WHEN GOD SPEAKS AND DIVINE SPEECH-ACTS
June 3, 2020 2023-04-05 19:12WHEN GOD SPEAKS AND DIVINE SPEECH-ACTS
WHEN GOD SPEAKS AND DIVINE SPEECH-ACTS
WHEN GOD SPEAKS AND DIVINE SPEECH-ACTS
When God speaks, creation ought to listen humbly and obediently. The Christian biblical God is a speaking God. Language is an essential part of Him. It’s an ability to command what He wills. Creation was brought into existence when He began to speak.
In the Old Testament, when God delivered the nation of Israel from Egyptian slavery, He gave them a commandment – the Ten Commandments. God Himself spoke all the words of the commandments even imprinting them on two tablets of stones (Exo. 20:1; 24:12). Although the typical accent of the Ten Commandments pronounces divine commands and prohibitions, its focal purpose is to motivate faithfulness to Yahweh not legalism. However, the problem is, because of the weakness of the human nature, the Law pronounces humanity under the wrath of God (Rom. 8:1-4). This is an important perspective when we view the Ten Commandments. When God spoke these words to the people of Israel in Exodus 20, He was not establishing a ritualistic and legalistic religion of dos and don’ts. The Law that He has spoken was a matter of the heart. The God that they saw on the mountain was far beyond human comprehension and expectation. They cannot shape Him according to their likes and manipulation. God is an independent God. For this reason, Exodus 20:18-21 tells us,
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
The directives of the Law call for human commitment.
That’s how God stated the dignity of His law – with thunder, lightning, and a sound of a great trumpet. Indeed, it invoked fear from the people, but fear that incites obedience to Yahweh. This is the description of what Solomon says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). God wants His people to receive His imperative speech with fear in order to protect them from sin. This is the heart of the Law. It wants to protect man from the destructive effects of sin. God knows that other ideological perspectives contrary to what He stated in the Ten Commandments will destroy man. But then, when Man started to form a kind of god suited to his own imagination and preference, the judgment of the Law brought him under the wrath of God. It corrupted his morality, his psychology and society.
The directives of the Law call for human commitment. It was a heartfelt declaration of God’s concern for humanity. And yet, because of the spiritual and moral effects of sin in the human heart, man cannot see the heart of God in His commands. Rather, he views it as a legalistic rule that binds him away from the happiness that he wants to embrace. Of course, this is foolishness. This is not the kind of wisdom that Solomon describes in the book of Proverbs. God’s commands preserve true happiness. And yet the point is clear: When man views the commands of the Creator as a killjoy legalism, disobedience is conceived and nourished in the human heart.
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