Alright, you can return to Hebrews
chapter 12. Make sure the one that says pulpit
mic is turned all the way down. Because if they're both running,
it causes feedback or something. Thank you. Hebrews says, we have not come
to a mountain that can be touched. You and I probably cannot truly understand what it was
like the day God descended on Mount Sinai and brought his covenant
of law to the Jewish nation. I don't imagine that there has
been any natural event that would have done more to work a sense
of doom and terror in the hearts of people. It says that we, and that means
believers. Now this book, the name indicates
that it was written with Jews in mind, but Jews who believed
that Jesus is the Messiah, is the Christ, and believed the
message concerning Him. And they knew the history of
their nation. They knew about the time in Egypt. They knew about Moses. They knew
about God giving the law on Mount Sinai. It's all recorded in the
Old Testament scriptures. And they were suffering, persecution
from their fellow Israelites because they believed that Jesus
is the Christ and they worshipped Him as their
God. And the temptation, and you know,
this temptation would have affected us, too. If we'd been Jews in
this day, we would have been tempted, just like these fellas,
just like these people that are being addressed in Hebrews, we'd
have been tempted to think, we haven't changed gods. We are
worshiping the God of our forefathers. Instead of suffering like we
are, why don't we just go back to the synagogue and we can just,
you know, whatever they say in the synagogue, we know how to
apply those things to Christ in our hearts, but we are not
going, let's not make such a big deal of being public about our
worship of Christ. Let's avoid the trouble. And what they didn't realize
that to do such a thing was to deny Christ. It was to crucify
him afresh. It was to do spite to the Spirit
of God. It was to trample underfoot the
blood of the covenant. You know, sometimes the things
we do seem trivial and insignificant to us. But when we think about
them, especially if we think about them with our mind set for the glory of God and
the worship of God, we realize some of these things that maybe
don't seem to be such a big deal, they really are. They're not
a matter of a small compromise. They are a complete undermining
of the gospel that we claim to believe. But they were familiar with the
story of God at Sinai. And so the writer says, you have
not come to a mountain that can be touched. In other words, when believers,
or when God's elect believe. They have come to something,
but they've not come to something natural. That's what he means
by a mountain that can be touched. a real physical mountain. And
see right there he teaches us something about the nature of
the Old Covenant. It involves the things of this
natural world. That's why it is called by, I
believe it was Paul, but he referred to it as a carnal or fleshly
commandment. Now that doesn't mean there's
something wrong with it, but it's a covenant that deals with
natural things. It deals with what you do. It involved things that you could
lay your hands on. I mean, there was a temple. You
weren't supposed to lay your hands on it, but I mean, it was
a physical thing. It was possible. The priest,
even the high priest, he might be someone you know. Someone
you visited with. Who knows? Might be a relative. The commandments concerned things
which can naturally be done. Thou shalt not kill. Maybe we've been tempted, but...
I mean, it's a simple thing anyway. You just don't do that. You don't
steal. So it's this natural commandment.
The mountain on which God descended to make known His law. Now, we
don't know exactly which mountain it is, but it's still over there.
Whichever one it was, as far as we know, it's still there.
