Okay, I'm going to start in verse
12 of chapter 12. We'll read and then we'll continue.
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak
knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is
lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive
for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no
one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to
obtain the grace of God. that no root of bitterness springs
up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled. That
no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his
birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward,
when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found
no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. For you
have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and
darkness, and gloom, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and
a voice whose words make the hearers beg that no further messages
be spoken to them. For they could not endure the
order that was given, quote, if a beast touches the mountain,
it shall be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the
sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But you have come
to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, and to the innumerable angels in festal gathering, and
to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and
to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous
make perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and
to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood
of Abel. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for being
able to get together. And Lord, we pray for our spiritual family. We pray for our brothers and
sisters in the faith, Lord, who are just working and laboring
in this life. Lord, I pray that you would help
us to pray for them that they would rest in the gospel of Christ. That they would really get up
every morning and say, this is a good day because the good news
of God is true. Help us all have that heart.
And Father, as we come to the close of this letter in the next
few weeks, I pray that you would teach us not just the practical
things that concern our lives together, though they are important,
but Father, that you would continue to drive into us by your grace
the most vital thing, which is Jesus Christ, who is our hope
of righteousness. For only through Christ are we
made perfect. Only through Christ are we sanctified.
Only through Christ, Lord, are we able to know and see the holiness
with which we can see you face to face. Father, help us to turn
away from the flesh and turn away from law keeping and turn
away from morality as a hope. as a moniker, as a gauge. But Lord, let us be known as
people of faith. And Father, as I stand this evening,
as I read your word, and as I talk about it, Father, I am someone
who is greatly in need of your strength, greatly in need of
endurance, and that we might help one another through the
gospel, keep each other's knees from flying out of joint. that
we may walk the race of grace. And we pray these things in the
name of Christ. Amen. All right. We're going to rewind
and pick up and let this disjointed last few weeks sort of roll into
a something that makes sense. So that's what we're going to
do. We know that the context of this letter is that there
were people who were troubling these Hebrew Christians, trying
to move them back under Moses, trying to move them back under
the law, trying to move them back in a place where they would
measure their confidence by their works, or worse, by God's power
making them something that was measurable before him. And so
the letter is a polemic against the law, against Judaism, against
the shadows, and it stands firmly on the promises of God by His
grace to His people alone. And it is hard to not give into
the flesh. And there's a lot of things,
I literally could talk for several hours tonight if I had the time,
but there are a lot of things that I want to make sure we see
in the context of chapter 12 before we move on. to some practical
things in closing and then move to the book of James. I'll say
this too, that without a true foundation of gospel, without
a true reality of the simple grace of Christ, these things
don't make sense to us. The letter of James will not
make sense to someone who is not truly converted. It will
not make sense to one who is clinging to the flesh, or clinging
to the law, or clinging to the practice of morality, or clinging
to their efforts, or clinging to their desires, or clinging
to the cleansing of something spiritual about their countenance
or their affections. It's not going to happen. And we don't really have to teach
the details of all the functions of grace in order for one to
receive the efficacy of grace. Yet Paul, the writer that I believe,
the person that I believe wrote this letter, is very clear that
it is about grace. That the prayer of the one who
has been shown the truth of God's righteousness understands mercy. And understands that it is only
by the mercy of God, He who gives mercy, He who is merciful, that
is the only hope of salvation. As a matter of fact, the words
that are spoken by Jesus giving the example of the and the Pharisee,
and the Pharisee praising God for a semblance of righteousness. That He's not like other men.
That He doesn't live like them, or speak like them, or dress
like them, or talk like them. Yet, the other sinner dares to
raise his eyes toward heaven and earnestly cries out, propitiate
for me. That's what he says. Satisfy
your judgment toward me God for only in that satisfaction shall
I stand free. We could go through Galatians
and we've read through some Galatians text and by the Lord's mercy
in the years to come I pray that we can go through detail of a
lot of these things but We know that it is for freedom that we
have been set free. And there is a great shadow or darkness
that rests upon the free world in the context of Christianity.
And this darkness is a present evil, and it's not about evil
deeds and evil thoughts in the way most people look at them.
It is about evil ideas and understandings concerning righteousness. It
is about hating grace and hating those who preach it.
But it is only by the mercies of God that we are not in the
same shadow. It is only by the power of God
for His people that we, in the Lord's time, have been given
eyes to see. That we are able to look at Christ
and see Him for exactly what He is. We've learned a lot of
truth in this letter thus far. And as I was thinking about this
today and as I am very familiar with this text, I'll tell you
that it is very difficult sometimes when this text is in my ear that
it does not bring me to a place of emotion. And emotion is not
a litmus test for sensitivity or spirituality. But there is
a sense in which, just like when I hear the story of Abraham and
Isaac, and he taking his son to the mountain to kill him,
when he says, son, the Lord will provide a sacrifice. Because I know that if I were
to approach God without Christ, I would die. I would die. And so would you. There's a lot
of debate and debate is very seldom ever beneficial for the
Bible does not teach us that the debate of humanity ever affects
God's sovereignty. But that the simplicity of grace
by the Spirit alone into the teaching through the teaching
of our lives verbally to the ears of the elect God will cause
them to see. So we teach with patience and
endurance and with long-suffering, I know I'm being repetitive,
but we teach with all love and affection and care, tenderness
and kindness, knowing that it is all about sovereignty and
God working salvation that He has already completed into the
hearts of His people. And as many of you have already
experienced, we can always be called anti-law or anti-gnomian. Because when we hear, when people
hear who don't understand the gospel grace alone, they think that then the preacher
of righteousness is saying live like you want to live. You know what's funny about that?
No human being in the world that has ever lived ever under the
law as a sinner. I'm not talking about excluding
the God-man. No person who has ever lived in the world has ever
had to be convinced to sin. They've never had to be given
permission. They've never had to go and had someone explain
to them how sin looks and what sin is. You don't have to explain
what is right. to a human being and what is
wrong in the sense of what is sinful and what is righteous
so that they then might choose the sin. It doesn't happen. We're sinners and we're going
to sin. We've been in 1 John also in
parallel with Hebrews and we see John writing the words there
in the very first chapter of his first letter. He says, Beloved,
I write these things to you that you may not sin. But if you sin, if you sin, we
have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our
sins. Now, let's get back to the context
here. With all of that in mind, in
my short life, Well, let's just put it in my short married life.
25 years now and a few months, Robin and I will have been married
25 years and a few months. And in the first 10 to 12 years
of our life, it seemed like we moved a lot. We moved a lot. We moved to a particular city.
We moved to a particular apartment. Then we move from an apartment
to a house, and then we move from a house to another house,
sometimes in the same community. Sometimes we move, like in Savannah,
we moved to four different properties in four years. And you think, that's crazy.
Well, that's what you do. When you're renting there, and
then you're renting here, and then you buy here, it just happens. Or you
have kids and the one-bedroom apartment's not big enough, you
just keep moving. But when we moved to Virginia
and then to the West Coast and then back here, it was beyond
the scope of our ability to move without assistance. And what
I mean by that is just driving a car hours and hours away with
children in it is difficult enough. Imagine everything you own. And
as you get older in your life, you accumulate more things. You
really do. When I first got married and
moved to Savannah, everything we owned fit in the back of a
pickup truck. When I moved to Brunswick, we had to rent the
small U-Haul. When I moved to Virginia, it
was the longer U-Haul plus a pickup truck. When I moved to California,
it was a semi-truck. When I moved back to Georgia,
it was two semi-trucks. It's like, how much more? And
of course, most of that was books as the library grew. But I remember the first time
that a company and a stranger came into my house and started
going into my things and taking my stuff out of my drawers and
putting it into boxes and labeling boxes and taping up things and
making an inventory. And there were dozens of men
who I did not know, who I'd never met, who didn't even have name
tags going through all of my stuff. And if you don't know
me, This whale, but for those who know me well know that that
dog doesn't hunt in my head. So I was like a hawk. Because
not that I was afraid they were taking it, but what are they
doing with it? That doesn't go there. It might have been in
that drawer, but it doesn't go in that drawer. Put it over here
in this drawer because this is where it goes. This type of thing. And to this
day, I'm missing several things that I cannot find. And I've
been looking for them. And one day I will find them.
