Hebrews: A Tale of Two Mountains | Guest Speaker: Sam Rapp

Good morning once again, Redeemer family.

My name is Sam Rapp, and I'm the student pastor here.

Um if you've seen me preach here before, you've seen that I wear a sport coat, and that's because I want to keep up with the maturity of Russ, and I have a lot of I have pimples on my face still, so I want to like up myself to not look like a 16-year-old because I know I do.

Uh so all that being said, I'm three for three with sport coats uh in my time preaching here.

But uh, if you do have your Bibles, we will be in the book of Hebrews, chapter 12, and we're gonna be looking at verses 18 to 29.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

So a couple years ago, I went on a trip to California, and first half of the trip we spent in San Francisco going to coffee shops, eating really good food, kind of just walking through those really hilly, confusing streets.

And then second half of the trip, we went up to Napa Valley, uh, and we spent the week or the spent the few days in Calistoga, which is this small wine country town, top of Napa Valley.

I was like 21 at the time, wasn't a wine guy, but we were in wine country, which a lot of y'all are probably like wishing y'all were there right now.

But we were up there and we were kind of just walking through the town, getting our bearings, driving around, understanding where everything was, where the grocery store was.

And we looked right behind where we were staying, and there was this huge mountain.

And we were like, man, like we were, you know, we're 21, we're in college, like we're gonna hike that tomorrow, right?

With no prep, no, no stretching, and we're just we're just gonna go for it, right?

And this mountain on the cover looked like Kennesaw Mountain, right?

Which is like a decent sized mountain, but like not a mountain mountain.

You know what I'm talking about?

So we actually mountain, we're thinking, man, okay, it's probably gonna take like an hour and a half, hour, maybe, right?

Because I mean you can go hike Kennesaw Mountain, you don't have to bring a bottle of water, right?

You can just hike up, hike down, you're done, right?

Go back home.

So we go up this mountain.

It takes us 10 hours to hike this mountain, okay?

We leave at 9 a.m.

We get back at dinner time, okay?

Listen, I brought a turkey sandwich in a chewy bar, okay, with a bottle of water.

And that's all I had for 10 hours.

So 25,000 steps later, I was crawling back to our rental car back at the bottom of the mountain, right?

Not only that, but we hiked through about four seasons of the year up this mountain, okay?

So first half, it's 75.

Uh the wildfires are going through California.

So the first half was like a burnt charcoal desert going up the mountain, right?

Second half was like 60, it was perfect.

Top of the mountain was 25 with a foot and a half of snow.

Okay?

I don't know how y'all packed for that, but I I didn't have the wardrobe for that hike, okay?

But long story short, when we got to the top of that mountain and we saw hundreds of miles of Napa Valley right before our eyes, all of that pain, because it hurt, all of that pain, all of that low blood sugar that I was carrying, it was all immediately worth it when we had that view at the top.

Why?

Because there is power and beauty in contrast, right?

Sometimes we have to see the darkness to truly get a glimpse of the light at the end, right?

And in my mind, I was expecting a view kind of like Kennesaw Mountain, right?

Which is pretty good, right?

Six out of ten, right?

You mean you see Buckhead, you see Stone Mountain downtown, right?

Those kind of big three things you see, and that's pretty good, right?

Don't get me wrong.

But when I was up there and saw hundreds of miles of California valleys before me, it was like all of that, the hundred calories from the chewy bar I just ate, was all of a sudden feeling pretty good, right?

Everything was made worth it.

And this is what God is doing in this passage, right?

He's painting an image for us of these two varying mountains that show us, man, one side the darkness and shadows of the law, and then the second one is the beauty of the heavenly city of Mount Zion, right?

He's reminding us of the darkness and horror of Mount Sinai to then give us the glory of Mount Zion.

So with that being said, we're gonna dive into this text.

And my hope for us this morning is to just simply let the word of God speak for itself, for the word of God to just invade our hearts and speak to us and move in and get all up in our business.

