Text: Hebrews 12:18–29
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé

Squinting Down At Sinai

So far, the twelfth chapter of Hebrews has been an exceedingly practical chapter. And what I mean by that is that Hebrews 12 has generally felt free to tell us what to do, right? Run with endurance, stop sinning, strive for peace, strengthen weak knees, and more.

Now, beginning in verse 18 where we pick up today, the author of Hebrews will tell us why we should and why we can obey these commands—and it has everything to do with the difference between the mountain that Israel came to in the wilderness and the mountain that the Lord Jesus has brought us to in his grace. Let’s read the passage together and you’ll see what I mean. This is the Word of the Living God:

“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.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal 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. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. 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.”

-Hebrews 12:18–29

The way this text works is very simple, basically in two parts. First, from verse 18–24, we are going to answer that question: Why ought we to obey—and how can we obey, what is our motivation to obey—all the commands the author has given us so far in chapter 12?

Then, in verses 25–29, the end of the chapter, the author circles back to application and ties up this whole section—really the main points of the whole book—with three final exhortations to us. First, let’s answer the question hanging in the air in chapter 12.

Two Mountains (18–24)

The question is hanging there right in front of our noses: Why ought we obey all these commands? How can we throw off every weight of clinging sin and run with endurance the race of our lives? How can we endure hostility and struggle against the flesh and persevere in faith? 

How can we lift drooping hands and strengthen weak knees and strive for peace and holiness? Why can we put off the sexual immorality of Esau and put on rather the holiness of our holy God?

How? The answer of the text is this: Because we have not come to the mountain that cannot be touched—the mountain of Law, Mount Sinai, the mountain of shadow and fire and death—but rather to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. 

We can do these things because we stand at the peak of the mountain of God’s New Covenant grace by the sprinkled blood of our Lord Jesus. 

What we need to do to really get this passage is to follow a pathway of mountain imagery that runs through the Scriptures from beginning to end.

The Garden in Eden was situated on what Ezekiel 28:13–14 calls the holy mountain of God. That the garden was on a mountain is obvious when you realize that the rivers flowed out of the Garden, and water tends to go down.

And so the Fall was literally a fall—a fall from God’s holy mountain to the plains. We fell, and God barred the way back in with an angel of fire and sword. History from that moment on is, in one sense, the story of mankind trying with all our might and ingenuity to climb back up to the peaks, to get back to God’s holy mountain.

It is no accident that one of the very first things recorded in Genesis after the Fall is the Tower of Babel. Babel was nothing but a homemade mountain. What have we been doing since the Fall from the holy mountain of God in Eden? We’ve been inventing our own homemade versions, like Magic Mountain at Disney—mountains built by our hands to get us as high as we can go.

Mountains we can climb atop and from which we can issue our own law, our own moral codes, our own ways to be clean and to be pronounced acceptable before the new gods, fashioned in our own image.

We have put our own priests and our own angels at the gates to our mountains, and barred entry to the unclean—conveniently allowing entrance to ourselves and those we like—barring all others from our mountaintop inner rings.

And over over again in Scripture, God brings people to mountains to underscore this theme—that we are cut off from the peaks, but that he intends to bring us back.

Abraham took Isaac to be offered to God in sacrifice on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22, and why the Temple was later built on that same mountain. It’s why God Elijah to a mountain to best the prophets of Baal in a competition of gods—a mountain, by the way called Carmel, which means “garden-land” in Hebrew.

It’s why Jesus gives his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5… on a mount, and why he declares judgment on Old Covenant Israel from a mountain in Matthew 24. It’s why the Lord Jesus was transfigured on a mountaintop and then why he went to a mountain garden, Gethsemane, to do what the first Adam had failed to do in his mountain garden—obey the Father.

It’s why he gave the Great Commission on a mountain. Mountains are everywhere in the Bible’s story. But one that towers over the narrative is the one from our text, Mount Sinai.

At Sinai, god showed us the impossibility of ascending the holy mountain through our own strength. After he frees them from slavery, he takes fledgling Israel to the base of a mountain that they couldn’t even touch, let alone ascend into the presence of God.

This is the mountain described here in the first four verses as the mountain that could not be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet. On this mountain, God’s glory descended in terrible power, and he gave Moses the Law. 

The point of this mountain is plain. It’s saying: You can’t climb this mountain, this mountain of Law. It is the mountain where God gave what Paul calls a ministry of condemnation, written in stone. A ministry of death to all who approach. 

We can’t climb this mountain back to God—and we all know it, deep down, we know it. We know we can’t fulfill the law of God. In spite of all our excuses, we know it, don’t we?

Something that we do with our kids always brings this fresh realization to me of how short I myself fall. Say someone tells a lie. We ask, “That was a lie, son. What do we call someone who tells lies?” The answer is always hard to make eye contact with. The answer is that we call a person who tells lies a liar.

And that conversation always makes me realize what I am, left to my own homemade righteousness. I am a liar. I am a thief. I am a sexually immoral man. I am greedy. I am proud.

