By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
In the Book of Deuteronomy, we meet the speaking God. In verse 33, again, “Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, and survived?” Mercy and grace meet here — also, as Moses makes clear, accountability. This is, in its own way, a protogospel, a revelation of the law, a discontinuity or distinction, but a continuity all the same, law and gospel.
Christopher Wright makes this comment concerning what happened at Sinai, saying that what really mattered there was not that there had been a theophonic manifestation of God, but that there had been a verbal revelation of God’s mind and will. Sinai was a cosmic audiovisual experience, but it was the audio that mattered. It is the audio that matters, for God has spoken.
Advertisement
If God has spoken, let me suggest several realities that should frame our thinking.
If God has spoken, we do know.
As a matter of fact, if God has spoken, we must know. And what we know, because God has revealed Himself to us, is the highest and the greatest knowledge that any human ear can ever hear. No human ear can deserve to hear it, but by God’s grace, we hear it and we survive. But having heard it, we cannot feign ignorance. We cannot act as if we do not know, for we have heard. That’s why, for instance, Francis Schaeffer said that for the Christian who understands the doctrine of revelation, there is no real epistemological crisis. There is only a spiritual crisis. All that remains is whether you will obey.
There is no way we can now claim that we do not know. There is a firm basis to what we do here, because we know. We have an authority by which we preach, and an authority by which we teach. We are not making this up as we go along! And because we have heard, we cannot feign ignorance, and because we have heard, we are accountable for the hearing. Secondly,
If God has spoken, we know only by mercy.
That’s a good reminder for theological education. There’s no pride in it, not if it’s rightly understood, because everything we know, we know by mercy. I can almost guarantee you that everyone who graduates graduates by mercy, and everyone who gets the opportunity to teach here does so by mercy, for in light of revelation and knowing who God is, it’s all mercy.
Carl F. H. Henry describes this so beautifully when he speaks of God’s mercy to us in revelation by speaking of revelation as God’s willful disclosure, whereby He forfeits His own personal privacy that His creatures might know Him. We have no claim upon God. He need not by any necessity forfeit His own personal privacy. There’s no way, as the Bible makes clear over and over again, that we could ever figure Him out. He must speak, and He has. Dr. Henry said this in the second volume of God, Revelation and Authority: