Hebrews 12 Pt: 4

So, as a church, we're going through Hebrews.

We're finishing up the book of Hebrews here over the next couple of weeks.

We're finishing chapter 12 this week, and then we'll spend a couple of weeks in chapter 13 and we'll be done.

And one of the things that we've talked about is that this pastor who wrote Hebrews, we don't know who it was.

He uses some language similar to Paul, but some very different ideas than Paul.

Maybe it was Apollos, maybe it was Barnabas.

We really don't know.

But he's writing to Jews who are a little ways into their apprenticeship to Jesus, but they are facing the moments that are described by Jesus in the parable of the sower, where there's concerns that kind of, worldly concerns that kind of are competing for the affections of their hearts.

And there are suffering and painful circumstances that are going on.

And this pastor is writing a letter that's like intense pastoral counsel, trying to encourage them to keep going in their spiritual journey and to not regress back to an old covenant Judaism, looking to the Levitical priesthood, but to see the fulfillment of their, even their ethnicity, to see their fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah.

And so in chapter 12, what we've seen is this idea of a race, that the the life of this, that our spiritual journey is uh it's like a race where we're taking steps of faith, that the the movement, the forward movement, are these steps of faith.

And then last week and the week before, we talked about this idea of discipline, and that as you're doing your spiritual journey, that the God of love comes and he trains us through suffering.

He trains us through discipline.

Uh, he uses his word first and then sometimes uh painful circumstances, all to get us to this place where we're sharing in his holiness and we're able to go for it in our relationship and really kind of just in our life as a whole.

And now we come to verse 14.

There is, before we get into these verses, I just want you to consider for a second just this word appropriate.

The word appropriate is an adjective that means suitable or proper in the circumstance.

For example, she wore an appropriate clothing for her job interview.

The idea of appropriate again is that there is a symmetry between the circumstance and the behavior.

There is a symmetry that exists.

And the Christian life, ethics, our behavior, our actions, once we're following Jesus, there is very much a symmetry with what God has done and not just God's commands.

So we're going to read some instructions that this pastor gives about how to live life.

And these are not to be taken as just commands of like, be this kind of person or behave in this way.

We're to see the ethical commands that are given to us very much in line, seated within a narrative, within God's past work, which to me is helpful because I don't like just commands in isolation.

I am the kind of guy who I will follow the rules, but I really love to know why.

What's the strategy?

What's the reason?

What's the context?

And what we're gonna see in this text is that there is an appropriateness to our behavior, to these ethics.

There are good actions we take, that there's an appropriateness about those actions based on our context.

They're good and of themselves, but the good actions are seated in a broader context of God's story.

This morning, as we're gonna see in verse 14, this pastor is going to encourage the readers to pursue peaceful relationships and guard against bitterness, but those ethical commands are appropriate given the circumstances.

Let's read through this text together.

It's lengthy, so it'll take us a minute, but I want you to have the full context as we go through here.

He says, Pursue peace with everyone and holiness, without it no one will see the Lord.

Make sure that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up, causing trouble and defiling many.

And make sure that there isn't any immoral or irreverent person like Esau who sold his birthright in exchange for a single meal.

For you know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears, because he didn't find any opportunity for repentance.

For you have not come to what could be what could be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of s of words.

Those who heard it begged that not another word to be spoken to them, for they could not bear what was commanded.

If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.

The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said, I am trembling with fear.

Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, a festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn, whose names have been written in heaven, to a judge who is God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which says better things than the blood of Abel.

See to it that you do not reject the one who speaks, for if they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth, even less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us.

For his voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised, yet once more, I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.

This expression, yes yet once more, indicates the removal of what can be shaken, that is, the created things, so that what is not shaken might remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful.

By it we may receive we serve God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we ask that you would teach us uh from your word this morning, and we've come to this passage out of Hebrews.

We believe in the active work of your Holy Spirit, that you accompany your word and bring it alive and apply it into our lives.

And you really know what we need to hear this morning.

You know where we need to hear words of comfort and encouragement.

You know where we need correction and teaching and righteousness.

Lord, we would just submit ourselves under the authority of Scripture and ask for that ministry of your Holy Spirit now.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So we have here three things in this passage from 14 through 29.

We have in verses 14 through 17 social ethics, from 18 through 24, this contrasting of two mountains, and verse 25 through 29, this idea of let God's voice rock your world.

Let's talk first about social ethics.

Social ethics, we have here in verse 14 the writer who has just talked about God's discipline and God's correction and his shaping in our life.

He calls these Christians to pursue peace with everyone and holiness.

Without it, no one will see the Lord.

So here is really our list.

Pursue peace with everyone, pursue holiness, and he attaches to this idea of holiness that it gives us this ability to see God.

There is apparently, and this is kind of a theme that comes out in uh Jesus' teaching as well, that um the lack of holiness, of sin in our life, gets in the way of our ability to see God.

There's also this, uh there seems to be this appeal back to Moses and Moses's fellowship with God and seeing God and the ethical dimension there of it.

But so it's perceive pursue peace.

There's a harmonious relationships with everyone, there's holiness.

And then he says, don't fall short of God's grace.

That's such a um uh a command that would be in line with this book.

Because when this writer is talking about grace, he's talking about the grace of God, God's supply, his resource that comes to us through the new covenant.

You see, Jesus died on the cross, his blood was shed, but before that act took place, he had a meal with his disciples, and he held up the cup, and he said, This is the cup of the new covenant.

Now, when he said that, he was pointing back to Jeremiah 31.

And this pastor has quoted Jeremiah 31 twice in his letter, and he has said that he's reminded the readers that, hey, this is what this new covenant is like.

It's better than the old covenant that came through Moses.

It has an aspect where there's this internal writing of God's law in our hearts, there is this teaching that God does in our lives, and then there's the forgiveness of sins.

Those are the three qualities.

Paul elaborated on this more in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 when he talked about it being a covenant of grace, where it's God's power that comes, it's different from the Mosaic covenant in that it's internal versus external.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

It's this writing on our hearts, and it's this equipping, this empowering.

In fact, of all 2 Corinthians, he's talking about this abounding grace that enables us to do the Christian life.

And the case with these Christians reading Hebrews, the very thing we're reading, the case with them is that they are falling short of the grace contained in the new covenant.

Paul, again, to quote Paul in Corinthians, he says, don't receive the grace of God in vain.

In other words, God's pouring out his resources on you.

You're just not receiving it.

God makes it possible for you to live the Christian life, but you're not in a place where you're receiving it.

You're falling short of the grace of God.

And so this pastor says, don't fall short of God's grace.

Don't fall short of it.

And then he says, don't let a root of bitterness spring up.

So there's a lot here going on in terms of just the community of saints, bitterness, peace with everyone.

Then he says, make sure there is no immoral or irreverent person.

Um and he's going to use Esau as the example.

Make sure there is no immoral or irreverent person.

So this pastor, again, he's talked about this in chapter 10.

He's talked about this in chapter 12 a bit, and holiness and just this community life that the Christians that were born into.

And he's laying out these social ethics.

Now, when he talks about this idea of no immoral or irreverent person, he uses Esau as an example.

You remember Esau was born and he was the counterpart to who?

To Jacob, that's right.

Esau is the counterpart to Jacob, and Esau early on in Genesis 25, he sells his birthright in exchange for a meal.

He's like so starved.

Jacob says, Yeah, I'll give you this food that I've made, but you need to sell me your birthright.

And the idea, culturally, the idea there is to take something so sacred that God in his just sovereign will has gifted Esau to and chosen him to be the firstborn, to receive a specific set of blessings by being the firstborn, a birthright, and to sell that, to cast it aside for the momentary pleasure of a pot of stew.

It's just something that we see as a value.

That's like the opposite of God wants, of what God wants.

God is very much in as he works with Israel, he designs the temple as a sacred space.

And there is this specialness to what God does, and there is this call for the people of God to have this reverence for order.

So you remember, like for the children of Israel, when they're when the land is divided up by Joshua and they go into the promised land, there is this um later on in the story of Israel, they're rebuked for for moving the boundary markers and by um by changing up the inheritance that was received.

And then some people were um they would fall on hard times, they would sell their property off, and the families that were intended to have that land, they were losing it because they um were in such a tight spot, and their brothers and sisters, their fellow uh Jewish brothers and sisters, were basically taking their land um as a loan to back the land.

And God's like so opposed to that.

Now, for us, we collateralize property all the time, we don't view it in the same economic system, but for God, there is this like sacredness to what is given to Esau, and he sees Esau's act of selling out his birthright as just something just totally irreverent, totally just just out of place in the life of a human.

I don't know what that looks like in in your life.

I don't know what's supposed to be reverent, and we fall short of calling what's reverent to God reverent.

But but maybe it's language, maybe it's a person, maybe it's a place.

But it's fascinating how God just like takes this act of Esau, and it just so bothers God.

It's just like it's this horrible act.

It's not just a bad exchange.

I mean, because we would look at it and we'd be like, that's a dumb exchange, right?

We're very economic in like we we that's how kind of I would evaluate it.

But for there's an irreverence about it in God's economy.

But not only that, but but also in Genesis 27, when Jacob um gets the blessing from his dad Isaac and and tricks him, it there it says in Hebrews here that he didn't find opportunity for repentance.

In verse 17, um, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears, because he didn't find an opportunity for repentance.

Again, if you want to go and read that, that's Genesis 25, Genesis 27.

The writer of Hebrews, remember, this is going to a Jewish audience, and so he he says there in the text, he literally says, Um, for you know he about Esau, you're you're very aware of this character Esau, you know what occurred in his life.

That's an example of what we don't want in our midst as a community, as a spiritual community.

So the pastor here spends a bit of time talking about ethics, but that's not the meat, I wouldn't say.

There are many times where the New Testament writers are giving instructions about social ethics.

Really important.

But what I love about this passage is how it's appropriate, it's appropriated to our lives.

It's it's it said this is this is the way to act because this is what we've inherited.

And that's this second section, the contrast of two mountains, the contrast of two mountains.

You'll remember up top, again, I referred to our place, our context, the idea of what is appropriate.

And this is the part of the text where we see this idea come forward first.

Let's see, the first mountain is Mount Sinai from verses 18 through 21.

He says, Um, you have not come to what could not be touched, to a blazing fire to darkness, gloom, and storm, to the blast of a trumpet, to the sound of words.

Those who heard it begged that not another word would be spoken to them, for they could not hear what was commanded.

If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.

The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said, I'm trembling with fear.

So, for those of you that may be new to the Bible, this writer, this pastor is pointing his audience back to this scene that occurs in Exodus chapter 18, chapter 19.

Exodus 18 · chapter mention

The children of Israel are camped at the base of Sinai, and God says to Moses, I want you to come up, and I want to meet with the people, and um, I want to give you the covenant.

Now God's making uh these special people.

He's fulfilling his promise to Abraham, and he's bringing to fruition the promises that he's given to Abraham.

In order to be a people, you need a common land, you need a common people, and you need a common constitution.

So the children of Israel are a common people, right?

They share DNA.

But they're also a um, they're going into a common land, which is called the promised land, and God wants to give them a common constitution, and which we call this old covenant, the Mosaic covenant.

In Exodus 19, the people say, No way, this is scary, this is terrifying.

I don't, oh, we don't, we don't want, we don't want to meet with God on the mountain anymore.

Sinon, and these are the characteristics.

So, so the writer of Hebrews, and we've seen this uh on his meditation on Psalm 90, Psalm 110, like this writer, this pastor who writes this, he sits in the Old Testament scriptures meditating on it, and then he pulls out stuff that he expects you and I to be familiar with.

But he says, these are the characteristics of the of the old covenant place.

This is what it was like for the people of God to receive the old covenant.

Now remember, if we were to read all of Hebrews this morning together, these are a people who are very tempted to go back to this place.

They're thinking about going back there.

And this pastor is saying, this is not the mountain that we've come to.

This is not our place.

Do you remember?

Like, when you look at this, what's a try?

I mean, does this one is this where you want to go on vacation?

Like, this is not on your imagine having this as like an Instagram account, you know?

It couldn't be touched.

Blazing fire, darkness, gloom, storm.

Like, you're not selling like vacations off of this kind of description, right?

This is horrible.

That's not where you want to live.

That's not this is not authoring and inspiring a beautiful life.

This is the children of Israel saw this and they're like, Moses, you go.

We don't want to have anything to do with this place.

So the pastor of Hebrews is saying, Do you remember, do you remember Mount Sinai?

Where Moses even says, I'm trembling with fear.

The people hear, they hear the words.

This whole idea in verse 19, they hear the sound of words, and those who heard it, they begged that not another word would be spoken to them.

Can you imagine?

Okay, so like we we take for granted, like for 2,000 years, people have been knowing and following Jesus.

And and like we just take for granted this just idea that you can wake up, open up your Bible, and just hear God speak to you, right?

That the Holy Spirit speaking into our life is just something that's like kind of gives us warm and fuzzy feelings.

And we forget that the children of Israel, their relationship with hearing God's voice was like, we don't ever want to hear that again.

That's terrifying.

Let's let Moses do his thing.

So that's one mountain.

But the second mountain is this.

Well, okay, so first of all, I want to show you this video.

And is the sound off, Hayden?

This is a um, I don't know if this will play, but I saw this pull up on my um Instagram account this week, and this is a farming device, and this device um is oh man, did you see yeah, there it is.

It is um what it's doing is it's going through and it's got a laser that is zapping the weeds, but not zapping the little baby plant that's growing.

And yeah, it's a really cool device, but I but I put it in front of you because I think oftentimes our conception of God is that it's like this zapping machine, and that God's kind of just rolling along and it's like, I'm gonna zap you.

And like, look how fast.

Like that's so that's the little plant that got zapped right there.

And that's how fast the laser is going.

Like it's like, look at their getting smoked as it's going through.

And I I think that I think that Moses, I I I think that the writer of Hebrews is like, that's not who our God is.

We're not, we're not at a play, we're not at Mount Sinai anymore.

We're not there.

That that's not what it looks like.

Instead, here's the other mountain.

Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels.

Can you say the word myriads?

It reads different from how it sounds, isn't it?

This has nothing to do with my sermon, but it just sounds funny.

You say it, it's like a cool word.

Myriads, myriads of angels, a festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a judge who is God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkling of blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.

So look at this list.

He's like, here's the mountain, here's the place that you and I have come to.

This is what characterizes our place.

So before we're ever going to talk about like social ethics and how we treat one another, just just know like this is your home.

This is what God's brought you to.

The city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.

You show up, look, there's there's angels, myriads of angels.

How many, how many angels fell with Satan?

Do you remember?

A third.

So how many thirds are left?

Two-thirds.

You guys good.

You got through third grade.

I know it.

That's awesome.

Congratulations.

So there's a bunch of angels there with us, right?

There's a bunch of angels.

It's a festive gathering.

The assembly, it's the assembling of the firstborn.

Again, the Bible Project did an awesome job of talking about the firstborn.

You can go back and listen to their series that they did on their podcast about this idea of the firstborn.

But we're the firstborn.

We're the ones, and he may be playing with the idea of Esau, because we are the ones who have this good firstborn quality, this good firstborn place, whose names have been written in heaven.

We've come to a judge, and he quali qualifies us.

He says, Who is God of all?

So in the place, in this place, our home place, there is a judge.

So there's justice.

There's this, and how good is that?

If you've been in a setting where things are unfair, like to know that our home has a judge who is the good judge over all is so valuable.

And then there's also to the spirits of the righteous people made perfect.

Like there, this is, you know, kind of revelation is coming into this.

The idea of revelation is coming in.

The people that have passed on, the people that are the cloud of witnesses to us, the spirits of the righteous people who are made perfect.

And then also, what do we find here?

Jesus is here.

He's the mediator of a new covenant.

And then also here, there's the sprinkling of the blood that says better things than Abel's blood.

The I think the goal, right?

The question is when the writer of Hebrews is praying for and thinking about these Christians, that they're off track.

And I don't know where you're at spiritually, but but maybe you're like them.

Maybe you're off track spiritually.

And this pastor is trying to realign them with God's work to be disciples of Jesus, to follow Jesus.

He wants to communicate their place.

And it's more than just a, well, you're part of the family of God, but it's this list that is exhaustive.

I mean, look how, look at all of these different things that are there with us.

So when you hear, and maybe maybe you haven't yet decided to give your life to Christ, and you're not yet a follower of Jesus, this is what you step into.

Like when we talk about a person becoming a follower of Jesus and being converted, there's an internal work that goes on.

He takes, he gives us a new heart, right?

We're taken from the kingdom of darkness and placed into the kingdom of light.

There is a um righteousness that is attributed to us, that we're no longer guilty, but the righteousness of Christ is put on our account.

So the idea of a guilty conscience and the things that Satan accuses you of, those things are no longer applicable, even though Satan does still accuse us.

We're righteous before God because of Jesus' righteousness applied to our account.

But then we also have the Holy Spirit that's given to us.

But here the writer, the pastor, he's saying, This is your place.

The city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem.

Here's all the angels.

There's a festive, like a party, a festive gathering, the assembly of the firstborn.

You look around the room and it's like, oh, we're all the firstborn.

We all have an inheritance together.

Because Jesus is the firstborn, and we're with him, and he's our brother, he's our older brother, and we we have the we inherit the promises through faith and patience.

There's justice there.

The spirits of righteous people.

I mean, I I know it's just it's a wealthy place to be.

The Bible, hopefully, you know, and if you don't, this is a good moment to know it.

There are ethical expectations under the old covenant and the new covenant.

The Ten Commandments says, you know, here's how you're supposed to treat your father and mother, here's how you're to treat one another, right?

But the basis, the basis is different.

The place is different.

We're no longer operating out of this terror that we're gonna get zapped like that machine is doing to those little weeds, but we're at a place where Jesus is at, the good judge is at, where we're loved by God and we're invited in.

It's this, it's this, it's this invitation that is immense.

Okay, so those are the first two sections.

We have two mountains, and before that we talked about the social ethics.

Let's talk about this last section, verses 25 through 29.

I put this picture up here because this, while there is no reference to a sequoia tree in the text, all throughout the Bible, the idea of being an established tree is the vision, right?

So this is supposed to be, this picture is supposed to be in contrast to the zapper machine and zapping the weeds, right?

You're on God's mountain, you're growing up as this stable, established tree.

That's that is the vision that God has for his people.

Verse 25 through 29, let's let God's voice rock your world.

This is going to close out chapter 12, and just the the way this plays together is fascinating to me.

He says, This see to it that you do not reject the one who speaks.

For if they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth, even less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven.

His voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised yet once more, I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.

This expression yet once more indicates the removal of what we what can be shaken, that is, created things, so that what is not shaken might remain.

Therefore, since we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful by it, we may serve God acceptably with the reverence and awe for our God as a consuming fire.

There seems to be this like divine ADD going on in this little chap little paragraph here, where he starts with God's voice, which has been a theme all throughout Hebrews, that God is a communicator, and that one of God's primary methods in our life is that God's verbal, he speaks to us, he wants us to have tender hearts, he wants us to respond with actions of faith as God talks.

