1. "The distinction between morality and popularity fades."

2. "If Sinai is the mountain in the wilderness that came to represent the old covenant, Mount Zion, really even in the Old Testament, had come in the Psalms and in Isaiah and the prophets to stand for God Himself, the dwelling place of the Lord."

3. "They were downgrading from the true heavenly worship of God to the merely earthly signs and symbols which were to teach them about the true heavenly worship of God."

4. "Your eternal life is not something that begins at death. Your eternal life is something that begins at conversion, when you are born again into this new life."

5. "Abel's blood cried out for justice to claim the life of the guilty. Christ's blood cries out for forgiveness for the guilty. Justice's claims having been met in His death."

6. "They saw the exodus. They receive the law, but then what happens? They worship God unacceptably. And is it any surprise that once their worship has gone astray, that their trust would fold?"

7. "If you will not have Christ for your Savior, you will have no Savior at all."

8. "Being certain of God's goodness to us and His pledge of continuing and even increasing experience of His grace, do we really have any reason to be marked by anything other than an underlying cheerfulness?"

9. "Faith itself is really a thankful acceptance of what God has done, and such thankfulness is an expression of love."

10. "These unshakable saints had unshakable faith because they've been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken."

Observation Questions

1. According to Hebrews 12:22-24, what specific things have Christians "come to" in contrast to Mount Sinai? List the elements the author describes as part of Mount Zion.

2. In Hebrews 12:24, what does the text say about the blood of Jesus compared to the blood of Abel? What word does it use to describe Jesus' blood?

3. What warning does the author give in Hebrews 12:25, and what comparison does he make between those who refused God's warning "on earth" versus refusing "Him who warns from heaven"?

4. According to Hebrews 12:26-27, what did God's voice do "at that time" at Sinai, and what does the promise from Haggai say God will do "yet once more"? What will be removed and what will remain?

5. In Hebrews 12:28, what reason does the author give for why Christians should "be grateful," and what kind of worship does he call them to offer?

6. How does Hebrews 12:29 describe God, and how does this description connect to the call for "reverence and awe" in verse 28?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does the author contrast Mount Sinai (verses 18-21) with Mount Zion (verses 22-24)? What is he trying to help the Hebrew Christians understand about what they have received in Christ versus what they would be returning to?

2. The sermon explains that Abel's blood "cried out for justice" while Christ's blood "speaks a better word." What does this contrast reveal about the nature and purpose of Christ's sacrifice compared to the consequences of human sin?

3. The author warns that those who reject "Him who warns from heaven" face a greater judgment than those who rejected God's warning at Sinai. What does this "lesser to greater" argument teach us about the seriousness of turning away from Christ?

4. What does the phrase "a kingdom that cannot be shaken" (verse 28) mean in the context of the coming cosmic shaking described in verses 26-27? How does this unshakable kingdom relate to the Christian's confidence and security?

5. How does the description of God as "a consuming fire" (verse 29) shape our understanding of what it means to offer "acceptable worship with reverence and awe"? Why is this a fitting conclusion to the book's argument?

Application Questions

1. The Hebrew Christians were tempted to return to old religious practices because following Jesus had become socially costly. What specific "costs" of following Christ do you face in your relationships, workplace, or community, and how does the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem in verses 22-24 help you evaluate whether faithfulness is "worth it"?

2. The sermon emphasized that Christians should be marked by habitual gratitude rather than suspicious comparison shopping about their faith. What areas of your life reveal more complaining or longing for what you don't have than thankfulness for the unshakable kingdom you've received? What would it look like to cultivate gratitude this week?

3. The author calls Christians to worship God with "reverence and awe" because He is a consuming fire. In what ways might you approach God with "misplaced familiarity or casualness" in your personal devotions, prayer life, or corporate worship? What specific change could you make to honor Him more appropriately?

4. The sermon mentioned that false worship at Sinai (the golden calf) led to a failure of trust and obedience when it came time to enter the Promised Land. How does your approach to worshiping God—whether in private or with the church—affect your ability to trust and obey Him in daily decisions and challenges?

