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Did We Hear God Speak and Survive?

The Lord’s Day
Morning

January 27, 2008


Deuteronomy 4


“Did We Hear God Speak and Survive?”

Dr. R. Albert
Mohler, Jr.

Let us pray together.

Our Father, as we come to Your word, we confess
that we are a blind people. Give us sight. Father, as we prepare to hear Your
word, we admit that we are a deaf people. Open our ears. Father, we pray that
You will give us eyes to see and ears to hear, and hearts to obey Your word.

Father, it will be to Your glory. We confess that there
is no health in us to hear or to see, but by Your grace and mercy we pray that
Your Holy Spirit will open our eyes and open our ears, as we open Your word.
Father, conform us to the image of Christ as we are confronted by Your word. We
pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What an honor it is to be here in the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson,
Mississippi. What a great honor it is to be here in this pulpit. The honor is
magnified because I know how faithful and excellent is the ministry that comes
from this pulpit week by week. I rejoice in what God does among you, and I am so
thankful for you as a congregation. I pray for you, as I know you pray for me.

And I want to thank you, not only for myself and not
only for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and for those who love the
word all over this world; I thank you on behalf of the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ, insofar as I may, for the gift of you pastor, Dr. Ligon Duncan. To me,
first of all, he is a dear friend; and to the gospel, he is a dear friend; and
to the church, he is a dear friend; and I want to thank you for sharing him with
so many others as you do, for he extends the ministry of this church all around
the world to the glory of Christ.

I am honored to be here, and I was reminded, as I was
thinking about being here, of how the Pope responded to Martin Luther, the
Reformer. When he set forth his bull excommunicating Luther, it became known
famously for the first two words: Exurge DomineExurge Domine–“Rise
up, O God!” And the next few words were, “Rise up, O God; a wild boar has
invaded Your vineyard.” And I want to thank you for allowing a Baptist into your
pulpit! It is an honor to be here because we stand together in the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and we rejoice this morning in the unity that brings us
together.

And I want to tell you (as a Baptist who really is a
Baptist), it is a great blessing to be among Presbyterians who really are
Presbyterians! You know, those who have abandoned their heritage — and no longer
make a claim to truth and have revised all their doctrines — have nothing decent
over which to have a disagreement. We need to be thankful that we love each
other enough to speak to each other the truth, and to stand together in the
truth, and to stand together in the gospel, as we are together for the gospel.

In that light, I would like to invite you to turn
with me this morning to Deuteronomy 4. The fourth chapter of the book of
Deuteronomy, and even though we will make reference to this entire chapter, I
want us to read together especially verses 32-40.

The Lord God is speaking through His prophet, Moses,
to His people as they are preparing to enter the land of promise. Verse 32:

“‘Indeed, ask now concerning the former days which were before you, since the
day that God created man on the earth, and inquire from one end of the heavens
to the other. Has anything ever been done like this great thing, or has anything
been heard like it? Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the
midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived? Or has a god tried to
take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and
wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great
terrors, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it
was shown that you might know that the Lord, He is God; there is no other
besides Him. Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; and
on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst
of the fire. Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants
after them. And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power, driving
out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and
to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today. Know therefore today,
and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the
earth below; there is no other. So you shall keep His statutes and His
commandments which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and with
your children after you, and that you may live long on the land which the Lord
your God is giving you for all time.’”

This is the word of the Lord, as the Lord spoke through His
prophet, Moses, to the children of Israel. This is the word of the Lord which is
given to us as the gift of Scripture. This is the word of the Lord, God’s
inerrant and infallible word, and it is the word which we now hear together by
the grace and mercy of God.

This is an incredible question found in
Deuteronomy 4:33: “Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the mist
of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived?”
We are familiar with so
many questions in Scripture, but this is one of those questions that is often
neglected by the people of God — a question that is crucial to the identity of
Israel.

