THE MAJESTIC VOICE – Charles Spurgeon

THE MAJESTIC VOICE

“The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” Psalm 29:4.

Introduction

All God’s works praise Him, whether they are magnificent or minute. They all discover the wisdom, the power, and the benevolence of their Creator. “All Your works praise You, O God.” But there are some of His more majestic works which sing the song of praise louder than others. There are some of His doings upon which there seems to be engraved in larger letters than usual, the name of God! Such are the lofty mountains which worship God with uncovered heads both night and day. Such are the rolling seas, too mighty to be managed by man, but held in check by God. And such, especially, are the thunder and the lightning. The lightning is the glance of the eyes of God and the thunder is the uttering of His voice. The thunder has usually been more especially attributed to God, though philosophers assure us that it is to be accounted for by natural causes. We believe them, but we prefer, ourselves, the first great cause and we are content with that odd and universal belief that the thunder is the voice of God.

It is marvelous what effect the thunder has had upon all kinds of men. In reading an ode of Horace the other day, I found him in the first two verses singing like a true Ithurean, that he despised God and intended to live merrily. But, by-and-by, he hears the thunder and acknowledging that there is a Jehovah, who lives on high, he trembles before Him! The most wicked of men have been obliged to acknowledge that there must be a Creator when they have heard that marvelous voice of His sounding through the sky! Men of the stoutest nerve and the boldest blasphemy have become the weakest of all creatures when God has, in some degree, manifested Himself in the mighty whirlwind, or in the storm. “He breaks the cedars of Lebanon,” He brings down the stout hearts. He lays down the mighty and He obliges those who never acknowledged Him to reverence Him when they hear His voice!

The Christian will acknowledge the thunder to be the voice of God from the fact that if he is in the right frame of mind, it always suggests to him holy thoughts. I do not know how it may be with you, but I scarcely ever hear the rolling thunder but I begin to forget earth and look upwards to my God. I am unconscious of any feeling of terror or pain—it is rather a feeling of delight that I experience, for I like to sing that verse— “The God that rules on high And thunders when He pleases, That rides upon the stormy sky And manages the seas— This awful God is ours, Our Father and our love! He shall send down His heavenly powers To carry us above.”

He is our God and I like to sing that and think of it. But why is there something so terrible in that voice, when God is speaking—something so terrific to other men and humbling to the Christian? The Christian is obliged to sink very low in his own estimation. Then he looks up to God and cries, “Infinite Jehovah, spare a worm, crush not an unworthy wretch! I know it is Your voice. I reverence You with solemn awe. I prostrate myself before Your throne. You are my God and beside You there is none else.”

I. The Thunder as the Voice of God

It might well have occurred to a Jewish mind to have called the thunder the voice of God when he considered the loudness of it when all other voices are hushed. Even if they are the loudest voices mortals can utter, or the mightiest sounds—yet are they but indistinct whispers compared with the voice of God in the thunder! Indeed, they are entirely lost when God speaks from His throne and makes even the deaf hear and those who are unwilling to acknowledge Him hear His voice!

But we need not stop to prove that the thunder is the voice of God from any natural feeling of man. We have Scripture to back us up and, therefore, we shall do our best to appeal to that. In the first place, there is a passage in the book of Exodus where I would refer you. There, in the margin, we are told that the thunder is the voice of God. In the 9th chapter and the 28th verse, Pharaoh says, “Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunder and hail.” The original Hebrew has it, and my margin has it—and the margin of all of you who are wise enough to have marginal Bibles—“voices of God.” “Let there be no more voices of God and hail.” So you see it is not a mere illusion, but we are really warranted by Scripture in saying that, “the thunder is the voice of God lifted up in the sky.”

Now, for another proof: to what shall we refer you unless we send you to the Book of Job? Beginning in his 37th chapter at the 3rd verse, he says, “He directs it under the whole heaven and His lightning unto the ends of the earth. After it a voice roars; He thunders with the voice of His excellence: and He will not stay them when His voice is heard. God thunders marvelously with His voice; He does great things, which we cannot comprehend.” And so he says in the 40th chapter at the 9th verse, “Have you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like He?”

