See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,
Parallel Translations
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See that you don’t refuse him who speaks. For if they didn’t escape when they refused him who warned on the earth, how much more will we not escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven,
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Se that ye despise not him that speaketh. For yf they escaped not which refused him that spake on erth: moche more shall we not escape yf we turne awaye from him that speaketh from heven:
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See that ye despise not him that speaketh: for if they escaped not which refused him, that spake on earth: much more shall we not escape, if we turne away from him, that speaketh from heauen.
Cross-references (26)
Passages linked to Hebrews 12:25 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Hebrews 8:5 who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, even as Moses was warned by God when he was about to make the tabernacle, for he said, “See, you shall make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.”
- Deuteronomy 30:17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away and worship other gods, and serve them,
- Hebrews 2:1-3 Therefore we ought to pay greater attention to the things that were heard, lest perhaps we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation—which at the first having been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard,
- Proverbs 13:18 Poverty and shame come to him who refuses discipline, but he who heeds correction shall be honored.
- Zechariah 7:11 But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear.
- Hebrews 11:7 By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
- Exodus 20:22 Yahweh said to Moses, “This is what you shall tell the children of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.
- Exodus 16:29 Behold, because Yahweh has given you the Sabbath, therefore he gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days. Everyone stay in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.”
- Numbers 32:15 For if you turn away from after him, he will yet again leave them in the wilderness; and you will destroy all these people.”
- Joshua 22:16 “The whole congregation of Yahweh says, ‘What trespass is this that you have committed against the God of Israel, to turn away today from following Yahweh, in that you have built yourselves an altar, to rebel today against Yahweh?
- 1 Kings 12:16 When all Israel saw that the king didn’t listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, “What portion have we in David? We don’t have an inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, Israel! Now see to your own house, David.” So Israel departed to their tents.
- 2 Chronicles 7:19 But if you turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them;
- Proverbs 1:24 Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one has paid attention;
- Proverbs 1:32 For the backsliding of the simple will kill them. The careless ease of fools will destroy them.
- Proverbs 8:33 Hear instruction, and be wise. Don’t refuse it.
- Matthew 8:4 Jesus said to him, “See that you tell nobody, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
- Hebrews 10:28-29 A man who disregards Moses’ law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will be judged worthy of who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
- Proverbs 15:32 He who refuses correction despises his own soul, but he who listens to reproof gets understanding.
- Isaiah 48:6 You have heard it. Now see all this. And you, won’t you declare it? “I have shown you new things from this time, even hidden things, which you have not known.
- Isaiah 64:9 Don’t be furious, Yahweh. Don’t remember iniquity forever. Look and see, we beg you, we are all your people.
- Jeremiah 11:10 They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear my words. They have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers.
- Ezekiel 5:6 She has rebelled against my ordinances in doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries that are around her; for they have rejected my ordinances, and as for my statutes, they have not walked in them.’
- Acts 7:35 “This Moses, whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
- 1 Thessalonians 5:15 See that no one returns evil for evil to anyone, but always follow after that which is good for one another and for all.
- 2 Timothy 4:4 and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn away to fables.
- Matthew 17:5 While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. Behold, a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (24 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 25. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh,…
25. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh, etc. He uses the same verb as before, when he said that the people entreated that God should not speak to them; but he means as I think, another thing, even that we ought not to reject the word destined for us. He further shows what he had in view in the last comparison, even that the severest punishment awaits the despisers of the Gospel, since the ancients under the Law did not despise it with impunity. And he pursues the argument from the less to the greater, when he says, that God or Moses spoke then on earth, but that the same God or Christ speaks now from heaven. At the same time I prefer regarding God in both instances as the speaker. And he is said to have spoken on earth, because he spoke in a lower strain. Let us ever bear in mind that he refers to the external ministration of the Law, which, as compared with the gospel, partook of what was earthly, and did not lead men’s minds above the heavens unto perfect wisdom; for though the Law contained in it the same truth, yet as it was only a training school, perfection could not belong to it.
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 The applying of the former comparison, If it were…
The applying of the former comparison, If it were not lawful to contemn his word which spake on the earth, how much less his voice which is from heaven?
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.…
25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
Ver. 25. See that ye refuse not, &c.] Gr. παραιτησησθε, that ye shift him not off by frivolous pretences and excuses, as those recusant guests did, Mat 22:1-14 It is as much as your souls are worth. Look to it therefore.
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That speaketh from heaven] By his blood, word, sacraments, motions of his Spirit, mercies, &c. If we turn our backs upon such bleeding embracements, and so kick against his naked bowels, what will become of us? And mark, that he speaketh of himself, as one.
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 Here the Spirit closely applieth his former arguments for…
Here the Spirit closely applieth his former arguments for their pursuit of holiness, especially that of Christ’s speaking by his blood to them; by caution, Heb 12:25-27; by counsel, Heb 12:28,29.
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh: he introduceth this caution with: Look ye, or take ye heed; a term expressing the things said to be great and weighty, intimating that fear, solicitude, and watchfulness about this great and important concernment of their souls, Luk 12:15; that they see to it there be no aversion in their spirits to, no undervaluing or despising of, no dislike or apostacy from, but a hearing, believing, and obeying Jesus speaking by his blood all the gospel covenant to us; convincing them of sin and guilt that needed his blood, calling them to repentance and faith in his blood and satisfaction, declaring his intercession with God for pardon, holiness, and glory by it, and so importunes them to follow holiness, which would evidence all this to them.
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For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth: he enforceth his caution by a rational motive of the danger of their refusal, arguing from the less to the greater; that is, their ancestors escaped not the vengeance of God when they refused to hear, believe, and obey the legal covenant, which he spake on earth from Mount Sinai, and wrote on tables of stones, and delivered to Moses on the mount, and by him communicated it to them, Heb 2:2; 10:28,30,31; Deu 33:1,4; Ac 7:51,53; 1Co 10:1-10.
Much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven; much more and greater sinners are all such who turn aside scornfully from Jesus, and receive not his voice and the revelation of God’s gospel covenant by it, who is God’s only begotten Son, and brought it down from the Father’s bosom in heaven, Heb 1:2; Joh 1:14,16-18; 3:13, and ratified it with his own blood on earth: and as the sin is beyond compare greater, so will the punishment be, and the certainty of its infliction both for time and eternity, Mat 11:24; 2Th 1:7-9; Heb 10:26-31; there remaining no more sacrifice for such sin and sinners.
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 Our apostle having, in the foregoing verses, given a…
Our apostle having, in the foregoing verses, given a summary account of the two states of the law and gospel with the incomparable excellency of the latter above the former, he gives them and exhortation and cautionary direction to take heed that they did not turn a deaf ear to so excellent a person as Christ was, preaching to them by his doctrine: see that ye refuse not him that speaketh.
Here note in general, That to refuse any who speak unto us in the name and authority of Christ, is to refuse Christ himself. This may be applied to all the faithful preachers of the gospel, however they may be despised in and by the world. But it is here the person of Christ that is particularly intended. To refuse him here, is either to reject his doctrine, and not to receive it, or having received it, to renounce it; so that this refusal includes both unbelief and apostasy, either of which are fatal and dangerous to the sons of men.
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Observe next, The reason drawn from the heinousness of the sin, and the grievousness of the punishment; if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth; that is, Moses, who delivered his message here below; much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven; that is, Jesus Christ his Son, sent down from heaven personally to deliver his holy doctrine; and now speaking to us from heaven by his Holy Spirit, in his ministers and apostles.
Note here, 1. That Christ did in former times speak unto his church by Moses and the propheets.
2. That in theses latter times he vouchsafed to speak unto his church personally himself.
3. That after he personally disappeared and left the world, he vouchsafed still to speak unto his Spirit in the ministry of the world.
4. That though to refuse Christ, when speaking here on earth, was a grievous sin, and deserved a fearful punishment; yet to refuse him now, speaking from heaven, is a more grievous sin, and deserves a greater punishment, considering who speaks, what he speaks, and from whence he speaks; the gospel was a mystery brought to us from the bosom of the Father, the clearest revelation of God’s will, and fullest manifestation of his love, and yet few regard it, most reject it, to their unutterable and inevitable condemnation.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Whose voice then shook the earth,.... That is, at…
Whose voice then shook the earth,.... That is, at the giving of the law on Mount Sinai: Christ was then present; his voice was then heard; which was either the voice of thunder, or the voice of the trumpet, or rather the voice of words: this shook the earth, Sinai, and the land about it, and the people on it; which made them quake and tremble, even Moses himself; see Exo 19:18
but now he hath promised, saying in Hag 2:6
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yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven; not only the land of Judea, and particularly Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of it, who were all shaken, and moved, and troubled at the news of the birth of the Messiah, the desire of all nations, the prophet Haggai speaks of, Mat 2:2 but the heaven also; by prodigies in it, as the appearance of a wonderful star, which guided the wise men from the east; and by the motions of the heavenly inhabitants, the angels, who descended in great numbers, and made the heavens resound with their songs of praise, on account of Christ's incarnation, Mat 2:2. How the apostle explains and applies this, may be seen in the next verse.
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 Refuse not - By unbelief. Him that speaketh -…
Refuse not - By unbelief. Him that speaketh - And whose speaking even now is a prelude to the final scene. The same voice which spake both by the law and in the gospel, when heard from heaven, will shake heaven and earth. For if they escaped not - His vengeance. Much more shall not we - Those of us who turn from him that speaketh from heaven - That is, who came from heaven to speak to us.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 25. See] βλεπετε. Take heed, that ye refuse…
Verse 25. See] βλεπετε. Take heed, that ye refuse not him - the Lord Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, who now speaketh from heaven, by his Gospel, to the Jews and to the Gentiles, having in his incarnation come down from God.
Him that spake on earth] Moses, who spoke on the part of God to the Hebrews, every transgression of whose word received a just recompense of reward, none being permitted to escape punishment; consequently, if ye turn away from Christ, who speaks to you from heaven, you may expect a much sorer punishment, the offence against God being so much the more heinous, as the privileges slighted are more important and glorious.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Heb 12:25. See that ye refuse not him that…
Heb 12:25. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh — (He alludes to his having just said that his blood speaketh;) namely, Christ, who speaks to you in the gospel, and by his Spirit and messengers, and whose speaking, even now, is a prelude to the final scene. In this command the apostle has respect to the double solemn charge given by God to his church to hear and obey his Son: the first, Deu 18:15; Deu 18:19, The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet, unto him ye shall hearken, &c. A charge intended to prepare the church for their duty in the proper season. The other charge was given immediately from heaven, Mat 17:5; This is my beloved Son, hear ye him. This is the foundation of all gospel faith and obedience, and the formal reason of the condemnation of all unbelievers. God hath commanded all men to hear; that is, to believe and obey his Son Jesus Christ. Hence he hath given command to others to preach the gospel to all individuals. They who believe them believe in Christ; and they who believe in Christ, through him, believe in God, (1Pe 1:21,) so that their faith is ultimately resolved into the authority of God himself. And in like manner, they who refuse them, who hear them not, do thereby refuse Christ himself; and, by so doing, reject the authority of God, who hath given this command to hear him, and hath taken on himself to require it when it is neglected. For if they escaped not divine vengeance, who refused him that spake — Greek, χρηματιζοντα, literally, that gave forth oracles; (namely, Moses, who delivered the law by inspiration of God;) on earth — Who received his message on earth, and delivered it only from mount Sinai, and whose oracles and doctrines were but earthly and carnal, in comparison of Christ’s; much more shall we not escape — Still greater vengeance; if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven — Who received his message in the bosom of the Father, came down from heaven to deliver it to us, and now addresses us not only in the solemn discourses which he uttered in the days of his flesh, sealed with his blood, and confirmed by his resurrection and ascension; but speaks to us from heaven by his Spirit in his apostles, evangelists, and other faithful ministers, and (he might have added) manifests that he does so by the mighty signs and wonders which he enables many of them to perform; and by the success he gives to the word of his grace which proceeds from their lips. See on Heb 2:2-3; Heb 10:28.
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 See that ye refuse not - That you do…
See that ye refuse not - That you do not reject or disregard.
Him that speaketh - That is, in the gospel. Do not turn away from him who has addressed you in the new dispensation, and called you to obey and serve him. The meaning is, that God had addressed “them” in the gospel as really as he had done the Hebrews on Mount Sinai, and that there was as much to be dreaded in disregarding his voice now as there was then. He does not speak, indeed, amidst lightnings, and thunders, and clouds, but he speaks by every message of mercy; by every invitation; by every tender appeal. He spake by his Son Heb 1:1; he speaks by the Holy Spirit, and by all his calls and warnings in the gospel.
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For if they escaped not - If they who heard God under the old dispensation, who refused to obey him, were cut off; notes, Heb 10:28.
Who refused him that spake on earth - That is, Moses. The contrast here is between Moses and the Son of God - the head of the Jewish and the head of the Christian dispensation. Moses was a mere man, and spake as such, though in the name of God. The Son of God was from above, and spake as an inhabitant of heaven. “Much more,” etc.; see the notes on Heb 2:2-3; Heb 10:29.
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 Refuse not then to hearken to him; for if…
Refuse not then to hearken to him; for if the Jews escape not God’s severe judgments, for being deaf to his admonitions, given by an Angel to Moses on Mount Sinai, and by him to the people, much less shall we escape, if we turn away our minds, and harden our hearts against the instructions of our Redeemer, who came from heaven to speak to us, and teach us the way to our eternal salvation. (Witham)
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 The guilt and punishableness of apostasy stand proportionate to…
V
The guilt and punishableness of apostasy stand proportionate to the blessings and obligations of the New Covenant
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Heb_12:25-29
25See that ye refuse not him that speaketh: for if they escaped not who refused him that spake [was uttering his oracles, χρηματίζοντα] on earth, much11 more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: 26Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I12 27shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removal of those things that are [being] shaken, as of things that are made [as having been made], that those things which cannot be shaken [which are not shaken] may remain. 28Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved [not to be shaken], let us have grace [cherish gratitude]13 whereby we may [let us] serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear [with devout reverence and 29fear]:14 For [also] our God is a consuming fire.
[Heb_12:25.—μὴ παραιτήσησθε, lest ye beg off from, decline, refuse; a verbal correspondence with παραιτήσ, Heb_12:19, which it is difficult to reproduce in English.—τὸν λαλοῦντα, him who is speaking, viz., God through Christ, as anciently through Moses.—παραιτησάμενοι, after refusing, or more exactly, when they refused. The Part, is not part of the subject, but is added predicatively to ἑκεῖνοι, or subject.—τὸν χρηματίζοντα, who was uttering heavenly oracles, declaring the divine will, not speaking as if=λαλοῦντα or λέγοντα—τὸν ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ him (who speaketh) from heaven—again God, speaking through Christ.
Heb_12:26.—νῦν δέ, seemingly temporal, and in part so, as contrasted with τότε; but in my judgment still more decidedly logical=in the present state of things, as the case actually stands.—ἔτι ἄπαξ, yet once, and once only.
Heb_12:27.—τῶν σαλευ.of the things which are being shaken.—ὡς πεποιημένων, as having been made.—Ἱνα, I connect not (with Del., Moll, etc.) with πεποιημένων, but with μετάθεσιν, and hence put a comma after πεποιη.
Heb_12:28.—βασιλ. ἀσάλευτον, a kingdom not to be shaken—“which cannot be moved,” of E.V., destroys the paronomasia.—ἔχμεν χάριν, according to Greek usage, not, let us have grace, but, “let us exercise gratitude.”—μετὰ εὐλαβείας καὶδέους; ‘with reverent submission and fear” (Alf.).
Heb_12:29.—καὶ γὰρ, for also, not “for even,” which would require ὁ μέτερος, or a more emphatic position of ἡμῶν.—K.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Heb_12:25. Him who is speaking, etc.—Inasmuch as the ἐπὶ γῆς χρηματίζων must be not Moses, but God; inasmuch, too, as the words τὸν ἀπ̓ οὐρανῶν, sc. χρηματίζοντα can in like manner, as shown by the following οὖ, denote God alone, but the words just mentioned stand parallel with τὸν λαλοῦντα in the beginning of Heb_12:25, by the “speaker” here referred to must be understood, not Christ (Œc., Primas., Böhm., Ebr., etc.), but God. The emphasis is not laid on the diversity of the persons whom God employed in founding the Old and the New Covenant, but on the diversity in the modes of revealing one and the same God. “The Sinaitic revelation, belonging to the past, and the ever present and continued revelations to the Church of Christ, are placed in contrast with each other. At that time, He who was speaking to Israel had descended to earth; but He through whom God speaks to us is He who hath ascended to heaven” (Hofm., Del., in part, Bl.). Thus vanishes the imperfect antithesis censured by De W., produced by referring the speaking on earth to the earthly ministry of Christ, and then, with Thol., laying the emphasis on the fact that Christ had descended from heaven, that is, had not appeared among mankind in the ordinary and natural way; or, with Lün., upon the fact that God had sent to us not an earthly man, as Moses upon Sinai, but His own Son, as His interpreter. For it might then be objected that the Son of God has appeared “upon earth,” but that God upon Sinai, without descending into the midst of Israel, had spoken “from heaven” (Exo_20:22; Deu_9:13). The true explanation preserves and renders consistent the connection of the thought with the above mentioned blood of sprinkling.
Heb_12:26. But now hath he promised.—The subject of ἐπήγγελται is contained in the preceding οὖ, and the whole sentence has sprung grammatically from blending into one two declarations; for the νῦν.δέ refers to the time of the incipient fulfilment of that which God has announced, Hag_2:6 ff. Ἐπήγγελται is Perf. Pass, in a middle sense, as 4:21.
Heb_12:27. Yet once for all.—The first shaking took place at the giving of the Law (Exo_19:18), where, however, the Sept. translates λαός instead of ὄρος, for which reason our author refers doubtless to Jdg_5:4-5; comp. Psa_68:9; Psa_114:7. A like display of Jehovah’s power is predicted by the prophets for the closing Messianic epoch, Mic_7:15; Habakkuk 3.; Haggai 2. The author follows the defective translation of the Sept. In the original it is said, “Yet one thing; it is a small matter.” This expansion of the time from Hos_1:4 implies, according to Hitz. and Hofm., two things; namely, that the time from the present until the final grand consummation will constitute but one epoch, and that this will be a brief one. Thus the argument from the “yet once for all” (ἔτι ἅπαξ) is sound as to the matter of fact, although in form it attaches itself to a false rendering.
As having been made, etc.—Alike the expression, ὡς πεποιμένων, and the final clause following that, show that the shaking refers not to any convulsion accompanying the entrance of Christianity into the world (Coccei., a Lapid., Böhm., Klee, etc.), but to the final consummation (Theodoret, Theoph., Erasm., Bez., Bl., Thol., etc.). Even at the creation God intended and prepared for the last and now commencing transformation of the changeable into the unchangeable, of what may be shaken into what cannot be shaken (Rom_8:21), or (as is said, Heb_4:4-9), for the sabbatism of the world. On account of this parallel with which Col_1:16; Eph_1:10 substantially coincide, the reference of the final clause with ἵνα to μετάθεσιν (Theod., Œc, Bl., De W., Lün., etc.) is quite improbable, and all the more so in that also the new heaven and the new earth are said to be created and made, Isa_65:17; Isa_66:22. In connecting ἵνα with ὧς πεποιημένων it is better with Grot., Beng., Thol., Hofm., Del., etc., to take μένειν in its usual signification, which has the authority of Isa_66:21, than in that of waiting for something (Storr, Böhm., etc.), which occurs Act_20:5; Act_20:23, and frequently in the Sept.
[Alford rejects, and I think with entire correctness, the, reference of the final clause to πεποιημένων, and retains the much more rational and entirely unobjectionable view that it is to be connected with μετάθεσιν. The characterization of “the things that are shaken” as “having been made in order that the things which are not shaken may remain,” to wit, by the removal of things which are shaken, is so forced and unnatural that nothing but necessity can justify our adopting this construction. On the other hand, its construction with μετάθεσιν seems to me open to no valid objection whatever. For, in the first place, although there is no strict logical causative connection between the removal of the things that are shaken and the remaining of the things that are not shaken, yet, as a popular form of expression, it is entirely natural. The changeable and temporary is easily conceived as being taken out of the way in order to give permanent place to the immutable and abiding. In the second place, the objection to taking τῶν πεποιημένων absolutely, as denoting simply things which have been made, i.e., created, drawn from the fact that the abiding and eternal, viz., the new heavens and the new earth are also represented as having been made, rests, I think, upon an entire misconception of the author’s point of view. He says nothing about “a new heaven and a new earth,” and there is no evidence that these specific things are in his mind. It is rather the great heavenly, spiritual elements of the new dispensation, as against the worldly, material, and perishable elements of the old. It is Mt. Zion as opposed to Mt. Sinai; the heavenly Jerusalem as opposed to the literal seat of the Old Theocracy; the heavenly sanctuary as against the earthly—and in short, the whole spiritual system of the New Testament, as against the things that have been made. The term τῶν πεποιημ. is therefore, from the author’s point of view, a precise and admirable characterization of the created and therefore perishable nature of the Old Test, economy.—K.].