Israel is now preparing to enter the land of promise.
The generation of rebellion and unbelief has died in the wanderings in the
wilderness. Their children, who are to be the inheritors of the promise, are now
preparing to enter the land. And even as they do so, the book of Deuteronomy is
this last great book of the Pentateuch in which God, through Moses, is preparing
His children for the challenges and the promise of the conquest that is to come.
The great danger is that they would forget who they are. The great danger is
that they would forget how they had now arrived at the threshold of this
promise. The great danger is that they would forget what it means to be God’s
covenant people, and to keep that covenant; that they would forget what it means
to hear and to obey the word of God. And in the book of Deuteronomy we have
several massive messages preached by Moses to the children of Israel.

Moses will not enter the land with them. You can
imagine the poignancy and the power of the prophet who knows that he will not be
taking the children of Israel into the Promised Land; he will take them to
the land of promise. He will not go with them, and thus you have the poignancy
and the deep intensity of a message that a man is preaching here, as God
preached through him, in order to prepare these children, the children of the
Exodus, for the promise that lies before them.

In Deuteronomy 4:33, we encounter this question.
It’s a question central to the identity of Israel as God’s covenant people, but
it’s also a question central to the identity of the church. The question comes
to us as well:

Have we heard the voice of God, and survived?

This points to the miracle of revelation. As we
gather together in this place for the worship of the one true and living God, it
finds its consummation in the preaching of God’s word. We are here in humility
to admit that we are here only because God has spoken to us, and we have heard.
We have heard, and we have survived. This is central to identifying Israel with
God’s covenant people. There were many other peoples, there were so many other
nations; they did not hear what Israel heard. They did not see the promises
Israel received. Israel, as God’s covenant people, was set apart from the other
nations in this very special way: they heard the voice of God speaking from the
midst of the fire, and survived.

These days, as we are now in the twenty-first
century, we live at a time of permanent epistemological crisis.
Some of you
didn’t know you were in a permanent epistemological crisis; this is a warning to
you today that, know it or not, you’re in such a crisis! This crisis is most
acute in the academy, in the world of the college and the university. It is
the question of how we know anything
. And after the Enlightenment and after
successive generations of skepticism, this is one of the major questions that
arises. And in this Postmodern age, it arises with a new confusion, a new
complexity; and, furthermore, a new energy. How can we know anything, if we
can’t know anything? And most especially if we can’t know who God is and what He
would have us to do, and how He would have us to worship Him, and what we must
do in order to hear and to heed His word, and what the gospel would be whereby
we might be saved? If we have not heard from God, the diagnosis of our problem
(which is sin)…if we have not heard a word from the one true and living God,
then we are lost in the cosmos.

You see, in the background of this question when
Moses asks the children of Israel, ‘Has any other people heard the voice of God
speaking from the midst of the fire, and survived?’ is the haunting question of
what it would mean for God to be silent.

What if we had not heard? What if we did not
know? The only way to resolve this crisis of how we know anything is for us to
confess together that whatever we know about anything that’s important — that
which we know about the most important questions of life, all that we claim to
know about God and His ways and the gospel in Christ — is because God has spoken
to us, and we survived. It’s not because we are smart enough. It’s not that we
were intelligent enough. It’s not that we had some means of exploring or
devising a way to come and find God out. As Paul wrote to the church at Rome,
God is past our finding out. He reveals himself to us, in order that we might
hear Him and we might know.

In my own personal pilgrimage, one of the books that
was most important to me is a book by a man by the name of Francis Schaeffer.
Some of you will remember that name. He wrote many books, but the one that had
the greatest impact on me when I was a teenager — a high school student and a
college student — was a book with the simple title, He Is There, and He Is
Not Silent
. Now frankly, if you hear the title, you’ve heard the book. He is
there. It makes all the difference in the world, that there is a God. But He is
not silent. For if there were a God who was silent, if the one true and living
God did not speak, we would be as lost as if He did not exist. He is there, and
He is not silent.

Our confession today is that everything we know about
everything that matters is because God has spoken; thus, we are a people of
God’s word; thus, we are a people of God’s grace and mercy, because it is only
by His grace and mercy that we hear and survive. We are the people of God’s word
in Scripture. We are a scriptural people, a people of the book, precisely
because God has spoken. And we have survived, and now we live by this word.