5. The passage warns against refusing Christ and drifting away from the faith. What practical habits, relationships, or spiritual disciplines help you "keep going" toward the heavenly Jerusalem rather than slowly drifting back toward reliance on things that will be shaken? Who could you ask to help you persevere?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Exodus 19:10-25 — This passage describes the terrifying scene at Mount Sinai that Hebrews 12:18-21 summarizes, helping us understand what the old covenant experience was like and why the new covenant is superior.

2. Jeremiah 31:31-34 — This prophecy of the new covenant is the foundation for the author's argument throughout Hebrews that Jesus mediates a better covenant with better promises.

3. Haggai 2:1-9 — The source of the quotation in Hebrews 12:26, this passage speaks of God's promise to shake the heavens and earth and fill His house with glory, pointing to the coming of the Messiah.

4. Hebrews 11:8-16 — This passage describes Abraham and Sarah seeking a heavenly homeland and city, providing the background for understanding what it means that Christians have "come to" the heavenly Jerusalem.

5. Revelation 21:1-8 — This vision of the new Jerusalem descending from heaven shows the ultimate fulfillment of what Christians have already come to in Christ, the unshakable kingdom that will remain after all else is removed.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: The Practice of Comparison Shopping Applied to Faith

II. The Greater Privilege Given to Christians (Hebrews 12:22-24)

III. The Greater Judgment Threatened for Turning Away (Hebrews 12:25-27)

IV. The Final Faithfulness Called For (Hebrews 12:28-29)

V. Exhortation to Persevere Until Faith Becomes Sight

Detailed Sermon Outline

The New Testament letter to the Hebrews is an old example of a still popular pastime, comparison shopping. Especially in days of inflation like our own, people notice a difference in things like gas prices. They'll notice the station over on 9th has this price, the station on 4th is other, and they'll go to where the difference is in their favor. Or with big holiday meals coming up, people not only want to see if they can find turkey, but if they can find it at a better price than someplace else. These are natural steps that we take.

Of course, not all costs are financial. Politicians these last few months have been weighing up how many votes this position would get them or that position might cost them. Even in the Senate this past week it seems, some have decided that immediate affirmation by many is more important than protecting religious freedoms that have long marked our land. The trade of our city is marked by this two-step process of first deciding what we think about something and then step two, altering that based on what we guess the public reaction will be. The distinction between morality and popularity fades.

Something like these examples was happening, it seems, among the first century church that the book of Hebrews was written to.

Only their calculations weren't merely financial or political, though that may have been a part of what they were thinking. Their question was a religious one. And socially, it seems like a religious choice many of these Jews had made to recognize Jesus as the long-promised anointed King, the Messiah, had grown too costly for them. And so they looked longingly over at the temple and the ancient rotation of sacrifices, food laws, feasts and fasts. And then back to their own Christian assembly gathered around the Word, which told them of the completion of all the bloody sacrifices in Christ.

And they simply wondered, is it worth it? Is the price that I'm paying for Going to the church, we don't know exactly what that price was, was it worth it? Perhaps social ostracism, likely even with their own families. Perhaps political penalties from the Roman government whose only legal exceptions from worshiping Caesar were made for Jews, not Christians. At least these costs we're causing some to reconsider, to start missing church, to start rethinking Jesus and their allegiance to Him.

And so this letter has been written comparing Jesus with Jewish practices, the New Covenant with the Old, and warning the Christians about the danger of turning back from Jesus. Now there is chapter 13 in Hebrews that we'll consider next month. It's pretty different, it's more miscellaneous in its instructions. Really our author closes his main argument that we've been following along all year with our passage we consider today, the end of chapter 12. It's really the conclusion of the argument of comparison and warning that the writer has been making since chapter 1.

So let's turn now to chapter 12. You'll find it on page 1009 in the Bibles provided. In our last study, the writer summarized the alternative people were leaving Jesus for. He summarized it as Mount Sinai. And then in our passage, he turns to what they had come to in Christ.

So let me back up before our passage. Start reading with verse 18 and then I'll read through the end of the chapter. Hebrews chapter 12. Beginning at verse 18, 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 general 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.

In our passage I want us to take note of the greater privilege that these Christians had received there in verses 22 to 24, the greater privilege. And the greater judgment we face in turning from this greater privilege, the greater judgment in verses 25 to 27. And then the final faithfulness that we're called to in verses 28 and 29, the final faithfulness that we're called to in verses 28 and 29. And I pray that as we consider this, you will be instructed and encouraged on to faithfulness, to whatever the final faithfulnesses are that God calls you to in the remainder of your pilgrimage.