Heb_12:28. Therefore since we, etc.—Διὀ introduces the following exhortation as a logical reference from the preceding verse, the special ground of the exhortation being given in the participial clause (Dan_7:18). The absence of the article with βασιλείαν indicates that this clause is not, with Calv., Schlicht., Beng. and others, to be included in the exhortation itself. Nor may we, with Bez., Schlicht., Grot., Bisp., etc., render, “Let us hold fast the grace.” For then the article would be indispensable with χάριν, and, instead of ἔχωμεν, κατέχωμεν would be required (as Heb_3:6; Heb_3:14; Heb_10:23); or κρατῶμεν, as Heb_4:14.
Heb_12:29. For also our God, etc.—Were the idea intended that our God also, the God of the New Test., as well as the God of the Old, is a consuming fire (Bl., De W., Thol., Bisp.), the reading should be καὶ γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός. Yet neither again do the position of the words and the connection point to the thought that God is not merely a God of grace, but also of avenging justice (Lün.). The passage merely designs to give, with a reference to Deu_4:24, a feature of the Divine character, and is not intended merely to give prominence to one attribute in comparison with another. Under this view, καὶ γάρ is = etenim, as Luk_1:66; Luk_20:37 (Del., Riehm).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. We can refuse to receive and to follow that which God says to us; but we can escape neither the responsibility for such conduct, nor the judgment of God regarding it.
2. Our responsibility is rendered all the greater by the increased elevation and fulness of grace which characterize the revelation of God in the New Testament, a revelation standing related to that of the Old Testament, as heaven to earth.
3. This Christian revelation is at the same time the final and the complete one, so that nothing farther is to be looked for but the last convulsion of all things, which, at the second coming of the Lord, shall transform heaven and earth.
4. At the very creation of the world, God looked forward to, and made arrangements for the eternally abiding and unchangeable kingdom of glory, and to the introduction of that kingdom tend all the revelations, arrangements, and providences of God in the history of the world.
5. This everlasting kingdom shall we Christians as children of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ (Rom_8:17), receive into possession: for this we owe a debt of gratitude to God, which should evince itself in a service well pleasing to Him, which yields for us the highest gain, and has the richest promise (Psa_50:23.)
6. This filial relation to God must beget neither an unbecoming familiarity, nor a false security, but must inspire a guarded caution and reverence such as belongs to the nature of God in which the fire of holy love consumes all that is unholy, and kindles to a flame all that is susceptible of life.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
God speaks with us; then He seeks us in His word; afterwards He judges us.—Every revelation of God is accompanied with great convulsions, and by movements in heaven and on earth. How stands our heart in relation thereto?—We can neither plead ignorance nor inability if we fail to escape the coming wrath.—The rejection of the highest grace, draws after it the heaviest punishment.—However different is the old covenant from the new, it is one God who speaks, judges, and saves, in both.—The world, however powerful and great it may be, cannot shield us against the wrath of God, and cannot rob us of the kingdom of God; but it can bring down upon us the one, and defraud us of the other.—The kingdom of nature is destined, through the kingdom of grace, to be transformed and exalted into the kingdom of glory.—The kingdom of God is the object of the creation; revelation is the means of its accomplishment.
Starke:—In the duty of serving through the grace of God, of pleasing Him with reverence and fear, lies a beautiful connection of Law and Gospel.—Believers receive the kingdom, not as mere subjects, but as partners in sovereignty, who are jointly exalted to the throne of Christ, (Rev_1:16; Rev_3:21; Rev_5:9 ff.), by virtue of their royal priesthood (1Pe_2:9).—Alas! the world sins against the commands of God as securely as if there were no avenger; nay, it even makes a mock at sin. But God is a consuming fire (Psa_2:11-12).
Rieger:—God is without end in the gift, the Lord Jesus without end in the allotment, and we without end in the reception of the immovable kingdom; and thus we mount above everything which is subject to change.
Heubner:—The glory of Christianity lays us under obligation for the highest gratitude.
Hedinger:—Compulsory love is not the best. But the obligation to be godly is great; of this be not forgetful.
Footnotes:
[11]Heb_12:25.—According to the best authorities we are to read ἐξέφυγον ἐπὶ γῆς παραιτησάμενοι τὸν χρηματίξοντα, πολὺ μᾶλλον. So also Sin.
[12]Heb_12:26.—Instead of σείω read σείσω, after Sin. A. C., 6, 47, 53.
[13]Heb_12:28.—The lect. rec. ἔχωμεν is supported by A. C. D. L. M., etc. So also the reading λατρεύωμεν. Sin. has in both cases the Indic.
[14]Heb_12:28.—Instead of μετὰ αἰδοῦς καὶ εὐλάβείας read μετὰ εὐλαβείας καὶ δεους, after Sin. A. C. D *., 17, 71, 73, 80, 137.
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 refuse not--through unbelief.
refuse not--through unbelief.
him that speaketh--God in Christ. As the blood of sprinkling is represented as speaking to God for us, Heb 12:24; so here God is represented as speaking to us (Heb 1:1-2). His word now is the prelude of the last "shaking" of all things (Heb 12:27). The same word which is heard in the Gospel from heaven, will shake heaven and earth (Heb 12:26).
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who refused him--Greek, "refusing as they did." Their seemingly submissive entreaty that the word should not be spoken to them by God any more (Heb 12:19), covered over refractory hearts, as their subsequent deeds showed (Heb 3:16).
that spake--revealing with oracular warnings His divine will: so the Greek.
if we turn away--Greek, "we who turn away." The word implies greater refractoriness than "refused," or "declined."
him that speaketh from heaven--God, by His Son in the Gospel, speaking from His heavenly throne. Hence, in Christ's preaching frequent mention is made of "the kingdom of the heavens" (Greek, Mat 3:2). In the giving of the law God spake on earth (namely, Mount Sinai) by angels (Heb 2:2; compare Heb 1:2). In Exo 20:22, when God says, "I talked with you from heaven," this passage in Hebrews shows that not the highest heavens, but the visible heavens, the clouds and darkness, are meant, out of which God by angels proclaimed the law on Sinai.
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 25. See—Uttered, as Delitzsch says, with the uplifted warning…
25. See—Uttered, as Delitzsch says, with the uplifted warning finger.
Him—The Son of God, as the Jehovah and Logos of both Testaments.
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Spake on earth—In the trumpets, thunders, and voice from Sinai.
Him that speaketh from heaven—Not simply the ascended Jesus; but the Logos, Lord alike of Sinai and Zion. For it was he who uttered the prophecy of Haggai, quoted next verse. It was the same I who shook the earth at Sinai, and who promised by Haggai to shake both heaven and earth at the first advent.
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 25. him that speaketh] Not Moses, as Chrysostom supposed,…
25. him that speaketh] Not Moses, as Chrysostom supposed, but God. The speaker is the same under both dispensations, different as they are. God spoke alike from Sinai and from heaven. The difference of the places whence they spoke involves the whole difference of their tone and revelations. Perhaps the writer regarded Christ as the speaker alike from Sinai as from Heaven, for even the Jews represented the Voice at Sinai as being the Voice of Michael, who was sometimes identified with “the Shechinah,” or the Angel of the Presence. The verb for “speaketh” is χρηματίζοντα, as in Heb_8:5, Heb_11:7.
if they escaped not] Heb_2:2-3, Heb_3:17, Heb_10:28-29.
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much more] On this proportional method of statement, characteristic of the writer, as also of Philo, see Heb_1:4, Heb_3:3, Heb_7:20, Heb_8:6.
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 (25) Refuse not.—In Heb_12:19 we have read that the…
(25) Refuse not.—In Heb_12:19 we have read that the Israelites entreated that they might no more hear the voice of God (literally, deprecated the speaking of more words). Twice in this verse the same word is used in the sense of declining to listen, with clear reference to the earlier verse.
Him that speaketh.—God speaking to us from heaven (Heb_1:1-2). See below.
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For if they escaped not who refused.—Rather (according to the better reading of the Greek), For if they escaped not when they refused on earth Him that warned. The terrors which accompanied the giving of the Law were designed to impress all hearts with the fearful peril of disobedience. In shrinking from* the voice of Him that warned they could not escape the declaration of the Law or the terrible penalties which awaited all transgressors.
If we turn away.—Rather, who turn away from Him that (warneth) from heaven. The argument is similar to that of Heb_2:2-3, where the same word “escape” is found. He from whom they turned aside on earth is He who now speaks to us; but then His voice was heard amidst earthly terrors, now His revelation comes through His Son who is exalted in heaven. If we do not hearken to the word of life and promise that is ever coming to us from God through His Son, it will be because we deliberately “turn away,” for the excuse of the panic-stricken Israelites cannot be ours. The voice that speaks on earth fell on the outward ear, but He who speaks from heaven makes His voice heard in the inner conscience; the one may fail to be heard and understood, the other will find us out, and is neglected only through stubbornness of will. Much less, then, shall we escape if we turn away from Him who warns from heaven.
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 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For…
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not, refusing him that spake (rather, warned; the word here used is not lalounta , as before, but crhmatizonta , expressive of a Divine admonition or warning. In the passive it is translated "warned of God," "admonished of God," (Mat_2:12, 22 Heb_8:5 Heb_11:7; of Act_10:22, ecrhmatisyh upo aggelou agiou) on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh (or, warneth) from heaven. Here the warning begins. "Him that speaketh (to)," is suggested by lalounti in the preceding verse. But the subject is changed: it is God, not the "blood of sprinkling," that is now regarded as speaking to us from heaven. It was God also that warned on earth; not, as some take it, Moses, whom the word crhmatizonta does not suit: of him it is said, kekrhmatistai . (Heb_8:5) The allusion is to the voice heard from the earthly Sinai, which the people entreated (supra, ver. 19, parhthsantothe same word as is used here) should be heard no more. But they escaped not the hearing of that voice, or the consequences of disregarding its warning. (cf. Heb_2:2 Heb_3:10)
Vers. 25-29. The final appeal.
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The body of the Epistle seems to conclude with these verses, Hebrews 13 being of the nature of a postscript. The solemn warning which they utter breaks forth abruptly. It drops like a thunderbolt out of the sunny sky of Zion.
I OUR NEW TESTAMENT PRIVILEGES.
1. God speaks to us from heaven. (Ver. 25) At Sinai, and while the Jewish dispensation lasted, God spoke as it were "on earth," by an earthly mediator, Moses; and largely by means of material forms, which were only "copies" (Heb_9:23) of the great spiritual realities. But now God speaks "from heaven, from his home at the heart of the universe, and therefore from the heart of truth; and by his Son, the Divine Mediator, who is "in the bosom of the Father." The whole Epistle is clasped together with the emphatic declaration in its opening sentence, (Heb_1:2) and here at its close that the Lord Jesus is the Prophet of the new covenant.
2. God has removed the things that were shaken. (Vers. 26, 27) It was only "the earth" that shook at Sinai. And that convulsion speedily subsided. Indeed, the Jews became lulled into the delusion that the Levitical institutions would never be overthrown. But Haggai predicted (Hag_2:6, Hag_2:7) that the shaking which was to accompany the introduction of Christianity would affect "the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and all nations." It would do greatly more than produce alteration in the outer form and state of the Church. It would grasp its very heart and life flooding it with the noonday light of spiritual truth, and with the abundant grace of the Holy Ghost. The movables of Judaism, which had been "made" at Sinai the tabernacle, the priesthood, the ritual, the sacrifices, the festivals, etc. were "shaken" and "removed" when the Church "came" to Zion. Judaism was only a scaffolding, set up temporarily with a view to the erection of the permanent structure of Christianity. Its ceremonial was the mere husk of religion; and when the husk rotted and perished, the kernel still lived and became fruitful.
3. God has given us a kingdom that cannot be shaken. (Ver. 28) Believers in Christ" receive" the kingdom of Heaven; they are not only subjects in it, but kings. And this kingdom is the finished work of God the Divine masterpiece. Everything connected with it is stable. Nothing that is loose or perishable can adhere to it. It is built upon those great facts and truths, which the convulsions that overturned the Levitical system could not disturb. The "things which are not shaken remain;" e.g. the character of God, the moral nature and responsibility of man, the dark fact of human guilt, the doctrine of acceptance by sacrifice. Christianity has solved the problem of sin, in relation to the life of man; and therefore it "cannot be shaken." Throughout all time the way of salvation, the encouragements to believe, the rule of duty, the principles of the Christian life, the fruits of holiness, (1Co_13:8, 1Co_13:13) will be the same. And what a joy to live, as we do, among these abiding realities! The kingdoms of the world pass away; but Christ"s kingdom "shall stand forever". (Dan_2:37-45) Systems of philosophy cease to be; but the truth as it is in Jesus endures. Denominations disappear; but the Church continues. Political establishments of religion are shaken; but national religion remains. Creeds decay and wax old; but the Bible possesses an indestructible vitality. The heavens anti the earth shall pass away; but the kingdom of the saints cannot be moved.
II THE RESPONSIBILITIES WHICH THESE PRIVILEGES INVOLVE. We must:
1. Obey the voice of God. (Ver. 25) That voice speaks to us in the Scriptures, and in the pleadings of the Holy Spirit within our souls. But in our time earth is "so full of dreary noises" that our weak hearts are sorely tempted not to listen to the words of God. There is the voice of the philosophic thinker, of the political leader, of the social reformer, of the scientific teacher, of the newspaper editor, of the popular novelist. But none of these voices are prophetic. The man who can speak with authority regarding some department of physical science is not on that account entitled to deference when he discourses about God and the future life. Only the Lord Jesus Christ, the Loges, by whom God now speaks from heaven, can instruct us concerning the spiritual universe and the way of salvation.
2. Cherish gratitude for the kingdom. (Ver. 28) "Let us have grace," i.e. gratitude. To cultivate the spirit of thankfulness is the very essence and sum of Christian duty. When God in his mercy invests us with the kingdom, what can we say, but just "Many thanks"? "I will take the cup of salvation;" "Thanks be to God for his unspeakable Gift.
3. Devote our lives to the service of God. (Ver. 28) For, while the saint is a king, he is at the same time a servant; indeed, he is a servant because he is a king. The service is involved in the kingdom. The entire life of the Christian is to be that career of devout consecration which is the natural outcome of the grace of gratitude. And, while thankfulness is the secret motive of the service, its befitting spirit is "reverence and awe." The believer"s manner and tone are not to be flippant or frivolous; but grave, chastened, solemn.
III WARNINGS BY WHICH THESE RESPONSIBILITIES ARE ENFORCED. This passage is an earnest admonition. It opens with an arresting "Beware" (ver. 25); and it sounds three notes of warning.
1. From Hebrew history. (Ver. 25) When God spoke by Moses and the prophets, "his people would not hearken to his voice;" and thus they were constantly drawing down punishment upon themselves. If, then, they escaped not who spurned the less adequate revelation made by the heaven-descended God, how may we hope to escape, if we turn away from the full-orbed revelation made by the heaven-ascended Son of God?
2. From Hebrew prophecy. (Vols. 26, 27) God has no other "Yet once more" to promise to the world. That was to be the last "shaking" of the Church which should accompany the introduction of the gospel. "It is the last hour". (1Jn_2:18) The final overthrow of types and forms is proceeding. God has done all for us that he can do. He has given us the "eternal gospel." To reject it were to attach ourselves only to the passing and perishing.
3. From Hebrew theology. (Ver. 29) The words of this verse fitly close the prolonged strain of exhortation. They are borrowed from Deu_4:24; and the apostle, in citing that passage here, reminds us that the Divine character is not one of" those things that are shaken." If the God who spoke at Sinai was just and severe, the God who dwells in Zion is not less so. For the very reason that God is gentleness and love and mercy, he must be "a consuming fire" to all who are essentially alien to him. Sometimes, when this warning word is quoted, it is softened after this fashion: Out of Christ God is a consuming fire." But such a gloss is unwarrantable. For God is never out of Christ. Christ is the manifested God. It is not so that God the Father is all justice and severity, and God the Son all tenderness and grace. Christ the Redeemer is "a consuming fire." The most dreadful declarations about the doom of the impenitent which the Bible contains were made by him.
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 Refuse not Him that speaketh
Heb_12:25-29
Refuse not Him that speaketh
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The voice of God in the vicissitudes of humanity
I.
THE VOICE OF GOD IS VARIOUSLY UTTERED IN DIFFERENT AGES OF THE WORLD. God speaks to rational beings on earth in two general ways
1. Natural. Everything around and within us is a book; all these are materials of knowledge--the soul alone is the reader, the student, the philosopher, the interpreter; a world is spread out by God, impressed with principles and laws for man, that he may look through them to Him.
2. Supernatural.
(1) Communications before Christ (Heb_1:1).
(2) Communications by Christ (Heb_2:1).
II. THE VOICE OF GOD PRODUCES GREAT CHANGES IN THE INSTITUTIONS OF MEN. There are two classes of things, and but two--things that may be shaken, and things that may not be shaken. There is one Being who exists by necessity--the absolute, immutable God. The nearer things are to God, the more fixed they are; the farther from God, the more changeable.
III. THE SHAKING OF THINGS MUTABLE IS DESIGNED TO LEAD MEN TO THE IMMUTABLE. The immutable things of Judaism are preserved in Christianity; its God, spirit of worship, law--these are retained.
IV. GOD, BY ALL THESE THINGS, BRINGS MEN TO THE TRUE WORSHIP OF HIMSELF. (Caleb Morris.)
The doctrine of Christ not to be refused
I. To REFUSE HIM THAT SPEAKETH, WHICH MEANS CONTEMPT OF GOD, WHO OUT OF GREATEST MERCY HAD RENDERED SALVATION UPON FAIREST TERMS.
II. THE REASON IS TAKEN FROM THE HEINOUSNESS OF THE SIN, AND THE GRIEVOUSNESS OF THE PUNISHMENT, BOTH WHICH ARE SET FORTH BY A COMPARISON IN QUANTITY. Let us apply this unto ourselves, and consider
1. Who speaks unto us.
2. What He speaks.
3. From whence He speaks.
(1) Its not man, but God; not Moses, but Christ: the law indeed was by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. The majesty and power of Him who speaks is such as angels are bound to attend and obey with all humble submission; and shall we worms, nay, dust and ashes, refuse to hear this glorious Lord?
(2) The matter that He speaks and we hear is the best, the most sweet, the most comfortable, and the most excellent; never better things seen, or heard, or understood by the heart of man. The gospel is a doctrine of profoundest wisdom, or greatest love and mercy, and of highest concernment, and most conducing to our everlasting good. And shall we reject it? Shall we sin against so great a majesty, so great a mercy? Sins against the mercies of God so freely tendered to us in Jesus Christ, are the most heinous of all others. Let us tremble to think of these sins, and those punishments which they must suffer that are guilty of them.
(3) He speaks from heaven; for the gospel is a mystery hid from the beginning of the world, and was brought unto us from the bosom of the Father, by His only begotten Son, and by the Holy Ghost; its the clearest manifestation of Gods deepest counsels concerning mans eternal estate, and of His greatest love to sinful wretches, the brightest light that ever shined from heaven; yet we hear it, and most men regard it not, but reject it to their everlasting woe. (G. Lawson.)
Hear! hear!
I. THERE IS NEED OF THIS EXHORTATION FROM MANY CONSIDERATIONS.
1. The excellence of the word. It claims obedient attention.
2. The readiness of Satan to prevent our receiving the Divine word.
3. Our own indisposition to receive the holy, heavenly message.
4. We have rejected too long already. It is to be feared that we may continue to do so; but our right course is to hearken at once.
5. The word comes in love to our souls; let us therefore heed it, and render love for love.
II. THERE ARE MANY WAYS OF REFUSING HIM THAT SPEAKETH.
1. Not hearing. Absence from public worship, neglect of Biblereading. Turn away from Him.
2. Hearing listlessly, as if half asleep, and unconcerned. 3 Refusing to believe. Intellectually believing, but not with the heart.