Um, so with that being said, I'm just gonna pray for us and then we'll just dive head first right in.

All right, let's pray.

Uh, Father, thank you so much for your grace to us in Jesus.

I thank you, uh, Lord, for the opportunity to come here freely as a church.

Uh, Lord, when there are brothers and sisters on the other side of the world not getting this.

Uh and so I pray, Father, that as we sit under the counsel and reading and teaching of your word, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would just open up our hearts and knock down our walls.

And Lord, that your word, which is alive and active and dark, sharper than any double-edged sword, would just pierce into our hearts and will give us comfort and peace in Jesus.

And we ask all this in his name.

Amen.

So again, we're in Hebrews 12, and I'm just gonna read for us the first three verses, verses 18 to 21.

So the word of God says this for you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them.

For they could not endure the order that was given, if even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.

Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear.

So I'll be honest, let's talk for a second.

When when Russ told me what I was preaching on, and that's what I read, I laughed out loud at my desk in the office back there.

And I was like, is this a joke?

Um, because man, I mean, you read that and you're like, oh, this is the word of the Lord.

I mean, all right, we're going for it.

So let's talk.

Let's talk first about what these passages are doing, right, so that we know what they're not doing.

Okay?

So the first mountain, Mount Sinai, is what is what's being given to us here, right?

And remember, this passage is basically painting an image between these two mountains, okay?

And these are probably two of the three most important mountains in the Bible, right?

Mountain number three is coming, it's at the end.

Y'all just get a sneak peek there, all right?

The first mountain here, Mount Sinai, is the mountain that Moses climbed to receive the law, right, back in Exodus.

He climbed this mountain.

You see in the text it was thunderous, it was scary, it was dark, it was gloomy.

And he received this law, which was good, right?

It was good and it was holy and it was helpful, it was perfect.

And it showed the Israelites how far they had to go to reach holiness, right?

It basically created this gap between them and God.

But the thing about the law is that it didn't give them the power to do that, right?

It just gave them a law, it didn't tell them how to do it, right?

If any of y'all got kids less than five, tell them not to eat a cookie right after this, all right?

And what they're gonna do, all they want is a cookie, right?

This law did not give us the power to achieve it, right?

All this does is dig this canyon between us and God, but it doesn't build the bridge for us to cross that canyon, right?

And this law is what came down from Mount Sinai, and this law had crippling demands, right?

I don't know if y'all have ever felt like this, but this is kind of what it makes me feel like to live under the law, right?

It's exhausting, it's it's crippling.

You feel like you're never enough, right?

You kind of feel like God is up there in heaven, like scoffing and scowling at you, right?

That's what it feels like to live under the law.

And man, you think, man, okay, if I if I check off these boxes, then maybe God will be happy with me, right?

That's what it feels like to live under the law, and that is a weight that, man, Jesus does not want us to live under, and that's good news.

But we do see here that this mountain is scary, right?

This mountain was dark, it was gloomy.

The words that describe it are a blazing fire with earthquakes, gloom, and darkness.

Those are not words that are happy, right?

And this is what the Israelites came out of Egypt for, right?

Remember, just before they received this law, they were living in slavery under Ramses, right?

Pharaoh, enslaved, and this is what they came out to?

This dark, scary, condemning mountain.

And Mount Sinai was so scary, in fact, that even Moses, who remember, gigantic Bible figure Moses, right, who we see probably as kind of superhuman, my man was afraid at this mountain, right?

And so, right after that, right after they received this law, the Israelites looked at Moses and were like, dude, we don't want anything to do with God anymore, right?

He's scary.

So they were like, man, you go talk to Yahweh and you tell us what he says, right?

You'll be the messenger, we'll just stay back here at arm's length, right?

That's how scary it was.

Why?

Because this holy presence of God on this mountain apart from Jesus is frightening.

And we see that this fear that filled them did not drive them towards holiness, right?

All it did was show them what holiness looked like according to the law, but it didn't tell them how to do it and give them the power to do it.

