A number of folk in this church love the sport of running. I gather that there's an increasing Trinity Church contingent at the Wykeham Lakes Park Run on a Saturday morning. If they change the time so it's not 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday, I might be tempted to give it a go myself. But running is a popular activity for many today.
Have you heard of the story of Russ Cook? Russ Cook acquired the nickname "Hardest Geezer", and he set out to run from the southernmost point of South Africa to the northernmost point of the African continent. The route took him 16,000 kilometres. Forget your 5k or your 10k — how about 16kk? That is the equivalent of 385 marathons, and he did it in 352 days. So that's over a marathon a day for just under a year. You’d better get to Wykeham Lakes more often than once a week if you want to try and level his record.
During his time, he was subjected to armed robbery as he passed through Angola. He was kidnapped at machete point in Congo. He got food poisoning in Cameroon and somehow kept running. As he left Nigeria, he got flu. He sustained a back injury in Guinea that required medical treatment from a doctor. As he prepared to enter Algeria, his visa fell through, and an emergency call to the Foreign Office finally got him into the country. And the last leg of the journey was across the Sahara Desert, where he discovered, to his horror, that the roadway eventually kind of just ran out — and he ended up basically running across sand dunes with a shirt wrapped around his face as a kind of sand mask.
But he got to the end.
When he was tempted to give up, what would he say to himself as to why I must keep going? How do you keep yourself going, he said? Incidentally, the only point when he was actually tempted to give up was as he was being marched through the Congolese forest at the point of a machete in his back. And at that point, he thought he might give up. But otherwise, he said, No, I'm not going to. Here's what he said:
"The only consistency is that no matter where I am in the world, or however difficult the moment I'm in is, I always have to live in my head. So if I can make my head a nice place to be in and protect the peaceful corner of it, even in the most challenging circumstances, then nothing can really break me."
Now, if you're a Christian — most of us, but not all of us here are — there are lots of things that would make you think about giving up. In fact, it's interesting to think of some of those things that would have made him potentially want to give up. Because if you're a Christian, you will know times of illness or back injury. And there are Christians in parts of the world where kidnap and armed robbery because of your faith is a reality.
So actually, this is not irrelevant.
As we read the book of Hebrews, we discover that some of the Christians this is written to knew some of those persecutions and swords and other difficulties and hardships of that sort. So this is not unconnected to our Hardest Geezer. What's going to keep you going when you're thinking of giving up? More importantly, can we do any better than Russ Cook?
Is there anything that will keep you going that is more than just what is in my head? I have to live in my own head, and if I can make my head nice, that will kind of keep me going. Is there anything outside of my own sense of willpower that will help?
If you're here and you're not yet a Christian — maybe you're still checking it all out, working out what to make of it — you'll be wise to consider before you start how you would keep going when life gets tough. So this is going to be a great help for you as you do that.
In fact, just this last week, I was speaking to somebody who said to me, "You know, I'm not a Christian. I would really like to be a Christian, but I want to know: if I became a Christian, would I keep going or would I give up?"
The right question to ask, isn't it?
Well, here's how last time's passage ended. You were here last week — chapter 12 verse 15. He says:
"See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral or godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son."
Afterwards, as you know, when he wanted to inherit his blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done.
In those days, there was great privilege. If you were the eldest son in the family, then you would inherit much more when your parents died than your younger siblings. But Esau — the outdoorsy pair, the elder of the two twins — had come in from his day hunting or whatever else he was doing outdoors, absolutely starved, smelt the delicious food his more indoorsy brother Jacob was cooking, and said:
"Could I have some of that food, please?"
And Jacob, ever the canny one, says:
"Yes — if you give me your privileges as the firstborn."
And Esau goes, Food? All right, and swaps. What an idiot. What an idiot!
And yet, how easily we repeat that same mistake. Faced with something very short-term in the moment, we're willing to surrender something far more long-term and valuable. And he says:
"Don't be like Esau."
And our question needs to be: How do I make sure that won't happen to me?
