Our God is an Awesome God pt 1

Hebrews 12:18-24

We are surrounded by warning signs and labels. Some of them make us wonder at the stupidity of whoever is the reason for that particular warning. Like the warning sign on a wheelbarrow that says, “Not for highway use.” Or the warning on a baby stroller that says, “Caution: remove child before folding.” Or the warning on a digital thermometer that says, “Once used rectally, do not use orally.” Or this warning label on a Chipotle truck, “Drivers do not carry burritos.” Or the warning on a shirt that says, “Caution: Do not iron while wearing shirt.” I think my favorite is the one on Razor scooters, “Warning: This product moves when used.”

Other warnings are more serious, and need to be taken more seriously. Like the warning lights in your car. How many of us have driven a car much longer than we should have after a warning light came on?

Someone did a study of how quickly people of different generations respond to the warning lights that come on in our cars. Gen Z and Millennial car owners take the longest. It takes an average of eight warning lights for them to schedule vehicle maintenance. One in four will continue to drive without calling a repair shop with lights on for excessive emissions, low tire pressure light, or a needed oil change, or scratches on their vehicle’s body or windshield. Which of course can lead to rust and bigger cracks.

Two out of three say they’re OK with their car not being up to par as long as it passes a state-licensed safety test. On average, it takes five breakdowns for Gen Zers and Millennials to buy a new car.

Thirty-nine percent say they’ll stop driving their car and get a new one when the upkeep surpasses their budget, thirty-eight percent when there are too many strange sounds or smells, thirty seven percent when too much of it is being held together by tape (37%).[i]

But there’s a price to pay for ignoring the warnings, isn’t there? Yes, sometimes its something small and your car is perfectly drivable until it can be fixed. But other things are more significant. Delayed oil changes can lead to big problems down the road, as the car ages. Ignoring the warnings for too long can lead to even costlier repairs, accidents, or breakdowns on the road. It’s smart, and cheaper, to heed the warnings.

God gives us plenty of warnings too. Warnings about the dangers of continuing to ignore him, rejecting his grace and mercy. Warnings about the dangers of turning our backs on him after having received his grace and followed him. Warnings about trying to hold on too tightly to the things this world values and follow him at the same time.

These warnings aren’t lists of do’s and don’ts. We always have to be cautious about those who want us to follow Jesus exactly the way they do. To follow their set formula or recipe. That’s what the Pharisees did. They made up rule after rule after rule about how to live as the people of God, but they completely ignored the state of people’s hearts. They only cared about behavior.

God, on the other hand, invites us into relationship with him, transforming our hearts first and then that transformation shows itself in transformed living. But it’s never about rules, about do’s and don’ts. It’s about being transformed internally into someone who wants to follow Jesus and begins to live like him. Who want to become “little Christs,” which is what the word “Christian” actually means.

The New Testament book of Hebrews gives us one of those warnings. It gives us a vivid visual, a theological picture based on two mountains in the Holy Land. One is Mt. Sinai, upon which God gave his law to his people through Moses. It is a mountain of judgment and fear. The other is Mt. Zion, upon which the temple was built in Jerusalem. Where the people of God draw close to him to worship him and enjoy relationship with God. We are, each one of us, trekking through life toward one of those mountains. And those of us who do follow Christ would be smart to heed the warning that we will be tempted to stop walking toward the one, and head toward the other. Turn with me to Hebrews 12:18-24.

The first mountain is Mt. Sinai, the mountain of law and judgment. The imagery comes from Exodus and Deuteronomy. In Exodus 19, the people are near Mt. Sinai, and God tells Moses that in three days, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever” (Ex. 19:9).

The people were to take three days to prepare. Close your eyes, and put yourself in this scene as one of the people. God told Moses,

“Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.” So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day …” (Ex. 19:10-15).

The mountain was set aside as holy, and they weren’t to go anywhere near it. Anyone who touched it, even an animal wandering unwittingly on it, was to be destroyed, lest the untouchable holiness of God come upon that person or animal and enter the camp and consume them. And they couldn’t even touch them. Just throw stones or shoot an arrow. The theme is distance. Keep a safe distance. God’s holiness is unapproachable.

Three days later, God came. “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder” (Ex. 19:16-19).

A few verses later, it says, “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die” (Ex. 20:18-19).

It’s a terrifying scene. And the people didn’t want to be anywhere near God. Moses, you go up there and speak with God and pass it on to us. Moses was then up on the mountain for so long that even after the terror they’d experienced, the people of God turned their backs on God and had Aaron make them a golden calf to worship. It was certainly much safer, much less terrifying than the living God they’d encountered on Sinai, where God was still speaking to Moses.

When Moses came down the mountain and found the people worshipping the golden calf, not only was he angry at the people, Deuteronomy 9:19 tells us that he was terrified of the judgment of God. In Moses’ own words, “For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you.” Even Moses eventually quaked in his boots, and he hadn’t done anything wrong. But the holiness of God he’d encountered on Sinai would certainly consume the sinful, stubborn people now worshipping a golden calf.

Now look at Hebrews 12:18-21. It’s a terrifying scene. The holiness of God present in fire and darkness and smoke and wind, the sound of the trumpet and the voice of God that sounded to them like thunder. Look at how our senses come into play here. The heat from the flame, the fire, can be felt. Touched. We can feel the earth itself shaking beneath us. We can see the darkness, the smoke, the gloom, the storm, the flames. We can hear the trumpets and the thunder. We can smell and taste the smoke. It’s a scene designed to completely overwhelm our senses. To completely overwhelm … us. Do words even do justice to what you are picturing in your mind right now?

