These words speak of the creative power of God. As we know, God has 'created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures' (Westmin­ster Shorter Catechism, Q. 10). The verse in Exodus is important with respect to the fact that man is created after the image of God 'in knowl­edge'. That means at least two things:

1. God has created man with the ability to acquire knowledge;
2. God has created man with a specific modality through which to acquire knowledge.

Our text points out that the way in which man acquires knowledge is through speaking, listening and seeing. As God is a speaking God, a hear­ing God, and a seeing God, so man is a speaking being, a hearing being, and a seeing being. But is there any superiority, any priority in these faculties? Is the mode in which men acquire knowledge determined more by speaking, by hearing or by seeing?

First of all we should consider whether there is a primacy and a pre­eminence of one of these faculties or powers in God himself. John M. Frame notes that 'it would be hard to find a subject more frequent in Scripture than the word of God' and God's ability to communicate. Frame explains that God's speaking is so fundamental in God that in all of his acts –

1. God's intratrinitarian actions,
2. His decrees for the creation,
3. The act of creation itself,
4. His providence, and
5. The redemption of his people and the deliverance of creation from sin and its consequences – 'revelation, or divine communication, is an aspect of each of them.'¹

Language and words, spoken and heard, have a pre-eminence with God.

Moreover the witness of Scripture, as well as that of experience, is that man distinguishes himself among other creatures by what we may call 'intellectual' or 'rational' knowledge. Beasts and animals know instinc­tively through seeing, listening, smelling and touching, but not intel­lectually by speaking. Language has always been considered to be among the chief differences between humans and animals. Of course animals have ways to communicate, but their ways of communication through seeing, listening, smelling and touching do not possess any element that corresponds to the use of words. Words can be endlessly combined to express new messages. Additionally animals cannot exchange informa­tion (for instance about time and possibilities), and even if some of them may express in some elementary form their own feelings and desires, they cannot express the feelings and desires of others (just think of a pig saying: 'How can cows enjoy eating only grass? I don't!').

What characterizes man and his way of acquiring and communicating knowledge is language. Language (and therefore listening) – not seeing, smelling and touching – is the distinguishing sign of humanity. From a non-Christian point of view, the famous linguist, Noam Chomsky, who was for a long time professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol­ogy, and who was also a pioneer of contemporary linguistics, affirms, as do his followers, that language is too complex for human beings simply to learn it; it must be innate. Chomsky claims that 'when we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the "human essence."'² Westminster Seminary professor Dan McCartney comments on Chomsky's position, saying: 'Our theism is able to answer the ques­tion of where such innate linguisticality came from: we are created in the image of a speaking God.'³

'Language and reason' – continues McCartney – 'are inextricably linked. One might even argue that they are simply two aspects of the same innate human ability ... And evaluating, relating, and ordering predictions – that is, using reason – all happen linguistically. There is indeed a prelinguistic perception, but the "making sense" of such perception is the process of outing it into language. Raw sense experience must be linguistically interpreted.'⁴

All that we have been considering brings us to a precise conclusion: knowledge and understanding of God and his universe cannot be acquired just through images and sounds, because by nature they are not sensory but abstract, in the sense that the various aspects of the realities we know cannot be transmitted just through images and sounds. They must be expressed and formulated linguistically to be reasonable. Significance is not something known through the sensory perception of sounds and images. It is language which gives significance to information received through the senses. As Gene Edward Veith puts it:

Visual arts just cannot communicate overt messages effectively ... Visual media are suggestive rather than clear-cut. Movies are not good at logical explanations; they pro­voke emotions and evoke mysteries ... The incapacity of visual imagery to convey specific meaning effectively demonstrates why God chose to reveal himself not by means of a tangible image – as with the pagan deities, with their mystical and emotional appeal – but with the Word.⁵

So, is it true that preaching is just one legitimate form of communi­cating the truth of God? What can we say of the advocates of a visual faith, who encourage a marriage of the arts with worship in the church? How should we consider the urge to enhance the spreading of the gospel through music, movies, computers and other digital and technological instruments? Is it true that, since we live in a visual age, the verbal plus the visual will increasingly be the most effective way to communicate? Is it true, as someone has said, that 'the reformed question is not whether the sermon is or can be affected by the visual age, but how. Anything less is to quench the Spirit'?