We can’t touch Sinai’s peaks, because we are not righteous. And so we have built fake mountains with fake laws to reach our own fake, homemade heavens. But does it work? No! We even violate our own made up laws! And so we add “hypocrite” to the list of nouns that accurately describe ourselves.

See, not only can we not climb the mountain of Law, we we can’t even touch it without dying. But unless we can get back up, we are cut off from life itself, from the divine life of God. 

See, this is why the gospel is so glorious: God came down. He came down from his Holy Mountain in Christ. He descended to earth that he might descend even lower—into the very heart of the earth in death—and there vanquish the Curse of the Law and ascend back to God’s mountain, freed captives in tow. 

The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is a Gospel of a Kingdom of men who now have free access to the peaks, to the Holy Place, to God’s Holy Mountain—Mount Zion. Listen to the promise of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 2:2, 

“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it…”

-Isaiah 2:2

Thus the promises of the prophet Daniel have come and are expanding now through the Great Commission, that the stone that the King saw, a stone cut out by no human hand, hurtled down from heaven to smash the kingdoms of men, to topple them and turn them to dust, and for that stone to become a mountain and cover the earth:

“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”

-Daniel 2:44-45

What is this stone that topples Kingdoms and conquers the world? It is the Lord Jesus Christ, and through him, it is the people of God! See, we don’t just climb this mountain, we are this mountain.

Or we could say that the mountain is the Kingdom of God, made up of the people of God, under the rule of God, spreading and multiplying across the globe. When you come to this mountain, our text teaches us, you are coming to a great festal gathering of saints and angels, of all of the spirits of the righteous made perfect, of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven—all of this is the language of God’s people.

Do you get that? The glorious scene of Mount Zion, this festal gathering of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, of saints and angels gathered in God’s city—this is describing us. It’s describing what we are right now and what we’re doing right now as we gather to worship.

Don’t make the mistake many make: What we are doing now, New Covenant worship, is far more glorious than that of the Old Covenant mountain of law. Just listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 3,

“Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” 

-2 Corinthians 3:7–18

Worshiping at an Active Volcano

Because the Lord Jesus descended and died and rose and ascended to the right hand of the Father—and because he has brought us through that death, burial, resurrection, and ascension with him—we stand on the peaks of the great, eternal, Mount Zion, clothed in glory. And so, he circles back and applies this great truth in verses 25–29,

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. 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.”

-Hebrews 12:25–29

There are three main exhortations by way of application in what we just read, and I will close very simply by pointing our eyes at them together:

1. Don’t refuse him who is speaking.

Don’t make the mistake that many make, who think that this glorious New Covenant of grace somehow comes with less warning. Don’t make the mistake that many make, who think that the New Covenant, unlike the Old, has no sanctions. It does. If they did not escape who refused the God of Sinai, how much more will judgment come for those who refuse the God of Mount Zion? 

2. Let us be grateful for the unshakeable Kingdom we have received.

The author refers us to the prophecy of Haggai 2:6–9,

“For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.’”

-Haggai 2:6–9

Here’s the connection the author is making: The Old Covenant Law at Sinai came with a shaking of the earth, but the shaking that comes with the New Covenant is far greater—it shakes the heavens, too. 

And the result of this shaking, according to this prophecy, is the streaming of the nations fo the house of the Lord, to fill up God’s house with the treasures of the nations, resulting in the glory of this New Covenant people, this heavenly Mount Zion, far surpassing the glory of the Old.

Here’s the point: Through the gospel, God is subduing the nations. He is bringing the nations into his house through the Son. It means, friends, that we are not a people of an impermanent Kingdom that is on the way out. No, we are members of the Kingdom of whose increase and government there will be no end, as Isaiah says. It means that the Great Commission will not fail, but will succeed. 

God is shaking the kingdoms of man to the foundations, in order that the Kingdom of God might remain and endure forever and ever, world without end. Amen.

And so finally, number three:

3. Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe at our God.

Verses 28 and 29,

“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.”

-Hebrews 12:28–29

We don’t trifle with God. We don’t treat him with irreverent flippancy. We don’t cater our worship around our own preferences—as if we were worshiping ourselves. No, we come to God with awe and reverence and respect. We come to him as we would the edge of an active volcano—with awe and fear and wonder.

We tend to think that the worship of God is somehow a less serious thing in the New Covenant than it was in the Old. Make no mistake: Our worship comes with far greater weight than theirs. The Old Testament was the toddler phase of the people of God. The New Covenant is the beginnings of its manhood and will stretch into its full and glorious maturity.

So we don’t come on Sundays, Refuge, for our own sakes, but to worship God. We don’t shape our service around our preferences, but around the right worship of God. We gather for his glory, and in that glory, we find our glory. 

Let me leave you, then, with this: 

Yes, our father Adam fell from his mountain garden, and his sons craned their necks at Sinai's peak. From the tower of Babel to the ivory tower, to the green groves and high places of our idol worship—nothing could bring us back up.

But by the shed blood of our Lord, we look down on Sinai's peaks through the clouds, seated as we are atop the heavenly Mount Zion. May we worship and live as if we believe that it is so. Let’s pray.