Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri
### Hebrews 12:14-29

Well, it’s a glorious Lord’s Day once more. First Sunday in Advent, as is evident by the candle that it’s still going good. Praise God. I was thinking as Roseanne played the piano this morning, families gathered back together for the holidays and it’s a delight to see the young people that have gathered back to RCC having grown up here, gone away for schooling and stuff and returned to assist us with our work here. I get to see Roseanne and Isaac, you know, every day during the week and it’s such an encouragement as are the young men and women at Kings Academy.

This is a wonderful time of joy and delight, the season of Advent. In the providence of God, we’ve arrived at Hebrews 12:14-29. So that’s the sermon text for today. Hebrews 12:14-29. If you want, you can follow along in the handouts or open your scriptures or simply open your ears and listen to the word of God as it is spoken. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 12, beginning at verse 14.

Pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled, lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.

For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. For they could not endure what was commanded. And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.

And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

See that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if they did not escape, who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. But now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this yet once more indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. Let us pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for the wondrous gift of your Holy Spirit who indwells us individually and corporately. We pray that your spirit might speak to us the words of Jesus today, not just in the hearing of our ears, but in the transformation of our hearts. Lord God, give us holiness. Give us, Lord God, peace. Give us reverence. Give us a godly fear. Thank you for our Savior who was heard and who now speaks to us, who has affected salvation for his people. We pray that we may be transformed by his advent, his drawing near to us in worship today and our drawing near to him. Transform us Lord God through the wonder of his grace. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I was listening to David Hammerstrom who gave me, I think he gave several of us, CDs—one with Christmas music, the other with psalms. And Christine and I had it on last night as we sat by the fire and she read a book and I was reading more notes for the sermon, going over my Saturday night review that I always do. And as I was meditating on this text, I heard these wondrous strains of angelic voices singing these wonderful Christmas songs that, you know, they’re so compelling. They’re so meaningful. They are so glorious. So many of these songs that we sing, particularly when we hear them sung well, and meditating on this text and the wonderful blessings that this text shows us—we’ll see this at the center of the text—where I tried to read it this way: the sevenfold description of the old covenant before Jesus came and then the sevenfold description of worship now, the worship we enter into every Lord’s Day.

And what a wondrous movement! As wondrous as the old covenant was, the Lord God coming and giving his law that we sang about earlier today, drawing near to his people, showing them the sacrificial system, what Jesus would accomplish—as wondrous and as wonderful as it was to be the people of God, to see Jericho fall down by the simple blowing of trumpets, liturgical warfare, you know, beginning the conquest of the promised land—as wondrous as all that was, yet the Lord God has prepared something far better for us.

And I hope that some way today, through my words, this wonder of this transformation, this movement from the time before the advent of Jesus to his advent drawing near is portrayed today in what we talk about.

Now, we’re following up from last week. We moved into the sixth section of this book and this matches the second section. The second section was the greater name of Jesus, right? The greater name than the angels. That name being Son of God and Son of Man. His divinity and his humanity were the subjects of the second section of this book. He’s the firmament, the second day. He’s the mediation between heaven and earth. And now matching that here, and we’ll see that there are textual matches as well, but just in terms of the subject matter here, we move toward the end of this sermon.

And this, some people would say, is the great pastoral climax of the sermon—the text we just read. But we’re moving to the end of it and we’re seeing how we’re now supposed to live like a heavenly community here on earth. So the focal point is a movement here from worship to our everyday lives. We go from the worship that we’re commanded to do and this worship is to have an implication in the context of our lives that is essentially the creation of heaven on earth.

We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus is the one who is Son of God and Son of Man. He has brought heaven to earth. And we now, as those who are the firstborn of the Savior, are those who develop, who work, who do these things in the context of the world that make the kingdom of Christ on earth. So there’s this matching. We’re to pursue peace with one another.

And this, you know, links back to what we have just seen in the last section of two weeks ago in Hebrews 12, the first half of Hebrews 12. There is this movement again from these exhortations to now the application of it in terms of our individual responsibilities to each other. Not just the individual responsibilities to endure, to endure and persevere—that was the first half of chapter 12. But now the implication that we have to have care for one another.

And that’s a theme of this sixth section—this concern one for the other. And we saw that this was sort of indicated in what we preached on last week, Hebrews 10:24-25. That text urged us to approach God with faith, right? Having our hearts cleansed, we draw near to God with full assurance of faith. And then that section of Hebrews 10:24-25 was spelled out in chapter 11, the great hall of faith, and a call for us to be faithful as well.

And then the text went on to say that we were supposed to endure, right? We were supposed to hold fast the profession of our faith. That was the second aspect of Hebrews 10:24-25. And endurance, in other words, holding fast. And so the first half of chapter 12 expanded that idea of hope that’s implied in the holding fast. So Hebrews 10:24-25 talked about faith. It talked about hope. Chapter 11, the first half of chapter 12. And then last week we preached again on the last portion that encourages us to do—to stimulate consider one another, to stimulate to love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together but exhorting one another. So the third triad of the Christian virtues—love—was focused on in that third section of Hebrews 10:24-25. We were to consider one another to stimulate to love and good works.

And so now through the rest of this sermon, the last half of chapter 12 and the bulk of chapter 13, this is what will be exposited: that third Christian virtue, love for one another, a consideration and a stimulation of each other toward love. And we saw last week that part of this stimulation, part of love, is to exhort one another in the context, usually, of things that are falling short, deliberate sin, or a failure of duty, whatever it is.