You can get on a plane, fly over and get a camel or whatever you
need and go out there. You can touch it. Here's the thing. You can touch
it. But on that day, it was said,
you dare not touch it. Why? When God descended on that
mountain, it made that mountain, for the lack of a better way
to put it, the holy God descending on that mountain made the mountain
holy. And he who is unholy dare not
touch that which is holy. There it was. The day before,
they could have walked on that, they could have climbed to the
top of it, they could have had a picnic. I don't know what the mountain
looks like, maybe it's not a good place to have a picnic, but theoretically
it would have been possible to have a nice picnic on the side
of Mount Sinai, maybe even on the top. This day, if you touch
it, or even an animal, you know, if a rover, Doesn't understand the
significance of what's going on and he's just in a playful
mood and he goes running up and touches that mountain. Rover's supposed to be killed. The same for Fluffy, the cat,
but most of us probably wouldn't mind that so much. It hurt us
to see the dog gone. Nobody. was to touch that mountain,
even though it was possible to touch it. There was fire, the token of
judgment, darkness, gloom, and a storm. I was talking to John
Vlastine the other day, it was Wednesday evening, and I was
reminded, and I'm sure it was within the First year, or first two years
of when we lived in this area. And they lived out there north
of Alvord. And I have learned that's not
pronounced Alvord. I got made fun of that for that when I came
here. It's Alvord. They lived on an acreage out there. And they invited
everybody over after church one Sunday night. And it must have
been spring. Because, I mean, one of those
Iowa thunderstorms came up. Now, we had thunderstorms in
West Virginia, but with all those mountains and valleys, you know.
I mean, we were so far down in the valley, you know, if we went,
what, 20 feet further down vertically, that was a river. That's as,
you know, far in the valley as you can get. And when we had
it, you know, everything's way up there. We never felt endangered
by the storms. It was a little unsettling to
me when I moved out here and, you know, there's no place to
hide out here. And that storm, I couldn't see the road. And
there I was, Bonnie and me and our three kids in that white
station wagon trying to make our way up there. And I thought,
I'm scared to drive. I'm even more afraid to stop. There never was a prettier sight
in my life up to that point than the lights of their house. Here
we are, you know, and we pulled up there and we got inside. Now
I've kind of grown accustomed, at least more accustomed to the
storms that can come up here, but that was nothing compared
to what was going on at Mount Sinai. Now I don't know if it
was raining or anything like that, but there was a cloud on
the top of that mountain. I remember one time, we were
already living out there northeast of town here, and I went in the
backyard, and here from the west came the blackest cloud I've
ever seen. And it come, I mean, right for
us. And it was so low to the ground.
I mean, it was an isolated cloud. I've never even seen a thing
like that. I've seen big cloud formations move in, The sky gets
covered with clouds. The sky was kind of covered with
clouds, but separate from all of that is this just black, almost
like somebody had burned a bunch of tires or something. And here
it came. And I was standing there looking.
I started going like this. It was so low to the ground,
I thought it was going to roll over me. That's what it felt
like. I remember I said, I'm going in the house, you know. That cloud there on Mount Sinai,
I'm sure it was much bigger, oppressive, terrifying, and a
voice like a trumpet. A couple months ago, I saw a video
and someone had recreated a Roman war trumpet. I didn't know this
about warfare back in that day, but One of the things the Romans
did, and other armies had done it too, but I guess the Romans
were best at it, they had built these horns, and they would have
just a whole bunch of them, and when they were coming for you,
they would blow those horns. I heard that guy blow one of
them. And you would have thought, that
you were about to get run over. Can you imagine what that sounded
like? There you are, one of the barbarians of the lesser countries
of that time, and here you've got your army together, and here
come those Romans with all their fancy armor and their machines,
and all at once this blast of all these trumpets. It would
demoralize. Those people. Well, here we have
that when our God came down there on Mount Sinai, and let me give
you a clue, when our God came on Mount Sinai, that was our
Lord Jesus. I realize He didn't come down
as the man Christ Jesus, but that is the eternal Word came
down. Every time men have had a confrontation
by God, a meeting with God, it's always been the Word. And so this is our Lord, He comes
down from heaven. And it's terrifying. God spoke
from Sinai, and such was the nature of the tokens of His presence. And such was the terrifying sound
of his voice. The people said, Moses, we don't
ever want to hear from him again. You go speak to him and then
you come tell us what he said. Yet for all the terror, the scene
that the book of Hebrews summarizes for us, it is this scene that
natural man is attracted to, spiritually speaking. Man is so bound to the concept
of law. He is so bound to the concept
that he must produce a righteousness for God in order to be blessed
by God. He's so bound to it that he will
approach a scene like this. Or he may find a way to gild it, decorate it, or something
to make it so it doesn't look so terrifying. But no matter how men try to change the nature
of approaching God through your own works, this description beginning
in verse 18 and going through verse 21, that's what it's like. You have approached the God who
descended on Mount Sinai. We are by nature drawn to this
scene like a moth to a flame. Have you ever seen that happen?
