Noisy

Revelation 19:1 After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting:
  “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,

Some people like quiet. Some people like noisy. Which are you?

I am a quiet person, not that I am quiet, but I don’t like crowds and multiple simultaneous conversation events. All that noise drives me nuts. But at the same time, I am personally not a quiet person. I can be loud!

I am loud, or I would say I can project my voice, when a loud voice in needed. I can lead a large group without a microphone, although I am a bit out of practice for a large group. If you need someone to speak up and get the attention of a whole group of people, I’m your man. Just one “At ease” is all it takes. Even those who forgot their hearing aides will get quiet.

When I was in Iraq we met for church in a cramped mechanical building filled with generators. There was a constant whirl in the background. Normally it wasn’t a problem because we would just turn up the volume on the sound system. Everyone could hear above the background noise. The jets taking off and landing was soon ignored by all who lived there.

But one day our electricity stopped. The generator broke down. This would have been OK if the electricity that ran the machinery in that building also failed. But as it happened, they were on an independent electrical system that didn’t fail.

So here we are trying to gather to worship and spend some time around the Word. Without the sound system we came to realize just how noisy it was in that building. You could barely hear yourself think, let alone a single voice at the front of the room.

I was that single voice. After our time of singing it was my turn to share from the Word. I spent the next twenty minutes projecting as loud as I could and still maintain voice inflections and humanity in my presentation. Even as I type this, my throat is remembering and tightening up, actually! Wow, I didn’t think something from twenty years ago could crop up at my kitchen table and bit me.

Our text tells us that at moments in heaven there will be a great multitude shouting. Is it going to be like my preaching experience in Baghdad? Will I want to run away from it because of the chaos and suffering?

No! Two things will distinguish my Baghdad experience from Heaven. First is that their shouts will be unified. They will be shouting/singing words together. Their message will be unified. Untold numbers of voices all directed in the same direction with the same message.

The second important difference is that there is no background whirl. No noise of this world, it’s competing messages and confusing sounds, will not be present. When the singing stops there is silence. The message of the voices will not have to rise above noise. Even a whisper of the heart will be heard.

It can be very hard to live in a world with so much background noise competing for our attentions. It can be equally difficult to present a coherent message above all the noise. And every voice in this world is seeking to be the loudest, the one heard above the whirl.

But this is what we must do at the present moment. We must preach in word and deed in a way that attentions get grabbed and truth gets heard in the hearts of men and women in need of the Savior Jesus. Our lives must attract so as to draw people near enough to the Jesus in us that they can hear the words of our mouths. Gospel presentation is personal.