And then I will throw them away. But it's bad having somebody
move you. It's bad. But if these people
had come in, this is a point of the illustration, if these
people had come into my house and began to take my stuff and
throw it in the trash can, we would have had a problem. If
these people, as a matter of fact, the movers who packed our
house from Virginia actually packed a couple of bags of waste. Like letters and stuff in a trash
bag. They just put the trash bag in the trash can, put the
trash can in a box and taped it up. So we get to California
and we open it up like, well, hey, here's our trash. Glad it
wasn't food. When people try to move you against
your will, it's a problem. And beloved, this is what's happening
to the Hebrews here. The Judaizers and those like them were trying
to move them away from Christ. Trying to take them back to the
law. And that's where we are here
in verses 18 through 24. This is the picture that we've
been ramping up to see the sufficiency of Christ. That He is preeminent
and powerful above all things. And these people wanted to move
them back to where they came from. Remember the beginning
of the letter where it talks about the promise of God to move
them out of bondage in Egypt, out of slavery, out of spiritual
death, into the land of promise. These temporary conditional things
that God established to be a shadow of the perfection of Jesus Christ.
And how for 40 years those generations grumbled and complained and didn't
want to believe in the promises of God. They'd rather go back
into the peace and proximity of Egypt in slavery rather than
deal with the uncertainty of the promises of God in their
own minds. And the warnings that are in this text that God gave
the Israelites at that time should cause us to sit up and think,
wow, it is all by grace. Because when we think about Sinai,
when we think about, as we see Esau, I didn't skip over him
on purpose, I wanted to conjoin him to this particular issue
of Sinai. See, look at Esau. Esau was the
firstborn son. Esau was the one who would receive
the promise. Esau, by all laws, had the birthright
and the blessing of his father. But what did he do? He sold it. For what? A pot of soup. Some
biscuits and gravy. Cinnamon toast crunch. I don't
know what it was. Some stew. Doesn't matter what it was. It
was the fact that he was willing to give up that which was his
under a covenant contract for something that was worthless.
And then later, he comes back and says, you know what? I made
a mistake. Too late. The blessing's been given away. Too late. Now that's a gospel picture. How so? Why did Jacob have the
love of God and Esau hated by God? So that the purpose of election
might stand. so that the purpose of election
might stand. This is a picture of God's grace. Even as Esau
represents the stubborn Israelites, and even as Jacob thought he
could finagle his way into that, the only reason things happened
the way they did is because of God's sovereignty, and God's
promises, and God's purposes. So then we move back even to
see not just these twins, but then we see Sinai here, don't
we? We see Sinai. Where the Israelites were moving
out of Egypt, they were being relocated. They were going to have a new
land. They were going to have a new life. They were going to have a new
opportunity. But what did they do in their
hearts? They committed adultery against God. And they stuck their
finger in the face of grace and said, no, we had it better over
there. And beloved, I'm going to tell
you something. It was pressing on the Hebrew Christians of the
day of this letter, and it's pressing on the Christians who
believe the gospel today. It is always a war by the religious,
who, well-meaning as they may think they are, are actually
teaching lies against Christ. Because see, in verse 18 through 24, we see
the picture of two cities. We see the picture of two promises. We see the picture of two covenants.