So compared to the Jews before them, for these Christians, first we see in verses 22 to 24, a greater privilege has been given. He's saying our place is better. He says, Christians in verse 22 have come not to Mount Sinai that we read about there in verses 18 to 21, but to Mount Zion, and we should appreciate this. Look again at verse 22. He says, you,'ve come to the city of the living God.

The pivotal word really is right there at the very beginning of verse 22. You see it? It's the word but. Lets you know, ah, okay, this sort of paragraph, as the ESV has it, is in two halves. There is the half about Mount Sinai, but now there is this other half, this contrasting.

So after representing what these believers had not come to in coming to Christ, all represented by Mount Sinai, we know from Galatians 3:11 that no one is justified by the law. A perfect standard will not be the way you or I climb back into God's favor. We consider this last time in verses 18 to 21. But now our author turns to another biblical mountain. So if Sinai is the mountain in the wilderness that came to represent the old covenant, Mount Zion, really even in the Old Testament, had come in the Psalms and in Isaiah and the prophets to stand for God Himself, the dwelling place of the Lord.

This was the main mountain in Jerusalem and was meant symbolically to show God's dwelling place in the heavens. We read in Isaiah 59, and a redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression. Or that famous Messianic prophecy in Zechariah 9, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation, is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. So in the New Testament, Mount Sinai comes to be contrasted with the earthly Mount Zion. It was in Jerusalem that Christ shed blood, established the new covenant, and that is our authors called it earlier in his letter, the new and living way to God.

He is enthusiastic about his description here about Mount Zion in verse 22. But you'll notice the Mount Zion he's talking about is not the literal mountain in Jerusalem. He's only using that as an analogy. He says in verse 22, He calls it the heavenly Jerusalem. So he's taking that contrast between two earthly mountains and he's taking the second of them and speaking of that as an analogy to the heavenly Jerusalem.

He's saying it's not the earthly city in Israel he's writing about, but the true one in heaven that he's just spoken of earlier of the heavenly tabernacle, that the earthly one had pointed to. It's the same idea. So that the earthly one sits there as a reminder to us. So the contrast he's making here in our passage is between the earthly Sinai and the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Zion. So he explains the difference to those who would turn away from Jesus to return to the temple sacrifices.

They were downgrading from the true heavenly worship of God to the merely earthly signs and symbols which were to teach them about the true heavenly worship of God. Notice also in verse 22, He calls it the city of the living God. One thinks of Psalm 87, celebrating Zion. On the holy mountain stands the city He founded, the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.

Except, of course, he's speaking not of this earthly Jerusalem, but he's using it as a type to speak of the heavenly one. The heavenly Jerusalem is the ultimate goal of the people of God. And that's why we can be said to both have come to it in Christ and still be progressing toward it. You understand that in the language here.

You look again up in chapter 11, verses 10 to 16.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 10, For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man in Him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city. So friends, you understand this teaching about a home sickness. This is not a home sickness for our literal physical home.

Wherever I travel around the world, people always tell me that their country is God's country, and they smile knowingly, looking for you to acknowledge that. This can be any place from Serbia to Kentucky. You know, this is God's country, right? Okay. And we know what you mean.

There's natural affection for the place where we've been brought up. That's appropriate. But friends, what we're seeing here is not that. What we're seeing here that is an analogy of, it's perhaps a type of, that there is a real home country for those made in God's image that we do naturally or supernaturally have a longing for. And that's the country in which God dwells.

And that's what we're being told here, we have come to in Christ. We see the heavenly Jerusalem. So Abraham and Sarah were looking for this city that you and I now inhabit spiritually. Paul says in Ephesians 2:6 that God has raised us up and seated us in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus. And someday we will inhabit this very city physically.

Now on Mount Sinai, God's presence was indicated by the storm. But here in this heavenly Jerusalem, God's presence is indicated not by the lonely solitary presence of Mount Sinai, but Note that the Mount Zion that's described in these verses is called a city. And we can see why when we read here, it's filled with angels and humans. Verse 22, There are innumerable angels in festal gathering. This idea of so many angels we see at various places in the Old Testament, it indicates the presence of God.