As you look at the book of Deuteronomy, you
recognize that this book is also the setting down of a treaty. It’s a treaty
between God and His covenant people.
But it’s not a treaty that God
negotiates with His people, it’s in the form of a treaty well known in the
ancient Near Eastern world called a suzerain treaty. It’s a treaty
whereby the conqueror sets down the terms for the conquered. And God, Jehovah,
sets down the terms for His covenant people. He says this is who you are, and
this is what you now must do. You must hear, and you must obey. You must listen,
and you must take My word to heart.

You have to read Deuteronomy 4 in the context of the
entirety of the book. Coming very quickly just after this chapter is the second
giving of the Law, when Moses will speak to the children of Israel and he will
again give the Law. Deuteronomus means second law, and that’s the
Ten Commandments. These Ten Words will be repeated for the children in order
that they would know them as they prepare to enter the land of promise.

We encounter here in salvation history the great plan
and purpose of God. God rescued His people in the Exodus out of captivity to
Pharaoh in Egypt. He brought them out in order that He might bring them into the
land of promise. They are the singular people that He has redeemed out of
captivity to pharaoh, but the singularity of the fact that they are God’s
covenant people is precisely the fact that they have heard the word of God from
the midst of the fire, and yet survived. This comes in a narrative form, and as
you read not only what we encounter here in Deuteronomy…you go back to the
entirety of the experience of Israel, and you’ll understand the narrative about
a mountain that shakes, about thunder and lightning, a mountain of holiness that
was so holy that even if a human or an animal should touch it, it should die.
And out of this fire spoke the one true and living God.

There is drama in this, but far more than drama
there is doctrine in this; and even more than doctrine, there is salvation in
this.
This passage looks backward and also looks ahead. It is one of those
transitional points in the book of Deuteronomy, and as Moses asked this
[question] to the children of Israel, ‘Has any people heard the voice of God
speaking from the midst of the fire and survived?’ it is the question we must
hear as well, as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What then does all of this mean? What does it mean
that we heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire and survived?
You need to know that this is in the backdrop and in the background of all the
paganisms that surrounded Israel…all the idolatries. Note the distinction
between the idols and the one true and living God: the idols are seen, but they
never speak; God is not seen, but His voice is heard. His voice is heard by His
covenant people. His voice is heard, and it makes all the difference.

You will remember the battle of the gods in I Kings
18. There is Elijah, the singular prophet of God there at Mount Carmel, and then
there are the hundreds of the pagan priests of the idols. You’ll recall the
contest with the two altars, and you’ll recall the prayer that the fire would
fall; and you’ll recall how Elijah taunted the hundreds of priests of the Baals.
They were jumping and dancing around their altar. They were imploring Baal to
speak. (Baal was understood to speak in thunder, as he was the masculine pagan
idol of the Canaanites who was understood to give rain in order to provide
fertility and life with the gift of water.) They even lacerated their bodies so
that the blood ran down their bodies into the ground. And Elijah, the prophet of
the one true and living God (who was absolutely confident that God would show
himself to be God) — he taunts them, saying, ‘Well, maybe your god is occupied.
Maybe Baal’s busy.’ But at the end of the day, the verdict from Baal was no one
heard, no one paid attention.

And then the fire did fall upon the altar of Yahweh
and consumed not only the altar, but the water and the rocks, and all that was
contained therein.

Think about the Scripture. Think about the
imperatives in Scripture and how often these imperatives come down to the
imperative to fear and to obey.
We can only hear
and we can only obey because, first of all, God has spoken, and we have
survived. We have to understand that God speaks. It makes all the
difference in the world. If God did not speak, we will be lost in darkness, we
will be lost in silence, and there will be nothing for us to but to devise our
own way, and it will be a way that would lead unto death. But God has spoken.
God has spoken, and thus everything has changed. God has spoken and thus we are
saved. God has spoken, and thus Israel was preserved. God has spoken, and
thus…well, everything is different. As one biblical scholar says, when you look
back as Moses called the children of Israel to look back to Mount Horeb and the
giving of the Law, when these things happened, when they heard the voice of God
speaking from the fire and survived…he said you have to recognize that this was
for Israel an audio-visual experience, but it was the audio that mattered. And
so it is for us as we hear the word of God.

