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TechnoratiIn this tremendous sermon, God speaks through His servant and prophet Moses. Looking back to the covenant at Horeb, obedience equals blessing, and disobedience equals cursing. This generation ought to know that. For this is the generation that survived, that was kept alive, through forty years of wandering in the wilderness. They had witnessed the death of their own parents because they disobeyed and did not trust the Lord. And now as the children of Israel are being prepared for the conquest of the Holy Land, they are reminded that they heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire and survived. As the Lord is preparing this new generation, we find in this sermon exhortation and memory mixed together – the memory of God's great saving work in bringing Israel out of captivity to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the great work of God in keeping the children of Israel alive through the forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
We call this book Deuteronomy – deutero nomos – the second giving of the law, because in the very next chapter we will confront again the Ten Commandments. The theme is very clear. Israel, in terms of its elect status, is the chosen nation of God, and that special status is represented in Torah, in this word, this law, even in these Ten Words. The central truth is that the Lord God spoke to His people, and they heard, and they survived. Moses says, "Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, 'Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words so that they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.' You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens: darkness, cloud, and thick gloom."
The giving of the Ten Commandments cannot be separated from the narrative context in which it comes. The propositional truth which is in the law comes in the midst of a history of a people and God's dealing with that people. It is a relational revelation, and it is a dramatic revelation. Israel is reminded not only of what they heard, but of the context in which they heard it. "The mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens, darkness, cloud and thick gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form – only a voice. So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone." The Lord God spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but you saw no form, only a voice. A voice!
Israel, heard the Lord, but they did not see Him. This is not a God who is seen, but a God who is heard. The contrast with the idols is very clear. The idols are seen, but they do not speak. The one true and living God is not seen, but He is heard. The contrast is intentional, it is graphic, and it is clear. We speak because we have heard.
The theme of these verses, especially in verses ten through thirteen, is the sheer gift of this. The revelation of God is sheer mercy. We have no right to hear God speak. We have no claim upon His voice. We have no right to demand that He would speak. We are accustomed to pointing to the cross of Christ and saying, there is mercy! But at Horeb, too, there was mercy. There is mercy whenever God speaks. There is the danger that contemporary evangelicals think of the doctrine of revelation primarily as an epistemological problem. Even those who hold to a high doctrine of Scripture – affirming the inerrancy of Scripture, verbal inspiration, propositional truth – are in danger of thinking of revelation primarily in epistemological terms. To be sure, there is an epistemological question, and there is an epistemological authority. But the reality is, this is mercy. It is a gift. Professor Eugene Merrill has said that while it is quite remarkable that no other nation had ever heard God speak out of the fire and lived to tell about it, the fact is, there are not even any other peoples that heard the voice of the Lord speak out of the fire and didn't live to tell about it. The Lord God spoke uniquely and particularly to Israel and allowed them to survive. Continue »