4. Raising quibbles. Hunting up difficulties, favouring unbelief.
5. Being offended. Angry with the gospel, indignant at plain speech, opposing honest personal rebuke.
6. Perverting His words. Twisting and wresting Scripture.
7. Bidding Him depart. Steeling the conscience, trifling with conviction, resorting to frivolous company for relief.
8. Reviling Him. Denying His deity, hating His gospel, and His holy way.
9. Persecuting Him. Turning upon His people as a whole, or assailing them as individuals.
III. THERE ARE MANY CAUSES OF THIS REFUSING.
1. Stolid indifference, which causes a contempt of all good things.
2. Self-righteousness, which makes self an idol, and therefore rejects the living Saviour.
3. Self-reliant wisdom, which is too proud to hear the voice of God.
4. Hatred of holiness, which prefers the wilful to the obedient, the lustful to the pure, the selfish to the Divine.
5. Fear of the world, which listens to threats, or bribes, or flatteries, and dares not act aright.
6. Procrastination, which cries to-morrow, but means never.
7. Despair and unbelief, which declare the gospel to be powerless to save, and unavailable as a consolation.
IV. REFUSING TO HEAR CHRIST, THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY IS DESPISED. Him that speaketh from heaven.
1. He is of heavenly nature, and reveals to us what He has known of God and heaven.
2. He came from heaven, armed with heavenly authority.
3. tie speaks from heaven at this moment by His eternal Spirit in Holy Scripture, the ordinances and the preaching of the gospel.
4. He will speak from heaven at the judgment. He is Himself God, and therefore all that He saith hath divinity within it.
V. THE DOOM TO BE FEARED IF WE REFUSE CHRIST. Those to whom Moses spake on earth, who refused him, escaped not.
1. Let us think of their doom, and learn that equally sure destruction will happen to all who refuse Christ. Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The murmurers dying in the wilderness. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.
2. Let us see how some have perished in the Church. Judas, Ananias, and Sapphira, &c.
3. Let us see how others perish who remain in the world, arid refuse to quit it for the fold of Christ. They shall not escape by annihilation, nor by purgatory, nor by universal restitutions. They shall not escape by infidelity, hardness of heart, cunning or hypocrisy. They have refused the only way of escape, and therefore they must perish for ever. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The plea of the gospel:
To refuse is a positive rejection of the word. But to turn away may be only neglect and disregard. To treat the message carelessly is to turn away from the speaker. And as the ancient people were condemned for refusing, so may we be far more terribly overwhelmed in destruction if we turn away from Christ. Christ in His preached Word, Christ in His perpetuated Church, Christ in the continued ordinances of His dispensation, is for ever speaking unto men. If you scorn, then, the feeblest presentation of the gospel, it is not the preacher that you despise, but the Lord Jesus Christ who speaks through the preacher.
I. THE MANIFESTATION OF TRUTH IN THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST HAS RECEIVED THE HIGHEST SANCTION WHICH CAN BE AFFORDED FOR OBEDIENCE AND FAITH. Do you ask for dignity in the person who claims your allegiance and evokes your faith? Where shall you find a higher worth and glory of personal nature and character than were in Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you impressible by power, and will you allow your conscience and heart to follow, where first your senses and imagination have been aroused? What more Divine glory and power shall you anywhere find than in Him, who stills a tempest with a word, who calls the dead back to life, and is the master of the unseen world, whom the very demons hear and swiftly and abjectly obey? Perhaps you ask for wisdom and the light of an intelligence that shines with the lustre of the mind of God. Go and listen to Him who taught upon the mountains, or compelled the wondering multitudes to a reverent attention, as He unfolded the mysteries of the kingdom in the parables that linked the simplest facts and events of earthly life to the sublimest truths of the Divine nature and government. Does moral heroism arouse you? Will the signs of the spiritual and the Divine, found in the conflicts of a true and tried life, stir your heart and compel your admiration? Where in the world hath ever shone a light so signalised by truth and bravery, by virtue, and perfection, as the life of Jesus Christ? Perhaps you will yield to the claims of holiness and justice. Like the ancient statue which broke the awful silence in a deep sweet note of music, when the morning sunlight first fell upon it, your nature answers with an echo of fine melody, to the revelation of law, and to the outshining of the claim of God. Behold, how it breaks in clearest light, from the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ! Or perchance to all these forces you only turn a hard, insensate nature. But surely you can melt beneath the influence of love. The traveller drew his cloak the tighter when the blustering north wind blew, but he cast off his covering when the sunshine came out. Wilt thou not, then, throw from thee thy coverings of self-righteousness, and rebellion, when the grace and pity of thy God stream upon thee from the offered sacrifice of the dying Lamb?
II. THE NEGLECT OF THIS MESSAGE OF GRACE IS THE DEEPEST SIN WHICH CAN RENDER A MAN OBNOXIOUS TO THE JUST PUNISHMENT OF GOD. TO wrong a stranger of his strangers right, to rob even an enemy of what justly belongs to him--these are crimes which human law of the imperfect sort punishes. But what is the deeply dyed shame of love outraged? What of the wickedness which tears the hand that is extended to help? These are enormities at which human nature stands aghast. And this is the sin which you commit, when you refuse Him that speaketh from heaven.
III. ESCAPE FROM THE RESULT OF THIS UNBELIEF IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. A company of shipwrecked sailors are on yonder raft. They drift helplessly upon the wide ocean. They are thousands of miles from land. That frail bundle of spars can never bring them to the shore. Storms may arise, and if the winds blow, and the waters beat in mountainous surges upon them, they must perish. But see, a vessel comes in sight. It is an ocean steamer. It bears down to them. It comes alongside, and offers to take them on board. Thereupon, they begin to speculate whether they may not still be saved, even if they refuse to accept the offer of succour, and remain upon the raft. Who would not pronounce them mad to the last degree of madness, if they hesitate to climb on board? The question would not even suggest itself. While we speak, every man of them has left the broken spars, and is safe on the deck of the ship. What then of you, of any of us, who wonder whether there may not be yet a chance, even if the salvation of Christ is not made your own? The voice from heaven is speaking. To reject it, is the deepest guilt. What hope can there be if this be not accepted? (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
Refusing God:
1. Doubt of His truth, dissatisfaction with His Word, is perhaps one of the most prominent features of such refusal. When a person begins to say, This in the Bible is, perhaps, an hyperbolical and figurative phrase; it needs to be palliated in order that we may reach its truth; it needs to be subtracted from in order that we may attain the exact meaning of the Spirit of God; he shows his tendency to depart from the living God.
2. A second evidence is, disagreement with God. How can two walk together except they be agreed? If two persons are in partnership, they can agree so long as they work together; but if one feels one course to be right and follows it, and the other, another, the two are at issue, and the one departs from the other. Departure begins at the smallest possible point of refusal. When a line starts from another, when a tangent starts from a circle, or one line diverges from another with which it ran parallel, it may be minutely, almost imperceptibly at the commencement, but, however, it will issue in an opposite and contrary direction. So your divergence from God may begin about a small matter; a very little which God demands but which you refuse; a little matter which you think ought to be in your way, but which God has said shall be in the opposite way; but that divergence which begins on that little fact in that little Bible may issue in results disastrous as imagination cannot conceive, and terrible as are pourtrayed in the condition of the lost by the Holy Spirit of God.
3. Another element is, dissatisfaction with what God is and what God does. God rules in providence. Some great blow falls upon your home, some disastrous loss occurs in your circumstances; you have light enough to see that God is in this, and grace enough to feel that it is Gods hand that strikes the blow, and you murmur against God; you object to religion; you are dissatisfied with Him who is its author, and you begin a course of departure from the living God. The tenant leaves the house with which he is dissatisfied; the friend leaves the friends company with whom he is offended; and you, dissatisfied with the providential government of God, believing that He has punished when He ought to have rewarded, arrested when He ought to have given impulse, retire from Him, forget His Word, forsake His sanctuary, and refuse Him. And such a course, I again remind you, may begin from very little indeed, but it must issue in terrible results. A person departing from God walks in the company of the ungodly. He stands in the way of sinners. Then, he sits in the seat of the scornful. Here you have, then, the course of one who refuses God. What are some of the signs or evidences that a Christian can take cognisance of?
(1) The first trait of refusal of God is dissatisfaction, perhaps, with the people of God.
(2) Another trait is less delight in His Word. Whenever men begin to think the Bible and religion very dull, and to long for a romance as the only exciting book, there is something wrong.
(3) Another strong mark, too, of refusing God is less delight in prayer. He that really has the grace of God in his heart will be always discovering deeper wants that need to be satisfied, infirmities that need to be removed, prejudices that require to be scattered, passions that require to be broken, and his heart will be ever rising quietly, but fervently, to God for strength to be made perfect in weakness, and grace to be made sufficient.
4. Another evidence is excessive love of the world. Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. I have submitted these as simple tests or criteria by which to ascertain either our growing acceptance of God, or refusing Him. It is a serious question, Am I a child of God? Is my heart set on heavenly things? (J. Cumming, D. D.)
Refusing Gods voice:
I. THE SOLEMN POSSIBILITY OF REFUSAL. NOW, to gain the whole solemnity of this exhortation, it is very needful to remember that it is addressed to professing Christians, who have in so far exercised real faith as that, by it, they are come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God. Then, again, it is to be noted that the refusal here spoken about, and against which we professing Christians are thus solemnly warned, is not necessarily entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. For the Israelites, who made the original refusal, to which that which we are warned against is paralleled, recognised the voice that they would not listen to as being Gods voice; and just because it was His voice wanted to hear no more of it. Then, remember, too, that this refusal, which at bottom is the rising up of the creatures will, tastes, inclinations, desires against the manifest and recognised will of God, may, and as a matter of fact often does, go along with a great deal of lip reverence and unconsciously hypocritical worship. The unconscious refusal is the formidable and fatal one. Will Gods voice be heard in a heart that is all echoing with earthly wishes, loudly claimant for their gratification, with sensual desires passionately demanding their food to be flung to them? Will Gods voice be heard in a heart where the janglings of contending wishes and earthly inclinations are perpetually loud in their brawling? Will it be heard in a heart which has turned itself into a sounding-board for all the noises of the world and the voices of men? The voice of God is heard in silence, and not amidst the noises of our own hearts. And they who, unconsciously perhaps, of what they are doing, open their ears wide to hear what they themselves, in the lower parts of their souls, prescribe, or bow themselves in obedience to the precepts and maxims of men round them, are really refusing to hear the voice of God.
II. THE SLEEPLESS VIGILANCE NECESSARY TO COUNTERACT THE TENDENCY TO RERUSAL. See that ye refuse not. A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptations around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle. If there is any need to dwell upon specific methods by which this vigilance and continual self-distrust may work out for us our seem try, one would say--by careful trying to reverse all these conditions which lead us surely to the refusal. Silencethe passions, the wishes, the voices of your own wills and tastes and inclinations and purposes. Bring them all into close touch with Him. Let there be no voice in your hearts till you know Gods will; and then with a leap let your hearts be eager to do it. Keep yourselves out of the babble of the worlds voices; and be accustomed to go by yourselves and let God speak. Do promptly, precisely, perfectly, all that you know He has said. That is the way to sharpen your ears for the more delicate intonations of His voice, and the closer manifestations of His will.
III. THE SOLEMN MOTIVES BY WHICH THIS SLEEPLESS VIGILANCE IS ENFORCED. If they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth--or, perhaps, who on earth refused Him that spake--much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven. The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience. The voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty, and of the clearer utterances which are granted to us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it. Mark how the words deepen and darken in their significance in the latter portion. The man that stops his ears will very soon turn his back and be in flight, so far as he can, from the voice. Do not tamper with Gods utterances. If you do, you have begun a course that ends in alienation from Him. Then mark, again, the evils which fell upon these people who turned away from Him that speaketh on earth where their long wandering in the wilderness, and their exclusion from the Land of Promise, and final deaths in the desert, where their bleaching bones lay white in the sunshine. And if you and I, by continuous and increasing deafness to our Fathers voice, have turned away from Him, then all that assemblage of flashing glories and majestic persons, and of reconciling blood to which we come by faith, will melt away, and leave not a wrack behind. We shall be like men who in a dream have thought themselves in a kings palace, surrounded by beauty and treasures, and have awakened with a start and a shiver to find themselves alone in the desert. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Unheeded warnings:
As he (Caesar) crossed the hall his statue fell, and shivered on the stones. Some servants, perhaps, had heard whispers, and wished to warn him. As he still passed on a stranger thrust a scroll into his hand, and begged him to read it on the spot. It contained a list of the conspirators, with a clever account of the plot. He supposed it to be a petition, and placed it carelessly among his other papers. The fate of the empire hung upon a thread, but the thread was not broken. (A. S. Froude.)
Fear due to authority:
Julius Caesar once said to one who appeared to treat his words with indifference: Know, young man, he who says these things is able to do them. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)
The word has not done with us:
We seem to have done with the word as it has passed through our ears; but the word, be it remembered, will never have done with us, till it has judged us at the last day. (Judge Hale.)
Where are his ears?
A nobleman, skilled in music, who had often observed the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Cadogans inattention to his performance, said to him one day, Come, I am determined to make you feel the force of music; pay particular attention to this piece. It was accordingly played. Well, what do you say now? Why, just what I said before. What! can you hear this and not be charmed? Well, I am quite surprised at your insensibility. Where are your ears? … Bear with me, my lord, replied Mr. Cadogan, since I, too, have had my surprise. I have often, from the pulpit, set before you the most striking and affecting truths; I have sounded notes that might have raised the dead; I have said, Surely he will feel now, but you never seemed to be charmed with my music, though infinitely more interesting than yours. I, too, have been ready to say, with astonishment, Where are his ears?
Yet once more
Yet once more:
The expression implies an approaching change. Whenever we speak of doing a thing once more, of visiting a place once more, of seeing a person once more, we imply that there is about to be, after that one act, a cessation, removal, separation, the thought of which is already casting its shadow over it and us. It is an old remark, but none the less true, that even things which we have little prized may awaken in the mind a tender feeling when they are viewed as for the last time, as what we shall never see or never do again. A man may become so habituated to a desert island or to a prisoncell, as to shed tears in quitting the one for his country or the other for freedom. And certainly the dullest home, the most monotonous occupation, the most uncongenial and unattractive circle, may easily be invested with an interest not its own, an interest which never belonged to it while it was regarded as permanent, the moment we feel that our hold upon it is shaken, that we are going forth from it to another abode, or in quest of another abode, which is as yet to us but an unrealised idea. Whenever we use the term once more, in the sense here intended, let us remember, that it signifies the removing of the things that are shaken, of things that are capable and in the process of shaking, as of things that are made. When God Himself said, in the passage quoted, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven, if was implied that the convulsion of nature, as it was the last, so also was the prelude to an actual removal and displacement of the framework of nature itself, in preparation for the introduction of that which should be absolutely indestructible. Every change, from the very greatest of all to the very least, from that which convulses empires to that which agitates a little world like ours, is the removing of something made, of some thing or some person that is temporal and transitory, with a view to the greater prominence, perhaps the restoration to notice, of things or of persons immutable and eternal. What, then, are some of these things which cannot be shaken?
1. I might bid you to think of this school which we all so much love, and to remember that through centuries of changes and fluctuations it has already stood its ground, and that it is now one of those institutions of our country which possess in themselves, by Gods blessing, an element of vitality and of permanence.
2. I will bid you, in the second place, to contrast with those human agencies which are necessarily so transitory in a place like this, and even with the institution itself in which they are carried on, those individual results of our work which we express by the comprehensive term of a human character; that mind, that heart, those habits, that life, which are the ultimate result, in each particular case, of education considered as a complete whole.
3. To speak of the formation of character, just and true though the words be, has a somewhat chilling sound. But when we go on to the verse following the text, and read there of a kingdom which cannot be moved, and hear of our receiving it, and find ourselves charged to have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, as though that also were by His gift in our own power; when we are thus brought, as it were, into His living presence, and made to view all things as coming to us from Him, and being ours already in Him; then whose heart does not burn within him; who does not then feel that there is, in deed and in truth, a rock higher than lie on which his feet may, if he will, be securely set, and that, if only we can reach that place of safety, no change can ever come amiss to us, no change can ever touch us, us ourselves, though it may make strange havoc of every earthly shelter which we had provided for ourselves or for a time rested under and trusted in? (Dealt Vaughan.)
I shake not the earth only, but also heaven
The gospel as a power:
I. As A REVOLUTIONARY POWER. Falsehood, evil, corruption--these, wherever they exist, in hearts, governments, commerce, literature, science, or art--Christianity has shaken and will shake.
II. As A REIGNING POWER. It is a kingdom.
1. He that does not receive it as a reigning power, does not receive it at all.
2. He that does not receive it as a reigning power, is exposed to the fate of a rebel against heaven.
III. As A PERMANENT POWER. A kingdom which cannot be moved.
1. Its elements are immutable. Love and truth.
2. Its fitness is eternal. Man through all the ages will never outgrow it, never cease to want it, never be able to get on without it.
IV. As A PRACTICAL POWER.
1. The mode of acceptable service. Reverence and godly fear.
2. The qualification for acceptable service. Let us have graces, i.e., thankfully realise the high blessings conferred on us, and with devout gratitude engage in the work.
3. The motive of acceptable service. Our God is a consuming fire Deu_4:24). The God who rolled thunder and flashed light-nings on Sinai has not changed, His antagonism to sin is as great as ever. (Homilist.)
The shaking and the kingdom
I. There are two shakings here referred to by the apostle; the first is that of Sinai, which is already past, the second is that at the Lords coming, which is still future. Of this STILL FUTURE SHAKING he affirms three things.
1. It is a final shaking. It is but once more, and then all creation is at rest for ever. It is but once more that the stormy vengeance of Jehovah is to be let loose upon the earth to work havoc there. That last tempest is even now drawing together its clouds of darkness from every region, and mustering its strength for the terrible outburst--an outburst terrible indeed, but yet the last!
2. It is a more extensive shaking than any heretofore. I shake not the earth only but also heaven. The heaven here spoken of is not the third heaven, which is the peculiar dwelling place of God and the shrine of His glory; but the visible heavens above us--the same as those of which we read, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This universal shaking is that which Jesus Himself predicted (Mat_24:29). It is also that of which the prophet Isaiah (chap. 24.), has given at length so dark a picture. Very fearful will these convulsions be. Above, beneath, around; earth, air, and sea shall be all one dark, wide circle of infinite desolation and terror. Careless sinner! What shall then become of thee?
3. It is a shaking followed by a glorious issue. It is not for the annihilation of this material fabric, nor is it for reducing all things to their primitive chaos. It is for a very different end. That end is twofold. There is first the removing of those things which are shaken as of things which are made, that is, things of perishable workmanship. Then there is the consolidating of what resists and survives this shaking into an immovable creation. The foreground is dark, but the scene beyond it is all glad and bright. The commotions in immediate prospect of which we are already beginning to descry the forerunners, are apt to depress and sadden; but all beyond that is so stable, so unchanging, and spreads itself out before us in such refulgent, holy beauty, that we can overleap the dreary interval and stay our hearts as well as refresh our eyes with the glory to be revealed when the skirts of the last cloud shall be seen passing off in the distance, and the echo of the last thunder heard remotely upon the joyful hills.
II. The apostle having thus foretold the convulsions of the last days, and alluded to the times of the restitution of all things, proceeds to show THE EFFECT WHICH THESE THINGS SHOULD HAVE UPON BELIEVERS, and in what a solemn attitude it places them. This is the object of what follows, which, from the use of the word wherefore, is obviously an inference from his preceding statements.
1. The kingdom. It is a kingdom which cannot be moved. All present things are to be shaken, and out of these is to come the kingdom that cannot be moved--a kingdom unchangeable and eternal. Sin, we know, has loosened everything, transforming a stable world into a decaying, crumbling ruin. In order that stability may be restored, all things must be shaken, and after these shakings comes this immovable kingdom. There is no kingdom like this among all that has ever been. Everything about it is incorruptible, as well as undefiled. Its territory, its subjects, its laws, its throne, its sceptre, its sovereign, are all everlasting! Nothing can shake it. No war, no enemy, can disturb its peace. No storm, no earthquake, can assail it. No internal weakness or decay can dismember or dissolve it. The day of its duration shall be the eternal Sabbath--the rest that remaineth for the people of God.