So much so that 40 days later they worshiped the calf, right?

Right after they saw Yahweh on this mountain with this tablets.

But the good news for us is that it doesn't end there.

Let's look at verses 22 through 24.

Y'all can smile now, it's about to get lighter.

Uh but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the innumerable angels and festival gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God.

This mountain's a lot sweeter and brighter, isn't it?

It makes you want to smile a little bit more.

The image in these verses is full of beauty and majesty, right?

And that's something we see in the Bible, is that God uses imagery a lot because it stirs up our guts to have a feeling, right?

And this is what we see is that we have already inherited this city.

This isn't just some distant idea, right, that's coming in the future, right?

It says in this text that we are enrolled in this heavenly city.

Just like y'all signed up for this church service and your name was on that list, so is the same with Mount Zion.

You are on the sign up genius list for Mount Zion, right?

And it's ours because we are sons and daughters of King Jesus, right?

We are enrolled in this heavenly city.

We haven't received this inheritance right now.

This is right here, right now, grace, right?

And this is what the writer of Hebrews is saying here.

He's saying, Man, we're not stuck in the same shoes as Esau.

You remember that story just right before this?

Russ hit on it last week.

Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, right?

He sold his birthright because he was hungry, right?

Back in that story, but also because he was living for the passing pleasures of the world, so much so that he gave up his inheritance, which means a lot more in 3000 BC than it does now.

But what we see in this text is that unlike Esau, we don't control our destiny with a bowl of soup.

Praise the Lord for that.

You never really realize how much value is in food until you lose it, right?

Until it's like right out of arm's reach, right?

So I was at Disney World this past week.

We were staying at the Swan Hotel, okay?

Uh and first of all, just by the way, Disney was limited to 35% capacity, but there were still two hour-long lines.

So y'all just do the math there.

I don't know if that's still 35%, but it felt big to me.

Uh but it was the first day, we're exhausted from driving, right?

It's like 6:30, uh, we're getting ready for dinner.

The girls have all figured out their meal, they're getting sushi.

I'm not a sushi guy, so I'm like, all right, we'll find plan B, which turned into plan, you know, Q or R at that point.

Uh but we get began on the Disney app, which was not as intuitive as I feel like it should be for a company like that.

But we're on the we're you know, in the room trying to order, we're sitting on the couch, me and my brother-in-law, it's like just us two, right?

There's like all eight of them had their meals, but me and my brother-in-law trying to figure this out, right?

So we try to place this order on this restaurant uh that was like walking distance, uh, and basically like we would get to the checkout of the ordering, and it would all of a sudden say, We're sorry, we could not complete your order.

That is just that's something when you're hungry.

I'll tell you that.

That is something to read when you're hungry.

Amen.

So increasingly frustrated, we went downstairs.

I mean, that took four or five tries of failing XX, right?

So we go downstairs, we look at the restaurants, right?

The restaurant that looked pretty good uh had like a two-hour wait to where you couldn't even order online until this certain gap, which I think was like 8 45.

And at the time, remember, it's 7 p.m.

So we're like, ooh.

So we go to this other restaurant, which is where the girls were ordering.

It was the sushi place, right?

And this isn't the kind of sushi place that like is a sushi place, right?

That has like fried rice.

This is the kind of sushi place that like doesn't even have a bowl of rice that you can order, right?

Like, I'm talking about like they have like raw tuna, and that's it.

That's all they got.

I mean, at that point, I was like, I'll take white rice and bean sprouts at this point, right?

Like, I'll take whatever you got.

And again, this sushi restaurant has sushi.

So if you're like me, that was not the answer.

So, like, man, we don't want that, so we go on to DoorDash, right?

Because he has the dash pass, so we of course went on the door on DoorDash and found a couple restaurants, every single one we would order, get to the end, and sure enough, you guessed it.

It said you're out of range for every restaurant.

There were restaurants like a seven-iron away from the hotel that still said out of range.