You've got a candle out. You know, a moth can't resist a light.
And they go for it and get burned up. And that's what men do. That's what all of us, we're
born with the nature, we're attracted to that. We see the flame of
divine righteousness and judgment. And like silly moths, we fly
for it as though it's a light that we can endure. It is written that men love darkness
rather than light. But it says this mountain, in
coming to this mountain, we are confronted with darkness. And
when John said men love darkness rather than light, this is the
darkness he's talking about. Isn't that amazing? If anything shows the spiritual
foolishness of natural man, it's this. He prefers the darkness
of the law with all of its judgment, all of its condemnation, all
of its punishment, all of its terrors. They love that darkness. Why would they love that darkness?
Because in that darkness, they are able to hide from everyone
else what they really are. Now people read that line in
John, men love darkness rather than light. Yeah, they like their
drunkenness and their carousing and their stealing and all that,
rather than light, so they won't come to Jesus. That's not what
he was talking about. He came unto his own, says the
Scriptures, and his own did not receive him. What does it mean
when it says He came unto His own? It means He came among His
own people. He came among those who were
under the law. He Himself was born under the
law to redeem those which are under the law. He came to them,
and He Himself was the light. And they didn't like it when
the light showed up. because they could hide their
true wickedness in the darkness of the law. And they could put
on their fancy rabbinic robes, and they could wear their phylacteries,
and they could make the fringe on their garment extra long.
And everybody looked at that and said, ooh, he is somebody
else. That's Rabbi so-and-so. Did you
hear about him? He's a famous rabbi. Rabbi, can
you tell me this? Rabbi, good to see you. They
loved that. They wanted to be in that darkness
there at Mount Sinai, because as terrifying as it may be, at
least in that darkness, no one around them could see what they
were, they could pretend to be righteous people. And they loved
that darkness. This morning, just think of how many billions
of people They say there's 2.2 billion Christians in the world,
but we know that they're using the word Christian to mean anybody
who claims to worship Jesus as the Christ. And that would include
a whole lot of religions that are mutually exclusive. They
can't all be right. But billions of people. are gathered
this morning in churches, thinking they are walking in the light,
but they are walking in darkness. Because they are walking according
to their own righteousness. In fact, it's quite possible
the very reason they're at church this morning is because they
think, I'm going to church, God will see this, and that'll give
me one more step towards glory. And if I am charged with sin
at the judgment, I can bring it up on such and such a day,
Lord. I was in church. In fact, every
Sunday morning, I was in church. I even went Sunday night. I was
there at the midweek service. My kids were in the youth program.