2. The kings. Who are they? We, says the apostle--that is, not we apostles, but we saints. As believers, we have received a kingdom, being made kings and priests unto God; being made heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. Angels are but ministering spirits: we are kings--partakers with Christ Himself of His crown and throne! Behold whatmanner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us! What a holy life should then be ours! Surely we may be expected to keep in mind our coming glory, and to walk worthy of such a calling, and of such a kingdom!
3. Our present position and employment. Let us serve God. Our whole life is to be one of service: not merely certain portions of our life, but our entire life from the moment that we believe. It is the life of men redeemed to God, and who have therefore become His property. Each saint is a priest unto God as well as a king. And as Jehovahs priesthood, we serve in the true sanctuary which the Lord pitched and not man. Ours is a consecrated life, and therefore a continual service, the service of priests. We are sprinkled with blood set apart for God, and our whole life is to be one of priestly service. With our holy garments upon us, our censers in our hands, and standing under the shadow of the glory, how can we give way to levity, or wickedness, or indolence in circumstances so unutterably solemn and overawing. Oh! what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness!
4. In what manner is this service to be performed?
(1) Acceptably--that is so as to please God. In all our service this is to be distinctly kept in mind. In our prayers, praises, duties, we are not only to gratify ourselves but to please God. Let us observe, however, that to serve God acceptably, is not to serve for the purpose of making ourselves accepted. No; before our services can be accepted, we must be accepted ourselves. A saint is not one who serves God in order to be forgiven, but one who, having found forgiveness, serves God in love and liberty as a forgiven soul, and with an enlarged heart.
(2) With reverence and godly fear. There is to be no irreverence, no rashness, no presumption in our service, as if God were one like ourselves, or nearly upon our level. There is to be fear and solemn awe when we consider whom we worship; who we are who are thus permitted to draw near; in what temple it is that we worship, and what blood it cost ere we could be permitted to enter.
5. How are we to maintain this service? By holding fast grace, says the apostle. When that free love of God entered our souls, it brought with it liberty and gladness and light. It dispelled all our darkness, it removed all our sorrow, it struck off every fetter, and blessed us with the liberty of
Gods beloved Son. And it is in this same love that we are to abide to the end. We are to beware of losing sight of it, or letting it go.
6. Our God is a consuming fire. This evidently comes in as an additional reason to the preceding. And a most weighty and solemn one it is. The fire, indeed, has not consumed us, but still it is consuming. The God with whom we have to do is a God who has saved us, yet still this very God whom we call ours is a consuming fire. Should we not, then, serve Him with reverence and godly fear? (H. Bonar.)
The shaking of Sinai and Calvary:
That voice of Sinai was a shaking of earthly things. How were nations dispossessed, how were thrones tumbled into the dust, how was the course of human history and human life changed or directed by that shaking of Sinai! And so with the shaking voice of Calvary! Earthly things were moved, and are still moved, by the power of that voice Divine. Not a home to-day in all our land, not a single relationship in life, no duty of the ruler, no obligation of the subject or the citizen, but is bent and swayed and governed from Golgothas hill. But heavenly things are shaken by the voice which cried on Calvary. Some have understood, by the term heaven as here used, those high states of human faith and worship, not only in the Jewish economy but in the idolatries of the world, which were as heaven to the men who received them; and these, the It is finished of our Lord has utterly overthrown. Is it a mere play of imagination, if we suppose that the voice which shook the heavens, was indeed heard by the inhabitants of that celestial world, and arrested the very worship of the skies, and startled angels from their lofty stations, to look with absorbed gaze upon the wonders of that sacrifice? Furthermore, may we not reverently suggest that the voice of victory on the completion of redeeming work, wrought even upon the heart of the Infinite One Himself? At least, the issue was a Divine acceptance, the change of threatening judgment into saving mercy. There was shaking at Sinai--shaking of old temporal and earthly relations, of old human and profane habits, and in their place the appointment of things seen in the heavenly, commanded by God, made indeed by men, but made after the fashion given on the Mount. But now, the voice from heaven hath shaken both earth and heaven. Once again, and far more surely and destructively, are the earthly things shaken, and there topple down all secularities and temporalities and mere passing phenomena of human thought and law of mans mere worldly duty and faith. But with these also pass the heavenly things that Sinai established. The rules of life, the precepts of morality, the very commandments received as mere external ordinances, the gorgeous ritual of priest and sacrifice of temples, offering of chant and incense, of blood and altar--all these things made are shaken, and being shaken, show their passing temporal character as they quickly vanish and disappear. But what remains to us? what are the things that not even the voice from heaven can shake, that not even does the voice desire to shake, but only to establish?
1. Law remains, grand, inviolable, Divine. A law may have vanished, the law may have grown effete and dead, but law is now personal and incarnate, and dwells for ever serene, benign, almighty in the Son of Man, who is raised into the glory of the Godhead, and who sways, with the power of the Father, alike the hosts of heaven and the inhabiters of the earth.
2. Love remains. Love is the form that dwells in heaven, love is dominion and the rule of God in Jesus Christ His Son.
3. And law and love combine, and in their union salvation remains. All the preparations and the promises, all the weary wanderings of human life, God-led or man-directed, all the times and dispensations, all the aims and hopes and despairs and sins of men, these have all ended now, and there is naught but salvation free and full and certain and eternal, for all who will believe--salvation for the worst--salvation that cannot fail, for it stands assured upon the foundation of the sovereign God, the suffering Son, the ever-gracious Spirit. And so abides for ever the kingdom of our God. Human weakness shall not sap its strength, and Satans malice and the wildest assault of hell shall never overthrow its glory. (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
The shakings of Jehovah
These Hebrew Christians were living in the midst of a great shaking. It was a time of almost universal trial. God was shaking not earth only, but also heaven. The Jewish tenure of Palestine was being shaken by the Romans, who claimed it as their conquest. The interpretation given to the Word of God by the Rabbis was being shaken by the fresh light introduced through the words and life and death of Jesus. The supremacy of the temple and its ritual was being shaken by those who taught that the true temple was the Christian Church, and that all the Levitical sacrifices had been realised in Christ. The observance of the Sabbath was being shaken by those who wished to substitute for it the first day of the week. In such a time we are living now. Everything is being shaken and tested. But there is a Divine purpose in it all, that His eternal truth may stand out more clearly, when all human traditions have fallen away, unable to resist the energy of the shock.
I. THEOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING SHAKEN. There was a time when men received their theological beliefs from their teachers, their parents, or their Church, without a word of question or controversy. It is not so now; the air is filled with questionings. Men are putting into the crucible every doctrine which our forefathers held dear. In these terrible shakings, not one jot or tittle of Gods Word shall perish, not one grain of truth shall fall to the ground, not one stone in the fortress shall be dislodged. But they are permitted to come, partly to test the chaff and wheat as a winnowing fan, but chiefly that all which is transient may pass away, whilst the simple truth of God becomes more apparent, and shines forth unhidden by the scaffolding and rubbish with which the builders have obscured its symmetry and beauty. The things which cannot be shaken shall remain.
II. ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING SHAKEN. Teachers of religion are challenged to show reason for their assuming their office, or of claiming special prerogatives. Methods of work are being weighed in the balances, missionary plans trenchantly criticised, religious services metamorphosed. Change is threatening the most time-honoured customs, and all this is very distressing to those who have confused the essence with the form, the jewel with the casket, the spirit with the temple in which it dwells. But let us not fear. All this is being permitted for the wisest ends. There is a great deal of wood, hay, and stubble in all our structures which needs to be burnt up, but not an ounce of gold or silver will ever be destroyed.
III. OUR CHARACTERS AND LIVES ARE CONSTANTLY BEING SHAKEN. What a shake that sermon gave us, which showed that all our righteousness, on which we counted so fondly, were but withered leaves! What a shake was that commercial disaster, which swept away in one blow the savings and credit of years, that were engrossing the heart, and left us only what we had of spiritual worth! What a shake was that temptation, which showed that our fancied sinlessness was an empty dream, and that we were as sensitive to temptation as those over whom we had been vaunting ourselves. What has been the net result of all these shakings? Has a hair of our heads perished? The old man has perished, but the inward man has been daily renewed. The more the marble has wasted, the more the statue has grown. As the wooden centres have been knocked down, the solid masonry has stood out with growing completeness. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
A lesson from the great panic
It is a most popular error that the world stands still, and is fixed and immovable. This has been scouted as an astronomical theory, but as a matter of practical principle it still reigns in mens minds. Galileo said, No, the world is not a fixed body, it moves; Peter had long before declared that all these things should be dissolved; at last men believed the astronomer, but they still doubt the apostle, or at least forget his doctrine. This is the substance, cries the miser, as he clutches his bags of gold; heaven and hell are myths to me. This is the main chance, whispers the merchant, as he pushes vigorously his commercial speculations; as for spiritual things they are for mere dreamers and sentimentalists. Cash is the true treasure. Ah, you base your statements upon a foundation of falsehood. This world is as certainly a mere revolving ball as to human life as it is astronomically; and hopes founded thereon will as surely come to nought as will card houses in a storm. Here we have no abiding city, and it is in vain to attempt to build one. Every now and then, in order to enforce this distasteful truth upon us, the God of providence gives the world, in some way or other, a warning shake. The Lord has only to lay one finger upon the world, and mountains are carried into the midst of the sea, while the waters of the ocean roar and are troubled until the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
I. The original draft of the statement refers to THE OLD JEWISH DISPENSATION. Why was it that it could be shaken?
1. One reason was that it had so much to do with materialism. It needed an altar of earth or stone, and such altars the hand of the spoiler can overturn; it required a bullock that hath horns and hoofs, and such sacrifices the plague may slay; it demanded a priest of the house of Aaron, and a race of men may be cut off from the families of the nations; it needed a tabernacle or a temple, and buildings made with hands are readily demolished; hence it could be shaken. These were but things which are made, and they have been shaken and removed; but the things which cannot be shaken still remain; our spiritual altar still endures, our great High Priest still lives, our house not made with hands is still eternal in the heavens.
2. The Jewish religion could be shaken because it could be combated by material forces. Antiochus could profane its altars, Titus could burn its temple, and cast down the walls of the sacred city; but no invader can pollute the heavenly altar of our spiritual faith by brute force, or destroy the celestial bulwarks of our hope by fire and sword. Material forces are not available in our warfare, for we wrestle not with flesh and blood. The tyrant may burn our martyrs and cast our confessors into prison, but the pure truth of Jesus is neither consumed by fire nor bound with chains; it hath within itself essential immortality and liberty.
3. Moreover, the Mosaic economy passed away because it could be affected by time. But see the doctrine of the Cross of Christ! No time affects it. The message of salvation by grace is as fresh to-day as when Peter preached it at Pentecost. The great command, Believe and live, has as much life-giving power about it as when it was first applied by the Holy Ghost.
II. ALL THAT IS TRUE IN OUR PROFESSED CREEDS AND STANDARDS WILL STAND WHEN MERE OPINIONS ARE SHAKEN.
III. THE REAL IN OUTWARD PROFESSION STANDS, NOTWITHSTANDING TIMES OF SHAKING. I do not think times of storm to a Church are in the long run to be regretted; a calm is much more dangerous. The plague bearing miasma settles and festers in the vale till the atmosphere becomes deadly, even to the casual passenger; but the storm fiend, as men call him, leaps from the mountains into the sunny glades of the valley; with terrific vigour hurls down the habitations of men, and tears up the trees by the roots; but meanwhile all is superabundantly compensated by the effectual purging which the atmosphere receives. Men breathe more freely, and heaven smiles more serenely now that the heaviness of the death-damp is gone, and the poisonous vapour clings no longer to the rivers bank and the valleys side.
IV. We will further apply the principle to our OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. LET me mention a few methods of soul-shaking.
1. Affliction is one of them. The man thought that he had resigned everything to God--death came and took away his child; where was his resignation then? Tribulations, losses, crosses, sicknesses, and bereavements, are very stern trials, and the things within us which may be shaken will be shaken by them; but if we can bear them well and trustingly, and yet praise God for all, we have evidence of possessing gracious qualities which cannot be shaken, and therefore will remain.
2. What a shake temptation gives us! Why, we shall then know whether our grace is the grace of God or the grace of man; we shall now see whether we have the faith of Gods elect or not. The faith of Gods elect can write Invicta upon its escutcheon; it is unconquered and unconquerable. There is a time of shaking coming which none of us shall be able to avoid.
3. If we should live without affliction and without temptation, which I think will be impossible, yet we cannot enter into the promised land without passing through the river of death, unless the Lord shall come. What a testing-time will the death-hour be!
V. I must now bring before you ALL THAT YOU HAVE IN POSSESSION. The things which can be shaken will be removed, but things that cannot be shaken will remain. We have many things in our possession at the present moment which can be shaken, and it ill-becomes a Christian man to set much store by them. Yet some of us have certain things which cannot be shaken, and I invite you to read over the catalogue of them, that if the things which can be shaken should all be taken away, you may derive real comfort from the things that cannot be shaken, which will remain.
1. In the first place, whatever your losses may have been, you enjoy present salvation.
2. In the next place, you are a child of God to-day. God is your Father. No change of circumstances can ever rob yon of that.
3. You have another permanent blessing, namely, the love of Jesus Christ. HE who is God and anon loves you with all the strength of His affectionate nature. Now, nothing can rob you of that.
4. You have another thing, namely this truth, that whatever may happen to you you have Gods faithful promise which holds true that all things shall work for your good. Do you believe this? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Things passing and things permanent:
The giving of the law shook the earth, the giving of the gospel is to shake earth and heaven. The concussion begins when Christ comes; it is going on now; and it will continue till the world receives its last shock and falls asunder. This is not a very common view of the gospel history, but it has its side of truth. The gospel cannot build up and make strong without shaking down. The things that are shaken are things that are made. They are created things, and therefore they can be and must be changed. But the things that are not made cannot be shaken. They are things that belong to Gods own nature, His truth and righteousness and love, which are unassailable and eternal, and give eternal power and life wherever they enter and become part of a creature. It is a very great thing for us to feel assured of this in the midst of the perpetual breaking down of everything around us.
I. IN ILLUSTRATING THE LAW, WE, MAY BEGIN WITH THE MORE GENERAL AND COME TO THE PERSONAL.
1. The Jewish dispensation was shaken, but the great realities enclosed in it remain. The New Testament Church emerges like a spirit clothed in a new and ethereal body fitted for a greater time.
2. The forms of human society are shaken, but the principles that regulate if remain. Every chaos has its harmonising voice, Let there be light; every flood its ark and its rainbow. Amid the tumults of nations and the guessing plans of politicians, a Christian man need never lose hope, for he has his foot on a kingdom that cannot be moved; and the communities of this world are being shaken and broken that they may be built up again, with more in them of that kingdom which is truth and righteousness, and which at last shall be peace.
3. Outward systems of religion are shaken, but the great truths of the Church of Christ remain. By outward systems of religion we mean the organisations that men form, with a particular human name and locality and administration; by the Church of Christ we mean the spiritual children of God, called together by His grace out of every country, and built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone. The great wants of mans soul cannot be changed any more than the necessities of his physical nature, and the great truths of the Bible that satisfy them can no more be shaken than the ordinances of heaven that furnish man with bread and light and life.
4. The temporal circumstances of man are shaken, but the great possessions of the soul remain. There are few who pass through life without experiencing many changes in it. All our possessions are in things of earth, and we hold them by a clay-tenure. Perhaps the saddest change of all is that which takes place in our feelings. How different the dreams of the opening of life from the realisations of its close! What broken hopes, what frustrated aims, what a poor handful of ears for the rich sheaves we saw before us! So God shakes our lives till all seems gone, things of possession and things of promise. And yet, the while, the soul may have within its grasp things that cannot be touched, that youthful expectations once thought little of, but that now grow into bright and great realities. It may have faith rising to God and laying hold of the treasure that nothing can endanger or diminish. It may have hope going down like an anchor and keeping the heart stable in every storm. It may have love within and around, dwelling on the things of God and giving, in communion with Him, a peace in trouble that is above all earthly good. If these have become part of the soul they may be clouded, but they are never lost. When we lose hold of them Christ holds them fast for us, and brings them out like stars over drifting sky-rack, and brightens them as night deepens.
5. The material frame of man is shaken, but the immortal spirit remains. Where the Divine life enters, it brings with it not only the promise but the pledge and foretaste of the immortal life. The light of faith already spoken of, shining when all else that looks out at the windows is darkened, is one of its foretokens. Augustine said of his mother, Monies, that the crevices of the falling tabernacle only let the celestial light shine in more clearly.
The souls dark cottage shattered and decayed
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.
And when death gives the last shock to the frame the work is completed. The soul is that light in Gideons pitcher which shines out most clearly when the earthen vessel that held it is broken.
6. Last of all, we observe, as an illustration of this law, that the whole system of nature is shaken, but the new creation remains. That which we can trace in all past eras, rising still to a better and brighter, must reach its brightest and its best if there be truth in earth or heaven. The passing things in the universe must lead to something permanent, for time no more than space can have a sea without a shore. That new material creation shall be suited to the nature of mans glorified, material frame, as that frame is suited to his perfected spirit. It must be free from all the elements of disorder and decay that press upon us here--a soil that never opens for a grave, a sky that never darkens with a cloud; to describe which Gods word fails, because it can only use figures drawn from things that are passing, and speak to finite minds enclosed within these limits. I do not know if there is anything that can give us a higher idea of that great end than this, that it is the end--the close to which all the events and processes around us are conducting--the one permanent, imperishable result of the history of the universe.
II. WE NOW COME TO INDICATE SOME OF THE BENEFITS THAT RESULT FROM THIS LAW. Could not God, it may be asked, have made a permanent world at first, without requiring us to pass through this process of change deepening so often to ruin? After all, this may be asking why God has seen fit to make this world under the condition of time, for, wherever time enters, change, as far as we can see, must accompany it. It may be that finite minds can learn, or at least begin their learning, only under some such forms of change as we see around us--processes of birth and growth and death and revival, taking place under our eyes, arresting our attention, and stimulating our study. It is a book where God is turning the pages to every generation, and giving it something new, an advancing development that bids men look back and forward. The world as we here see it is a becoming--a process where constant change is imprinted on all. It has seemed fit toGods wisdom to put us through such a course of learning, where change should be so prominent, and yet the permanent never far off to those who will feel after it till they find it; and if we could understand all things we might see that the proportion in which the two are mingled is best suited to our present condition. We come, however, to something more practical when we remark that this is a world into which moral disorder has entered, and that the painful changes that touch us are the consequence of it--the consequence of it, and yet an aid to the cure of it. Without sin there might still have been mutation, but it would have wanted the sting and the shadow. We have lost through our fall the true perception of spiritual and eternal realities, and we must be made to see them through painful contrasts. It is by this process, too, that we not only see the greatness of these permanent things, but learn to cleave to them as our portion. This at least is the purpose, and if Gods Spirit stirs the heart when His providence shakes the outward life this will be the result. Still further, things that are shaken preserve those things that are to remain until their suitable time of manifestation. God gives us earthly comforts and hopes, till He gives something better in their stead. A young Christian could not be reconciled to many things which the more advanced cheerfully accept. In our present state we could not bear the view of another world, and the veil is kept between till our souls are attempered. Meanwhile, the seed of the incorruptable is here now--the seed of the everlasting inheritance in these frail hearts, of the glorious body in these dying frames, of the new creation in the world we look on. The things that perish encase them, as winters snow covers the seed, as the husk the flower. When all is ready, the sun will come and the snow will melt, the husk will fall, the flower will blossom to the summer day, and we shall see that the things which perish have also their place in the plan of God. They are the veil between grace and glory, very needful, and only to be done away when that which is perfect shall have come, and we are ready to take possession of it. (J. Ker, D. D.)
A kingdom which cannot be moved
The immovableness of the gospel dispensation
The gospel dispensation is the kingdom which cannot be moved. It is described as a kingdom which cannot be moved, because it is the complete development of Gods design towards this earth, and not a mere herald of a fuller manifestation. And when St. Paul appeals to the reception of an immovable kingdom as furnishing a motive to earnestness in the service of God, he is to be considered as arguing from the fixedness of the present dispensation to the duty of a reverential and filial obedience. The object, therefore, of our discourse must be to display the fairness of such reasoning; in other words, to explain how the fact that the kingdom that cannot be moved furnishes a motive to the serving God acceptably with reverence and with godly fear.