And you even see there characterized what they're doing here. It's this festal gathering. Only time this word is used in the New Testament. It's the word that would be used of the kind of public celebrations they would have, say, around the Olympic Games. It's a festival gathering.

That's the great celebratory look of what's happening in the heavenly Jerusalem. It's a joyful assembly that the Christians have come to, in contrast with Sinai's dread. You remember up in verse 21 where it says, Even Moses said, I tremble. So here when we come to this final heavenly Jerusalem, here the journeying is done. Here is the rest for all of God's people, the rest that we have entered into as we've entered into Christ by faith.

Then in verse 23 he continues with the image of an assembly and the writer calls it a church of the firstborn. Now this doesn't mean a church of those who are privileged as opposed to other siblings. The firstborn are not referring to the angels. Christ is called the firstborn a few times in the New Testament, but that's merely a way of expressing his preeminence over all creation. The firstborn here in the original is actually in the plural.

So we know it's not referring to Christ. It's referring to all the firstborn, all of us who are firstborn. That is, who are united to Christ, the preeminent one. We are united to him by faith. So this is referring to the Christians who've been born again by God's Spirit.

We are those who are already, he says here, enrolled in heaven. Have you thought about that? You are already enrolled in heaven. You've already begun, in one sense. Your eternal life is not something that begins at death.

Your eternal life is something that begins at conversion, when you are born again into this new life. Brothers and sisters, how great is that? That we have already started in the city of God. He again depicts coming to Mount Zion as coming into the presence of God, the judge of all, he describes him as, and what an awesome thought that is. The great cloud of witnesses testifies to God's special presence there.

That's what everybody's doing there. How great is our God. Earlier in chapter 4 he's written, no creature is hidden from his sight. But all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. We will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

Each of us will give an account of himself to Him.

Sometimes people feel that this part or that part of their life has been wasted. They taught in this school for years with no effect. They worked for that company, they just were laid off finally. Nothing really came of their family, the neighborhood seemed to just deteriorate. And we have these passing judgments that we ourselves make upon various earthly endeavors.

And yet, friends, we're not the final judges of them. God is the final judge. God will say what these things were worth. Ultimately it is God who speaks the truth about our lives. If God is the judge of all, then He is the one that you will one day and soon want to finally and ultimately please.

His is the pleasure you live for. The writer here has just presented it as an assembly of the firstborn, the inheritance of the blessings of Christ. Now in verse 23 he puts it this way, the spirits of the righteous made perfect. This city is inhabited by God and his people made perfect. But how could sinners like us be made perfect?

Well, look, the heart of the vision that they're coming to is right here in coming to this new covenant we see in verse 24. You've come to the blood of Christ. This writer has been at pains throughout the book to show that Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. That new covenant is described in the Old Testament in Jeremiah 31, and it's the backbone really of what this writer is pleading with the Jewish Christians to say, look, don't turn from the new covenant back to the old. You're misunderstanding what the old was for, and you are clearly ignoring the benefits of the new, of what we have been given in this new covenant.

There's no reason to ever turn away from the blood of Christ to the blood of bulls and goats. Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, the sprinkled blood. Jesus, of course, that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Now that may have been a little surprising turn to use. Why Abel?

Who's Abel? Abel, you remember, this is the very early Abel. This is Adam and Eve's son. This is Cain and Abel. This is back in Genesis chapter 4.

Now Cain said to his brother Abel, Let's go out to the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? I don't know, he replied. Am I my brother's keeper?

The Lord said, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. That's why the writer of the Hebrews, I think, picks that up right here. The blood crying out. The blood is saying something.

So the blood of Abel spoke, so to speak, of guilt for sin. But it only spoke of guilt for sin. Jesus' blood speaks of guilt and of forgiveness, of killing and of laying down one's own life, of our sin and of His loving righteousness, even in offering Himself, of our sin, but also of God's holiness. In short, Jesus' blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. And that is the word that those of us who call ourselves Christians have come to.

We haven't come to a physical mountain that mainly displays our distance from a holy God. I mean, that's a true thing, but we already knew that. There's nothing new there. There's no advance, there's no new hope. No, here in verse 24, though, we see that we have come to the blood of Christ.