We did all these things. And they don't realize the moment
they bring that stuff up, they've gone to the mountain that can
be touched, but you dare not touch it. They're in darkness,
gloom, storm. And there they sit. This is the scene, the scene
of the mountain that can be touched. It's the scene. to which the heretics in Galatia
were calling people to go. They came there into the churches
in Galatia, and they said, oh yeah, Jesus
is the Christ, we understand that. Yeah, salvation's by grace. But you know, you must be circumcised
to be saved. And you might think, well, okay,
not comfortable, but nonetheless, they didn't lay the whole law
on us, just that one part of it. We can compromise that much. You know what Paul said? He said,
you compromise on that. For those who are bringing this
message in, he said, I'm surprised you're being quickly called to
another gospel. And the Greek language has two
different words that can be translated, another. And one means another
of the same thing. You know, you can go down to
the car dealer there and here's a, I didn't know they're still
making them, but evidently are, a Chevy Malibu. And then there's
another Chevy Malibu. And then there's a word that
means another, but entirely different. And he says, I'm surprised that
you're being called, that you've so quickly been drawn away to
another same kind of gospel, which is not really another of
the same kind. It's entirely of a different
kind. And all that had happened, nothing
had been denied of what Paul had taught them. They simply
added this one requirement to all that Paul had told them about
the grace of God. And he said adding that one requirement
made it an entirely different message. Why? The Scripture tells
us to be guilty in one point of the law is to be guilty of
all of it. And they were coming in and saying,
well, to be obedient in one point of the law, that'll make you
obedient to all of it. That's what they were saying. But what they were actually doing
is these people who had professed to believe the Gospel, they were
taking them back to Mount Sinai. And here's something that surprises
me, and I hope the people that say it simply don't understand
what they're saying. But they say, you know, we go
to Mount Calvary for salvation, but we go to Mount Sinai for
sanctification. I beg your pardon. I beg your
pardon. No, I don't. I'm not apologizing
for this at all. Friends, the only place we go
for everything we need for life and godliness is Christ and Him
crucified. Period. That's it. We go to Christ. Our first spiritual thing that we do is
go to Christ. And in the end, the last thing
we're going to do is go to Christ, depend on Him. And every step
between the beginning and the end, and this is what we were
looking at last week, from the beginning to the end, every bit
of it is a matter of the grace of God in Christ. None of it
is ever accomplished by that covenant that says, do this and
live. None of it. It's not the fault
of the covenant. It's not like it's a bad law.
It's just we can't do it. Not enough to satisfy God. No wonder Paul said, O foolish
Galatians, who has bewitched you to be in a place of grace, to have everything that God has
for the sinner, to be a possessor of all of it, and then go out
and try to work for it. To have it all as a free gift
from God, and then turn right around and allow yourselves to
be entangled again in a yoke of bondage. How dumb is that? That'd be like, you know, at
the end of the Civil War when all the slaves were finally let
go. You know, the masters didn't
have a choice. Imagine some of those slaves going out there
and beginning to enjoy the fruits of freedom. And then saying,
well, you know, at the plantation, I had to work hard, but I got
three meals a day. And it's a pretty place. Nice
plantation house. Of course, I can't go in it,
but it's nice to look at. What if they went back? What
would you think of any one of those slaves that went back to
the old master's house, went over, and shackled themselves
again? And bound themselves to labor
that would never be good enough to earn them anything? You'd say, oh, you foolish man.
And that's what Paul said. But he says that we've not come
there. And believe in the gospel and
trust in Christ. We have not come to that mountain
that can be touched. He says, verse 22, but you have
come to Mount Zion. Yes, we've come to a mountain.
And it's not a mountain that can be touched. The mountain that can be touched,
that's part of the old covenant. It's a here and now. It's a natural
thing. The mountain to which believers
have come is a heavenly or spiritual mountain. You can't touch it. You can't see it. Now there is a natural Mount
Zion. It's the hill on which the temple
was built. Sometimes they would say Mount
Zion or just the word Zion to include all of Jerusalem. But its most precise location
was Mount Zion where the temple is. And he says that that natural
Mount Zion, we've come to a spiritual heavenly version of it. Whatever Mount Zion represented
in the Old Testament, whatever it pictured in the Old Covenant,
we've come to the reality of it. We've come to a mountain
that cannot be touched, but we must touch it. Remember before, it was a mountain
you could touch, but you dare not. We've come now to a mountain
that can be touched. It's not a part of this world.