And we were like, I don't know how this adds up, right?

So finally, we open Uber Eats, right?

You know the feeling, right?

You you you go through Uberetz, you're closing out, it goes through, right?

And then you swipe the card, and then food's on your way, right?

We got Antoine bringing us our food in 30 minutes.

But this was the kind of thing where, right, you know, like on Uber Eats, you can pay the extra dollar fifty to get them to deliver it straight to you.

I made the mistake of not doing that.

So we had Antoine bringing meals to other people before us, right?

And so he was at this restaurant, this other dude's house for 20 minutes, and I'm up there refreshing, refreshing, refreshing.

We're in the lobby, upset, right?

That was a long way of saying uh our salvation is not dependent on a bowl of soup, alright?

So, all that being said, the good news is that we are not building our salvation on a bowl of soup, right?

And let's be human just for a second, okay?

I was at the point where if you put a bowl of lentil soup before me, y'all, birthright would have been gone.

I'm just gonna tell y'all that.

Like, inheritance like Esau would have been out the door for that bowl of lentil soup, right?

That's where I was at.

But again, that's the good news.

Is that our salvation, our inheritance, our enrollment in the heavenly city is not based upon our feelings, our faith, our strength, right?

So let's let's think about it this way.

This is what it might feel like in comparison to being under a law, what it feels like to live under grace.

These are just a few things that came to mind.

Confidence.

Security in Jesus' grip on you.

Freedom to move towards godliness, not to earn your standing before Jesus, but because of your standing with Jesus.

See, our faith is not about how strong we're holding on, just hoping we don't let go, right?

Our faith is built upon Jesus holding deeply and strong onto us, not letting us go.

And that's good news.

Let's look back into verse 40 24 really quick again.

Verse 24 says this, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, into the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

So let's think back all the way to Genesis 3, right?

Adam and Eve, they're in the garden.

Man, you read, you read Genesis 2 and 3, right?

Every time you're like, man, maybe they won't eat the fruit this time, right?

And every time Genesis 3 rolls around, they eat the fruit, right?

Every time you're like, no, Eve, why?

So they eat the fruit, and then sure enough, God's like, hey, you're gonna have a son, and this son is gonna crush the head of the serpent, right?

He's gonna crush the head of the serpent, and this curse is gonna be wiped away, right?

So sure enough, Adam and Eve have a couple sons, right?

They have Cain and Abel.

And so we've got to think for a second.

If you're Adam and Eve and you had this son, you don't know about the redemptive plan of Jesus yet, right?

That's that's a long time in the future.

All you know is that you have a son now, and God promised that your son would crush the head of the serpent.

So you're thinking, man, maybe Cain's the guy, right?

Maybe Cain's the one that's gonna do this thing, but what does Cain end up doing?

If you remember this story, you you remember that Cain, instead of crushing the head of the serpent, crushed the head of Abel in a fit of jealous rage, right?

This firstborn son that you had, who was supposed to be the redemptive savior in your mind, right, all of a sudden murders your other son.

This verse in Hebrews says that the blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, right?

Why?

It's because Abel's blood on the ground in Genesis 4 was calling out for condemnation, was calling out for vengeance and revenge to take place for his death.

But what does the blood of Jesus speak for us in this text?

It speaks forgiveness, right?

Jesus' blood is crying out for your forgiveness to the Father.

It's crying out for your chains to be broken, for your idolatry to be crushed, and for your forgiveness and reconciliation with Jesus.

And this brings us to the last section of this passage.

So verses 28 and 29.

It says this Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe.

For our God is a consuming fire.

So the book of Hebrews, we've been going through it for a while.

But this book is, was likely given as a sermon to a group of Jewish Christians, right?

And that these Jewish Christians were living in a world that was dominated by Rome, right?

I mean, superpower, world superpower beyond anything we could even begin to imagine, right?

And what does this writer say?

That there is only one kingdom that will stand forever, right?

And that's not Rome.