We see the picture and we've already seen it haven't we? This
isn't new. It's just painting a picture from the beginning. Imagine Sinai. Imagine coming
to the tempest. were Moses, the spiritual leader,
the prophet of God, who had brought them out of Egypt by the power
of God. Of course, they manifest their
worship to Moses, but we know it was God, it was Christ, it
was the Lord who brought his people out as a picture. But
God met with Moses on the mountain and he wrote a contract with
Moses. And he wrote a contract so that the people of Israel
could see two specific things. One, is that they could see exactly
how powerful God was in his holiness and his righteousness and his
justice. And I'm using all those terms very synonymously right
now. And he also wanted to prove to
later generations just how powerless, just how powerless humanity is. and not just powerless, unable
to approach God whatsoever in His justice, in His righteousness,
in His power. So here's Moses and here are
the people who have seen great works of God, promised a new
space, promised a new life, promised a promised land. And Moses goes
up on the mountain and the mountain and its experience is so bad
that Moses says, I tremble with fear. I tremble with fear. Now
I've been in some bad weather. I've been in tornadoes and I
have survived a hurricane that really wasn't that much of a
hurricane. It was just horrible for me. Sustained winds that
would not allow you to walk forward is scary. So I can imagine being in the
presence of God as a sinner. As a non-justified human being. That's what Sinai is. Sinai is
the closest humanity can get to that which can be touched. See what does he say there? You
have not come to what may be touched. He's comparing the old
covenant with the new covenant. He's comparing the law with Christ. He's comparing justice with grace
and he's comparing death with life and so many other comparisons.
And this is the gospel. What we're going to see today
is a simple gospel expression. So the Israelites are there.
Moses is fearful. He walks up. God begins to speak
to him. With his own hand, he writes
on the tablets of stone ten little tiny laws that are to establish
a simple understanding of God, of righteousness. And God did
not give the law so that the Israelites could earn righteousness. He gave the law so that the Israelites
would know they're dead in their shoes. He gave the law so that
they would be clear in their understanding that they will
die in the presence of their God. And He even proved it. What happens
when Moses comes down? Aaron has created a calf party
and worshiped idols. And God opens up the ground and
swallows some of them. Then Joshua and other generals,
if I could say generals, I don't know the ranks of Israeli, Israelite
armies, but let's just say he was a military person, of course,
in defense. He and others like him go start
splitting open the stomachs of people. God said, from the mountain,
if an animal touches that which can be touched. See, that's what's
crazy. It can be touched and felt and
understood and absorbed, but yet you can't touch it. Started
to entitle this message, Can't Touch This, but I did. Because
you can't, in your sinfulness, none of us can, in our sinfulness,
touch the presence of righteousness. None whatsoever. And so God gives
the law to Moses and all the law of Moses is one law. All 613 laws that we see in the
Old Testament and the Old Covenant are considered the law. When
we start parting out the law, oh, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments,
that's just part of the law. It's all or none, baby. Which
do you want? You want to be at Sinai or do
you want to be in Zion? And the crazy thing is it's not
your choice. So when I ask questions like that, it is not a well-meant
offer. It's just expressing the harshness of righteousness. So here, this blazing fire, darkness
and gloom, the sound of a trumpet. They didn't want to see Moses'
face and they didn't want to hear any more instruction. They
did not want to hear that where they were in the presence of
God, that if an animal touched the mountain base, they were
to stone that animal because nothing can approach the righteousness
of God. That's what the law is, beloved.
The law is death. One million percent of the time. It will never ever give life. Religion will never give life.
Morality will never give life. Spiritual maturity will never
give life. Nothing will give life but the
life giver himself and that is Jesus Christ. That is Jesus Christ. I tremble
with fear. Because Moses knew that he was
dead. Moses knew the power of his flesh
was futile. Moses knew that no matter how
mature he became, he would die if it weren't for
the mercy of God. And Moses was a faithful servant over the house
of God, yet he was faithless. Remember that? I think week 26,
27 we talked about that. You hear me talk a lot in the
teaching of the scripture about making provision for the flesh.
Let's talk about that in this context here for a second. You also hear me talk about this.