And that becomes the focal point of this section here, right? We’re supposed to look carefully lest any of you fall like Esau fell. And so this idea of looking out for one another is stressed in our text today. So it really follows up well what we preached about last week. Even though out of sequence, it is in the sequence of the development of faith, hope, and love—the hall of faith, endurance in the first half of 12, and love, now beginning with a consideration of one another.

Our community obligations to each other is stressed here. I was listening to the radio this last week and there was a woman on talking about airplane etiquette. You know, a lot of people are flying and they tell you what to do if there’s somebody next to you that’s got their, you know, elbowing you or, you know, using your space, whatever it is. And it’s interesting, they take you through these steps and the last step—if everything else fails—then maybe you want to talk to the person next to you. But you don’t want to do that because if they don’t like what you’re saying, then you’ve got a bad plane trip the entire time. You’re supposed to talk to a flight attendant, request a change of seat. If they’re doing something obnoxious, talk to the flight attendant again. Talk to everybody but the person that’s causing you the problem. This is modern airplane etiquette.

Well, that’s exactly the reverse, is it not, of what we talked about last week. What we said last week is that when we’re having problems with someone, what we’re supposed to do is we’re supposed to go to that person, right? And we’re supposed to create a climate in which our exhortations to one another are accepted. That’s the context for this section here that’ll go in more detail in terms of how we love one another.

It’s so difficult to do this though. But again, this text will show us how very important it is that we go to one another and encourage and exhort each other. You know, I always preach that sort of sermon like I did last week every year or two and I’m always amazed how quickly it’s violated, usually almost immediately in the context of even the Lord’s Day. You know, it’s amazing to me—not given the state of men’s hearts. It’s not amazing to me that we have word fights with one another. What’s amazing is we don’t break out with fist fights at our prayer meetings. Really, that’s the grace of God, right? It’s this spirit of God. That’s in our fallen state. That’s what we do—we fight and claw with one another. But the Spirit of God moves us to have a consideration and a love for each other that’s seen in our speech.

I was reading also this last week George Washington’s Rules of Civility. When he was 14 or so, they found a book of his, a notebook, and he’d written out these 103 or 110, whatever it is, rules of civility. And for a while, they thought this was like rules that George Washington came up with. Well, they found out that really it was somebody else’s rules, and it might have just been a penmanship exercise. They don’t know. But what does seem to be true is that Washington lived his life according to these rules of civility. As a teen, as a young teenager, he took these rules to heart and he very self-consciously—and it’s very obvious and noted throughout the rest of his life—tried to apply himself to these rules that he had learned from a book of etiquette. And some people say that’s how he became president and that’s how he became the most influential president of all time: because he became a man who was totally governed by these rules of etiquette and he held himself in that way. Some people said he was a fake. But no, he was trying to adapt himself to how we are supposed to do, to live in community.

I wanted to read the very first of these rules of civility. “Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.” That’s nice, isn’t it? Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present. This is particularly true, of course, of the church of Jesus Christ. What’s the first gift we get every Lord’s Day? Glory, right? God assures us of our forgiveness. He gives us worth. He gives us respect. That’s how we begin the worship service with the confession of sin. Well, that’s what we’re to do with one another.

The conversations that will be good and useful for our church and stimulating one another to love and good works have to be seen in the context of respect for each other. And when we use words that draw down respect or cut at other people—particularly those that are not present—we’re immediately violating everything that I’ve tried to preach on for the last few weeks. And this is what we tend to do. This text will show us one more time how important it is to do this and how important it is to get it right. We’ll see that as we go through this particular text.

Let’s look briefly, actually before we do that, at a few other statements relative to the introduction of this. Look at your outlines if you have them there and you’ll see that there’s a command at the beginning of the text, there’s a command at the end of the text, and then there’s some exposition of scripture in the midst of the text. Does this sound familiar? This is what we saw two weeks ago in the first half of chapter 12. Remember, you’re supposed to run the race and then there was a boxing match illustration and there was an exegesis of a Proverbs text relative to the discipline that we get from God and then there was a final exhortation to finish the race well. So it’s the same sort of thing. The last half of 12 is very much like the first half of 12.

We’ve moved into a new section, an application, but it’s the same kind of thing: command, exposition, command. That’s the pattern of this text in front of us. And so it emulates this pattern we’ve seen in other places, right, in the very beginning of chapter 12 as well.

Additionally, this text—and we don’t have time to look at all of these things—but the text before us here in this sixth slot of Hebrews with the introduction to make straight paths. This is how you make straight paths. We’re going to be told now how to do that. This text, these verses from verses 14 to 29, really encapsulate the major themes of the rest of the book. And this is why some people say it’s the great climactic pastoral part of the sermon here. Everything that’s been said before comes back here. The major themes—this serves as what some people call a magisterial résumé of themes and motifs introduced throughout the rest of this book.

We’ve seen earlier that there were exhortations that no member of the church lose the blessings of the gospel through carelessness. And that’s repeated here. We saw earlier in this book the warnings that apostasy will entail irreversible loss, can’t be won back to repentance. We’ll see that with Esau here. We saw earlier in this sermon the old and the new covenants with their respective mediators compared and contrasted.

