John 10:4: “And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.”

John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:”

I have always been bothered by these verses.  Well not the verses so much as the spin put on them by the preachers I grew up with.  They would scare me to death.  They would say things like: “If you don’t know the voice of God you are going somewhere other than heaven.”  “If you don’t recognize the voice of God you don’t really love Him only those who love Him recognize His voice.?” These preachers never addressed the elephant in the room and that is most likely no one sitting in that congregation had actually heard the audible voice of God.  I mean if you are always hearing a voice in your head, they have a name for that.  I am not saying that one may not hear an audible voice.  I myself can point to two occasions in my life when I heard an actual audible voice that I knew and recognized as the voice of God.  But that was only two times in my three score and five years on this planet. Most of the time I just get audible silence from heaven.

There was a movie out many years go called: Oh God.  It was about a man who was visited personally by God.  I think God was played by George Burns and the guy seeing him was John Denver.  Anyways I remember very little about this movie except for one scene where John Denver’s character was brought before a legal and ecclesiastical panel to answer for his outrageous claim that he had actually spoke with God and God spoke to him.  On the panel was one religious leader who was supposed to portray an evangelical world famous evangelist of the stature of Billy Graham.  The panel confronted Denver’s character and asks: “Do you honestly believe God spoke to you?”  And the man innocently replied, “Of course, doesn’t He speak to you the religious leaders?”  He directed his attention to the evangelist and said: “He has spoken to you hasn’t He?”  His answer is the only words I clearly remember from the movie: “Well, He has made His Word known unto me.”

Let’s face it people rarely hear an audible voice from God and if they do on a regular basis, even I would question the person’s sanity. Yet, these verses clearly say that sheep hear and know His voice. The problem comes in interpreting the word voice as an audible voice.  The word in the Greek is phone and is generally a reference to an audible voice. However, there are occasions when phone is used to express nonverbal communicate which gives us enough leverage to say Jesus was not referring to an actual audible voice.  The Aramaic Bible, The Peshitta uses the word qala which can mean either audible or an inaudible form of communication. I believe it is safe to say that Jesus is using the double meaning here.  In reference to sheep they hear an audible voice and in reference to us it is not in an audible voice but still a form of communication.

It is interesting that in verse 27 God knows his sheep and in verse 4 we know His voice. No one ever told me that there were two different words in the Greek used here for knowing. For God the knowing is the Greek word ginosko which is the word Mary used when was told she was to have a child and asked how such a thing could be seeing she ginosko no man. In verse 4 however “for they know His voice.”  The word for know here is oidasin.  This is more of a perception, definitely not that intimate knowing of ginosko, just a recognition.  However, the Aramaic Bible, the language that Jesus spoke uses the same word for God know us and we knowing his voice which is the word yida. This is identical to the Hebrew word yada.  Both have the same Semitic origin of YD.   The Septuagint uses the word ginosko for yada.  So in both cases, God knowing us and we knowing His voice is a reference to an intimate knowing.  Like the old preacher said; “I know that I know that I know.”   I think all of us had those times when we just felt God speaking so directly to us it was almost like an audible voice like “Don’t take this job” or “Don’t marry this woman.”  Months maybe years later we sit back and sigh and say: “Boy am I glad I listened to the little voice inside of me.”

But hold presses, there is something much deeper here in the use of the word yida. This is an intimate knowing of a lover.  Let say a guy connects with a woman on an online dating service. He hasn’t even met the gal in person.  He gets to know her through correspondence and then falls madly in love with her such that he just deactivates  his profile and shuts down his whole operation and he is like gone.  The old boy been smitten and all he has are a few correspondences and a picture that he is not certain is less that twenty years old, but no matter, he his wasted. Come on, it happens and we all know someone that it happened to.  Finally the moment comes when they connect by phone.  Let me tell you this guy might be a customer service rep who speaks to women all day long on the phone.  He hears many different voices of women and he has no emotional response whatsoever.  But when the woman of his dreams answers that phone for the first time, his heart is racing, his blood pressure is reaching stroke level, he is ready to hang up the phone out of sheer terror and then that voice comes over the line.  It is no different than the voice of hundreds of women he has listened to but to him that one voice, it could be the voice of Gravel Gertie but to him it is the sweetest most beautiful voice in the world and he just falls back into nothingness listening to that voice go on and on and he wishes it would never quit.  It is like listening to a beautiful symphony, it is like, well I will let you romantics out there fill in the spaces.

My point is as a child I keep trying to hear an audible voice from God.  But after years of researching the word qala (voice) I am convinced that rendering it as voice is totally misleading.  It should be communication and nonverbal at that. Tomorrow I am going to have the chance to spend two hours in total prayer, nothing else but praying. Odds are very good that I will not hear an audible voice but I will receive a communication from God and I am even now getting excited and nervous over this prayer time for I know yida, His qala or communication but it is more than just recognizing it, it is like the old boy hearing the voice of his beloved on the phone, it is like listening to a beautiful symphony, it is like just falling back into nothingness and resting in that lovely voice. I don’t know, I am not a woman, maybe you gals have the same experience, I know this Jesus said he yida’s us, He is also intimate with us and when we He hears our voice he falls into nothingness.  If this old boy says he will call his beloved at 6:30 and this gal is really into him like he is to her, then she will be sitting by that phone, sweating waiting to her that voice and if he is five minutes late, like calling at 6:35, he had better be ready with an awfully good excuse, well maybe no excuse will work.

Wednesday is prayer meeting night for millions of Christians. Most don’t even go. Would it make a difference if you knew that God yida’s you, and is sitting by that prayer phone checking his watch every ten seconds. If you callously are off on what you think are more important things you are going to leave a broken hearted lover sitting by that prayer phone.