The voice unheeded.
I. GOD IS EVER SPEAKING TO HIS CHILDREN. There is a Divine voice speaking, not to favored prophets in rare moments of spiritual elevation, but to all men, that all who will may hear. This voice comes to us in many forms.
1. The voice of nature—the proclamation of the power and wisdom of God in the awful, silent speech of the stars (Psalms 19:3), and the gentler language which tells of his tenderness and beneficence in the cheery songs of spring and the glad shout of the harvest.
2. The voice of history. God is in history, and speaks to us through the events of the past, warning by judgments (Jeremiah 7:12), inviting by acts of deliverance and gifts of mercy (see Psalms 105:1-45.).
3. The voice of providence in daily life. Has not God been speaking to us through our own experience—using various prophetic agencies—the advent of a new joy, the cloud of a great sorrow, a visitation of the angel of death to the home? Has he not repeatedly roused, invited, pleaded, and consoled us with voices from out eternity?
4. The voice of prophecy. God had often so spoken to the Jews before the days of Jeremiah, and reference is plainly made to this fact in the text. That voice still lives, because truth is eternal. Thus God speaks to us through the inspired thoughts of the Bible.
5. The voice of Christ. He is the "Word" of God made articulate in the dialect of men (John 1:1-14). He who sees Christ hears the voice of God.
6. The voice of conscience. This is God speaking within the soul. Every time we feel compunction at doing wrong, or an inward urging to do the right, God is pleading in our heart by direct communion, spirit with spirit.
II. THE VOICE OF GOD IS URGENT. God speaks with urgency—"rising up early and speaking."
1. The urgency of God's voice is a proof of his great love to his children. He speaks with frequency, repeating the same unheeded lesson, and even when none attend to his voice. God speaks to his children before they pray to him. The first impulse, to spiritual communion comes from God, not from us (Psalms 27:8). Christ stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20). We may see in this an evidence of the long-suffering mercy of God—a mercy which "endureth forever," and we may see an encouragement to listen and turn to him. Still he "waiteth to be gracious."
2. The urgency of God's voice is a proof of the great importance of what he says. God is urgent. What tremendous destinies must turn on a question which even he must rouse and bestir himself about! We might expect that any voice from the awful majesty of God would be full of deep and vast meaning. What must be the significance of his words when even he speaks with earnest insistence, with pressing urgency? How can such an utterance be passed unheeded?
III. GOD'S VOICE IS OFTEN NOT HEEDED. He speaks with the authority of the majesty of heaven, with the yearning love of a Father, with the urgency which betokens matters of profound interest, and with a direct reference to the most fearful woe and the most glorious blessedness of his children. Yet men turn aside with indifference. What are the causes of this appalling wonder?
1. Spiritual deafness. There are men who have no ears for the voice of God. Yet God can open our ears if we are willing to hear.
2. Hatred to the highest truth. Men stop their ears against the sound of honest words which are hateful to sinful hearts.
3. Consciousness of guilt. Fearing words of doom, men refuse to hear any words from God; but
4. Unbelief. Doubt as to whether a voice is Divine is often natural, and if the doubt grows into widespread skepticism the cause may be intellectual rather than moral. Bat when once a voice is recognized as Divine, unbelief is distrust in God; is "making him a liar."
IV. THE REFUSAL TO GIVE HEED TO GOD'S VOICE IS A FATAL EVIL.
1. It aggravates guilt by adding to it
2. It leaves the purpose of God's voice unaffected. He urges and pleads with his children, but he does not force them to return to him. If they will not heed his voice that voice is lost upon them, and the ruin from which it would call them unaverted.