I am glad, in this age, when men are seeking to forget God and put Him entirely out of the creation—trying to put laws in the place of God, as if laws could govern a universe without Someone to execute those laws and put power and force into them—I am glad, I say, to be able to bear testimony to something which men cannot deny to be caused immediately by God, the mighty One, Himself! There is one striking proof I would offer to you that the thunder is the voice of God and that is the fact that when God spoke on Sinai and gave forth His law, His voice is then described, if not in the first passage, yet in the reference to it, as being great thunders. “There were thunders and lightning, exceedingly loud and long.”

God spoke, then, and He spoke so terribly in thunder that the people requested that they might hear that voice no more! And I must refer you to one passage in the New Testament which will bear me out thoroughly in describing the thunder to be, indeed, the voice of God. Look at John, in the 11th chapter, where Jesus lifted up His voice to heaven at the tomb of Lazarus and asked His Father to answer Him. And then a voice came from heaven and they that stood by said, “that it thundered.” It was the voice of God which was then heard and they ascribed it to the thunder. Here is a remarkable proof that the thunder has usually been ascribed to God as being His voice! And when God’s voice has been heard on any remarkable occasion, it has always been accompanied by the sound of thunder, or, rather, has been the sound of thunder itself.

II. The Voice of God as Elsewhere Heard

Well, now, leaving these considerations altogether, we come to make some remarks, not upon the voice of God in the thunder, but upon the voice of God as elsewhere heard. It is not only heard there, naturally, but there are spiritual voices and other voices of the Most High. “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” God has spoken in various ways to man in order that man might not think Him a God so engrossed with Himself that He does not observe His creatures. It has graciously pleased the Divine being to sometimes look upon man, at other times to stretch out His hand to man and, sometimes, to reveal Himself in mortal appearance to man and frequently to speak to man.

At sundry times He has spoken absolutely without the use of means—by His own voice—as, for instance, when He spoke from Sinai’s blazing mountaintop. Or when He spoke to Samuel in his bed And said unto him several times, “Samuel, Samuel.” Or when He spoke to Elijah and Elijah said, “He heard the whirlwind and he saw the fire.” And after that there was “a still small voice.”

He has spoken immediately from heaven by His own lips on one or two occasions in the life of Christ. He spoke to Him at the waters of Jordan, when He said, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” He spoke to Him on another occasion, to which we have already referred. He spoke—it was God that spoke, though it was Jesus Christ—He spoke to Saul, when on his way to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” He has spoken several times by His own voice without the intervention of means at all.

At other seasons, God has been pleased to speak to men by angels. He has, as it were, written the message and sent it down by His messenger from on high. He has told to man many wonders and secrets by the lips of those glorious beings who are flaming spirits of His that do His pleasure. As frequently, perhaps, God has spoken to men in dreams, in visions of the night when deep sleep falls upon them. Then, when the natural ear has been closed, He has opened the ear of the Spirit and He has taught truths which, otherwise, men could never have known.

More frequently, still, God has spoken to men by men. From the days of Noah even until now, God has raised up His prophets, by whose lips He has spoken. It was not Jeremiah who uttered that lament which we read—it was Jehovah—God in Jeremiah speaking through the natural organs of his voice! It was not Isaiah who foresaw the future and foretold the doom of millions—it was God in Isaiah thus speaking. And so with every prophet of the Lord now living and every minister whom God has raised up to speak—when we speak with power and efficacy and unction—it is not we, who speak, but it is the Spirit of our Father who dwells in us! God speaks through men and now, also, we know that God speaks through His own written Word of Inspiration. When we turn to the pages of Scripture, we must not look upon these words as being, in any degree, the words of men, but as being the Word of God. And though they are silent, yet do they speak. And though they cause no noise, yet, verily, “Their God has gone forth throughout the entire world and their noise unto the ends of the earth.”

And again—God even now speaks by the use of means. He does not make man speak, He does not make the Bible speak merely of itself, but He speaks through the Bible and through the man—as really as if He had used no books or employed no man to speak for Him! Yes, and there are times when the Spirit of God speaks in the heart of man without the use of means. I believe there are many secret impulses, many solemn thoughts, and many mysterious directions given to us without a single word having been uttered but by the simple motions of God’s Spirit in the heart. This thing I know, that when I have neither heard nor read, I have yet felt the voice of God within me and the Spirit, Himself, has revealed some dark mystery, opened some secret, guided me into some truth, given me some direction, led me in some path, or in some other way has immediately spoken to me, Himself.