And the answer is this week's passage. This week's passage will tell you how to make sure you keep going — how to make sure that you are not the next in a line of Esau.
Now, if you have a look at chapter 12:18, at the start of our reading — now, you do have to look really, really hard, okay? Get a magnifying glass out and squint with a funny squint, okay? But verse 18 starts with the word for. Okay, your eyesight's not good enough, that's why you can't see it, okay? You've got to look even closer at the text — it's there. It is:
"For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched..."
Okay, don't be like Esau. Why not? Because of everything that is in this week's passage. And this week's passage gives you three ways not to give up. And there's one in each of our paragraphs. And they're actually all the same reason.
The reason you keep going is because of God.
So what this passage will give us is three portraits of God. And each portrait of God is some feature of God — some aspect of His character — that will keep you going when giving up is tempting.
So here's number one:
1. God is awesome
God is awesome. Keep going because God is awesome.
"You have not come to a mountain that can be touched, that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them — because they could not bear what was commanded: 'If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.' The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, 'I am trembling with fear.'"
Now, we're going to look at this description — but before we get there, what is it meant to do to us, this description in this paragraph? It's worth just reflecting how we're supposed to listen for these words.
See, some modern interpreters note that verse 22 starts with but. So: verse 18 — you've not come to a mountain like this. Verse 22 — but you have come to a mountain like that. And they say: Aha, see, we're not there — verse 18 to 21, that's not us — and therefore, the purpose of these verses is to make us relieved that we are not in this position that they were in long ago.
But there's a problem with that. And the problem with that is verse 25:
"See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them from earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?"
He's not saying that our experience is different from the one in verses 18 to 21 — he's saying our experience is exactly like that, only it's greater. It is scaled up. It's even more vivid than they had.
So we are meant to read verses 18 to 21 and realise that this is our God. And therefore, we have even less chance of getting away with it if we walk away from this God than they had.
Let's have a look at these details of this description of the God that they encountered — and remember that this is our God as well.
They approached a mountain that can be touched — or, in fact, can't be touched, as it turned out — but the point is it's a physical, tangible thing that on any other day of the year you could have gone for a walk. It's a physical mountain. It was burning with fire. Fire symbolises the presence of God frequently in the Bible — God had come down on the mountain. But the mountain was burning with an unapproachable heat.
So, have you ever had it where, if you've got, like, a coal fire or a wood fire or a burning stove in your home, and you accidentally put too much fuel on it, and it really gets roaring — but you want to try and then just move a few logs off to the side to calm it down. But there's a problem, because unless your pokey tools are really long, you can't actually get close enough to the heat, because it's just — your face cannot bear that amount of heat.
Well, that's what Mount Sinai was like. It was burning with fire, and was so hot, they just could not get near.
But here's a paradox. As well as being hot because of fire, it was dark. Don't ask me how it was both at once. For some reason, it's a common paradox in Scripture: darkness and fire belong together. But they do. The word for dark here is actually the same as the word in the ninth plague of Egypt. Remember when the people in the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, they had light — but the rest of Egypt was plunged into darkness. So dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. That black — darker even than the canal tunnel on the Shropshire Union Canal that is quarter of a mile long and has a bend in the middle — and when you get to the middle, you can't see a thing. Darker than that. Really, really black.
And then there was a trumpet. Trumpets, it says. Now, you look back in Exodus, you discover these trumpets were not some kind of regal fanfare, like some ceremonial event where all the buglers are there, heralding the arrival of a dignitary. No. They were a klaxon — getting louder throughout the day. And the message was really simple: in case you've forgotten, put your fingers in your ears because you may not approach this mountain. It is really, really dangerous. So much so that if even an animal — someone's pet dog — strays over the fence line onto the mountain, it must be killed. But you can't go and retrieve it. You can't even go and inject a lethal injection, because you would then get killed. So the only thing you can do is lob stones at it.
But never mind even thinking what would happen if a human being strayed that close.