So once again, this writer is contrasting the temple Judaism that they had known in the past to an understanding of Jesus as the Messiah who had come to fulfill all the promises of the old covenant. And he's saying that there is no reason whatsoever to even begin to hesitate and price compare and choose the old covenant of promises when we now have the new covenant of fulfillment in Christ. This is the great gift that has come to believers in the coming of Christ. Not merely knowledge of God's holiness and our sin and promises of a way to span the distance, but the actual provision of a sacrifice sufficient for our sins, which he said earlier has made a new and living way into the very presence of God for us, into our being able to establish a loving relationship with this truly fearfully holy God.

Friend, if you're visiting with us today, maybe you're politely trapped by family for Thanksgiving, we're glad you're here, thank you for coming. This is the good news of Christianity, that you're not an accident, you're not a mistake, you're not just a cosmic happenstance, that there is a sovereign God of this world and He made each person in His image, and that you have completely messed it up, not completely in the sense that you've done everything wrong in your life, but completely in the sense that most fundamentally, the one it is most important for you to relate to, more important Then to your mom and dad, to your wife, your kids, your relationship with God, you have completely messed up. And we know this not because I know you personally, but because I know what God has said in the Bible about all of us, that we have turned from God to worship really ourselves, what we want to do. And God in his amazing perseverance and mercy has sent his only son to live the life that we should have lived, and to die a death in the place of all of us that would ever turn from our sins and trust in him. He paid a sacrifice for our sins.

And God has raised him from the dead, showing he accepted that sacrifice. Jesus rose and presented that sacrifice in heaven to his reigning Father who accepted it. And Jesus then in the language of earlier in Hebrews, sat down and began to reign as the anointed king, the Messiah. And he calls all of us to repent of our sins and to trust in him. Friend, that can be a new life for you.

You want to understand what that means, what that would look like in your own life. Talk to somebody who brought you today. Talk to anybody at the doors on the way out. You can either have a conversation with us or we can suggest a book you can read. We'll do anything we can to help you understand more of what it would mean for you to come to understand this good news in your own life.

Abel's blood cried out for justice to claim the life of the guilty. Christ's blood cries out for forgiveness for the guilty. Justice's claims having been met in His death. Friends, consider how God's own Word is heard through the sacrifice of Christ.

Reflecting on this description of Mount Zion, and there's so much in In verses 22, 23, 24 to talk about, we could do a whole sermon series through like aspects of the church that we see, aspects of God's people. Spurgeon described the church as a people chosen, then called, then culled, separated from the world, then consecrated, then congregated. Because I know what about 5% of you are like, I will say those five C words again in order.

Chosen, called, cullEd, consecrated, then congregated. God in His love elects us, by His Spirit calls us, by His grace separates us, in Christ congregates us together, and forevermore uses us in His service. The writer here throughout this letter has shown Christians that we are objects of God's great work.

In designing and bringing to pass the Christian church. And it is our privilege to have been so elected and called, so separated and congregated, and to be still so employed by God himself to this very day. Friend, what other organization in the world is only founded and made possible and entered into through God's only Son, giving his own life for it?

There's not another one. This is it. What an honor to be associated with it and so with God Himself.

Now, if all of this is our greater privilege that we've known before, even in the old covenant from Moses, then can we be too surprised that we see in verses 25 to 27 a greater judgment is threatened. You see how he's kind of summarizing his case for the whole book. He summarized the privileges in Christ, now he's summarizing the warnings of turning away. He tells this to them as a final plea, don't turn away from the Lord Jesus. If you appreciate your greater privileges, you must beware of incurring a greater judgment.

You know, throughout the Bible, stability is an image of safety. David said in Psalm 16, I have set the Lord always before me, because He's at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Psalm 125 says, those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. Or the Lord's words in Isaiah 54, For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and My covenant of peace shall not be removed.

In verse 25 we see that if the Sinai generation was so judged for turning away and worshiping the golden calf and refusing to go into the Promised Land, and isn't that an interesting sequence, by the way, thinking of that Sinai generation? They saw the exodus. They receive the law, but then what happens? They worship God unacceptably. They worship God with the golden calf that he's expressly forbidden.

