For you have not come to a mountain that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness, darkness, storm, the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them, for they could not stand that which was commanded, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned”. So fearful was the appearance that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”
But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable multitudes of angels, to the festal gathering and assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than that of Abel.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv18, 19, 22, 23, 24 18. For ye are not come, etc. He fights…
18. For ye are not come, etc. He fights now with a new argument, for he proclaims the greatness of the grace made known by the Gospel, that we may reverently receive it; and secondly, he commends to us its benign characters that he might allure us to love and desire it. He adds weight to these two things by a comparison between the Law and the Gospel; for the higher the excellency of Christ’s kingdom than the dispensation of Moses, and the more glorious our calling than that of the ancient people, the more disgraceful and the less excusable is our ingratitude, unless we embrace in a becoming manner the great favor offered to us, and humbly adore the majesty of Christ which is here made evident; and then, as God does not present himself to us clothed in terrors as he did formerly to the Jews, but lovingly and kindly invites us to himself, so the sin of ingratitude will be thus doubled, except we willingly and in earnest respond to his gracious invitation.
Then let us first remember that the Gospel is here compared with the Law; and secondly, that there are two parts in this comparison, — that God’s glory displays itself more illustriously in the Gospel than in the Law, — and that his invitation is now full of love, but that formerly there was nothing but the greatest terrors.
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Unto the mount that might be touched, etc. This sentence is variously expounded; but it seems to me that an earthly mountain is set in opposition to the spiritual; and the words which follow show the same thing, that burned with fire, blackness, darkness, tempest, etc.; for these were signs which God manifested, that he might secure authority and reverence to his Law. When considered in themselves they were magnificent and truly celestial; but when we come to the kingdom of Christ, the things which God exhibits to us are far above all the heavens. It hence follows, that all the dignity of the Law appears now earthly: thus mount Sinai might have been touched by hands; but mount Sion cannot be known but by the spirit. All the things recorded in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus were visible things; but those which we have in the kingdom of Christ are hid from the senses of the flesh.
Should any one object and say, that the meaning of all these things was spiritual, and that there are at this day external exercises of religion by which we are carried up to heaven: to this I answer, that the Apostle speaks comparatively; and no one can doubt but that the Gospel, contrasted with the Law, excels in what is spiritual, but the Law in earthly symbols.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv18, 21, 23 Which might be touched with hands, which was of…
Which might be touched with hands, which was of a gross and earthly matter.
Now he applieth the same exhortation, to the Prophetical and kingly office of Christ compared with Moses, after this sort, If the majesty of the Law was so great, how great think you that the glory of Christ and the Gospel is? And this comparison he declareth also particularly.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv18–24 18 For ye are not come unto the mount…
18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,
Ver. 18. For ye are not come, &c.] q.d. You are not under the law, but under grace, beware therefore of profaneness and licentiousness. For think you that God hath hired you to be wicked? are you delivered to do all these abominations Jer 7:10. Ought you not to walk gospel high? Php 1:27. Will not the angel (Christ) that goeth along with you, destroy you after that he hath done you good, if ye turn not and repent according to the rules of the law, the gospel? Exo 33:2-4.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv18–24 For showeth, Heb 12:18-24, the apostle enforcing on these…
For showeth, Heb 12:18-24, the apostle enforcing on these Hebrews, and with them on all Christians, the pursuit of holiness and peace, by subjoining the great helps they have for it, beyond what the Old Testament church had, they being freed from the legal dispensation, which was less helpful to it, and admitted to that of the gospel, most promoting it. The first he layeth down, Heb 12:18-21; and the other, Heb 12:22-24. They are freed from the covenant dispensation at Mount Sinai.
Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched; you have not been called, as to your body, to journey it to Sinai, or as to your faith to close with that covenant administration, to depend on, or have any expectation from it, as delivered by Moses at Mount Sinai in Arabia; a mountain visible, tactible, sensible, on earth, signifying the covenant dispensation from this mount to be low and earthy, occasioning earthy thoughts of God and carriage to him, sticking in an earthy altar sacrifice, and carnal and sensual religion; to the law written in stones, without minding the spirituality of it, or having it in their hearts; walking wisely in this wilderness state, yet, by the charge of God, not touchable by Israel at that time, though they came near to it in the third month after their coming out of Egypt, Exo 19:1,12,13,23.
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And that burned with fire; to the fire, in the which the Lord descended on the mount, Exo 19:18; which burnt unto the midst of heaven, Deu 4:11; 5:23,24, and would consume them that broke that law which he spake to them out of it, Deu 33:2.
Nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest; to the black, thick smoke that ascended as the smoke of a furnace, Exo 19:18; to darkness, occasioned by the thick clouds enveloping the mount, Deu 4:11; 5:23; to tempest, the storm of thundering, and lightnings, and earthquake, the terrible attendants of this solemnity, Exo 19:16,18; 20:18. All these shadowing forth the fiery and terrible storms of wrath and indignation, which should pursue the breakers of this covenant to the lowest hell; giving them, in this delivery of the law, a visible type of what should be the issue of their breaking it, Exo 19:22,24. These terrors of the Almighty did so fright them, that they ran from God, and set not themselves to the serious pursuit of holiness, Isa 33:14.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv18, 22 Our apostle’s design being to bring over the Hebrews…
Our apostle’s design being to bring over the Hebrews fully from Judaism to Christianity, he enters here upon a description of both states, shewing the excellency of the one above the other. He describes first the legal state of the church under the Old Testament, and the manner of their forefathers entering into covenant with God at Mount Sinai. And then he sets forth the evangelical state, whereunto they were called, and into which they were entered.
In the verses now before us, he sets forth the dread and terror of the Mosaic dispensation, and the way and manner how their forefathers under the old Testament entered into their church-state; telling them, that they came to a mount that might be touched, that is, to Mount Sinai in the desert of Arabis, a barren and fruitless place, full of bushes and brambles, but without water or food; intimating, that such as are under the law, in a state of sin, bring forth no acceptable fruit unto God; and as there was no water in the desert, but that which the people lived upon was brought out of the rock, and that rock was Christ: it intimates, that from Christ alone were all their and our refreshments: The law affords none, but thunders from its fiery mouth, wrath and a curse.
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Farther, this mount is said to be what might be touched; that is, a sensible, carnal thing, exposed to feeling; intimating how low and inferior the giving of the law was in comparison of the promulgation of the gospel, which was from heaven. The law was given from a mount that might be touched by man or beast, though if either touched it they must die, to intimate the bondage and fear the people were then in, who might not so much as touch the mountain where were the signs of God’s presence: But the gospel was promulgated from heaven, and the Son of God sent down on purpose from thence to plant and propagate it here in the world.
The second thing which the apostle tells them they were come unto, was to fire that burned. This fire that burned on the mount was a token of God’s presence, and a distinct means of filling the people with dread and fear. This fire represented the purity and holiness of God’s nature, his jealousy and severity against sin. Thus the law represents to us the holiness and severity of God, with his anger and displeasure against sin and sinners, but there leaves us consumed, without relief by Jesus Christ.
Unto fire the apostle adds blackness, and darkness, and tempest; which blackness and darkness might be caused by thick clouds and smoke that covered the mount. This darkness was a type of that utter darkness of hell, which the transgressors of that law deserved; and the tempest and terrible storms were emblems and signs of God’s fiery indignation and fearful vengeance on the wicked violaters of his holy law, and might also point out and signify the effects of the law then delivered, namely, to bring the soul into darkness, that it can see no light either for its direction or consolation; and it raises a tempest in the mind, of disquieting, perplexing thoughts, without relieving or encouraging a sinner to look out after any relief, until Christ in his gospel says, Behold me, Behold me.
It follows, ye are come to the sound of a trumpet: This was not a real trumpet, but the sound of a trumpet formed in the air by the ministry of angels waxing louder and louder, to signify the nearer approach of God; also as this trumpet did summon the people to appear before the Lord as a legislative trumpet, in like manner there shall be a judicial trumpet, to summon the world to appear before Christ at the great day.
After the sound of the trumpet followed the voice of words that is the voice of God in a terrible manner promulging the law out of the midst of the fire, in a language understood by that people. As the sound of the trumpet, so the voice of God was loud, majestic, terrible, and like thunder.
Quest. But why was there such vast solemnity used at the giving of the law?
Ans. To signify the majesty and authority of him who was the supreme lawgiver, even the Lord of heaven and earth; and that the greater the outward solemnity was, the greater the inward impression might be upon the minds of the people; and to signify, that if the promulgation of the law was so awful, the transgression of it would be fatal, and the transgressors’ punishment very dreadful.
Observe lastly, The event of this sight and hearing on the part of the people: Fear made them desire that they might hear this voice no more: And God’s design in all, was to cause them to long for, and look after, that great prophet, Christ Jesus, by whom God would speak unto them more comfortably, and by whom they might have access to the throne of grace more freely. They entreated that the word should not be spoken unto them any more, because it heightened their fear and dread to the utmost.
Learn from hence, That the sight and voice of God will be very dreadful to us: and there will be no appearance for us before him with confidence and peace, unless we have an answer in readiness with us to all the words of the law, even all that the law requires of us; and such as trust to their own works and merits to answer for them, or to any thing whatsoever, besides the blood and sacrifice, the mediation and satisfaction, of Jesus Christ, the surety of the new covenant, will find themselves eternally deceived.
The next evidence the apostle gives of the dreadful promulgation of the law, and consequently of the miserable state of them that are under its power, appears in this, that the people could not endure that which was commanded; that is, the severity of that command, that if a beast touched the mountain, it should be stoned or thrust through with a dart. All this was to shew the absolute inaccessibleness of God, in and by the law, and at what distance we ought ot keep ourselves from everything that falls under the curse of the law.
It is added last of all, That Moses himself did exceedingly fear and quake.
From whence observe, How all persons concerned were brought to an utter loss and distress at the promulgation and giving of the law, from whence no relief is to be obtained, but by him alone who is the end of the law for righteousness unto all them that believe.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v18 Here the apostle goes on to engage the professing…
Here the apostle goes on to engage the professing Hebrews to perseverance in their Christian course and conflict, and not to relapse again into Judaism. This he does by showing them how much the state of the gospel church differs from that of the Jewish church, and how much it resembles the state of the church in heaven, and on both accounts demands and deserves our diligence, patience, and perseverance in Christianity.
I. He shows how much the gospel church differs from the Jewish church, and how much it excels. And here we have a very particular description of the state of the church under the Mosaic dispensation, Heb 12:18-21. 1. It was a gross sensible state. Mount Sinai, on which that church-state was constituted, was a mount that might be touched (Heb 12:18), a gross palpable place; so was the dispensation. It was very much external and earthly, and so more heavy. The state of the gospel church on mount Zion is more spiritual, rational, and easy. 2. It was a dark dispensation. Upon that mount there were blackness and darkness, and that church-state was covered with dark shadows and types: the gospel state is much more clear and bright. 3. It was a dreadful and terrible dispensation; the Jews could not bear the terror of it. The thunder and the lightning, the trumpet sounding, the voice of God himself speaking to them, struck them with such dread that they entreated that the word might not be so spoken to them any more, Heb 12:19. Yea, Moses himself said, I exceedingly fear and quake. The best of men on earth are not able to converse immediately with God and his holy angels. The gospel state is mild, and kind, and condescending, suited to our weak frame. 4. It was a limited dispensation; all might not approach to that mount, but only Moses and Aaron. Under the gospel we have all access with boldness to God. 5. It was a very dangerous dispensation. The mount burned with fire, and whatever man or beast touched the mount must be stoned, or thrust through with a dart, Heb 12:20. It is true, it will be always dangerous for presumptuous and brutish sinners to draw night to God; but it is not immediate and certain death, as here it was. This was the state of the Jewish church, fitted to awe a stubborn and hard-hearted people, to set forth the strict and tremendous justice of God, to wean the people of God from that dispensation, and induce them more readily to embrace the sweet and gentle economy of the gospel church, and adhere to it.
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II. He shows how much the gospel church represents the church triumphant in heaven, what communication there is between the one and the other. The gospel church is called mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is free, in opposition to mount Sinai, which tendeth to bondage, Gal 4:24. This was the hill on which God set his king the Messiah. Now, in coming to mount Zion, believers come into heavenly places, and into a heavenly society.
1. Into heavenly places. (1.) Unto the city of the living God. God has taken up his gracious residence in the gospel church, which on that account is an emblem of heaven. There his people may find him ruling, guiding, sanctifying, and comforting them; there he speaks to them by the gospel ministry; there they speak to him by prayer, and he hears them; there he trains them up for heaven, and gives them the earnest of their inheritance. (2.) To the heavenly Jerusalem as born and bred there, as free denizens there. Here believers have clearer views of heaven, plainer evidences for heaven, and a greater meetness and more heavenly temper of soul.
2. To a heavenly society. (1.) To an innumerable company of angels, who are of the same family with the saints, under the same head, and in a great measure employed in the same work, ministering to believers for their good, keeping them in all their ways, and pitching their tents about them. These for number are innumerable, and for order and union are a company, and a glorious one. And those who by faith are joined to the gospel church are joined to the angels, and shall at length be like them, and equal with them. (2.) To the general assembly and church of the first-born, that are written in heaven, that is, to the universal church, however dispersed. By faith we come to them, have communion with them in the same head, by the same Spirit, and in the same blessed hope, and walk in the same way of holiness, grappling with the same spiritual enemies, and hasting to the same rest, victory, and glorious triumph. Here will be the general assembly of the first-born, the saints of former and earlier times, who saw the promises of the gospel state, but received them not, as well as those who first received them under the gospel, and were regenerated thereby, and so were the first-born, and the first-fruits of the gospel church; and thereby, as the first-born, advanced to greater honours and privileges than the rest of the world. Indeed all the children of God are heirs, and every one has the privileges of the first-born. The names of these are written in heaven, in the records of the church here: they have a name in God's house, are written among the living in Jerusalem; they have a good repute for their faith and fidelity, and are enrolled in the Lamb's book of life, as citizens are enrolled in the livery-books. (3.) To God the Judge of all, that great God who will judge both Jew and Gentile according to the law they are under: believers come to him now by faith, make supplication to their Judge, and receive a sentence of absolution in the gospel, and in the court of their consciences now, by which they know they shall be justified hereafter. (4.) To the spirits of just men made perfect; to the best sort of men, the righteous, who are more excellent than their neighbours; to the best part of just men, their spirits, and to these in their best state, made perfect. Believers have union with departed saints in one and the same head and Spirit, and a title to the same inheritance, of which those on earth are heirs, those in heaven possessors. (5.) To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. This is none of the least of many encouragements there are to perseverance in the gospel state, since it is a state of communion with Christ the Mediator of the new covenant, and of communication of his blood, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. [1.] The gospel covenant is the new covenant, distinct from the covenant of works; and it is now under a new dispensation, distinct from that of the Old Testament. [2.] Christ is the Mediator of this new covenant; he is the middle person that goes between both parties, God and man, to bring them together in this covenant, to keep them together notwithstanding the sins of the people and God's displeasure against them for sin, to offer up our prayers to God, and to bring down the favours of God to us, to plead with God for us and to plead with us for God, and at length to bring God and his people together in heaven, and to be a Mediator of fruition between them for ever, they beholding and enjoying God in Christ and God beholding and blessing them in Christ. [3.] This covenant is ratified by the blood of Christ sprinkled upon our consciences, as the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled upon the altar and the sacrifice. This blood of Christ pacifies God and purifies the consciences of men. [4.] This is speaking blood, and it speaks better things than that of Abel. First, It speaks to God in behalf of sinners; it pleads not for vengeance, as the blood of Abel did on him who shed it, but for mercy. Secondly, To sinners, in the name of God. It speaks pardon to their sins, peace to their souls; and bespeaks their strictest obedience and highest love and thankfulness.
III. The apostle, having thus enlarged upon the argument to perseverance taken from the heavenly nature of the gospel church state, closes the chapter by improving the argument in a manner suitable to the weight of it (Heb 12:25, etc.): See then that you refuse not him that speaketh - that speaketh by his blood; and not only speaketh after another manner than the blood of Abel spoke from the ground, but than God spoke by the angels, and by Moses spoke on mount Sinai; then he spoke on earth, now he speaks from heaven. Here observe,
1. When God speaks to men in the most excellent manner he justly expects from them the most strict attention and regard. Now it is in the gospel that God speaks to men in the most excellent manner. For, (1.) He now speaks from a higher and more glorious seat and throne, not from mount Sinai, which was on this earth, but from heaven. (2.) He speaks now more immediately by his inspired word and by his Spirit, which are his witnesses. He speaks not now any new thing to men, but by his Spirit speaks the same word home to the conscience. (3.) He speaks now more powerfully and effectually. Then indeed his voice shook the earth, but now, by introducing the gospel state, he hath shaken not only the earth, but the heavens, - not only shaken the hills and mountains, or the spirits of men, or the civil state of the land of Canaan, to make room for his people, - not only shaken the world, as he then did, but he hath shaken the church, that is, the Jewish nation, and shaken them in their church-state, which was in Old Testament times a heaven upon earth; this their heavenly spiritual state he hath now shaken. It is by the gospel from heaven that God shook to pieces the civil and ecclesiastical state of the Jewish nation, and introduced a new state of the church, that cannot be removed, shall never be changed for any other on earth, but shall remain till it be made perfect in heaven.
2. When God speaks to men in the most excellent manner, the guilt of those who refuse him is the greater, and their punishment will be more unavoidable and intolerable; there is no escaping, no bearing it, Heb 12:25. The different manner of God's dealing with men under the gospel, in a way of grace, assures us that he will deal with the despisers of the gospel after a different manner than he does with other men, in a way of judgment. The glory of the gospel, which should greatly recommend it to our regard, appears in these three things: - (1.) It was by the sound of the gospel trumpet that the former dispensation and state of the church of God were shaken and removed; and shall we despise that voice of God that pulled down a church and state of so long standing and of God's own building? (2.) It was by the sound of the gospel trumpet that a new kingdom was erected for God in the world, which can never be so shaken as to be removed. This was a change made once for all; no other change shall take place till time shall be no more. We have now received a kingdom that cannot be moved, shall never be removed, never give way to any new dispensation. The canon of scripture is now perfected, the Spirit of prophecy has ceased, the mystery of God is finished, he has put his last hand to it. The gospel church may be made more large, more prosperous more purified from contracted pollution, but it shall never be altered for another dispensation; those who perish under the gospel perish without remedy. And hence the apostle justly concludes, [1.] How necessary it is for us to obtain grace from God, to serve him acceptably: if we be not accepted of God under this dispensation, we shall never be accepted at all; and we lose all our labour in religion if we be not accepted of God. [2.] We cannot worship God acceptably, unless we worship him with godly reverence and fear. As faith, so holy fear, is necessary to acceptable worship. [3.] It is only the grace of God that enables us to worship God in a right manner: nature cannot come up to it; it can produce neither that precious faith nor that holy fear that is necessary to acceptable worship. [4.] God is the same just and righteous God under the gospel that he appeared to be under the law. Though he be our God in Christ, and now deals with us in a more kind and gracious way, yet he is in himself a consuming fire; that is, a God of strict justice, who will avenge himself on all the despisers of his grace, and upon all apostates. Under the gospel, the justice of God is displayed in a more awful manner, though not in so sensible a manner as under the law; for here we behold divine justice seizing upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and making him a propitiatory sacrifice, his soul and body an offering for sin, which is a display of justice far beyond what was seen and heard on mount Sinai when the law was given.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv18–24 And the sound of a trumpet,.... Exo 19:16, which…
And the sound of a trumpet,.... Exo 19:16, which made it still more awful, as the sound of the trumpet will at the last day:
and the voice of words; of the ten words, or decalogue; which was as an articulate voice, formed by angels; and, therefore, the law is called the word spoken by angels, Heb 2:2 and is represented, as the voice of God himself, Exo 20:1 who made use of the ministry of angels to deliver the law to Moses; "which" voice is called , "the voice of words", in Deu 4:12, and this voice,
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they that heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: fearing that they should die; wherefore they desired Moses to be their mediator, and draw nigh to God, and hear his words, and speak them to them, from him, Exo 20:19.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv18–24 For - A strong reason this why they ought…
For - A strong reason this why they ought the more to regard the whole exhortation drawn from the priesthood of Christ: because both salvation and vengeance are now nearer at hand. Ye are not come to the mountain that could be touched - That was of an earthy, material nature.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv18, 22, 23, 24 Verse 18. - 21. For ye are not come…
Verse 18. - 21. For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched] I believe the words ψηλαφωμενωορει should be translated to a palpable or material mountain; for that it was not a mountain that on this occasion might be touched, the history, Ex 19:12; Ex 19:13, shows; and the apostle himself, in Heb 12:20, confirms. It is called here a palpable or material mount, to distinguish it from that spiritual mount Sion, of which the apostle is speaking. Some contend that it should be translated tacto de caelo, thunder-struck; this sense would agree well enough with the scope of the place. The apostle's design is to show that the dispensation of the law engendered terror; that it was most awful and exclusive; that it belonged only to the Jewish people; and that, even to them, it was so terrible that they could not endure that which was commanded, and entreated that God would not communicate with them in his own person, but by the ministry of Moses: and even to Moses, who held the highest intimacy with Jehovah, the revealed glories, the burning fire, the blackness, the darkness, the tempest, the loud-sounding trumpet, and the voice of words, were so terrible that he said, I exceedingly fear and tremble.
These were the things which were exhibited on that material mountain; but the Gospel dispensation is one grand, copious, and interesting display of the infinite love of God. It is all encouragement; breathes nothing but mercy; is not an exclusive system; embraces the whole human race; has Jesus, the sinner's friend, for its mediator; is ratified by his blood; and is suited, most gloriously suited, to all the wants and wishes of every soul of man.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv18, 20, 22, 23 Heb 12:18-19. For, &c. — As if he had…
Heb 12:18-19. For, &c. — As if he had said, Take heed of apostatizing from Christianity to Judaism again, because of the great privileges you enjoy by the gospel above what your fathers enjoyed by the law: which privileges contain a strong reason why you should attend to these exhortations and cautions; ye — Who are proselyted to Christianity; are not come unto the mount that might — Or could; be touched — That is, of an earthly, material, or tangible nature; but which the people were prohibited to approach, and much more to touch. And that burned with fire — Unto the midst of heaven, (Deu 4:11,) to show that God is a consuming fire to the impenitent; and to blackness and darkness — An emblem of the obscurity of the Mosaic dispensation; and to tempest — Josephus tells us, (Antiq., lib. 3. c. 5,) that at the giving of the law strong winds came down, and manifested the presence of God. “Perhaps,” says Macknight, “this prefigured what happened when the new law, the gospel, was given. For, previous to the descent of the Holy Ghost, there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind: and the sound of a trumpet — Formed, without doubt, by the ministry of angels, and which at length waxed exceeding loud, (Exo 19:18-19,) preparatory to the voice of words — That is, the ten commandments, written afterward on the two tables of stone. For (all other noises, as of thunder, the trumpet, &c., ceasing) God caused a loud voice, speaking those ten commandments articulately in their own language, to be heard by the whole congregation, men, women, and children, in the station wherein they were placed at the foot of the mount; and this voice was so great and terrible that the people were not able to bear it: for although they were terrified with the dreadful appearances on the mount, yet was it this speaking of God that utterly overwhelmed them. See Deu 5:22. Which they that heard — Namely, the whole assembly or congregation, strongly impressed with the holiness and power of their Lawgiver and Judge, and being exceedingly terrified; entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more — Or that the word or speaking of God to them should not be continued. The verb παρητησαντο, here rendered entreated, is twice translated to refuse, Heb 12:25. The meaning is, they deprecated the hearing of the word in that manner any more, which they did doubtless by their officers and elders, who both themselves being terrified, and observing the dread of the whole congregation, made request for themselves and the rest to Moses; and because they did it with a good intention, out of reverence for the majesty of God, without any design of declining obedience, it was accepted.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv18–24 For ye are not come - To enforce the…
For ye are not come - To enforce the considerations already urged, the apostle introduces this sublime comparison between the old and new dispensations; Heb 12:18-24. The object, in accordance with the principal scope of the Epistle, is, to guard them against apostasy. To do this, he shows that under the new dispensation there was much more to hind them to fidelity, and to make apostasy dangerous, than there was under the old. The main point of the comparison is, that under the Jewish dispensation, everything was adapted to awe the mind, and to restrain by the exhibition of grandeur and of power; but that under the Christian dispensation, while there was as much that was sublime, there was much more that was adapted to win and hold the affections. There were revelations of higher truths. There were more affecting motives to lead to obedience. There was that of which the former was but the type and emblem. There was the clear revelation of the glories of heaven, and of the blessed society there, all adapted to prompt to the earnest desire that they might be our own. The considerations presented in this passage constitute the climax of the argument so beautifully pursued through this Epistle, showing that the Christian system was far superior in every respect to the Jewish. In presenting this closing argument, the apostle first refers to some of the circumstances attending the former dispensation which were designed to keep the people of God from apostasy, and then the considerations of superior weight existing under the Christian economy.
The mount that might be touched - Mount Sinai. The meaning here is, that “that mountain was palpable, material, touchable” - in contradistinction from the Mount Zion to which the church had now come, which is above the reach of the external senses; Heb 12:22. The apostle does not mean that it was permitted to the Israelites to touch Mount Sinai - for this was strictly forbidden, Exo 19:12; but he evidently alludes to that prohibition, and means to say that a command forbidding them to “touch” the mountain, implied that it was a material or palpable object. The sense of the passage is, that every circumstance that occurred there was suited to fill the soul with terror. Everything accompanying the giving of the Law, the setting of bounds around the mountain which they might not pass, and the darkness and tempest on the mountain itself, was adopted to overawe the soul. The phrase “the touchable mountain” - if such a phrase is proper - would express the meaning of the apostle here. The “Mount Zion” to which the church now has come, is of a different character. It is not thus visible and palpable. It is not enveloped in smoke and flame, and the thunders of the Almighty do not roll and re-echo among its lofty peaks as at Horeb; yet it presents “stronger” motives to perseverance in the service of God.
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And that burned with fire - Exo 19:18; compare Deu 4:11; Deu 33:2.
Nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest - see Exo 19:16.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv18, 22 For you are not come to a mountain,[7] &c.…
For you are not come to a mountain,[7] &c. That is, to a mountain on earth that can be touched; to wit, to Mount Sinai, where the law was given to Moses, where the mountain seemed all on fire, with dreadful thunder and lightning, whirlwinds, darkness, tempests, sounding of trumpets, voices, &c. which they who heard excused themselves, begging that Moses only, and not God, might speak to them, for they could not without exceeding consternation think of what was then said; that if any man, or even beast, should touch the mountain, he should be stoned to death. (Exodus xix. 15.) Nay Moses himself, trembling, was frightened. This particular is nowhere mentioned in the Scripture, but the apostle might know it by revelation, or by some tradition among the Jews. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Ad tractabilem montem, Greek: pselaphomeno orei. palabilem.