And then Moses. Well, he was the mediator. He was the one person who was allowed to approach on behalf of everybody else. And he said, after the fact, that he was shaking with fear.
Even Moses was terrified.
This is our God.
When you've been a Christian for a while, as I have, I think there is a danger that you can forget that God is real — that God actually exists. So you kind of keep him in your pocket. You talk to him in prayer, you come to church, you sing songs to him, you read the Bible and you know this is God's voice, and you live your life seeking to serve him. It's all real. It's called living by faith. You don't feel that it's true, but you just get on and live as though it's true anyway, because you know it is. And that's what "faith, not sight" is all about.
Don't knock it! Faith is good. But it's easy to have that disconnect, where we become like Russ Cook, and the God that keeps us going is a God who simply is in our head. And we forget that he is out there. He is almighty. He is all-powerful. He's not just real — he is awesome. And if a human being, ill-prepared, tried to approach him, they would die instantly, because our God is a consuming fire.
There's just a danger that you kind of forget that this is who you're dealing with — not a domesticated pocket God, but a real, triune, holy, holy, holy, burning-with-fire God.
Now keep in front of you that God is awesome, and you see very quickly why you do not just walk away. "Don't you walk away from me," says your boss at work, as you just walk away from a difficult conversation. Let me tell you, if you know that this is what God is like, you would never get close to just turning your back and walking away from him. You just would not dare.
God is awesome.
2. God is gracious
Second: God is gracious. God is not all stick. It's not saying, "Be terrified of me. I want you to be frightened of me." No, no, no, no, no. God is good. God is kind. In fact, the reality of the Christian gospel is that this fiery, awesome, consuming God is the one who graciously comes towards them and says, "I want you to know me. I want you to love me. I want you to have joy. I don't want you to be frightened." He does not want the stick of his terror to frighten you into being a Christian. He just wants you to come towards him because he loves you.
God is gracious.
You see, we may have the same God that they did. We are in some ways at Mount Sinai, but we're not in the same place, because the appearance at Mount Sinai was a really important point along the journey of God's people. It was a very dramatic point along the journey of God's people, but it was not the destination. The story kept running.
So, verse 22: "But you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You've come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of..."
Best of times, it was the worst of times. This is not a tale of two cities. This is a tale of two mountains: Mount Sinai in the desert, and Mount Zion, which is the hill on which the city of Jerusalem was built. But he says you haven't come to the physical city. He says you've come to the heavenly Jerusalem.
Now maybe that's a little bit of a weird thought for you. What do you mean, "heavenly Jerusalem"? What's that? Well, actually, as we've been working through Hebrews, that thought shouldn't be quite so strange. Just flip back — chapter 8, verse 1:
"Now the main point of what we are saying is this: we do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being."
So he's just described how they built a tabernacle — a tent — in the desert in which God could symbolically live. But he then says Jesus serves in the true tabernacle, that human beings did not build.
"See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."
So the earthly tabernacle — the tent they built — was a copy of the real place where you can meet God in heaven. Or in chapter 11, a couple of weeks ago, here's verse 8:
"By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."
How could he sit so loose on his earthly home, and not really have a permanent one?
"By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God."
A city that God didn't just design, but actually built. Or verse 13 of chapter 11:
"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
See — the earthly tabernacle in the desert? Just a copy of the real one in heaven. The earthly city of Jerusalem? Just a copy of the real one in heaven. And we, he says, are part of the real thing — not just the scale model. He says:
"We've come to thousands upon thousands of angels who are having a party around God's throne, and we are invited to join the party — to be with them. That's our destiny. We're there spiritually now. One day, if we know Jesus, we'll be there physically, joining in the angelic party."
And we've come to the church — the church of the firstborn. Now I've already said, haven't I, that in their culture the greatest privileges went to the firstborn. In Hebrews 1:6, Jesus is called God's firstborn. In Exodus chapter 4, Israel collectively is called God's firstborn. But here it's plural. To use really bad English: we are. It's the church of the firstborns. We are all gathered as God's firstborn people.