And we saw the middle section of Hebrews all about the similarities and yet the differences as Jesus comes to initiate and inaugurate the final new covenant. And this compare and contrast of the old and new covenants is right at the heart of the exposition in today’s text. We’ve seen a contrast to the inability of access in the Old Testament to now the unrestricted access through Christ. We saw that in that middle section. Right now we can draw near into the Holy of Holies where only the high priest went once a year. That has all been told to us already. But it comes up here again. Sinai is a place of no access, virtually, and Zion is a place of full access. And so we see that major theme repeated here again.

We saw at the beginning of the sermon to the Hebrews the speaking of God, right? He has spoken to us in Christ and therefore in chapter 2, you better listen. And so we see it here again. He speaks from heaven. You better listen. The major themes all come back to us here. And they come back to us to a particular end, right? The particular end is what begins and ends the section—this text—the call to pursue peace and holiness and then matching that at the end the command to serve God with reverence and godly fear.

All of these themes are repeated to the specific end that we would do those simple things: to pursue peace—not the peace of silence, but the peace of God’s orderliness and blessing—with all men. The implication is with all, in other words all in the context of the church, not being segmented up into different little cliques or groups of friendships that aren’t, don’t see their responsibilities to the broader body of Christ. We’re to pursue peace with everyone and holiness—a nice summation of the Christian faith. Said it before, talked about it last week. The heart of the Pentateuch, Leviticus—heart of Leviticus is 70 commands and exposition, a sermon so to speak, on the Ten Commandments in two sections. First, holiness, and that moves to the middle of that section of Leviticus 19. Peace with one another. How we love our neighbor as ourselves. Those are the two great poles: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might; love your neighbor as yourself. Way back in Leviticus, we saw it. Here we see it again. There is this holiness in reference to the God who is holy. But there’s a pursuing of peace, a loving of our neighbor as ourselves that’s combined with that and in fact placed first here in the command.

And this matches up with this serving God with reverence and a godly fear. So all of these great themes are repeated to the particular end of urging and exhorting us to really very simple actions and behavior.

Now, on the outline I provided you, it gets a little more detail than just the ABA structure. There is an admonition. It moves from this command to an admonition not to fall short of grace. And the example here is Esau. Then it says you’re not at Sinai. There’s an exposition of Mount Sinai and at the very center of the text, I believe, is a description of new covenant worship at Mount Zion. And the implication of that is that we are supposed to listen. There’s a movement, a joyous movement from Sinai to Zion. But the end result is we’re supposed to listen even harder now. Therefore, listen, have grace again and have this grace to observe the commandment, which again is phrased in the context of a warning.

The commandment at first says, you know, if you don’t have holiness, you won’t see God. And the commandment at the end is exhorted to us but buttressed by the warning that our God is a consuming fire. So there’s the absence of God’s blessing, the presence of God’s curse. These are the admonitions, the warnings that are given to, you know, really drive home these commands: to be at peace with one another, to pursue peace, and then to do this in the context of serving God.

All right. So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to simply move our way through the text. I’ll comment briefly on the different sections of the text and we’ll see how this comparing and contrasting is once more given to us in terms of the old covenants and the new covenants.

All right, first section then. This first commandment of warning: pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

Well, the word for pursue here is not seek after in the normal sense of the term, not look for, not you know try to accomplish this. It is a strengthened form of this verb. It can be used to persecute, to you know really run after somebody and try to do harm to them, to follow after hard so to speak and persecute someone. In the same way that stimulation is frequently used in the negative sense, so here pursuing frequently can be in the negative sense. But it’s this strengthened form. In other words, we’re not just supposed to pray for peace on earth and leave it at that. We’re supposed to pray for peace on earth and then work, pursue it diligently with all of our being.

And again here, the specific command that this is in reference to is peace with people. Peace is defined as this relationship with all. And we’re to seek God’s order in the context of the Christian community. This is what it’s all about. The same thing we’ve been talking about from Hebrews 10:25—that love is accomplished through the exhortation of one another and a seeking after one another, the pursuing of peace with all people.

Secondly, it is to pursue holiness as well. And again, this is the two poles of right relationship to God. So I heard singing, “Holy, holy, holy” this morning. Leviticus says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” Well, how do we do that?

Well, in Leviticus, the two things immediately mentioned in terms of holiness are respect and reverence for one’s parents and a respect and reverence for the Lord’s Day—for the Sabbaths of the Old Testament, the Lord’s Day, Christian Sabbath of the New Testament. How do you know if you’re holy or not? Well, you want a lifestyle of consecration and commitment to God. This is really the goal of our entire lives, right? To seek holiness, to try to be holy as God himself is holy, to try to be sensitive to the leadings of the Holy Spirit, both the rebukes, the convictions he gives us and the encouragements to do what’s right. We’re to seek after that.

It doesn’t just come. If you’re walking your Christian walk and say, “I don’t get it. I don’t have a whole lot of peace with other people and I don’t have a whole lot of holiness in my life,” are you pursuing it? Are you making it your life’s ambition? How do you pursue it? We pursue all kinds of things in life. Some people pursue weight loss. Some people pursue vocational excellence. Some people pursue, you know, hard entertainments with one another. I mean, they really try to work hard at their play. All that stuff’s great. All that stuff’s good. But in reference to what this says, we should always be thinking: how hard are we trying to pursue peace with other people? And how hard, how much energy, how much focus are we putting into achieving personal holiness? For our God is holy.

