O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! -Psalm 34;3
I believe that everything the Word of God says about God is as true today as it ever was. Everything He ever did, He’s still doing. He didn’t give us His word to say, “Look at who I used to be! I wish I could be like that again.”
God didn’t give us these great and glorious demonstrations of His power or show forth His glory in past generations and record them for us to read about only to turn around and say, “I can’t do those things anymore, sorry.”
The same immutable God that existed then exists now.
One of the most blatant examples of God reduction are those who teach that God no longer speaks to His children today. As far as I’m concerned such a teaching is shameful. They’ve reduced Him to being mute!
All over the place in the scriptures God is complaining that the people look to dumb idols that can’t speak, but He certainly never says that about Himself! I never see any place in the scripture where it says that God ever stopped speaking!
We’re confidently told by these people that God has already spoken in the Bible. “If you want to hear what He has to say”, they tell us, “you can read that”. They try to convince us that because we have the Bible God has no need to say anything else.
Really?
So God wrote a book, walked away, and refuses to ever talk to His children again except through the book?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Bible and I believe God speaks through it, but to think that He can’t speak to me directly is preposterous.
Birds sing, dogs bark, my cat purrs and vocalizes to me all the time. Humans are talking nonstop, but God lost the ability to speak?
I don’t believe it!
Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” -Jeremiah 1:4-5
What does Jeremiah do when God speaks to him?
He does what any of us would do when spoken to- He speaks back!
Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” -Jeremiah 1:6
Apparently the Lord not only has a mouth, but He also has ears, because He heard what Jeremiah had to say to Him, and He answered Jeremiah very specifically.
“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak.” -Jeremiah 1:7
God’s not just shouting orders to Jeremiah, but He’s actually having a conversation with Him! The very thing that God did with Jeremiah is exactly what some people are claiming God will not do today.
You mean to tell me that what God did under the Old Covenant He will no longer do under the new and better Covenant ratified by the blood of Jesus? You’re trying to tell me that with the passage of time God has distanced Himself and gotten less personal?
Has the one who has come to live inside of us run out of things to say?
The reduction of God among cessationists AND continuationists
It’s troubling to me how both cessationists, and continuationists, reduce God to something less than He is. They’ve simply chosen to do that in different ways.
One of the most common things that a cessationist will tell you is that God has stopped speaking today. So they reduce God to a block of wood, like the carved idols of old. And yet, these same people will wax eloquent about the sovereignty of God. So on the one hand God no longer speaks, but on the other hand He’s intimately in control of everything? It’s as if God lost one of his appendages! He lost His tongue, but He still has a strong arm and a strong hand!!
I applaud the emphasis on His greatness and His sovereignty, but don’t you realize that you have just reduced Him to less than a singing bird or a barking dog when saying that He doesn’t speak anymore?
On the other hand, I find it very odd that many continuationists have absolutely no problem believing that God speaks today, and yet when it comes to His sovereignty, these same people strip Him of this glorious attribute and act like He’s powerless over the things He’s created. Apparently God’s tongue is still working among these people, but in this case He’s lost His arm and His grip!
What are we to make of this selective blindness among both cessationists and continuationists?
Either He’s lost his ability to speak, or He’s lost His ability to act!
Many have decided that God is quite impotent. We’re either left with a mute God, who thankfully wrote a book before His tongue stopped working, or a God who is anemic.
We’re told that the God who made the entire universe by a word spoken from His mouth, has gone silent and is no longer in control of it! How did that happen? Did He lose His strength? Has He declined mentally because He’s existed for so long? Has eternity taken its toll on Him?
Oh the excuses people make when it comes to the greatness and glory of God!
The Psalmist entertains none of this God reduction. He says, “I’m going to magnify God, and I want you to do it with me!”
O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! -Psalm 34;3
Our great failing as human beings is that we have a tendency to bring God down to our level rather than magnifying Him for who He really is. It is never a matter of God failing to be great; it is always a matter of our own failing eyesight to see it!
Get yourself up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news. Raise up your voice powerfully, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news; Raise it up, do not fear. Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” -Isaiah 40:9
I would be very happy if the whole church believed that God still speaks today and that He’s still sovereign and in control.