And is it any surprise that once their worship has gone astray, that their trust would fold? That when it gets to the point of going into the Promised Land, actually trusting him to obey, having cut themselves off From the true worship of God, they lose the power, the discernment, the will to obey Him. Friends, don't assume that the worship of God is unimportant to the experience of your trust, your experience in God. This generation all fell in the wilderness wanderings. And what He's saying is that we will be judged even more if we reject the warning not just from the earth, but the warning from heaven.

The writer to the Hebrew warns them in verse 25 here, See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking, referring, of course, to God in Christ. And he reminds him of what happened to those who refused God's revelation at Sinai. And he says, Look, if they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, how much less will we if we turn away from Him who warns us from heaven, Jesus Christ. It's the author's typical lesser to greater comparative argument. So they had tremendous warnings from Mount Sinai, but we have warnings from the One who has risen from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of God.

So if we've seen even they were judged by turning away, how much worse judgment will we face? You know, the book of Hebrews is marked by these seven warning passages. That's one way you could outline it. If you want to go look at my message of the Old Testament book, you can find that one sermon on Hebrews, and you'll see it just kind of lined out there by these seven warnings. I wonder if you've ever listened to them all together.

They're very brief. Here are the warnings of the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 2 verse 1, Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation. And then over in chapter 3, verse 15, As it is said, 'Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.' or then down in chapter 4, verse 2, For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

Then down in chapter 4, verse 12, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. Over in chapter 6, verse 4, it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance. Since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt. And then over in chapter 10, verse 28, because between 6 and 10 is when he goes into the long argument about Jesus as the great High Priest.

Chapter 10, verse 28, Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace? And then here in our passage, chapter 12, verse 25, 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. He contrasts that in verse 26, he says, At that time, meaning at Sinai, His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, and he quotes from the Old Testament prophet Haggai, chapter 2, Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.

So just follow what he's saying here. He's saying the shaking of the earth at Mount Sinai, the giving of the law, would not be the last shaking of the world that God would do. There would be another. It's promised in Haggai. But this one will involve the heavens as well.

This time all that is not eternal, including these types and shadows that fail at the temple, all of those will be destroyed, and all of those who put their trust in them will be condemned. So when He returns, some things will be shaken or destroyed, and others will remain. Verse 27, 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. So this is his exhortation to us, to rely on those things that cannot be shaken, and warns us not to reject him who warns from heaven and so turn away back to the very things which we're told will be shaken, will be destroyed, will be removed. Turn not away from those things that will remain.

Friends, as I've reflected on this and preached through this book this year and read these verses to you, Words fail me to warn you more. The warnings that I've read you are clear, they're emphatic, they're repeated. If you will not have Christ for your Savior, you will have no Savior at all. And so in the last couple of verses, verses 28 and 29, he calls for a final faithfulness. So he's saying, Let's be grateful and worship God because our God is a consuming fire.

Appreciate where he's brought us. Beware of turning your back on it and keep going till your faith becomes sight and you see the King with your own eyes. The writer calls us in verse 28, Therefore let us be grateful. And worship God. That brief phrase in verse 28, Let us be grateful.

He's saying, that's the attitude you should have. Not the suspicious attitude of looking at all this and then looking carefully back over the sacrifices, comparing and contrasting and wondering, maybe I had a better deal back over here. He's saying, that's the opposite of the attitude that you should have. Your attitude should be one of gratitude. Of thankfulness.

He clearly gives the reason for it right there, for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. This unshakableness of the kingdom is a way to speak of the kingdom's lastingness, its abiding, its eternity. And this is the kingdom that we are inheriting. And so we should be thankful. Our attitude shouldn't be, as theirs was at the time when this was written, one of considering whether they should reject this gift.

Rather they should be thankful that God has decided to give them this kingdom that could not be shaken, this eternal life with Him.

So friend, as we begin to finish up on this argument, this main argument in the book of Hebrews, I would just ask you, are you thankful? Is this your response to what God has done for you in Christ? Are you habitually grateful to God? Or is your mind more often filled with things you don't have? Friends you've lost, relationships that have been ended, offices and opportunities that you once held but do no longer?

Is Thanksgiving in your life limited to one week? Maybe one afternoon a year? My Christian brothers and sisters, what else can we be but thankful, given God's infinite goodness to us that the writer has laid out before us? And if you are so thankful, how can you show that? Have you considered that question before?