III. The Voice of the Lord Is Full of Majesty

First of all, essentially, “The voice of the Lord” must be “full of majesty”; secondly, constantly, “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty”; thirdly, efficaciously, in all it does, “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.”

I. The Voice of the Lord is Full of Majesty

Yes, and so it should be. Should not that voice be full of majesty which comes from majesty? Is not God the King of kings and the Ruler of the whole earth? Should He, then, speak with a voice below His own dignity? Should not a king speak with the voice of a king? Should not a mighty monarch speak with a monarch’s tongue? And surely, if God is God, and if He is the Master of all worlds, and the Emperor of the universe, He must, when He speaks, speak with the monarch’s tongue and with a majestic voice! The very nature of God requires that all He does should be Godlike. His looks are divine looks. His thoughts are divine thoughts. Should not His words be divine words, since they come from Him? Verily, from the very essence of God we might infer that His voice would be full of majesty!

But what do we mean by a voice having majesty? I take it that no man’s voice can have majesty in it unless it is true. A lie, if it should be spoken in the noblest language, would never be majestic! A lie, if it is uttered by the most eloquent lips, would be a mean and paltry thing, however it might be spoken! And a lie, wherever uttered and by whomever, is not majestic! A lie can never be truth and truth only can ever have majesty about it. And because God’s words are pure truth, unalloyed with the least degree of error, therefore does it come to pass that His words are full of majesty.

Whatever I hear my Father say in Scripture, wherever He speaks to me by the ministry, or by His Spirit—if He speaks it, there is not the slightest alloy of untruth about it! I may receive it just as it is— “My faith may on His promise live, May on His promise die.” I need not reason about it, it is enough for me to take it and believe it because He has said it! I need not try to prove it to the worldling. If I were to prove it, he would believe it none the better. If the voice of God’s majesty does not convince him, surely the voice of my reasoning never will. It need not stand and cut and divide between this voice of God and the other, I know it must be true if He has said it and, therefore, I will believe all that I believe God has said, believing that His voice is full of majesty!

Then, again, when we speak of a majestic voice, we mean by it, that it is a commanding voice. A man may speak truth and yet there may be but little majesty in what he says because he speaks it in a tone that never can command attention and catch the ear of his fellow creatures. In fact, there are some men, expounders of the truth of God, who had better hold their tongues, for they do truth an injury. We know full many who affect to preach God’s truth. They go out to battle, they take the lance in their hands to defend the honor of Christ, but they wield the lance so poorly—they have so little of God’s Spirit—that they do but disgrace His holy name! It would have been better had they remained at home. Oh, beloved, God’s voice, when He speaks, is always a commanding voice! Let the monarch arise in the midst of his creatures—they may have been conversing with each other before—but hush, his majesty is about to speak! It is so with the majesty of God—if He should speak in heaven, the angels would hush their hallelujahs and suspend the notes of their golden harps to hear Him! And when He speaks on earth, it is at all times becoming in all His creatures to hush their rebellious passions and make the voice of their reason be silent. When God speaks, either from the pulpit or from His Word, I hold it to be my duty to keep silent! Even while we sing the glories of our God, our soul stands trembling. But when He speaks forth His own glories, who is he that dares to reply? Who is he that shall lift up his voice against the majesty of heaven?

II. The Voice of the Lord is Constantly Full of Majesty

God’s voice, like man’s voice, has its various tones and degrees of loudness. But it is constantly full of majesty—whatever tone He uses—it is always full of majesty! Sometimes God speaks to man with a harsh voice, threatening him for sin—and then there is majesty in that harshness. When man is angry with his fellows and he speaks harshly and severely, there is little majesty in that. But when the just God is angry with sinful mortals and He says, “I will by no means spare the guilty,” “I, the Lord, am a jealous God.” When He declares Himself to be exceedingly angry and asks who can stand before the fury of His countenance—when the rocks are cast down by Him—there is a majesty in that terrific voice of His!

Then He adopts another voice. Sometimes it is a gentle instructive voice, teaching us what He would have us learn. And then how full of majesty it is! He explains, He expounds, He declares. He tells us what we are to believe—and what majesty there is in His voice then! Men may explain God’s Word and have no majesty in what they say. But when God teaches what His people are to hold to be truth, what majesty there is in it! So much majesty, that if any man takes away from the Words that are written in this Book, God shall take away his name out of the Book of Life and out of the holy city—so much majesty, that to seek to mend the Bible is a proof of a blasphemous heart—that to seek to alter one Word of Scripture is a proof of alienation from the God of Israel!

