Christians Have Stopped Listening to God... Here's Why!

There's a voice most Christians have completely stopped listening to. Not the news, not social media, not their spouse. It's the voice of God. And here's what's wild. John the Apostle, sitting alone on a prison island with no church, no worship band, no pastor, no sermon, heard this voice loud and clear, louder than anything around him. And what God showed him in that moment changed how he listened to God's voice from there on forward. And it will completely reframe how you and I read the book of Revelation, how we interpret the End Times, and how we live our lives today. You're gonna wanna stay with me to the end because I'm gonna show you something about Psalm 23 that will change the way you live your life from here on out. Four, three, two, one, hang on. Welcome back to Get Into The Word, my name is Robin Gallaty. Before we dive into the text, I want to set the scene for you because the context of the book of Revelation is everything. And if you've missed the earlier episodes, make sure and go back, I'll put a link below that you can watch the previous episodes of Revelation. John is going to drop a personal detail that we're tempted to skip over or skip past

in Revelation 1, verse nine. Notice what he says. I, John, the apostle, your brother, and partner in the affliction. Now that word affliction is the word for tribulation. Oh, by the way, I thought the tribulation was in the future. No, John's experiencing tribulation here and now. In the kingdom and endurance that are in Christ Jesus, I was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. The Roman emperor had exiled John to a tiny island on the coast of the Aegean Sea. He's a prisoner, there's no church building there, there's no praise team, there's no choir, there's no congregation, there's no elder board, just John, the sea, and a Roman guard. And what does John do? Well, he worships the Lord. Look at verse 10. John says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and that's when I heard a loud voice behind me like a trumpet. I want you to let that sink in. He turned a prison into a praise service. I love that. His circumstances did not determine his worship. His location did not limit his access to God. Somebody needs to hear this today. John understood something that many of us forget the moment life gets hard or circumstances are difficult.

Worship, listen, is not a building you go to. It's a posture you carry with you. Now, if you think John is the only one who's figured this out, I wanna take you to Acts 16. You know that story because it's Paul and Silas in the church of Philippi. They had just taken the gospel to the western shore of the world. They're taking it west. And they get to town. They cast out a girl who has a spirit of divination. You remember this? And for casting out this girl from demonic oppression, you would think the town threw a parade for him. They celebrated. No, they persecuted him. They publicly and violently beat him and whipped him and Silas for doing that. For what? For preaching the gospel. They're thrown in prison. Their feet are in stocks. Their backs are bleeding and they are locked up. And what do they do around midnight? You may remember what the text says. At midnight, what do they do? Do they complain? Do they point fingers? Do they blame God? No.

What do they do? They pray and sing hymns. Acts 16, 26 tells us that at the moment they were singing and praising God, a violent earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. The doors flew open and every chain came loose. All the chains were released. I would say right now, Elvis ain't got nothing on Paul and Silas. This is the first time the jailhouse rocked. Here's the principle I want you to see. When our praises go up, God's presence comes down. Let me say that again. When our praises to God go up, his presence comes down to us. Psalm 22, three says it best. God inhabits, watch this, the praises of his people. Notice what the text says. God, you are holy and enthroned on the praises of Israel or the people of God. Here's what it shows us. God dwells in our praises. He abides there. And here's what I want you to hear. I can't promise you that every time you praise God, you're gonna feel a wave of emotion. I can't promise you that every time you praise God, all of your problems will go away. But I will promise you this. You will never sense the presence of God

when you're pouting and complaining. The choice is yours. Now, here's where it really gets interesting. Because while John is worshiping alone on an island by himself, the spirit comes upon him and he. hears something, and what he hears and how John describes it contains one of the most stunning literary structures in all of scripture. Let's go back to verse 10 in Revelation, and I want you to see what John hears and sees in Revelation chapter one, verse 10. John says, I heard a loud voice behind me that sounded like a trumpet. And then he goes and describes from verses 14 on what he sees and hears. John is going to give us a description of Jesus standing among the lampstands. Notice what it says. The hairs of his head was white, or the hair of his head was white as wool, white as snow, and his eyes like a fiery flame. His feet were like the fine bronze as it is fired in a furnace, and his voice like the sound of cascading waters. He had seven stars in his right hand, a sharp double-edged sword came from his mouth, and his face was shining at full what? Strength. When I saw him, John said, I fell down like a dead man. Now sadly, most Western modern readers of the Bible

just view this as a list. White hair, fiery eyes, bronze feet, cascading voice, seven stars, a sharp sword, shining face, seven details, and then they move on. But that is not what John is doing here. John is not just recording random insights that he sees about Jesus. John was embedding a literary structure called a chiasm. You need to know what this is because once you learn to spot it, you're gonna realize it's all through the Old Testament Bible, even into the New Testament as well. The word is called a chiasm. It comes from the Greek letter chi, which looks like the letter X, but you actually only take one side of it to form a V. I'll put a picture of a chiasm in a moment up for you to see. Imagine the side of a V or a greater than symbol. Western thinking, the way you and I, mostly Europeans, we think in linear fashion. We build to a conclusion at the end. For example, one, two, three, four, five. The most important point comes last. But the Hebrew thinking is different. They think chiastically. It's a structure like a pyramid where the most important point doesn't sit at the end, but at the center.

