STUDY TIP: This page will be best understood by people who have first read Two Covenants.
One thing that we learn in Two Covenants is that the New Covenant is the better covenant enacted on better promises. Since this is God’s own comparison of the two covenants, most people will want to be sure that their relationship with God is consistent with the New Covenant and not the Old/First Covenant. That being true, they must be able to hear God’s voice because God considers failure to listen to his voice to be a transgression of the New Covenant. Another way to say this is to say that failure to listen to God’s voice is sin. It is critical, therefore, for people who desire to be in a New Covenant relationship with God to understand how to hear his voice.
The relationship between New Covenant disciples and God has three main points:
Because there is a strong tendency among Jews and Christians to translate “listen” and “hear” as “read”, they have a very hard time hearing and obeying God’s spoken word. Thus they assume that reading the Bible is the same thing as hearing God’s voice and they assume that if they hear a rabbi or pastor/teacher teach them they have heard God’s voice. Neither assumption is true. Reading the literal words of the Bible and hearing someone teach his/her interpretation of those literal words are not the same as hearing God’s voice.
STUDY TIP: See Literal or Symbolic Interpretation for understanding of the differences between the literal words of the Bible and God’s voice.
This is unfortunate because until they do learn how to hear his spoken voice they are sinning against him because they violate the terms of the New Covenant.
This tendency is a stumbling block that leads people to create religious laws out of the literal words of the Bible while ignoring God’s spoken word. They self-righteously congratulate themselves for their sincere efforts to make sense out of the literal Bible and convert it to religious laws (i.e. traditions) that mean much to religious people but mean nothing to God.
Religious laws that religious people obey are based on traditions that God says are lip worship without the right heart attitude. Even though both religions are based on concepts of sacrifices, festivals and rituals mentioned often in the Old and New Testaments, God says the following about these traditions:
We can learn how to apply these truths to our own lives by looking at Jesus’ example. His understanding of God’s view about the relative value of religious traditions compared to listening to God’s voice is evident in his condemning reply to religious leaders who questioned why he and his disciples did not follow Jewish traditions. Because Jesus understood that God values what is in the heart and does not value religious tradition, he was unafraid to break religious laws. He did this even though he caused trouble for himself (i.e. he was despised, mistreated, rejected and eventually killed) with the religious leaders of his day when he rebuked them for their religious behaviors. He did not fear what men would do to him when he broke their religious laws.
What we learn from the life and death of Jesus is that breaking from religious traditions and speaking out against religious behavior are conditions for hearing God’s spoken voice because obedience is an absolute condition for being able to hear God’s voice. Since Jesus only did the things that God told him to do and only said the things that God told him to say, breaking religious traditions, causing trouble in the temple and speaking out against religious behavior are acts that people who claim to follow Jesus should do also. More to the point, if they do not themselves break religious laws, do not cause trouble in religious institutions, and do not rebuke religious people for religious behaviors, it must be said that they do not hear God’s spoken voice. In other words, obedience that includes, but is not limited to, breaking religious laws, causing trouble in religious institutions, and rebuking of religious people for religious behaviors, is a an absolute condition for the ability to hear God’s voice. He gives the ability to hear his voice only to people who obey what they hear — not to rebellious people who harden their hearts to his voice.
Jews and Christians, however, being full of pride about their righteousness in obeying their own traditions based on the literal words of the Bible, fail to recognize that Jesus’ condemnations of traditions and religious behavior applies to them just like it applies to the Pharisees (i.e. religious leaders) of Bible days. In their pride and ignorance, they invalidate God’s word for the sake of preserving and advancing their religious traditions and behaviors. They have stumbled over the written laws on which their religious traditions are based. They exalt their ability to understand and obey the literal words of the Bible while totally ignoring God’s spoken voice. They create for themselves active, and even satisfying, religious lives but they do not possess fulfilling spiritual lives that is available only to people who hear, understand, and obey God’s spoken voice.
STUDY TIP: Religious people call what they do faith, but in God’s eyes their religion is Fake Faith.
To state the condition for hearing God’s voice as plainly and simply as possible, it can be said that God does not allow people who follow religious laws the ability to hear his voice. It is an issue about which he is very jealous because speaking and hearing represents deep intimacy between God and his people.
STUDY TIP: See this link for a discussion about intimacy.