How can you show the gratitude that you feel? When the writer here exhorted these early Christians to be not doubting but thankful, what would it look like if they were to have obeyed those instructions? Well, I'll tell you one very simple component of such gratitude. It's having a cheerful temper. Having a cheerful temper.

Really, Mark, all of these great pyrotechnics of the book of Hebrews and you get down to telling us to cheer up.

Well, friends, it's a bigger matter than you may have appreciated. It may indicate more about your own soul than you might like to admit.

Being certain of God's goodness to us and His pledge of continuing and even increasing experience of His grace, do we really have any reason to be marked by anything other than an underlying cheerfulness. I'm not arguing for a flippant, casual, secular optimism, but rather a deep and robust thankfulness, evidencing itself in the constant practice of giving thanks to God and of resting in the certainty of His goodness. Faith itself is really a thankful acceptance of what God has done, and such thankfulness is an expression of love. How many people even understood that they are so loved, let alone return the thanks to God that He deserves for this love? In His command to us as Christians to be thankful, He's doing no more than calling us to acknowledge the wonderful reality that there is for us in Christ.

Look at this city He's called us into. I don't mean Washington, D.C. I mean this heavenly Jerusalem filled with innumerable angels in a festal gathering. That's where we've ended up by God's grace.

We shouldn't refuse this gift of gratitude. Praise God that in this new covenant God has also given us the right way to worship Him, the ability to approach God, to know Him. That's really what this whole letter has been about, and that's what's behind this final command there in verse Let us offer to God acceptable worship. That must mean that there must be an unacceptable way to worship God, which is an absolutely new thought for most people today. Most people today think God's pretty desperate.

Anything we throw in his direction he should be thankful for. But that's not what we have presented in the Bible at all. No, this author knows that people could approach God wrongly. And so he specifies that they're to approach God with reverence and awe. That is, giving careful attention in respect to how he has told us to worship him.

How has he told us to worship him? Not through bulls and goats being killed, but through Jesus. To have reverence and awe means you approach through Jesus, means you trust in the instructed way, Jesus and his sacrifice. And we do so because of His final statement in verse 29, Because our God will condemn those who worship falsely. I think that's why He says here in verse 29 that our God is a consuming fire.

It seems that some people might be tempted to treat God with a misplaced familiarity or casualness that show they don't really understand who He is. Reverence and awe are part of what it means for us to worship God acceptably. But friends, that reverence and awe doesn't so much mean singing this kind of hymn as opposed to that kind of hymn, but tell me the words the hymns say. Are they directing you to strength and trust in yourself and what you do, or to strength and trust in God and what He has done? You want to serve a God in a way that pleases Him well, then approach Him reverently and with awe.

And that means in the way that he's commanded you to do. And that's not through the sacrifice of animals, but through the sacrifice of his only son. And keep doing that. You see in verses 28 and 29, this is really an exclamation point to the letter's whole message reminding us that a final faithfulness is called for. So let us be grateful and worship God, because our God is a consuming fire.

So let's keep going. This scene up in verses 22 to 24, this is the destination of our journey that we've been on through the whole book of Hebrews. This festival gathering is where we've been headed to. So we should keep going toward it, further up and further in, as Lewis would say, in Narnia. Brothers and sisters, how grateful we should be for such a gift, a gift purchased at such a cost.

Christ's sacrifice has ended all other sacrifices. So to trust that sacrifice and to restrain ourselves from offering up other animal sacrifices or others that we could think to give up as opposed to His to trust in other things, to not do that, to do what he calls us to do here, is a way of praising him as being the completely good and reliable God that he is as we trust in Christ's sacrifice as sufficient. So this and only this is the worship that is acceptable to God. The Lord Jesus taught God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth. Paul writes, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Because our God will condemn those who falsely worship Him. This is the last major warning for us from the book of Hebrews. I wonder what would help you to keep going. And not ever start to rethink Jesus and your allegiance to him. I'll tell you one thing that helps me and that I work on hard here.

It's the hymns. I work to find hymns that help us to have the kind of spiritual vision that we're given here in verses 22, 23, 24, the innumerable angels, the heavenly festival gathering. I think that spiritual reality that's depicted there that will become visible to us soon enough in reality, that's what we want to catch a glimpse of as we sing. Don't you think that would help us? That's what hymn writers often try to help us do.

