"And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness." Solemn and suited accompaniments of the occasion! "And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire." Oh, how differently He speaks in the gospel of His grace! "Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude." Important fact for them to ponder! "_Only a voice._" And "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." "And He declared unto you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform--ten commandments; and He wrote them upon two tables of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments," not that they might discuss them, sit in judgment upon them, or argue about them, but "that _ye might do them_"--the grand old story, the Deuteronomic theme of _obedience_, most precious! whether out of or "in the land whither ye go over to possess it."
Here lies the solid ground of the appeal against idolatry. They _saw_ nothing. God did not show Himself to them. He did not assume any bodily shape, of which they might form an image. He gave them His word--His holy commandments, so plain that a child could understand them, and the wayfaring men though fools need not err therein. There was no need for them, therefore, to set about imagining what God was like; nay, this was _the_ very sin against which they were so faithfully warned. They were called to hear God's voice, not to see His shape--to obey His commandment, not to make an image of Him. Superstition vainly seeks to do honor to God by forming and worshiping an image; Faith, on the contrary, lovingly receives and reverently obeys His holy commandments. "If a man love Me," says our blessed Lord, "he will"--what? make an image of Me, and worship it? Nay, but "he will keep My words." This makes it so simple, so safe, so certain. We are not called to work up our minds to form any conception of God; we have simply to hear His word and keep His commandments. We can have no idea whatever of God but as He has been pleased to reveal Himself.--"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."--"God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
Jesus is declared to be the brightness of God's glory and the exact impression of His substance. He could say, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Thus the Son reveals the Father; and it is by the Word, through the power of the Holy Ghost, that we know any thing of the Son; and therefore for any one to attempt, by any efforts of his mind or workings of his imagination, to conceive an image of God, or of Christ, is simply idolatry. To endeavor to arrive at any knowledge of God or of Christ save by Scripture, is simply mysticism and confusion; nay, more, it is to put ourselves directly into the hands of the devil, to be led by him into the wildest, darkest, and deadliest delusion.
Hence, therefore, as Israel, at Mount Horeb, was shut up to the "_voice_" of God and warned against any similitude, so we are shut up to holy Scripture and warned against every thing which would draw us away, the breadth of a hair, from that holy and all-sufficient standard. We must not listen to the suggestions of our own minds, nor to those of any other human mind: we must absolutely and sternly refuse to listen to any thing but the voice of God--the voice of holy Scripture. Here is true security, true rest; here we have absolute certainty, so that we can say, "I know _whom_"--not merely _what_--"I have believed; and am persuaded that _He_," etc.
"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, (for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire,) lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, the likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth; and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto Him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day."