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HOLY HELP FOR THE HOPELESSWHO LISTEN TO WHAT GOD SAYSHebrews 12:18-29INTRODUCTION In our passage this morning the author is returning to where he started the letter. If you will remember he began by telling us that God has been speaking throughout the ages. He first spoke through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but now he has spoken to us by his son. The author has spent the bulk of this letter telling us why we ought to listen to what God has said in and through Jesus. In v. 25 of this passage he tells us once again, “See to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking.” So the question that faces us this morning is a simple one: are we listening to God? The God who made everything, including you and who keeps all things existing, including you, is talking to you. Are you listening? This passage furnishes us with reasons for why we ought to listen to what God says to us by Jesus. God knows it is hard to hear him in the midst of a world that is bombarding us with contrary messages. He knows it is hard to listen when there are so many apparently more pressing issues to deal with. He knows it is hard to listen when you feel threatened or are in pain or have suffered loss. He also knows it’s hard to listen when you have ears that are trained to listen to another voice and a heart that is inclined to ignore God’s voice. So will you listen this morning to the reasons God gives for why you should listen to what he is saying through Christ? God thinks that the most important thing you have to do every day is to listen to the gospel. The most important thing for you to do each day is not go to work or be a parent or go to school or be a husband or a wife or watch TV or go hunting or go shopping. The most important thing for each day is not to find out what God wants you to do but rather for you to listen to what God has done and is doing in Jesus. Do you remember the story of Mary and Martha on the day that Jesus came to visit them in their home as it is recorded in Luke 10? The house is full of guests because Jesus has come to stay with his dear friends, Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus. Martha is running around the kitchen getting the meal ready while Jesus and Lazarus and the disciples and her sister Mary are in the living room talking. Rather Jesus is talking; everyone else, including Mary is listening. Martha, we are told, distracted by all the work--in other words, she is not listening--bursts into the room and demands of Jesus, “Master don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me.” Do you remember what Jesus said? “Martha, Martha you are worried and distracted by so many things but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.” There is one necessary thing for you and I to do each day: listen to what Jesus tells us about himself and what he has done and is doing. So this morning I want to give you reasons why we should make it the goal of each day to listen to what God says in the gospel. MAIN POINT Make it your goal to keep listening to what God says in the gospel and believing it because…I. The gospel brings us to Mt.Zion and not to Mt.Sinai (vv. 18-24) He sets forth the first reason we should listen by way of a contrast. In v. 18 he says we should do these things because “you have not come to what may be touched…” and then in v. 22 he says, “but you have come to Mt. Zion…” In vv. 18-21 he describes the experience that the people of Israel had when they came to Mt. Sinai and then in vv. 22-24 he contrasts that with our coming to Mt. Zion through the gospel. I want us to look at these two experiences in order to understand the incredible thing that God has done for us through Jesus. You and I need to understand what he is saying here so that we will every day make it our business to listen to God speaking to us in and through the gospel of Jesus. The first thing to notice is that he doesn’t name Mt. Sinai whereas he does name Mt. Zion. It is clear he is talking about the experience of Israel at Mt. Sinai. Most of the language comes right out of Exodus 19-20 and Deuteronomy 4 & 5 which relate the event and then Moses describing the event 40 years later. But why does he leave out the name of the mountain when he clearly names Mt. Zion? The answer is because he doesn’t want us to just think about that historical event but rather to see that the experience of Israel at Mt. Sinai is the experience of everyone who attempts to draw near to God on the basis of law and law keeping. What is it like to approach God on the basis of the law, the Ten Commandments? If you attempt to draw near to God on the basis of your performance of his law, what will you find? If you spend your life thinking about your work and your obedience and approach God on the basis of what you have done, what will happen to you? What was it like for Israel and Moses at Mt. Sinai, the place where God gave his law? It was a terrifying experience. God’s presence as the Law-Giver overwhelmed the people of Israel with shock and awe. They didn’t see God; they saw the terrifying effects upon creation of God's presence. They couldn’t draw near to him because he said that if anyone so much as touched the mountain they would be killed. It was an amazing display of pyrotechnic power and overwhelming noise. The visible and auditory signs of God’s presence served more to obscure than to reveal, to drive away than to bring near. God said the people could not come near and the people did not want to be