The answer to these questions is clearly a resounding no! Take away language and you lose humanity! The essence of being human lies in having the ability to understand, to reason and to cultivate knowledge through words, spoken and heard. The other sensory abilities would not be human without oral and written language. And adding the visual, the theatrical, the musical, the digital and the technological will not increase the efficacy of the spoken word. Rather it will decrease it by distracting the listeners and by failing to involve them intellectually, emotionally and volitionally. It is not because of a cultural conditioning that the apostle Paul affirmed that 'faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God' (Rom. 10:17), but because human beings are made in such a way as to make it necessary for them to understand words. 'The kind of hearing that can lead to faith, can only happen if there is a definite salvific word from God that is proclaimed.'⁶

Jonathan Edwards explains:

'The impressing divine things on the hearts and affections of men is evidently one great and main end for which God has ordained that His Word delivered in the holy Scriptures should be opened, applied, and set home upon men, in preaching. And therefore it does not answer the aim which God has in this institution, merely to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend as well as preaching to give men a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the things of the Word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections.'⁷

All of this brings us to the (concluding) matter of our need to recover confidence in the Word of God and in our commission to preach the gospel. This is what is required of us in our time. I submit to you that we live in a culture in which people are more and more consumed by visual idolatry and enslaved by virtual and technological addictions, even those in professing Protestant/Reformed churches. It is easy for Christians to criticize such social trends and tendencies 'of the world' and of 'worldly churches', strengthening our self-reliance by such criticism (cf. Luke 18:10-12). We can be so busy blaming others that we forget to examine ourselves, considering whether we are preaching and witnessing as we should be to the world to whom we have been sent as salt and light.

Speaking about the gospel that has been entrusted to us to announce to sinners, Hebrews defines it as 'so great a salvation' (Heb. 2:3). Why is it so? We can answer in part by saying the following:

1. Sin, which has rendered salvation needful, has produced a great ruin.
2. God, who conceived it, is a great God.
3. Christ, who accomplished it, is a great Saviour and Redeemer.
4. The Spirit, who applies it to sinners, performs a great work.
5. The benefits flowing from it are great blessings.

Professor John Murray, speaking on The Atonement and the Free Offer of the Gospel has warned us that 'the passion of missions is quenched when we lose sight of the grandeur of the evangel.'⁸ Martyn Lloyd-Jones, considering the decline of preaching within Christian churches late in the 20th century, saw the first cause of that phenomenon in 'the loss of belief in the authority of the Scriptures, and a diminution in the belief of Truth.' Speaking more pointedly about how this affects the Christian ministry he adds:

If you have not got authority, you cannot speak well, you cannot preach. Great preaching always depends upon great themes. Great themes always produce great speaking in any realm ... as belief in the great doctrines of the Bible began to go out ... it is not surprising that preaching declined.⁹

Therefore, brethren, we must ask ourselves, considering the issue of the general decay of belief in the authority of truth and preaching under the pressure of visual and technological idolatry of our Western culture, is it not that this state of things was favoured also by our losing sight of the grandeur of the evangel? Do we still believe that the doctrines of the Bible are 'great doctrines'? We should be aware of the temptation to live peacefully concentrating only on our needs and being careful to offend no one. This is the consciousness that dawned on those well known lepers who, having found a great salvation from destruction, told each other, 'We are not doing what is right. This is a day of good news, and we remain silent. If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us' (2 Kings 7:9).

Are we doing well? Are we proclaiming and offering such great good tidings to sinners in our paganized and technologized Western society? Let us examine ourselves: the timidity of our witness, the coldness towards sinners – especially to sinners belonging to other religious traditions, the thought that God will save his people apart from our evangelistic efforts, the neglect of fervent prayers for revival and for the conversion of sin­ners can all be symptoms of our having lost a sense of the grandeur of the evangel. Gazing within our souls, let us ask ourselves, 'Do we really believe that the gospel is so great a Salvation?'