I. First, then, upon general grounds. WHY SHOULD THE FIXEDNESS OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION URGE US TO DILIGENCE IN THE SERVICE OF GOD? Suppose we take the opposite supposition, and imagine that there had been none of this fixedness in the gospel of Christ. Let us conceive ourselves placed under an imperfect and temporal economy, and see what difference would be made in our moral position. If you could throw an air of doubtfulness around the completion of revelation--if rather you could prove that there was still a portion of Gods will to be made known; that we are not in possession of all that knowledge in respect of redemption which shall be communicated to man on this side of eternity, then immediately there would be engendered a feeling of restlessness and uncertainty; our minds, in place of setting themselves earnestly to the study of what was given, would waste themselves in conjecturing what was withheld. It is evident that under the Jewish dispensation there was a vast deal of this moral dissatisfaction. An absolute sickness of heart appears to have been felt by the most upright and pious at the long delay of a fuller revelation. There is just the difference between our condition under an immovable kingdom, and the condition of those who were under the movable kingdom, that there would be between a man who should be bidden to do something in the dark, and that of another man who should be told to do the same thing in the daylight. We will not say that the darkness is an apology for remissness, but that the sunshine takes away a great show of excuse. Receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, there are not brought to bear on us the disturbing forces which acted within the moral orbit of the Jew. We look straightway to Christ as a sacrifice, and are not set to behold Him in bulls and goats led up to the brazen altar. We can mark the Mediator, entering by His own blood into the holy of holies, and are not left to search out His intercession in that of a priest who, compassed with infirmity, needed for himself what he presented for others. We can go at once to the fountain open for sin and uncleanness, and are not required to learn the methods of spiritual purification from the multiplied processes of ceremonial. We have been made acquainted with the abolition of death, of life and immortality being brought vividly to light, and we are not reduced to a vague hope or dim conjecture of the resurrection of matter and of its fresh inhabitation by spirit. But in these and numerous like points of distinction lies the difference between a kingdom which can be moved and a kingdom which cannot be moved. That which cannot be moved is the substance, whilst that which can be moved is only the shadow. He, therefore, who is under the immovable, has realities within his grasp, whilst he who is under the movable has only figure and parable; and just in proportion that the knowing with precision what is to be hoped and what feared will make a man more decisive in action than the being left in doubt and uncertainty--in that same proportion ought energy under the immovable dispensation to carry it over energy under the movable dispensation. The statutes of this kingdom are not written in hieroglyphics; the laws of its citizenship are not propounded in enigmas; everything wears the aspect of a final and complete revelation; the figurative has given place to the literal: prophecy has sunk into performance; who, therefore, will refuse to acknowledge that there is laid upon those who receive the immovable kingdom a mighty weight of responsibleness over and above that which rested on the recipients of the movable? And if the fixedness of the dispensation thus enhance the responsibleness of its subjects, we put beyond controversy that the fixedness should furnish motives to the serving God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.
II. Now we propose, in the second place, to make good the same truth on the particular ground which the apostle lays down. St. Paul argues the duty of obedience from the fixedness of the dispensation; BUT THEN HE SUBJOINS AS HIS CONCLUDING ARGUMENT--For our God is a consuming fire. Let us see how the several arguments are associated. We cannot be wrong in arguing that until the gospel was published--until, that is, the spiritual kingdom was finally settled on an immovable basis, there were points on which Gods will was not clearly ascertained, and men might easily have formed incorrect suppositions, forasmuch as they proceeded on an imperfect knowledge. Informed of Gods gracious design of providing pardon for the guilty, but not informed of the details of the arrangement, it might well come to pass that they would indulge in expectations which a fuller intelligence would have caused them to reject. They knew that God was a consuming fire; but they derived this knowledge from that tremendous outbreak of thunder and flame which accompanied the delivery of the law. But you will, we think, allow that if the Israelites knew God as a consuming fire, because so revealed on Mount Sinai, and if they did not as yet know thoroughly the character under which lie would reveal Himself on Mount Zion, it might be a matter of question with them whether the mildness of the one revelation would not so temper the fierceness of the other, that a consuming fire might no longer be a just description of God. They lived under a movable dispensation; the immovable which was to follow, came charged with discoveries of Gods purposes of lovingkindness; might there not consequently have been somewhat of hesitation on their minds as to whether the tire which blazed awfully before mercy was allowed to shine out in its brightness, would be equally devouring when the day of free pardon had dawned on the creation? But so soon as the kingdom became a kingdom which cannot be moved; the possible union of characters--the characters of the punishing God and the pardoning God--was established beyond the reach of a question or a doubt. We cannot, unless we hoodwink our understandings, and take pains to be the victims of a lie, flatter ourselves that judgment when brought out into action will be less fiery and less tremendous than when graven on the statute book. Ours is the immovable kingdom, and the very process by which this kingdom was set up and wrought into steadfastness witnesses with a testimony the most thrilling, that it was a law with God, the least swerving from which would be the shaking of His own throne, that sin must be punished before the sinner can be pardoned. It was on Zion ten thousandfold more than on Sinai, that the Almighty proved Himself a consuming fire. When the eternal Son in the might of the coalition of Deity and humanity went up the mountain side and laid Himself down on the altar, the substitute of a lost world, and there blazed forth the fires of justice to consume the sacrifice. Oh t then, far beyond the demonstration of Sinai, wrapped in flame and smoke, was there given a proof to all intelligent creation, that the emblem of God, when He deals with the guilty, shall be ever that of a consuming fire. Thus it was in giving fixedness to the dispensation that God manifested Himself as a consuming fire. The fact that the kingdom cannot be moved is an irresistible proof that the fire cannot be extinguished. Thus there is a connection, the very closest between the fixedness of the gospel dispensation and that character of God which sets Him forth as the devourer of the impenitent; and hence we gather that the argument to the serving God acceptably, which is drawn from His being a consuming fire, is but a particular case of the general argument derived from our receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved. Therefore, all our former reasons on the general argument must be applicable to the particular. Futurity comes charged with no softenings away of Gods wrath against sin; this is the fact that should nerve to obedience. We ought, perhaps, to say a word on the somewhat singular expression--Let us have grace. It can only refer to our seeking grace, to our improving grace. Without grace is it impossible that we should serve God acceptably, for man himself is void of all capacity for performing the will of his Maker; hence the being admonished that we may have grace to serve God acceptably is the same thing as being admonished that we set not to the work in any strength of our own, but that we go to God for assistance in order that we may honour God by obedience. And we may further observe that the service here demanded at our hands is of a nature which marks the awfulness of God. There is to be nothing of familiarity, there is to be nothing of forgetfulness of the unmeasured distance which, even when brought nigh by the blood of His own Son, separates between God and ourselves. Therefore we are to serve with reverence and godly fear; and though undoubtedly the fear which a Christian entertains towards God will be filial fear rather than slavish, the fear of a son who loves rather than that of a servant who dreads, yet it is certain that in our text an apprehension of wrath is supposed to be an element of godly fear. Such would have been my lot, will the Christian say, when musing on the fate of the impenitent, had not free grace interposed, and God of His rich lovingkindness brought me up from destruction. Carry away with you, then, this truth--the truth that peculiar interest in God is no encouragement to the throwing aside the most awful fear of God. Our God is a consuming fire. How rich the summit of privilege when you can say, O God, Thou art my God! And yet when the summit is reached you must still look to the blazing, burning Deity for our God, my God, is a consuming fire. At first glance, says an old prelate, these two expressions, our God, and a consuming fire, seem to look strangely at one another, but the Holy Ghost hath excellently tempered them. He is our God--this corrects that despairing fear which would otherwise seize on us from the consideration of God as a consuming fire. But then, He is not only our God; He is also a consuming fire--this corrects that presumptuous irreverence to which else we might be emboldened by the consideration of our interest in God as our God. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The immovable kingdom, or Christianity contrasted with earthquakes
In the case of Palestine, there had been ages of experience in volcanic convulsions before Bible times. Probably the great Mediterranean Sea is a pre-Adamic volcanic crevasse, by which Europe and Africa were separated from each other. Its many volcanoes are still active vents in the vast fissure. The Red Sea is almost certainly a volcanic crevasse separating Africa from Asia. That crevasse runs up northward from Mount Sinai to Mount Hermon, through the whole length of Palestine. The river Jordan, with its two lakes and the Dead Sea, are in the bottom of that great volcanic crevasse, far below the surface of the Mediterranean. The oldest historical record of an earthquake tells how God knocked a little more of the bottom out of that crevasse, at the south end of the Dead Sea, and let it swallow up the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole vale of Siddim. But Bela, the old name of Zoar, meant convulsions before Lot fled thither. There are records of earthquakes, and allusions to them, all through the Old Testament, in the Psalms, Prophets, and historical books. The imagery of our text is all taken from that great earthquake with which God accompanied, and sublimely emphasised, His giving of the law on Mount Sinai. That shaking of the literal mountain lies at the base of the figurative and spiritual use which is made of it by the author of this Epistle to the Hebrews. They knew and gloried in the history, and could feel the force of its application when reminded of a kingdom that could not be shaken. But for us, that we may understand it, let us consider
I. THE MEANING OF THIS IMMOVABLE KINGDOM: WHAT IS ITS SIGNIFICATION? To this question there are for us two answers.
1. Christianity in contrast with Judaism. A striking contrast here, from the eighteenth verse onward, between Judaism, as represented by Mount Sinai, where it was revealed; and Christianity, represented by Mount Zion, where it was revealed. The one is clad in material terrors, the other in spiritual glories. To approach the one is death, the other life. The one reveals the law against sin, the other salvation from sin. The one shakes the world with an earthquake of wrath against all unrighteousness, the other with the Pentecostal earthquake of joy at the bringing in of everlasting righteousness. The one shakes a temporal mountain, but leaves the ceremonial law as a barrier between the Gentile world and salvation; the other shakes down the old dispensation of types and shadows, but leaves in its place the unshakable and final dispensation of grace, the pure and simple principles of justification, holiness, union with God, and eternal salvation, all through Christ. But this immovable kingdom also means
2. Christianity in its wider contrast between all earthly and perishing things, on the one hand, and the spiritual and unperishing things of the soul and salvation, on the other hand. What a stupendous symbol of the perishableness of all earthly interests is this which the apostle uses as a foil to set off the unperishing durability of the kingdom of Jesus Christ over the souls and destinies of men! Let earthquakes shatter all created things. Let all that earth has to offer, its loves, its hopes, its possessions and ambitions, perish together. The soul that has received by faith the unperishing kingdom of Christ has a possession which not only endures, but saves its possessor with it, and fills his inmost soul with consciousness of eternal riches, eternal strength, and joy. He who has Jesus in his soul knows that be has the last thing, the best thing, the eternal thing. The immovable kingdom is his. No changes of ritual, no translation of priesthood, no civil revolution, no providential catastrophe of earth or time can affect him. He is an heir of God for ever. And now it is in view of our noble heirship to this glorious and immovable kingdom that Paul adds, as a logical conclusion, introduced by the wherefore.
II. THE EXHORTATION TO FITNESS FOR THE HEIRSHIP OF SUCH A KINGDOM. Let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing unto God, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. There are three points in this exhortation.
1. This heirship demands a corresponding service on our part. We must offer service well-pleasing unto God. In the ages of the old feudal kingdoms of Europe, all the smaller or feudatory kingdoms, principalities, dukedoms, earldoms, &c., were held as the direct gift of the sovereign crown, and homage must be rendered and feudal service in arms pledged to the sovereign king by the heirs to the various feudatory principalities, &c., before they could be invested with their inheritances, however great. And so it is with the heirs of the glorious kingdom of Christ.
2. The rendering of such a service requires the abiding grace of God in our souls, as a qualification therefor. Let us have grace, said the apostle, that we may so serve God. Ah, he knew how much of the deep inward grace of God is necessary for such a service. It is not enough that we know the will of God and theoretically accept it. The Israelites did that in the desert, and yet, at the very foot of Mount Sinai, and then, after all the glorious manifestations of Gods power in the flaming mountain and the quaking earth, they backslid into idolatry then and there, in the very presence of the glory of God. The reason for this was that they had not the grace of God in their hearts. Their reverence and obedience lasted while the earthquake lasted, but no longer. It was not the grace, not even the holy reverence and awe of our text. We ought all to say for ourselves, Let us have grace. It is for us, and for us all. We may have it if we will seek it. It is the work of the Holy Spirit in us; and what is there which God is so willing to give as the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?
3. A solemn warning against negligence in this matter. For our God is a consuming fire. It is not too much for us to serve God with reverence and awe. God is the same now as He was at Mount Sinai. He was Jehovah, the Angel of the Covenant, the pre-incarnate Jesus then; who then spake on earth, but now speaks from heaven. All that He then showed of power and majesty is still at His command. In His incarnation storms, diseases, deaths, and devils obeyed Him, and voices from heaven attested His Deity. (G. L. Taylor, D. D.)
Service in the kingdom of God
I. THE DOCTRINE IS THIS: THESE HEBREWS RECEIVED A KINGDOM WHICH COULD NOT BE MOVED. And it is first to be explained, and the difficulty lies in this phrase of receiving a kingdom. For
1. There is a kingdom.
2. This kingdom cannot be moved.
3. They received it.
(1) There are many temporal kingdoms, but this is spiritual and Divine. The King is God; the Administrator-General is Christ, who, in the administration of this kingdom, is so one with God, that He is King as He is; the subjects, believing saints; the rules of government are the doctrines of the gospel; the privileges and benefits of this kingdom are the blessings of grace and glory.
(2) This kingdom cannot be moved, or is not moveable or alterable, because Prince, people, laws, and administration continue for ever.
(3) They had received this kingdom. A kingdom may be received either by a prince to govern it, or by subjects to be governed; the former is not, the latter is intended. For subjects to receive a kingdom, may be either duty or a benefit. As a duty, it is to submit unto the power and laws of the sovereign; as a benefit, it is to be admitted as a subject to enjoy the privileges, peace, and happiness of the kingdom. Both may be here meant, and the benefit presupposing the duty fully and finally performed, may be, and shall be, that we shall be kings and priests, and reign with Christ for ever.
II. THE EXHORTATION FOLLOWETH, WHERE THE DUTY IS TO HAVE GRACE TO SERVE GOD.
1. By grace may be meant the doctrine of grace, which is the gospel so called (Tit_2:11).
2. Faith and belief.
3. The profession of this faith.
4. The sanctifying power of the Spirit, which all true believers and professors have; and this presupposeth all the former, or infolds them. To have this grace is to have this sanctifying power, and to hold it, keep it, exercise it more and more. The end why we must have and hold it is, that we may serve God. This implies that God is the Sovereign in this kingdom, and we are the subjects, and our duty is continually to serve our Lord and King. To serve Him, is not only with all humility to adore His excellent Majesty, but also sincerely, wholly, and absolutely to submit unto His power and obey His laws. This implies
(1) That in this kingdom we are not our own masters, or at liberty to do what we would. But God is our Master, and we are bound to obedience by His laws.
(2) That without the grace of God continued and held fast we cannot serve our God constantly; without grace we cannot serve Him; without grace held fast we cannot serve Him to the end. The manner how we must serve God is to serve Him acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. In general, our service must be acceptable; in particular, it must be reverence and godly fear, which render it pleasing to God, and without which it cannot be accepted. Men may fear God--that is, perform some religious service to God--and yet it will not prove acceptable. For some serve God, and not with a pure and sanctified heart; some serve God in outward circumstantials and rituals, not in substantials; some serve God with a profane and wicked heart; some serve Him ignorantly or negligently, without fervency and due affection. Reverence in Gods service looks at His excellency and glorious majesty, and at our own unworthiness, and the infinite distance between Him and us; and therefore we must adore Gods excellent Majesty with deep humility, abasing ourselves very low, being afraid and ashamed, out of a sense of our own vileness, to come near Him, except in His great mercy and free grace He vouchsafe access. Signs of this reverence is our kneeling, bowing, covering our faces, prostration, and such like gestures. And if we were either apprehensive and sensible of our own vileness, or Gods excellency, how could we possibly be so profane and unreverent in His worship? Godly fear may be the same with reverence or distinct from it. The word in the Greek signifies sometimes caution, sometimes devotion, sometimes fear, and that in the service of God, which is a religious fear, and care not to offend, but to please Him. Both reverence and fear, in this place, may farther be a more than ordinary care and diligence in the service of God, that we may please Him and be accepted of Him. For as the greatest honour with the greatest humility is due to God, that supreme Lord, whose Majesty is infinite and eternal, so the greatest caution must be used in His worship, for He will be sanctified in all them that draw near unto Him. (G. Lawson.)
I. THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION.
The immovable kingdom
1. It is the complement and perfection of all prior dispensations of religion; that to which they were but introductory, and in which they were merged and consummated.
2. Its chief and blessed Administrator, our Lord Jesus, is declared as such to be eternal. He shall always stand in this relation to His people. He shall ever be Head over all things to the Church.
3. Another proof that this kingdom cannot be moved is, that it perfectly answers the end of all religion.
II. THE PRACTICAL INFERENCE. Let us have grace, says the apostle, taking it for granted that all who earnestly desire and properly seek it, shall obtain. It is most liberally offered and most freely bestowed.
1. This grace is to be obtained in order that we may serve God. We are to return to Him from our alienation; to relinquish our guilty rebellion; and to bind ourselves to Him in sincere and ceaseless allegiance. His laws are to be ever obeyed, His glory supremely sought.
2. To those who thus resolve to give up themselves to God, it must be further shown that we are to serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear.
(1) Acceptably--in conformity to the ordination of the Lord of this kingdom. Make mention only of the Lord Christ and of His righteousness. Let His love be all your plea; let His passion speak for you. Let all your service, prayer, love, praise, be offered through the ever-blessed Name!
(2) We are also to serve with reverence and godly fear. It ought deeply to affect and impress our minds that the very system which is so full of mercy for us, is also distinguished by its solemn views of God, and its inculcation of the profoundest reverence for His name. He is ever gracious and abundant in goodness and truth; He is also a consuming fire! There is forgiveness with Him; not, however, that He will be trifled with, but that He may be feared. God has set His King upon the holy hill of Zion--a King lowly and having salvation; we are therefore to serve the Lordwith fear, and to rejoice with trembling. (John Hartley.)