near God and they did not want to listen to God. They begged that God stop talking to them. They were terrified by what they saw and heard. The law is not friendly to sinners. The law does not offer us any hope because it requires perfect obedience and threatens awful judgment for those who do not obey. God as lawgiver and judge considered apart from Jesus is not the friend of sinners. The ultimate proof of the insufficiency and inadequacy of the law is shown in the fact that even Moses, who was the only one who could actually go up the mountain and to whom God actually spoke also was terrified. When was Moses terrified? He describes the occasion of his terror in Deuteronomy 9. It was after the people built the golden calf and worshipped it while he was on the mountain the first time. After he came down and saw the idolatry and broke the first tablets and then went up the mountain to intercede for the people he was terrified of God's anger, "for he was angry enough to destroy you." Moses’ terror was the result of witnessing firsthand the wrath of God against lawbreakers. He saw at that time that there was no way for sinners to safely live with this God of perfect holiness. He knew that the only hope did not lie in people keeping God's law but in God’s nature to forgive. If you will remember, it was at this time that he offered to die for the people. He saw that the only way for sinners to live with a holy and just God was by means of a substitutionary death. The point of this description of Mt. Sinai and the reminder of the terror of the people and Moses and their refusal to listen to God is to warn us that if we attempt to approach God apart from Jesus Christ and his finished work, this is what we are going to find. You will discover a fierce and menacing God who demands perfect obedience and is determined to destroy all who do not obey perfectly. But when you come to God through Christ, by faith, by trusting in what he has done, you have come to Mt. Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. The second time that Mt. Zion is mentioned in the OT is in 2 Samuel 4. Right after David is crowned king over all of Israel he and the armies of Israel attack and conquer the city of Jerusalem which is built on Mt. Zion. So, Samuel tells us, Zion becomes the city of David. Then, forty years later, David’s son, Solomon builds the temple on Mt. Zion, in the midst of Jerusalem. Zion then becomes the place where God rules over his people through his king and the place where he dwells with his people in peace through the mediation of the priests and sacrifices. Zion is God’s city where he is known and worshipped and where he exercises his power to defend and save his people. Throughout the psalms and the prophets, Mt. Zion is associated with God’s final salvation which will happen in the last days. This is the reason for the first point of contrast between the two mountains. Mt. Sinai can be touched whereas Mt. Zion cannot be touched. Why is that? What this is not saying is that the visible, material world as represented by Mt. Sinai, is evil and the invisible, spiritual world, represented by Mt. Zion, is good. The reason Mt. Sinai can be touched is because it already happened in history. The reason that Mt. Zion cannot be touched is because it is yet in the future. Isaiah 2 says, “In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” The point is that when you come to Jesus you have come to this city, which is yet to come, by faith. It is not yet visible, not because it is not material but because it awaits the final consummation, the return of Christ. This is the city that Abraham was looking forward to whose designer and builder is God ( 11:10). This is the city that God has prepared for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Sarah who were living by faith when they died without receiving the things promised ( 11:16). This is the city that is yet to come ( 13:14). What is true in this city in contrast to Mt. Sinai is first of all, the angels are gathered there in celebration. There’s a party going on in this city and all of God's angels are invited to attend together with us. No terror, no fear, only joy is in this city. Second, this is the city where all of God’s firstborn sons have their names written in the book of citizenship. This word enrolled is the word used for taking a census where the name of every citizen of a city is written down in a book. In chapter one we were told that Jesus is God’s firstborn son. In v. 16 of this chapter we read that Esau traded his rights as the firstborn son for a bowl of soup. Here all those who are firstborn sons are so because they remain united to THE FIRSTBORN SON, through faith. Those who do not trade their birthright for a bowl of this world’s soup are God's firstborn sons. This is the city where the promises made to the firstborn sons of Abraham: Isaac and Jacob and Judah are fulfilled. Please notice the names of all the firstborn are already written down in God's book of citizenship. This is the same book referred to in Revelation 20, the book of life. This city then is the home of all those who are citizens of heaven, who, as Paul says in Philippians 3, “are eagerly awaiting a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Third, this is the city where sinners can safely live with God, the Judge of all men. This is the astonishing thing about this city in contrast to Mt. Sinai. The same God who is Judge of all people is present in both places but in Mt. Zion he can be safely approached and joy can be found in his