To Whose Voice Are We Listening: God's or Men's?

Since October I have been reading through the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch, in the sequence that the Jewish people do. Every week there is a different portion. This week the reading was from Exodus 18-20. Of course in that section is the giving of the Ten Commandments.

Now I probably do not need to remind you of those Commandments. You might have memorized them as a child. You probably have seen them inscribed on a public building, perhaps even one within your own community. And you will remember that great scene from the movie of Charlton Heston holding the two tablets aloft.

But what few people truly understand is that the Ten Commandments were given orally by God before they were written down by the finger of God and given to Moses. Turn in your Bible to Exodus 20. The first verse reads: And God spoke all these words. Then follows the recitation of the Ten Commandments - the first four dealing with man and his relationship to God; the last six dealing with man and his relationship to his fellow man. Then follows these words: When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die" (Exodus 20:18-10).

In an audible voice that instilled great fear into the hearts and lives of the people of Israel, God thundered His commandments. The people stood there listening and shaking in their sandals. The voice of God convicted them of their smallness compared to His greatness; of their inadequacies compared to His power. And so they said to Moses, "We don't want to hear God's voice anymore; but we will listen to your voice." In other words, "We don't want to hear God; we want to listen to man."

Later, as he was writing his final thoughts, Moses said this about the office of prophet: The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, "Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die" (Deuteronomy 18:15-16). We know that this passage is a reference to Jesus Christ, God's great prophet who came to share with the world the message of God. In fact, until the coming of Jesus, God's voice was never heard audibly again.

Because we do not hear God's voice today in an audible way, that proposes a danger of totally relying upon what men say. Are men, especially those who stand behind the pulpits today, truly speaking for God? Or are they merely sharing with they know men and women want to hear? The prophet Isaiah records this concerning the people of his day: They say to the seers, "See no more visions!" and to the prophets, "Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!" (Isaiah 30:10-11). They were saying to their religious leaders: "Don't tell us what God says. Tell us what we like to hear. In fact, don't talk to us about God at all." If you were to listen to many of the sermons preached across America today, in a good percentage of them there would be no mention of the Bible at all; in many sermons God might only be referenced as one would an expert authority. There would be no meeting between a sinful humanity and a holy God. There would be no challenge toward repentance from sin and getting right with God. We are like ancient Israel: We don't want to hear God; we want to hear from a man.

Now I praise God for those who are not afraid to share the Word of God and a "thus says the Lord" with a congregation every week. I pray that they will remain true to the Word and not succumb to the temptation to only speak words that will the praise of men.