Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."
Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

 

When you were a kid, how did you parents call you in for dinner? Did they have a special way of whistling for you, a bell they rung, or a certain way of yelling for you? I know that in our neighborhood it seemed like all of us had a special whistle or bell. For example, we would be playing football in a neighbor’s yard, and suddenly two brothers would say, “Sorry, we have to go home, my mother’s calling.” We’d say, “What? What are you talking about? We didn’t hear her call.” They’d say, “Oh, it was our whistle.” They recognized a special whistle of their mom’s, one that we ignored but they knew was for them. Of course we’d beg them to stay, and five minutes later we’d all hear their shrill whistle, calling them home for dinner.

A few minutes later a few more would peel off from the game, saying that their mother was calling them. “What?” we’d say. “We didn’t hear her call?” They’d say, “Oh, she just yelled. We can tell it’s her voice.” Then a few minutes later we’d hear our call: an old, clangy cowbell.

Each of us had a special call, calling us home for dinner. For some it was whistle. For others it was a call. For others it was a bell. All of us had a special call. We ignored each others’ calls because their whistles, bells, and calls sounded like background noise—like cars passing by and dogs barking. But when ours went off, we knew it was time to come in. That doesn’t mean that we necessarily went in right away. Normally our bell was accompanied by a more persistent ringing five minutes later, followed by a yell after another five minutes. But you get the idea. We all had our own special kind of call.

In a lot of ways, I think of God’s speaking to us as being kind of similar to our being summoned by a dinner bell. I don’t mean that God uses a bell or a whistle or a loud yell to cal us. I mean that when it comes to hearing God’s voice in our lives, there’s a special voice God uses for each of us. Many Christians know what God’s voice sounds like, but many others don’t. It’s sort of like sheep with a shepherd, as Jesus says in our passage: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

One of the problems with reading scripture is that we are so far removed from Jesus’ time culture that many of the examples he uses don’t mean much to us. The phrase above is an example of this. What Jesus says sounds nice, but to the people of his day, there was much more that statement than meets the eye. The people of his day would have known exactly what he referred to, and it all had to do with how shepherds kept their flocks safe.

You can imagine that if you were a lone shepherd and had your flock of sheep spread out all over a hillside, it would be hard to protect them from predators and from wandering. You could only cover so much ground. To protect their sheep, the shepherds typically gathered about five flocks together on a hillside so that the shepherds could spread out and protect each other’s flock. But there’s a problem. What happens when you have to leave with your flock? They’re now all mixed together with other flocks. The answer is that each shepherd had a special way of whistling, and the sheep knew the sound of their shepherd’s whistle. If a shepherd wanted to take his flock back to his barn, he would whistle his special whistle, and as if by magic those sheep would separate from the others and come to him. This is what Jesus was referring to. He was saying that those who know and love him also know his voice, even if others don’t. Basically, he is saying that God uses a special language for those with faith.

I’ve discovered over the years that God seems to use a special language for each and every one of us, but we have to learn that language if we are to hear God. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Years ago, I met a woman who told me that God speaks to her clearly through dreams. These aren’t biblical style dreams where God tells her things such as that we are about to go through seven years of feast, and then another seven of famine. Her dreams were much more mundane. For instance, she might be struggling in a relationship with someone at work, and in her dreams she would find a way to work things out, ways that she would try out afterwards that would be successful. She told me that she was convinced that God was speaking to her through these dreams in order to show her how to live a better life, one filled more with love.

Another woman once told me about the special language God uses for her. She said that God speaks to her through comets and shooting stars. Whenever she had a big decision to make, she would come up with a plan, and she knew it was right if she saw a shooting star, a picture of a comet, or something similar. And she commented on how often she saw a shooting star in one form or another after a big decision. She felt it was God’s way of saying that everything is alright.

Another man, a member of Calvin Church has told me how God speaks to him through numbers—specifically through the number 111. His father also hears God through the numbers 444. They aren’t alone in this. God seems to speak to me through numbers, specifically through the numbers 333, 777, or some combination of the two sets. For instance, there was a time several years ago when I was feeling very down. I was at a conference in Denver, and as I was flying into Denver I was reflecting on my life. On the drive from the hotel to the airport, I was praying to God, asking if what I was doing with my life was the right thing. I got out of the shuttle, looked over across the street and saw that the number for a cab parked there was (333) 777-3333. It was very clear to me that God was saying, “Things are okay. You are doing what I want you to do.”