And how does it start? Well, what’s the first step, Dennis? Okay, I want to go at it. Well, authorities—reverence for authorities, for parents. Parents are, you know, the symbol of all authorities. The Fifth Commandment relates to all of our authorities in the context. That’s what Leviticus says. And then the Lord’s Day. You know, don’t tell me, “Well, I’m having trouble with my spiritual walk” if you’re not, you know, consecrating the Lord’s Day for purposes of his glory. You see, if you’re drifting away from setting this day aside, of course you’re going to fall into trouble.

You know, we talked a couple weeks ago about the endurance. We’re to shake off sins that so easily beset us. Why? If you’re having trouble with endurance, it could just be you’re having trouble with endurance and you just got to keep going. Preach the gospel to yourself. Preach, you know, the Proverbs text about God chasing whom he loves, all that stuff. You just have to do it. But more often than not, a failure of endurance, a desire to just sort of give up and to stop being zealous about Christ and his kingdom, results from sin. Unconfessed sin. Problems you’ve not dealt with then produce a sense of depression, a failure of endurance in life. Not always. Sometimes you just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But frequently, that’s why the text said that lay aside the sins that so easily beset us. They won’t. If you’ve got unconfessed sin that you’re not dealing with, you see, if you’ve got sin that’s got control of you and you’re not having victory over it, or at least engaging in the battle, then it’s going to bind you up.

Instead of having running shorts on, you’re going to be like, you know, have a robe or a long garment that you keep getting caught in and falling down in sin. So holiness here matches that. Holiness is an attempt to be consecrated and committed to God. And I would suggest that if you want to begin that pursuit today, you do it by thinking of your relationship to authorities in the church, state and family. And you do it in relationship to the Lord’s Day. This is how you get holy. You make this day holy. And it begins the pattern then for the rest of your life.

Holiness, pursue after peace with all people. And then the warning: without which no one will see the Lord.

So we have that. Now the next section here is a warning to us about Esau. While we do this, we are to look carefully, for three “lests,” and the first one is lest anyone fall short. Now this is the same thing—consider one another—but here the consideration of one another that’s being advised to us is what some commentators have called a verb of dread. You’re to episcope—that’s the word that’s used here—you know, episcope, overseer, supervisor, to look over. You’re to be an overseer. All men are called here as overseers in the general sense. All men and women, all Christians are called to be bishops. That’s the episcopal system, the system of overseers. Well, it’s the same word that’s used here. You’re to look carefully, not, you know—now you were supposed to look carefully before in Hebrews 10 to stimulate each other. Now you’re supposed to look carefully around you to make sure no one is falling short of the grace of God.

And it’s a verb of dread. As I said, it’s like, “Oh, this would be really bad. Look carefully lest anyone fall short.” Remember in Hebrews 4, don’t fall short, come short of the rest of God. Some people can fall short of the grace of God. There’s three “lests” here that all combined together. Lest anyone fall short of the grace of God.

What is grace here? Well, this is what this section is kind of characterized by—the header here: don’t fall short of the grace of God. And it can mean lots of different things. The grace of God is the grace of God. It’s the sovereignty of God ministered to us. But see, we can through sinfulness and through carelessness and through characteristics that are going to be described here, fall short of that grace. Fall short of the rest, not endure into that grace and into that rest. And we have a picture of that here.

The grace of God is ministered to you today. And what happens is maybe people stop coming to church and they start falling short of the visible means of grace, the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments. Now, it isn’t restricted to that here in the text. It means a lifestyle that’s characterized by that. But again, Sunday is where all this starts. It’s the kind of the picture of the thing.

When you come to the table, have you done what I asked you to do last week? Give thanks for someone you didn’t, you don’t like to give thanks for. How many of you did it? I’m not going to ask for a show of hands. But did you see? Are you pursuing peace with one another? Are you trying to engage in conversations in which every person of the company you’re addressing is given some degree of respect, as Washington said? You see, are we pursuing peace? If we’re not pursuing peace, then we’re falling—that we’re in danger of falling short of the grace of God. We’re in danger of falling away into eternal damnation.

Lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. Now, you know, this is a well-known verse, and I don’t want to take anything away from people that have talked here about “You got to search to make sure you don’t have bitterness in your heart against other people.” That’s very true. I think though that this text is a reference back to Deuteronomy 29, verses 14 and following. We read this. “I make this covenant and this oath not with you alone, but with him who stands here with us today before the Lord our God, as well as with him who is not here with us today. For you know that we dwelt in the land of Egypt and that we came through the nations which you passed by.”

So he’s saying this is covenant making and it’s covenant making not just with you that are here today, but all the rest of us as well that will come after us. Okay, in the context of that he says, “You saw their abominations, the Canaanites—that is, their idols which were among them, wood and stone and silver and gold. So that there not be any among you a man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations and that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood. And so it may not happen when he hears the words of this curse that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall have peace even though I follow the dictates of my heart’—as though the drunkard could be included with the sober. The Lord would not spare him, for then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy would burn against that man, and every curse that is written in this book would settle on him, and the Lord would blot out his name from under heaven.”

