Listen Faithfully

Listen Faithfully

All must attend to the ministry of the Word.

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’”

For their part, the people of God must listen to the Lord’s spokesmen. Certainly we must all make use of the Word of God—reading, meditating, studying—but not in isolation. None of us is adequate, in and of himself, to make clear or full sense of the Scriptures. The Bible is best understood in community, where pastors and teachers equip the saints for ministry by teaching us the Word of God faithfully (Eph. 4:11, 12; James 3:1).

Moreover, the saints have a duty toward one another, to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly, so that they might teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16). In addition, both pastors and those they teach must not neglect the vast resources of the larger Church in their reading and study of God’s Word. In our day we are blessed to have available the great heritage of Christian literature from every age of the Church to guide us in hearing the voice of the Lord in His Word. We are not wise if, having such a great treasure, we fail to make good use of it.

The Lord promises to “require” it of those who will not listen to His spokesmen. That’s not a very clear warning, but it has, we can agree, an ominous tone to it. We might imagine ourselves standing before the Lord of glory at some point to give an accounting of our stewardship of His Word. Do we, at that time, want to say only, “I have read your Word faithfully and understood it as best I can”? And if the Lord should ask, “Were you faithful in listening to the voice of My prophets?” how shall we reply.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.