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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v18 We are held under obligation to this by the…
IV
We are held under obligation to this by the nature of the New Covenant
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Heb_12:18-24
18For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched [to a mountain7 that is handled], and that burned with fire [and to burning fire], nor [and] unto blackness, 19and darkness,8 and tempest, And [to] the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice [om. voice] they that heard entreated [deprecatingly begged, παρῃτήσαντο, that the word should not be spoken to them any more [that (further) speech might not be added to them]: 20(For they could not endure [endured not] that which was [om. was] commanded, And if so much as [Even if] a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart [om. or thrust through with a dart9]: 21And so terrible was the sight, that [And—so fearful was the spectacle—] Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake). 22But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23To the general assembly and church of the first-born [and to myriads, a festal company of angels and the congregation of the first-born], which are written [who are registered] in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all [or, and as Judge, to the God of all], and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the [a] new covenant, 24and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of [more mightily10 than] Abel.
[Heb_12:18.—ψηλαφωμένω, scil., ὄρει, to a mountain that is felt of, handled, palpable to touch=material and earthly.—καὶ κεκαυμένῳ πυρί, and to kindled, hence, burning fire, better than burning with fire.
Heb_12:19.—παρητήσαντο, etc., begged off against any further word being said to them; παραιτεῖσθαι, to beg off for oneself, to deprecate, not=αἰτεῖσθαι παρά τινος (as Alf.), but παρά, with force of aside from, against.
Heb_12:20.—οὐκ ἔφερον τὸ διαστελλόμενον, they did not bear that which commanded=the command.
Heb_12:21.—καί—οὕτως. So, perhaps, it is better to punctuate, carrying καί over to τὸ φανταζ., as otherwise a ὅτι, or ὥς with φανταζ., could hardly be dispensed with.
Heb_12:22-23.—μυριάσιν ἄγγέλ. πανηγύρει καὶ ἐκκλησία. The Eng. ver., an innumerable company of angels and the general assembly and church, etc., is rendered impossible by the absence of the conjunction before πανηγ. while again to connect πανηγ. with ἐκκλησία without the καί, involves an unaccountable departure from the general structure of the passage, in which all the other principal members are connected by καί. It remains then either to take μυριάσιν as a collective term distributed into the πανήγυρις of angels, and the ἐκκλησία of the first-born, or to take μυριάσιν as belonging only to the clause ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει in which case again it is a question whether we are to read, “to myriads, a festal company of angels,” or, “to myriads of angels, a festal company.” In regard to the first construction, μυριάσιν is justly remarked by Moll to be naturally suggestive, from Old Testament associations, of angels, and it seems better so to restrict it. Thus restricted again, if μυριάσιν governs ἀγγέλ. the noun πανηγ. comes in as a dragging and halting apposition. With Moll, I prefer, therefore, “to myriads,” via., a festal host of angels. If (with Alf., etc.) μυριάσιτ covered both πανηγ. and ἐκκλησ., so elegant a writer would hardly have omitted τε after ἀγγέλων.—πανήγυρις, not merely a general assembly, but, a festal gathering, a joyful and jubilant host.—ἐκκλησ. πρωτο., perhaps better rendered by the indefinite art., “a congregation of first-born ones,” suggested by the case of Esau, who had to lose his birthright in order that Jacob might obtain it.—ἀπογεγ. ἐν οὐρ, registered., enrolled, whose citizenship is in heaven.—καὶ κριτῆ θεῷ πάντων, and to God the judge of all, so E. V., etc., and still Alf., while among others Be Wette, Bleek, Lün., Del. and Moll construct: “and as judge to the God of all,” which certainly has the order of the words, and I think the sentiment in its favor.
Heb_12:24.—διαθ. νεᾶς, of a new covenant.—κρεῖττον λαλοῦντι, speaking better, or, more mightily.—παρὰ τὸν Αβελ, in comparison with Abel.—K.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Heb_12:18. Which is handled.—The pres. particip. can be scarcely regarded as=the verbal adjective in τος, hence ψηφαλώμενος is not=which might be touched, as is commonly maintained, nor=touched by God, i.e., by the lightning, and therefore, smoking (Beng., Storr, and others); but it expresses that which, in its nature, is material and perceptible to the sense. The position of ὄρει is opposed to the construction which would connect κεκαυμένῳ with it, and make πυρί dat. of the instrument (Bl., De W., Thol., Lun., etc.), with reference to Deu_5:23; Deu_9:15, etc. Del. also remarks, in defence of the coördinate construction of these words adopted by Erasm., Calv., Beza, Grot., Beng., etc., that also at Deu_4:36; and elsewhere “the great fire” is mentioned by itself. Σαλπίγγος ἤχῳ is borrowed from Exo_19:16; φωνῇ ῥημάτων from Deu_4:12; the relative clause ἦς, etc., refers to Deu_5:22; Deu_18:16; comp. Exo_20:18 ff.; the command, Heb_12:20, refers to Exo_19:12 ff. To understand τὸ διαστελλόμενον as=that which is ordained (Storr, Schultz, etc.), is contrary to the New Testament usage, which employs the verb only as a middle.
Heb_12:21. And—so fearful, etc.—The proper punctuation originated with Beza. Previously, καὶ οὕτως were always taken together. Heb_12:21 is a heightening of the idea of 8–20; but the καἱ is not=also, or even (Carpz., Boehm., and others). This interpretation is inconsistent with its position in the clause. The words here ascribed to Moses are not found in the Scripture account of the giving of the Law. According to Calov, the author drew from immediate inspiration. According to Erasm., Beza, Schlicht., and others, from tradition. Recent commentators more correctly refer the words to Deu_9:19, where Moses expresses his fear of the wrath of God, after the defection of the people in worshipping the golden calf, by the words καὶ ἔκφοβός εἰμι. Stephen, at Act_7:32, in recounting the appearance of God in the burning bush, represents Moses as ἔντρομος γενόμενος, which words, also, are not found at Exo_3:6.
Heb_12:22. To Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem.—With Mount Sinai, the representative of the legislation of the Old Covenant (Gal_4:24), is contrasted Mt. Zion as the city of the fulfilled Messianic promises (Psa_48:3; Psa_50:2; Psa_78:68; Psa_110:2; Psa_132:13; Isa_2:2; Mic_4:1; Joe_3:5; Oba_1:17; Rev_4:1), and as the true dwelling-place of God (Micah 14:3; Isa_26:21; Eze_3:12). So also the Heavenly Jerusalem, which (Gal_4:26) is also mentioned as Mother of the redeemed and truly free children of God, is contrasted with the earthly Jerusalem, the city of the great King (Mat_5:35), as the city in which the living God, who is also its Founder and Architect (Heb_11:10; Heb_11:16), has not so much His dwelling-place as His people. That the contrast of the earthly and the heavenly is here arranged according to the sacred number seven (Beng., Del., Kluge), is not indicated in the text.
Myriads, etc.—By the term “myriads,” we are involuntarily reminded of angels (Deu_33:2; Dan_7:10; Judges 14). It is therefore very natural to regard angels also here as exclusively meant, and to take the term not as a collective conception, distributing itself into the two parts of a festal assemblage of angels, and the congregation of the first-born (as with Beng., Bl., De W., Ebr., Del., etc.). It is, indeed, in my judgment, most natural to conceive the angelic hosts “as a festal company” (Son_7:1), yet, as in apposition with ‘myriads;’ to which there is then subjoined the mention of the Christian church. For inasmuch as the term “myriads” does not of necessity, under all circumstances, denote angels, Num_10:36, it would be almost indispensable to add some specializing clause. Should we, on the contrary, connect ἀγγέλων not with πανηγύρει (Seb. Schmidt, Griesb., Knapp, etc.), but with μυριάσιν (Bez., Calov, Storr, Thol., Lün., etc.), we must, in that case, either take πανηγ. as in opposition with μυριάσιν, which would be dragging and heavy, or connect it with the following, giving it quite another reference. Thol. makes, alongside of the ‘myriads of angels,’ a ‘festal company’ of glorified saints, who are already celebrating the Sabbath of the people of God (Num_4:19), and the community of Christians still walking upon the earth. To these latter the ἐκκλησία πρωτοτόκων certainly has reference, inasmuch as they are said to be “registered or enrolled in heaven;” because by the introduction of their names into the book of life, they are registered as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, with an assured prospect of the heavenly inheritance, (Dan_12:1; Luk_10:20; Php_4:3; Rev_3:5; Rev_13:8; Rev_20:15); and they are called “First-born,” not in reference to the time of their conversion, whether understood of Apostles (Primas., Grot.), or of the earliest Jewish and Gentile believers (Schlicht., Bl., Ebr., etc.), or of those who have been glorified by martyrdom (De W.); but in reference to their dignity as “first-fruits of the creatures of God” (ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κτισμάτων τοῦ θεοῦ), Jam_1:18, Rev_14:4; 2Th_2:13 (Böhm., Thol., etc.). [May there not be a reference in the term πρωτότοκος, here to the case of Esau, a little above alluded to, who sold his birth-right, πρωτοτόκια, and whose selling or parting with it was indispensable to its passing over to Jacob? In earthly families and relationships there can be but one first-born; the prerogative is restricted by the nature of the case. But in the family of God they are all ‘first-born.’ The congregation of ancient Israel was made up in but a small proportion of those who held this honor; but the spiritual church of the New Testament is a “community or congregation of First-born ones”—they are all first-born. This need not exclude the reference to the import of the term as given by the author.—K.]. The term ἀπογεγρ. forbids our referring the “first-born,” either to those already dwelling in heaven, or to angels, as the oldest inhabitants of heaven (Nöss., Storr, etc.), or to the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament (Calv., Beng., Lün., etc.), or to the glorified first fruits of Christianity (De W.); for the sealing borne by the 144,000, as their characteristic mark on the heavenly Zion (Rev_14:1), and which had been already impressed upon them on the earth (Heb_7:3), is an entirely different thing from the registering of their names in the list of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. But it is very questionable whether we are authorized to refer πανηγ. to the festal company of the glorified, as such a reference is in no way exegetically involved in the text. It were much more natural in such a coördination of πανηγύρει and ἐκκλησίᾳ in reference to the πρωτότοκοι, not, indeed, to adopt the view of Lün., that the collective community of the first-born are characterized partly as a festal and exulting assemblage (πανηγ.); partly as bound in an inward unity (ἐκκλησ), but rather that of Hofmann, who finds in it the united and kindred designations of the church, partly as a religious and worshiping, partly as a political organization. But there is absolutely no ground apparent for this double representation; on the contrary, the absence in this case of the connecting particle καί between the two principal members would be entirely inexplicable.
Heb_12:23. As Judge, to the God of all, etc.—[So Moll with many, instead of “to God, the Judge of all”]. We need absolutely assume no inversion (with the old translators and interpreters). The subject is the prerogatives of the Christian revelation; hence in regard to the Judge before whom the first-born, who are enrolled for the kingdom of heaven, i.e., Christians, are yet to appear, the comforting declaration is made that He is the God of all; i.e., stands in a positive religious relation to all the members of this community. This explanation is suggested by the context, and is entirely satisfactory. It makes also a natural connection with what follows. To take πάντων as neuter, thus designating the Judge who protects His people by His judgment, in His omnipotence as God over all beings and things (Del.) is totally unnecessary, and, in fact, would require ἐπί with πάντων. It is equally erroneous to find in the passage a reference to the narrow and bigoted conceptions of the Jews (Bl., De W., Lün.).
Spirits of the just made perfect.—By virtue of their religious communion with God the Christians, while yet living, stand in the same political fellowship to which the departed spirits of the righteous belong, not barely those of the Old Covenant (Schlicht., Bl., De W., Ebr., etc.), nor merely those of the New (Grot., Beng., Storr, Lün., etc.), but of both (Böhme, Thol., Bisp., Del., Riehm, Alf.). They are called τετελειωμένοι, not because they have completed their earthly life (Calv., Limb., Böhme, etc.), and not in the sense of τέλειοι, perfect ones (Theophyl., Luth., etc.), but because Christ has brought them to the goal of perfection. For although they have not yet experienced the resurrection, and that ultimate perfection (τελείωσις) which is common to all the believers of the Old and the New Testament, still awaits them (Heb_11:40), yet Christ who descended and ascended, Eph_4:10, has already opened to them the gates of the realm of death (Rev_1:18). Even before the resurrection they have been permitted to enjoy the presence of the Lord (Php_1:23; compare Joh_14:2).
Heb_12:24. Jesus, mediator of a new covenant.—The writer selects the personal historical name of the Mediator, because by the death of the Incarnate One upon the cross, that covenant was effected which (Heb_8:8; Heb_8:13; Heb_9:15) was called καινή, as being new in its quality (fœdus novum), but is here called νεά which Böhme, Kuin., and others here without ground regard as identical in meaning, but which rather characterizes this covenant as recent, as new in time and fraught with youthful vigor.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The legislation of Mount Sinai has a threatening, and even fearful character, which brings out in strong relief the majesty of the God, who, by His voice indeed reveals Himself on earth, but remains Himself invisible; and in view of it fills sinful man with terror in the feeling that he stands exposed to the avenging lightnings of this Heavenly King, and has nothing to oppose to the thunders of His speech; so that, instead of rejoicing in the presence of God, he would rather flee from the stormy terrors of His approach, unless restrained by the hand and mandate of the Almighty. This fearful shuddering before God was felt even by the Mediator of God’s revelation to the world, inasmuch as He was only a man who Himself stood in need of a reconciling mediator. Although there existed an earthly place for the revelation of God, yet God still remained Himself unapproachable, and the natural phenomena in which He announced His presence, and indicated the character of His revelation for the time being, at the same time veiled His real essence. In accordance with this, the character of God’s Old Covenant people is only that of an external holiness and union with God, which expresses, and represents that which should be, but is unable to obtain and impart it.
2. Christians, on the contrary, are the true people of God, endowed with a citizenship in heaven, and with all the means of grace on earth, so that in their pilgrimage below, they are not merely blest with heavenly goods, but are transformed into the heavenly character, (Eph_2:6), and have their citizenship (πολίτευμα) in heaven (Php_3:20), with whose inhabitants they now already, as belonging to the kingdom of God, have fellowship, and their approach to which, as members of the New Covenant, is rendered possible by the blood of its Mediator, which brings them who are sprinkled with it into a gracious relation to the Judge, and which, as the blood of the Righteous One, who, in the power of an indestructible life, stands completely and forever in our stead, powerfully surpasses the cry of Abel for vengeance, who, murdered in his innocence, is not forgotten of God (Heb_11:4).
3. The mention of the “spirits of the just made perfect,” argues decisively alike against the assumption of a sleep of the souls of the departed, and against the doctrine of a purgatory.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
By what means we ascertain that the Mediator of the Old Covenant revelation was not the genuine Mediator.—The diversity of the voice of God in the Law and in the Gospel.—By our entrance into the Christian Church we come into communion with a heavenly world.—That which most terrifies us, most powerfully consoles, most tenderly allures.—Our connection with heaven, prepares us on earth to triumph over the world.
Starke:—The glory of the New Covenant pledges all who live in it to the greater sanctity.—The law of the Most High is no child’s play; it commands and threatens. If we are unable to fulfil it, we must still fear in holy reverence, and seek protection with Him who has fulfilled it on our behalf.—Here on earth believers are really blessed and they pass in their blessed state of grace from one degree of blessedness to another.—See, we are to be citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, associates with Christ, with the holy angels and the elect.—By faith, Christ dwells in our hearts; we have Him and enjoy Him; but in heaven we shall properly see Him, possess Him, and be satisfied.
Hahn:—We are, as it were, so loaded down with grace, that it were the greatest ingratitude and insensibility if this did not spur us on.—The fact that a part of His people are still in a distant land, and some are already at home, is matter of no account with the Lord Jesus, and occasions Him no concern; for, in His own time, He will bring us all thither.—We have, in the Spirit, perpetual access on high, and perpetual enjoyment from on high.
Heubner:—The Church of Christ on earth is a nursery for the Church of Christ in heaven.—The Christian alone has the hope of a blessed communion with all saints.
Tholuck:—The greater the grace which is evinced toward us, the heavier our responsibility, if we refuse to heed it.
Appuhn:—The children of God on earth and the children of God in heaven, are intimately united.
Hedinger:—Grace, not wrath, is to quicken our obedience.—The fairer the city, the more cheerful and glad the service of its citizens.
Footnotes:
[8]Heb_12:18.—Instead of καὶ σκότῳ read, after Sin. A. C. D., 17, 31, 39, the more rare and elegant τῷ ζόφῳ. The former comes from Deu_4:11; Deu_5:22, and is added in Sin. by the corrector.
[9][Heb_12:20.—The clause ἤ βολίδι κατατοξ. of the Rec. (but inserted after καὶ οὕτως, Heb_12:21), is as deficient in authority as it is injurious to the rhetoric of the passage, and is rejected as an interpolation by all the best editors.—K.].
[10]Heb_12:24.—Instead of κρείττονα, the uncials uniformly, and the minusc. generally read κρεῖττον.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv18–24 For--The fact that we are not under the law,…
For--The fact that we are not under the law, but under a higher, and that the last dispensation, the Gospel, with its glorious privileges, is the reason why especially the Hebrew Christians should "look diligently," &c. (Heb 12:15-16).
are not come--Greek, "have not come near to." Alluding to Deu 4:11, "Ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire . . . with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness." "In your coming near unto God, it has not been to," &c.
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the mount--The oldest manuscripts and Vulgate omit "the mount." But still, "the mount" must be supplied from Heb 12:22.
that might be touched--palpable and material. Not that any save Moses was allowed to touch it (Exo 19:12-13). The Hebrews drew near to the material Mount Sinai with material bodies; we, to the spiritual mount in the spirit. The "darkness" was that formed by the clouds hanging round the mount; the "tempest" accompanied the thunder.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv18–24 4. INSPIRATIONAL.—In view of our Mount Zion, so superior…
4. INSPIRATIONAL.—In view of our Mount Zion, so superior to Sinai, let us have grace and confidence, Heb_12:18-29.
18. For—In view of the above warning of forfeiting their birthright by relapsing from the gospel dispensation into the Sinaitic, he will draw them a symbolic picture of the two.
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Ye are not come—The word come, here and in Heb_12:22, is significant. It is said, (Deu_4:11 :) “Ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.”
The journeyings of Israel are typical of our probationary journey in life and history. The Jew has only arrived as far as Sinai; we Christians have attained to Zion.
Bengel, followed by Delitzsch, finds in the two pictures a series of particulars, amounting each to seven, which are in some degree antithetical.
1. The mountain (Sinai) that can be touched. 1. Mount Zion.2. Kindled fire. 2. City of the living God.3. Dense clouds. 3. Myriads of angels and firstborn.4. Darkness. 4. God the judge of all.5. Storm. 5. Spirits of just perfected.6. Sound of the trumpet. 6. Jesus, mediator of the new covenant.7. Voice of words. 7. Blood of sprinkling.
An understanding of this tabulated parallelism is facilitated by a comparison with a similar tabulation in our notes to Gal_4:22-26. The same two things are illustrated in both tables, namely, the old theocracy, or Judaism, and the new, or Christianity. Both are furnished for the same purpose, namely, to prevent a relapse from the new to the old. In both cases the two mountains, Sinai and Zion, form the basis of the whole conceptual framework. And it is curious to note that as in Galatians the reader finds the actual name Zion to be omitted, so, by the best readings here, the actual name of Sinai is omitted. The term mount is, in fact, absent from the text of so many good manuscripts that both Lachmann and Alford omit it; but the sentence is thereby so lamed, that Delitzsch holds it to have been omitted by the carelessness of an early copyist. Tischendorf’s text reads, Ye are not come to a touched and kindled (lighted to full conflagration) fire, and to black clouds, and darkness, and tempest. Perhaps the phenomena crowning the mount are named as an elegant implication of the mountain; or, rather, we might say the fire stands for the mountain itself, as volcano would stand for the mountain in which it rages, or as a burning building is called “a conflagration.” Yet Alford’s view may be best, namely, that the author’s mind has mount here, though the word is unwritten until the opposite Mount Zion is reached in Heb_12:21.
Might be touched—That is a tangible material mountain, though it was forbidden to be touched, in Exo_19:12-13. Bengel interprets as “lightning-touched,” that is, by God; Wordsworth, a mountain that had to be groped after, that is, in the darkness; a sense justified indeed by the Greek word for touched, but hardly making a congruous idea. The mount was a material object, and all the particulars ascribed to it in this passage are physical and sensible. Nevertheless the literal mountain is really the base on which is overlaid the conception of old Judaism. Our author does not merely tell his readers that they have not come unto the literal Sinai; but that they have truly gone beyond the Sinaitic dispensation and come to the Zionic.
Blackness—The dense dark cloud encircling the mountain on whose summit was the fire, shadowing the lower sides of the mountain with darkness, while from the cloud and darkness issued the tempest.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv18–24 18–29. The mercy and sublimity of the New Covenant…
18–29. The mercy and sublimity of the New Covenant as contrasted with the Old (18–24) enhance the guilt and peril of the backslider (25–29)
18. For ye are not come] At the close of his arguments and exhortations the writer condenses the results of his Epistle into a climax of magnificent eloquence and force, in which he shews the transcendent beauty and supremacy of the New Covenant as compared with the terrors and imperfections of the Old.
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unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire] Unless we allow the textual evidence to be overruled by the other considerations, which are technically called “paradiplomatic evidence,” the verse should be rendered “For ye have not come near to a palpable and enkindled fire.” In any case the allusion is to Exo_19:16-19; Deu_4:11, and generally to “the fiery law.”
blackness, and darkness, and tempest] Deu_4:11; Deu_5:22.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv18–24 (18-29) The exhortation to faithfulness is most impressively enforced…
(18-29) The exhortation to faithfulness is most impressively enforced by means of a comparison between the earlier revelation and that which is given in Christ.
The mount that might be touched.—It appears certain that the word “mount” has no place in the true Greek text. Had this word been in the sentence as originally written, its absence from all our more ancient authorities would be inexplicable; whilst, on the other hand, the contrast with Heb_12:22, and the recollection of Deu_4:11, from which the last words in this verse are taken, would very naturally lead a transcriber to supply this word, which he might suppose to have accidentally dropped out of the text. If, however, the writer did not make use of the word here, though the contrast of Heb_12:22 was already before his mind, it seems certain that the word was not in his thought; and hence we have no right to introduce it in the explanation of the verse. The true translation, in all probability, is as follows: For ye are not come unto a material (literally, a palpable) and kindled fire, and unto gloom and darkness and tempest. The object of the writer is to set forth the terrors which accompanied the giving of the Law,—that which the awe-stricken people saw and heard. Not the mount, but the terrible fire was that which met their gaze. Thus again and again in Deuteronomy we find reference to the voice and the fire alone (Deu_4:33; Deu_4:36; Deu_5:4; Deu_5:25-26; Deu_18:16). Shortly before “the day of the assembly” in Horeb Israel had been led by “a pillar of fire” (Exo_13:21); in Heb_12:29 of this chapter the figure of “a consuming fire” is applied to God Himself. To avoid such associations as these, and vividly to represent what then was shown to the Israelites, he speaks of “a material and kindled fire.” The metaphor in “palpable” as applied to fire is hardly more remarkable than that involved in “a darkness which may be felt” (Exo_10:21, where the word used in the LXX. is almost the same as that which we have here).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv18–19 Vers. 18-29. There follows now, both for encouragement and…
Vers. 18-29. There follows now, both for encouragement and for warning, a grand contrast between the Mosaic and Christian dispensations, founded on the phenomena that accompanied the giving of the Law. To Mount Sinai, with its repelling terrors, is opposed an ideal picture of Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, expressive of the communion of saints in Christ. And then at ver. 25 (as previously in Heb 10) the tone of encouragement changes again to one of warning, the very excess of privilege being made the measure of the guilt of slighting it.
For ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned, with fire, and unto blackness and darkness and tempest. The allusion is to the Israelites approaching Mount Sinai when the Law was given. (see Deu_4:11, whence still more than from Ex 19 the whole description is taken, "And ye came near (proshlyete , the same word as is used supra, Heb_4:16 Heb_7:25) and stood under the mountain"). Though the word "mount" in the Received Text has the support of no ancient authority, it must be understood, whether or not originally written. For it comes after proshlyete in the passage of Deuteronomy which is evidently referred to, the following words, "blackness, darkness, tempest" (skotov gnofov yuella), being also found there. And otherwise we should have to translate, "a touched i.e. palpable and kindled fire;" but "touched" (fhlafwmenw) is not suitable to fire; and we should also lose the evidently intended contrast between the two mountains of Sinai and Zion, which appears in ver. 22. Neither may we trans- late, as some would do, "a mountain that might be touched, and kindled fire;" for the original passage in Deuteronomy has "and the mountain burned with fire (kai to orov ekaieto puri)." The participle fhlafwmenw (literally, that was touched), rather than qhfalhtw , may be used here, although on the occasion referred to all were forbidden to touch the mountain, by way of bringing more distinctly into view the actual Sinai, which was touched at other times, and which Moses both touched and ascended. If so, the main purpose of the word is to contrast the local and palpable mountain of the Law with the ideal Mount Zion which is afterwards spoken of. Or, the verb qhlalaw may here carry with it its common sense of groping after, as in the dark, (cf. Deu_28:29, Kai esh qhlafwn meshmbriav wsei qhlafhsai o tuflotei) with reference to the cloudy darkness about Sinai, and in contrast with the clear unclouded vision of Zion.
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Vers. 18-24. Sinai and Zion.
This grand passage, extending to the end of the chapter, forms a magnificent finale to the lengthened general exhortation to constancy, beginning at Heb_10:19, which occupies so important a place in the Epistle. The verses before us exhibit a highly wrought and impressive contrast between the Mosaic and the Christian dispensations. Mount Sinai is the emblem of the one, Mount Zion of the other. And Zion is incomparably superior to Sinai, in the privileges and blessings which flow from it.
I A PICTURE OF THE OLD REVELATION AT SINAI (Vers. 18-21) The nature of the dispensation inaugurated there was reflected in the character of the scene on occasion of the giving of the Law. The old economy was:
1. Sensuous. Sinai was "a mount that might be touched" (ver. 18); i.e. a tangible, palpable, physical mountain. The expression suggests the ceremonialism which was so prominent a feature of the Mosaic dispensation. The scene at Sinai was spectacular; and Judaism, in like manner, was a religion of externals. Its teaching was elemental, because elementary, Its ritual was sensuous. Its precepts were sustained by earthly sanctions.