The immovable kingdom:
It is obvious that anything which can be termed the kingdom of God must be immovable. But we propose to consider rather some of those elements which are not so readily, not so necessarily recognised, and the word receiving of our text suggests the direction in which we must seek. It is a word of much force. It is more than receiving simply as taking. The preposition, which is compounded with the verb, suggests the idea of by the side; so that when we thus receive, we receive by the placing of ourselves by the side of, in a certain identification, in a certain intimate blending of ourselves with the thing received. We thus make it our own, it becomes part of our own peculiar property--part of ourselves, we might say. Perhaps the best interpretation of this text may be found in the words of the Lord addressed to Peter, when this disciple had made his famous confession. Christs Church was to be built upon that foundation of life and faith which the confession of Peter indicated. Not the truth as an abstract proposition; not the individual as a personal historical item; but the truth apprehended, the truth felt, the truth obeyed in the living man. This is the foundation of the Church. And this is the acceptance of the kingdom. That this is the fact, needs only a review of history to determine. The essential elements of this kingdom were as truly existent before the coming of Jesus Christ as after. It was necessary that Christ should appear m historic time and form, and therefore lie must have appeared at some time and under some form; and yet all that His work produced, and the dependence of the moral and spiritual life of man upon Hint and His atonement were as real before as after His advent. Christianity as old as the Creation, or at least as old as the Fall, is a phrase that the Christian is quite prepared to accept, even though it came from a sceptical and destructive quarter. What changed, and passed, and disappeared, are not of the essence of religion. That remained, and the historical Christ, and the Christian Church, and the post-Christian era only illustrate and explain and illuminate the truths which are eternal. And this is the lesson of all the experiences through which the gospel has passed. It has known persecution, but persecution only strengthened the faith, and while it purged away the false and the weak, it but tempered and purified the true. No new element of truth introduced, no other means of acceptance with the Father, no other name given under heaven whereby men shall be guyed, but the one, Christ Jesus, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. And, as we have said, we shall find the source of this immovableness in the possession which the kingdom takes of our own inner life. We call attention now to these subjective, these human aspects of the gospel. Do men want a religion of humanity? Here is the religion of humanity. Our spirits crave for it, our hearts leap up to it when it comes; our consciences accept it and commend it; the entire nature closes with it as the faith of man; and even the baser being, as it sinks down into its condemnation and its death, echoes back, in the cry of hatred with which it receives it, the truth, the human, the Divine, the eternal, and changeless truth of the religion of Jesus Christ. The first element in what we may call this human aspect of the immovable kingdom that we receive, is the appeal which the gospel makes to mans moral nature, and the response which is made to it upon that side of its teaching concerning the lost and helpless condition of man. Mans nature is in revolt; there is strife, and sickness, and a certain death. And these the gospel recognises, and to these it addresses itself, and so remains for ever unchanged, whilst the heart of man is what it is. God builds its foundations, and He lays them in the very depths of the human soul. Another fact of human nature which is recognised in the gospel scheme, and makes for its unchangeableness, is the complete helplessness of man to extricate himself front the position in which he finds himself. Man is lost; man in his loss is helpless. These are the two profound facts of human nature. Christianity fully recognises both of these truths. They may be called the human axioms of the Christian scheme, the first principles of salvation through Jesus Christ. And these abide for ever in the nature of man. The kingdom of grace includes a further truth--viz., that of a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. Man attains his glory in personality. It is the assertion of his personality which is the condition of the catastrophe that has overcome him. It is the sense of personality which reveals continuously and with horrid stings of upbraiding conscience and alarming sanctions of threatening law the miserable condition of helplessness in which he lies; and so man everywhere turns to the thought of a person, to any pretension of a person, to any supposed fact of a person, to the personal life, the personal work, the personal sympathy, for the salvation he requires. Hence the kingdom of salvation is the kingdom of Jesus Christ; the message of mercy is the life of Jesus; the comfort of man is the name of Jesus; the warrant of hope is the promise of Jesus. Jesus is the ceaseless, the changeless gospel of the human heart. And all this, according to the truth of the gospel, is made perpetual and abiding by a power which shall ever dwell in the hearts and lives of men. A Holy Spirit for ever dwells in the Church of God; that Spirit who was the energy of creative power; that Spirit who was the inspiration of the good, and the holy, and the true in every age; that Spirit who is the very life and communion of the Godhead itself. It is this that makes the kingdom immovable. What is genius arrayed against this power of God? What can wit with keenest arms effect against this force? What can the wear and ruin of all human life waste when there is ever this source of power and renewal to revivify and repair? The kingdom of God is immovable; and this you may receive through Jesus Christ our Lord. (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
The kingdom that cannot be moved:
One of the Red:Republicans of 1793 was telling a good peasant of La Vendee, We are going to pull down your churches and your steeples--all that recalls the superstitious of past ages, and all that brings to your mind the idea of God. Citizen, replied the good Vendeean, pull down the stars then. (W. Baxendale.)
Let us have grace
Our need of Divine grace
1. We need it, not only for reformation and change of character, but also for the preservation of character when good and upright. It must be admitted that early discipline and long-established habit may do much to mould the heart and the mind; but that these things are enough to keep the character from harm, and to plant around it an invincible protection from sudden and unexpected contingencies of trial, is contradicted by experience and by the past and present history of man in every form and condition of his existence. But look at the case in a religious point of view. I say religious, because that involves the higher purposes of being, the exercise of the nobler powers, and the destinies which reach onward through an endless futurity. When referring to this subject, virtue, in all its various aspects of loveliness and usefulness, is not only to be regarded as virtue simply, but virtue produced, upheld, and protected by a power superhuman. Under a religious influence, any one of the virtues you might name is turned into new and heavenly channels; and while it retains all its natural elements, it becomes changed in the nobleness of its motives, in the grandeur of its purposes, and in the glory of its objects. What can bring about this change but Divine grace?
2. It is obtainable. It is freely given simply upon the condition of being asked for in Sincerity and faith. As the weary traveller can freely partake of the stream of water by his side, though he be penniless, so the man burdened by guilt, without God and without hope in the world--an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, homeless, and without a guide on the broad and desert-wastes of the world--can partake freely of the grace of God, as a Fountain opened for sin and uncleanness.
3. Consider, in the time of any sore trial, what a source of strength and comfort may be found in the Divine grace. At such times we sink under the weight of our own suffering. Overpowered by the affliction, we find no strength within us to bear us up against it. We try according to our means to counteract the suffering; but memory, ever busy, calls up to our minds, in defiance of our earthly resources, a thousand painful associations; and the deep mourning thoughts of the heart linger where the pain arises. In vain we look around us for help--help enough to break down the agony and to crush it. But the grace of God can bring to the wounded and crushed heart a remedy. It, and it only, can blend feeling with precept; bind up in one the soothing power of sympathy with the earnestness of hope; the assurance of faith with the anticipation of rest for evermore. (W. D.Horwood.)
Serve God acceptably
Acceptable service:
Many things are absolutely needful for the acceptance of any service rendered unto God: of these some are not stated in the text, but they are so important that I commence with mentioning them. The first is that the person who attempts to serve God should himself be accepted. The offerer must himself be accepted in the Beloved, or his offering will be tainted by his condition and be inevitably unacceptable. The next essential is that, the act being performed by a person accepted, it should be distinctly done as unto God. Our text speaks of serving God. Alas, much is done which is in itself externally commendable, but it is not acceptable to God, because it is not rendered unto Him, and with a view to His glory. And we must take care that all this is done with faith in Christ Jesus; for it is a law of universal observation in the kingdom of heaven that without faith it is impossible to please God. We must bring our offering to Jesus, our great High Priest, and He must present it for us, for it can only be acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. These things being mentioned, I now confine myself to the text itself, which has in it a world of solemn, heart-searching thought with regard to the acceptable service of God.
I. If we are to serve God acceptably, it must be UNDER A SENSE OF OUR IMMEASURABLE OBLIGATION TO HIM. Look, Wherefore we receiving a kingdom &c. See, whatever service we may render to God, we must begin by being receivers. We receiving a kingdom. What a gift to receive! This is a Divine gift; we have received, not a paupers pension, but a kingdom--a kingdom which cannot be moved. But, say you, we have not received this kingdom yet.
1. I answer that we have received it in a certain sense; we have received it first in the promise. I appoint unto you a kingdom as My Father hath appointed unto Me. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Fathers good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
2. More than this, we have received it in the principles of it. The kingdom of God is within you. As the fairest flower lies packed away within the little shrivelled seed, and wants but time and sun to develop all its beauty, so perfection, glory, immortality and bliss unspeakable lie hidden away within the grace which God hath given unto all His people. He that believeth in Him hath everlasting life. The life of heaven is begun within the believer.
3. Moreover, in a measure we have received this kingdom in the power of it. God hath endowed you with power from on high by giving you the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
4. Moreover, you have received much of the provision and protection of that kingdom.
II. Acceptable service must be rendered to God Is THE POWER OF DIVINE GRACE. Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably. Note, then, that acceptable service to God is not offered in the power of nature, not even of nature at its best, when we call it good nature and philanthropy; but in the service of God everything must be the fruit of grace. You are to serve the Lord, not in the strength of your own wit or experience, or talent, but in the energy of the new life which God has given you, and in the power of the grace which is continually bestowed upon you moment by moment as you seek it of the Lord.
III. To serve God acceptably, WE MUST DO IT WITH REVERENCE. The word, according to Bishop Hopkins, signifies a holy shamefacedness. The angels veil their faces with their wings when they worship the Most High, and we must veil ours with humility. The angels feel their own littleness when they stand before the presence of the dread Supreme. You and I who are much less than angels, and have sinned, should, when we come before God, be covered with blushes. Our heart should be filled with wonder that we are called to this high privilege, though we are so unworthy of it.
IV. The other word is, with godly fear; and this suggests that we should serve God IN THE SPIRIT OF HOLY CAREFULNESS. We ought to fear lest we should offend the Lord even while we are serving Him; fear lest the sacrifice should be a blemished one, and so be rejected at the altar; fear lest there should be something about our spirit and temper which would grieve the Lord. He is a jealous God, and must be served with holy carefulness.
V. We must cultivate A PROFOUND SENSE OF THE DIVINE HOLINESS and of the wrath of God against sin, For our God is a consuming fire. Observe, then, from this most solemn sentence that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament (Deu_4:24). While the Lord is merciful, infinitely so, and His name is Love; yet still our God is a consuming fire, and sin shall not live in His sight. If your offering and mine be evil, it will be an abomination unto Him. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; if our worship and service are mingled with hypocrisy and pride, He will not endure them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Acceptable service
I. OUR RELATION TO GOD, PRODUCED BY THE GOSPEL, NECESSARILY DEMANDS OUR SERVICE. God has given us salvation at a tremendous cost. He not only sent His Son, but He spared not that Son. God not only spike by prophets, and by holy men of old, but He was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. We serve, therefore, not merely an existent Deity, a splendid and majestic God, but we serve One who has wrought and suffered loss, and made valuable cost, and borne diminishing, and self-emptying, and death for us. The kingdom is not a mere natural growth, not a mere inheritance; it is a conquest gained after terrible conflict, assured only at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. Hence logic, and rhetoric, and poetry, and art--these are poor responses to such service for us as God has rendered. Even praise, though it should be in hymns themselves inspired, seems feeble as a return for such affluence of service as we have received. We, too, must serve; we, too, must render back in thankfulness all that we have, all that we are.
II. THE SERVICE WHICH WE CAN RENDER UNTO GOD IS THE CONTINUAL SENSE OF GRATEFULNESS UNDER WHICH WE OUGHT TO LIVE TOWARDS HIM. The position of the believing recipient of the grace of God is a paradox. He must serve; and yet what service can he render? What does God need? How shall the Infinite and the Eternal be added to or made more great?
Besides, what have we that we can render? All that is ours is already Gods. From Him it came; by Him it consists; on Him it depends. To give Him aught, then, is only to give Him His own. Oh, wondrous paradox of a Divine necessity! We must serve, and we have no service; we must render, and we have and are nothing. See yonder snowflake dropping into the ocean. It has vanished in a moment, and is lost in the boundless fulness of that heaving deep. What can the snowflake add to the immensity of waters? Was it not itself exhaled from that ocean, and ascending as vapour, caught by the cold of the sky, and sent back again to its ocean source? See yonder mirror, flashing back the light towards the sun. What shall that reflected beam add to the glory and brightness of the centre of all light? It is only the return of the ray upon its own path, which had already come from the sun itself. And so what is our service, what is the best we can do, the richest we can give? It has only found the place whence it first came. Here, then, our text comes to our help. Let us have gratefulness, it says, and by this let us serve God acceptably. Whoso offereth thanks glorifieth Me, and follows a path in which I will show him the salvation of Elohim. This spirit changes all life into a service. Every scene is a temple. Every word is worship. A work of bounty, of compassion, of self-denial, does not exhaust this grateful spirit. It does always its best, and then, when the best is done, cries with true self-knowledge, We are but unprofitable servants. And may it not be here, that the quality of the service, as suggested by the word acceptably of our text, should rightly be considered? Acceptable service we are commanded to render, and the more we contemplate the service, and the power we have to pay it, the more clearly we find our inability, our utter bankruptcy even of gratitude. Then, we remember that the sacrifice, which redeemed our souls from death, the atonement by which our sins were expiated and our guilt removed, still remains all efficient, ceaseless in its power, infinite in its appealing force with God. The things that were shaken passed away, we learned, that the things that could not be shaken might remain. And the blended law and love which were found in the blood that speaketh better things than that of Abel, in the Jesus, Mediator of the new covenant, these passed not, but remain for ever. And so our failing gratitude, our empty return, our poor gift of service--these can all be filled to a Divine fulness at the Cross of Jesus.
III. WE LEARN THE SPIRIT IN WHICH OUR SERVICE SHOULD BE FOR EVER RENDERED. With reverent submission, and godly fear. Reverent submission is the becoming, and careful, and observant attitude of the soul, keenly alive to the holiness of God and its own unworthiness. Our words should be few and fitting and well chosen, our penitence deep and real, our feeling true and sweet, our desires pure and high; and thus should we worship and bow down with reverence and godly fear. (L. D.Bevan, D. D.)
The true spirit of service
I once saw a beautiful device and motto painted on the walls of a Sabbath-school. It was an ox standing between an altar and a plough, with the words underneath, Ready for either. The altar represented suffering, and the plough serving; and the ox stood ready to be laid on the altar or to be yoked into the plough, equally ready for suffering or serving, as the owner wished. We should ask God to make us ready for either. Your life will be a poor withered thing unless you try to serve Christ. An old man reading the Bible came to the words, Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. He stopped and said with a smile, Yes, and ye are your own friends too. He is his own worst enemy who shuns the service of Christ.
With reverence and godly fear
Reverence
Robert Hall once remarked, when criticising the habit of a lady addicted to easy, familiar talk of the Divine Being: It is a great mistake to affect this kind of familiarity with the King of kings, and speak of Him as though He were a next door neighbour, from the pretence of love.
Godly fear:
Love and fear are the positive and negative poles of the same electric bar, and are both forces convertible into aids to holiness. Love rules in the home, and its sunshine is the life of all who dwell therein; but fear of marring the domestic peace, spoiling the domestic purity, or poisoning the domestic joy, is a temper that pervades and chastens, hallows and enlarges the household life. Our soldiers fight for the love of country, but how unspeakably they are goaded forward in the severity of battle by the dread of losing their countrys flag! In the finest types of married life, it is not till years of perfect communion and of character-assimilating love have made husband and wife a complete unity, and blent soul with soul, and will with will, that all fear is gone--if indeed it ever is. Certainly in the earlier stages it is a spur to that continual and anxious attention to aid, and not to hinder, in developing the one life, which finally becomes the gracious habit and beautiful form of the domestic ministry. (J. Clifford, D. D.)
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 25–29. See that ye refuse not. The whole Old…
25–29. See that ye refuse not. The whole Old Testament shows that those who refused to listen to God's message delivered by men did not escape. How can those escape then who refuse to listen to God's own Son?
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 Heb_12:29. Consuming fire.—Deu_4:24. Not intended as in any sense…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Heb_12:29. Consuming fire.—Deu_4:24. Not intended as in any sense a description of God, but “an anthropomorphic way of expressing His hatred of apostasy and idolatry. The reference is made in order to show why we ought to serve God with holy reverence and fear.”
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_12:25-29
The Voices of God.—God has always found voices for the communication of His will to men. They always carry responsibility to those who hear them—deepest responsibility to those who not only bear, but distinctly recognise the voice as the voice of God, and fully admit it to be His. And this is precisely the condition of the Christian Jews, to whom this epistle is addressed. They had received Jesus Christ as the voice of God, and doing so had brought them into the most serious responsibilities, which it was impossible for them to shirk. They admitted the Mosaic dispensation to be a voice of God; and so did the writer. But they admitted the voice that spoke in Jesus Christ to be a new and later voice—the last message that had come direct from God. It could not possibly honour God for them to refuse that later voice, and fall back upon their confidence in the earlier one. In order to reassure them, the writer contrasts the two voices, and argues for the deeper responsibilities attaching to the reception of the later one.
I. The voice of God on earth.—A voice that could be heard by human ears, that could be apprehended and written down, and that could put into rule and order all their human conduct, duty, and relations. They came under serious responsibility who received that voice for the guiding of their lives; for the voice was supported by severe and holy sanctions.
II. The voice of God from heaven.—A voice that no human ear could hear, but every human soul might hear if it would. That voice speaks the holy will to the man’s love, and the man first hears with his soul, and then writes the laws upon his heart. In figures the writer says what a searching thing the new voice is. It shakes—tests—everything that is shakeable. It confirms everything that is unshakeable. And the spiritual sanctions that support this voice must be in every way more searching and more awful.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Heb_12:25. Refusing God’s Voice.—The writer has finished his great contrast of Judaism and Christianity as typified by the mounts Sinai and Zion. But the scene at the former still haunts his imagination, and shapes this solemn warning. The multitude gathered there had shrunk from the Divine voice, and “entreated that it might not be spoken to them any more.” So may we do, standing before the better mount of a better revelation.
I. The solemn possibility of refusal.—The exhortation is addressed to professing Christians, who have in so far exercised faith as that, by it, they are “come to Mount Zion.” The true application is to Christian men. And it does not mean entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. Then, again, it is to be noted that the refusal here spoken about, and against which we, professing Christians, are thus solemnly warned, is not necessarily entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. For the Israelites, who made the original “refusal,” to which that which we are warned against is paralleled, recognised the voice that they would not listen to as being God’s voice, and just because it was His voice wanted to hear no more of it. And so, although we may permissibly extend the words before us to include more than is thereby originally meant, yet we must remember that the true and proper application of them is to the conduct of men who, recognising that God is speaking to them, do not want to hear anything more from Him. That is to say, this warning brings to us Christians the reminder that it is possible for us so to tamper with what we know to be the uttered will and expressed commandment of God as that our conduct is tantamount to saying, “Be silent, O Lord! and let me not hear Thee speak any more to me.” The reason for that refusal, which thus, in its deepest criminality and darkest sin, can only be made by men that recognise the voice to be God’s, lies just here, “they could not endure that which was commanded.” So, then, the bottom of the whole thing is this—that it is possible for Christian people so to cherish wills and purposes which they know to be in diametrical and flagrant contradiction to the will and purpose of God, that obstinately they prefer to stick by their own desires, and, if it may be, to stifle the voice of God. Then remember, too, that this refusal, which at bottom is the rising up of the creature’s will, tastes, inclinations, desires, against the manifest and recognised will of God, may, and as a matter of fact often does, go along with a great deal of lip-reverence and unconsciously hypocritical worship. These men from whom the writer is drawing his warning, in the wilderness said, “Don’t let Him speak! We are willing to obey all that He has to command; only let it come to us through human lips, and not in these tremendous syllables that awe our spirits.” They thought themselves to be perfectly willing to keep the commandments when they were given, and all that they wanted was some little accommodation to human weakness in the selection of the medium by which the word was brought. So we may be wrenching ourselves away from the voice of God, because we uncomfortably feel that it is against our resolves, and all the while may never know that we are unwilling to obey His commandments. The unconscious refusal is the formidable and the fatal one. It comes by reason, as I have said, at bottom, of the rising up of our own determinations and wishes against His commandments; but it is also due to other causes operating along with this. How can you hear God’s voice if you are letting your own yelping dog-kennel of passions speak so loudly as they do? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart that is all echoing with earthly wishes, loudly clamant for their gratification, with sensual desires passionately demanding their food to be flung to them? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart where the janglings of contending wishes and earthly inclinations are perpetually loud in their brawling? Will it be heard in a heart which has turned itself into a sounding-board for all the noises of the world and the voices of men? The voice of God is heard in silence, and not amid the noises of our own hearts. And they who, unconscious, perhaps, of what they are doing, open their ears wide to hear what they themselves, in the lower parts of their souls, prescribe for themselves in obedience to the precepts and maxims of men around them, are really refusing to hear the voice of God.
II. The sleepless vigilance necessary to counteract the tendency to refusal.—“See that ye refuse not.” A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptations around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle. “Blessed is the man that feareth always,” says the psalm. “The confident”—by which is meant the presumptuous, and not the trustful—“goeth on, and is punished.” The timid—by which is meant the self-distrustful—clings to God, because He knows his danger, and is safe. If we think that we are on the verge of falling, we are nearer standing than we ever are besides. To lay to heart the reality and the imminence and the gravity of the possibility that is disclosed here is an essential part of the means for preventing its becoming a reality. They who would say, “I cannot turn away because I have come,” have yet to learn the weakness of their own hearts, and the strength of the world that draws them away. There is no security for us except in the continual temper of rooted self-distrust, for there is no motive that will drive us to the continual confidence in which alone is security, but the persistent pressure of that sense that in ourselves we are nothing, and cannot but fall. I want no man to live in that selfish and anxious dread “which hath torment,” but I am sure that the shortest road to the brave security which is certain of never being defeated is the clear and continual consciousness that
“In ourselves we nothing can,
Full soon were we down-ridden;
But for us fights the proper Man,
Whom God Himself hath bidden.”
The dark underside of the triumphant confidence, which on its sunny side looks up to heaven and receives its light, is that self-distrust which says always to ourselves, “We have to take heed lest we refuse Him that speaketh.” If there is any need to dwell on specific methods by which this vigilance and continual self-distrust may work out for us our security, one would say—By carefully trying to reverse all these conditions which, as we have seen, lead us surely to the refusal. Silence the passions, the wishes, the voices of your own wills and tastes and inclinations and purposes. Bring them all into close touch with Him. Let there be no voice in your hearts till you know God’s will; and then with a leap let your hearts be eager to do it. Keep yourselves out of the babble of the world’s voices, and be accustomed to go by yourselves and let God speak. Do promptly, precisely, perfectly, all that you know He has said. This is the way to sharpen your ears for the more delicate intonations of His voice, and the closer manifestations of His will. If you do not, the voice will hush itself into silence. Thus bringing your lives habitually into contact with God’s word, and testing them all by it, you will not be in danger of “refusing Him that speaketh.”
