Turn to Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12. In verse 18, It has to deal with what Doug
read to us earlier. The apostle says, For ye are
not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned
with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest. There
was no singing there, I thought, as we were singing the songs
of praise. There was no songs of praise
going on at Mount Sinai. Darkness, tempest, the sound
of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that
heard entreated that the words should not be spoken to them
anymore. They could not endure that which was commanded, and
if so much as a beast touched the mountain, it shall be stoned
or thrust through with a dart. And so terrible was the sight
that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake. But you are coming
to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem,
to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly
and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven.
and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men
made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant,
and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than
that of Abel. The apostle takes the Hebrews
back in time, at the time of the giving of
the law, and he paints A very dark but true picture. What he has given us here, what
he wrote to the Hebrews, was not an allegory here, it was
a real event. A real event. And he wants them
to see the error of their way, of some of them, who is wanting
to draw back. He wanted them to change the
way they were thinking at that time. It was not good. It was
not good. If you want to go back to the
law, he says to them, if this is what you want to do, if you're
thinking this way, you need to understand the real work and
purpose of the law. The law, that path, is a very
dark road to go down. Darkness, he said. Darkness. Tempest. There are no lights
on that road. No light. Nothing but darkness
and blackness. That's how it's described. The
black cloud hanging over that mountain. The mountain's on fire. And there's lightning. And there's
tempest. There's a windstorm. a windstorm
going on, and as he read a trumpet, and that trumpet kept getting
louder. You know, when I read that earlier, I thought of what
Paul said in Galatians 3. It just came to my mind. And
Paul said, You that want to be under the law, do you not hear
the law? It's screaming at you. Do you
not really hear? The trumpet got louder and louder.
You can't hear what it's saying? That's a place you don't want
to go to. That mountain quaked, it shook. There's no life on that mountain.
You know, I never really thought of it before, but when he said,
if a beast even touches that mountain, it is to be stoned,
it is to be thrust through with the dark. When God descended
on that mountain, there was no life existing on that mountain. Everything on that path that
you're thinking about, some of you are thinking about, it's
a path that leads to death. And it's not because the law
is bad, it's because you're bad. That's why. You know, the law
was good. Paul said the law was good. There's
nothing wrong with the law. It's good. You know, it's good
not to kill one another. Thou shalt not kill. That's good.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. That's good. The law of God is
good. Like God, it's good. Can God
give a bad law? No. Can He give a bad command?
No. It's good. The problem is not
with the law, it's with us, the sinner. The law can't set me
free. It has to be just. It has to
execute justice. It has to do what's right. And
he's saying, you don't want to go down that road. A beast couldn't
even live if it touched that mountain. And he says in verse
18, For you are not coming to the mount that might be touched.
There was a real mountain. It's still over there. It's still
over there. A real mountain called Mount
Sinai. and it could be touched. It's a material mountain. It's
a material place. You can touch it. It's not a
spiritual place. It's a real physical mountain.
You can touch it. But I tell you what, at that
time, if you touched it, it was death. It was death. And this is where God gave the
law to Moses and Moses gave it to the people. And when this
happened, when God came down on the mountain, on Mount Sinai. That mountain, it says, burned
with fire. This speaks of God's holiness
and God's justice. It doesn't speak of grace. It
speaks of God's holiness and God's justice. It was a very
frightening sight. I'll tell you what's interesting.
When Doug read that over there... I want you to go back over here
to Exodus 19. I saw this today going over this.
In Exodus 19, Moses went down and he told the people... He called the elders there in
verse 7. And Moses came and called for the elders of the people
and laid before their faces all the words which the Lord commanded
him. Now listen, and all the people
answered together and said, All that the Lord has spoken, we
will do. He hadn't even spoken yet. He
hadn't given a command yet. You reckon you ought to hear
the command before you say, I can do that? He hadn't even given
the law yet, and they said, We can do it. Whatever He says,
we can do it. You might want to hear what's
said first. You know, you say, John, whatever
you tell me, I'll do it. Well, go jump off a bridge. You
say, but I can't swim. That's irrelevant. Go jump off
the bridge. You said you'd do what I said.