And to these hearers, that would have been unimaginable, right?

He's saying that, man, even Rome is gonna fall one day.

And for these people, that was unimaginable.

But I want to ask you guys this.

Do you know anyone now that's afraid of Rome?

I mean, you go there as a tourist now.

Nobody's afraid of Rome anymore, right?

In the 1940s, no one could imagine a world, especially if you lived in Europe, where Adolf Hitler was not the world's superpower leader, right?

In the 1600s, if you lived within a hundred miles of the Mediterranean, you could not imagine not living in the world of the Ottoman Empire, right?

Stalin, Genghis Khan, Nebuchadnezzar, Ramses, all of these powerful men ran the world at various points in history, right?

And we're not still living in their regime, are we?

Unimaginable that their kingdoms would fall, especially in the time where you were living under it.

About as unimaginable as the Titanic sinking.

Y'all remember that?

Have y'all ever seen that movie, right?

You're like, Leo, don't get on the boat, dude.

I promise it's gonna sink.

And what does the Titanic do every time you watch that movie?

Right?

It sinks.

But the good news is we have a kingdom that cannot and will not be shaken.

The walls of Mount Zion, the heavenly city, will not fall.

Even if you go around it seven times like Jericho with horns, right?

That thing is not gonna fall, right?

And that's good news for us.

Because there will be a day that comes when America will fall, when Europe will fall, when Russia will fall, all these nations will fall on their knees before Jesus one day because his city will not fall.

His city will stand, and that is good news.

So, what do we do with this?

What do we do with this word, with this text?

The writer of Hebrews does, as per usual, a great job following some meaty verses with two very straightforward and simple applications, and these are straight from the scripture.

So, verses 28 and 29, they say this.

Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

And then number two, let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe.

And acceptable worship does not mean a life of legalism.

Guys, hear me.

This does not mean a life of legalism.

Acceptable worship, according to Psalm 51, what David says right after he commits adultery is the only offering acceptable to God is a broken and contrite heart, right?

The only acceptable worship to Jesus is just being willing to receive him.

And so my encouragement for us this morning is to move back to him this morning and worship.

Not out of a place of, man, like I need to come with the right heart or mindset to him, but just coming.

Remember, living under grace with freedom, right?

With peace with your Savior.

And this peace comes not from Mount Sinai, right?

This peace comes from Mount Calvary.

That's the third mountain that we see.

It didn't end at Mount Sinai.

It will end at Mount Zion, but only because of Mount Calvary, right?

Where Jesus climbed that mountain, took his cross with him, was nailed to it for your sake, so that you didn't have to bear that cross for yourself, right?

That's what Mount Calvary did for us.

And because of that, this canyon that we were living across from God has been bridged, right?

Hallelujah.

This mountain of darkness and fear, Mount Sinai, has become for those who are enrolled in the heavenly city, those who have received and committed to Jesus as Lord has become Mount Sinai.

The one of freedom and reconciliation and light.

So we're no longer in the shadow of Mount Sinai.

We are no longer under the law.

But we are now under grace.

Jesus says that it is for freedom that he set us free.

So let's walk in that freedom this morning.

Let's pray together.

Father, we just praise you for sending Jesus on our behalf.

Lord, we recognize that He is Lord, that every nation will fall and bow before Him one day.

We recognize that, Lord, Jesus, in your Lordship, that you also came down as the form of a man to reconcile us to yourself, to bear our pain, our suffering, and Lord, free us from the jail cell that we were living in.

And so I pray, Lord, that we would not uh be condemned to living in the law anymore, but that for those of us who are weary and tired and uh looking at you, the Father, thinking that you're mad, I pray that you free us from those thoughts.

I pray uh Lord for all of us in here that we would just recognize the deepness of your grace through Mount Zion and Mount Calvary.

Thank you for your word.

I pray that it would speak to us further this week.

Uh Lord, as we come to the table to receive it.

Uh we love you, ask all this in Jesus' name for your sake.

Amen.