Now, even if you're a twin, one of you has to come out first. Let's not dwell too long on that thought — but one of you has to be the firstborn. Whereas with God's people, we all have all of the privileges. We're all first. We all get the greatest level of privilege possible. And our names are written in heaven. So God has a book, and in his book he writes the names of all the people that he would love to be with him forever.
If you follow Jesus, he's written your name in that book. In fact, let's turn that round: if he's written your name in that book, you will follow Jesus. He's going to make sure of it, one way or another, because he wants you there.
And we've come to the spirits of the righteous made perfect. That's to say, Christians of bygone ages who have died and are now with Jesus in heaven, lacking nothing apart from their final resurrection bodies. They are made perfect, and spiritually we're with them, enjoying Jesus.
Abel's blood, spilled on the ground, cries out for justice — cries out for vengeance, for more life to be shed to pay for it. Whereas Jesus's blood cries out for your forgiveness, cries out for your acceptance before God, cries out for your debt to be wiped away. His blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
So if you're a Christian, this is where you have come — have come. Let's just get this really clear. This is not about Sunday worship. He's not saying, "This is where you come week by week as you gather to worship." You do, but that's not his point.
Have come — past tense. Okay? You came to this place at a moment in the past when you became a Christian. And you're still there today.
So... why would you? Why would you walk away from a God who's brought you into this place? Just wouldn't — when he's this amazing and this great.
God is awesome. God is gracious.
3. God is eternal
And third: God is eternal.
"See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he's promised, 'Once more I’ll shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.' The words 'once more' indicate the removing of what can be shaken — that is, created things — so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."
Now we've already thought of how these verses applied the warning of Sinai. Voice shook the earth. And then the writer of this letter carries on reading his Old Testament and goes to a little book called Haggai. Haggai chapter 2. Haggai was a prophet at the time when they were rebuilding the temple after the Babylonians had destroyed it. And some were watching the new temple going up and were really unimpressed with it. It was nowhere near as good as the old one — especially because God's glory never moved into it. They were just so unimpressed. "This is not like the old. It looks a bit like it — but no."
And so God speaks. God promises that they won't stay disappointed, because he's going to shake again. And this time, he won't just shake earth — he will shake heaven. He will shake the foundations of everything that there is. And he will build something that is utterly wonderful when everything gets shaken.
And the writer of Hebrews sees that that is referring to the final judgement, when God restores all things and comes to live amongst his people, and everything gets shaken. And what is left behind is just the one thing that cannot be shaken:
"The words 'once more' indicate the removing of what can be shaken — that is, created things — so that what cannot be shaken may remain."
You’ve got some gold that is slightly impure, and you want to purify it. What you do — I'm told, I have never done this — is you melt it and burn it really, really hot, so that all the things that are impure burn off. But gold — that is inert — is then the only thing that remains. And as it sets, it is then utterly pure. You're left with what can't be burnt.
Or if you have a gemstone that is covered in sand and dirt — yeah, stick it under the tap. But that won't get the dirt out of the little cracks that are too small. Instead, you put it in something called an ultrasound cleaner that literally shakes it with loads and loads of really microscopic vibrations, shaking off everything that is breakable and soft. And provided the gemstone is hard enough, all you're left with is the gemstone. Don't do it with a gemstone that is not hard, or all you're left with is just dust — because the whole thing will fall apart.
God shook the earth at Sinai. God will shake the heavens too. And everything that is transient will just fall off. And you'll be left behind with God and his kingdom, shining beautifully.
But here's the point: it was God's voice that shook the earth. God promises to shake the heavens too. God's voice is the ultrasound that purifies the gemstones. So why would you not listen to that voice?
If you’re going to keep going with God, then keep your before your gaze the reality that God is eternal.
Conclusion
So, what’s going to keep you going.
The answer is that God will.
God is awesome. God is gracious. God is eternal.
Keep your eyes on that God, and you won’t fall short of the grace of God, and you won’t give up on him, his kindness, and his eternal blessing and beauty.