But I am not going to do that. I can't swim. The point I'm making is you might
want to listen to what the command is. But they were so arrogant,
they said, whatever he says, we will do. Now listen, over
in chapter 20, over in chapter 20, okay, we have the giving
of the Ten Commandments. Here's this thunder, and this
lightning, the sound of a trumpet, and a voice of words, and the
words of the Ten Commandments. He's given these Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, and then thou shalt, and thou
shalt. And anyway, look in verse 18.
And after the Lord gave the commandments, And all the people saw the thunderings,
and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountains
smoking. And when the people saw it, they removed and stood
afar off. And they said to Moses, Speak
thou with us, and we will hear. But let not God speak to us any
more. And that's what he's reminding
these Hebrews of. You might want to go back here
in history. Go back and look at the history.
Go back and read the Word of God, the Old Testament. When God spoke, there was lightning
and fire and thunder, and the people couldn't bear it. There
was blackness and darkness and tempest. The giving of the law
offered no hope. When the people heard the voice
of God, when they saw all this, they said, Moses, you speak to
us. We don't want God to speak to
us anymore. Let me ask you something. When the gospel is preached,
do you want to hear it again? Do you want to hear it again? It's good news, isn't it? It's
good news. It's a big difference between
the demands and commands of the law and the gospel of grace. The giving of the law offered
no hope, only curse and wrath. No life on that mountain. You
don't want to go there. He's pointing this out to these
Hebrews who were having doubts. Some of them went back. The giving
of the law only revealed part of God's character. It only revealed
part of it. But not God Himself. It revealed
something of God's holiness. It did do that. Something of
God's majesty and holiness and greatness. But it didn't reveal God who delights to show mercy. the
God of all grace, the God of all comfort. To really see God in His completeness,
we have to see Him in the face of Jesus Christ. To really see
the glory of God's person, we see it in a person, not on tables
of stone. Not on tables of stone. We see
it in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's only when we see
the Lord Jesus Christ do we see the fullness of God. We read
and looked a few months ago in Hebrews 1 where it says that
the Lord Jesus Christ is the express image of God. He's the express image of His
person. Our Lord said, He that has seen Me has seen the Father. Over in Colossians, it says that
in Christ dwells all the fullness, all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. Whatever it is we need to know
of God, whatever it is there is to know of God, will be known
in Jesus Christ. But we won't know it. We'll not know it. The Israelites said that they
would do all that was commanded, clearly showing they did not
know God and they did not know themselves. That was a clear
statement of their ignorance of God, of Christ, of themselves. They didn't know. They didn't know Him at all. I'm trying to think as I'm talking
here, but over in Romans chapter 10, I want to show you something
here. Paul said, My heart's desire,
Romans 10 verse 1, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer
to God for Israel is that they might be saved. For I bear them
record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to
knowledge, for they have been ignorant of God's righteousness.
First of all, I think he's saying here, they've been ignorant of
the very righteous nature of God. They were ignorant of the strict,
absolute, unadulterated righteousness of
God, His character, His person. For God said in Psalms, you thought
I was like you. You thought I was like you. What
a misunderstanding of God. And because of that, they said,
oh, we'll do whatever he commands. Whatever he commands, we'll do
it. And he says back here in Hebrews
19, there's the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words. That
trumpet, as we read earlier, kept getting louder and louder.
And what's going on here is the law, this trumpet had been louder
and louder and the voice of words, the law of revealing our sins. The work of the law was to reveal
sin. And I'll tell you what, when
God gives you, when He gives me, when God gives a sinner a
real conviction of sin, Your conscience and that conviction
of your sin and your sinfulness gets louder and louder until
you run to Christ, until you run to the Lord Jesus Christ.
David said over in Psalm 32, he said, My bones waxed old through
the roaring. They were screaming. He said,
There's screaming inside of me. He was so eaten up. with guilt
over what he did with Bathsheba and Uriah, and he tried to just
hide it like it was nothing, to make nothing of it, and just
go on, I won't do that no more. You know, that's his attitude.
I won't do that again, I'm sorry. But he tried to keep, he just
tried to just put it down. Let's go over to Psalm 32. I'll
never get through this if I keep doing this, but we need to see
this. These are what I call unplanned
parts of the message. David said here in Psalm 32,
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is
covered. Boy, did he know that by experience. Blessed is the
man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit
there is no guile. When I kept silence, He's not
talking about just going out and telling anybody about it.