I. I would hope you would see
with me first that if God has spoken, we do
know.

You know, one of the great head-scratching responses
that you hear in this day is the simple scratch of the head and the answer, “I
don’t know.” That’s considered a mark of humility.

Well, it’s an appropriate mark of humility if you
really don’t know. But as Moses was speaking to the children of Israel, he was
reminding them “We do know.” Who is the one true and living God? We do know. Who
is His covenant people? We do know. Is Baal god, or is Jehovah God? We do know.
You see, in the church today there is an artificial and pernicious humility. It
is a false humility in which far too many people say “I don’t know”, in which
from too many pulpits comes the message “we can’t know” when the reality is that
because God has spoken we do know. And thus we are responsible and accountable
for this knowledge. It is the highest and the greatest knowledge that any human
ear can ever hear. We do know! We know all things necessary for our salvation.
We know how to distinguish the true God from the idols. We know because God has
spoken; not because we are smart enough to figure this out; not because we are
ingenious enough to discern the right from the wrong, the true from the false;
but because the one true and living God has spoken to us.

All that we need to know, we know. And it is a
false humility; it is a sinful false humility to say that we do not know.

I mentioned Martin Luther earlier. I have to admit
that I find some real commonality with Luther on many points and some
encouragement from him as well…in all of his humility and all his boldness and
all his faithfulness, and in the fact that he was a seminary president. And that
meant that Martin Luther, too, had to deal with theology students. (I love them,
and Luther loved them.) In his Table Talk there is recorded a
conversation he had with a theology student. Several of them were having dinner
at his home, as he was often wont to invite them to his home, and one theology
student said, “Father Martin, what was God doing before He created the heavens
and the earth?” Well, brothers and sisters, that is not answered in scripture,
but Martin Luther nonetheless answered. He said, “He was creating hell for
impetuous theology students.” It is a form of theological misbehavior to ponder
the things unanswered by Scripture. It is a mark of theological immaturity to be
fascinated by the things unanswered by Scripture. But what the Scripture
contains is everything needful for our salvation. And because God has spoken, we
do know. And because God has spoken, it would be disobedience to claim that we
do not know.

2. Secondly, if God has spoken,
then we know only by mercy.

You see, this is the true humility. The false
humility is to say ‘I don’t know’ where God has spoken and we must know. The
false humility is to say ‘Well, you know everybody has a different angle on the
truth, and who am I to say that I know who God is and what God would expect?’
Well, the reality is that no one should trust you or should trust me. The issue
is whether they trust God, who has spoken in His word. The true humility is to
say it’s not about us, it’s about God. The true humility is to say it is only by
grace and mercy that we have heard and have survived. The true humility is to
say it isn’t about us, it’s about the fact that God has spoken. He has spoken to
us. And just as God spoke to His covenant people of old in Israel, so He speaks
to His covenant people in the church through His word in order that we might
hear. Our response is the humble response of the one who hears and receives and
obeys the word of God. This is the proper humility. This is why we understand
that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone; and this is why Scripture
alone matters so much. It’s a statement of humility: we know only by mercy.

Carl Henry, one of my mentors, now gone to be with
the Lord, defined revelation in such a sweet way when he said that we must
remember that divine revelation, especially the revelation of God in Scripture,
is God disclosing himself to His creatures; out of His love willingly forfeiting
His own personal privacy. In other words, God could have retained His own
personal privacy. He could have forbidden His creatures to know Him. He could
have been unmolested by His creatures in the glory of what He is, who He is in
himself. And Henry put it this way:

“If divine revelation in terms of speech means anything, it implies among other
things that God need not have thus disclosed himself. God might indeed have
remained silent and incommunicative in relation to His creatures. His
revelational speech to mankind is not an inescapable or inevitable reality. It
is instead a demonstration of His own character.”

Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.

3. Third, if God has spoken,
then we too must speak.

You see, the Bible is very clear about this, and
that’s why the imperatives about hearing and speaking are so close together.
Those who have heard the word of God have the responsibility to speak the word
of God, to teach the word of God, to preach the word of God, to take the word of
God.