And the elements on either side mirror the point. Stick with me. You're not gonna wanna miss this. By the way, if you're interested in learning more about the culture and how to think like a Hebrew or how to think like Jesus, you may wanna check out a book I wrote called The Forgotten Jesus. This is a book I wrote years ago. By the way, I have a podcast I do with my wife on this where we study the Jewishness of Jesus, in a sense, the forgotten part of Jesus's life. So here's a quick example of a chiasm from Proverbs 6, 16 through 19. Now, you know this passage because it's the passage of the seven things God hates. And I'll put it on the screen. The first is God hates arrogant eyes. God hates a lying tongue. God hates hands that shed innocent blood. God hates a heart that plots wicked schemes. He also hates feet eager to run to evil, a lying false witness, and one who stirs up trouble. Now, you would read that list and think, oh, wow, all those things are equally important, which they are. But the centerpiece of all of it, you're gonna love this, is a heart, look at it, that plots wicked schemes. Don't miss this.

The center of this passage is the heart. You could say it this way. The heart of the problem is a problem of our heart. The whole passage is pointing inward like an arrow that is aimed at one thriving truth. Now, let's take that back to Revelation 1 and look at how John describes Jesus. Check this out. It says, Jesus's head was white as snow. He had eyes that were fiery like a flame. His feet were like fine bronze. His voice was of cascading waters. He was holding seven stars in his hand. A sharp double-edged sword came from his mouth, and his face was shining like the sun. Now, if you look at these, you'll notice a pattern. Head and face go together. They speak of God's infinite wisdom. Eyes and mouth are features of the head. They speak of God's penetrating gaze and his purifying words. Feet and hands are parallel body parts. His feet are refined, purified, and his hands hold the seven stars, the messengers of the seven churches. It shows us that Jesus controls what? Everything. And what sits dead center of all of this? The voice of God. Coming close.

This is not an accident. John is using the most sophisticated literary architecture in the ancient world to point us to one inescapable conclusion, and that is this. The single most important thing you and I need from Jesus is to hear his voice clearly. And this raises a devastating question. What is the most neglected spiritual discipline in the average Christian's life? We talk about listening to sermons, those are important. We talk about prayer and the practice of prayer, it's important, memorizing scripture, fasting, worshiping, journaling, all of these things matter. But there's one thing that sits underneath all the others. It's the one that holds everything up, hearing the voice of God. I want you to think about that. The Bible uses the words listen or hear over 700 times. Let me say that again. The words listen or hear 700 times. 500 of those 700 are commands. God is commanding us, listen to me, hear me. The greatest prayer in the Old Testament, you know this, is the Shema from Deuteronomy 6.4. Shema Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echadveh, Ahavta Adonai Elohecha. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and diligently teach that to your children. You know this verse.

Write it on your foreheads and put it on your hand. God's saying, hear the word of God, hear the word of Israel. And notice this, hear doesn't just mean listen with the ear, it means obey with your life. Romans 10.17, Paul says this. If you wanna accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, faith comes by what? Say it with me. Hearing and hearing the word of Christ. Hearing begins at our Christian life. The moment we're saved, we start to hear the voice of God. But for many people, you probably included, you haven't genuinely heard the voice of God since the day you were saved. The seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation all have an insight at the end of every one of them. I wanna show it to you. At the end of Revelation chapter two, when you go back to Revelation two verse seven, this is just one of the churches. You hear, let anyone who has what? Ears to hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Jesus says it seven times to seven churches. The number seven's significant. He's not being redundant here, he's being urgent. Here's why this matters. The churches of Asia Minor were drowning in competing voices.

The seductive voice of the Roman culture, the threatening voice of the evil emperor Nero and the pressure that was facing them to worship and bow down to the emperor in worship. If you think about it, you and I are facing the exact same problem today, just with different channels, different voices. We are fearful voices on the news all the time, immoral voices on our phone and from Hollywood, arrogant voices from Washington, negative voices on social media, critical voices in our head from the subcommittee that's always criticizing. Every one of us is listening to voices that distract. We're being told what to do and how to do it. Everyone is screaming for our attention and the quiet, steady, almost you can hear it, cascading voice of Jesus is getting buried by the noise. Dan Rather, the news reporter, once asked Mother Teresa to describe her prayer life and she was in that interview and she said, well, I simply listen to God. And Dan Rather responded and he said, well, what does God say? And Mother Teresa smiled and said, he listens. Dan Rather sat there confused and she added, if you don't know what I'm talking about or understand that, I can't explain it to you. You see, Jesus said it directly, my sheep know me and they hear my what, voice. So let me ask you something honest.