It’s an image designed and intended to create one response. Fear. Fear before the awesome judgment of God upon sin. Darkness. Fire and smoke. Thunder and lightning and wind.  The earth itself quakes at the judgment of God. Judgment and distance and separation from God. When I try to picture that in my mind, I am taken to another hill just outside Jerusalem. A hill simply called “Golgotha,” “place of a skull.” It was a place Romans routinely carried out executions by crucifixion.

And I’m reminded of the words of Matthew. “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” … And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised …” (Matt. 27:45-46, 51-52).

Sounds similar, doesn’t it? Jesus faced Sinai, the place of law and sin and judgment, for us. He walked into the darkness, the smoke, faced the storm, felt the earth shake, and stood before the Father with your sin and mine counted as his. The awesome terror of that scene doesn’t have to be our destiny. He has already faced it for us.

And what do we do with it? You and I? Some reject it outright, like the stubborn people of God Moses led. No matter what God did, no matter how God showed up …in the impossible victory over Pharoah and his troops at the Red Sea, in the mercy of the quail and manna, in the comforting presence of the pillar of cloud and fire, or in the terror of Sinai, they stubbornly turned away from God, sometimes remarkably quickly. God was still speaking to Moses on the mountain in the thunder while they were worshipping a golden calf, a false god they could control, who wouldn’t ask anything of them, who didn’t care so much about sin and righteousness.

But those of us who follow Jesus are tempted to get back on that path. Maybe not outright. We try to walk the path toward Sinai hoping it will still lead us to Zion. We want the final destination of Zion, but without the pilgrimage. Without the cross. We play around with sin. We downplay the holiness and justice and righteousness of God. We love to talk about the grace and love of God, and they’re real and powerful, but not our rebellion and sin that make them necessary.

Hebrews gives us the warning, and then the most comforting words, I think, in the Bible. Look carefully at V. 18. “For you have NOT come to … Sinai.” No, if you are following Jesus, you have come to Mt. Zion. Look at Vv. 22-24. “Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” of which the earthly Jerusalem was and is just a shadow. A forerunner.

Jerusalem was a Jebusite city when Israel encountered and conquered the city under David’s leadership. And he made it Israel’s capital by bringing the Ark of the Covenant, which represented the reign of God and the throne of God on earth, into the city, commissioning his son Solomon to build a magnificent temple for God there, patterned after the portable tabernacle that Israel had used until then, with the Ark of the Covenant resting inside the holy of holies.

Our Zion is not the earthly Jerusalem, to this day a source of conflict, but the heavenly one. The presence of God. God is still the center of it all. Not the angels too numerous to count, no longer gathered for battle but now in the joyous praise of God. Not those who have died in Christ, the “firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” who are there worshipping God and enjoying God’s presence. No, God is the centerpiece. It’s all about him. It’s all about Jesus. But now there is no smoke or thunder or quaking earth.

There’s a party. Why? Because for those following Christ, the judgment of Sinai, God’s just and right judgment of sin, has been dealt with. Distance and judgment have been replaced by closeness and relationship and grace.

And then the writer compares the blood of Abel, spilled by Cain, his brother, with the blood of Christ. The blood of Abel pooled on the ground, crying out for justice and recompense. Punishment for the act of murder that shed the blood. But the superior blood of Christ pools on the ground crying out for grace and mercy and forgiveness and pardon.

And that’s why this warning is so serious. We aren’t living in the time before Christ, when law and sacrifice and Sinai were all that was. No, we are living in the time of Christ. He HAS lived. He DID die in our place, facing Sinai for us. He WAS raised again in victory over death.

When we reject him. When we turn away from him and turn back, going back to our old lives before Christ. When we play around with sin thinking we can hold onto this world and still have Christ, we spit in mocking derision on the cross, on the shed blood of Christ, on his agony and torment, and on his victorious resurrection. We spit on all he has done for us.

So the Sinai we will face apart from Christ, if we insist on going that way, will be far worse than the one that terrified the people of God and made Moses himself shake in terror. The Sinai of Moses will pale in comparison.

Those of us who follow Christ today live in the time between times. We live between Christ’s first coming and the cross, and his second coming. The kingdom of God is fully established, but is not yet fully present. You sometimes hear Gregg talk about us living the time of the “now, and the not yet.” That’s what he’s referring to. Yes, there is a struggle. Satan is a defeated foe but he is not yet vanquished. Sin has been dealt with but not yet destroyed.

So sometimes our hearts long for an easier path than the one God has us walking as we follow Jesus. Sometimes people ridicule us or get angry. In some places of this world they would and often do imprison or kill those who follow Christ. Like Jesus, who looked down from the cross at those who were at the moment ridiculing him and taunting him, who had lied about him, beat him, and nailed him to that cross, and prayed, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing,” (Lk 23:34), we are called to “Love [our] enemies and pray for those who persecute [us]” (Matt. 5:44). To “Bless those who persecute [us]; bless and do not curse them” (Rom:12:14).

Sometimes we long for an easier path. Sometimes we get distracted by the lure of power and pleasure and position. And sometimes we just stubbornly want to do things our own way.  Let’s heed the warning. Let’s we fix our eyes on Jesus, and follow him right up to the heavenly Zion, and into the presence of God. And if one of us stumbles and falls, let’s make sure we’re there to pick them up and get them back on the path, back in the race. Let’s pray.

[i] Adapted from Chris Melore, “Average young adult finally takes car into shop — after 8th warning light,” Study Finds (8-6-22)