All right. What does it mean then? It doesn’t mean that bitterness is what happens first and then you fall away from the grace of God. Deuteronomy says that this root of bitterness that the sermon here is surely alluding back to is what happens when people are allowed to drift away from God and to think that they’re blessed because they’re presumptuously saying, “I’m a member of the covenant community. I’ll be blessed in spite of whether I’m pursuing peace or holiness or not.” That produces bitterness in the camp. That’s what grows this root of bitterness.

Bitterness grows from it and it affects the congregation. The warning is that if you let people be part of the covenant community of God and let them drift away in the manner of Esau that he’ll come to here in a couple of minutes, then it’s going to defile the entire community. That’s the point of this. The sin of one person in the church affects—or can affect, will affect if left unguarded—the entire community. And so he’s reminding them again that they have obligations to each other and part of that obligation is, properly speaking, selfish. We want us and our family to do well. And the only way us and our family will do well is if the corporate community does well. And if we look carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest anyone say through presumptuousness that they don’t have to pursue peace and holiness—and as a result, defilement brings up or springs up.

Verse 16: Lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. “You know that afterward when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.”

Well, here it is. This is the summation of all these warnings. We’ve had, you know, three or four major warnings throughout the book, you know, not to be careless, not to drift away, not to let sin grow up in the context of our lives. And the end result of this, the example that puts the kind of the picture in our mind of all the warnings he’s given us, is Esau.

Esau was presumptuous. He was part of Isaac’s family, the covenant of blessing. “Oh, what do I care about the birthright?” He didn’t think about it because he thought that he was this guy in Deuteronomy. He’s the one that said, “Well, God will still bless me even though I don’t have regard for him.” And he was wrong. He sought the blessing diligently with tears afterwards, but he did not come to a biblical and godly repentance. He may be said to have not been able to at that time, meeting with the language earlier in Hebrews that it’s impossible to renew them to repentance.

Esau is the example that puts the cap on all of these instructions, these warnings to us. Esau is presumptuous. Esau was impatient, right? He couldn’t wait to eat that good, tasty food. He’s impatient. Just like children are impatient, godly men are patient. We wait. Godliness has a future orientation to it that lets us pursue peace and seek after holiness in the long term. Esau is impatient and most of all what the text specifically identifies him as here is he’s profane. He’s secular.

Now, it says he’s a fornicator. Well, it may not say that. It could be that the fornicator is referring to other kinds of people and the profane person is specifically linked to Esau. Or it could be that anybody is really a fornicator if they don’t seek after God, if they sin by way of not seeking after him and placing him as a priority in their lives. We don’t know. But we do know that the designation closest to Esau’s name here is profane. This is a tremendous warning to us.

Esau was a secularist. Esau cared about what was around him. He cared about what he saw, what he experienced, what he tasted. It disregarded the invisible, as it were, blessings of the inheritance of the covenant—the covenant of God, the spiritual realities meant little to him. What meant everything to him was his physical life. Are we like Esau? Well, we are very much in our culture today tempted to be Esaus. Tremendous temptation to us to be secularists, to have no thought of God as we go about our lives. How often are we trying to pursue peace and holiness in the context of our week? Or is our week just like the rest of the culture’s week where we just go about our business like everybody else, we do our recreations like everybody else, we have our fun like everybody else. Is that who we are? I hope not, because everybody else is Esau.

We live in a culture of secularists who don’t care for spiritual things. And we are warned, just as this covenant community that the sermon was originally addressed to, the word of God speaks to us today warning us that we not be like profane Esau, drifting along in our secularism, in our caring more about what we eat than the blessings of God. Short-term orientation. Impatient. Yeah, presumptuous—that because we come to church and get the sacrament every Sunday, well, that means we’re okay. No, the Bible says, “Be careful, be warned, don’t be like Esau. Understand the implications of Jesus Christ for every part of your life.”

So there’s this great example here given to us that we’re to fulfill the command. We’re not to be like Esau, not to be like this profane person. And then there’s a contrast as we move toward the center of the text between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion.

Both are Old Testament references of course. Sinai, verses 18 and following. “You have not come to…” in Hebrews. Remember we’ve talked about this many times, but this verb that’s used here for come is one that is specifically talking about worship. So what he’s talking about here is worship, covenant renewal, covenant making that happened at Sinai. And by implication, worship, covenant renewal that happens at Zion. So he’s contrasting two worship experiences, so to speak, but then he’s putting this in the context of everyday implications for our lives in the pursuit of peace and holiness.

So it all starts again. It has the center here of worship. Well, Sinai—the descriptions here are pasted together from various accounts in the Old Testament. But listen to what it says. It’s a sevenfold designation. “You have not come to worship at a mountain that may be touched. So you have this visible, sensory experience—that burned with fire, to blackness and darkness, to darkness.” It probably would be better to read “gloom” here instead of “darkness.” A sense of foreboding, palpable almost. “Tempest, the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words.”

Now, it’s not—the name is not named in this sevenfold description. The voice—what is not named in this sevenfold description is the name of God. In Exodus, where this description primarily comes from, there is a sixfold—Deuteronomy 5 rather repeats this discussion of Sinai—there’s a sixfold repetition of the divine name. It’s not here at all. The entire picture is one of fear, dread, apprehension. The sound of a trumpet isn’t produced joy in the people. It produces fear and dread. The fire doesn’t produce, like, great purging fire of God. It’s fearfulness, you see. And the words themselves that are spoken, the words of covenant renewal, they’re so overwhelming, they’re so fear-producing, they really can’t distinguish the words. They know words are in there mixed with the sound of the trumpet. But the only thing they really come away from it with is exceeding dread and fear.