presence rather than terror. Fourth, it is the city where right now all those who have died in faith, who have died trusting in Christ are now dwelling as disembodied spirits. These are the righteous who have been made perfect. This is a direct reference to 10:14 where we are told that “God has made perfect forever, by the one sacrifice of Jesus, all those who are being made holy in this life.” One day all of God's firstborn sons whose names are written in his book will be assembled there but right now our dead brothers and sisters in Christ are in this city as disembodied spirits. The author climaxes his description of this city by telling us why there is such a party going on in Mt. Zion, why the firstborn are enrolled there, why sinners can live with God the judge there and why the spirits of the righteous have been made perfect there. It is because Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant is there. The difference between Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion is Jesus. It is because his blood has been sprinkled on this city and on all who inhabit it that it is a city of joy and life and not gloom and death. He has cleansed the place and the people by his blood and so it is the city of the Living God with whom we can safely and joyfully live. The last phrase makes this point in an incredibly powerful way. The sprinkled blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Able. Do you remember what the blood of Able says? The story is back in Genesis 4. Cain has just murdered his brother Able and God has come to Cain and asked him where Able is at. Cain replies with that infamous question: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord says to him, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse…” What does Able’s blood say to God? It cries out for justice, for vengeance, for the curse. The blood of innocent Able cries out for God to come down with fire and to destroy all the wicked. The blood of Able cries out for Mt. Sinai. Ah, but not the blood of innocent Jesus. The unjust, violent death of the Son of God, whose blood poured out on the ground from that cross, which was carried out by wicked men does not cry out for vengeance but for mercy. The death of the spotless Lamb of God does not invite God to come down with fire to destroy this wicked world that murdered him but rather appeases God’s wrath and invites God and sinners to dwell together in peace in Mt. Zion. Listen! Do you hear the blood of Jesus crying out from the ground, “Father forgive them...” You need to listen to what God is saying through this blood every day so that you will, at the end of all things come to Mt. Zion and not to Mt. Sinai. Make it your goal to keep listening to what God says in the gospel and believing it because…
II. Those who listen will not fall when God shakes the universe (vv. 25-27) When v. 25 tells us not to refuse him who is speaking it is talking about God who speaks to us through and in the sprinkled blood of Jesus. Don’t refuse God the judge who is now speaking through his crucified and resurrected and ascended son who intercedes for all his people. Some of you sitting before me are refusing to listen to him as he speaks to you words of peace and reconciliation through his son. Some of you are so bitter and angry that you cannot hear the voice of Christ offering you forgiveness. Some of you are so sad and lonely that you cannot hear the offer of fellowship with God forever. Some of you are so enamored with bowls of soup, the pleasures of sin and of this world that you cannot hear him. Some of you are so distracted by the cares and worries of life that you cannot hear him. I beg you do not refuse to listen to him when he speaks to you by Christ. Here is the reason: the people of Israel didn’t escape when they refused him who warned them from Mt. Sinai. He killed them in the desert for their refusal to listen and trust him and obey him. How in the world do you think you will escape if you refuse him who warns you from heaven? God is speaking to you now through a crucified and resurrected Savior who is in heaven right now at the right hand of his power waiting for the day when he will return and if you refuse him, there is no one else to turn to. He is the only Savior. When God appeared at Mt. Sinai there was an earthquake but that is nothing compared to the shaking that will come upon the universe when Christ returns. The author to the Hebrews quotes, in v. 26, a portion of a verse spoken by the prophet Haggai. The full text says, “In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations and the desired of the nations will come and I will fill this house with glory… I will shake the heavens and the earth. I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of the foreign kingdoms.” When Christ returns he will shake this entire universe and when he does it will be for the purpose of destroying all that “can be shaken, that is, created things (v. 27).” In v. 27, to what does the phrase, “what can be shaken, that is, created things” refer? And to what does the phrase, “what cannot be shaken” refer? What the author is doing is picking up on a very common idea that is expressed in the Psalms and setting it next to the shaking of judgment expressed in Haggai. Psalm 16:8 says, “I have set the Lord before me. Because he is at my right hand I will never be shaken.” Psalm 62:1-2 says, “My soul finds rest in God alone, my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” Psalm 125:1 says: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mt. Zion , which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” What cannot be shaken is God, his city and all who trust in him. On the other hand, what can be shaken is every part of the created order that is not right with God. All that is in rebellion to God, that does not conform to his will, that does not listen to him will be shattered on the day that he shakes the universe. God will end the curse and will bring to an end all those who are under the curse when Jesus comes to shake the whole universe and the only ones who will not be shaken are those who have made Christ their refuge, their fortress. Steve Farrar tells relates this story in his book "Standing Tall." He tells how a TV news crew in Florida was out filming the devastation that followed Hurricane Andrew several years ago. There were no houses standing anywhere. Trees were shattered and homes were just piles of rubble. You've seen the pictures. However, as the camera was going down one street it came upon a house that was standing in the midst of the devastation. The owner of the house was in his front yard cleaning up the brush and debris. The camera crew went up to him and asked why his house was standing while every other home was destroyed? He told them that he built this house himself. He built it according to the Florida state building code which promised him that if he built it according to the code it would withstand a hurricane. He listened to what the building code said and out of his faith in it obeyed. As a result his house withstood a hurricane. One day the hurricane of God's wrath is going to come upon this world and shake this entire universe. Only those who listen to what God says in Christ, depending upon his word of grace will survive. Everyone else will be destroyed. Make it your goal to keep listening to what God says in the gospel and believing it because…
III. It is the only way to be happy now and forever (vv. 28-29) As we listen to what God says through Christ we know that we are in the process of receiving an unshakable kingdom. By faith we know that God has set in motion, through the coming of Christ, his plan to establish his kingdom on this earth. We have not yet received it in full but we are in the process of receiving it. It is on the way. Because we know that we are going to live with King Jesus in his unshakable kingdom we should be grateful and so worship God with reverence and awe. This verse tells us what should happen to all who are listening to the promises of God in Christ. People who know they are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken are not people who are full of discontent and anger and complaint and bitterness. We are grateful because we are going to live in an unshakable kingdom. We are not going to be destroyed when Christ comes. Our hearts are right now full of confidence and joy and gratitude for what we have been given as a free gift by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This gratitude breaks forth into worship of God. Do you remember a couple of years ago; Oprah Winfrey gave a car to ever person in her studio audience? I don't remember why she did it but I saw a video clip of what happened when she announced to the audience that there was a car key under every seat which went to one of the brand new cars parked in the studio parking lot. The audience went nuts. There were cries of joy and applause and hugging and praise of Oprah. The hearts of every person in that room were immediately filled with joy and gratitude and overflowed into worship of Oprah. This is what human beings do when they are given gifts. We are grateful and we praise the giver and we do this because of our joy in the gift and in the love and generosity of the giver. If you are trusting in Jesus, listening to his promises then you are receiving an unshakeable kingdom. There is nothing better in the entire universe. You are the recipient of this amazing gift not because of anything you have ever done but because of what Jesus has done. By his bloody death in your place for your sins and by his present intercession you are receiving an unshakable kingdom. Therefore, our hearts are filled with gratitude and our lips and lives break forth into joyful worship. Our worship of God is not merely giddy excitement but is tempered by fear and awe because we know that the kingdom we are receiving is ruled over by the God of Mt. Sinai who is a consuming fire. We know that we should not be in this kingdom. We know that if not for the fact that Jesus was consumed by this fire we would be consumed. For all of eternity we will be living with the God who is a consuming fire. We will know every moment of eternity that the only reason we can safely dwell with this God is because of who Jesus is and what he has done. We know this now as we listen to what God says and we will know it forever by firsthand experience. So we are grateful and full of joyful, reverent praise to this great God who has not consumed us and will never do so because he consumed his own son in the fire of his wrath. My dear friends, he alone is the ground for joy. You will find no unshakable foundation for joy in health or home or the pleasures of this world. All this is shakable. But there is an unshakeable kingdom to which you belong through faith in Christ and so you can be grateful and full of reverent, joyful worship. Make it your goal to keep listening to what God says in the gospel and believing it because…
© Copyright 2007 John Swanson.
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