Is that when we spend our energy and our flesh and our minds on
trying to put away sin, we're actually making provision for
the flesh because we think that there's something that we can
do to satisfy righteousness to a certain degree. Even if we
believe in the grace of God, we put too much emphasis on laboring
over becoming better rather than resting and having been declared
to be righteous. One is faith in Christ, the other
is works. You can't work toward grace. You can't work in grace and you
can't work for grace. It defeats the definition of
it. So in this comparison, it teaches
us that there's a difference between the fear of approaching
God with a covenant of works or a covenant or a contract dealing
with his righteousness thinking that there is any way that anyone
could ever obtain it versus coming to Mount Zion to that Mount Zion
which is an eternal that's why he says you haven't come to what
can be touched but you can touch Mount Zion but just not yet see we live in a day where it's easier to sit down
and be told what to do and what not to do than it is to just
rest Because that's what the human
flesh does. We don't have innumerable additions
to Gospels. We don't have innumerable cults
and ideals and philosophies and all sorts of things because the
human mind is lacking in creativity and approach to righteousness. There's always going to be brilliance.
in all these fake, false Christianities. And they all make sense to us
sometime along down the road. It started to make sense to some
of these Hebrew people. You know what? We were, you know,
sort of doing these things. Now we're not. I mean, aren't
they commanded of us? Are we resting in Christ or are
we not? So Mount Zion is the city of
the living God. We are aliens in this land. We
are not citizens of this world. We are not of the world, though
we are in the world. And we are supposed to be in
the world. We're not supposed to isolate ourselves from the
people of our communities. We're not supposed to isolate
ourselves as a city that's on a hill would not turn out its
light. And if you don't know what that's illustrating, it's
just like when you travel, especially across Texas, and you're driven
for 70 or 80 days, and you've not seen anything. And then you
see this light in the horizon, and you're thinking, I don't
care if it's something that's on fire, I'm stopping. You're excited
to see something to do, some destination. So we don't hide
from the world, but we're not of the world, we're different.
We don't put our hope in this life. We don't look to all the
frustrations of this world and think, Lord, what am I doing
wrong so that I might live a better life? No, the better life is
not here. The better life is at Zion. The
better life is the promise of hope through Jesus Christ. It's
not here. And we will approach Zion. the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering. Know
what that means? Celebration. How many angels? You can't count them. There's
no number known to humanity's computation systems that can
express the number of angels that are going to be present
in the worship of God. That's why it says innumerable. We've come to the celebration
of God. We've come to the glorious worship
of God. We've come to thank God with
the angels who are praising Him for His glorious grace. Remember
what Paul says to the Ephesians? The whole point of all this adoption,
of all this election, of all this eclectic mindset of, I'm
gathering my people before the foundation of the world, all
this is to the praise of my glory, he says. Not Paul's glory, but
to the glory of Christ. I just inadvertently made Paul
Jesus. It's to the praise of the glory of Christ. It's to
the praise of the glorious grace of God. God is satisfied in the
praise that has to do with His grace. He is not satisfied in
praise that is man-centered. He is not satisfied in the living
sacrifices of a life well-pleasing. And when people think that's
gonna do something for them in the day of judgment. And yet, just like I said, as
we were getting started this evening, it's always interesting
when people say to me, well, you're saying people can just
go sin. We don't have to teach people
to sin. They're just gonna sin. I have five children and I have
a journal of wicked moments. It's funny. But it's not funny. My children have really taught
me a lot through the years and will continue to do so as I digress. Hopefully they mature. But we are going to be with not
just the heavenly host worshiping God in thankfulness. We're going
to be with the assembly, the ecclesia of all the firstborn
who are enrolled in heaven. What does that mean? Your name,
beloved, has been written in the Lamb's Book of Life before
the foundation of the world. Now, God doesn't have sharpies
and pens and pencils and he's not up there printing paper on
a printing press in heaven. He's not going around trying
to write down names. He didn't get together with the
Trinity one day. You know, the triune God didn't
get together and say, okay, let's start making names. This is imagery. It's a picture of us understanding.
I mean, we've gone on trips before and I've taught at conferences
and Robbins taught at conferences and conventions and you know
some of the places that we went, the venues that we went, you
had to have a tag to get into these places. You couldn't just
come in off the street and eat in these restaurants. They were
specific to the venue. So in order to get in, you had to have
a tag or you had to have your name on the list. If your name
wasn't on the list, it didn't matter how much money you had.
