care nothing for the sheep (John 10:13). They gather followers for their own benefit. When the wolf comes, they abandon the sheep (John 10:12). But Jesus the Good Shepherd loves you. He has laid down his life for you. Listen to him!
Listen to him as he speaks to you through his Word. Whether it is your own personal reading or hearing the Word preached by another, when it is based on his Word, it is his voice. Compare all the other voices you hear, not to what your heart wants to hear–that which is found in the heart itself–but to what your heart needs to hear–that which is found in the Word of Christ.
Indeed, his truth might conflict with what your heart says. It might not be what your heart wants to hear. But as we follow the Good Shepherd, “we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Why? Because he has saved us and promises to lead us out of this world to our heavenly home.