III. The solemn motives by which this sleepless vigilance is enforced.—“If they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth”—or, perhaps, “who on earth refused Him that spake”—“much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.” The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience. The voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty, and of the clearer utterances which are granted to us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it.—Anon.
Heb_12:27. Things Passing and Things Permanent.—Outside in the world and within our own souls there are stable realities. It is well for us to see them and to have them rising up and becoming stronger under the shock of every earthquake. I. Illustrate this law of things. II. Show some of the benefits that result from it.
I. To illustrate this law.—
1. The Jewish dispensation was shaken, but the great realities enclosed in it remain.—The coming of Christ in the flesh was the signal for the overthrow of that venerable and magnificent system. The Jewish nation has ceased to be the peculiar people of God, but there is a spiritual Israel, all of them priests, to offer sacrifices continually, in lives holy and acceptable through Jesus Christ.
2. The forms of human society are shaken, but the principles that regulate it remain. Christianity intensifies social struggles by pouring new light upon human rights and duties, but great principles of right and freedom assert themselves amid all changes.
3. Outward systems of religion are shaken, but the great truths of the Church of Christ remain. Organisations with a particular human name, locality, and administration are shaken, but the spiritual children of God built on Jesus Christ, the great corner-stone, abide.
4. The temporal circumstances of men are shaken, but the great possessions of the soul remain. In disease, sickness, death, old age, faith in God abides.
5. The material frame of man is shaken, but the immortal spirit remains. There may be a growing life within corresponding to the growing death without.
6. The whole system of nature is shaken, but the new creation remains. When the curtain is gone, we may say: Isa_51:6.
II. Some of the benefits that result from this law.—
1. Finite minds can only learn by such processes of birth, growth, death, revival.
2. Painful changes are the consequence of sin, yet an aid to its cure.
3. We learn to cleave to the permanent things as our portion. Jesus is the abiding Friend.
4. It is Christ who shakes all things, but He stands unshaken. “To whom can we go,” etc.—J. Ker, D.D.
Heb_12:28. Religion.—What is religion? Sometimes we hear religion put in a kind of opposition to theology. “Let us have religion, but not theology.” But theology is the indispensable basis on which religion rests. The word “religion” is not used in the Old Testament. It is found in three places in the New.
1. Gal_1:13. In the original the word rendered “the Jews’ religion” is Judaism. St. Paul says he had formerly lived and been forward “in Judaism.” This word is like Christianity. And as we can say “the Christian religion” to mean the same thing as Christianity, so our translators used “the Jews’ religion” to mean the same thing as Judaism.
2. Act_26:5 : “Straitest sect of our religion.” The religion here referred to means the whole creed and worship of the Jews.
3. Jas_1:26-27 : “Seem to be religious … this man’s religion.… Pure religion and undefiled.” Here religion stands for devout habits of life. The religious man was one who had the form of godliness according to the fashion of his time. A man who assumes an exterior of religion, St. James says, professes that he desires to worship God devoutly. Let him know that the devout worship which is real, and which God approves, is best shown in charity and unworldliness. But the most original, simple, and universal sense of the word is fear of God. It denotes the awe which instinctively possesses the human mind in contemplating the supernatural. This awe or fear may be of any quality, ranging from the noblest and most exalting reverence down to the most superstitious cowardice. An irreligious mind is a mind without this awe. The religious sentiment is instinctive or natural. In no portion of humanity will you find it altogether wanting. It appears in various shapes. That which is most opposite to it is thoughtlessness or superficiality of mind. If human beings can be kept in a perpetual whirl of trivial occupations and interests, the very instinct of religion may be almost starved. But wherever an atmosphere is created for it by reflection, there a feeling of awe is sure to be inspired by the mysteries of the unseen world. In the early stages of civilisation it has always been in a great measure through contemplating the incidents and processes of nature that the fear of the unseen powers has been developed. Some races have been more affected by the dangerous and destructive occurrences of nature; others by the orderly and beneficent aspects of nature. The fact that religion has often manifested itself in hateful and cruel superstitions is an undeniable and important one, and has made this name “religion” odious in the eyes of some. But we are really not bound or concerned in any way to clear the name “religion” from these imputations. It is far better that we should honestly admit their truth; it is profitable to remember them. In itself religion is not to be called either bad or good—that is, it may be the one as well as the other. It may be either a terrible curse, or an exalting and purifying and sustaining sentiment. A secondary sense in which the word “religion” is often used is that of customs and ordinances of worship. These are the forms in which religion clothes itself, and to these accordingly the name of religion is naturally given. If any one attempts to describe a religion, he will find it impossible to keep such modes and forms of worship separate from the account of the being or beings to whom the worship is paid. So when a religion is spoken of, the creed and the worship are generally combined in one. The creed represents what is believed concerning the unseen world—concerning God, and man’s relation to God. The nature of the creed always affects the nature of the worship. People fear God in a manner corresponding to what they believe concerning Him. The creed, therefore, is sometimes what is chiefly meant when a religion is named. For example, when we speak of the Christian religion, we very generally mean the system of doctrines or the creed supposed to be held by Christians in common. But when it has come to mean a system of doctrines, the word “religion” has diverged considerably from its first and most proper sense. Religion is first the fear of God; secondly, by a natural extension, the mode of worship; thirdly, the belief on which the worship is founded. When we desire to be accurate, it is better not to use the word “religion” in this third sense. There are several words we may use instead, such as “creed,” “faith,” or “theology.” Religion rests on creed or theology. It is idle to talk of having religion without a theology. If you urge a man to be religious, he will want to know whom or what he is to regard with awe, to whom or what he is to consecrate himself. Illustrate from a Christian teacher requiring the faith of a heathen people. He must teach what is to be believed. (See the work of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra.) By bringing men to believe in Jesus Christ and in the Father, the preachers of Christ undoubtedly nourished in them an ever-increasing fear of God. It is impossible to believe in God, to think of Him, and not to fear Him. But the fear of the just and gracious Father emancipates, and does not enslave. The fear of the true God is allied with faith and hope and love. It gives courage, instead of melting it away.—J. Llewellyn Davies, M.A.
Heb_12:29. The Christian’s God is a Fire.—Emphasis lies on the word “our.” “Our God is a consuming fire.” The God of the Jews was—that must be granted. The God of the Christians is—that should be apprehended. The mildness of Christianity has made it often to be misrepresented. There is the intensest severity behind love. There is nothing so searching as love. The sternest person in the world is the good mother. The passage in Deuteronomy shows what the precise idea of the passage is—a jealous God. Jealousy is that feeling we have when one whom we have a right to think loves us turns from us to set his love on another. That human feeling represents the Divine feeling towards apostates. Fire is a fitting figure to represent the activity of the Christian’s God, because fire consumes the consumable, and purifies the unconsumable. God works in the Christian to secure the end which is secured when fire acts on metals—He delivers the Christian from everything that would hinder his being and becoming his best possible.
God a Consuming Fire.—“Fire” as a symbol of the Divine nature is a most happy and expressive symbol. For if fire is the first thing we are taught to fear, do we not early learn to love it too? Do we not gladly gather round the hearth, and spread our hands to its fostering warmth? Is not “the hearth” a familiar synonym for “the home”? Is not “the home” the name for all that we hold most precious and dear? Fire destroys; but it destroys the dead wood to comfort the living man. It only burns us when we handle it wrongly or foolishly. Fire burns and destroys; nevertheless, it is so much our friend, human civilisation and comfort and progress depend so utterly upon it, that the wise Greeks had a fable of one who was man, and yet more than man, who, in the greatness of his love for the human race, stole fire from the gods, and was content to endure an immortal agony that he might draw down this sovereign good from heaven to earth. Fire is a destructive agent, but it is also a creative, vivifying, conservative agent. Through the broad reaches of geological times fire gave form to the very earth on which we dwell. Its daily task, its common work, is not destructive, but most serviceable and benignant. So when we find God compared to a fire, we have to remember
(1) that though fire consumes, it consumes that which is dead in order to feed and nourish the living;
(2) that though fire burns and destroys, it also gives life, conserves life, supports life; and
(3) that while destruction is but the occasional and accidental effect of fire, its real and constant task is to quicken and cherish and bless. Thus interpreted, fire becomes a very welcome symbol of the character of God. But can we fairly welcome it, both as consuming and as destroying fire? The love of God is no weak, puling sentiment, but a masculine, nay, a Divine affection, which, for their good, can bear to inflict pain, and even the worst extremities of pain, on those whom it embraces. If when the fire of Divine love kindles upon our sins and sinful habits, in order that we may become pure, we will not let them go, what can happen but that we shall be burned, as well as our sins, until we can no longer retain them? On the other hand, if, when in His holy love God calls us to pass through fiery trials, we willingly cast away from us the besetting sins which He has devoted to destruction, from which we ourselves have often prayed to be redeemed, one like unto the Son of God will walk the furnace with us (for was not even He made perfect by the things which He suffered?), and we shall pass out of it, not only unharmed, but transformed into His likeness. We have before us the leading passages of Holy Writ in which God is compared to a devouring or consuming fire. Read in their connections, they do not convey harsh or repugnant suggestions. If we can say of fire, that it is not an implacable enemy, but a constant and benignant friend; that it never becomes our enemy till we abuse it; that we use it and love it far more than we fear it; that it consumes that which is dead to warm and serve the living; that it holds all things in being and in order; that, if it destroys, it also quickens, nourishes, and preserves; that to destroy is only its occasional and accidental work, while to vivify and preserve and nourish is its common task,—if we can say all this of fire, can we not also say it of God, and of the love of God as revealed in Holy Scripture? Is not He our gracious Friend till we compel Him to become our enemy? Is not our love toward Him, should it not be, more than our fear? Does not He seek to consume our dead works and evil lusts only that He may feed and liberate and strengthen that in us which truly lives? If He sometimes destroys, does He not commonly quicken and nourish and conserve? Is not destruction only His strange occasional work, while His constant task from day to day is to vivify and cherish? Is not His anger but for a moment, while His mercy endureth for ever? What can be more full of comfort and hope for us than to learn that at the centre of the universe there burns a sacred fire of Divine love, to which all intolerable but unconquerable evils will be as stubble?—S. Cox, D.D.
Our God a Consuming Fire.—The emphasis in this sentence rests upon the word “our.” There can be no doubt at all that the God of the Jews was a “consuming fire.” There need be no question at all concerning the further fact, that the God of the Christians is also a “consuming fire.” Our God, the God revealed and manifested in Jesus Christ. But this is not the familiar thought of the Christian’s God. God is love. Fatherliness, mildness, pity, gentleness, are the familiar characteristics of the Christian’s God. And there is some grave danger of the exaggeration of onesidedness. That is not all our God. Behind it lie all the solemnities of Divine righteousness, august majesty, supreme claims, searching inspections, and the holiest jealousy. The Christian’s God is to be served with thankful trust, loving obedience, and sunniest joy; but He is also to be served with reverence and godly fear; for He is still—nay, He is more truly than He ever was—“a consuming fire.” That seems to be the point of impression of the text. The mildness of Christianity makes it liable to misunderstanding. And it needs to be made quite plain, that there is nothing so searching, so severe, so inexorable, as love. There is an awful strength in gentleness; there is a masterful persuasion in pity; there are inexorable demands in love. We may remember the times when our father beat us with the cane for our wicked ways, but we recall them with a smile, for well we know there was too much passion in them for them to have been effective vindications of righteousness. But among our very holiest memories are the times when we grieved our mother. She did not punish; she did not say much; but the distress of her wounded love smote us to the quick, humbled us into the dust; it was harder far to bear than those fatherly strokes; it was a “consuming fire” of love, and we have never lost the ministry of that “fire” of mother-love, though long years have passed since she joined the assembly of the saints. The writer of this epistle is still full of his contrasts of the two dispensations. In urging the Jewish Christians to maintain their loyalty and faithfulness to the Christian profession, he has endeavoured to touch Jewish sentiment, and inspire to noble things, by reading over the long roll of heroes, who, by faith, mastered a thousand difficulties, and held fast their integrity. He has carefully explained the deeper meanings of those afflictions, anxieties, and persecutions through which they were passing. They were the strengthening and corrective discipline of Divine chastisement. And in a most effective rhetorical contrast he has pictured for them the genius and tone of the two dispensations. The older having its locus in storm-encircled mountain-heights, from which the fires flashed, over which the darkness brooded, and around which the alarming thunder-voices rolled. The new having its locus in a spiritual sphere; in a mount that had no earth-foundations; in a city which was built by God, ministered by angels, and dwelt in by sainted souls. No fires flash in that spiritual sphere; no thunder-voices waken terror in the soul. All is peace and love and service. But his contrast might leave a wrong impression. They might presume on the mildness of the new dispensation, and relax into indifference. He would check that possibility by this strong assertion, “Our God [too] is a consuming fire.” His service too must be rendered “with reverence and godly fear.” We can, however, see a little more precisely what was in his mind; for his words are a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy (Deu_4:24), and an incomplete quotation. To complete it is to provide the explanation of the term “consuming fire.” The older Scripture reads, “For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” The jealousy of God is expressed in this fire figure. We need search no further than this for its meaning. The text reads thus, “Our God, even the Christian’s God, is a jealous God.” But that is a term which we do not like to use for God. With us it has associations which seem to make it quite unsuitable. And yet the Bible has frequent allusions to the Divine jealousy, and it may be possible to find primary meanings in the term, and to affix careful limitations to it, so that we may recognise its appropriateness as, even in these times, applied to the Christian’s God. It does seem strange, but it may even be right, to apply the term to Christ, to “God manifest in the flesh”; for “our God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” He can burn with the indignation of slighted, wounded love; and that is holy jealousy. Jealousy is that feeling which we have when one whom we love, and who seemed to love us, turns away from us to set his love upon another. Then we are said to burn with jealousy. It is when we have a right to the love which is taken from us, and given to another, that our jealousy becomes so intense and is so righteous. In this way the word can be applied to our God. He is jealous of His honour and His rights when the love that belongs to Him is given to another. He could properly be jealous of His ancient people, who were bound to Him by every dearest tie, when they forsook Him, and set their love on idol-gods—“on every high hill, and under every green tree wandering, playing the harlot”; and against them His jealousy most righteously burned as doth an oven. It is important to notice this distinction—jealousy is natural and proper and right when we have exclusive property in another’s love. The husband ought to be jealous if his wife is unfaithful; a wife ought to be jealous if her husband is unfaithful; a king ought to be jealous if his subjects are disloyal, and set their love on another. It is only when we really have no exclusive property in the love, but try to make out that we have, that our jealousy is wrong and unworthy. It is easy then to see how the term can be properly applied to God, seeing He has absolute, sovereign, and unquestionable rights in the love of His creatures. They ought to love Him with all their heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. And He ought to be jealous and indignant when they turn away from Him, and set their love on another. He may well be to them as a consuming fire. It was precisely in relation to idolatry that God was called jealous in the Old Testament. “Thou shalt have none other gods before Me … for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” And it is to idolatry in some of its later phases that the term is applied in the New Testament. Apostasy is modern idolatry; and towards it God is a consuming fire. But here is a somewhat strange thing, one which needs consideration, and suggests some searching applications. Those who were addressed in this epistle were not in danger of leaving Jehovah to worship and serve idols. They were in danger of leaving the Christian God to take up with the Jewish God, and we are to understand that this aroused the Divine jealousy, and towards this God was a consuming fire. And yet it was the same God. Yes, it was. But it is the grief of love to be loved only for what we were, not for what we are—to be loved for what we were thought to be in the first hours of passionate affection, not for what we are in the full maturity and beauty wrought through the culture and experience of years. A simple illustration will make this quite clear. You had childish views and thoughts of God: there was as much fear as there was wonder in them; but they were most imperfect, and altogether unworthy. He was really no more than a magnified benevolent man. If you now persisted in giving up all those higher, worthier, more spiritual apprehensions of God, which the thousand-fold experiences of your life, and the spiritually enlightened teachings of God’s word, have brought you; if you persisted in going back upon those old child-notions, would you not grieve Him, would you not make Him jealous of your loving that old God better than Himself? Must He not then be to you a consuming fire? But that is precisely what some of those Jewish Christians were doing. And that is precisely what some of you are doing. You are afraid of the God revealed to your manhood, and falling back upon the God of your babyhood. You are leaving the Father of Jesus for the El, the power-God of your childhood. You are wanting all those picture-teachings, simplicities, first principles, which properly belong to a child’s God; and cannot rise into the higher, spiritual, divine apprehensions of God as He is in Christ, which are the holy satisfactions of cultured manhood. And God is jealous of His old self, because it thus takes your love away from Him as He is, and wants to be now to you. The idolatry of the Jewish Christians was not Baal or Moloch, or even Jupiter or Venus. It was an old image of Jehovah which was good enough in its day; but its day had long since passed. They wanted to worship that, to keep on worshipping that. And to them God was a consuming fire, even a jealous God. But we seldom think that we are trying God just as they did. He gives us fuller revelations of Himself. We prefer the old ones. He gives us larger apprehensions of truth. We prefer the little ones. He lifts us into the pure atmosphere of the spiritual. We get down again as soon as we can into the thick, murky atmosphere of the material. And so to-day we make Him jealous, we compel Him to become to us a consuming fire. For though our fullest love is due to Him as He is, we persist in taking it away from Him, and giving it to something that He was. We make an idol of our childhood’s God, and worship Him rather than the Father of Jesus.
I. God always has been a consuming fire, jealous of His supreme claims to love for what He is.—Almost the first lesson humanity had to learn was God’s jealousy of His outraged honour. His consuming fire was upon our first parents, who had given up the obedience of love for self-pleasing; and the fire found its symbol in the flaming sword of the cherubim, which guarded the lost Paradise.
1. The God of the patriarch was a consuming fire, even a jealous God; for the horror of great darkness which fell on Abraham, when the smoking furnace and lamp of fire passed between the severed victims, was meant to assure him how exclusive were the claims of the Covenant-maker.
2. The God of Moses was a “consuming fire, even a jealous God”; for the bush that burned, and was not consumed, was the sublime assertion of Jehovah’s exclusive rights in the people of Israel—rights to burn them into national form in the fires of sternest discipline.
3. The God of the people of Israel was a consuming fire, even a jealous God; for His symbolic presence was a cloud which was silver-tinted in the light of day, but flashed and glowed as with the burning of an inner fire in the dark night-sky. And when the young priests forsook Jehovah for the idols of their own self-wills, forth flashed the fires of the Divine jealousy, for their sudden and awful destruction.
4. And the God of the prophets was “a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” The people had forsaken Jehovah, and in a spirit of time-serving had set their love on Phœnician Baal and Astarte. And the Divine jealousy burned. One day on Carmel the assembled nation on the sides of the hill watched in breathless suspense a solitary Jehovah altar, and a solitary prophet, who stood calm and strong beside it. And the fire of God fell, the jealousy of God burned, and that day four hundred men, who had taken from Jehovah the love that was His sole and sovereign right, were consumed in the fire of the Divine indignation, slain on Kishon’s side, to be swept by the coming rain-floods out to the ocean’s nameless grave. There, all down the story of the ages lie the ever-varying illustrations of the truth that God is a jealous God. His glory He will never give to another. The love which is His sole right He will never share with another. Against all phases and types of idolatry His indignation ever burns as does an oven.