At another time God uses another voice—a sweet consoling voice. And oh, you mourners who have ever heard God’s comforting voice—is not that full of majesty? There is nothing of the mere trifling that sometimes we employ to comfort poor sick souls. Mothers will often talk to those who are sick in some gentle strain—but somehow it appears to be affected and is, therefore, not full of majesty. But when God speaks to comfort, He uses His majestic words. “The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed,” says the Lord who has mercy on you!

Oh, is there not majesty in this sweet voice? “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may forget, yet will I never forget you.” How sweet, but yet how majestic! We cannot avoid being comforted by it if God speaks it to our souls. Sometimes God’s voice is a reproving voice— and then, too, it is full of majesty. “The ox knows his owner,” He says, “and the ass his master’s crib, but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.” And He speaks reprovingly, as if He had a controversy with them and calls the mountains and the hills to hear His reproof of them on account of sin. “I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against Me.” But God’s reproving voice is always full of majesty!

At other times it is a voice of command to His children, when He appears to them and says, “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward.” And how majestic are God’s commands, how mighty is His voice when He tells us what to do! Some of you have a very poor estimation of what God’s voice is. God tells you to be baptized in honor of your Lord and Master. He speaks to you and He tells you to come round His Table and to remember His dying sufferings. But you do not think much of it. It seems to be lost upon you. But let me tell you that God’s voice of command is as full of majesty and ought to be as much regarded by His people as His word of promise or His word of doctrine! Whenever He speaks, there is majesty about His voice. Whatever tone He may adopt, there is majesty. Ah, beloved and there are times coming when God will speak words which will be evidently full of majesty—then He will speak and say, “Arise, you dead and come to judgment.” There will be majesty in that voice for hell shall then be unlocked and the gates of the grave sawn in two. The spirits of the dead shall again be clothed with flesh and the dry bones shall be made alive once more. And He will speak, by-and-by, and summon all men to stand before His bar. And there will be majesty in His voice, then, when He shall say, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” And oh, dread thought, there will be tremendous majesty in His voice when He shall exclaim, “Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

IV. The Voice of the Lord and Its Effect

Again—God’s voice is full of majesty in all the different degrees of its loudness. Even in calling, there is a difference in the loudness of God’s voice. Many of you were called gently to Christ and you did not seem to hear the thunders of Sinai, like many of God’s people. But whether the voice is loud or soft, it is always full of majesty! And in all its mediums, it is full of majesty. God has, sometimes, chosen the poor to speak His wisdom. If I go and hear a countryman or an untaught man, preach—who makes many mistakes in grammar—yet if it is God’s Word that He preaches, it “is full of majesty.” And sometimes when a little child has repeated a text, we have not noticed the child by reason of the majesty of the voice! In fact, the meaner the instrument employed, the greater the majesty in the voice, itself.

I have noticed a tendency in many to despise their poorer brothers and sisters, members of smaller churches, where there is a more humble minister than one they are in the habit of hearing. This is all wrong, for God’s voice is full of majesty and He can speak as well by one as the other!

Conclusion

I must briefly refer to the majesty of God’s voice WHEN IT IS REVEALED IN ITS EFFECT—when it is spoken home to the heart of man. Just look at the psalm and let me briefly refer to the facts here mentioned. I shall not understand them naturally, though, doubtless, they were so intended by David, but I shall understand them spiritually. As Dr. Hawker remarks, “Doubtless, they were intended to set out gracious operations, as well as natural ones.”

First, the voice of the Lord is a breaking voice. “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars.” The most proud and most stubborn sinner is broken before Him when He speaks! I believe that even the spirit of Voltaire, stubborn as that spirit was, and hard as a millstone, would have been broken in a single instant if God had but spoken to him. The hardest heart I have here needs only one syllable from God to break it in a moment!

The hardest sinner is only one word away from brokenness before God.

May God give us ears to hear His voice, and may we bow in reverence, recognizing that He speaks with power, majesty, and authority. May His voice be heard and felt in every aspect of our lives. Amen.

Charles Spurgeon