2. Obscure. When God came down upon Sinai, he made blackness and darkness" his pavilion; he revealed himself in flame and storm. This is an emblem of the clouded character of the Old Testament revelation. Under it the plan of redemption still remained veiled in mystery. "The way into the holy place was not yet made manifest". (Heb_9:8) The Jews, in their ignorance and weakness, could only bear a shaded, shadowy, portentous manifestation of truth.
3. Exclusive. God spoke at Horeb only to one small nation, gathered before him there on the plain, and separated by the rocks and passes of the desert from the great peoples of the world. The Jews were a little flock, and the Shepherd of Israel shut them into a little fold by themselves.
4. Remote. The Hebrews dared not approach the God who revealed himself to them. The mountain was fenced round, and the stern penalty of death was threatened upon the trespasser (ver. 20). Similarly, while the Mosaic economy granted a certain access to God, and Israel was "a people near unto him," this access was yet not the most real. For Jehovah, to the mind of the Jew, was clothed with thunder; legal barriers stood between him and sinful men; and the Levitical system was saturated with ceremonial restrictions. Moses could not be an adequate mediator for Israel, to bring them to God; at the giving of the Law he was himself smitten with fear and trembling (ver. 21).
5. Terrible. This is the most prominent feature of the whole picture. At Sinai the lightnings flashed and the thunder rolled; the trump of God sent forth its wild weird blasts, and the awful voice of the Eternal spoke the ten "words" (ver. 19). But the people could not endure the revelation. They crouched and cowered in terror. When God of old came down from heaven, In power and wrath he came; Before his feet the clouds were riven, Half darkness and half flame. Around the trembling mountain"s base The prostrate people lay; A day of wrath, and not of grace; A dim and dreadful day. (Keble.)
Now, this awful scene symbolized the spirit and genius of the old dispensation. The Law inspired terror. It was "the ministration of death" and of "condemnation." It "bore children unto bondage." The ceremonial system became an unbearable yoke, by reason of its burdensome constraints; while the moral law pronounced its pitiless curses upon the disobedient.
6. Temporary. Sinai rears its shaggy cliffs of granite in the naked wilderness, and Israel made only a year"s encampment there. The tented plain of the desert was not their home. And so the dispensation set up at Mount Sinai was provisional and preparatory. It was only to stand until, under the Divine leading, the Church should be brought to the spiritual Mount Zion, and to the heavenly Jerusalem as its "city of habitation.
II A CONTRASTED PICTURE OF THE NEW REVELATION AT ZION. (Vers. 22-24) Although we did not attempt to trace the various points of comparison in detail, we should yet be impressed with the contrast as seen in the large outlines of the two pictures, and in their general tone and color. The new economy, as represented by Mount Zion, is:
1. Spiritual. The Church of Jesus Christ is the ideal Zion. It is also "the heavenly Jerusalem," the metropolis of the mediatorial kingdom. The New Testament system of religion is inward, supersensible, experimental. The types and ceremonies of Sinai have passed away. The matter of the new revelation is more spiritual. Christianity speaks of righteousness, not of ritual. The gospel laws are written upon the heart.
2. Clear. No night, or cloud, or storm gathers around Mount Zion; its very name means "sunny." The Sun of righteousness shines upon its towers and palaces, gilding them with brightness and beauty. The new covenant is "clear as the sun" in its teachings. It has given the world the most advanced truth; and it presents that truth in the simplest and the most explicit form.
3. All-embracing. Mount Sinai stands in the lonely and silent desert; but Mount Zion is the center of a populous city, whose teeming inhabitants are cosmopolitans. The Jewish Church was shut out from intercourse with the rest of the world; but our fellow-citizens under the new covenant are:
(1) The holy angels: "myriads of angels, a festal assembly" (vers. 22, 23); the cherubim and seraphim, all the princes, potentates and rulers of the celestial hierarchy.
(2) The saints or, earth: the "Church of the Firstborn who are enrolled in" the album of heaven. Israel was mustered and numbered at Sinai; and so the New Testament Church, although dispersed all over the world, forms but one society of firstborn ones, each of whom is a prince of the blood of God.
(3) The believers of the ancient Church: the spirits of just men made perfect." The disembodied souls of the Old Testament saints could not be made perfect "apart from us"; (Heb_11:40) and thus we now form one brotherhood with them, as well as with departed believers who lived in Christian times.
4. Access-giving. At Sinai "the people stood afar off." They could not draw near to God. The presence of his attending angels brought them no confidence. The mediation of Moses could not remove the barrier of their guilt. But now the great invitation is, Come. " The sum of gospel privilege is expressed in the words, "Ye are come" (ver. 22). Believers have been admitted to the mount and city of God, to the companionship of his angels, to the fellowship of his redeemed saints, and into his very presence as the righteous Judge, the God of all." And to what are we indebted for this access? We have come to God, because we have come "to Jesus," and have been sprinkled with his "blood" (ver. 24). Christ and his blood are the ground of all our blessings, and the sum of all. The nail-pierced hand of a better Mediator than Moses has opened for us the door of access.
5. Genial. The scene at Sinai was terrific; but all is peaceful in the sunny garden-city of Zion. It is true that the punishments connected with the new dispensation are far more dreadful than the merely spectacular terrors of the old; but these occupy the background of the picture, while at Sinai the terrors were in the foreground. And all who really come "to the blood of sprinkling" are safe. The atmosphere of the new covenant is balmy and genial by reason of the merit of that blood. Abel spoke (Heb_11:4) by his sacrifice only of a coming atonement and a future redemption; but Christ"s blood certifies that these blessings have been secured. And so the whole panorama of Zion is genial and attractive. Its verdure is unfading; (Psa_72:6) all is winsome and gladsome and serene.
6. Final. "The heavenly Jerusalem" is "the city which hath the foundations". (Heb_11:10) The life of the Church now is no longer a tent-life. It has exchanged the tabernacle for the true temple. The covenant of which Jesus is the Mediator is a "new," i.e. (according to the Greek in ver. 24) a fresh covenant, one that shall never become stale or old. The kingdom of heaven is a "kingdom that cannot be shaken" (ver. 28). As this whole picture embraces the entire history of the Christian Church, its truthfulness will be more and more appreciated as the centuries roll on, and most of all in the times of the latter-day glory.
CONCLUSION. The practical improvement of this graphic and pregnant passage is indicated in the solemn verses which follow.
Vers. 18-24. The exalted privileges of sincere Christians. For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, etc. This paragraph exhibits a striking contrast between Sinai and Zion the Mosaic and the Christian dispensations. The chief points of the contrast seem to be these:
1. The sensuous at Sinai is contrasted with the spiritual at Zion. At Sinai the manifestations were palpable, visible, audible (vers. 18, 19); at Zion they were heavenly, and to some extent invisible and inaudible. The former appealed chiefly to the senses, the latter to the soul.
2. The rigorous at Shoal is contrasted with the gracious at Zion. The former mountain was palpable, but no one of the people might draw near unto it, and if even a beast touched it it was to be stoned. The whole of the proceedings were awful and terrible. The revelation was of Law. Love was there, for love was the fountain of the Law; but Law, solemn and inflexible, and not love, was conspicuous. But at Zion, love and not Law was conspicuous. "The Law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." In the Christian dispensation grace is unmistakably clear and prominent. Here the voices are musical, the utterances are inviting.
3. The repellant at Sinai is contrasted with the attractive at Zion. At the giving of the Law, "they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them, And so fearful was the appearance that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake." But in this later dispensation men are drawn by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. To the sincere soul Christianity is bright, alluring, and blessed. Let us now consider the exalted privileges of sincere Christians as set forth in our text.
I THEY ARE MEMBERS OF A DISTINGUISHED SOCIETY, "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." We do not apply these words to heaven, but to the Church upon earth, the kingdom of Christ here and now; because
(1) in the sacred Scriptures Mount Zion is not set forth as the antithesis of heaven, but of the Christian Church; (Gal_4:24-26) and
(2) the text affirms that Christians "are come unto Mount Zion," etc. It is the statement of a present fact, and not a future prospect. Mark the characteristics of this distinguished society.
1. It is spiritual in its constitution. "The heavenly Jerusalem." The qualification for admission into this society is spiritual, not carnal; a thing of character, not of circumstances; not physical descent from Abraham, but moral approximation to Christ. Its worship is not restricted by local limitations, or by conventional and artificial rules; but by spiritual conditions only. "The hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.... The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth,". (Joh_4:21-24) Wherever there is a devout soul, there is the true Zion. The contrite heart can consecrate for itself a temple wherever it may be.
2. It is hallowed by the Divine presence. "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." Previous to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the name Mount Zion "was applied exclusively to the eastern hill, or that on which the temple stood." The glory of the Holy Land to the pious Hebrew was Jerusalem, and the glory of Jerusalem was Mount Zion, and the glory of Mount Zion was the temple, and the glory of the temple was the Shechinah. (cf. Psa_48:1-3 Psa_80:1 Psa_132:13, Psa_132:14) "The Lord is in his holy temple." "He sitteth between the cherubim. The Lord is great in Zion." But in a higher sense he dwells in the consecrated heart, and in the Christian Church. Where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.
3. Its members are individually consecrated to God. "To the Church of the Firstborn." The firstborn of Israel were dedicated to God as his priests. (Exo_13:1, Exo_13:2, Exo_13:11-15) Afterwards the tribe of Levi was selected for this service instead of the firstborn of all the tribes. (Num_3:11-13) And it is characteristic of every Christian that he is consecrated to God; he is a priest unto God. "Ye are a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God"s own possession.
1. Its members are heirs to a glorious inheritance. All Christians are called "firstborn" because they are all heirs of the heavenly inheritance. "We are children of God: and if children, then heirs," etc. Heirs "unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled," etc.
2. Its members are individually known unto God. They "are written in heaven." They are not yet citizens of heaven who have taken up their full citizenship by passing through death, but persons to whom their citizenship is assured, they being as yet here below." This enrolment in the book of life is the sign that the citizenship of the Christian is in heaven, and that his name and character are known unto God. "The Lord knoweth them that are his." The good Shepherd "calleth his own sheep by name". (cf. Luk_10:20)
II THEY ARE FAVOURABLY RELATED TO ANGELIC BEINGS. "Ye are come... to an innumerable company of angels." Notice:
1. The great number of angelic beings. The text speaks of" myriads of angels," an expression which is employed to indicate a great multitude. St. John in spiritual vision saw "many angels round about the throne; ... and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.
2. The joyful spirit of angelic beings. "And to myriads, the festal host of angels." Alford: Panhguriv is the complete, multitudinous, above all, jubilant, festal, and blissful assembly." "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." They rejoice in the progress of the cause of Christ, in the extension of his Church, in the triumphs of his cross and Spirit.
3. The gracious relation of angelic beings to Christians. Angels were present at Sinai in great numbers, and assisted at the giving of the Law. (cf. Heb_2:2 Deu_33:2 Gal_3:19) But their ministry upon that occasion seems to have been majestic and terrible, fitted to awe but not to attract men. But their relation to Christians is gracious and engaging. We are come unto them. Invisibly yet beneficently they are present with us as out" spiritual helpers. "Are they not all ministering spirits?" etc.
III THEY ARE SYMPATHETICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE PERFECTED SPIRITS OF THE GOOD. "And to the spirits of just men made perfect." We have here:
1. The noblest portion of human beings. "Spirits." Having laid down their bodies at death, these thinking, reflecting, loving, worshipping spirits live on in consciousness and in blessedness.
2. A commendable character of human beings. "Spirits of just men." Not innocent; but pardoned and purified from sin through the mercy of God. Spirits of all the just who have entered the eternal state, from righteous Abel down to the spirit which last responded to the home-call.
3. The most excellent condition of human beings. "Spirits of just men made perfect." Made perfect, not in degree, but in character and condition. Perfect as being without error and sin, but not as being incapable of further progress. They are without sin, but they will grow in holiness. They are without error, but they will increase in knowledge. "Made perfect;" then how different are they from even the best of men in this world! Many an imperfection will be put off by us at death; many an error will be corrected soon as we see things in the clear light of eternity. "We are come... to the spirits of just men made perfect." They are not lost to us. Life and immortality are brought to light in the gospel. Deep and tender is their interest in us. We are one with them in sacred and blessed sympathy. E"en now by faith we join our hands With those that went before; And greet the blood-besprinkled bands On the eternal shore. (C. Wesley.)
IV THEY HAVE GRACIOUS ACCESS TO THE GREAT GOD. "And to God the Judge of all." At Sinai the Israelites were terrified at the signs of his presence as Lawgiver; but in this later dispensation sincere Christians draw near to him with confidence even as the Judge of all. Nay, there is a sense in which this aspect of his being attracts them. They are yet in the world. They have enemies to contend against and wrongs to endure; and they look up to God as their righteous Judge, who will vindicate their right and their cause. We are come unto him. He is not a cold, impassive, remote being. He is near to us; he loves us, draws us to himself, and blesses us with his gracious presence. We confide in him, and realize our holiest impulses and most blessed experiences in fellowship with him.
V THEY ARE SAVINGLY RELATED TO JESUS CHRIST. "And to Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
1. We are come to him as our Mediator. By him God is brought so near to us, and we are reconciled to God. Through him we enter into the possession of all our exalted and rich privileges.
2. We are come to him who effected his mediatorial work by the sacrifice of his own life. The blood of sprinkling is his own precious blood, which he shed for us. "We have our redemption through his blood," etc. And this blood speaks of the infinite love of God, and the full and free forgiveness of sins, and spiritual perfection, and endless progress and blessedness.
CONCLUSION. Great privileges involve great responsibilities. W.J.
Vers. 18-24. Sinai and Zion.
Esau bewailed his lost birthright, and yet to what did that birthright lead the posterity of him who gained it? See the posterity of Jacob gathered round the terrible mountain in the wilderness. The posterity of Esau might perhaps congratulate themselves on having escaped the constraints of Jehovah that fell so sorely on the kindred children of Jacob. If, then, this birthright, over the foolish casting away of which Esau shed such copious and fruitless tears, led to such terrible experiences, how should we guard the privilege that brings us, not to Sinai, but Zion, with all its durable attractions and companionships? Such seems to be the thought underlying the exhibition of these two contrasted pictures.
I THE SAME GOD MANIFESTS HIS PRESENCE IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS. Zion is very different flora Sinai, but for all that Sinai must precede Zion. This, it may be said, is not true to every individual experience. Not true, perhaps, in strict sequence of time; but every human life must know something of Sinai if it would know Zion to the full. Every human being must know something of the Law coming by Moses, as well as the grace and truth coming by Jesus Christ. Let no complaint be made that preachers impose on the ignorant and the timid by fictitious and exaggerated terrors. Jehovah is none the less God of Sinai because since then he has become God of Zion.
II SINAI IS MEANT FOR THE PASSING EXPERIENCE, ZION FOR THE PERMANENT ONE. The children of Israel came to Sinai for a very short time. God"s anger with the wicked abides he is angry with the wicked every day but it would be clean against his character as a pitiful and long suffering God to have Sinai continually involved in smoking flame and roaring tempest. Sinai is God"s appointed halting-place for us somewhere in the solemn and arduous journey of life. Zion is the goal of the journey. Many of those who trembled along with Moses at the literal Sinai have surely been gathered with Moses since upon the heavenly Zion.
III NOTE POINTS IN THE CONTRAST. Sinai was in the wilderness, and there is some reason to suppose that it has now more of the wilderness than ever, that its desolation is greater than when the children of Israel camped there. Zion was in the city. Men lived about it all their lives. He who comes to Zion comes to an abiding company. The earthly Jerusalem where the ark dwells, typifies that heavenly Jerusalem where the God of the ark really dwells. Thence the messengers of God issue forth on their errands of righteousness and mercy, and thither they return to resume the service of the higher, holier sphere. At Sinai just men, struggling with their sense of sin, were made to feel their imperfection. On Zion just men are gathered in their purity of heart and spiritual completeness, enabled forever to look on the face of God. The two contrasted pictures must not be pushed too much into detail. Let the imagination rather try to group each as a whole. The passage suggests two frameworks, in one of which we may gather the peculiarities of the old covenant, and in the other the peculiarities of the new. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v18 The mount that might be touched
Heb_12:18-24
The mount that might be touched
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Sinai and Zion
I.
CHRISTIANITY IS A SPIRITUAL, NOT A MATERIAL, DISPENSATION. The mount that might be touched--a palpable mountain: the words indicate that the religion thereon proclaimed was a mass of ritual, legal service, and physical endurance; and not that spiritual surrender, and inner life of holiness, essentially belonging to the gospel. The apostle having elaborated this idea, shows that Christians have left behind them the barren Arabian mount, and in approaching God have increased the spirituality of their religion.
II. THOUGH CHRISTIANITY IS SPIRITUAL IN ITS NATURE, IT EMPLOYS MATERIAL FORMS AS ADJUNCTS. Sinai has given place to Zion. We have our material forms, but they are subordinate, not primary: bodies, not souls: servants, not lords.
III. SINAI AND ZION ARE ONLY MARKS OF PROGRESS, NOT FINAL DESTINATIONS. The home is further onward. Our past victories are only earnests of a universal conquest. Lessons:
1. Privilege is the measure of responsibility.
2. There is no limit to progress in love and knowledge. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The sensuous and the spiritual:
All things are capable of being intensified by contrast. There is no colour so bright but it may be made to look doubly so, by placing it by the side of its opposite. There is no beauty so exquisite but it may be made to appear more beautiful, by nearness to the unlovely and deformed. We should not know half the cheeriness of the day, if it were not for the gloom of night. There are some sculptured figures in St. Peters, at Rome, which are reduced, to the eye of the beholder, to a third of their real size, by the vastness of everything around them. One half, and sometimes more, of the pleasure of the things that please us comes of the sorrows we have known. Whose are the eyes that greet the light of the morning with the greatest eagerness? Surely, the eyes of those who have watched all the darkness of the night. Whose rest is the sweetest, if not theirs who have toiled the hardest through the day? Who were they whose shout in heaven was like the sound of many waters, as they said: Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb? It was the voice of them which had come out of great tribulation. And who was the man who seemed best to understand, and most to revel in, the freedom and love of the gospel, as a system of salvation? Why, it was the man who had most heartily yielded himself up to the whole influence of the former dispensation, and most conscientiously kept his neck in its yoke. And what was the spirit of the first dispensation, as contained in these words? Is it not this?--It was sensuous; it was artificial; it was based on fear. Whilst the great and blessed character of the second is that it is spiritual, it is real, and it is based on love.
I. FROM BEGINNING TO END, JUDAISM WAS AN APPEAL TO SENSE. It was Gods most merciful accommodation of His revelation of Himself and of His will to the necessities of mans weakness and ignorance. Sinai was designed to he, and was, a splendid Divine answer to a few of the deepest questions of the whole human soul--Is there a God? And have we anything to do with Him? And what? And will He dwell with us here, upon the earth? The true answer, Divinely written, at the first, upon the heart and conscience and intelligence of man; ay, written, too, on every leaf of natures living page, in golden letters of the sunlight, in silver gleamings from the moon and stars, sharp graven on the mountain edges, on azure page of heaven, had faded from mans heart and eye and ear. Is there a God? said the restless, troubled heart of man. And so, in His own time and way, God gave the answer Himself; and that answer was Sinai. Now look! Yon cloud! It is the robe of Deity. Doubt you? Then hark! And see! Those thunders and sharp lightning flashes are the tramping of His heralds, and the flashing of their spears. Only a storm, say you? Then hark again! What warrior blast is that? So piercing shrill, that, like a steeled sword, it darts through every heart--a blade of fear--and makes the stoutest tremble like a leaf. And then, more awful still, a voice, a voice of words--but not an earthly voice, of human words. The voice of very God. And so God answered these great questions of the human heart. There it was! A great, sensuous thing, that could not but make its own impression on those who saw and heard it, and, through them, might gain the ear and heart of posterity and all the world. And by as much as what we see impresses us more deeply than what we only hear, by so much was this peoples heart more deeply touched than by any simpler revelation of the truth. But because it was sensuous, it was artificial, unreal. As an allegory wraps up a truth in beauteous, but concealing folds; as a picture reveals the countenance of your friend, and yet is not himself, and cannot be more than a miserable substitute for himself; so, all this was not God; it was not even the likeness of God, it was but the shadow of God. And so again, because it was sensuous and artificial, it was terrible. It is of no use to appeal to the reason of a child, or of a savage, or of a man utterly under the dominion of his senses; you appeal to what is not, or to what has lost its power to act. You must, then, appeal to some lower part of his nature; to his self-interest, if he is capable of perceiving it, if not, to his fear. Now what was it that made it necessary for God to reveal Himself and His will to the Jews in a sensuous and artificial way? It was because they were not susceptible of the higher way. They were children, and wanted to see in order to believe. Ay, they were children morally, subject to great temptation, and God wanted them for their own sake to obey Him, and to worship Him; and so, in the first instance, He laid the foundations for their obedience in terrors.
He bound them to Himself by the bands of fear, and holding them thus He then, in the after history of the nation, began to draw them to Himself with the cords of love, the bands of a man. So they came to the mount, &c. to the sensuous, the artificial, the terrible.
II. Now, in the second place, let us view the contrast, in all its particulars, which marks THE DISPENSATION UNDER WHICH WE ARE PLACED.
1. All is spiritual. At the first, indeed, it pleased God so far to accommodate His ways to the wants of humanity in this respect, as to give us the truth in a sensible, bodily form. When the fulness of time was come, &c. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, &c. And so there was enacted, down here on the earth, once for all, the splendid mystery of the incarnation and the crucifixion and the resurrection. Jesus Christ is the full and complete answer to all those questions that man ever had asked or ever could ask about himself, and God, and all other spiritual facts. But after he had looked for a little while at the new Temple, and the new Priest, and the new law, and the new sacrifice--long enough to feel and see the Divine splendour that was in it, without fully comprehending what it was--it was taken up boldly into the heavenly, that men might know to the full what it was that had been amongst them. But mark you! When it was done, there was not a vestige of the sensuous left. The Holy of Holies was an empty shrine; the very temple was suffered to be thrown down so that not one stone was left upon another; ay, Jerusalem itself, the centre of the whole of the previous system, was desecrated, and has ever since been heathen ground; and the very Jews, the chosen people, the medium of the former revelation, ceased to be a nation, and were scattered among the nations of the earth. And what, then, have we in its place? We have a history, a record, a book, and nothing else. That is to say, we have the truth in its purest, simplest form. The world a temple, thrown open to all mankind; worship possible everywhere, at every time. Would you see God now? Look on the face of Christ, in the mirror of the book, and that is all that you can have. Would you go to God now? Kneel where you are, and He is there, to hear you and to bless.
2. All is real now. There is no exaggeration. Nothing artificial. Christ is the express image of the Father. I do not say that it is the whole truth about God, that we shall come to have some day, when this veil of flesh has been dissolved; but it is all that we can bear.
3. It is as loving and as winning as Sinai was terrible. It makes no appeal to our fears; only to our reason and our love. He is the tender Shepherd of the sheep, come to seek the lost. He is the Fathers plaintive pleading with His rebellious child. He is the outstretched hand of God to every repenting sinner. He is the utterer of a grand amnesty to all the world who will receive it. He lays His Cross athwart the threatening law, and takes away its curse. He is the rebuke of all mens guilt-born fears about God, and all their hard thoughts of Him. In a word, He is the incarnate love of God pleading with sinful man. (G. W. Conder.)
Mans place is Christianity
I. MANS PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY IS RELATED MORE TO THE SPIRITUAL THAN THE MATERIAL.
II. MANS PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY IS RELATED TO THE ATTRACTIVE RATHER THAN THE TERRIBLE. This subject presents a motive for
1. Gratitude.
2. Catholicity. Heaven is not a sect.
3. Self-inquiry. Are we cometo this system? How do we come to it? Not by mere birth, not by profession, but by a new creation in Christ Jesus. (Homilist.)
Ye are come unto mount Sion
The privileges and the duties of believers
I. What are the PECULIAR PRIVILEGES of the members of Christs Church?
1. The first and greatest, because the foundation of all the rest is, union with Christ.
2. Association with the whole body of the faithful.
3. The right to the heavenly inheritance.
II. If the PRIVILEGES of all who are come unto Mount Zion are thus precious and ennobling, their DUTIES are proportionate.
1. Correspondent to the first-named privilege there is the duty of loyalty to Christ.
2. Correspondent to the second privilege, there is the duty of love to the brethren.
3. It is the duty of the members of Christs Church, as heirs of the celestial inheritance, to set their hearts and hopes on heaven. (J. M.McCulloch, D. D.)
