Has Any People Heard the Voice of God Speaking...And Survived?...Continued from page 6

You see, God does speak words of judgment in the Scripture, and God does speak words of warning.  There are hard words in Scripture, but it’s all for our good!  God spoke to Israel, even the words of warning, in order that Israel might hear the warnings and obey the word, and not suffer the inevitable consequences of disobedience.  It is all for our good, every single word. 

That is why, even in this chapter, we are told that you should not and must not add to these words, nor shall you take from these words.  It is all for your good.  Like medicine for the soul, like food, it is for our good. 

If God has spoken, it is for our redemption. 

When we think of the work of God in our salvation, we focus of course on the culmination and the fulfillment of God’s saving work in the work of Christ on the cross.  But to read the Scripture is to understand that God has been a redeeming, saving God from the very beginning.  Taking Israel out of Egypt was redemption.  Keeping Israel alive, even in the wilderness, was redemption.  Speaking to Israel and letting Israel hear and survive was redemption.  Jonathan Edwards well understood this.  Speaking of this passage, he says,

This was quite a new thing that God did towards this great work of redemption.  God had never done anything like it before.  ‘Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire and live?  Or has God assayed to go and take Him a nation that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt?’  This was a great advancement of the work of redemption that had been begun and carried out from the fall of man, a great step taken in divine providence towards a preparation for Christ’s coming in the world, in working out His great and eternal redemption.  For this was the people of whom Christ was to come, and now we see, we may see how that plant flourished that God had planted in Abraham.

God allowing Israel to hear and to survive was a part of His work of redemption.  Revelation is for our redemption, and we need to remember that.  So often, I think even evangelical Christians speak of revelation at times as if it is something that merely witnesses to redemption.  But revelation is also a part of God’s work of redemption in and of itself, for without revelation we would not know.  We would have no clue.  But we do know. 

Because God has spoken, we must obey. 

This is not a word submitted for our consideration.  The living God allows us to hear His voice from the fire and survive.  This is because He has demands to make of us, as Creator speaks to creature.  And in the giving of the Torah and the entire body of law and statute and command, there is the requirement of obedience, and it is repeated over and over again.  It is stated in principial form, as Israel is told:  If you obey, you will be blessed and you will live.  You will prosper in the land that I am giving you.