That's why I'm glad to try to find hymns like There Is a Happy Land or Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal or Where Shall I Be? Or Glory Land. Well, a new one that I've noticed that we've not sung yet, but that Isaac Watts wrote two centuries ago, is called why Do We Mourn Departing Friends? And it's longer than you want to hear right now, but you wouldn't mind getting four stanzas of it. Why do we mourn departing friends or shake at death's alarms?

'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends to call them to His arms. The graves of all the saints He blessed and softened every bed. Where should the dying members rest but with their dying head? Thence He arose, ascending high, and showed our feet the way. Up to the Lord our flesh shall fly at the great rising day.

Then let the last loud trumpet sound and bid our kindred rise.

Awake, ye nations underground, ye saints ascend the skies. Friends, I'll tell you what would change your perspective if all the dead people in all the cemeteries of Washington got up right now while we're talking, not in some zombie-like way, but like in a Christian resurrection day. If you saw them right now being raised up, all of the things that you say you already believe, your beliefs don't change at all. But your interaction with those beliefs, your perspective on your job, on the argument with your husband or wife, on the concerns you have, I predict would change massively and quickly.

Friends, all you're noticing is what it is that we already say we believe. If that is true, find those things that encourage you in that faith. And that's how you continue on. You keep going till your faith becomes sight and you see the King with your own eyes.

Friends, Christ continued on to the very end, enduring the cross for the joy set before Him. If we are truly His, we will do the same. As an historian, I always look at what happened on this date. I just can't help it. It's part of my life's vocation, I think.

Today is November the 20th, and in God's providence there have been a lot of testimonies to enduring faith in Christ that have taken place on November the 20th. It's an anniversary of so many faithful endurers to the end. Two of the colonial period's most eminent Baptist pastors were dismissed from their labors below, as their contemporaries put it, to wear a crown of glory above on November the 20th. In 1771 it was Shubal Stearns who started the Sandy Creek Baptist Church down in Guilford, North Carolina and started a revival that ended up beginning hundreds of churches. In 1806, after 60 years in the ministry, it was Isaac Backus of New England's turn to rest from his earthly labors on November the 20th.

It's also the anniversary of more dramatic faithfulnesses. On November the 20th in the year 869, Edmund, King of East Anglia, was defeated and captured by invading Vikings. They offered him his life if he would simply renounce his Christian faith, his whole life just for renouncing his faith. This apparently sincere Christian had memorized much of the book of Psalms. He recited them regularly.

He declined to renounce his faith. And so they thought they could bring him to his senses by beating him. And so they beat him. And he again decided not to renounce his faith. And so finally they killed him.

And then almost a thousand years later, on November the 20th, 1839, Reverend John Williams and James Harris, both men who I would call young in their 40s of the London Missionary Society were killed by the natives of the island of Eromango in the South Pacific while they were endeavoring to plant the gospel there. Both their bodies were afterwards cooked and used in a cannibal feast.

And then there's Sharif. Who we've looked in on at various points in this series in the Hebrews, a convert to Christ, known to people who are known to us, still on the run, being threatened, being helped by some of you, thank you, and yet trusting God's promises through all the challenges he's having to endure. Friends, taking the gospel around the world to where it's never been, going from being a king to being captured and threatened, pastoring a church for decades, even in the case of Bakker, it meant you had to be thrown in jail sometimes, or refusing to apostatize even when family and enemies like Sharifs are threatening. The faithfulness is the perseverance that God calls each of us to.

Can look so different. And yet it's really all fundamentally the same, isn't it? These unshakable saints had unshakable faith because they've been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken. They served God with reverence and awe, having received that kingdom that cannot be shaken, that will never end.

Our church's statement of faith, Article 11, is simply this: We believe that such only are real believers as endure unto the end; that their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from superficial professors; that a special Providence watches over their welfare; and they are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. Let's pray together.

Lord God, we rejoice that in the promise of the shaking that is to come, you cannot be shaken. Those who trust in you alone will persevere. Thank you, Lord, for causing us to be distinguished from our own former selves who relied on things unreliable and untrustworthy. Thank you for the new life we have in Christ. Oh, Lord, preserve us, we pray, for your glory and our good.

In Jesus' name, Amen.