II. God is to-day a consuming fire, even a jealous God.—Jealous of His sole and sovereign claims, in Christ Jesus, upon our love. Our God, the Christian’s God, is “a consuming fire.” If it be so, then there must be some forms of idolatry by which nowadays we can be enticed. The apostle John knew that there were such in his day, for he wrote, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” If we are Christians, then our whole soul’s love is given to God in Christ, the Father-God of the ever-acceptable Son, and that love carries to God the full consecration of ourselves, of our life. In that “setting of our love upon Him” God finds His holy satisfactions and delights. Then we know what grieves Him, wounds Him to the very heart, rouses the holy jealousy, and compels Him to be to us a consuming fire. It is our taking that love which is His, which is His sole and sovereign right, and giving it to some one else, to something else, to idol self. Can it be that we ever do this? Can it be that God knows we are really idolaters? Can it be that our heart is divided? Have we in actual fact our own private idols, and do they take our real heart-love and worship? The missionary Paton felt convinced that the apparent religion of the aborigines of Australia was not their real religion, and set himself to discover what it was. At last he found they had in secret smooth stones, kept hidden in bags, and in these their souls trusted. It may be so with us. We bow at the Christian altar, and keep idols of our own at home. Idols we make of persons; idols we make of opinions; idols we make of pleasures. But our text has suggested a kind of idol which we may never have thought of before. The Jewish Christians were in danger of making an idol of the old God they served before they became Christians. And God is represented as being jealous of their leaving His present self to worship and serve His old self. Can it be possible that we are grieving God thus? He has lifted us up, in Christ Jesus, to high, spiritual, noble thoughts and apprehensions of Himself, and to a high and holy circle of truths gathering round His spiritual Fatherhood. Alas! it seems too high for us, and we leave Him to go back upon the bare, poor idea of God which belonged to our childish immaturity, and to the unspiritual days before our regeneration. We make idols of the bald, picture settings of doctrinal truths which suited our religious childhood. It is as if the Christian Jews persisted in becoming formal Mosaic Jews again. It is one form of the idolatry into which Christians fall in our days; and God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12
Heb_12:25. Refusing Advice.—I once happened to be on a visit to a great castle situate at the top of a hill. There was a steep cliff, at the bottom of which was a rapid river. Late one night there was a woman anxious to get home from that castle in the midst of a thunder-storm. The night was blackness itself; the woman was asked to stop till the storm was over, but she declined; next they begged her to take a lantern, that she might be able to keep upon the road from the castle to her home. She said she did not require a lantern, but could do very well without one. She went. Perhaps she was frightened by the storm—I know not the cause—but in the midst of the darkness she wandered from the path and fell over the cliff. The next day that swollen river washed to the shore the poor lifeless body of this foolish woman! How many foolish ones are there who, when the light is offered them, only say, “I am not afraid; I fear not my end I” and how many have perished because they have refused the light of God’s truth, which would have guided them on the road to heaven!—Bishop Villiers.
Heb_12:29. Consuming Fire.—A traveller writes, “I saw a flaming globe of fire, magnificent indeed, but too terrible for the eye to rest upon, if its beams had been naked and exposed; but it was suspended in a vase of crystal, so transparent, that while it softened the intensity of its rays, it shrouded nothing of its beauty. On the contrary, that which before would have been a mass of undistinguishable light, now emitted through the vase many beautiful and various coloured rays, which riveted the beholder with wonder and astonishment.” Such is God manifested in Christ and out of Christ, He meets the affrighted sinner’s eye as “a consuming fire.” Like fiery flames breaking forth to consume the adversary, He is too terrible for the apprehension. But now He reveals Himself in Christ; His terrible majesty no longer affrights us. His consuming fire, seen in Christ, is like the mild rays of the morning sun in spring, going forth to bless the earth with its cheerful and invigorating beams.—H. G. Salter.
Heb_12:27. Removing Shakeable Things.—Let us be glad when “the things which can be shaken are removed,” like mean huts built against the wall of some cathedral, masking and marring the completeness of its beauty; “that the things which cannot be shaken may remain,” and all the clustered shafts, and deep-arched recesses, and sweet tracery, may stand forth freed from the excrescences which hid them.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Losing Anchor-hold.—I was looking out not long ago upon a very stormy sea. The winds howled, the troubled waves were dashing themselves into spray upon the rocks. Many vessels were in the bay; they could not move for the hurricane, but could only trust to some anchor in the sands, and were tossed wildly up and down. In the night the anchors of two of them slipped their hold, and they were hurled helplessly in total wreck upon the shore. There was no beauty or glory in those poor ships; it is the beauty and glory of a ship when her helm is firmly grasped, and the obedient wind swells her white sails, and the cleft wave bears her onwards towards her haven—“a plume and a power.” And so it is with man.—Farrar.
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Hebrews
REFUSING GOD’S VOICE
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Heb 12:25
THE writer has finished his great contrast of Judaism and Christianity as typified by the mounts Sinai and Zion. But the scene at the former still haunts his imagination and shapes this solemn warning. The multitude gathered there had shrunk from the divine voice, and ‘entreated that it might not be spoken to them any more.’ So may we do, standing before the better mount of a better revelation. The parallel between the two congregations at the two mountains is still more obvious if we remark that the word translated in my text ‘refuse’ is the same as has just been employed in a previous verse, describing the conduct of the Israelites, where it is rendered ‘entreated.’ It may seem strange that after so joyous and triumphant an enumeration of the glorious persons and things with whom we are brought into contact by faith, there should come the jarring note of solemn warning which seems to bring back the terrors of the ancient law. But, alas I the glories and blessedness into which faith introduces us are no guarantees against its decay; and they who are ‘come unto Mount Zion and the city of the living God,’ may turn their backs upon all the splendour, and wander away into the gaunt desert.
I. So we have here, first of all, the solemn possibility of refusal.
Now, to gain the whole force and solemnity of this .exhortation, it is very needful to remember that it is addressed to professing Christians, who have in so far exercised real faith, as that by it ‘they are come to Mount Zion, and to the city o the living God.’ We are to keep that clear, or we lose the whole force and meaning of this exhortation before us, which is addressed distinctly, emphatically, and, in its true application, exclusively to Christian men - ‘See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.’
Then, again, it is to be noted that the refusal here spoken about, and against which we professing Christians are thus solemnly warned, is not necessarily entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. For the Israelites, who made the original ‘refusal,’ to which that against which we are warned is paralleled, recognised the voice that they would not listen to as being God’s voice; and just because it was His voice, wanted to hear no more of it. And so, although we may permissibly extend the words before us to include more than is thereby originally meant, yet we must remember that the true and proper application of them is to the conduct of men who, recognising that God is speaking to them, do not want to hear anything more from Him. That is to say, this warning brings to us Christians the reminder that it is possible for us so to tamper with what we know to be the uttered will and expressed commandment of God, as that our conduct is tantamount to saying, ‘Be silent, O Lord! and let me not hear Thee speak any more to me.’ The reason for that refusal, which thus, in its deepest criminality and darkest sin, can only be made by men that recognise the voice to be God’s, lies just here, ‘they could not endure that which was commanded.’ So, then, the sum of the whole thing is this, that it is possible for Christian people so to cherish wills and purposes which they know to be in diametrical and flagrant contradiction to the win and purpose of God, that obstinately they prefer to stick by their own desires, and, if it may be, to stifle the voice of God.
Then remember, too, that this refusal, which is reality is the rising up of the creature’s will, tastes, inclinations, desires, against the manifest and recognised will of God, may, and as a matter of fact often does, go along with a great deal of lip reverence and unconsciously hypocritical worship. These men, from whom the writer is drawing his warning in the wilderness there, said, ‘Do not let Him speak! We are willing to obey all that He has to command; only let it come to us through human lips, and not in these tremendous syllables that awe our spirits.’ They thought themselves to be perfectly willing to keep the commandments when they were given, and all that they wanted was some little accommodation to human weakness in the selection of the medium by which the word was brought. So we may be wrenching ourselves away from the voice of God, because we uncomfortably feel that it is against our resolves, and all the while may never know that we are unwilling to obey His commandments. The unconscious refusal is the formidable and the fatal One.
It comes by reason, as I have said, fundamentally of the rising up of our own determinations and wishes against His commandments; but it is also due to other causes operating along with this. How can you hear God’s voice if you are letting your own yelping dog-kennel of passions speak so loudly as they do? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart that is all echoing with earthly wishes, loudly clamant for their gratification, or with sensual desires passionately demanding their food to be flung to them? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart where the janglings of contending wishes and earthly inclinations are perpetually loud in their brawling? Will it be heard in a heart which has turned itself into a sounding-board for all the noises of the world and the voices of men? The voice of God is heard in silence, and not amidst the Babel of our own hearts. And they who, unconsciously, perhaps, of what they are doing, open their ears wide to hear what they themselves in the lower parts of their souls prescribe, or bow themselves in obedience to the precepts and maxims of men-round them, are really refusing to hear the voice of God.
It is not to be forgotten, howsoever, that whilst thus the true and proper application of these words is to Christian men, and the way by which we refuse to listen to that awful utterance is by withdrawing our lives from the control of His will, and dragging away our contemplations from meditation upon His word, yet there is a further form in which men may refuse that voice, which eminently threatened the persons to whom this warning was first directed. All through this letter we see that the writer is in fear that his correspondents should fall away into intellectual and complete rejection of Christianity. And the reason was mainly this, that the fall of the ancient and ramrod system of the old covenant might lead them to distrust all revelation from God, and to east aside the gospel message. So the exhortation of my text assumes a special closeness of application to us whose lot has been east in revolutionary times, as was theirs, and who have, in our measure, something of that same experience to go through which made the sharp trial of these Hebrew Christians. To them, solid and permanent as they had fancied them, ancient and God-appointed realities and ordinances were melting away; and it was natural that they should ask themselves, ‘Is there anything that will not melt, on which we can rest?’ And to us in this day much of the same sort of discipline is appointed; and we, too, have to see, both in the religious and in the social world, much evidently waxing old and ready to vanish away which our fathers thought to be permanent. And the question for us is, Is there anything that we can cling to? Yes! to the ‘voice that speaks from heaven’ in Jesus Christ. As long as that is sounding in our ears we can calmly look out on the evanescence of the evanescent, and confidently rely on the permanence of the permanent. And so, brother, though this, that, and the other of the externals of Christianity, in polity, in form, in mode, may he passing away, be sure of this, the solid core abides; and that core lies in the first word of this letter. ‘God... hath spoken unto us in His Son.’ See that no experience of mutation leads you to falter in your confidence in that voice, and ‘see that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.’
II. Again, note the sleepless vigilance necessary to counteract the tendency to refusal.
‘See that ye refuse not.’ A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptations around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle.
‘Blessed is the man that feareth always,’ says the psalm. ‘The confident’ - by which is meant the presumptuous, and not the trustful - ‘goeth on and is punished.’ The timid - by which I mean the self-distrustful - clings to God, because he knows his danger, and is safe. If we think that we are on the verge of falling, we are nearer standing than we ever are besides. To lay to heart the reality and the imminence and the gravity of the possibility that is disclosed here is an essential part of the means for preventing its becoming a reality. They who would say ‘I cannot turn away because I have come,’ have yet to learn the weakness of their own hearts and the strength of the world that draws them away. There is no security for us except in the continual temper of rooted self-distrust, for there is no motive that will drive us to the continual confidence in which alone is security but the persistent pressure of that sense that in ourselves we are nothing, and cannot but fall. I want no man to live in that selfish and anxious dread ‘which hath torment,’ but I am sure that the shortest road to the brave security which is certain of never being defeated is the clear and continual consciousness that ‘In ourselves we nothing can, Full soon were we down-ridden; But for us fights the proper Man, Whom God Himself hath bidden.’
The dark underside of the triumphant confidence, which on its sunny side looks up to heaven and receives its light, is that self-distrust which says always to ourselves, ‘We have to take heed lest we refuse Him that speaketh.’
If there is any need to dwell upon specific methods by which this vigilance and continuous self-distrust may work out for us our security, one would say - by careful trying to reverse all these conditions which, as we have seen, lead us surely to the refusal. Silence the passions, the wishes, the voices of your own wills and tastes and inclinations and purposes. Bring them all into close touch with Him. Let there be no voice in your hearts till you know God’s will; and then with a leap let your hearts be eager to do it. Keep yourselves out of the babble of the world’s voices; and be accustomed to go by yourselves and let God speak. Nature seems to be silent to the busy traveller who never gets away from the thumping of the piston of the engine and the rattle of the wheels of the train.
Let him go and sit down by himself on the mountain top, and the silence becomes all vocal and full of noises. Go into the lone place of silent contemplation, and so get near God, and you will hear His voice. But you will not hear it unless you still the beating of your own heart. Even in such busy lives as most of us have to live it is possible to secure some space for such solitary communion and meditation if we seriously feel that we must, and are ready to cut off needless distractions. He who thus has the habit of going alone with God will be able to hear His voice piercing through the importunate noises of earth, which drown it for others. Do promptly, precisely, perfectly, all that you know He has said. That is the way to sharpen your ears for the more delicate intonations of His voice, and the closer manifestations of His will. If you do not, the voice will hush itself into silence. Thus bringing your lives habitually into contact with God’s word, and testing them all by it, you will not be in danger of ‘refusing Him that speaketh.’
III. Lastly, note the solemn motives by which this sleepless vigilance is enforced.
‘If they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth’ - or, perhaps, ‘who on earth refused Him that spake’ - ‘much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.’ The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience. The voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty, and of the dearer utterances which are granted to us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it.
Mark how the words of my text deepen and darken in their significance in the latter portion. In the first we had simply ‘refusal,’ or the desire not to hear the voice, and in the latter portion that has solidified and deepened itself into ‘turning away from Him.’ That is to say, when we once begin, as many professing Christians have begun, to be intolerant of God’s voice meddling with their lives, we are upon an inclined plane, which, with a sharp pitch and a very short descent, carries us down to the darker condition of ‘turning away from Him.’ The man who stops his ears will very soon turn his back and be in flight, so far as he can, from the voice. Do not tamper with God’s utterances. If you do, you have begun a course that ends in alienation from Him.
Then mark, again, the evils which fell upon these people who turned away from Him that speaketh on earth were their long wanderings in the wilderness, and their exclusion from the Land of Promise, and final deaths in the desert, where their bleaching bones lay white in the sunshine. And if you and I, dear friends, by continuous and increasing deafness to our Father’s voice, have turned away from Him, then all that assemblage of flashing glories and majestic persons and of reconciling blood to which we come by faith, will melt away, ‘and leave not a wrack behind.’ We shall be like men who, in a dream, have thought themselves in a king’s palace, surrounded by beauty and treasures, and awaken with a start and a shiver to find themselves alone in the desert. It will be loss enough if the fair city which hath foundations, and the palace-home of the king on the mountain, and the joyful assemblage of the angels, and the Church of the firstborn, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and the blood of sprinkling, all pass away from our vision, and instead of them there is nothing left but this mean, vulgar, fleeting world. They will pass if you do not listen to God, and that is why so many of you have so little conscious contact with the unseen and glorious realities to which faith gives access.
But then there are dark and real penalties to come in another life which the writer dimly shows to us. It is no part of my business to enlarge upon these solemn warnings. An inspired man may do it. I do not think that it is reverent for me to do it much. But at the same time, let me remind you that terror is a legitimate weapon to which to appeal, and unwelcome and unfashionable as its use is nowadays, it is one of the weapons in the armoury of the true preacher of God’s Word. I believe we Christian ministers would do more if we were less chary of speaking out ‘the terror of the Lord.’ And though I shrink from anything like vulgar and rhetorical and sensational appeals to that side of divine revelation, and to what answers to it in us, I consider that I should be a traitor to the truth if I did not declare the fact that such appeals are legitimate, and that such terror is a part of the divine revelation.
So, dear friends, though I dare not dwell upon these, I dare not burke them. I remind you - and I do no more - of the tone that runs through all this letter, of which you have such instances as these, ‘If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression received its just recompense of reward, how shall We escape if we neglect so great salvation?’ and ‘Of how much sorer punishment, think you, shall they be thought worthy who have counted the blood of the Covenant wherewith they were sanctified a common thing?’ ‘See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh,’ for the clearer, the tenderer, the more stringent the beseechings of the love and the warnings of Christ’s voice, the more solemn the consequences if we stop our ears to it. Better to hear it now, when it warns and pleads and beseeches and comforts and hallows and quickens, than to hear it first when it rends the tombs and shakes the earth, and summons all to judgment, and condemns some to the outer darkness to which they had first condemned themselves
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The need of reverence and godly fear:
The need of reverence and godly fear:
v. 25. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven,
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v. 26. whose voice then shook the earth; but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
v. 27. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
v. 28. Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear;
v. 29. for our God is a consuming fire.
On the basis of the truths brought out in the last paragraph, of the fact that the Gospel with the fullness of God’s mercy in Christ is now preached to the world and has been given to the believers, the author launches into a final appeal: See to it that you do not try to turn from Him that speaks; for if those people did not escape who turned from Him that was uttering His oracles on earth, much less shall we, if we repudiate Him who speaks from heaven. This is a most solemn admonition, bidding the Christians by all means to heed the voice of the Lord, who is now speaking to us through His Son through the Gospel. For if in the Old Testament they that refused to hear the Word of the Lord which He spoke here on earth, the Word of the Law, did not escape punishment, then there will be no chance whatever for the person who now, when the riches of God’s mercy are offered without stint and without condition, should refuse to hear His kind invitation. It cannot be emphasized too often or too strongly that the one sin which really condemns to everlasting damnation at the present time is the sin of unbelief, which turns from the Lord’s outstretched hand of mercy and refuses the gift of His love.
Every believer should remember: Then His voice shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. When the Lord gave His Law from Mount Sinai, the ground was shaken by mighty earthquakes, Exo 19:18. But that was as nothing beside another manifestation of His power which He has promised for the time of the New Testament, saying that He would shake heaven and, earth once more, Hag 2:7. See Isa 64:1-3; Mic 7:15; Hag 2:22-23. For, as the author says: That word "once more" indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken as of things that have been made, in order that those things which are not shaken may remain. Only once more does God intend to reveal Himself before the world in the splendor of His almighty majesty, on the last day of the world. On that day, when God will shake the foundations of earth and heaven, all created things will be removed, will pass away in the form which they had for this present world. Then will only that which is not shaken, namely, the kingdom of Christ, the inheritance of the Christians, abide in all eternity, 1Pe 1:4; Luk 1:33; Isa 65:17-19; 2Pe 3:13; Rev 21:1-5.
This being true, that the perishable things of this world must pass away: Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by means of which we may acceptably serve God, with reverence and fear; for indeed our God is a consuming fire. Ours is an immovable kingdom, the kingdom of His grace and glory; in it we shall reign with Him as kings, Rev 1:6. By virtue of our membership in this glorious communion, the festival assembly of all angels and saints, we are assured of the grace, of the merciful love of God in Christ Jesus. In possession of this grace we can serve God in the proper manner, as it is well-pleasing to Him, with devout reverence and fear, Col 1:12. And let no man forget that we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for our God is a God whose wrath is a consuming fire, Deu 4:24, upon all those that reject His mercy and repudiate the remission of sins in Christ Jesus. Thus the author lays upon all believers the greatest obligation to live a godly life and not to let the saving faith in Jesus leave their hearts.
Summary
The sacred writer appeals to all Christians to heed the example of the Old Testament believers and of Christ and to be strengthened in holiness by the chastisement of God; he warns against apostasy, referring to the example of Esau and showing the greater excellency of the covenant of grace as compared with the covenant of fear.
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 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Having contrasted the Israelites' experience at Mount Sinai with the believers' experience after Christ died, the writer reminds believers that they have the same God who warns them today. This is the fifth main warning given to believers.
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General Information:
This quotation is from the prophet Haggai in the Old Testament. The word "you" continues to refer to believers. The word "we" continues to refer to the writer and the readers who are believers. (See: Forms of You and Inclusive "We")
you do not refuse the one who is speaking
This can be stated in positive form. AT: "you pay attention to the one who is speaking" (See: Double Negatives)
if they did not escape
The implicit information can be stated explicitly. AT: "if the people of Israel did not escape judgment" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
the one who warned them on earth
Possible meanings are 1) "Moses, who warned them here on earth" or 2) "God, who warned them at Mount Sinai"
if we turn away from the one who is warning
Disobeying God is spoken of as if a person were changing direction and walking away from him. AT: "if we disobey the one who is warning" (See: Metaphor)
his voice shook the earth
"when God spoke, the sound of his voice caused the earth to shake"
shook ... shake
Use the word for what an earthquake does in moving the ground. This refers back to Hebrews 12:18-21 and what happened when the people saw the mountain where Moses received the law from God.
translationWords
earth
turn
heaven
voice
promise
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 12:25-29 As the final warning in the book (see…
12:25-29 As the final warning in the book (see 2:1-4; 4:12-13; 6:4-8; 10:26-31), this passage plays off the image of God speaking in 12:18-24.
12:25 God is the One who is speaking his revealed word in his Son, Jesus (1:1-3). The author argues from lesser to greater (see study note on 9:14): Moses’ warning the people under the old covenant is the lesser situation, and God’s warning us from heaven is the greater situation. If people did not escape judgment when they were warned by Moses, those who reject the message of the Son of God will certainly not escape punishment.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.