It didn't matter if you were the President of the United States. It didn't
matter because they were only going to serve the people who
had paid to attend the conference and you didn't pay because you're
not on the list. You're not going to believe in
the grace of God if you're not on the list of life. You see,
that's the image. The names. who are enrolled in
heaven, we are enrolled eternally by the Father who adopted His
people before the foundation of the world that He would create
the world so that His people could be given to His Son that
when His Son went obediently to the cross and said, it is
finished, their salvation was finished. You were saved at the cross,
beloved. You were saved at the cross. We come with all those to God. Now see, look at the difference. In Sinai, you come to God, you
die. Why? Because the law convicts you
and kills you. The law convicts you and kills
you. But look at this, you come to God, and what does he say
here? How does he identify God? What
adjective does he use? What name? The judge of all. The judge of all. So now here we are. Wait a minute.
Sinai was a place of judgment. Yes, you better believe it. And
God was telling the truth when He said that all men have fallen
from His glory. That none are righteous. That
no one seeks after Him. That all do evil in His sight. That our tongues are like the
tongues of ass. That our throats are like open
graves. We murder and kill and do all sorts of acts of unrighteousness. But beloved, those who do not
believe in the grace of God, everything they do is an act
of unrighteousness. Everything. Every prayer, every
good deed, every love, every benefit, every act of benevolence,
every kind word. It's all unrighteousness because
even the righteous works of a human being are wicked in the eyes
of God. They're filthy. It is only the
righteousness of Christ that matters. And we're not at Sinai
anymore, Paul's saying. We are looking to Zion, and we
are going to come to the celebration in the midst of God, who is the
judge of all. Now, that should scare us for
a moment, right? And in our culture, we have a
lot of so-called gospel preachers who love to preach the gospel,
preach the grace, and then add some fear behind it, because
let me tell you what fear does. Fear motivates behavioral modification
to a place where everybody's looking the part and living the
part, Even though they know internally and in private, they cannot live
up to it. So that's why we come to the
judge. Why is there a celebration if
God is the judge? Because he's talking to believers.
He's talking to the elect. He's talking to those who have
been given to Christ before the foundation of the world. He's
talking to those who are saved because of the blood of Jesus.
There's so many things I want to say. We come to the judge
of all. But look at this very next phrase
out of the same sentence in verse 23. And to the spirits of the
righteous made perfect. Now see, this isn't the first
time we've seen this. We've seen this, we enter in the holy places
by the blood of Jesus. through His flesh. We've seen
this already in the sense of faith. We know that it is by
faith that we hold fast to the promises of God. We can go on
and just go back every few chapters, every few paragraphs rather.
The mediator of a new covenant so that those who call may receive
the promise eternal life because a death has occurred that redeems
them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
We just keep going. I mean, everywhere you look in
this letter, it teaches us the same thing. That there is a certainty
for us, the elect of God, who have been purchased by the blood
of Jesus, that there is a judge that we will stand before, but
that judge will say nothing of condemnation. Though when God,
as we see in Romans 1-4, when God condemns all humanity, He
is right and just in that condemnation. We are guilty as sinners long
before we ever sin. That's why Pelagianism and Semipelagianism
and Arminianism and all these other historical monikers are
really false gospels. Just call them what they are.
It's nothing new to you. False gospels that teach that
there is something man can do to stand righteous before the
Father. of righteousness and justice. There's nothing that
you can do. The gospel is that Christ has done it all. Christ
has satisfied the debt. So that when we come to the judge
we are coming together as the assembly with the celebration
of the heavenly host rejoicing to the praise of his glorious
grace with all the other saints. What does that mean? Righteous
people who have been sanctified through the righteousness of
Jesus Christ forever. Period. And now we are perfect. So that while God has rightly
judged us in His justice as guilty and deserving of death, the law
in Sinai proved that further, that we are dead. He then is the advocate with
Jesus Christ who is the mediator of a better covenant. And that's what verse 24 says.
We've come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. And then he
gives a comparison again. He gives the same comparison.
We've already seen Cain and Abel, right? Cain and all his worship and
all his obedience and all his first fruits and all this stuff.
And God hates him. Why? Because he does not belong
to God in redemption. Cain does, or could accomplish,
or could offer, God is acceptable. I mean, what do you bring the
person who has everything for Christmas? No, what do you bring
for Christmas the person who has everything, or for a birthday?