He's talking about silence before God, not confessing, not going
before the Lord and owning up to it. My bones waxed old through
my roaring all the day long, for day and night thy hand was
heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the
drought of summer. I tell you, when God brings Holy
Spirit conviction, that law, that sound of the trumpet just
gets louder and louder. And all you can say, guilty,
guilty, guilty, until one day you finally fall down before
the Lord and you cry, guilty, like David did in Psalm 51. Against
thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. the sound of that trumpet, the
voice of words, the Ten Commandments. It revealed their sin, it demanded
perfect obedience, but it didn't give any strength to keep them. No strength to do. And when they heard that voice
of words, they didn't want to hear it again. It says, I read
it to you, they couldn't endure what was commanded, they could
not do. They could not do. They're back
there in Hebrews. It says they could not endure.
That means they couldn't do. They couldn't do what was commanded. It was guilty, guilty, guilty.
Remember when the Lord stooped down and put His finger on the
ground? That woman called it an adultery.
And then He stood up and He said, You that are without sin cast
the first stone in being convicted. They were convicted in their
own hearts. They knew they were guilty. They stand before the
judge. They knew they were, and one
by one, they slipped out. I can imagine one of them just
trying to ease over and just slip out, another one slipping
out. And the next thing you know, there was no one there but him
and her. All her accusers were gone. They were gone. Now if you want to stay under
the law, the accusers are not going to be gone. They're going
to stay right there. They're going to stay right there,
and they're going to see to it that you're stoned. That you're
stoned. When a sinner hears the gospel,
that sinner wants to hear the Lord speak. You see, when they
heard it, they said, we don't want to hear Him no more. But
I tell you what, when you hear the Gospel, when you hear the
Lord speak to you in the power of His Spirit through the preaching
of the Gospel, you want to hear it again and again. And that's
why you're here tonight. You want to hear it again. You
didn't come here to hear me read the Ten Commandments. You came
here to hear me preach the Gospel. If I stand here and read the
law to you and that's all I do, I'm just condemning you. Of course,
we'd be so self-righteous, we'd probably go right over our head,
but it'd still be to our condemnation. Tell me the gospel. Tell me the
old, old story, we sing. Tell me the old, old story. One
more time. Tell it to me one more time. The Scripture says concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ, grace pours from His lips. It didn't pour from Sinai. It
didn't pour from there. But grace pours from His lips.
Come unto me, all you that labor and heavy laden, and I'll give
you rest. They didn't hear that at Sinai. You go and read the
Ten Commandments. Do you hear that? You don't hear
that. No, you don't hear that until
Christ speaks. You're not going to hear that
from the law, you're going to hear that from grace. That's grace pouring from His
lips to a bunch of rebels. They could not endure. In verse
20, they could not do what was commanded. The law demanded perfection. They couldn't do it. They couldn't
do it. And because of that, they said,
we don't want him saying more to us. Enough's enough. Now, the point he's making is
this. Do you want to go back to that? Do you want to go back to that
kind of life? Do you want to go back to that kind of rituals
and ceremonies, the ceremonies and the sacrifices that could
not take away sin? Do you want to go back? I tell you what, for the believer
there is no going back, is there? There's no place to go back to.
The Lord said to His disciples once, will you also go away?
And they said, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life. There's no place to go. Boy,
I tell you, it's just beautiful when the Lord shuts you up and
burns your bridges and you have no place else to go but Him.
You ain't got no place to go back. And you don't want to either.
But, he says in verse 22, you are come to Mount Zion, the city. Boy, the picture... Now he can paint a beautiful
picture. He just painted this dark, dark picture of lightning
and thunder and death. Death. And now he turns from... that to a city, to a city, and
to a mountain, mountains called Mount Zion. And listen, this
is a mountain that's spiritual. This is not a physical mountain.
Although I see, I see those who make it up. Because he's speaking
here at the church. Mount Zion is the church. But
it's spiritual. It's a spiritual mountain. It's
God's dwelling place. God dwells in His people. Is Christ here tonight? Is He here tonight? If you believe the gospel, I
believe the gospel, God has saved us. Christ is in you. Yes, He's here. He's here in
you. He's here in you. But you have
come to Mount Zion, city of the living God. Where does God dwell? God dwells in you. That's astounding. That's totally astounding. The
city of the living God is the church. It's the church. Heavenly Jerusalem is the church.