The heavenly life
The whole chapter shows that this is the nature of a picture motive. It is an influence rather than a knowledge. And yet how shall one feel influence except through the reason, or through knowledge? But it is the way of the highest instruction to enter through the imagination, and come to the reason in that way. That is the genius, certainly, of the New Testament, in its description of the life above--the life that is to come. It never defines. It seeks not so much to impart knowledge to the reader, as we should call it in this life, as to produce in his mind certain states of feeling. Unskilled men writing, without inspiration, of the new city beyond, of the great afterlife, would have fallen into the mistake of attempting to give in revealed distinctness and accuracy things which by the very terms of our existence we cannot comprehend accurately and distinctly. Not so the inspired teachers. They poetised heaven; they dramatised the future; they gave to man conceptions through his imagination--and not aimlessly, but because through the imagination the sympathies of our nature, hope, joy, trust, aspiration, and the rest, could all be reached. What men need is to be stirred up, and then to be quieted. Intensity and quietude are harmonious in the higher spiritual life. What we want is some motive that will propel us along the sphere of our present life. We do not so much need to know what is to be the daily bread, converse, and activities of the other life; but we do need to know that there is One who has promised us personal sensibility and personal identity there, and that we shall know and be known, love and be loved. We do need to know that heaven is more than a compensation for earth. We do need to know that our being here contributes to immortality, glory, all that belongs to the act of rising into a pure spiritual form and condition where that which is Divine remains and continues in activity. To this Revelation and all the Pauline teachings tend. To this the writings of the unknown author of the Book of Hebrews tend. They give us an inside revelation which reveals nothing. Well, say men, what kind of a revelation is that? When the poor wayfarer from old plantation life, hiding himself by day, and then beginning to live at night, pursued his weary way toward the north, he had but one guide and that was the polar star. That star said nothing to him. It shed no warmth on him. He did not know its contents. He knew nothing about it. But it was a star that, when he looked upon it, directed him to where liberty was. From that bright point in the far north he gathered zeal, so that in the darkness, through forest, through fen, across streams, over mountains, pressed by adversaries, with hounds baying on his track, he sped on his way. It was the inspiration of that star that supported him, though it revealed nothing to him but this: You will be free. So there is no real description of the future life given to us in the New Testament except this: It is more grand than anything that you can conceive. It hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive it. Nor can mans capacity compass it and take it all in. Nevertheless, what there is in human notions that inspires us with a sense of grandeur we apply to it. Now, the imagination teaches men in such a way that if you accept the description of heaven simply as a picture or vision, it is full of inspiration and hope. When you say that it shall be glorious, it is a good deal; but the moment you attempt to tell what the glory is, it is nothing at all. To say we shall reign, is a good deal; but to undertake to tell what reigning is spoils the whole thing. I love you fills the soul and makes it vibrate like a harp, but undertake to explain what the love is, and it is turned to ashes at once. Nevertheless, the emotion is real, and the highest and most potent of our feelings are those which do not suffer themselves to be touched. The most glorious things in us are silent, and will not submit to rude handling, dwelling as they do in the centre of the ineffable. How much greater, better, and more untranslatable by mortal knowledge than physical existence is the realm of love! It is all right if you do not want to know what it is and how it works; but the moment you undertake to philosophise about it, its character is changed. The realm of purity is glorious so long as you do not attempt to analyse it; but you may as well bid it good-bye if you commence to reason about it. There are, then, some lessons to be derived from this. Having thrown off the peril of misinterpretation, there are certain great truths that we may deduce from it without resorting to the curiosity-mongers process--without attempting to anatomise heaven and deal with it scientifically. There are certain elements that it was meant we should derive from the pictures of it, and that, if we consider them aright, may be of exceeding great comfort to us in our Christian life. If it be true that we are to live again; if it be true that we are living here that we may go forward and live in a higher state, then the grandeur of the life that now is out of sight. You cannot tell by the earlier condition of things what their later states are to be. You cannot tell by the bud what the inflorescence is to be. You cannot tell by the flower what the fruit is to be. We cannot understand human life by looking at what it has yet come to under the influence of physical economy. In this life many are discouraged; but let a man maintain integrity under all circumstances and in all conditions, let him always and everywhere act with simplicity and fidelity, let him ally himself to those great qualities which God has revealed to be the centre-current of the universe, and all will be well with him. Love works no ill to ones neighbour; Gods law is love; Thou shalt love is the command; and let a man conform himself to that central law of the universe, and then let death plant him, and we will run the risk of his coming up in the other life. And that ought to be a consolation to a man who in this world is poor and inconspicuous, and, as helpless amid the sweep of human affairs as a last years leaf on the current of the Amazon. There are multitudes of such men, to whom a view like that which I have been presenting should carry not only comfort, but a great deal of instruction. Consider another fact in this connection--namely, that in this life the things which make the most ado are not the things which are the most important. There is nothing on earth noisier than a storm beating on the shore, and yet what does it do? It is bred in the desert sea. It lashes itself into a useless rage. It thunders in the heavens, and shakes the earth, and comes pouring down, and is broken into a million globules on the immovable rocks. By-and-by its wrath ceases, it smooths its blow, and the sea is tranquil again. What has happened? Nothing. Not a single thing has been done. A mans life goes thundering on, and the things which are most in the eyes of men are often of the least possible importance. The rage of nations, the march of armies, the rise of inconspicuous tribes to power, and their deliquescence and fading away again--these things seem great to men; but they come and go, and the earth is no whit changed, and men are no whir changed. So the things which are actually worth chronicling, and which are being chronicled, for ever and for ever, are the things which no man hears or sees. This great empty scroll above our heads is Gods workshop, and He is writing there the history of time and the world. The scroll itself shall shrivel and depart; but the things that are written on that scroll shall never change. A man is not what he seems. This life is not what it appears to be. That which men call nothing--the great invisible realm--is the power which was declared by the apostle to be real. It is the things which are not that bring to naught the things that are. There is dominion in imagination, or in faith, to the man that knows how to avail himself of it. I remark, also, that if these views of the other life,. of the invisible, uninterpreted, and uninterpretable life, of the life of joy and power and grandeur which is to come--but which we cannot define any more closely than this--if these views be true, then how beautiful are the conceptions which are in the nature of comfort to men in the decays that take place in this state of existence! I have always been very much struck by that illustration of Pauls which is contained in the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians. He is speaking about the act of dying. And that which is true of the mere act of death is just as true of every other relation that terminates, or of any other composition which is analysed and goes back to its elements again. He says there are two sides to this matter. You cannot stand in the time-world and see what you will see in the world to come. You only see corruption, you only see dishonour, you only see weakness in the natural body. But then there is another side. There is the way in which God sees things, and there is the way in which the heavenly host see them. But what is to be seen on that side? Why, incorruption, glory, power, a spiritual body. If you look up at the bottom of the coffin from the earth side it is all sad and solemn. If you look down upon the coffin from the Divine side it is all radiant, triumphant, joyful. Those that I have known, whose virtues I have dwelt upon, and whose nature has shed great beauty in life, I love to follow, step by step, as they go down toward death. My faith rejoices in their advance till their voices fail out of my ear, and till their faces are hidden from me, because they have gone to live in Zion and before God: Wherefore comfort one another with words: Strengthen each other by the way. Sing and rejoice, knowing that, bright as is any experience here, it is but a twilight experience till the day shall dawn and the sun shall arise upon your souls. (H. W.Beecher.)
The Church likened to a mountain
1. For the height of it. A mountain is higher than the ordinary earth. The Church is high, it is above (Gal_4:26), and they that be of the Church must carry high and regal minds. We must leave earth, and mount up in our affections into heaven; we must seek the things that be above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.
2. The Church is compared to a mountain: for the security of it.
3. For the difficulty of ascending to it. A man may not go up a high hill, but it must cost him pains, sweat and labour; so it is a laborious thing to get to heaven.
4. For the immobility of it. The Church is as Mount Zion that standeth fast for ever, and cannot be removed. Happy are they that be of the Church. (W. Jones, D. D.)
Within sight of it, but cannot see it:
Crossing from Belfast to Greenock by the night-boat late one autumn, after several attempts to sleep, I came upon deck soon after the steamer had entered the Clyde, and stood for a time in conversation with the mate, a true son of Erin. A dense haze prevented us from seeing far beyond the vessel, and I was disappointed in not being able to get a view of the coast. Thinking we were still at sea, I remarked to the man at the helm I suppose we shall soon be in sight of land? when, judge of my surprise, the following rejoinder was tendered in reply: Sure, and were within sight of it now, but ye cant see it I More than a little amused with the paradox, I thanked my Hibernian friend, and waited till the hills, purple with heather and crowned with the first signs of winter, rewarded my anxious gaze. I knew that with the firs beams which should penetrate the mist the land would be visible, so I kept looking, and had not long to wait. The landscape, aglow with a thousand blended charms as the sun chased away the gloom of night and the mist of the early dawn, soon stood revealed in all its beauty, and forms a memory to be fondly cherished. (V. J. Charlesworth.)
The heavenly Jerusalem
The heavenly Jerusalem
I. THE STATE OF HEAVEN AS A GLORIOUS CITY. Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. This is that city
1. Where the most glorious display of Divine wisdom appears, everything conducted with exquisite policy.
2. Where omnipotent goodness operates at large, and deals her favours with the richest profusion (Psa_16:11).
3. Where the King of Glory Himself dwells, and everything declares His more immediate presence (Rev_7:15).
4. Where the laws, manners, and employments of the inhabitants most resemble and are most worthy of God.
5. In fine, this is that city which is the first production of the grand Architect of nature, and whither we are at last conveyed; but not till duly prepared for it (Rev_21:27; Rev_22:14). See a fine description of this Rev_21:10-22). And of this city, all real Christians are represented as members, even while they are in this world.
II. OUR ACCESSION OR RELATION TO IT. There is a certain figure made use of by our Saviour and His apostles, a figure that makes futurity present and realises the distant glories of immortality (Mat_5:3; Eph_2:6). And the text says, Ye are come;--already come, etc. The Christian religion suggests particular grounds for this sublime representation, such as no other system can exhibit. For example, we have
1. The express promise of God to put every persevering Christian into the possession of Mount Zion above (Rev_22:14; Rev_2:7; Rev_2:10).
2. It is farther ascertained from the mediation of Christ, the grand end of which see Heb_2:10.
3. The supreme power of the Redeemer (Mat_28:18), which is equal to remove every difficulty, subdue every enemy, supply every necessity, and exalt to the highest dignity.
III. OUR RELATION TO THE HEAD AND TO THE MEMBERS OF THIS CITY.
1. Ye are come to God, the Judge of all, angels and men; the knowledge of God, His nature, unity, perfections, providence (Eph_5:8). The worship and service of God (1Th_1:9). To His favour Rom_5:1). His family and household (Gal_4:6-7). His presence; an event so certain that the apostle at once transports the Christian beyond the grave, to that Being who is the souls portion, her centre and final happiness.
2. To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant: in and through whom both parts of the covenant are reciprocally conveyed and transmitted. Blessings from God to man, through Christ; and duties from man to God, acceptable through Christ. Come to the Mediator, so as to be united to Him; participate a new nature through Him (2Co_5:17), rely on His sacrifice, obey His commandments, and, according to the aforementioned figure, to be taken by Him at last to the city of God (Rev_3:21).
3. To an innumerable company of angels. Good men in this world have, indisputably, various connections with those superior beings; they are fellow-subjects and servants (Rev_22:9). Protected by them Psa_34:7). Minister to them (Heb_1:14). Conduct them to heaven (Luk_16:22). As public heralds, proclaim their Lords approach (Mat_24:31). The apostle here anticipates our incorporation with those happy spirits in glory (Rev_7:9-12).
4. To the spirits of just men made perfect. We are one community, of the same spirit and disposition, loving the same God, enjoying the same felicity, differing only in degree. They are got home, we are going; they have got the prize, we are wrestling for it.
5. To the general assembly and Church of the firstborn (Rom_8:29; Col_1:15-18). It may respect themselves; they are the chiefs the excellent ones, the firstborn. Written in heaven, alluding to the custom of ancient states, who enrolled their freemen; Christians enrolled in heaven Luk_10:20), to signify that they have a right to all the high privileges of the city of God: and when all collected, compose the general assembly, Mat_24:31; Rev_7:9).
Of this amazing corporation every Christian becomes a member at the moment of his conversion to God. Improvement:
1. Hence see the peculiar excellency of that religion which animates her proselytes with so glorious a hope.
2. Let our temper and conduct declare our kindred to those serene and happy intelligences.
3. Let the views of these glorious and animated prospects raise our souls to God in grateful adoration of His goodness and love (Psa_31:21; Psa_72:18-19). (J. Hannam.)
I live there:
Some one asked a Scotchman if he was on his way to heaven. Why, man, he said, I live there. He was only a pilgrim here. Heaven was his home. (D. L. Moody.)
Already in heaven:
Are you dreaming, father? I said one day, when he (Father Taylor) was leaning back in his chair, with closed eyes and a happy smile playing about his mouth. I am in heaven a little way, he answered, without moving. And what is heaven, really? I asked, climbing upon his knees. It is loving God, he replied, still with the same soft dreamy tone. (Mrs. Judge Russell.)
Heaven should be much in the thoughts
A lady, unused to the rough travelling of a mountain land, went thither to make her home, and received from one of her new friends this bit of advice. She had been telling of her faintness when guiding her horse through a deep ford where the waters ran swiftly and the roar was incessant, and said she feared she should never be able to overcome the abject physical terror which dominated her whenever she found herself in the strong current midway between the banks. Oh, yes, you will, said her companion. Just take a leaf in your mouth and chew it, and as you ride across keep your eyes on the other side. (M. E.Sangster.)
Heaven not flit away:
We measure distance by time. We are apt to say that a certain place is so many hours from us. If it is a hundred miles off, and there is no railroad, we think it a long way; if there is a railway, we think we can be there in no time. But how near must we say heaven is?--for it is just one sigh, and we get there. Why, our departed friends are only in the upper room, as it were, of the same house. They have not gone far off; they are upstairs, and we are down below. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The nobility of the Christian life:
How noble the lowest life may become, like some poor, rough sea-shell with a gnarled and dimly-coloured exterior, tossed about in the surge of a stormy sea, or anchored to a rock, but when opened all iridescent with rainbow sheen within, and bearing a pearl of great price! So, to outward seeming, my life may be rough and solitary, and inconspicuous and sad, but, in inner reality, it may have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living. God, and have angels for its guardians, and all the first-born for its brethren and companions. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
An innumerable company of angels
The office of angels
I. Angels are, as far as we know from revelation, the only beings who take an interest with us in God and the spiritual world. Angels are fellow-citizens with us in the kingdom of Christ. It is certain, moreover, that angels are immortal, but not eternal; that they are very numerous, and have different ranks; that they are used by God as His special ministers, and that they have sympathy with man. But how far this sympathy extends is not so certain. Are they cognisant of human things generally, and of their own accord, or must they in each case be informed by God? In the course of three thousand six hundred years there are, I believe, recorded only twenty instances of angels visits, which would allow on the average an interval of one hundred and eighty years between each appearance. Thus their visitations were, in the strict sense of the word, extraordinary, and will be found for the most part to accompany a great national crisis. Next, had angels in those days power to influence the souls of men? It is very questionable. That they led men by the hand, and spoke Gods messages to them, is certain; but it is not so sure that they instilled into the soul a secret thought, or endued the tempted spirit with heavenly grace. Again, when angels are said to have interfered, were they not visible, no phantom or vivid imagination of the mind, but the impression of a visible substance upon the eye and brain? Thus much of the Old Testament. Let us now proceed to the New. Perhaps the first thing which strikes us here is the frequent mention of angels in contrast with their rare appearance under the old dispensation. It is as if the light of the presence of God on earth brought out more vividly the lesser lights of the spiritual world; just as it has been remarked that the evil spirit also is more apparent in the Gospels, and as the light of Gods glory becomes more intense, so is Satan more evident (as witness the Book of the Revelation). Now some of these references belong to the office which angels hold in heaven, as do all the passages that occur in the Revelation. Of the rest, all but one are concerned with the Divine person of their and our Lord, or with momentous events in immediate connection with Him. The exception is the solitary instance of an angel stirring the waters of Bethesda. Thus there is no more evidence in the Gospels than in the Old Testament to justify us in believing that angels exercise their ministry on earth on ordinary occasions, or that they have any spiritual influence on man at all, or that they act in any way without making themselves visible to those whom they approach. Our next step, then, will be to examine what Holy Scripture says of angels after Pentecost. St. Peter is twice rescued by an angel; Cornelius is advised by an angel to send for Peter; Philip the deacon is sent by another to the eunuch; Herod is smitten by an angel; St. Paul had an angel standing by him in the ship. Thus it is clear that angels are not displaced by the Holy Ghost; and these passages are extremely important, as being those to which we should look, rather than to any which precede them, for an answer to the question, what place do angels hold in the Church of Christ on earth? The answer is very explicit on one point at least. The influence of angels in these instances is not spiritual, but external; their aid is in times of physical danger, not of inward temptation. Again the answer is explicit as to their visible presence--confirming the result to which former records in Scripture had led us, that when they interfere they are not only felt but seen. Finding this to be the case, it is natural to inquire how far this view of angels ministries agrees with the whole spirit and character of the Christian dispensation. Let me ask your close attention to this portion of the subject. What is the great change wrought in our condition by the holy incarnation of the Son and by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost? Words fail me when I try to answer; let me use the language of St. Paul:--Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one … Through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. And rising higher to St. Johns divine words, so wondrously simple and profound, on the truth of the incarnation: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit the words of Christ Himself: The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. This is the change wrought by Christ in the relation of man to God. I will not say, what room is there here for spiritual aid from angels? because we know not the boundaries of Gods scheme of mercy to man; but I will ask, is there not here in Gods own presence all that the spirit of man can desire or imagine? Tell me any sorrow, or doubt, or temptation, or critical emergency of life, in which your heart need look elsewhere for aid but to the Holy Ghost? To look for angels help against the enemy of souls, when God Himself has promised to abide in us, is worse than for the traveller to seek at his feet a glowworms light to show the path when the moon has risen and called the stars about her overhead. Still, after all, much is doubtful. As with the saints departed, so with angels; it is well to think of them often, but safer to think of them as above, not amongst us, each in his happy sphere midway between ourselves and heaven. (Canon Furse.)
The connection between Christian, s and angels
I. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS FRIENDS, from whom we have been separated by the fall. Men and angels, in their original creation, formed but one family; and, though they differed in nature and in residence, they had one Father, and there would have been a free and pleasing intercourse between them. But sin destroyed the harmony of the world. Sin disunited heaven and earth. Sin separated not only between God and men, but between angels and men. When man revolted from his lawful Sovereign, they remained in their allegiance; and as sin rendered God our enemy, so it rendered angels our enemies too. Accordingly we read of their being the executioners of the Divine vengeance. But, in consequence of the mediation of our Lord and Saviour, the breach is healed. We are reconciled not only to God, but to the angels. Men and angels form again one family; they remained in their original state; we are restored to it; and such is the disposition of those celestial beings, that they do not repine, like the elder brother, at the return of the prodigal, but rejoice to welcome the younger branches of the family home.
III. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS ATTENDANTS, whose care is to follow us through life. Gods noblest creatures are His childrens servants. Such honour have all the saints.
III. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS WITNESSES, whose observations we are to reverence. It would be well for us to remember that we are always in sight. The eyes of our fellow-creatures are often upon us; and if they were always upon us, they would restrain us from a thousand sins. But invisible beings always behold us. There are cases in which two guilty individuals are implicated. They accuse each other; and no human being was privy to their wickedness. But angels saw Abel and Cain when they were alone together in the field. They can decide, in an intrigue, who was the seducer, and who the seduced. What a world of private wickedness will they develop!
IV. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS PATTERNS, whose example we are to imitate. To these models our Saviour Himself leads us in the form of devotion He gave to His disciples; in which He teaches us to pray, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. And, even now, this prayer is accomplished. Between believers and angels there is a resemblance, though not an equality. Wherein does it appear?
1. It appears in the nature of their obedience. We are told that the angels, however great, find it their privilege to serve. Their obedience is ready, without delay; cheerful, without reluctance; constant, without intermission; and impartial, without choice. The reason is, they love God, and it is His will alone they regard. And whatever low idea you may form of a
Christian, such is, and such must be, His leading desire, and His prevailing endeavour.
2. It appears in their union. These beings have various degrees among them. Yet these produce no contempt, no envy, no eagerness to dictate, no backwardness to co-operate. They perfectly harmonise. They have but one spirit, one wish. Shall I say that Christians do resemble all this? Alas 1 there is too little of it in our churches and assemblies.
3. It appears in the subject of their study. The angels are proverbial for knowledge; we read of being wise as an angel of God. Had we heard only of such exalted beings, we should be anxious to know what things they deemed most worthy of their attention. But we are informed. They are the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow--which things the angels desire to look into. Are you like-minded? Is this the most welcome subject to your hearts? The most important to your minds?
4. It appears in their worship. They adore the incarnate Redeemer. And is there a Christian upon earth that does not delight in the same praise?
V. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS ASSOCIATES, with whom we are to blend our future being, and from whom we shall derive no inconsiderable part of our happiness. It is not good for man to be alone. He is formed for social enjoyment; and it is a great source of his present pleasure. The representation of heaven meets this propensity. And there are two classes of beings that will contribute much to our satisfaction and improvement. The one is endearing. It takes in those you loved in life, with whom you took sweet counsel together, and went to the house of God in company, your pious friends and relations, who now sleep in Jesus. The other is dignifying. It comprehends patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs--angels. You shall be introduced to company of the very first sort. Angels are the flower of the creation; and the poorest, meanest believer shall enjoy it; and be prepared for it. Let us conclude with two questions.
1. How can it be said that we are come to this blessed assembly? By the certainty of the event. By promise--and he Scripture cannot be broken. By hope-and hope maketh not ashamed. By anticipation, by earnests, by foretastes of this exalted felicity.
2. To whom are you come? (W. Jay.)
The nature of angels:
I. THEY ARE THE HIGHEST OF ALL CREATED BEINGS, WHOSE HOME IS THE IMMEDIATE PRESENCE OF GOD. They were heavens earliest inmates, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. They see God face to face continually; they worship Him, and rest not day and night from praising Him; their obedience is perfect and secure; where laws end, love begins. To borrow the image of South, like a cup of crystal thrown into a brim-ruing river, which first is filled, then lost in the stream, so sinks their overflowing love in the love of God. Nor is their vision limited to heaven. Once they saw the eternal Son descend from thence to earth, and marked His life and death, and ministered to Him in His abasement and His glory. With sympathetic insight into the mystery of redemption, yet there remained things into which they desired to look. And now that the Son has returned in glory to His eternal home, they look for the fulfilment of His joy; watching for the coming in of souls for whom He died; rejoicing when one by one are drawn into the circle those for whom He prayed, Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me, where I am. And when through the contentions of a doubtful life grace has at last prevailed, who can tell the joy with which through the yielding air they spread their level wings, and bear in their hands the sour of the contrite, secure from sin, far off into Abrahams bosom?
II. Lastly, as to THEIR ADORATION OF GOD IN HEAVEN. Worship is angels work; and in the contemplation of their office here no room is left for difference or doubt. The Old Testament and the New conspire in holy emulation to reveal the heavenly vision in the noblest terms. Worship is the sum of the life in heaven; and what is the noblest work of our life on earth? The same. As among our natural passions and affections towards our fellows love is the highest, and has mightiest influence, so towards God is worship. Worship is love sublimated by the majesty of God. Think what the example of angels teaches us in this great portion of the Christian life.
1. First, that worship is only possible in the presence of God. Their worship in the Church above is only more perfect than that of saints in the Church below, because they are more near to God. The sight of Him is their joy; and such will be yours, if yours be the promise, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Meanwhile what sight is now to angels, and will hereafter be to you, is at the present time your faith.
2. Next this apprehension of the Divine Presence fills them with awe and reverence. The cherubim with his wings covers his face and his feet; the angels before the throne fall on their faces. Such a thought may give us a rule of conduct in our acts of worship. In all our public devotions, above all at Holy Communion, let our commonest actions be ruled by a tender spirit of reverence.
3. Again their worship exercises not only their affections, but their intelligence. They understand what they worship. The principle of all true worship is this--I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.
4. Above all with their praises and their prayers goes on the sweet accompaniment of an obedient will, a heart attuned to the love of God, sympathy with all His doings in judgment and in mercy, sympathy with His holiness and His vengeance against sin.
5. Again we little know how much we are affected by the example of numbers. The numbers on one side or the other decide the choice of waverers. We cast our lot into the heaviest scale. The broad way, though it lead to death, has its contented wayfarers, chiefly because it is so broad; the narrow way discourages so many, because there are so few that walk in it. Then, like Elishas servant, open your eyes and see the hosts of angels serving God, exceeding in number the generation of men, whom you see afraid to confess Him here.
6. Lastly to think of their happiness! happiness, so rare a gift, that among friends it is but seldom named, and then under their breath, and in a tone almost of despair of finding it; each heart knowing its own bitterness; the stranger not intermeddling with it, the friend unable to hear it, so he must let that alone for ever! And then to read of angels happiness, so perfect, so secure! (Canon Furse.)
General assembly and Church of the firstborn
The Church of the firstborn
I. THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION.
It is pre-eminently mild and gracious. This being so, it becomes those who are under it, and who have been made partakers of its blessings, to cultivate a spirit in accordance therewith. A spirit of slavish terror, however befitting the law, is altogether unsuitable to the gospel. It is related of Titus, the Roman emperor, when a certain petitioner presented his address to him with a trembling hand, that he was much displeased; and addressing the affrighted suppliant, he asked, Dost thou present thy petition to thy prince as if thou wert giving meat to a lion? While a spirit of reverence might have been proper on such an occasion, he regarded the extreme fear which this person displayed as altogether unbecoming. A spirit of trembling fear should be avoided by the Christian, being forbidden by the many gracious assurances which God has given to encourage us in our approaches to His throne; and also as being opposed to the distinctive features of the dispensation under which we dwell,
II. THE NATURE AND PRIVILEGES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
1. Its unity.
2. Its glory. Judging by outward appearance, the Church of Christ may appear despicable; much that is ignoble and mean may be seen in its members. But is it so in reality? What I ignoble, when the city they belong to is the city of the great King; a city whose streets are of gold, whose gates are of pearls, and into which the glory and honour of the nations shall be brought! And then there is, not merely the city of the believers habitation, but his associates and his friends. Talk of meanness, when myriads of angels, and the great multitude of the redeemed, are his companions [
3. Its spirituality. But ye are come--come to what? To things pre-eminently glorious; but they are at present invisible, being spiritual realities, objects of faith, and not of bodily vision.
(1) Let the Christian seek to realise his true character and position. Where your treasure is, there let your heart be also.
(2) That the only way in which we can become members of the heavenly commonwealth, is by a believing application to the Redeemer. Having an interest in Him, an interest in all the rest will follow. (Expository Sermons.)