If you fast-forward from Deuteronomy 4 just two
chapters to Deuteronomy 6, you will recall that great and classic passage
whereby the parents of Israel are instructed about their responsibility to teach
their children: what they have heard and received, they are to teach. To receive
the grace and mercy of God by hearing God speak is not merely to let the process
end there, with our hearing. It is to be then our responsibility to speak that
word; and this is true, of course, of those who have been called to the teaching
office of the church. That’s why the imperative is so clear: Preach the word…;
preach the word in season and out of season; retain the pattern of sound words;
guard the treasure that has been invested and entrusted to you. The
responsibility to speak the word of God is actually incumbent upon everyone who
has heard it; upon every parent, who should teach the child; upon every
Christian who has the urgency of the word to witness. As we are told we are to
be ready at all times to give an answer for the hope that is in us.

You know there are some quotations that just get
picked up, and they sound so good until you think about them. And we live in a
day in which an awful lot of theology is done as if it’s sent down by
Hallmarkā„¢…some little pithy saying that you open up an envelope, there’s a card,
and you go, ‘Wow, that’s really sweet.’ Time and time again you hear people
quote St. Francis of Assisi to say, ‘Wherever you go, preach Jesus; and if
necessary, use words.’ Brothers and sisters, it is necessary! No one is going to
intuit Jesus from you; they’re going to have to hear about Jesus from you. We
always have to use words.

Now those words have to be backed up with
demonstration. Those words have to be backed up with integrity and authenticity.
But without words, there is no salvation. If God has spoken, we too must speak.

4. Fourthly, if God has spoken,
then it’s all about God, and it’s all for our good.

This is why we understand that every single word of
Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for all things. Every single
word. The words that at first seem sweet, and the words that at first seem so
hard; the words that we know with such familiarity, and the words which sound to
us so strange. Every single word is inspired of God. Every single word is all
about God. Every single word is for our good. We are to receive every single
word of Scripture for our good. This is one of the reasons why we must, in the
church, if we are to see recovery and reform in this generation, have a recovery
of expositional preaching that preaches all the word, not just highlights from
the Scripture as if we somehow have the ability to decide what the highlights
are. But all of it! All of it is the priceless, inestimable, sweet word of God.

5. Fifth, if God has spoken, it
is for our redemption.

“Has any other people heard the word of God
speaking from the fire, and survived?”

It’s important to remember that Israel was not allowed to
survive just in order that they could spend a few more years in the wilderness.
They heard for their preservation. They heard in order that God would preserve
them for the fulfillment of His covenant promises.

Look back to Deuteronomy 4 with me, and understand
what is going on here. He takes the children of Israel back to the giving of the
Law, he takes them back to Mount Horeb. And you’ll notice the importance and
centrality of the word of God here. In verse 2 there comes a warning:

“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, not take away from
it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command
you.”

In verse 6, he says:

“So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the
sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say ‘Surely this great
nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that
has a god so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call on Him? Or what
great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole
law which I am setting before you today?

“Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that
you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen, and they do not depart
from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and
your grandsons.”

[Look carefully at verse 10.]

“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.’ 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 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 wrote them on two tablets of stone. The Lord commanded me at
that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might perform them in
the land where you are going over to possess it.

“So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on
the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you
do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any
figure, the likeness of male or female.”

[In verse 24 comes the consummate word of warning.]

“For the
Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

You see, when we hear the question asked in verse 33,
“Has any people heard the voice of god speaking from the midst of the fire…and
survived?” the first response is surely to think about the miracle by which God
spoke to His people; the grace and mercy of God whereby He revealed himself.
But let’s also remember that the last words are of utmost importance: Israel
heard the word of God and survived.

Breathers and sisters, soberly and seriously we must
remember this morning that there have been those — and as the Scripture makes
very clear, there will be those — who will hear the word of God and not survive.
This is God’s grace and His mercy for our redemption. When we think of the word
of God, the work of God in our salvation, we focus of course on the culmination
and fulfillment of God’s saving work in the accomplished work of Christ on the
cross. But to read the Scripture is to remember that God has been a redeeming,
saving God from the very beginning. And here He redeems His people in order to
preserve them. God’s word has spoken, and it is for our redemption.