All these refer to the people of God, the church of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the place where God dwells. It's where we worship. We worship God here tonight in
Christ. And I'll get to this here in
just a second. There's no way to come to any
of these places that he's talking to here, you've come to Mount
Zion, the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and
the only way we come to this place, these places, he's put
it in a plural, is coming to Christ. Because we have it all
in Christ. It's all in Him. In Him I have
all this. I have this fellowship. I have
acceptance, I have worship with God, I have fellowship with God. You are come to Mount Zion, the
city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and listen, an innumerable
company of angels. Angels are spoken of more than
once here in the book of Hebrews because they are very important
servants of God, and they are very important servants concerning
us. Did you see any today? No. But
I'm telling you, I'm not exaggerating. This room right now is full of
angels. I'm telling you the truth. I'm
not off my rocker. This room is full of angels.
And even though you and I are having a hard time maybe staying
awake, I mean, I was yawning like crazy before I came here
because I was studying today, and I'm tired. I'm tired. My mind is tired. But there's a company here with
us right now that's rejoicing that's unbelievable, unimaginable
right now in this room with us and they're angels. And they
surround this place, they protect this place, they take care of
this place. They take care, when I say this place, I'm not talking
about a building. I'm talking about the people, the church
of the living God. This place is a lot more full
than we think. And the angels... Boy, this just
drew up my soul when I thought about this today. I thought, you know, you and
I, we had to struggle with this flesh and sin, and all that went
on out there today, you brought in here with you. You know, we
carry our baggage around with us a lot. We carry too much baggage
because we really don't know how to get rid of it. We're told
how to get rid of it, but we don't. We take a burden to the
Lord, leave it there. If you were able to leave it
there, you wouldn't go home and worry about it. Right? You wouldn't. But I take it to
the Lord and I bring it back home. And I worry about it, and
then I try to do it again and worry about it. That's just us. We're so sinful and so weak in
this flesh, that's us. That's us. But I tell you, the
angels that are with us, and this encourages me in preaching,
they are rejoicing. The fact that I'm preaching about
our Lord, their Lord, our God, their God. Let all the angels
of God worship Him, and they're doing it right now, even as I
stumble through this. I'm just a man with limited abilities
and limited understanding, but I tell you what, they know the
gospel when it's preached. I promise you, they know the
gospel when it's preached, and they rejoice. And to the General
Assembly, Church of the Firstborn. You know everybody in here is
a Firstborn? Every believer in here is a Firstborn. It is in such a way that we're
all Firstborns, with Christ being the Firstborn. To the General Assembly in Church
of the Firstborn, I heard Henry give this one time. He said,
The church of God is assembled in His mind from all eternity.
They are assembled in Christ then, and they are assembled
in Christ now. And someday, we will all be assembled together
in His presence. Someday. Someday we won't be
here. You know, if I live long enough,
I'll be doing some funerals. I know that. And then somebody
will do mine. And someday, this will all finally
be done with, and we'll all be right there, gathered in His
presence. In the general assembly here
in Church of the Firstborn, here's the meaning of this, is this, it is a festive occasion. There was no festive occasion
in the giving of the law. There was nothing festive about
that. There was nothing about that
that was festive. But when we talk about the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ being assembled And it's a festive
occasion. Didn't we just sing? Didn't we
just sing? You know, the Lord accepts that.
I mean, our minds may be on something else, and we're trying. You ever
say, Lord, enable me to worship? And you try to listen. You try
to pay attention. And for about two seconds, you
can. And then your mind goes off on something else. And then
you come back. And then it goes off. And you do that through
the whole service. And yet, through the Lord Jesus
Christ, this is received as a worship service from His people. And it's a festive occasion.