The firstborn
Sweeter to our ear than the full chorus of bright skies and greenwood, are the first notes of the warbler that pipes away the winter, and breaks in on its long, drear silence! And more welcome to our eye than the flush of summers gayest flowers, is the simple snow-drop that hangs its pure white bell above the dead bare ground. And why? These are the firstborn of the year, the forerunners of a crowd to follow. In that group of silver bells that ring in the spring with its joys, and loves, and singing birds, my fancys eye sees the naked earth clothed in beauty, the streams, like children let loose, dancing and laughing, and rejoicing in their freedom, bleak winter gone, and Natures annual resurrection. And in that solitary simple note, my fancy hears the carol of larks, wild moor, hillside, and woodlands full of song, and ringing all with music. And in Christ, the Firstborn, I see the grave giving up its dead; from the depths of the sea, from lonely wilderness and crowded churchyard they come, like the dews of the grass, an innumerable multitude. Risen Lord! we rejoice in Thy resurrection. We hail it as the harbinger and blessed pledge of our own. The first to come forth, Theft art the Elder Brother of a family, whose countless numbers the patriarch saw in the dust of the desert, whose holy beauty he saw shining in the bright stars of heaven. The firstborn! This spoils the grave of its horrors, changing the tomb into a capacious womb that death is daily filling with the germs of life. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
The general convocation around Mount Zion
I. First, I want to set out, A CONTRAST PRESENTED IN THE ENTIRE PASSAGE--a contrast between the economy of law and the economy of grace.Every good thing is enhanced in value by its opposite. The contrast between free grace and law makes grace appear the more precious to minds that have known the rigour of the commandment. The contrast presented here is sevenfold. First, as to place, Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched (Heb_12:18); But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb_12:22). Behold Sinai with its rugged crags: scarce had a human foot ever trodden it: perhaps until that hour in which Jehovah descended upon it in splendour it had remained a virgin peak, which the foot of man had never polluted. It was sublime, but stern and tempest-beaten. God came upon Sinai with His law, and the dread mount became a type of what the law would be to us. It has given us a grand idea of holiness, but it has not offered us a pathway thereto, nor furnished a weary heart with a resting-place. The Jews under the law had that stern hill for their centre, and they compassed it about with pale countenances and trembling knees. We gather to quite another centre, even unto the palace-crowned steep of Zion. There David dwelt of old, and there Davids Lord revealed Himself, This mount which might be touched, we are told, in the next place, burned with fire. Gods presence made the mountain melt and flow down. Jehovah revealed Himself in flaming fire. What, then, have believers come to instead of fire? Why, to another form of fire: to an innumerable company of angels--He maketh His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire. God comes to us by them: He rode upon a cherub, and did fly. Pursue the contrast, and you find on Mount Sinai that there was blackness, doubtless made the more intensely black as the vivid lightnings flashed out from it. Ye are not come unto blackness, says Paul, What is the contrast to this? But ye are come to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. Blackness is the symbol of sorrow, it is the garb of mourning. Everywhere we associate blackness with grief; but now Paul sets before us the grandest embodiment of joy. The word for general assembly in the original suggests a far-reaching festivity. Ye are come to the paneguris: to a solemn festive assembly, comparable to the National Convocation of the Greeks, which was held around the foot of Mount Olympus, every four or five years, when all the Greeks of different states came together to keep up the national feeling by festivities and friendly competitions. Follow the next point of contrast, and you have darkness mentioned. Nor unto blackness, and darkness. The cloud on Sinai was so dark as to obscure the day, except that every now and then the lightning-flash lit up the scene. What are we come to in contrast to that darkness? To God the Judge of all. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. What a contrast to the darkness of the law is a reconciled God! And what follows next? Why, tempest. It is said, Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest. All over the top of Sinai there swept fierce winds and terrible tornadoes, for the Lord was there. All heaven seemed convulsed when God did rend it, and descended in majesty upon the sacred mount. But what do you and I see? The very reverse of tempest--The spirits of just men made perfect, serenely resting. They are perfect, they have fought the fight, they are full of ecstatic bliss, the glory of God is reflected from their faces; they have reached the fair haven, and are tossed with tempest no more. Follow the contrast further, and you coma to the sound of a trumpet. This resounded from the top of Sinai. Clarion notes most clear and shrill rang out again and again the high commands of the thrice-holy God. You are not come to that. Instead of a trumpet, which signifies war and the stern summons of a king, ye are come unto Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and the silver tones of Come unto Me, all ye, &c. The seventh contrast lies in this--together with the trumpet there sounded out a voice, a voice that was so terrible that they asked that they might not hear it again. We have coma to another voice, the voice of the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. There is a voice from Zion, there is a voice that rolls over the heads of the innumerable company of angels, a voice of the Lord that is full of majesty, and exceedingly comfortable to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, who know the joyful sound.
II. There is A COMPARISON in our more central text. We are come to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. It is a comparison, not with anything Jewish, for that would not have been suitable, but with a Gentile festival, which more readily lent;itself to the apostles great thought. In Greece, in her happier times, in order to preserve a national unity, the various states, kingdoms, or republics, which constituted Greece proper, held at the foot of Olympus a great gathering, to which none came as participators except citizens of the various Greek nationalities. The object of the gathering was that every part of the Greek nature might be educated and displayed, and the unity of the Greek race be remembered. How much I wish that we could look upon all the conflicts, sufferings, and troubles of this mortal life as occupations of the great festive gathering which is now being held in heaven and in earth around the city of our God. If we all understand that this period is not comparable to a battle, whereof the result hangs in the balance, but comparable to those deeds of prowess wherewith of old men celebrated a victory, then the face of things is altered, and our toils are transfigured. Angels come down, and poor men and women are lifted up, in patience triumphing, and giving pleasure to their Lord, and bringing honour to that favoured city which God has prepared for them. Oh, the bliss of feeling that even nosy heaven is begun below, and the sufferings of this present life are but a part of the glory of the Lord manifested in His people!
III. The third point is--A COMING TO BE ENJOYED. This is the essence of it all We are come unto this general assembly and Church of the firstborn. How then do we come? This festival is only for the firstborn, and you are not that by nature. You must first be born again, and become one of the firstborn. The Spirit of God must make you a new creature in Christ Jesus, and then the porter will open the wicket, and say, Come in, and welcome. Which part are you going to take in this great gathering? Will you fight against sin? Will you wrestle against error? Will you run for the crown? Will you sing or speak? What will you do in this great congress of all the saints? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Anticipating holy society
Socrates was glad when his death approached, because he thought he should go to Hesoid, Homer, and other learned men deceased, whom he expected to meet in the other world. How much more do I rejoice, who am sure that I shall see my Saviour Christ, the saints, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and all holy men who have lived from the beginning of the world! Since I am sure to partake of their felicity, why should not I be willing to die, to enjoy their perpetual society in glory? (Henry Bullinger.)
Intercourse between heaven and earth
I was reading the other day that, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, the wives of fishermen whose husbands have gone far out upon the deep are in the habit, at eventide, of going down to the seashore, and singing, as female voices only can, the first stanza of a beautiful hymn. After they have sung it, they listen till they hear, borne by the wind across the desert-sea, the second stanza, sung by their gallant husbands as they are tossed by the gale upon the waves; and both are happy. Perhaps, if we could listen, we, too, might hear on this desert-world of ours some sound, some whisper, borne from afar, to remind us that there is a heaven and a home; and, when we sing the hymn upon the shores of earth, perhaps we shall hear its sweet echo breaking in music upon the sands of time, and cheering the hearts of them that are pilgrims and strangers and look for a city that hath foundations. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
The general assembly written in heaven:
We have in this whole passage a description of the Catholic Church as it is now revealed to us under the gospel. And this is put in contrast with the state of the Church under the law. The kingdom is now united, and the Church is catholic; and those who come into it are not only joined in mutual earthly fellowship, but they come into union, as real, although not so conscious and apparent, with the Church invisible and glorified. As we consider some aspects of this subject, let us try to think and feel ourselves into that higher fellowship.
I. We come to that unseen and glorious company BY OUR KNOWLEDGE. We have far more actual knowledge of the invisible world than we vivify and use. We know, that when flitting like shadows here, from place to place, and ever nearer to the grave, there is a city which hath foundations, in the records of which our names may be enrolled. We know that when struggling and crowding here--striving for space and room, and particular standing--there is a house of many mansions, and a place prepared for each, large enough for the developments of the immortal life. Our knowledge is in some respects limited enough. We cannot see it; we cannot come to it in the flesh; flesh and blood shall not inherit it; no mortal hand can draw aside the veil, nor pierce it, although it sometimes seems so thin. Perhaps if we were better, purer, more saintly, we could safely be trusted with more light on the future, and it is certain that if we ask and look and wait we shall attain to more. We are like men gazing towards the land from the deck of a ship. A dim outline appears, like a cloud, at which they strain their sight; until by the movement of the vessel and the custom of the eye it becomes clearer and clearer still. The mountains gradually reveal their peaks; then the valleys show; then the corn; then the smoke of the cottage; the group by the cottage door; the apples on the tree; and then--the vessel is in port. So, by looking, heaven becomes clearer; as welook, it comes more near. To us as individuals, this revelation will be much or little, according to our personal realisation of it. Our knowledge may be a lamp unlighted as well as burning. It may be a map of a country on which we seldom look, or on which we trace with careful finger every mountain ridge, every river and plain. Central Africa is now opened, and to the world it can never be a blank any more. Some individuals may know very little of it, yet that knowledge is a possession to the race for ever. And so, to the world has been given the unalienable possession of the knowledge of the better country, the heavenly, which is on the other side of death, in which the Saviour is, into which He has already gathered myriads of His friends, to which so many of our own friends have gone, and to which we ourselves are travelling.
II. We come to the invisible Church BY OUR FAITH. We come to it more by our faith than by our knowledge. Faith is knowledge glorified, and vitalised; it is, as the former chapter tells us, the substance of things hoped for. It makes the objects of our cognition so real and vivid that we possess in our thought the very substance of them. We have such assured confidence in their existence that the removal of them from the realm of faith would be like taking away the solid world from our senses. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. It proves them, and presents them so that the mind feels their presence; sees them; is solemnised by them; holds them fast! It redeems our humanity from its degradation to know that there are men, who, while living here, are also living yonder--who have a life hidden as well as visible with Christ in God. We believe that He is. We believe that our friends are with Him; and if we can come to Him, and to them, in our daily faith--in the seekings, strivings, and settlings of our souls, then we are believers indeed. We may form what views we will on the time and nature of the resurrection--on the intermediate state, or on the physical characteristics of the life to come. If only we come to Him--our High Priest within the veil, and our forerunner there--we shall in due time stand rejoicing in His presence.
III. We are come to that invisible triumphant Church, IN OUR LOVE, as truly as in our knowledge and our faith. All heaven-born souls love the place of their birth. Born again, or born from above, is to have enrolment and citizenship there--it is to have our treasure there and our heart also.
IV. And all these comings, need we say? are presages of THE FINAL PERSONAL COMING BY DEATH into the general assembly and Church of the firstborn in heaven. We speak often of death as a going away, and picture to ourselves the spirit passing into vast solitudes, friends and dear familiar scenes all left behind, as it looks out upon the first reaches and roundings of the everlasting journey. Some thoughtful writers have dwelt much on the loneliness of death, until one has felt intensely solitary in the prospect. They have fixed upon the fact that each of us must meet death alone, and, of course, that is true, at least as regards earthly companionships. But that even then we shall be absolutely alone is only conjecture; and if we must conjecture, I for one would rather take the other side, and believe that since God gives us company here from the moment of birth to the moment of death, He will have other company awaiting us there, so that we shall take no step in loneliness or dread, but enter at once and easily into the higher fellowships, and go forward with a cheerful confidence through the valley of transition. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
God the Judge of all
Faiths access to the Judge and His attendants
I. FAITH PLANTS US AT THE VERY BAR OF GOD. Here is a truth which it is the office of faith to realise continually in our daily lives. Your loving access to God, Christian men and women, has brought you right under the eye of the Judge, and, though there be no terror in our approach to that tribunal, there ought to be a wholesome awe as to the permanent attitude of our spirits, the awe which is the very opposite of the cowering dread which hath torment. Then, again, notice that this judgment of God is on e which a Christian man should joyfully accept. The Lord will judge His people, says one of the Psalms. You only have I known of all the inhabitants of the earth; therefore will I punish you for your iniquities, says one of the prophets. Such sayings represent this present judgment as inevitable, just because of the close connection into which true faith brings a man with his Father in heaven. Inevitable, and likewise most blessed and desirable, for in the thought are included all the methods by which, in providence, and by ministration of His truth and of His Spirit, God reveals to us our meannesses; and delivers us sometimes, even by the consequences which accrue from them, from the burden and power of our sin. So, then, the office of faith in regard of this continuous judgment which God is exercising upon us because He loves us is, first of all, to open our hearts to it by confession, by frank communion, by referring all our actions to Him to court that investigation. And then, further, remember that this judgment is one that demands our thankful acceptance of the discipline which it puts in force. If we knew ourselves we should bless God for our sorrows. These are His special means of drawing His children away from their evil.
II. FAITH CARRIES US WHILE LIVING TO THE SOCIETY OF THE LIVING DEAD. The Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect. Immediately on the thought of God rising in the writers mind there rises also the thought of the blessed company in the centre of whom He lives and reigns. The spirits of … men made perfect. That is to say, they dwell freed from the incubus and limitations, and absolved from the activities, of a bodily organisation. Then, further, these spirits are perfect. The writer has said, at the close of the preceding chapter, that the ancient saints without us should not be made perfect. And here he employs the same word with distinct reference, as I suppose, to his previous declaration. From which I infer that Jesus Christ shot some rays of His victorious and all-reconciling power from His Cross into the regions of darkness, and brought thence those who were waiting for His coming through many a long age. A great painter has left on the walls of a little cell in his Florentine convent a picture of the victorious Christ, white-robed and banner-bearing, breaking down the iron gates that shut in the dark rocky cave; and flocking to Him, with outstretched hands of eager welcome, the whole long series from the first man downwards, hastening to rejoice in His light, and to participate in His redemption. So the ancient Church was perfected in Christ; but the words refer, not only to those Old Testament patriarchs and saints, but to all who, up to the time of the writers composition of his letter, had slept in Jesus. They have reached their goal in Him. But yet that perfecting does not exclude progress, continuous through all the ages; and especially it does not exclude one great step in advance which, as Scripture teaches us, will be taken when the resurrection of the body is granted. Corporeity is the perfecting of humanity. Body, soul, and spirit, these make the full-summed man in all his powers. And so the souls beneath the altar, clothed in white, and lapt in felicity, do yet wait for the adoption, even the redemption of the body. Mark, further, that these spirits perfected would not have been perfected there unless they had been made just here. That is the first step, without which nothing in death has any tendency to ennoble or exalt men. If we are ever to come to the perfecting of the heavens, we must begin with the justifying that takes place on earth. Let me point you to one other consideration bearing not so much on the condition as on the place of these perfected spirits. It is very significant that they should be closely associated in our text with God the Judge of all. Is there any hint that men who have been redeemed, who, being unjust, have been made just, and have had experience of restoration and of the misery of departure, shall, in the ultimate order of things, stand nearer the throne than unfallen spirits, and teach angels? (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God the Judge of all
I. I am to show THAT IT IS A VERY AWFUL, THOUGH A COMFORTABLE, THING TO CONVERSE WITH GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL.
1. The majesty and glory of the great God makes it awful conversing with Him.
2. Gods omniscience is another thing which makes it solemn conversing with God as Judge of all (Heb_4:13).
3. The purity and holiness of God make it a solemn thing for polluted sinners to have any converse with Him.
4. The strictness of Gods law, which is the rule of judgment, makes it a solemn thing to converse with this great and glorious Judge. God judges of all my thoughts and actions by the same law now that sentence is to be passed by in the great day of accounts.
Use 1. Is it so solemn a thing for believers in Christ to come to God the Judge of all; how or where then must the sinner and the ungodly appear?
2. Is it so solemn a thing to converse with God the Judge of all? Then, believer, how seldom art thou in a right frame for duty. You know with what solemnity and preparation they of old attended on God when giving the law. The people were sanctified to-day and to-morrow, and washed their clothes to be in readiness against the third day (Exo_19:10). Is there less call for preparation and solemnity under the gospel? are trifling frames and a worldly spirit any part of that liberty we have in Christ? Dare we go to holy ordinances drowned in the cares of this life, reeking in the filth of some unsubdued lust?
3. Learn from what has been said, the only way to think of future judgment with pleasure and comfort. It is by coming to God the Judge of all, now.
4. What a blessed gospel is that which reveals the only righteousness wherein a poor guilty sinner may appear before God with comfort!
II. How Is IT THAT SUCH A CONVERSE IS BEGUN BETWEEN A HOLY GOD AND POOR SINNERS?
1. It is begun in the conviction or sensibleness a soul has that he is a guilty lost sinner.
2. In order to a poor sinners comfortably conversing with God the Judge of all, there must be a free confession of all sin and a subscribing to the rights of His justice. This is called an accepting of the punishment of ones iniquity (Lev_26:41) and a clearing and justifying God when we are judged (Psa_51:4).
3. In order to a poor sinners comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, there must be an absolute renouncing all righteousness of his own.
4. The way to have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all is to come before Him in the Mediators righteousness and to plead it with Him as thy justifying righteousness.
Use: 1. If there be no coming to God as Judge of all with comfort but by confessing sin, their state must be sad who seek comfort by hiding or lessening sin.
2. Must a soul be brought to submit to the rights of Gods justice in order to a comfortable converse with Him as Judge of all? then woe to all such as quarrel with Gods judgment.
3. Must all self-righteousness be renounced in order to a comfortable converse with God the Judge of all? How contrary is that doctrine which sets up the creatures sincere obedience as a part of our gospel-righteousness!
III. IN WHAT INSTANCES AND BY WHAT METHODS THIS CONVERSE WHICH BELIEVERS HAVE WITH GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL IS MAINTAINED AND CARRIED ON.
1. I am to give some instances wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, through the whole of their gospel profession and walk. The apostle speaks of it as a privilege attending their state, not a blessing peculiar to some extraordinary frames. It is a believers settled mercy and daily duty to converse with God the Judge of all.
(1) A great part of this comfortable converse with God lies in those high and honourable thoughts which believers have of His righteousness as Judge of all.
(2) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God lies in their pleading justification before God upon the footing of righteousness.
(3) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all lies in their referring themselves to His righteous judgment with respect to their state, their frames, and all their actions.
(4) Another instance wherein believers have comfortably con versed with God the Judge of all lies in a hearty approval of all providential dispensations to themselves and others.
(5) Another instance of this comfortable converse which believers have with God the Judge of all is in a Way of anticipating, or antedating as it were, that sentence of absolution which shall be openly pronounced upon them at the last day.
2. How or by what special methods this comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained.
(1) By looking often to the everlasting settlements and grace of the covenant; what God does in time is by virtue of covenant-agreement with His Christ and our Surety in eternity (Psa_98:3).
(2) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by the souls daily faith on the person of Christ as God-man.
(3) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by earnest endeavours after conformity to God in righteousness and true holiness (1Pe_1:16).
(4) A believers converse with God the Judge of all is promoted and maintained by his coming often to the blood of sprinkling.
(5) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted by the believers application to God as a Father in Christ (Eph_2:18).
(6) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted and maintained by direct acts of faith on the promises of the covenant.
(7) A daily application to the Spirit as the glorifier of the Father and of Christ. All the glory of the Fathers provision for lost sinners in the person and blood of Christ, and in the grace of the covenant, depends upon the Spirits revelation of it to and in the soul (Gal_1:15-16). It is His work as well to convince of sin as of righteousness (Joh_16:8).
3. By what means this comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is prevented and interrupted?
(1) This comfortable converse with God is greatly obstructed when it is apprehended that only the benefits and effects of Christs righteousness are communicated to believers, and not the very righteousness itself.
(2) This comfortable converse is interrupted by supposing that the great God has put all His creatures, believers as well as others, into a state of probation or trial, and that a man cannot be fully persuaded of the safety of his state till the day of his death.
(3) Believers comfortable converse with God is further prevented or interrupted by a changing or shifting the foundation of our faith and hope. Some that have begun in the spirit think to be made perfect by the flesh Gal_3:3).
Use: 1. Surely a believers converse with God must be very precious when Satan finds out so many ways to prevent and interrupt it. Were it then, the office of faith in regard of this continuous judgment which God is exercising upon us because He loves us is, first of all, to open our hearts to it by confession, by frank communion, by referring all our actions to Him to court that investigation. And then, further, remember that this judgment is one that demands our thankful acceptance of the discipline which it puts in force. If we knew ourselves we should bless God for our sorrows. These are His special means of drawing His children away from their evil.
II. FAITH CARRIES US WHILE LIVING TO THE SOCIETY OF THE LIVING DEAD. The Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect. Immediately on the thought of God rising in the writers mind there rises also the thought of the blessed company in the centre of whom He lives and reigns. The spirits of … men made perfect. That is to say, they dwell freed from the incubus and limitations, and absolved from the activities, of a bodily organisation. Then, further, these spirits are perfect. The writer has said, at the close of the preceding chapter, that the ancient saints without us should not be made perfect. And here he employs the same word with distinct reference, as I suppose, to his previous declaration. From which I infer that Jesus Christ shot some rays of His victorious and all-reconciling power from His Cross into the regions of darkness, and brought thence those who were waiting for His coming through many a long age. A great painter has left on the walls of a little cell in his Florentine convent a picture of the victorious Christ, white-robed and banner-bearing, breaking down the iron gates that shut in the dark rocky cave; and flocking to Him, with outstretched hands of eager welcome, the whole long series from the first man downwards, hastening to rejoice in His light, and to participate in His redemption. So the ancient Church was perfected in Christ; but the words refer, not only to those Old Testament patriarchs and saints, but to all who, up to the time of the writers composition of his letter, had slept in Jesus. They have reached their goal in Him. But yet that perfecting does not exclude progress, continuous through all the ages; and especially it does not exclude one great step in advance which, as Scripture teaches us, will be taken when the resurrection of the body is granted. Corporeity is the perfecting of humanity. Body, soul, and spirit, these make the full-summed man in all his powers. And so the souls beneath the altar, clothed in white, and lapt in felicity, do yet wait for the adoption, even the redemption of the body. Mark, further, that these spirits perfected would not have been perfected there unless they had been made just here. That is the first step, without which nothing in death has any tendency to ennoble or exalt men. If we are ever to come to the perfecting of the heavens, we must begin with the justifying that takes place on earth. Let me point you to one other consideration bearing not so much on the condition as on the place of these perfected spirits. It is very significant that they should be closely associated in our text with God the Judge of all. Is there any hint that men who have been redeemed, who, being unjust, have been made just, and have had experience of restoration and of the misery of departure, shall, in the ultimate order of things, stand nearer the throne than unfallen spirits, and teach angels? (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
God the Judge of all
I. I am to show THAT IT IS A VERY AWFUL, THOUGH A COMFORTABLE, THING TO CONVERSE WITH GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL.
1. The majesty and glory of the great God makes it awful conversing with Him.
2. Gods omniscience is another thing which makes it solemn conversing with God as Judge of all (Heb_4:13).
3. The purity and holiness of God make it a solemn thing for polluted sinners to have any converse with Him.
4. The strictness of Gods law, which is the rule of judgment, makes it a solemn thing to converse with this great and glorious Judge. God judges of all my thoughts and actions by the same law now that sentence is to be passed by in the great day of accounts.
Use: 1. Is it so solemn a thing for believers in Christ to come to God the Judge of all; how or where then must the sinner and the ungodly appear?
2. Is it so solemn a thing to converse with God the Judge of all? Then, believer, how seldom art thou in a right frame for duty. You know with what solemnity and preparation they of old attended on God when giving the law. The people were sanctified to-day and to-morrow, and washed their clothes to be in readiness against the third day (Exo_19:10). Is there less call for preparation and solemnity under the gospel? are trifling frames and a worldly spirit any part of that liberty we have in Christ? Dare we go to holy ordinances drowned in the cares of this life, reeking in the filth of some unsubdued lust?
3. Learn from what has been said, the only way to think of future judgment with pleasure and comfort. It is by coming to God the Judge of all, now.
4. What a blessed gospel is that which reveals the only righteousness wherein a poor guilty sinner may appear before God with comfort!
II. How Is IT THAT SUCH A CONVERSE IS BEGUN BETWEEN A HOLY GOD AND POOR SINNERS?
1. It is begun in the conviction or sensibleness a soul has that he is a guilty lost sinner.
2. In order to a poor sinners comfortably conversing with God the Judge of all, there must be a free confession of all sin and a subscribing to the rights of His justice. This is called an accepting of the punishment of ones iniquity (Lev_26:41) and a clearing and justifying God when we are judged (Psa_51:4).
3. In order to a poor sinners comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, there must be an absolute renouncing all righteousness of his own.
4. The way to have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all is to come before Him in the Mediators righteousness and to plead it with Him as thy justifying righteousness.
Use: 1. If there be no coming to God as Judge of all with comfort but by confessing sin, their state must be sad who seek comfort by hiding or lessening sin.
2. Must a soul be brought to submit to the rights of Gods justice in order to a comfortable converse with Him as Judge of all? then woe to all such as quarrel with Gods judgment.
3. Must all self-righteousness be renounced in order to a comfortable converse with God the Judge of all? How contrary is that doctrine which sets up the creatures sincere obedience as a part of our gospel-righteousness!
III. IN WHAT INSTANCES AND BY WHAT METHODS THIS CONVERSE WHICH BELIEVERS HAVE WITH GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL IS MAINTAINED AND CARRIED ON.
1. I am to give some instances wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, through the whole of their gospel profession and walk. The apostle speaks of it as a privilege attending their state, not a blessing peculiar to some extraordinary frames. It is a believers settled mercy and daily duty to converse with God the Judge of all.
(1) A great part of this comfortable converse with God lies in those high and honourable thoughts which believers have of His righteousness as Judge of all.
(2) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God lies in their pleading justification before God upon the footing of righteousness.
(3) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all lies in their referring themselves to His righteous judgment with respect to their state, their frames, and all their actions.
(4) Another instance wherein believers have comfortably conversed with God the Judge of all lies in a hearty approval of all providential dispensations to themselves and others.
(5) Another instance of this comfortable converse which believers have with God the Judge of all is in a way of anticipating, or antedating as it were, that sentence of absolution which shall be openly pronounced upon them at the last day.
2. How or by what special methods this comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained.
(1) By looking often to the everlasting settlements and grace of the covenant; what God does in time is by virtue of covenant-agreement with His Christ and our Surety in eternity (Psa_98:3).
(2) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by the souls daily faith on the person of Christ as God-man.
(3) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by earnest endeavours after conformity to God in righteousness and true holiness (1Pe_1:16).
(4) A believers converse with God the Judge of all is promoted and maintained by his coming often to the blood of sprinkling.
(5) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted by the believers application to God as a Father in Christ (Eph_2:18).
(6) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted and maintained by direct acts of faith on the promises of the covenant.
(7) A daily application to the Spirit as the glorifier of the Father and of Christ. All the glory of the Fathers provision for lost sinners in the person and blood of Christ, and in the grace of the covenant, depends upon the Spirits revelation of it to and in the soul (Gal_1:15-16). It is His work as well to convince of sin as of righteousness (Joh_16:8),
3. By what means this comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is prevented and interrupted?
(1) This comfortable converse with God is greatly obstructed when it is apprehended that only the benefits and effects of Christs righteousness are communicated to believers, and not the very righteousness itself.
(2) This comfortable converse is interrupted by supposing that the great God has put all His creatures, believers as well as others, into a state of probation or trial, and that a man cannot be fully persuaded of the safety of his state till the day of his death.
(3) Believers comfortable converse with God is further prevented or interrupted by a changing or shifting the foundation of our faith and hope. Some that have begun in the spirit think to be made perfect by the flesh Gal_3:3).
Use: 1. Surely a believers converse with God must be very precious when Satan finds out so many ways to prevent and interrupt it. Were it not a great privilege, it would be less envied, less obstructed.
2. How needful is a doctrinal clearness in the business of a sinners justification in the sight of God! Confusion in the mind and judgment makes confusion in the souls comfort.
3. To show what a blessed privilege such a comfortable converse is in the whole of believers course heavenwards. Wherein the privilege of such a converse does consist.
(1) This blessed converse makes all other comforts blessings.
(2) This comfortable converse which believers have with God sweetens all their afflictions and crosses. No trial befals thee but it was put into the covenant. It comes from the hand of God as a reconciled Father for thy profit and purging; not from His hand as a sin-revenging Judge for thy punishment.
(3) This comfortable converse with God makes duties and ordinances sweet; why should there be terror and fear where there is no enmity, no distance?
(4) This comfortable converse with God makes all reproaches we receive from men sit easy upon us (Psa_31:14-15).
