By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
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 they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.'
Let us remind ourselves that we cannot separate the giving of the Ten Commandments from the narrative context in which it comes. The propositional truth in the law comes in the midst of a history of a people and God’s dealing with them. 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: “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. Then 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,” (Deuteronomy 4:11-12). A voice!
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Israel heard, as will be made clear in the Ten Commandments, in the second commandment, that 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. This is not something Israel deserved. This is sheer mercy.
As we begin this new academic year, I want us to remember that 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 — as we ought always to do — and saying, “There is mercy!” But at Horeb, too, there was mercy. There is mercy when God speaks.
I think there is a 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 and affirm verbal inspiration, propositional truth, and the inerrancy of Scripture are in danger of thinking of revelation primarily in epistemological terms. There is an epistemological mandate; there is an epistemological authority. But the reality is that it is mercy — a gift — that the Lord God allowed Israel to hear His voice from the midst of the fire and survive.
As Professor Eugene Merrill has said, it is not merely that no other people 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, but knowing the speaker and understanding who He is, the miracle is that even those He would allow to hear His voice survived.