So much so that the text actually tells us that Moses himself—and this is not told to us in the accounts in the Old Testament. But here we have the inspired word of God saying that it was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.” So the Old Covenant is a place of not much access and it’s a place of great fear and dread. Getting close to God was not good. It was dangerous. It was terrifying. You see, and Sinai is a picture for the entire old covenant worship system, the tabernacle that God will set up at Sinai.

Remember that’s where the instructions come. It’s just like Sinai. You know, Sinai—Moses is at the top. The elders and the priests are at the middle of the mountain. They get to go up halfway and the people are kept back away from the base of the mountain. The tabernacle has this outer courtyard where people might be able to get close to God in the outer courtyard. And then the holy place—only the priests could go in there to do their thing. And then the holy of holies—only the high priest could go in. So it’s a replication of Mount Sinai and it has this restriction of access. Only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies. Only Moses could go to the top of the mountain. Other priests could go halfway into the holy place. Priests and elders go halfway up the mountain. People had to stay in the courtyard or at the outside of the courtyard. They had to be held away from the base of the mountain.

So the whole old covenant worship system that’s been described before in this book is portrayed here as one of dread, fear, trembling. How could it be other than that? We’re drawing near to the holy God. Omnipotent. We use that word so easily. It rolls off our tongue. But this is the all-powerful God, the all-holy God. And we sinful people are going to come into his presence. What’s he going to do? He’s going to strike us dead. And in fact, it says that. It says that if we get close to that mountain and start to touch it or go up, well then we’re supposed not just us, but animals. Well, they were supposed to throw a spear through us and kill us. Same thing is true in the tabernacle and temple. You’re an average guy. You try to go into the holy place, the Levites are there, spear right through you, they kill you. You see, you can’t get close. You don’t want to get close. You want to stay far away because God is so frightening.

Now, this is the picture of the past. Okay? And now he’s going to give us a picture of the present. How could it be other than that? Well, there’s only one way it could be other than that, and that’s the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the incarnation of Jesus.

The next section, the central section I think, describes this Mount Zion. I remember Mount Zion is where David set up a tabernacle of worship. You know, you got the tabernacle. It’s given at Sinai. They use that. They come to Shiloh, put it in the land. It’s taken apart. Then part of it comes to Zion. David sets up a worship center there. And eventually the temple is built on Mount Moriah. So the tabernacle of David is at Mount Zion. And here in Hebrews, we’re said that when we draw near, we come to God in worship.

We’re not going to Moriah, the temple mount. We’re not going to the tabernacle. I mean, there’s a sense in which we’re tabernacle and temple, but the preeminent imagery is Mount Zion where David set up the ark of the covenant. David’s worship—there was no real Jew or Gentile distinction, not as much at least. Gentiles appear to be on the worship team. There was no veil separating the worshipper from the ark of the covenant. It says that the praise of God happened in the presence of the ark. And this is where music starts. The tabernacle services—silent. The Psalms are primarily written for this tabernacle of David, this Mount Zion festival worship center. And all during the time that it’s set up, it’s inaugurated with blood sacrifices, but that’s it. One blood sacrifice at the beginning. After that, no blood in that worship of David at Mount Zion.

Instead, it’s a worship of praise. It’s the thanksgiving with lips of praise, just like our worship. It’s a little picture of new covenant worship set in the context of the old covenant. It tells us what will happen when the greater David comes and that’s what our worship is to look like. Now, it was wedded to the temple worship, you know, so there was certainly the progression of tabernacle and temple as it remains the same in tabernacle of David worship. But this is what Mount Zion is. It’s first of all this worship center here.

Again, there’s a sevenfold portrayal of this and it’s not obvious in your translations perhaps, but in the Greek it is. “You have come to Mount Zion, even to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” That’s one statement. That’s the first description is that we’ve got Mount Zion, the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem.

Now, in the Old Testament, in Greek culture—let’s say there, they had a hill, and they would worship at the acropolis on top of the hill, and then they had an agora down at the base, and that’s where the community, the business life would work. And the acropolis flowed into the agora. Okay. The worship in Greek culture flowed into the marketplace. Well, it wasn’t just Greek and Tower of Babel. They didn’t build just a worship tower. They built a city. Worship determines the city. You see, when we read here that Mount Zion is the city of the living God, it isn’t restricting us to tabernacle of David worship. It can talk about the entire city, the agora, the assembling of the people and their common lives as linked to the worship that goes on Zion. You see, it can do it that way. And it refers to it as the heavenly Jerusalem. So we have a threefold designation. We have this, you know, this heavenly reality that was reflected in the tabernacle of David on Mount Zion. And now, Mount Zion is used to describe the heavenly Jerusalem.

So first of all, it’s this transcendent, heavenly Jerusalem city. Secondly, you come to an innumerable company of angels. When we come to church, we come to Zion worship. We come to what will impact. This is the city of the living God because it will flow out and create the cities in which we live if we’re faithful and pursuing peace and holiness. And not only that, but we come to an innumerable company of angels, myriads of angels. And the word company here is a very technical term. And it doesn’t just mean a company. It means a festive, joyous assembly.

