Last week I addressed misconceptions about sheep and talked about their relationship with their shepherd. Today I am looking at misconceptions about God and His relationship with His followers, the “sheep” Jesus is actually talking about in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” After 23 years of taking “Free Prayer” to the roadside, Karen and I have found that a great many people are full of wrong beliefs about God and His character. When we share the truth about Him, they are thrilled to find out that He is good, that He knows all about them and loves them, that He wants to be a part of their lives to bring about the best for them, that He wants them to live with Him in heaven forever.
How do people form wrong beliefs about God? That He is condemning, punishing, untrustworthy, unknowable, unreliable, indifferent? Not from the Bible, not from someone who knows the Lord intimately! You can’t find out what God is like by listening to someone who doesn’t know Him. The book of Job is a perfect example! Many people base their theology on what Job DIDN’T know about God. They believe that when bad things happen, God caused them. You’ve probably heard, and maybe even said yourself, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,” referring to Job 1:21. Do you know that God never said that? Job said it! It conveys the sense that God will do whatever He wants to, that He set up Job and so, He may very well set you up too! But how often do you hear someone quote Job 42:5-6 in which he repents to God? The Message reads, “I [Job] admit I once lived by rumors of you; now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears! I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise! I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.” At the end of the book, Job admits he spoke out of ignorance, repeating and believing things he’d only heard about God.
I believe many people today know more about the sounds of their cars than they know about the sound of God’s voice. People hear a sound in their car and know immediately something is wrong! If you don’t know God’s voice, you can easily be deceived into believing something that isn’t true. A woman came up to me once after I finished preaching, a visitor to our church, and said, “Pastor, your sermon was in error.” I asked her how? She said, “You mentioned Satan and my pastor says that Satan is never mentioned in the Bible, so you are in error.” I showed her in Genesis where it says that Satan fell like lightning. Then I showed her where Satan tempted Jesus on the temple roof, then took her to Revelation where Satan accuses us before God’s throne. You would think afterwards, she would be mad at her pastor. But instead, she got mad at me! We must read the Bible for ourselves and false teachers will be no match for us!
Today we often hear, “God doesn’t speak to me and I can’t hear His voice!” The truth is we can all hear His voice if we will read the Bible. The Bible is God’s Word! Hebrews 1:1-2 says that in the past (the Old Testament), God spoke through prophets but since He sent His Son Jesus into the world, God speaks through Jesus! When we read the words of Jesus in the New Testament, we can “hear” God’s voice and God’s heart and know what God is truly like. How can you know God’s character and thoughts unless you read His book? How will you recognize if it’s Him or someone else speaking to you? If someone says, “God told me to kill my neighbor!” would you believe him? Of course not! The 6th Commandment spoken to Moses, “Thou shalt not kill,” still speak to us today. God never violates His Word or principles. That “voice” does not belong to God. The more of the Bible you have inside of you, the less you can be deceived or misled.
The sheep who know Jesus and belong to Him, the Good Shepherd, have an intimate relationship with Him. So familiar with His voice, His words and how He speaks to them, that even if a different voice, a stranger, calls to them, they won’t follow him (John 10:5)—they will only respond the One who always lovingly leads them on the right path. So what am I trying to say? If you don’t know His voice, you don’t know Him.
-Emil Liko 8/7/26