6. Sixth, because God has
spoken, we must obey.

The formula is very simple: trust and obey; hear and
heed; receive and obey; take them to your hearts; do not reject this, do not
resist this, but receive this. Predicate your lives upon this word. This is the
imperative that comes repeatedly and most consummately in Deuteronomy. It comes
at the very end of the book, where we look together at Deuteronomy 30, where,
speaking of the law, when God spoke to His people, Moses [beginning in verse 11]
says this:

“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you,
nor is it out of reach.”

You remember back in Deuteronomy 4, where God spoke to
Moses to say to the people that other peoples of the earth will be amazed that
Israel’s God is so near? Well, how is Israel’s God near? In His word. And here
the nearness of the word is so very, very important.

“It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven to get it
for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it? Nor is it beyond the sea,
that you should say ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us
hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth
and in your heart, that you may observe it.”

Here comes the issue. Since God has spoken, we must obey.
Look at verses 15 and following. The Lord spoke through Moses to say,

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity;
in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and
to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live
and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are
entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but
are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today
that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where
you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to
witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the
blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your
descendants, by loving the Lord you God, by obeying His voice, and by holding
fast to Him….”

You see, the true test of hearing is obedience. As Jesus
makes very clear in Matthew 13, it’s not about the physicality of the operation
of the eye; it is about the heart and seeing the word of God. It’s not about the
operation of the auditory capacity of the ear; it’s about the heart to receive
the word of God. It is about obedience.

7. Seventh, if God has spoken,
we must trust His word.

You see, the affirmation of the Christian church of
Scripture is not that Scripture is merely adequate, it is that Scripture is
perfect. You see, our trust is that a perfect God — a God who is indeed infinite
in all of His perfections — would speak to us in a word that is perfect. And
thus we can trust every single word. We can trust every single part. We dare not
mistrust, fail to invest whole trust in any part of the word of God. “Trust and
obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and
obey.” It really is a matter of trust. We do understand that trust is one of the
most essential issues of our response to Scripture. Even before we may feel like
we adequately understand the word, we trust the word. We trust the word because
we know that it is God who has spoken. We trust the word because we trust the
speaker of the word, the revealer of the word. To insult that trust is not
merely to insult the Scripture, but to insult God who has spoken His word.

It’s very clear that we understand the basis of our
faith, the foundation for our knowledge, is the fact that the Scripture is
perfect: infallible; inerrant; authoritative; inspired by God to the slightest
detail. And we trust it.

8. Eighth, if God has spoken,
we must witness.

Not merely must we speak in order that there
may be the intellectual understanding of others to hear and obey the word, but
it comes with the redemptive purpose whereby our challenge, our charge, our
commission, is to take the word. This is made nowhere more fully clear than in
Romans 10, where the Apostle Paul makes it very clear that “faith comes by
hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” And there comes the outlaying of
the missionary purpose of the church, where the Apostle Paul makes very clear
that we are to send and we are to go precisely because if they do not hear, they
will not believe; if they do not believe, they will not be saved. And thus the
great commission: evangelism, missions, witnesses — all involved in what it
means to understand that we really have heard the word of God, and in obeying
the word of God we go, we take, we share, we witness.

Israel had this responsibility. It goes all the way
back to the covenant that God made with Abraham when He said through you
[speaking to Abraham] and through your seed shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed. And you know that that has come true in the mission invested to the
redeemed people of God and the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, for we bear the
responsibility now to see the nations rejoice in the knowledge of the one true
and living God, and Jesus Christ, His Son.