I discovered this special language from God back in 1993, while working on my dissertation for my Ph.D. I was going through a particularly bad time in my writing. I was frustrated, feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing, and that the writing process didn’t make any sense. I wondered whether getting my Ph.D. was a waste of time. I was thinking about all this while exercising on a nordic track exercise machine. In the midst of my thinking, I stopped for a while as I prayed. Lost in prayer, asking God to speak to me, I looked down and saw that I had gone 3.33 kilometers on the nordic track. Something inside me said that this is God’s way of saying that everything is okay. Ever since then, God has used this language. It seems like I don’t go more than a few days before I see 333, 777, 733, or 337 somewhere: on a license plate, a clock, an address, or something else. I’ve found that it is God’s way of saying, “I’m with you.”

What’s interesting about these numbers is that the man I mentioned earlier, an elder on the session, had a particular experience of his 1s that coincided with one of my experience of 3s. It was after the session had made the decision to present to the congregation the proposal to build our addition. As he was driving home, he noticed that the time was 11:11. He sensed that it was God’s way of saying that everything was okay. As I was driving home, I looked down at the mileage and temperature gauge in my car (it’s a small little thing that tells the miles driven on a line over the outside temperature. I looked down and saw that I had driven 3 miles, and that the temperature was 33 degrees. It looked like this:

3
33

Like him, I also sensed it was God’s way of saying that we had made the right decision. God speaks to all of us, but not all of us recognize God’s language. Sometimes God speaks to us in words, but I’ve discovered that more often God speaks to us in symbols and experiences.

The point of telling you about these experiences is to remind you that God is always speaking to us, but that to hear God’s voice, we have to listen. Jesus tells us in our passage that his sheep know his voice. We are his sheep, but do we hear his voice? What I want to do this morning is to help you hear God’s voice. To help you, I want you to imagine that you are hearing trying to listen for God’s voice in one of these. Do you know what it is?

From what I’m told, it is a Phillco radio that was popular in the 1930s. Some of you listened to a radio just like this when you were younger. This would have been a time before television, as whole families sat around the radio, listening to music, news, and dramatic programs. You can imagine that in this family, the kids might have been playing with toys on the floor. The mother might have been knitting, sewing, or clipping out coupons. The dad might have been sitting in his chair, with his head back, listening.

Now, imagine that the radio didn’t work. You tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. What would your first response be? Would it be to think that there are no such thing as radio waves and that the whole idea of being able to listen on the radio is nothing but nonsense? Of course not. What you might do, though, is to check the plug to see if the radio is plugged in. That’s the first lesson in listening to God. To hear God, we have to plug into God. Just as the whole house might be wired for electricity, but radios won’t work if they aren’t plugged into that electricity, God is all around us, but we can’t receive God’s waves unless we first plug in. And we plug in simply by believing that God can speak to us. It has to do with our attitude. If we don’t believe, we can’t hear.

Second, we need to tune into God. God has a frequency, and to hear that frequency we have to tune through all the other noise and static that surrounds us in life. And there’s a lot of noise and static. Our lives are filled with it. Listening to God isn’t easy. We can get frustrated at how long it takes to tune in. We can get irritated that sometimes it’s hard to filter out the static. But as we get experienced, we can find that sweet spot in which tuning becomes easier.

Third, we need to sit and listen to God. Again, it’s so easy to get so busy and distracted that even if we plug in and tune in, other activities call out to us. Listening to God requires the willingness to slow down and seek God in silence, just as listening to the radio requires silence. As it says in the psalms, “Be still and know that I am God.” If we want to be able to hear God, we have to find a way to bring stillness to our lives.

Fourth, we need to consider what we’ve heard. It’s pretty easy to listen and not hear. We do it all the time. We listen to someone say something, but we don’t hear it because our minds get distracted, or we just aren’t interested. You know what I’m talking about. Your kids complain about it all the time: “You aren’t listening, Mom!” You are hearing the words, but you aren’t necessarily paying attention as you do fifteen other chores. To hear God, we have to take time to reflect and consider what God has said to us.

Finally, we need to actually act. If we think we’ve heard something from God, we have to be willing to act on what we’ve heard. That’s the really hard part because there are so many doubts involved in following God’s voice. What if we didn’t really hear God? What if we’re wrong? But we have to find a way to act in faith anyway.

Whether you believe it or not, God is always speaking to you, but to hear you have to attune yourself to God’s frequency. You have to believe God is speaking, and you have to adjust your life to God’s frequency. So here’s a question to ponder: What frequency is your receiver on?

Amen.