It's not a part of those things which are seen, which are merely
temporal. It's a part of those things which
are unseen and eternal. We can't touch it with these
hands, but we do touch it. By the grace of God, being made
spiritually alive, we are allowed to touch, or we are enabled to
touch spiritual things. You've come to Mount Zion. You have come. This is one of those places where
it's good to have the word, but. Verse 22, but you have come. You've not come to a mountain
that can be touched, but you have come to Mount Zion. The word but is a very powerful
word because where you put it makes
all the difference in the world. Most of religion, most of the
Christian religion as practiced by men is, they would put it
this way, you have come to Mount Zion but you must return to Mount
Sinai to be perfected. Anything that comes after the
word of the gospel, anytime someone declares a truth of God's gospel,
then says, but trouble's coming. Nothing good can be said after
that. Really think of it. The just shall live by faith. But what can you say after that
that's going to be good and right and according to the truth? Nothing. There's nothing to be said. But
if you say, We were dead in trespasses and sin, but God, who is rich
in mercy, in the love wherewith He has loved us, has made us
alive in Christ. Now that's the way to use the
word but correctly in the Gospel. Naturally, we approach the mountain
that can be touched. But, thanks be to God, we've
been made alive, spiritually alive, and we have now come to
Mount Zion. We have come. We believe in the
sovereign grace of God, but we do not hold it as some do. I don't know that any around
here hold it this way, but there is one Baptist denomination that
kind of holds sovereign grace this way. You know, salvation
is by the sovereign grace of God, and if God's chosen you,
you're going to go to heaven whether or not you ever hear
the gospel or whether or not you ever believe it. No. If God chose you, you will believe
the Gospel. Somewhere along the line, you
will come to Mount Zion. You see, we were doing our natural
thing. We were running headlong to the
mountain that can be touched. We were about to get ourselves
killed by touching that holy mountain in our unholiness, but
sovereign grace intervened. Sovereign grace got in the way.
Isn't that a wonderful thought? Sovereign grace got in our way. There's a way that seems right
unto a man, but the ends thereof are death. And we were going
the direction we thought we should go. We were saying, I'm doing
the best I can. I'm living up to the obligations
that they told me at church I was supposed to be living up to.
And we're just going like this. And Christ got in our way. He blocked our path. And he said,
you're running to the wrong mountain. Well, why? You touch that one,
you'll die. You touch, you go to that mountain,
see that big heavy cloud there? See the lightning, hear the trumpet?
You go there, you're dead. There's a mountain over here
where you can go. And there's life there. And he gave you, well like Lydia,
he opened your mind that you might understand what he had
said. And you went to Mount Zion. You
didn't go there because you're smarter than the other people
in your former way of religion. You didn't go there because you
had some kind of spiritual edge on them naturally, no. The only
reason that any of us here believe the gospel of God's grace is
because God would not let us touch that mountain. He got in
our way and he said, your mind, I'm not going to let you die. People don't like sovereign grace.
Natural people don't because it doesn't leave things up to
them. That's exactly why I like sovereign grace. God didn't leave
it up to me. Because I know what mountain
I'd be trying to touch if he hadn't gotten my way. Mount Zion. Rejoice, brethren, rejoice. Against every natural inclination,
you have come to Mount Zion. And you came here, and I don't
mean this church. You came to this Mount Zion because
you were brought here by the Lord Jesus Christ. indignant
justice stood in view. To Sinai's fiery mount I flew,
but justice cried with frowning face, this mountain is no hiding
place. Ere long, a heavenly voice I
heard, and mercy's angel form appeared. He led me on with gentle
pace. to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. How wonderful it is that our
God got in our way, violated our will, turned us upside down,
inside out, and said, now you're mine. And
here's the direction you're going to go. He doesn't do that for
everyone. But everyone he does it for,
they end up on Mount Zion. Why is Mount Zion so good? Well,
this is the spiritual Mount Zion. I've got eight things written
here. Obviously, I'm not going to spend much time on them. Let me just run through them. Mount Zion in Psalm 48 verse 2 is the joy of the whole
earth and the city of the great king. You know that Mount Zion over there?