(5) This comfortable converse with God secures against the threats, the wiles, and hellish designs of Satan.
(6) This comfortable converse with God makes death and judgment without terror. Doth the law acquit thee now? it will never condemn thee then. A serpent without a sting may affright, but it cannot injure. (John Hill.)
Christians have to do with God as Judge:
When, a few years since, a Mahometan convert at Calcutta came to Lal Behouri Sing for baptism, the missionary asked him, What was the vital point in which he found Mohammedanism most defective, and which he found that Christianity satisfactorily supplied? His prompt reply was--Mohammedanism is full of the mercy of God; and while I felt no real consciousness of guilt as the breaker of Gods law, this satisfied me; but when I felt my guilt, I felt that it was not with Gods mercy, but with His justice that I had first to do. Now to meet the claims of Gods justice Mohammedanism had made no provision; but this is the very thing that I have found fully accomplished by the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and therefore Christianity is now the only adequate religion for me, a guilty sinner. (C. Stanford, D. D.)
The spirits of just men made perfect
The contemplation of departed saints
1. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to reconcile us to our lot upon earth, however adverse and afflictive in its nature. What was the condition of these exalted and glorified spirits while they tabernacled upon earth? Did their station here in any way resemble the state in which they are now placed? Or, did their worldly circumstances foreshow what they have come to enjoy? No doubt some of them were men of rank and affluence; but still, it is well known that many of them were persons of low degree, who were subjected to want, who were pinched with poverty, and oppressed with both personal and relative affliction during the period of their mortal life. Amongst these there is a Job, there is a Lazarus, who was under the disagreeable necessity of begging his bread. We here learn that neither poverty nor affliction is any mark of the Divine displeasure; but that the troubles which afflict the just, on the contrary, may be great and many in number. Besides, we have here the most convincing evidence that God will reject none on account of his indigent circumstances or diseased body; but that the poor and afflicted may nevertheless be amongst the friends of heaven.
2. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to preserve us from despondency under a consciousness of guilt and imperfection. As this may be occasioned by a deep sense of guilt and depravity, so a means of preventing it may be found in contemplating the spirits of just men made perfect. Though they were created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works, and were studying to die unto sin and live unto righteousness; yet they had reason to complain of the little progress which they made in the way of holiness. Though they all delighted in the law of the Lord after the inward man, and in some measure accounted it as their meat and drink to do the will of God; yet they were at times neglectful of their duty, and, through inadvertence or the strength of temptation, were stepping aside from the path of rectitude. There was not one of them that always did good and never sinned. Why, then, should Christians despond while they recollect what these objects of their contemplation once were, and attend to what they now are. These once struggled against the corruption of nature, but they have obtained the victory. Instead of being excluded from the beatific presence of Jehovah, and falling under the condemnation of the Almighty, they are now reaping the honours and the felicity of the righteous. Yes, they are the spirits of just men made perfect: their guilt is wholly cancelled, and their depravity is completely done away.
3. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to support and comfort us under all our trials and afflictions. The saints in heaven have been made perfect as in holiness, so also in blessedness: they have entered into glory; they have removed from a world of trial and suffering to the land of eternal rest, where there is no more sorrow nor sighing, no more sickness nor death.
4. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to animate us in the discharge of duty, and to make us persevere in the practice of holiness. Methinks I now see them holding forth the ensigns of royalty, and hear them saying to us who profess to be the disciples of Jesus: These are the rewards which God hath given, Be not weary, then, in well-doing, for you will at length reap if you faint not.
5. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to console our minds while mourning on account of the death of our Christian friends. Though they are absent from the body, yet they are present with the Lord. Though the frail house of their earthly tabernacle is dissolved, yet they have obtained the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (John Ralston, M. A.)
Benefits of meditation on Gods saints
1. First, let us think what an encouragement it is to us to go forward on our Christian course with zeal, perseverance, and steadiness, when we reflect on that perfect state of peace and holiness to which the spirits of the just shall be admitted in the eternal world.
2. Again, let us consider, that if we are indeed faithful servants of Christ Jesus, then we are members of that Comumnion of Saints, that mystical body, whereof He is the Head. Then we are entitled to a place among patriarchs, prophets, saints, and martyrs. Then the glory to which we shall be admitted at last is as much above the glory of the greatest prince or potentate on earth, as heaven itself is above this world. Such, and so great, is the dignity of the true Christian.
3. Another thing to be considered is, of the deep, sincere, and thorough humility which must be expected of those who think to be admitted into the blessed society of the spirits of just men made perfect. Indeed, the true dignity of the Christian consists in his humility:--He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. How can we in reason expect to be numbered with Gods saints in glory everlasting, if it be not our constant study to follow them as they followed Christ, in all lowliness and meekness, in long-suffering and loving forbearance? And these considerations will be still further heightened in proportion as we remember, on the one side, our own worthlessness even at the best; and on the other, the vastness of that mercy, the boundlessness of those promises which are held out to us. For to a mind which is at all well disposed, nothing can be more touching, nothing more humbling, than to receive kindnesses from one whom we have injured. What, then, must be our feelings when we contemplate our behaviour to God, and how He has requited us! What heart can think of these things worthily? or how can we sufficiently bow ourselves down with humility?
4. Let me, in conclusion, call to your thoughts what comfort and encouragement there is in this heavenly doctrine of the spirits of just men made perfect, to be received into the eternal joy of their Lord. Comfort and encouragement in respect of ourselves, in making us patient, cheerful, and thankful; and in our conduct towards others, in making us brotherly and kind, and still looking forward to a happier meeting in a world where neither sin nor sorrow can enter. (Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times. )
The immediate blessedness of departed saints:
What an announcement! For the manner in which this passage is introduced sufficiently shows that it is designed to impart encouragement and solace, to awaken spiritual-mindedness and hope. And yet there is something which seems to mock us, which may excite our consternation, depress our zeal. Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect. Know we not otherwise? The link between ourselves and those whom we loved is broken. Does it not seem to trifle with us, when we are bereaved indeed, to tell us that we are come to them from whom we are so hopelessly and irreparably torn? Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect. Our natural apprehensiveness is thus excited by the appeal. Creatures of flesh and blood, nothing seems so strongly to fasten upon our instinctive fear as spiritual contact and communication. Who would wish to behold the dearest friend whom he had ever loved, returning a spirit from the region of spirits, with their manner and mystery? What nerve could encounter the interview? What fondest heart could endure the shadowy embrace? And do we not shrink when we are bidden to approach this ghostly band? Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect. Our ardour is depressed. Our sympathy is checked. Our imitation is debarred. Little fellowship can we claim with their refined essences, their unalloyed purity and bliss- they subsist beyond the range of our ideas and susceptibilities. But the purpose of the Holy Ghost in these words must stand: that purpose can only be tender, consolatory, assuring. And is it not most kind and cheering to inform and certify us, that they, who are thus departed, are not lost? That, rescued from the burden of this flesh and delivered from the hazard of this world, they expatiate in the freedom of a nature ethereal and incorruptible? And is it not animating and triumphant for us to perceive, in their release, the pledge and model of our exaltation, when our spirits shall throw off their oppressions, and shall attain to yonder state of immaterial being? Come, then, to these spirits--endeavour to conceive of them, to catch their fervours, to reciprocate their joys, to respond their strains!
I. WHO ARE THEY? WHENCE CAME THEY? They are not the natives of heaven. They have no proper birthright in it. They belong to a very different sphere. They are men. They have been prepared, while on the earth which was given to them, for their present abode. They have been brought hither by an act utterly independent of their original constitution. It is a state altogether strange and new. They constitute the just. Only the just can be in a condition of safety and favour, only the just can be endued with a nature of sanctity and love. Theirs is a true sense of right, of duty, the firm habit of fidelity.
II. THESE JUST MEN ARE NOT ANY LONGER IN OUR PRESENT SPHERE, OR KIND, OF EXISTENCE. We are summoned to meditate them in a new condition. The image of the earth is effaced. They are no more seen in a compound nature. They are spirits. All beside is left in the grave. Nothing material cleaves to them. But it is the higher essence--the intellect the consciousness--the self--which this disembodiment must suppose. How may this state of spiritualism be conceived? It is described as subsisting in intimate union with the Saviour. It is to depart and to be with Christ. It is to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. He receives them. This is the great distinctiveness of their present condition. Their inward nature, drawn forth from the outward, is in a relationship; in an access to the Blessed Redeemer far different from any enjoyment of His presence, or communion with His person, known on earth. In addition to this immediate presence of the Redeemer-God, that light in which they see light, the light of the Lamb -the spirits of just men are made perfect. This is a discovery of their state which greatly explains itself. This spirit is matured in its powers and consummated in its joys. According to its capacities it is complete. All its true aims are unfolded. It is wrought out into its fullest development. It is a condition of pure spiritualism. Certain facts suggest themselves as the necessary accompaniments of such a condition.
1. The consciousness must be very distinct. The self revolves upon its own centre, ever substantiating what it really is, ever enjoying its proper exercises of understanding and emotion. This hidden man lives in his own light. Nothing is attached to the spirit which can divert this concentrated impression.
2. The inward life must be very strong. The whole soul, all that is within it, is absorbed in that deep and holy sense.
3. The intellectual faculty must be very clear. It still follows on to know the Lord, it still follows hard after God.
4. The meditative abstraction must be very intent.
5. The adoring gratitude must be very earnest.
6. Its awaiting aspiration must be very glad. The disembodied saint ascertains the future stage to which it constantly approaches, which is the last of all, and which is only wanted to complete his entire being. He understands its nature. He is assured of its certainty. Oh, the transition, the passage of the spirit, escaped from earth, released from mortality, to this glorious state! Spirit!--which hast long walked in darkness, brooded in sorrow, pined in weariness--spirit! which wast long tossed with tempest, harassed by hostility, vexed with care--spirit! which didst long groan within thyself--spirit! long bound to sense and chained to infirmity spirit! long lacerated and bruised with inward wounds--spirit! the shadow of whose guilt hitherto lay upon thee though forgiven, the effort of whose depravity until now struggled in thee though subdued--Christian soul depart! Go forth to rest and home!
III. THESE SEPARATED SPIRITS ARE REPRESENTED TO US AS IN A STATE OF EXALTED ADVANCEMENT, DEPENDING UPON THEIR DISEMBODIMENT. This doctrine of immediate happiness was not entirely concealed from the ancient saints. Their language occasionally leads us to think that they had some conception of it (Psa_16:10; Psa_73:24; Psa_49:15; Isa_57:2).Christ was the Conqueror. He spoiled principalities and powers. Of Him it was declared that He should swallow up death in victory. He ascends! He is received up into glory! There are not only the angels and the chariots in their thousands of thousands--there is another train! All holy spirits follow Him who had appeared a spirit to them in their place of keeping. They now forsake that place for things above. And, therefore, it is said in the text: Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect. But this is asserted as a privilege unknown before. It arises from the new covenant in contradistinction from the old. It is explained: God having provided some better things for us (than for those who died before the rising of Christ) that they without us (without living until our time and under our dispensation) should not be made perfect. But they are now made perfect, in common with us. This perfection is bestowed upon all past, as well as for all future, time, and ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect!
1. The spirits of just men will be made perfect in holiness.
2. Such spirits are raised to the perfection of wisdom.
3. These souls of the departed are perfectly secure.
4. A fulness of beatitude must be contained in their perfection.
They can know no want: yet are they full of holy desires, ever waking only to be satisfied, ever longing only to be fulfilled. The vessel at each moment overflows: but at every moment it also is enlarged. There are pleasures for evermore. The source of all is in the Infinite Plenitude. The river of life proceedeth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
IV. THERE ARE RELATIONS WHICH UNITE THE JUST ON EARTH, AND THE SPIRITS OF THE JUST IN HEAVEN, NOTWITHSTANDING THE DISPARITY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE CONDITIONS. Certain affinities may be discovered between mind and mind in this world, which are not restricted to personal intercourse, which operate as in defiance of the laws of space. And the announcement of the text is but the enlargement of such mental affinities. It is not said that we shall come to the spirits of just men made perfect, but that we are.
1. There is unity. To impress this upon our minds the Church is shadowed by various figures, all of which have respect to its indivisibility. It is a city, a corporate community, but all, who are enrolled in it, partake of common immunities, and are fellow-citizens with the saints. It is a household. It is a household of faith and of God. They of this household are all they who are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Its distribution in these different abodes affects not its identity. It shall find even in heaven many mansions. It is a body. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.
This, then, is no fiction nor ideal. It is based on our union with Christ. We are all one in Him. We are joined to the Lord, and are one spirit. It is, therefore, declared to have been the design of God in redemption, to bind, in communion and identification, all His people, however scattered abroad on earth, or however raised to the glories of a higher existence. That in the dispensation of the fulness of times, He might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him. And having made peace through the blood of his Cross, by Him to reconcile, or to unite, all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. These are the links which separation cannot weaken, and which death cannot dissolve.
2. There is resemblance. Heaven is doubtless a place. But we must rather conceive of it as a state of mind. The heaven of perfect spirits must be chiefly this. This state of mind--far transcending all present attainment of knowledge, sanctity, and joy--consists not in estrangement and extreme. It is not alien from what is now experienced. There is no principle, no companionship, no employment, no rapture, of that region, but has in the Christian on earth its foretaste and counterpart. He hath the Father and the Son. The Spirit dwelleth in Him. He hath eternal life. He is a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. The heaven which he enters and enjoys is but the expansion of principles and emotions he long has known. He has been changed already into the image of the Divine glory, from glory to glory. He wanted but this consummation. The last of dying triumph, and the first of empyrean rapture, may thus easily and naturally blend: and in the yearnings of a kindred mind, we now come to the spirits of just men made perfect. Do we not know it? Have we not found it? Are now our affections set on things above? Does not the holy city come down from God out of heaven? Is not our conversation in heaven?
3. There is endearment. A holy affinity unites us to the spirits of just men made perfect. They are the Church of the first-born: they are our elder brethren. Our desire is to them. Are they weaned from us? Are we forgotten? Is all sympathy withdrawn? Hearts grow not selfish in heaven. Spirits made perfect can abandon no love which it was ever their right to form, their duty to maintain, their benefit to exercise: their perfection is the pledge that each holy attachment is raised to that perfection.
4. There is appropriation. We already have obtained a portion in heaven. Joint-heirs with Christ Jesus, He has claimed it for us. He is our
Forerunner. He has for us entered. He now appears in the presence of God for us. We come to the spirits of just men made perfect, for they inhabit our country, they dwell ill our home. They have preceded us, but things to come are ours, and their title is no surer than our own. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)
Disembodied saints
I. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A DISEMBODIED STATE.
II. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A MORALLY PERFECT STATE.
III. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A GLORIOUSLY SOCIAL STATE.
IV. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A SPIRITUALLY ACCESSIBLE STATE.
1. We come to them in a loving memory of their histories.
2. We come to them by appropriating their principles of action.
3. We come to them by a participation of the sources of their joy.
4. We come to them in earnest hope.
Lessons:
1. The worthlessness of all worldly and adventitious distinctions.
2. The paltriness of religious sectarianism.
3. The infinite value of Christs office.
4. The blessedness of death to the good. (Homilist.)
Advent of the living to spirits departed
Spirits--because resurrection is future. The bodies still tenant the grave or the deep--only the spirits are free. This is that state of deliverance from the bondage of the flesh, in which Jesus Himself, quickened with a new vitality, went and preached, between death and resurrection, to spirits, themselves separate from the body. This is that state, Paradise Jesus called it, in which the dying penitent beside Him should that day be His companion, spirit with spirit. Just men, or righteous: not in that self-righteousness which is of the law; not in that righteousness which Christ Himself, He said, came not so much as to call or to evangelise; on the contrary, just in the justice of the Just One--righteous in the merit of a full justification, and in the grace of a progressive and at last perfect sanctification. Just men made perfect. Completed and consummated in that holiness which, begun below by the work of the Holy Spirit, is at last finished and accomplished for ever; to be sullied no more, nor grieved any more, by the contact or presence of evil: sealed now with the stamp of a blessed immortality, and waiting only the gift of a transformed body to make the whole man anew in the very image and likeness of God. Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect. We read and speak often of Christs coming--His coming in the flesh, His coming in the Spirit, His coming in glory. Here we read of an advent, not of Christ, but of the Christian; an advent, not in the future tense, but in the perfect--not anticipative or progressive, but finished and done. But this is not the world which the text opens. The text bids us see ourselves tenants and citizens of a world out of sight. Like the prophets servant in Dothan, we are to open our eyes to a mountain full of chariots and horsemen of fire--and those chariots of God are thousands of angels; and those horsemen are Gods saints, already gone from amongst the living, but present with us, for companionship and for sympathy and for communion still. You have had, you have made, an advent--an advent for abode, an advent for perpetuity. Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect.
1. The first and least thing here said--itself great and glorious too--is the union of the Christian living with the Christian dead in their faith and in their example. It is a thought not without comfort, that, as Christians, we have an ancestry and a pedigree. The continuity is not broken. The Church of all time is one. Then disgrace not your family. Bring no blot upon your escutcheon. You are come to the spirits of the perfect. You join on to them in the genealogical tree. Be followers, be imitators of them, as they once, in their day and generation, were of Christ.
2. Ye are come to the spirits and souls of the righteous in their sympathy. There is a living as well as a memorial sympathy between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. All the glimpses given us in Holy Scripture of the mind and life of Paradise seem to point this way. It was of no sleeping soul that Christ spoke on the Cross to the malefactor beside Him. It is no bathing in Lethe, for the obliteration of earths memories and the annihilation of human affections, which the gospel opens to us as the prize of the race to him that overcometh. Rest with us is something different from this selfish, this isolated, this drowsy repose. Even nature demands something different. There is an instinct as well as a revelation of this advent of the living to the departed. We want it for comfort, we want it for admonition. God has knit together His elect in one communion and fellowship. There is a communion of saints as well as a Catholic Church; the militant and the perfected are not two societies, they are one. Have any of as a friend in the happy land--father or mother, sister or wife, friend closer than a brother? Remember then, remember for use as well as for consolation, that you are come to that other--come, by an advent such as there is none between the living. The stripping off of this carcase gives a sympathy, gives a contact, gives an intuition of love such as cannot be had here. You are come to the dead, as you cannot come to the living. See then that you give joy, only joy, to the inhabitants of that world.
3. Ye are come to the spirits of the righteous in their single, their engrossing devotion to Christ their Lord. It is said, I scarcely care to ask whether in history or fiction, that there was one from whom had been taken away by the stroke of death the desire of his eyes, the wife of his youth. He had laid her in the earth; yet night after night she visited him in his chamber, herself yet not herself, the same but a thousandfold more beautiful--and in that periodical converse, making night day for him and darkness light, he half forgot his bereavement and his desolation. One night she came, and he could not repress an exclamation upon her peculiar beauty. I never saw you, he said, so lovely. She said, It is my last visit to you: to-morrow I am to see Him, and after that sight I shall have no eye for aught else. He saw her no more. Is not this, perhaps, the answer to those questions so often agitated by the mourner as to the future sight and recognition of friends? Be sure that nothing shall be denied thee in that world, which could give thee solace or satisfaction. If thou desirest there thy friends face or voice or hand, be sure thou shalt have it. Nevertheless, when thou shalt have been there but a little while; when, if so it be, after a season of preparation, as it were of purifying and anointing for the day of the espousals, thou shalt actually have seen the King in His beauty--I say not that thou shalt be debarred then from other sight or other converse; but this I say--the desire for aught else will have left thee; all other love, not destroyed, not diminished, rather ten thousandfold enhanced, will yet be absorbed and swallowed up in that; thy loved one, and thou, will be so wrapped up in another love and higher, that the selfish love will be gone, and only the Divine love will continue. (Dean Vaughan.)
Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant
The messenger of the covenant and its seal:
I. GODS REVELATION TO US IS IN THE FORM OF A COVENANT. Just as when a king gives forth a proclamation, he is bound by the fact that he gave it forth, so God, out of all the infinite possibilities of His action, condescends to tell us what His line is to be, and He will adhere to it. He lets us see the works of the clock, if I may so say, not wholly, but in so far as we are affected by His action. What, then, are the terms of this covenant? We have them drawn out, first, in the words of Jeremiah, who apprehended, when he was dwelling in the midst of that external system, that it could no be a final system; and next, by the writer of this letter quoting the prophet; who, in the midst of the vanishing of that which could be shaken, saw emerging, like the fairy form of the fabled goddess out of the sea-foam, the vast and permanent outlines of a nobler system. The promises of the covenant are, then, full forgiveness as the foundation of all, and built upon that knowledge of God inwardly illuminating and making a man independent of external helps, though he may sometimes be grateful for them; then a mutual possession, which is based upon these, whereby I, even I, can venture to say, God is mine, and, more wonderful still, I, even I, can venture to believe that He bends down from heaven, and says: And thou, thou art Mine! And then, as the result of all--named first, but coming last in the order of Nature--the law of His commandment will be so written upon the heart that delight and duty are spelt with the same letters, and His will is our will. If these, then, be the articles of the paction, think for a moment of the blessedness that lies lived in this ancient, and to some of us musty, thought of a covenant of Gods. It gives a basis for knowledge. Unless He audibly and articulately and verifiably utters His mind and will, I know not where men are to go to get it. And then, again, let me remind you how here is the one foothold, if I may so say, for confidence. If God hath not spoken there is nothing to reckon upon. There are perhapses, probabilities, if you like, possibilities, but nothing beyond. And no man can build a faith on a peradventure.
II. JESUS CHRIST IS THE EXECUTOR OF THIS COVENANT. The depth of the thought is only reached when we recognise His divinity and His humanity. He is the ladder with its foot on earth and its top in heaven. Because God dwells in Him, and the Word became flesh, He is able to lay His hand upon both, and to bring God to man, and man to God. He brings God to man by the declaration of His nature incarnate in humanity. And, on the other hand, He brings man to God; for He stands to each of us as our true Brother, and united to us by such close and real bonds as that all which He has been and done may be ours if we join ourselves to Him by faith. And He brings men to God, because in Him only do we find the drawings that incline wayward and wandering hearts to the Father. And He seals for us that great covenant in His own Person and work, in so far as what He in manhood has done has made it possible that such promises should be given to us. And, still further, He is the Mediator of the covenant, in so far as He Himself possesses in His humanity all the blessings which manhood is capable of deriving from the Father, and He has them all in order that He may give them all. There is the great Reservoir from which all men may fill their tiny cups.
III. NOTE THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD WHICH SEALS THE COVENANT. The blood shed establishes the covenant; and the blood sprinkled brings us into it. If Jesus had not died there would have been no promises for us, beginning with forgiveness and ending in wills delighting in Gods law. It is the new covenant in His blood. The death of Christ is ever present to the Divine mind and determines the Divine action. Further, that sprinkling, which introduced technically and formally these people into that covenant, represents for us the personal application to ourselves of the power of His death and of His life, by which we may make all Gods promises our own, and be cleansed from all sin. It is sprinkled. Then it is capable of division into indefinitely small portions, and of the closest contact with individuals. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Christ the Mediator of the covenant
I. Consider Christ, our Mediator, in His REASON. His person is amiable; He is all made up of love and beauty. He is the effigies of His Father, the express image of His person. Consider
1. Christs person in two natures.
2. His two natures in one person.
II. Consider Christ, our Mediator, in His GRACES: these are the sweet savour of His ointments that make the virgins love Him. Christ, our blessed Mediator, is said to be, full of grace and truth. He had the anointing of the Spirit without measure. Grace in Christ is after a more eminent and glorious manner than it is in any of the saints.
1. Jesus Christ, our Mediator, hath perfection in every grace. He is a panoply, magazine, and storehouse of all heavenly treasure, all fulness.
2. There is a never-failing fulness of grace in Christ.
3. Grace in Christ is communicative, His grace is for us; the holy oil of the Spirit was poured on the head of this blessed Aaron that it might run down upon us. Use
1. Admire the glory of this Mediator; He is God-man, He is co-essentially glorious with the Father.
2. If Christ be God-man in one person, then look unto Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
3. Is Jesus Christ God and man in one person? This, as it shows the dignity of believers, that they are nearly related to one of the greatest persons that is, in Him dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily, so it is of unspeakable comfort. Christs two natures being married together, the Divine and human, all that Christ in either of His natures can do for believers, He will do. (T. Watson.)
The privileges and blessings of the new covenant
I. WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THIS GRAND AND AMIABLE CHARACTER BY WHICH OUR BLESSED LORD IS HERE REPRESENTED TO US AS MEDIATOR OF THE NEW COVENANT? The Mediator betwixt God and man, acting in the Fathers name, and by His authority, and acting in our behoof, and for our salvation.
1. But more particularly, in our serious attention to this subject, our urgent need of Him, in this great capacity, may first naturally occur to our thoughts. What man could not do, God hath effected. Our help is laid upon One who is mighty and able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God through Him.
2. For it is to be observed that Jesus Christ is constituted and appointed by the Father Himself to this great office, to be Mediator of the new covenant.
3. But further. The Mediator of the new covenant is fully qualified to discharge this great office, to sustain this high character. The Redeemer of man is the Sea of God. Hence the infinite value and efficacy of His meritorious sufferings, and prevailing mediation
4. But He is the Mediator of the new covenant, through whom, and in virtue of whose atonement for sin, and satisfaction to Divine justice, the covenant is established and ratified, and all its benefits purchased. In a word, the full pardon of sin; established peace with God; the adoption of children; the grace of His Spirit; victory over sin and death; and a state of eternal happiness in the world to come.
5. But further, as Mediator of this covenant, He acts with God for man, that we may be brought to a compliance with the terms of the covenant, be reconciled in our hearts unto God, and live as the ransomed of the Lord. This is evidently necessary, in order to our receiving the blessings of this covenant. This work of mediation is carried on by His Word, by His servants speaking in His name, by the ordinances of the gospel, and by the influences of His Spirit.
6. He is the Mediator of the new covenant, who carrieth on the blessed work of mediation for us, now in His exalted state, and will continue to do so, until all its purposes shall be finally accomplished.
II. Consider WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE EXPRESSIONS WE ARE COME TO HIM. Ye believe in Him as the Mediator of the new covenant. Ye see His excellency and all-sufficiency. Ye have received Him to be your Redeemer; ye have assented to the terms of His covenant on your part, and have yielded yourselves unto the Lord through this Mediator. Ye are spiritually united to Him. Ye live in a state of union and friendship with Him. Ye abide in Him by faith and love, and ere long shall ye be for ever with Him. That communion is now begun, which shall be hereafter perfected; because He liveth ye shall live for ever also. (J. Williamson.)