Pangyric—is a transliteration of the Greek term. And it has to do with, you know, gyric actually comes in this idea of agora assembling of the peoples. But a pangyric was a coming together to celebrate, to have a festival, to sing praises. It’s a joyous assembly of worship. So you see the contrast there. You had something that could be touched. Here when we get together for worship we come to the heavenly Jerusalem. It can’t be touched really. And there you had fear and dread and difficulty. And here in New Testament worship, we have a joyous assembly of angels all floating around playing their harps and celebrating him, whatever they’re going to do. They’re in great joy and festive gathering. They’re arrayed in festal robes. That’s what happens in worship. This is the reality of what God’s word says. It’s joy. Heaven and earth, the joy of heaven is mirrored in the angelic joy of this festive myriad company of angels.

And then third, you’ve come to the general assembly—and this word assembly comes from the ekklesia. It’s the called ones together. The church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven. So we come to the church. This is this refers to people on earth, Christian saints whose names are recorded in heaven. Now I said that this is the sixth day which matches the second day. Well in the second section of Hebrews—it described Jesus as the firstborn from the dead. You remember we talked about that a long time ago. Well, here who’s the firstborn? It’s us. You see, the city takes on the characteristics of the Savior. And so we have Jesus in the second section. Now, we have matching that heaven on earth in the sixth section. We’re now referred to as firstborn. Okay? Just as Jesus was earlier in this sermon.

So now we’re the general assembly, church of the firstborn, registered in heaven. Now this again is a joyous designation. This word general assembly has this joyous connotation to it as well. So not only we have rejoicing angels, we’re supposed to come together and sing great songs of joy and festivity and thanksgiving, which we do in the Lord’s Day. And this is where we come. We come to the church militant on earth, really across the whole globe. And their specific designation again is as a joyful worshipping assembly.

Now, it may interest you to know that there was a sense in which these things were true at Sinai, right? I mean, Sinai—there are heavenly realities that are going to be portrayed to Moses and how to construct the tabernacle, right? And at Sinai, we know from Hebrews and other places that angels were the mediators of the law. So there were all kinds of angels mediating the law to Moses as well. And we read of Israel that they were registered. They were on the list. They were on the book of life. Okay. So there’s a sense in which we have continuity with those saints. But what the text is, well, so it has that element. But what the text wants us to see is the radical difference that’s happened with the advent of Jesus Christ. Moving from fear and dread and apprehension and “oh please don’t speak anymore” to now a festival assembly of angels and a joyous company here in the context of worship, praise.

Praise God for these realities. And let us pray that we continue to mature in our rejoicing worship together with more instruments being involved, with the heartfelt joy and praise and thanksgiving that this designation tells us is what we come to as we approach God in worship every Lord’s Day.

The fourth element is to God, the judge of all. At the very center of this is God, the creator. God who is the judge of all humanity is at the center. The fifth is to the spirits of just men made perfect. This is the church triumphant in heaven. Okay. So church militant on earth, church triumphant in heaven. They match up—numbers three and five in the sevenfold designation. The firstfruits, right? Day three of creation. And the church triumphant in heaven, the harvested saints, day five—see kind of matches that—teeming things, multiplication. You children who’ve been in Sunday school for a few years at RCC, you know what I mean, even if you adults don’t. There is this relationship of the sevenfold structure to the creation days that’s rather obvious.

With God the judge of all mankind right at the center. And then six, we come to Jesus and this is the most obvious part of the seven-day creation symbol. To Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. Jesus—not Christ, not Jesus Christ—Jesus. Why Jesus? To stress the incarnated Son of God as Savior, to stress his humanity. You see, again, the distinction, the contrast between Sinai is so marked that the mediator that we have is Jesus, right? The one who has come to save us by his death on the cross. We come to Jesus—sixth day. He’s the second Adam. He’s the new creation, right? He’s the new man. And as we’re linked to him, we’re linked to the source of all blessing and salvation.

Then the seventh thing: to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. Speaking blood. Well, Abel’s blood spoke from the ground, right? It spoke out that he needed to be avenged. And Jesus’s blood speaks out peace to the people of God. And so the seventh, the resting place that we have in our worship is ultimately to be found as we progress to the Lord’s table and the blood of Jesus Christ speaks good news, speaks gospel to us.

Now, see, this is what I was meditating on last night as I’m listening to the beautiful Christmas music and the awe and wonder of the Christmas carols that have been written for hundreds of years. How could it be other than Sinai? Well, a most wise, most powerful, most gracious, and most loving God sent his son Jesus to earth to be incarnated for us, to move us from fear and dread which was inescapable given the realities of a holy God and the realities of our sin.

How could it be other than this? Only through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. And praise God, that is the movement, that’s the tremendous transition here at the center of this text is that Hebrews says that the new covenant is a time of access to God and not just access but joyful revering in the very presence of the eternal judge of all mankind. That is our great and high privilege in worship every Lord’s Day.

Conversely, that tremendous blessing that’s portrayed in these two lists of seven—Sinai and Zion. I mean, this brings Christmas joy to me. I hope it does to you—this tremendous description of what our worship and not just our worship but what the city that we’re building in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities. This is the peace. We’re to seek peace because we’re the planted new creation community of Jesus Christ.

When we leave this place as well—a tower and a city, you see, a worship place and a city. This is what has invaded planet Earth. This is what has come and what will never be extinguished. This is what the light that has dawned. This is the wonderful, magnificent news of Advent and of Christmas. And it is tremendous blessing, is it not?