Over in Revelation 5, we were singing. And I thought about all that
was going on at Mount Sinai, all that thunder and lightning
and storm and tempest and earth, the mountain quaking and shaking. There was nothing festive about
that. In Revelation 5 verse 9, And they sung a new song, saying,
Thou wert worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof,
for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood
out of every kindred, tongue, and people, and nation, and hast
made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on
the earth. And I beheld and I heard the
voice of many angels round about the throne and the beast and
the elders and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000,
thousand and thousands. saying with a loud voice, worthy
is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and
wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing. And every
creature which is in heaven and under the earth and such as are
in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I say, blessing
and honor and glory and power, Be unto him that sitteth upon
the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever. And the four
bees said, Amen. And the four twenty elders fell
down and worshipped him that liveth forever and ever. I tell
you what, we say Amen too. We say Amen. They didn't say
that at Mount Sinai. They said, Don't speak to us
again. Don't, Moses, don't let him speak to us again. Do you all want me to speak to
you again? Do you want God to speak to you again? Do you want
to hear the Gospel again? I do. I do. You've come to that General Assembly,
Church of the Firstborn, which are, listen, written in heaven,
past tense. The names are already written
down. They're not written down as we go along, as life goes
along, as time goes along. He's writing it down as it goes
along. This one accepted me today. And
he's not erasing them out of there either. I know there's some who believe,
I've talked to some who believe that you can be saved and you
can be lost. You can be saved, you can be lost. You better hope
when you pluck that last daisy that you're saved. You ever do
that when you're growing up? She loves me, she loves me not.
Well, you know what, you get to she loves me not, you pick
another daisy. Just keep on going. Till you get the outcome you
want. You get another daisy. But that's not, it's not writing
the name and erasing the name. Writing the name, erasing the
name. It's like, what's it gonna be like by the time I die? No,
that name was written down long before you and I were born. Long
before we were born. And it's going to stay there.
"...which are written in heaven, whose names are written in the
Lamb's book of life." And listen, here's what we've also come to.
To God, the Judge of all. They said, Moses, don't let Him
speak to us. You and I want Him to speak to us. We're not afraid
of the Judge. We have favor with the Judge
through His Son. We have free access to the Judge
of all the earth. We have no reason to be afraid
of Him. No reason. We've come to the Judge and to
the spirits of just men made perfect. We have a real communion
with justified men and women right here. Right here, right
now, we have a real communion with spirits of men and women
that have been justified. I have communion with justified
people. How'd that happen? How did this
justification happen? Okay, here's how it happened.
In verse 24, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling. This is how we're justified.
Through the Lord Jesus Christ and his substitutionary work.
Christ died for my sins. In Christ, we are justified. In Christ, we are clear of all
charges. All charges. It just keeps getting
better, doesn't it? As we go along here. Why do you
want to go back to signing? Why do you want to go back to
the law? Why do you want to go back to works and ceremonies when God is over here? Salvation is over here. Salvation,
forgiveness, cleansing and acceptance, it's over here. It's not back
there. It's in Christ. Coming to Christ by faith, knowing
your real need of Him, knowing He's able to save you to the
uttermost, is the best thing that could ever happen to you.
the best. And to the blood of sprinkling,
this blood is the blood of atonement, blood that cleanses from all
sin. It identifies what he's doing here. He is identifying
the blood of Christ as an act of atonement. They knew what
the sprinkling of the blood meant. They knew the lamb had been slain
and the blood sprinkled. They knew the blood had been
put on the door post and the side post. They knew what that
meant. The blood of sprinkling, the
blood of atonement is in Christ. It's not back there in those
old sacrifices. It's not in lambs and all those Old Testament sacrifices. It's there. John said, Behold
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. You
want your sins taken away? Go to Him. Go to the Lord Jesus
Christ. this blood of sprinkling here,
and Christ being the mediator of this new covenant, this new
covenant of grace, is the key to it all. It's the key to all
of it. This is where the apostle has
been bringing the Hebrews and us, and every child of God who
is ever here, this is where he's bringing us to, this climax right
here, is we've come to Jesus Christ, who is the true mediator
of the new covenant. His blood is the blood of reconciliation. His blood is the blood of atonement. And don't you go anywhere else.
Don't go anywhere else. Whose blood speaks better things
than that of Abel. It speaks peace. Abel's cried
for vengeance. God said, Your brother's blood
cries to me from the ground. But the blood of Abel that he's
talking about, he's talking about that blood of that sacrifice
he offered. That's the blood he's talking about. The blood
of that sacrifice that Abel offered was a typical sacrifice that
never took away any sin. But the blood of Jesus Christ,
has taken away all our sins. It speaks better things than
that of Abel. It speaks peace, real peace,
real forgiveness, real acceptance with God. It does. All right, we'll pick up the
next time. To whom have you come? That's what he's putting in her
mind. He's saying here, you need to really consider to whom you've
come. Not Mount Sinai, but to Christ. And don't you go back. Don't
you ever go back. Ever, ever, ever.