9. Ninth, if God has spoken, we
understand that He speaks to us consummately in Christ.

We need to juxtapose these two verses: “For has any
people heard the voice of God from the fire and survived?” and then think of
this verse from the prologue to John’s Gospel, verse 14:

“And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld His glory, glory as of
the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

You see, we are here, brothers and sisters, not
merely because God spoke to Israel, but because God spoke to us not merely in
the old covenant, but in the new covenant. But He speaks to us most consummately
in Jesus Christ. In the book of Hebrews, chapter one, we encounter this in its
quintessential form when that book begins with these words:

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions
and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He
appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the
radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds
all things by the word of His power.”

“In the beginning,” John writes, “was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” See, this is where salvation
history comes — the fulfillment in all things in Jesus Christ and His cross, in
the resurrection. This is where we have come to understand that God has spoken
to us not only in the word that was heard, but in a Word that became our
substitutionary Savior. Indeed, we come to understand that all of this finds its
consummation in Christ, the incarnate Word.

In chapter 12 of the book of Hebrews, after the book
of Hebrews has instructed us on the fact that Jesus Christ is the mediator of a
new covenant — a new and better covenant, a covenant in His blood, a covenant
for our salvation —we come to read these words, beginning in verse 18 of chapter
12. You’ll notice this looks back. Even as Deuteronomy 4 looks back to Mount
Horeb, so also the writer of the book of Hebrews takes the church back to the
same place, but with a contrast:

“For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire,
and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the
sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further
word be spoken to them. For they could not bear the command, ‘If even a beast
touches the mountain, it will be stoned.’ And so terrible was the sight, that
Moses said, ‘I am full of fear and trembling.’ But you…”

[writing to the church, the blood-bought church of the Lord
Jesus Christ…]

“…but you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and the
church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of
all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator
of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood
of Abel.”

Has any people heard the voice of God speaking in the midst
of the fire and survived? Listen as Hebrews continues (chapter 12, verse 25):

“See to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if those did not
escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape
who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth
then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the
earth, but also the heaven.’ And this expression, ‘Yet once more,’ denotes the
removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that
those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a
kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, whereby we may offer to
God an acceptable service with reverence and awe.”

And what did Moses say to the children of Israel in
Deuteronomy 4? What we find in the book of Hebrews in chapter 12: “For our God
is a consuming fire.”

Did any people hear the voice of God speaking from
the midst of the fire, and survive? Israel did. That’s what revealed Israel as
God’s chosen people, as covenant people, for they alone heard the voice of God
speaking from the midst of the fire, and survived.

Now look to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who
are we? We are the people saved by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
incarnate Word, the consummate revelation of God, the Word through whom the
worlds were made, the Word who was the mediator of the new covenant. And what is
the exhortation to and through the church? “See that you do not neglect so great
a salvation.” Hear, obey, receive, believe, trust, and come.

Let’s pray.

Our Father, we rejoice in the salvation which You
have accomplished through the Lord Jesus Christ. We declare the gospel that
begins with the knowledge that we are sinners and that our sin infinitely
separates us from You and Your holiness.

Father, we declare Your grace and mercy to us in
the Lord Jesus Christ. We declare the glorious gospel, whereby You redeem
sinners through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ who died on Calvary’s cross
as our substitute. Father, He is our Prophet, and Priest, and King. Father, He
is not only the incarnate Word, but we’ve come to understand He is also our
substitutionary Savior.

Father, we rejoice in the fact that even as He
died in perfect obedience on the cross, shedding His blood as the mediator of a
new covenant, shedding His blood for our sin, You raised Him from the dead.

And, Father, we declare that there is salvation in
no other name, but that all who come to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, who
confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in their hearts
that God has raised Him from the dead, shall be saved.

Father, we declare the good news of Your
salvation. We declare it with words, and we pray that even as Your gospel is
declared, Your church will rejoice in it, and be more faithful ever in it.
Father, we pray that sinners will hear it.

And Father, we pray that even as sinners come to
You through Jesus Christ our Lord, You be glorified, and Your people will
rejoice.

Father, we pray this as we pray all things, in the
name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We invite you to stand and sing our closing hymn, a
wonderful new hymn which speaks precisely to that which has been our hope and
substance from the message of God’s word today, the hymn which you will find as
Speak, O Lord, printed in your bulletin of worship this morning. Let us
stand together and sing.