But that great blessing, the tremendousness of that blessing, is what can be lost to us. You see, I mean, it’s held out as a tremendous blessing to the end that we would fulfill these commands: to exhort each other, to seek peace with our brothers and others in holiness with God, to serve God acceptably. You see, it’s held out there to motivate us to look carefully to one another lest anyone fall. And as a result of his falling short of the grace through being secular, impatient, presumptuous, lest his fall produce a root of bitterness and many are led astray away from Zion, away from the place of joyous assembly together in the presence of God.

And so the note of warning comes again. “See that you do not refuse him who speaks.” This is exactly what it said in Hebrews 2. Remember Jesus, the Son of God, Son of Man? Therefore, listen to him. Be careful. The wording is almost identical. “See that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven.”

That’s Jesus. Jesus has gone into the heavens for us. He’s told us that over and over in this sermon. The one who speaks from heaven now is Jesus speaking to us today. We come together in festive assembly to hear the voice of Jesus preached as an exhortation to us to pursue peace, to pursue holiness. Make it a goal of your life because God is a consuming fire. Without holiness, without a seeking of peace with one another, we won’t see God’s blessing. We won’t come eternally to Mount Zion. We will only be left with that terrifying fear of judgment that the sermon has talked about prior to this.

“His voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, ‘Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.’ Now this yet once more indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.”

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, what’s the point of this text? There was shaking at Sinai—shook the earth. There were shakings in the Old Testament. In Isaiah, it says that when Babylon was judged, God shook the heavens and the earth and the heavens poured down as well. The heavens are ruling authorities. The heavens are nations. The heavens are the nation of Jerusalem which will be shaken several years, just a few years after this sermon is written.

Heaven itself, the representation of heaven at the temple, will be shaken and destroyed. And if the temple be destroyed, how can anything that raises itself up against Jesus Christ be preserved? It can’t be. History is the inevitable removal of things that are in opposition to Christ. And that, my friends, my loved ones, I tell you, and I tell myself: that includes you and I. If we do not pursue holiness and peace with one another through our words, to our actions, that includes you and I. We’ll be shaken out, tossed out of the garment like some dust or dirt that might cling to it. He warns us.

What’s the center of that joy of celebration at Zion? “To God, the judge of all men.” Even in the midst of our assemblies and our joy and festivities, we come to a God who judges, who evaluates, who commands us. I’ve given you so many blessings. Think of the blessings from Sinai to Zion. And you’ll start singing those Christmas songs of wonder and glory and delight and what God has accomplished with the advent of Jesus. They’ll mean more to you as you meditate on those two mountains as the movement of history, the coming of Jesus. And that’s the very thing that we are apt to throw away and discard through something as simple as thinking more about food than about holiness. It was that simple for Esau.

He just wanted some food. “Oh, I don’t care about, you know, the long-term thing. I’m sure Dad will take care of me anyway. You know, yeah, I should be committed, you know, to holiness, but it’s not important right now. Just give me some food.” That simple. Carelessness, secularism, impatience. And this text warns us that we run the risk of rebelliously not listening to the voice that speaks to us from heaven today.

We are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. Let us have grace. Now this is the same term grace, but probably here a better translation is thanksgiving. Let us—and it can mean this: the word charis. Let us have thanksgiving by which we may serve God, acceptably. The word here is liturgy. Again, the specialized term of worship. Again we’re returning to worship with reverence, shamefacedness before God in a godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.

Let us at the end of this then give thanks to God and that thanksgiving to God for what he has given us in Christ finds its expression. It is the motivating factor: the thanksgiving to God, the grace that he’s shown us. This is the motivating factor for pursuing peace with each other and holiness with God. This links our worship back to our cities. They parallel up. We’re going to serve God. How are we going to serve God? Well, we get together and worship. Yeah, that’s the liturgy for the day. But it’s linked in the text. This worship must flow into a seeking peace with one another or it is not acceptable worship before God. It links worship to the city.

Again, it links worship to what you’re going to say with your mouths as soon as the sermon is over, as soon as the Q&A begins, as soon as the dinner starts, as soon as you go home. You see, as soon as that happens, we’ll see the implications of whether we served God acceptably by linking it to seeking peace with one another. Godly fear driving us to holiness in our lives, not to a secularism, not to going away the rest of the week and just forgetting about this stuff, but a reverence, a godly fear for God links to our holiness.

The Lord God says that the advent of Jesus Christ is a tremendous blessing to us. It is a tremendous blessing. And because of that, we are called to be more diligent than ever to receive it with thanksgiving, to let our worship and our praise flow forth into a positive seeking of peace with one another and pursuing holiness in the context of our lives. God says when we do these things, then the great joy of the angelic assembly, the church militant on earth and triumphant in heaven—we come to God, the judge of all men.

But we don’t come to a judge who is angry with us because we come to the judge who listens to the blood of Jesus Christ that speaks better things than that of Abel. Words of peace, words of reconciliation, words of atonement for our sins.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the advent of Jesus. But we know, Father, that we should be doubly aware that Advent brings with it tremendous privileges but also tremendous obligations. Help us, Father, to do the simple things: to seek peace, to seek holiness, Lord God, to make our worship, our service of you acceptable by taking its implications into our cities. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.