What is required in the Mediator between God and men:
He must have the natural power of God and the natural power of man. In an advocacy so original and peculiar as that which involves mediation between God and man, it is past our ability to conceive how it could be otherwise. The stairway of light seen in the splendid imageries of the patriarchs dream, touched both worlds, or it would not have been a medium of communication; a bridge flung across the river must touch both shores, or it could not be a medium of passage; and it seems but the language of fair analogy to say that a mediator between God and man must, in the mystery of his being, touch both natures, or he could not be the medium of intercourse. (C. Stanford, D. D.)
The blood of sprinkling
The blood of Abel and the blood of Jesus
I. JESUS BLOOD SPEAKS BETTER THINGS IN GENERAL. What did the blood of Abel say? Was it not the blood of testimony? When Abel fell to the ground beneath his brothers club, he bore witness to spiritual religion. He died a martyr for the truth that God accepteth men according to their faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ, being also a testifier and witness for the faith of God, spake better things than Abel, because He had more to speak, and spake from more intimate acquaintance with God. Moreover, the blood of Abel spake good things in that it was the proof of faithfulness. His blood as it fell to the ground spake this good thing--it said, Great God, Abel is faithful to Thee. But the blood of Jesus Christ testifies to yet greater faithfulness still, for it was the sequel of a spotlessly perfect life, which no act of sin had ever defiled; whereas Abels death furnished, it is true, a life of faith, but not a life of perfection. Moreover, we must never forget that all that Abels blood could say as it fell to the ground was but the shadow of that more glorious substance of which Jesus death assures us. Jesus did not typify atonement, but offered it. It is well to add that our Lords person was infinitely more worthy and glorious than that of Abel, and consequently His death must yield to us a more golden-mouthed discourse than the death of a mere man like Abel.
II. Now we will remember that THE BLOOD OF JESUS SPEAKS BETTER THINGS TO GOD than the blood of Abel did. The blood of Abel cried in the ears of the Lord, for thus He said to Cain, The voice of thy brothers blood crieth unto Me from the ground. That cry did not go round to seek a mediator, but went directly to the judgment-seat of God, and laid an accusation against the murderer. Can you stand at Calvary now and view the flowing of the Saviours blood from hands, and feet, and side? What are your own reflections as to what that blood says to God? That blood crieth with a loud voice to God, and what doth it say? Does it not say this? O God, this time it is not merely a creature which bleeds, but though the body that hangs upon the Cross is the creature of Thy Holy Spirit, it is Thine own Son who now pours out His soul unto death. O God, wilt Thou despise the cries and the tears, the blood of Thine own Son? Then, moreover, the voice would plead, It is not only Thy Son, but Thy perfectly innocent Son, in whom was no necessity for dying, because He had no original sin which would have brought corruption on Him, who had moreover no actual sin, who throughout life had done nothing worthy of death or of bonds. Canst Thou see it, Thou God of all, canst Thou see the infinite holy and just Son of Thy heart led here to die, and not feel the force of the blood as it cries to Thee? Was there not added to this fact that our Lord died to vindicate the honour of His Father? For Thee, O God, for Thee He dies! If Thou wert content to stain Thine honour or to restrain Thy mercy, there were no need that He should give Himself. Is there not power in this voice? Yet over and above this the blood must have pleaded thus with God:--O God, the blood which is now being shed, thus honourable and glorious in itself, is being poured out with a motive which is Divinely gracious. O God, it is a chain for God in heaven which binds the victim to the horns of the altar, a chain of everlasting love, of illimitable goodness. Now you and I could not see a man suffer out of pure benevolence without being moved by his sufferings, and shall God be unmoved? the perfectly holy and gracious God?
III. Furthermore, JESUS BLOOD SPEAKS BETTER THINGS TO US IN OUR OWN HEARTS than the blood of Abel. When the sinner looks to Jesus slain, he may well say, If I did not know that all this blood was shed for me as well as by me, my fears would multiply a thousandfold; but when I think that that precious blood is shed instead of mine, when I think that that is the blood of Gods own dear Son, whom He has smitten instead of smiting me, making Him bear the whole of His wrath that I might not bear it, O nay God, what comforts come streaming from this blessed fountain! Just in proportion as thought of murder would make Cain wretched, in the same proportion ought faith to make you happy as you think upon Jesus Christ slain; for the blood of Christ must have a more powerful voice than that of Abel, and it cries therefore more powerfully for you than the blood of Abel cried against his brother Cain.
IV. JESUS BLOOD, EVEN IN MY TEXT, SPEAKS BETTER THINGS THAN THAT OF ABEL. It speaks the same things but in a better sense. Did you notice the first text? God said unto Cain, What hast thou done? Now that is what Christs blood says to you: What hast thou done? Ah! Lord, done enough to make me weep for ever if it were not that Thou hast wept for me. What I want mainly to indicate is this. If you notice in the second text, this blood is called the blood of sprinkling. Whether Abels blood sprinkled Cain or not I cannot say, but if it did, it must have added to his horror to have had the blood actually upon him. But this adds to the joy in our case, for the blood of Jesus is of little value to us until it is sprinkled upon us. Faith dips the hyssop in the atoning blood and sprinkles it upon the soul, and the soul is clean. The application of the blood of Jesus is the true ground of joy, and the sure source of Christian comfort; the application of the blood of Abel must have been horror, but the application of the blood of Jesus is the root and ground of all delight. There is another matter in the text with which I conclude. The apostle says, We are come to the blood of sprinkling. Now, from the blood of Abel every reasonable man would flee away. He that has murdered his fellow desires to put a wide distance between himself and the accusing corpse. But we come to the blood of Jesus. It is a topic in which we delight as our contemplations bring us nearer and nearer to it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The blood of sprinkling
I. WHAT IS IT? What is this blood of sprinkling? In a few words, the blood of sprinkling represents the pains, the sufferings, the humiliation, and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He endured oil the behalf of guilty man. He properly, but yet most generously and spontaneously, came and shed His precious blood in the stead of sinners, to bring the guilty near to God. But the text does not merely speak of the blood shed, which I have explained to you, but of the blood of sprinkling. This is the atonement applied for Divine purposes, and specially applied to our own hearts and consciences by faith.
1. The blood of sprinkling is the centre of the Divine manifestation under the gospel. Observe its innermost place in the passage before us.
2. I next ask you to look at the text and observe that this sprinkling of the blood, as mentioned by the Holy Ghost in this passage, is absolutely identical with Jesus Himself. If you have done with the blood of sprinkling, you have done with Jesus altogether; He will never part with His mediatorial glory as our sacrifice, neither can we come to Him if we ignore that character.
3. Observe that this blood of sprinkling is put in close contact with the new covenant. To us Jesus in His atonement is Alpha and Omega, in Him the covenant begins and ends.
4. But I want you to notice that according to the text the blood is the voice of the new dispensation. Observe that on Sinai there was the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they heard that entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more. You look, therefore, under the new dispensation, for a voice, and you do not come to any till you reach the last object in the list, and there see the blood of sprinkling that speaketh. Here, then, is the voice of the gospel; it is not the voice of a trumpet, nor the voice of words spoken in terrible majesty; but the blood speaks, and assuredly there is no sound more piercing, more potent, more prevailing.
5. Observe, that this voice is identical with the voice of the Lord Jesus.
6. This blood is always speaking. It always remains a plea with God, and a testimony to men.
7. This precious blood speaks better things than that of Abel. It saith, There is redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. He His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed. He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The voice of the blood is this, For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
II. WHERE ARE WE? I have to explain what is meant by the expression which is found in the twenty-second verse of the chapter, Ye are come. Link the twenty-second verse with this twenty-fourth, and read, Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling.
1. Well, first, ye are come to the hearing of the gospel of the atoning sacrifice. You are come to hear, not of your sin and its doom, not of the last judgment and the swift destruction of the enemies of God, but of love to the guilty, pity for the miserable, mercy for the wicked.
2. In a better sense, going a little further, we have not only come to the blood of sprinkling by hearing about it, but we have come to it because the great God now deals with us upon methods which are founded and grounded upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ.
3. Further, there is a far more effectual way of coming to the blood of sprinkling than this--when by faith that blood is sprinkled upon our souls. This is absolutely needed: the blood shed must become to each one of us the blood sprinkled.
4. Further, to come to this blood of sprinkling means thankfully to enjoy all that comes to us through the blood of sprinkling.
5. I think, once more, that this coming to the blood of sprinkling means also that we feel the full effect of it in our lives. The man who knows that Jesus shed His blood for him, and has had that blood applied to his conscience, becomes a sin-hating man, consecrated to Him who has cleansed him.
III. WHAT THEN?
1. Do not refuse the voice of Jesus by cold indifference.
2. When you resolve to study the doctrine, do not approach it with prejudice through misapprehension.
3. Do not refuse the voice of the Lord Jesus by rejecting the principle of expiation.
4. Do not refuse this voice of mercy by preferring your own way of salvation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv18–24 18–21. For ye are not come unto the mount,…
18–21. For ye are not come unto the mount, etc. Ye should be diligent “for,” etc. Mount Sinai and the inauguration of the law are described. It was a mountain that could be touched, a mountain of earth. It burned on that occasion with fire. See Exod. 19:12–19.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv18, 22 Heb_12:18. Might be touched.—A figure of speech for a…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Heb_12:18. Might be touched.—A figure of speech for a “material” thing. “A palpable and enkindled fire.” For the terrors accompanying the giving of the law on Sinai, see Exodus 19, 20.
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_12:18-21
Emblems of the Older Revelation.—The rhetorical character of this passage is very marked, and it should be treated as we properly treat rhetorical work. It is unreasonable to press for a precise meaning and a logical relation in the terms of a rhetorical passage. Farrar says: “At the close of his arguments and exhortations the writer condenses the results of his epistle into a climax of magnificent eloquence and force, in which he shows the transcendent beauty and supremacy of the new covenant as compared with the terrors and imperfections of the old.” The point which comes out most prominently is, that the old was an outward and material religion of bodily acts, relations, obediences, and ceremonies. Its character could therefore be indicated by material signs: nature-moods and nature-forces could be wisely associated with the founding of that religion, and the promulgation of that law. Dr. Geikie recalls to mind the sublimity of the great day of Sinai: “At last, on the morning of the third day, the peaks of the mountain were seen veiled in thick clouds, through which lightnings quivered vividly and unintermittently, as if the vast height were aflame; terrible thunders leaped from crag to crag, and reverberated in multiplied echoes, like the sound of mighty trumpets announcing the approach of God. The phenomena of thunder-storms were in all ages associated by the Hebrews, as by other early and simple races, with the Divine presence, and were its fitting accompaniments when Jehovah now actually drew nigh. All nature was moved, and seemed to tremble before Him. The people had been led out by Moses to see a spectacle so august, but its terrors awed small and great; for as they gazed the mountain appeared to smoke like a furnace, and to reel on its foundations. But if the sight presented were august, the words which sounded above the thunders were still more so.… What, in comparison with a moment like this, was the whole record of the Hindoo, Egyptian, or other nations, however ancient—with all their wisdom, or their gigantic creations of temples, pyramids, and colossi? The transaction on Sinai was for all time, and for the life beyond. It laid the foundation of true morality and human dignity among mankind. It was the birth-hour of a people differing from all yet seen. The simple but profound truths of a spiritual God of whom no likeness was to be made—a Being who draws to Himself the oppressed and wretched; of the veneration to be shown to parents; of chastity; of the sacredness of human life and of property; of truth between man and man; and of the necessity of a clear conscience, were first revealed at Sinai, as a legacy for all ages.” Dean Stanley gives us even a deeper impression of the relation in which nature stood to the old revelation: “The outward scene might indeed prepare them for what was to come. They stood in a vast sanctuary, not made with hands—a sanctuary where every outward shape of life, animal or vegetable, such as in Egypt had attracted their wonder and admiration, was withdrawn. Bare and unclothed, the mountains rose around them; their very shapes and colours were such as to carry their thoughts back to the days of primeval creation, ‘from everlasting to everlasting, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made.’ At last the morning broke, and every eye was fixed on the summit of the height (Ras Sufsafeh). Was it any earthly form, was it any distinct shape, that unveiled itself?… There were thunders, there were lightnings, there was the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; but on the mount itself there was a thick cloud—darkness, and clouds, and thick darkness. It was ‘the secret place of thunder.’ On the summit of the mountain, on the skirts of the dark cloud or within it, was Moses himself withdrawn.… They saw not God; and yet they were to believe that He was there. They were to make no sign or likeness of God, and yet they were to believe that He was then and always their one and only Lord.” This sublime scene the writer of the paragraph before us recalls to mind; but it is the materiality of it all on which he dwells. These were nature-emblems of a ceremonial and outward religion.
I. A material mountain.—“A mount that might be touched.” It had substance. It was a real mountain. It has been noticed that those who are born and dwell in mountain districts, though they feel passionately attached to their country, seldom either intellectually or poetically interest themselves in the hills. Those who visit such districts receive the mental and spiritual impressions which they are calculated to produce. And the Israelites were visitors to Sinai, to whom the mountain impressions fully came, giving thoughts of the eternity, stability, and sublimity of Him who made these everlasting hills His throne. How the mountains waken thought may be illustrated by one of R. Buchanan’s Coruisken Sonnets.
“Ghostly and livid, robed with shadow, see!
Each mighty mountain silent on its throne,
From foot to scalp one stretch of livid stone,
Without one gleam of grass or greenery.
Silent they take the immutable decree—
Darkness or sunlight come—they do not stir;
Each bare brow lifted desolately free,
Keeping the silence of a death-chamber.
Silent they watch each other until doom;
They see each other’s phantoms come and go,
Yet stir not. Now the stormy hour brings gloom,
Now all things grow confused and black below,
Specific through the cloudy drift they loom,
And each accepts his individual woe.
Monarch of these is Blaabhein. On his height
The lightning and the snow sleep side by side,
Like snake and lamb; he broodeth in a white
And wintry consecration.”
II. An earthly form.—The awful majesty of tempests in mountain districts is told by travellers. The thunders roll from hill to hill, and gather force as they roll. The might of nature-powers is overwhelmingly impressed on the soul, and man feels his utter nothingness and helplessness in their presence. And yet Elijah learned in this very region of Sinai, that the fire and tempest are but material forces, and belong to the lower ranges of Divine revelation. Those lower, earthly ranges were the only ones which the Israelites could then reach. The time for the spiritual revelations was not then fully come.
III. A trumpet-voice.—Which seems to mean sound without sense. The appeal to fear, rather than to love. A call to attention, an awakening to concern; but the time was not fitted for the utterance of words which could be taken into thought and heart, and made the guide and rule of life. At least the words could not then come from God Himself. His voice sounded to Israel but as the blare of some mighty trumpet, and it did but fill them with fear.
IV. A strict injunction.—They were to consider that mountain so entirely sacred, that they must not permit even a stray beast to overpass the boundaries. The living symbol of that sacredness of the Holy of Holies, where God dwelt, which was the very centre of their religious system. All the emblems suggested a formal, outward, material revelation and religion. And it is of the very essence of outward, material religion—the religion of forms and rites and ceremonies—that it treats men as children, and helps them to goodness through fear. A spiritual revelation and religion—which comes to man and spirit in the power of the Holy Spirit—alone can treat men as men, and help them to goodness by principle and trust and love. The way of “help to goodness through fear” is always called for, since in every age there are found men who are but children, and therefore must be treated as such. Sinai that may be touched, till there can be apprehension of Zion that cannot be touched.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_12:18-19. Sinai and Zion.
I. Christianity is a spiritual, not a material, dispensation.
II. Though it is spiritual in its nature, it employs material forms as adjuncts.
III. Sinai and Zion are only marks of progress, not final destinations.—Jesus is the grand resting-point.
Learn—
(1) that privilege is the measure of responsibility;
(2) that there is no limit to progress in love and knowledge.—Dr. J. Parker.
Heb_12:18-21. The Gospel Church and the Jewish Church.—Here the writer goes on to engage the professing Hebrews to perseverance in their Christian course and conflict, and not to relapse into Judaism. He shows how much the gospel Church differs from the Jewish Church, and how much it excels. We have a very particular description of the state of the Church under the Mosaic dispensation.
1. It was a grossly sensible state. Mount Sinai, on which that Church-state was constituted, was a gross, palpable place. It was very much external and earthly.
2. It was a dark dispensation. Upon that mount there were blackness and darkness; and that Church-state was covered with dark shadows and types.
3. It was a dreadful dispensation; the Jews could not bear the terror of it.
4. It was a limited dispensation; all might not approach to that mount, but only Moses and Aaron.
5. It was a very dangerous dispensation. The mount burned with fire, and whatever man or beast touched the mount must be “stoned” or “thrust through with a dart.” This was the state of the Jewish Church, fitted to awe a stubborn and hard-hearted people, to set forth the strict and tremendous justice of God, to wean the people of God from that dispensation, and induce them more readily to embrace the sweet and gentle economy of the gospel Church, and adhere to it.—Matthew Henry.
Heb_12:18-24. The Two Mounts.—There, on the right hand, are the flowery slopes of the mount of blessing; there, on the left, the barren, stern, thunder-riven, lightning-splintered pinnacles of the mount of cursing. Every clear note of benediction hath its low minor of imprecation from the other side. Between the two, overhung by the hopes of the one, and frowned upon and dominated by the threatenings of the other, is pitched the little camp of our human life, and the path of our pilgrimage runs in the trough of the valley between. And yet, might I not go a step further, and say that above the parted summits stretches the one overarching blue, uniting them both, and their roots deep down below the surface interlace and twine together?—A. Maclaren, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12
Heb_12:18. Mount Sinai.—Among the characteristics of Sinai one must not be omitted—the deep stillness, and consequent reverberation of the human voice. From the highest point of Rás Sufsàfeh to its lower peak, a distance of about sixty feet, the page of a book, distinctly but not loudly read, was perfectly audible; and every remark of the various groups of travellers, descending from the heights of the same point, rose clearly to those immediately above them. It was the belief of the Arabs who conducted Niebuhr, that they could make themselves heard across the gulf of Akaba—a belief, doubtless, exaggerated, yet probably originated or fostered by the great distance to which, in these regions, the voice can actually be carried, and it is, probably, from the same causes that so much attention has been excited by the mysterious noises which have, from time to time, been heard on the summit of Gebel Mousa, in the neighbourhood of Um-Shómer, and the mountains of Nâkús, or the Bell, so called from the legend that the sounds proceed from the bells of the convent enclosed within the mount. In this last instance the sound is supposed to originate in the rush of sand down the mountain-side, and here, as elsewhere, playing the same part as the waters or snows of the North. In the case of Gebel Mousa, where it is said that the monks had originally settled on the highest peak, but were, by these strange noises, driven down to their present seat in the valley, and in the case of Um-Shómer, where it was described to Burckhardt as like the sound of artillery, the precise cause has never been ascertained. But in all these instances the effect must have been heightened by the death-like silence of the region, where the fall of waters, even the trickling of brooks, is unknown.—Dean Stanley.
Roots Uncomely but Useful.—The root of a plant is often a rough and very unsightly part. Its colour is unpleasing, and its form ungainly, yet it plays an all-important part in the economy of the plant’s life. You may pluck off the bright flowers and leaves one by one till all is stripped bare, and it will still survive; but the root is essential to its life: injure or remove it, and the plant perishes. Again, the oxygen, the life-sustaining element of the air, given off by the various members of the vegetable kingdom, comes entirely from the stem and leaves, the green parts of the plant, the more beautiful flowers and fruit only exhaling poisonous carbon. So it is with the body mystical of Christ, “the Church of the firstborn,” and its members in particular.… Often God brings a rough, uncouth Luther to far more distinction than a refined Erasmus, and exalts Bunyan the tinker above the most polished of his pious contemporaries. The “uncomely parts” have more honour, for it is God’s method of working to place more honour upon them, and make them of more use. It is very humbling to pride, especially spiritual pride, but it is His way, who will have “no flesh to glory before Him.”—James Neil, M.A.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v18
ARGUMENT 18
THE THREE EVANGELICAL MOUNTAINS
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— SINAI, CALVARY, AND ZION.
This paragraph, including Heb 12:18-29, is the grand Apollonian climax exhibitory of the threefold gospel, i,e., conviction, regeneration, and sanctification.
18-21. These four verses describe the memorable scene when God Almighty descended on Mount Sinai in densely black clouds, roaring tornadoes, terrific lightnings, appalling thunder-bolts, stentorian thunderclaps and paroxysmal earthquakes, striking paralyzing affright and horrible trepidation into all the people, so they trembled, quaked, screamed and fled from the scene, beseeching Moses to stand between them and the awful God of Sinai. This indescribable scene emblematizes the gospel of conviction, when the fire-baptized preacher, fearless of men and devils, takes Mount Sinai for his pulpit, trusting God to supply the lightning, thunder, tempest and earthquake, while he uncaps hell and shakes the people over the seething, burning, unfathomable billows, with a strong hand and a fearless heart. This explains the historic fact that the apostles raised a row, provoked persecution, and received bleeding backs and broken beads wherever they went. The Sinai Gospel, indispensable to conviction, is the great deficiency of the present age. In popular pulpits it is considered discourteous to speak of hell and damnation, and intolerable to preach on it. A cultured clergyman, in a city pulpit, found it necessary in the process of his discourse to say “hell.” He said it so softly that a lot of money-loving merchants present thought he said “sell” some Universalists in his audience thought he said, “all’s well,” while an old saint in the amen corner actually certified that the man said “hell.” While the Sinai Gospel is dead and forgotten in the popular churches, so the members actually go to perdition at race-horse speed without any serious trouble in the way of conscientious compunction, it is a lamentable fact that it is fearfully deficient in the holiness movement. Consequently, the people are professing in platoons, while possession is like the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. Internal superficiality is the greatest enemy of the holiness work. Sanctification is impossible without regeneration, and regeneration without conviction, while the Sinai Gospel is God’s artillery for conviction. I am an old revivalist. In the vigor of my manhood I delighted to go into the very hotbed of Satan’s kingdom, take Sinai for my pulpit, trust God for thunder, lightning and earthquakes, stand like a messenger from heaven and preach the terrors of the violated law, the blackness of sin, the horrors of hell and the doom of the damned for days and weeks and see conviction settle down on all the people like a nightmare from the regions of woe, hope take her flight and despair on raven wing hover around the doomed people till they would fall on all sides, crying for mercy. Then I would open the altar and at least half of the whole congregation would pile into it. I have frequently seen meetings like it is said of heaven, “Congregations ne’er break up and Sabbaths have no end,” the slain of the Lord, unable to stand on their feet, lying prostrate till the next meeting, so there was really no adjournment. Scenes of this kind were accompanied by sky-blue conversions and sun-burst sanctifications. We have great need of an overhauling and a reformation in the holiness movement, and a return to first principles, less we retrogress so far as to run into formalistic manipulation and routine profession, like the dead churches, taking mentalities for spiritualities. I find people in my travels professing sanctification who satisfy me upon spiritual diagnosis that they are not only unsanctified but ignorant of regeneration, the trouble consisting in the fact that they have never had a spiritual conviction. Consequently all their professions have been intellectual, formalistic and perfunctory, their own immortal spirit all the time dead in the sepulcher of sin. The soul abides in an interior citadel, surrounded by the mind, which must be interpenetrated in order to reach the immortal spirit, the man himself. While human words can reach the man, convince the judgment, influence the will and stir the emotions, all of which is right, proper and necessary in the plan of salvation, God’s lightning flashing from Sinai’s melting summit is necessary to interpenetrate materiality, mentality and reach the immortal spirit on its throne in the center of the soul. While the awful thunders of Sinai must wake up the sleeping sinner, the smashing, convulsing earthquakes of God’s convicting Spirit alone can shake him from his sandy foundations. God help us all to study and preach the Sinai Gospel, till we see the wicked fall like dead men, as I have so often seen, especially in my early evangelistic ministry. While the Sinai Gospel, when faithfully preached, brings conviction, it is equally true that the Calvary Gospel, when faithfully preached, invariably brings conversions. Our Savior warned us not to cast our pearls before swine. O, how we have need to heed this warning. Preaching God’s pardoning love to impenitent sinners is casting your pearls before the swine and calculated not only to harden them in their wicked courses, till they will go on from bad to worse, congratulating themselves, “God loves me too well to send me to hell.”
The Gospel of Sinai is for impenitent sinners, and should be preached to them till conviction strikes them. The Gospel of Calvary is for all penitent sinners, and should be faithfully preached to them till they are gloriously converted. As a rule, the popular churches are mainly filled up with proud impenitent sinners. What a mistake to preach sanctification to such people! Of course, they trample the jewels of holiness under their carnal feet, and get mad enough to tear one to pieces because he did not give them corn to eat. Such people need the Gospel of Sinai to convict them, so they may see their lost estate and fly for refuge. It is frequently quite different when we preach to the drunkards, harlots, thieves and murderers in the slums. In their case, frequently ruined health, terrible physical suffering, abject poverty, dissipated fortunes and alienated friends have reacted on them with the crushing weight of an avalanche, broken their hearts and blighted all their hopes; meanwhile the Holy Ghost, through these sad and awful calamities, has reached their hearts with a true and genuine conviction. Therefore they are already penitent and ready with gushing gratitude to hear you tell of Jesus, the sinner’s Friend, and the sinner’s Savior dying on the cross to take away their sins, keep them out of hell and lift them up to heaven. In the normal economy of Gospel grace, the sinner is convicted by the thunder and lightnings of Sinai, flies to Cavalry, falls beneath the reeking cross, looks up at the dying Savior, hears Him say, “It is finished.” He now soliloquizes, “What is finished? My salvation? Then what have I to do? Nothing, but take it. I do, by the grace of God, and eternity will be too short for me to serve, praise, honor and adore Thee as I ought, because Thou hast come all the way from heaven down to save this my lost soul.”
22. The New Covenant of entire sanctification was inaugurated on Mount Zion, when Jesus poured down on His disciples the Pentecostal fire. This glorious experience identifies us with the “heavenly Jerusalem,” the Bride of Christ and the mother of God’s children, bringing us into angelic sympathy and fellowship
23. bringing us into the “Church of the firstborn,” of which Jesus is the Head, and the truly sanctified people His body, the spirits of justified people having been made perfect, i.e., converted people who have afterwards been sanctified
24. and to “Jesus, the Mediator of the covenant, and to the blood that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel.” Whereas Moses was the mediator of the Old Covenant, sanctified by the blood of animals, Jesus is the Mediator of the New Covenant sanctified by His own blood. We are all now living in the Mount Zion dispensation, which was inaugurated at Pentecost, to prepare the world for the millennium. It is a deplorable pity for us to go back and live under the dispensation of Moses, following human guides, depending on church rites and legal obedience which have no power to take away sins.
25. Disobedience under the Mosaic dispensation was punished with physical death, adumbrating the sad fate of the soul rejecting the blood of the New Covenant, the baptisms of Pentecost, the glories and victories of full salvation.
26. The memorable scene of Sinai also typified the summary vengeance of the violated law in the cremation of the earth with its aerial environments, in order to the complete, final and total extirpation not only of sin, but of its effects from the created universe.