Obviously it's not the joy of the whole earth that people want
to blow it up. This Mount Zion, people from
every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation have seen this Mount
Zion and have run to it. And they have seen there, it's
the city of the great King. Not the great King David, not
the great King Solomon. The great King Jesus Christ,
Lord of heaven and earth. All authority in heaven and earth
is given unto me, he said. And we live in his city. I can't help but compare this
to the political mess we call the American election system.
You and I are going to have to put up with a bunch of people
trying to tell us how great they are. I know we're supposed to respect
government, but it's getting harder and harder, isn't it? I was having one of those discussions
in my head with people that weren't present. I was trying to figure
out why do I have the attitude that I do towards our government,
in particular this upcoming presidential election. And I got to thinking,
you look at the slate of people running, and I couldn't look
at one of them and say, and think it would be a positive thing if I could say,
that's my dad or mom. We're not a one of them. I would
call great. But this is the city of the great king. The one who
rules all things and rules them well. Mount Zion, according to 1 Kings
8 chapter 1, is the home of the ark of God's covenant. Now here's
the thing, on Mount Sinai and on Mount Zion, you will find
the law of God. But if you find it on Mount Sinai,
what are you going to find? Do you remember what happened?
God gave Moses the law, chiseled it out there on the stone tablets.
He comes down, he's carrying those things, and then he learns
what's going on down there. Idol worship, all this nonsense.
And he throws them down. All you'll find on Mount Sinai
is a broken law. I hope I said that right. Mount
Sinai. Zion sounds so much like Sinai. I'm not sure that I get
it right. All you'll find on Mount Sinai is a broken law. You go to Mount Zion, you're
going to find the law. Where is it? It's inside the
Ark. That's what they were to put
in the Ark of the Covenant. The copy of the law and a couple
of other things. But there it is, unbroken. But even then, it's inside that
box. On top of that is what is traditionally
called the mercy seat, but strictly the words mean an atonement cover.
And what's on top of that? The blood. The law is there, but you can't
see it. The law is there. It's unbroken. It's covered with mercy. And
it is satisfied with blood. And God sits above that in sovereign
power. You know, we who believe are
the only ones who uphold the law. Paul says by faith we uphold
the law. He didn't say by faith we keep
it. He says by faith we uphold it. Those who are trying to gain
God's blessing by their obedience to the law, they're the ones
who are showing disregard for the law. Because they're acting
one of two ways, probably some of both. They're acting as though
the law is low enough, they can reach it. And they think they're
good enough to reach it. And in both respects, they are
denying the testimony of the Law. But the man who abandons
any hope in the Law and runs to Christ and Christ alone, he's
the one who's upholding the Law because he's saved that Law.
It's just holy, righteous, and good. I can't do it. It's too
much for me. I'm running to Christ. I'm running
to Christ. Mount Zion's the refuge of God's
remnant. It's where the survivors of judgment
dwell. 2 Kings 9 31. Psalm 50, verse 2, it's the place
from which God shines forth. What was Mount Sinai? A place
of darkness. What's Mount Zion? God's wonderful
light shines out from there. The 76th Psalm, verse 2, says
Zion is where God dwells. In Psalm 78, it says Mount Zion
is where God's love is. 1 Peter 2, verse 6, there's this
quotation from the Old Testament. Mount Zion is where the chief
cornerstone, the Lord Jesus Christ, was laid by God. And according to Revelation chapter
14 verse 1, Mount Zion is where the lamb stands. The lamb that had been slain,
he stands on Mount Zion with all his people. I guess I have some material
left over for next week, because I plan to get through all the
rest of it. All I got was to Mount Zion. We'll have to deal
with the rest of it next week. But all rejoice. Be happy. Don't go around carrying the
weight of your sin. Leave that mountain of darkness
and doom and gloom and go to that mountain where God is, where
His law is satisfied. Go where the blood is. Go where
the Lamb is. It's not a place you can touch
naturally. By grace you can touch it spiritually. and there's life.