What do you give them? What do you give somebody with
three houses? A new set of rugs? I don't know. I mean, what do
you give the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills? What
do you give the one who has already said in this text, I don't want
the blood of bulls or of goats. They're my goats. They're my
bulls. I don't want your law keeping.
It's my law, you see. That's what God is saying. What
are we giving? We give Him nothing. But praise to what? To His glorious
grace. So now Cain and Abel. Cain offered
everything he could. Not acceptable. Why? Because
it doesn't matter about who wills or desires or who puts forth
the effort. It matters about the one who
has mercy and who gives mercy to whom he pleases. That's what's
good news. Mercy. So this new covenant is not like
the blood of Abel. What did the blood of Abel do?
The elect of God was loved by God and acceptable to God and
everything that Abel did was acceptable to God because God
in his mercy counted him righteous in Christ Jesus long before Abel
understood the particulars of grace in its function. There
was something innate inside of Abel who knew that there was
a sacrifice, there was some kind of a celebratory thankfulness
in Abel's heart that it was about God's grace. That there was gonna
be, as his mom and dad had told him, one day there is going to
be Messiah who will take care of satisfying God's wrath against
us. And so when Abel gave an offering,
it was an offering of thanks. When Cain gave an offering, it
was an offering of expectation. And I'm not saying they were
ignorant of the promised Messiah. I'm saying they were ignorant
of all the functions of grace. They didn't know all the, they didn't
have all the laws. sacrificial systems. And when
we get to the sacrificial system, what do we see? Well, let's finish
with Abel and then we'll close with that. So Cain killed Abel because Abel's
deeds were righteous and Cain's were wicked. That's what Paul
says. So New Testament apostolic authority trumps, a.k.a. defines Old Testament theology.
We know what the Old Testament means because we have the New
Testament to tell us. in that order. So God comes to
Cain who has struck his brother down with a rock and his blood
spilled in the dirt and he says, where's your brother? And Cain's
being a little smarty. Am I supposed to keep up with
this guy? I don't know, maybe he's pooping.
I don't know. What's he doing? Cain, your brother's blood's
crying out to me from the grave. Now what does Abel's blood say? Vengeance. Abel's blood says
to the righteous God of heaven, avenge me. Avenge me. Take my brother and bring your
wrath upon him. He struck down your child. So God has continued to show,
even from the day of Cain and Abel, He will bring justice. And that's what the law shows
us. It's what it's for. It's what
it's for. The blood of Christ speaks a
better word than the blood of Abel. Why? Because the blood
of Christ doesn't cry out for justice. The blood of Christ
By the way, the holy and anointed one of God, Jesus, stands in
opposition to the blood of Abel by saying, mercy. God says we are guilty. The law
says we are dead. God's justice and righteousness
says you die and I'm right in that death. I'm right in that
wrath. I'm right in that judgment. And
then the blood of Abel continues to prove man's wickedness and
that God will seek recompense. Not for Abel's sake, for his
own. But the blood of Jesus says,
forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. The blood of Jesus says, I stand in their place. And you know what John 5, remember
we read that a couple of weeks ago. In John chapter 5 where
Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and they're accusing him of blasphemy
and he's talking about the scripture and he says the word of God is
not in you. He says in verse 30, he says, I can do nothing
of my own. I hear, I judge as I hear and my judgment is just
because I seek not of my own will but the will of him who
sent me. He goes on to say that there will come a time where
All people will come out of the grave and God, the Son, the Son
of Man will judge them, some unto everlasting life and some
unto everlasting damnation. In this text then here in Hebrews
chapter 12, when we see the new covenant that Jesus Christ's
blood has sustained and perfected for us, the promise of God with
Himself to save us, His people, from our sins through the death
of Jesus, He is the appeaser of the wrath of God, our propitiation,
the blood of Jesus, is life to us, but the blood of Jesus is
death to the reprobate because he's the judge. I had a small court hearing this
past Monday to sit as an advocate And the judge can say and do
whatever the law allows them to do. And I've never in my life,
I've sat in hundreds of cases. I've sat in hundreds of hearings,
even ex parte hearings where the person whom I'm advocating
for wasn't even there. And I've never seen a judge take
the penalty of a guilty person on themselves. But Jesus did. Jesus did. is our life. How? By grace. Why? To the praise of His glorious
grace. That's why. That's why. That's why He did
it. To the praise of His glorious grace. See, a lot of people think,
well, I need to grow up, I need to mature into Jesus. Like Paul says in Ephesians 4,
I think, let us grow up in every way into Him who the head, Jesus
Christ. Paul would say in Colossians,
who's the head of the church, etc., and so forth. But what
does it mean to mature in Christ? That means to stop working in
the flesh to please God and rest in the flesh of Jesus that pleased
Him, that appeased Him. That means to have no law by
which you will be burdened. that is not the law of faith.