27. “But this yet once exhibits the removal of things shakable as having been created, in order that things unshakable may remain.” When Satan invaded Eden and captured Adam and Eve, the king and queen of this world, he threw the black banner of this conquest around the globe, polluting all from center to circumference, warp and woof, intrinsical and extrinsical. Therefore this whole world with its contents passed under condemnation and was excommunicated from the celestial empire. When the Son of God espoused the lost cause, satisfying the violated law by paying the penalty, the Holy Ghost was sent into this world to execute the stupendous work of the new creation, anticipatory of earth’s re- annexation to the heavenly universe. Regeneration is the creation of the new life in to human spirit, while sanctification is the elimination of the old creation. Thus the new creation of the soul is consummated in sanctification; that of the body in the resurrection, and that of the mind in glorification. But this is not enough; the whole earth and firmament are contaminated with sin and must pass through the purgatorial fires like the Pentecostal flames, which sanctify the soul. Contemporaneously with the final judgment, this earth with its environments will be subjected to a thorough cremation, consuming not only all sin, but exterminating all the effects of sin from the terrestrial sphere. Then it will be the glorious prerogative of the Holy Ghost, the Executor of the new creation, to renew this earth and environments in the purity, glory, majesty, splendor and immortal beauty peculiar to the unfallen heavenly worlds.
28. “Therefore, receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us have grace through which we may worship God acceptably, with reverence and Godly fear.” Under the wonderful provisions of the New Covenant, providing an uttermost salvation for all of God’s children, there is no reason why we should not worship Him acceptably, like the angels in heaven. The fallen creation, having passed under condemnation. can never render Him any acceptable service, but when the Holy Ghost has wrought in us the new creation and eliminated out of us the old, there is no reason why we should not have constant victory in our souls and perpetual and delectable communion with God.
29. “For truly our God is a consuming fire.” The connection here involves the conclusion that our God consumes all inbred sin and hereditary depravity out of the hearts of His people, who fully consecrate and solidly trust Him for the execution of that great work. It also follows, the logical sequence, that God out of Christ is a consuming fire to the wicked. When the New Covenant was inaugurated on Mount Zion, amid the Pentecostal baptisms, tongues of fire did sit on the heads of the apostles. These tongues were cloven in twain, significant of the Gospel economy. Hence we see that our Gospel is all fire, consisting of two messages, i.e., hell fire, to warn and convict the wicked to flee the wrath to come; and heavenly fire, to sanctify the righteous for the glorified presence of God. This is the condemnation of the popular pulpit. It has no fire. It neither preaches hell fire, to alarm the wicked, nor heavenly fire, to sanctify the Christian. It has a North Pole atmosphere, surrounded by icebergs and glaciers. The gospel that does not burn is Satan’s counterfeit, to hoax the people and lead them to hell. All cold religion is a diabolical delusion. Satan freezes the people in this world and burns them in the world to me. God’s religion is full of fire in this world, but has no fire in the world to come. There is no mention of fire in heaven, because there is nothing there that ought to be destroyed.
1. “Let brotherly love abide.” O, how pertinent this Apostolical exhortation, and how beautiful and amiable the grace of brotherly love! The sable Ethiopian, the almond-eyed Chinaman, the superstitions Esquimau and the Rocky Mountain Comanche, are all my brethren. Entire sanctification is the only grace competent to obey this commandment. It knocks down all sectarian fences and demolishes all race lines.
2. The departure of the angelic grace of Christian hospitality oat of the churches of the present day is the swift harbinger of the awful apostasy now sadly verifying many alarming latter day prophecies. The Old Testament saints were pre-eminent for their hospitality, while the Jerusalem Church actually sold their estates that they might extend hospitality to their brethren providentially detained in the metropolis by the Pentecostal revival. The Arabic children of Abraham relate a notable incident in the life of the patriarch, i.e., one tempestuous night an old man called at his tent soliciting entertainment, which was courteously granted. After supper, when Abraham proceeds with family prayer, his guest peremptorily refuses to worship the God of Israel, being a rigid, conscientious idolater. In vain the father of the faithful preaches, exhorts, prays and importunes; the old idolater is inflexible as rock. Finally, Abraham presents to him the alternative, “Worship my God or leave my tent.” The old man, choosing the latter, is escorted to the door and turned out in the howling storm. Scarcely has Abraham closed the door when God speaks to him: “Abraham, I have borne with that old sinner a hundred years; can not you stand him one night?” Abraham jumps out, exclaiming aloud, “Come back, come back!” The old man returns astonished, and says, “What sort of a man are you, to drive me off and call me back?” “O,” says Abraham, “the God of Israel did chide me because I would not bear with you one night when He has home with you a hundred years.” Then says the old man, “If that is the kind of God you have tell me more about Him.” Abraham labors with his earnest penitent, who is rousingly converted before day.
3. This verse commands us to show kindness to the prisoners, the afflicted and all in distress, which all who walk in the footprints of Jesus are certain faithfully to perform.
4. Apollos here highly commends the divine institution of matrimony, the providential preventive of the awful destroyer of soul and body, i.e., adultery. The eye of God is upon all its subjects in their dismal, brutal and diabolical nocturnal debaucheries. His judgments are swift on their track.
5. “Let your conduct be free from the love of money, being contented with present things; for Himself hath said, ‘I will never, never forsake thee, nor never, never do I leave thee.’” Nothing but entire sanctification can take the love of money out of the human heart and make us perfectly content and satisfied with a cup of water and a crust of bread, and shout in starvation, enjoying a fast for the glory of God.
6. Well has the poet said, “Man wants but little here nor wants that little long.” The King of England, riding along in his gilded vehicle, seeing a ragged boy digging up the briars in the fence corner, halting a moment, said, “Boy, what do you get for your work?” The astonished lad said, “I just get my victuals and clothes.” The King responded, “Go ahead, boy, for I am the King of England, and that is all I get.”
7. Our God is a God of order and organization. The Church in the Bible is described in military phraseology, as a rule. Military law is most exact, rigid and inviolable, punishing the cowardly and disobedient with death. Our religious meetings are the Lord’s battlefields. Though a human leader may err, for the sake of order and uniformity, we had better obey, trusting God to overrule all mistakes for His glory.
8. “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and forever.”
9. “Be not carried away with divers and strange teachings: for it is good that the heart be established with grace and not with meats.” The whole Bible is but the biography of Christ, the Old Testament that of Christ concealed, and the New that of Christ revealed. Hence all truth is as old as the Bible, and everything new is false. We are here solemnly warned against the fatal mistake of taking materialities instead of spiritualities, i.e., “meats” instead of “grace.” If the church edifice should burn down and the pastor turn over to the devil, how many church members would have any religion left. If the Conference should drop a church out of the work, as a rule they would nearly all backslide in a year. This illustrates the materialism of their religion, and their radical deficiency in grace. Sadly they are following human leaders instead of Christ. How frequently an evangelist has a great revival, but carries away the religion with him when he goes, because the people were converted to him instead of to God. If he would do like Paul, leave out all the eloquence, and give them the thunder and lightning of Sinai, instead of worshipping him they would give him a thrashing. In that case, there would be some hope of their conversion to God.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv22–24 Heb 12:22-23
Hebrews
WITH WHOM FAITH LIVES
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Heb 12:22-23
The magnificent passage of which these words are part sums up the contrast between Judaism and Christianity which this whole Epistle has been illustrating and enforcing. The writer takes the scene on Sinai as expressive of the genius of the former revelation, whose centre was a law which evoked the consciousness of sin, and kindled terror; and which was embodied in sensible and material symbols. Far other and better are the characteristics of the latter revelation. That excites no dread; is given from no flashing mountain with accompaniments of darkness and trumpet blasts and terrible words; and it brings us into contact with no mere material and therefore perishable symbols, but with realities none the less real because they are above sense, and not remote from us though they be.
For, says my text, ‘Ye are come,’ not ‘Ye shall come.’ The humblest life may be in touch with the grandest realities in the universe, and need not wait for death to draw aside the separating curtain in order to be in the presence of God and in the heavenly Jerusalem.
How are these things brought to us? By the revelation of God in Christ. How are we brought to them? By faith in that revelation. So every believing life, howsoever encompassed by flesh and sense, can thrust, as it were, a hand through the veil, and grasp the realities beyond. The scene described in the first words of my text may verily be the platform on which our lives are lived, howsoever in outward form they may be passed on this low earth; and the companions, which the second part of our text discloses, may verily be our companions, though we ‘wander lonely as a cloud,’ or seem to be surrounded by far less noble society. By faith we are come to the unseen realities which are come to us by the revelation of God in Christ. ‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion.’
Now, looking generally at these words, they give us just two things - the scene and the companions of the Christian life. The remainder of the passage will occupy us on future occasions, but for the present I confine myself to the words which I have read. And I shall best deal with them, I think, if I simply follow that division into which they naturally fall, and ask you to note, first, where faith lives, and, second, with whom faith lives.
I. First, then, where faith lives.
‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.’ There are two points here which carry us back to the topography of the ancient sacred city. In the literal Jerusalem, Zion was the lofty Acropolis, at once fortress and site of the king’s palace, and round it clustered the dwellings of the city.
The two symbols are thus closely connected, and present substantially the same idea, and perhaps it is pressing a figure too far to find a diversity of meaning in the separate parts of this closely connected whole. But still it seems to me that there is a substantial difference of aspect in the two clauses.
The first thought, therefore, that I would suggest to you is this, that the life of a man who has truly laid hold of Jesus Christ, and so is living by faith, is on its inward side - that is, in deepest reality - a life passed in the dwelling of the great King. All through this letter, the writer is recurring to the thought of access to God, unimpeded and continual, as being the great gift which Jesus Christ has brought to us. And here he gathers it into the noblest symbol. There, lifted high above all the humbler roofs, flash the golden pinnacles of the great palace in which God Himself dwells. And we, toiling and moiling down here, surrounded by squalid circumstances, and annoyed by many cares, and limited by many narrownesses which we often find to be painful, and fighting with many sorrows, and seeming to ourselves to be, sometimes, homeless wanderers in a wilderness, may yet ever more ‘dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty and to inquire in His temple.’
The privilege has for its other side a duty; the duty has for its foundation a privilege. For if it be true that the real life of every believing soul is a life that never moves from the temple-palace where God is, and that its inmost secret and the spring of its vitality is communion with God, what shall we say of the sort of lives that most of us most often live? Is there any truth in such exalted metaphors as this in reference to us? Does it not sound far liker irony than truth to say of people whose days are so shuttlecocked about by trifling cares, and absorbed in fleeting objects, and wasted in the chase after perishable delights, that they ‘are come unto Mount Zion,’ and dwell in the presence of God? Is my ‘life hid with Christ in God’? There is no possibility of Death being your usher, to introduce you into the house of God not made with hands, unless faith has introduced you into it even whilst you tarry here, and unless your habitual direction of heart and mind towards Him keeps you ever more at least a waiter at His threshold, if you do not pass beyond. ‘I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than dwell in the tents of wickedness.’
My brother! do we so knit ourselves to Him, by heartfelt acceptance of the good news of His loving proximity to us which Jesus Christ .brings, as that indeed we have left earth and care and sin at the foot of the mount, with the asses and the servants, and have our faces set to the lofty sweetnesses of our ‘Father’s house’? ‘Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house,’ and no less blessed are they ‘in whose hearts are the ways’ that lead to it.
Then let me remind you how Zion contrasts with Sinai, and thus suggests the thought that a true Christian life, based upon faith, has a communion with God which is darkened by no dread, nor disturbed by consciousness of unforgiven sin. We have set against each other the terrors of that theophany on Mount Sinai, attendant on, or rather precedent to, the giving of the law - the mountain wrapped in smoke; in the heart of the wreathing blackness the flashing fire; from out of the midst of it the long-drawn trumpet blasts, the proclamation of the coming of the King; and then. the voice which, divine as it was, froze the marrow of the hearers’ bones, that they entreated that no words like these should any more fall on their trembling ears.
That is the one picture. The other shows us the mount where the King dwells, serene and peaceful, the clouds far below the horizon; the flashing fire changed into lambent light; the blast of the trumpet stilled; the dread voice changed into a voice ‘that speaketh better things’ than were heard amidst the granite cliffs of the wilderness.
And so in vivid, picturesque form the writer gathers up the one great contrast between the revelation of which the message was law and its highest result the consciousness of sin and the shrinking that ensued, and the other of which the inmost heart is love, and the issue the attraction of hearts by the magnetism of its grace. The old fable of a mountain of loadstone which drew ships at sea to its cliffs is true of this Mount Zion, which is exalted above the mountains that it may draw hearts tossing on the restless sea of life to the’ fair havens’ beneath its sheltering height, There is no dread, though there is reverence, and no fear, though there is awe, in the approach of those who come through Jesus Christ, and live beneath the smile of their reconciled God and Father. ‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion,’ the dwelling-place of the living God, from whose lips there will steal into the ears and the hearts of those who keep near Him, gracious words of consolation, so thrilling, so soothing, so enlightening, so searching, so encouraging, that they which hear them shall say, ‘Speak yet again, that I may be blessed.’
And then there is the other aspect of this scene where faith lives. ‘Ye are come unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.’ I need not remind you of how much we hear in this Epistle in reference to that city. It is generally set forth as being yet to come, as being the object of seeking rather than of possession. But the fact is that there are two aspects of it. In one it is future, in the other it is present, The general idea to be attached to it is simply that of the order and social state of those who love and serve God. Here, in this part of my text, we have to deal with the city rather than with its inhabitants. They follow thereafter, but, so far as we can separate between the two, we have just this idea enforced in the words that I am now commenting upon - viz., that the lowliest life, knit, as it seems to be, by so many bonds to the perishable associations and affinities of earth, yet, if it be a life of faith in Jesus Christ, has its true affinities and relationships beyond, and not here. ‘We have our citizenship in heaven,’ says the Apostle, ‘from whence also we look for the Saviour.’ And every Christian man and woman is therefore hound to two or three very plain duties.
If you are living by faith, you do not belong to this order in the midst of which you find yourself. See that you keep vivid the consciousness that you do not. Cultivate the sense of detachment from the present, of not being absorbed by, or belonging to, things which are not coeval with yourself, and from all of which you will have to pass. Cultivate the sense of having your true home beyond the seas; and look to it as emigrants’ and colonists in a far-off land do to the old country, as being home. Live by the laws of your own city, and not by those that run in the community in which you dwell. You are under another jurisdiction. The examples, the maxims of low earthly prudence, or even of a somewhat higher earthly morality, are not your laws. You are not bound to do as the people round about you do.
‘I appeal unto Caesar.’ I take my orders from him. I send my despatches home, and report to headquarters, and if I get approbation thence, it does not matter what the people amongst whom I dwell think about me. Make your investments at home. The Jews invented banking and letters of credit in order that they might the more easily shift their wealth from one land to another as exigencies required. We are strangers where we are. Do not put your property into the country in which you live as an alien, and lock it up there; but remit, as you can do, to the land where you are going, and to which you belong. Home securities are a good deal better than foreign ones. ‘ Ye are come to the city of the living God.’ ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth.’
II. And now let me turn to the other thought herewith whom does faith live.
I need not trouble you with merely expository remarks upon the diversity of arrangements which is possible in the second half of my text. Suffice it to say that just as the scene of the life of faith has been represented in a twofold and yet closely connected form as Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, so the companions of that life are also represented in a twofold and yet closely connected form.
A slight alteration in the punctuation and order of the words in our text brings out, as it seems to me, the writer’s idea. Suppose you put a comma after ‘innumerable company,’ and substitute for that phrase the original Greek word, so reading ‘and to myriads’ and then pause there. That is the general definition, on which follows the division of the ‘myriads’ into two parts; one of which is ‘the general assembly of angels,’ and the other is the ‘Church of the firstborn which are written in heaven.’ So then, of companions for us, in our lonely earthly life, there he two sorts, and as to both of them the condition of recognising and enjoying their society is the same - via, the exercise of faith,
Now the word rendered ‘general assembly’ has a grander idea in it than that. It is the technical word employed in classic Greek for the festal meetings of a nation at their great games or other solemn occasions, and always carries in it the idea of joy as well as of society. And so here the writer would have us think of one part of that great city, the heavenly Jerusalem, as, if I may So say, the dwelling-place of a loftier race of creatures whose life is immortal and pure joy; and that we, even we, have some connection with them. In an earlier part of this letter we read that they are all ‘ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation.’ But here the ministration is not referred to, simply the fact of union and communion.
I am not going to enter at any length upon that subject, concerning which we know but very little. But still it seems to me that our ordinary type of Christian belief loses a great deal because it gives so little heed to the numerous teachings of the New Testament in regard to the reality of the existence of such beings, and of the tie that unites them with lowly believers here. All the servants of the King are friends of one another. And howsoever many they may be, and howsoever high above us in present stature any may tower; and howsoever impossible it be for us to see the glancing and hear the winnowing of their silver wings, as they flash upon errands of obedience to Him, and rejoice to hearken to the voice of His word, there is joy in the true belief that the else waste places of the universe are filled with those who, in their loftiness, rejoice to bend to us, saying, ‘I am thy fellow servant, and of them which worship God.’ Brethren, we have a better face brightening the unseen than any angel face. But just because Jesus Christ fills the unseen for us, in Him we are united to all those of whom He is the Lord, and He is Lord of men as well as angels. So if the eyes of our hearts are opened, we, too, may see ‘the mountain full of chariots of fire and horses of fire round about’ the believing soul. And we, too, may come to the joyful assembly of the angels, whose joy is all the more poignant and deep when they, the elder brethren, see the prodigals return.
But the second group of companions is probably the more important for us. ‘Ye are come,’ says the text, not only to the angelic beings that cluster round His throne in joyful harmony, but also ‘to the Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven.’ And, seeing that the names are in heaven, that means, evidently, men who themselves are here upon earth.
I have not time to dwell upon the great ideas which are here contained in the designation of the community of believing souls; I only remind you that probably the word ‘church’ is not so much employed here in its distinct ecclesiastical sense {for there are no ecclesiastical phrases in the Epistle to the Hebrews}, as with allusion to the assembly of the Israelites beneath Mount Sinai, the contrast with which colours the whole of the context. It means, therefore, in general, simply the assembly of the firstborn. Can there be more than one firstborn in a family? Yes! In this family there can, for it is a name here not pointing to a temporary order, but to dignity and prerogative. The firstborn had the right of inheritance; the firstborn was sanctified to the Lord; the firstborn, by his ‘primogeniture, was destined in the old system to be priest and king. All Israel collectively was regarded as the firstborn of the Lord. We, if our hearts are knit to Him who is preeminently firstborn amongst many brethren, obtain, by virtue of our union with Him, the rights and privileges, the obligations and responsibilities, of the eldest sons of the family of God. We inherit; we ought to be sanctified. It is for us, as the ‘first fruits of His creatures,’ to bring other men to Him, that through the Church the world may reach its goal, and creation may become that which God intended it to be.
These firstborn have their names written in heaven - inscribed on the register of the great city. And to that great community, invisible like the other realities in my text, and not conterminous with any visible society such as the existing visible Church, all those belong and come who are knit together by faith in the one Lord.
So, dear friends, it is for us to realise, in the midst, perhaps, of loneliness, the tie that knits us to every heart that finds in Jesus Christ what we do. In times when we seem to stand in a minority; in times when we are tormented by uncongenial surroundings; when we are tempted by lower society; when we are disposed to say, ‘I am alone, with none to lean upon,’ it does us good to think that, not only are there angels in heaven who may have charge concerning us, but that, all over the world, there are scattered brethren whose existence is a comfort, though we have never clasped their hands.
Such, then, is the scene, and such is the society, in which we may all dwell. Christian men and women, do you make conscience of realizing all this by faith, by contemplation, by direct endeavors to pierce beyond the surface and shows of things to the realities that are unseen? See to it that you avail yourself of all the power, the peace, the blessing which will be yours in the degree in which your faith makes these the home and companions of your lives.
How noble the lowest life may become, like some poor, rough sea-shell with a gnarled and dimly coloured, exterior, tossed about in the surge of a stormy sea, or anchored to a rock, but when opened all iridescent with rainbow sheen within, and bearing a pearl of great price! So, to outward seeming, my life may be rough and solitary and inconspicuous and sad, but, in inner reality, it may have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, and have angels for its guardians, and all the firstborn for its brethren and companions.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv22–23 (See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
angels
(See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v18 The covenant of fear contrasted with that of grace:
The covenant of fear contrasted with that of grace:
v. 18. For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,
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v. 19. and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them anymore;
v. 20. (for they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart;
v. 21. and so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake;)
v. 22. but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
v. 23. to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
v. 24. and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Here is another reason for the entire appeal and warning as contained in this chapter, namely, the fact that grace is the compelling motive in the Christian’s life, and not fear: For you have not approached to the mountain that can be touched and burns with fire, to darkness and gloom and hurricane, and to the sound of a trumpet and to a voice sounding in words, which they that heard earnestly begged that further speech might not be added to them. The reference is evidently to the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, Exo 19:1-25; Deu 4:1-49. That was a solemn, a fearful occasion, for the mountain itself was burning with fire, Deu 4:11, and yet the rest of the country in the neighborhood was covered with a misty gloom, with a heavy darkness, while a storm-wind having the proportions of a hurricane made every heart quake, Deu 4:11; Deu 5:22. To this fearsome scene was added the sound of a trumpet, in itself calculated to make even a stout heart shrink under such conditions, Exo 19:16-19; Exo 20:18, and then the voice of words which were spoken from the top of the mountain, Exo 20:1-26; Deu 5:4-22. No wonder that the children of Israel were filled with such terror that they earnestly entreated and begged Moses to arrange in some way that this fearful voice might not sound for them any more, Exo 20:18-19; Deu 5:23-27. The very enumeration of the various phenomena gives some idea of the terrifying character of the spectacle.
How great the terror of the people was, is indicated in the following verses: For they could not bear that which had been ordered, If even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, Exo 19:12-13. It was a day when all hearts quaked with a fear that could not be quieted, since all nature seemed in an uproar, and the Lord Himself appeared to be their threatening enemy. So inexpressibly great was the glory and majesty of God on Mount Sinai that Moses, upon returning from the presence of God with the two tables of the Law, and finding that the people had so far forgotten themselves as to become guilty of the basest idolatry, was terrified by the very thought of God’s possible revenge upon them, and cried out: I am extremely afraid and tremble, Deu 9:9; Deu 9:15-19. That is a picture which properly characterizes the Law with its terrible threats and curses of damnation.
Fortunate are the Christians that they are no longer under the Law, the very giving of which struck abject terror into the hearts of a whole nation: But you have drawn near to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the perfected righteous, and to the Mediator of a new covenant, Jesus, and to the blood of sprinkling, whose message is more excellent than Abel’s. The contrast between the old and the new covenant is brought out by every expression. For the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, is not an earthly, visible mountain, but a fellowship of saints, whose excellence can be but feebly indicated by attributes of human speech. Because David, the forefather of Christ, lived on Mount Zion and in the city of Jerusalem, and because the salvation of the Messiah was to take its beginning from this neighborhood, therefore the congregation and communion of saints, where God lives with His salvation in Christ, is commonly called Mount Zion, the city of God, in the prophecies, Psa 9:11; Psa 76:2; Psa 110:2; Isa 2:2-3; Mic 4:1-2. The ideal Zion is the place where God manifests His presence, the fullness of His grace in Christ. It is the heavenly Jerusalem, since it is not earthly and made with hands, and yet will be the final abode of all believers, Gal 4:26. God has His home, the throne of His mercy, in the midst of His Church, Rev 14:1; Rev 21:2; 1Co 3:16; 2Co 6:16. Into this communion the believers have entered. They are thus united with many thousands of angels in a fellowship of bliss, heaven and earth being united through the coming of Christ, Col 1:20; Eph 1:10. We belong, by faith, to the great festival assembly, to the congregation of God’s first-born children, those that have been converted to faith in the foremost First-born, the eternal Son of God. We have come to God, the Judge of all men, and are able to stand before Him in trusting confidence by virtue of the justifying faith which has been kindled in our hearts through the Gospel. We are even one great congregation with the spirits of the saints that have reached the final perfection, the last goal, the bliss of heaven, Luk 23:43; 2Co 5:8; Php 1:23. All this, however, is possible because we have come to the great Mediator of the New Testament, to Jesus, who restored mankind to the original relation of children to the heavenly Father, through His own holy, innocent blood, with which we have been sprinkled in faith. The blood of Abel may indeed act as a witness and as such have value for this life, Heb 11:4. But the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed us from all sins, and therefore pleads before God with a voice so loud and persuasive that it secures perfect righteousness for us. Thus the inspired writer brings home to us the fact that we have come to the pleasant, merciful, saving Gospel. What a glorious privilege!
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv18, 22 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
The author gives a contrast between what believers in Moses' time had while living under the law and what present day believers have after coming to Jesus under the new covenant. He illustrates the experience of the Israelites by describing how God appeared to them at Mount Sinai.
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General Information:
The words "you" and "You" refer to the Hebrew believers to whom the author wrote. The word "they" refers to people of Israel after Moses led them out of Egypt. The first quotation comes from the writings of Moses. God reveals in this passage in Hebrews that Moses said he shook at seeing the mountain.
For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched
The implicit information can be stated explicitly. AT: "For you have not come, as the people of Israel came, to a mountain that can be touched" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
that can be touched
This means that believers in Christ have not come to a physical mountain like Mount Sinai that a person can touch or see. This can be stated in active form. AT: "that a person can touch" or "that people can perceive with their senses" (See: Active or Passive)
You have not come to a trumpet blast
"You have not come to a place where there is the loud sound of a trumpet"
nor to a voice that speaks words whose hearers begged that not another word be spoken to them
Here "voice" refers to someone speaking. The phrase "be spoken" can be stated in active form. AT: "or where God was speaking in such a way that those who heard him begged him not to speak another word to them" (See: Metonymy and Active or Passive)
what was commanded
This can be stated in active form. AT: "what God commanded" (See: Active or Passive)
it must be stoned
This can be stated in active form. AT: "you must stone it" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
fire
darkness
trumpet
voice
beg
endure
command
stone
fear
Moses
terror
tremble
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv18, 19, 22, 23, 24 12:18-24 This passage contrasts the old covenant with the…
12:18-24 This passage contrasts the old covenant with the new. The old covenant, represented by Mount Sinai (12:18-21), is depicted as impersonal, intimidating, and unapproachable; it booms, flashes, and terrifies. The new covenant, represented by Mount Zion (12:22-24), is depicted as relational, welcoming, and celebratory.
12:18 The descriptions of Mount Sinai come directly from God’s encounter with Israel at that mountain (see Exod 19:16-22; 20:18-21; Deut 4:11-12; 5:23-27). The images communicate separation from a holy God.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.