And so this whole section here is about God speaking, and he says, Don't reject the one who speaks.

And then he's pulling from Hebrew or from Exodus the scene at Sinai and the way that people responded to God's voice, he says, See to it that you do not reject the one who speaks.

For if they had not, if they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth, even less will we, if we reject the one who speaks from heaven.

So God is speaking.

And then in verse 26, he quotes from Haggai, and where it says, Yet once more I will shake not only earth, but the heavens.

So he's combining the scene from Sinai.

He's borrowing from this prophetic word from Haggai and the shaking.

So he's like, Do you see the shaking that's happening back there in Exodus?

Do you see that there's a promised shaking from the prophet Haggai?

And now he's saying to you and I, he's saying, map your life onto that.

Okay?

It's like just like we did with transparencies back in the day when we used them, and you'd have like multiple transparencies.

You use that kind of idea.

Map your life onto the children of Israel, into what Haggai is saying, and recognize that God's speaking, and it's critical that you and I don't reject it because God's gonna speak again, and the heavens and the earth are going to shake because of God's voice.

And this pastor says an implication that comes out of this idea of shaking is that what can be shaken are the things that don't remain, but what remains are the things that cannot be shaken.

So we're kind of drifting here from God's voice to shaking to what remains.

But it's good because what he's saying is like, listen, you've been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

He's calling you to engage God's word and let it rock or shake your life and stir up your life, because this is what will happen, this is what has happened, and you have been given something that will not be shaken.

Don't reject the one who speaks.

When he speaks, the earth shook.

In the future, the earth and the heavens will shake.

What shakes are the things that can be moved, removed.

These are the created things.

We've received a kingdom that will not be shaken.

Remember the one uh who were who we are just talking about up top.

By the unshakable kingdom we can serve God acceptably with reverence and awe.

Our God is a consuming fire.

That's that's kind of the flow here.

This this pastor from a place of love is inviting you and I to a new mountain, heavenly Jerusalem, the city of our God, where God's talking, where Jesus is at, where the sprinkling of the blood is at.

You're invited in.

You're invited in.

And there's things that get shaken up and just get kind of cast away as God talks.

In the Psalms, it says that God's voice splits the cedars.

God's voice needs to be powerful enough in your life and my life, where some stuff just goes out the window because God gets the final say.

And there's a terrifying aspect to that that was terrifying for the children of Israel where they delegated Moses, but you and I, we can stand in that place because the Spirit of God is in you and I.

And Jesus is our high priest.

And we know that as God is talking and things are shaking, there's this, there's this absolute divine love that surrounds us.

And there's this good thing where we can embrace and and let God talk and shake up our world, and the things that get shaken up are falling away and falling away, and we can know that the goodness of God, we're experiencing the goodness of God in that place.

I have no idea what that looks like in your life, but my prayer for you this week is that you'll experience it.

Are you willing?

Are you willing?

Are you willing to let God's word engage your life and for there to be a shaking that happens?

And the things that are temporal pass away, but some stuff remains.

Some stuff remains.

Let's go before the Lord and we'll tell him that we're we're willing to let God speak into our life.

Lord, we um bow our heads before you, and we are so grateful for the place and how it has become so appropriate for our life to take on particular behaviors because of the place you've brought us to.

Such a good place.

And God, we don't have to be terrified by your voice, but your voice is powerful.

Lord, I pray that we would experience your voice as we pick up our Bibles this week, that there would be a felt impact, that we'd have an experience beyond just goosebumps, but there would literally be an invasion of your word in our life, and that we would yield and submit to what your word says to us.

Like earlier in Hebrews, there's just that we would have a tender heart and a response of faith, that we would believe you and say yes as soon as we hear what you're saying.

Thank you for Jesus pioneering our faith, making it possible for us to relate to you with such love, for rending the curtain and making it possible for us to be in that holy place with you.

I pray God that you would work in our lives this week.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.