That means to do nothing in your flesh that you think would warrant
some type of kosher, maybe that's a bad word to use, some type
of happiness in God's eyes toward you. To mature in Jesus is to
know that his death was your death. To mature in Jesus is to have
life. Anyone know the picture there? What's the picture of
judgment in the sacrificial system? Here's Abel and Cain giving sacrifices
and then later we see Moses bringing the law and we see the sacrificial
system being done. Where is the law of God in the
context of the tabernacle and in the temple? The tablets of
stone that represent all the righteousness of God in justice
are inside the mercy seat, inside the Ark of the Covenant. And
the seal and the cherubims are set on top of it and the law
is contained. And the mercy seat is where the
angel wings would reach up and touch each other here and the
priest would take the blood of the sacrifice and they would
sprinkle it on the mercy seat many times. Seven, I think. And the only way We stand in
the presence of God at Mount Zion is if Christ's blood sprinkles
us. If Christ's blood saves us. What is it that these Judaizers
wanted these Hebrew Christians to do? They wanted them to go
in there, into the Holy of Holies and get a high-pressure water
hose and pressure wash all that blood off. And open that thing
up and pull those tablets out. Pull that manna out and pull the budding staff of Aaron. Going
back to the priesthood, going back to the law, is to reject
the grace of God. Don't believe me? Look at verse
25. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they
did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth,
much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven."
Now, there's something I have to say about this so that we
don't sit on our hands and fret. Just like when we see the warning
passages here in Scripture, Paul is not suggesting that there
are people in the reading of his letter who are elect, who
will reject. He's just showing the severity
of what happens. when we entertain the idea of
reverting back to Moses. Just like the Galatians. It is
of no benefit to you to go back under the law. Because if you
think you want to keep it, you better keep it all, because one
infraction is death, and beloved, we are already dead. But the
good thing is, is that our Flesh has been crucified with Christ.
Paul sums it up best this way. He says, it is not I who live,
but Christ who lives within me. And I live this life by faith
and the one who loved me and gave himself for me. We live because Christ lives. We are righteous because Christ
is righteous. We have a heavenly hope because
Christ is there. and everything else that can
be touched, avoided, touch, don't touch, eat, don't eat, taste,
don't taste, look, don't look. It's not the gospel. We judge
by that which God has promised and he's promised his people
life through the finished work of his son. Let's pray. We thank
you, Father, for just the truth of this text. And Lord, I pray
that all that I have in my brain and the things that come out
of my mouth, Lord, would be sufficient because you can cause us to hear
that which is certain and true. Help us to be like the Bereans
and that we test what we hear and what we say by the truth
of your word that we might be resolved to be corrected by your
spirit. And Lord, let us be settled in
our heart, cause us to be settled in our heart, for it is not we
coming to you with all of our will and decisions. We didn't
choose you, Father. You chose us in Christ. And the
only way that we will ever see this simple grace is because
of your spirit and your love for us, helping us. to not turn away, but keeping
us by your divine power in the way of Christ. And the holiness
that is required of us in order to see you is already perfected
in Jesus. So, Lord, help us to praise you,
and to thank you, and to admonish each other, and to encourage
each other in this great gospel. In Jesus' name, amen.