When was the last time you got a word from God? When was the last time you sat long enough and lingered long enough to bend your ear to the accent of the Holy Spirit? Now, God speaks through his word, of course he does. God speaks through sermons and preaching, of course he does. But God also speaks through circumstances and people and nudges and checks in our spirit. When was the last time you even made time or attempted to hear the voice of God? We get to the final part and I don't want you to miss this. This is something very difficult for us to grasp and for those of us in difficult seasons, this will speak to you. In verse seven of chapter one, let's go back to the text, we're going to see what happens when John is face to face with the presence and the voice of God. John says, when I saw Jesus, I fell down like a dead man. He laid his right hand on me and said, don't be afraid for I am the what? The first and the last and the living one. I was dead, but look, I am alive forever and ever and I hold the keys to death and Hades. Where is Jesus standing when John sees him? Well, if we go back to verse 13, we realize something interesting. Let me put it back up. Verse 13 shows us that Jesus was standing, if you remember, among the golden lampstands, right? Actually, 12.

When I turned around, I saw him among the lampstands. But the Greek word is stronger than among or around. It actually says the middle of. Jesus is in the middle of the seven lampstands. And when he turns to us in verse 20, he represents the seven churches. Why is that important? He's not above them. Jesus is not standing outside of them. He's not watching from a distance. He's not on the fringe of society. Jesus is right in the middle of the center of his people. And in Revelation chapter five, verse six, when John sees the great heavenly worship service with Jesus appearing around the throne, it says he's in the middle of the throne. He's at the center of heaven's worship. He is the centerpiece of eternity. Now, why does this matter? Because sometimes you and I can feel like we're losing. For decades in America, Christians had a kind of cultural home field advantage. Churches were full. Courtrooms displayed the Ten Commandments. You remember those days? Politicians used to build their entire campaigns on biblical values. 30 years ago, if you skipped church on Sunday, you had to explain to your neighbors why you didn't go. Today, if you go to church on Sunday,

some of you might have to explain to your neighbors why you even went. And in that shift, something has happened to a lot of believers. We started to feel like outsiders, like the culture has moved on and left us behind. I know some of you are nodding your head now. Like we're on the margins of society. But I need you to hear this carefully. What you see around you is not the center of all things. It may look like it, but it's not. Wall Street is not the center. Washington is not the center. Hollywood is not the center. Silicon Valley is not the center. The Middle East conflict is not the center. Your newsfeed is not the center. Jesus is at the center. He holds the keys to death and Hades. He holds the seven stars in his right hand. He's standing right in the center of the center of the church, which means he's standing right in the middle of this moment, this season, this situation that you're carrying in life today. Now, I wanna teach you something that I promised early on that's gonna change everything. So you need to stay with me. And it has to do with Psalm 23. Now, Psalm 23 is an interesting chapter

because it's probably one of the most well-known Psalms in all of the Bible. You probably have it memorized. You've quoted it before. You've heard it at funerals. But there's something embedded in the Hebrew text that most Christians have never seen in their entire lives. If you notice Psalm 22, sorry, if you notice Psalm 22, you'll realize Psalm 22 has exactly 55 Hebrew words. The Psalm, in a sense, is a chiasm. I set you up earlier to get you here. A chiasm, which is, remember, a greater than symbol. And when you count those words, 26 words on one side and 26 words at the end, right dead in the center, the bullseye of the entire Psalm are three Hebrew words that are translated in English as this, for I am with you, or for you are with me. That is the center of Psalm 23, and that's the point. Everything else in this Psalm, the green pastures, the still waters, the restoration of your soul, the valley of the shadow of death, the table that God prepares before our enemies, the cup that is running over, all of it is arranged around three central words. And so what does that mean? I wanna speak this into your life. If you're in the deepest valley of your life right now, you need to know this. God is with you.

If you're on the highest mountain, God is still with you. If you're walking through cancer, through the failure of a marriage, through a child battling addiction, through a grief that no one has a name for, through the fear that wakes you up in the middle of the night at three in the morning, look at me, God is with you. He's not in the margins of your life. He's not on the fringe. He's not on the outside looking in. He's at the center of it all. He's at the center of the center of your life. And the question is, I wanna leave you with this, where are you looking? Are you looking for God in the middle or toward the margins? Are you looking for Jesus in the middle of your mess? Well, if you are, he's right there with you. John heard that voice, not because he was in the right building, not because he had the right circumstances, it was because he was paying attention, get this, and positioning himself to receive a word from God. He was in the spirit, he was worshiping. And when the voice came to him, it came like cascading waters, a healing balm to his soul. It drowned out every other sound competing for his attention. John turned a prison cell into a praise service, and so can you today.

Friends, the same voice is available to all of us today, right now, the question isn't whether. God is speaking. The question is whether you're listening. Do me a favor and leave a comment right now. I really want to hear from you. If you were impacted by this video in any way, or you're going through a difficult season, we should put that in the comments. I really try to read most all of them. They are a lot, but I try to read them and comment. And I pray for those who ask for prayer. If you aren't subscribed to the channel, do me a favor and subscribe now. You don't want to miss any video in the future. And like it and share it with a friend who needs it. It really helps us get the word out. Until next time, get into the word until the word gets into you.