Sinai and Zion

Hebrews 12: Sinai and Zion

We continue this morning in our studies in the book of Hebrews, chapter 12. Book of Hebrews, chapter 12. We open the Word of God. Let us ask once more for the Lord's blessing upon our time. Our gracious Heavenly Father, as we once again are exhorted from Your Word to faithfulness and perseverance, may our hearts be open, may Your Spirit come and minister amongst us.

Lord, may we truly hear from Your Word this morning. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. We are pressing on, just as the writer of the Hebrews encouraged those who were reading his epistle to press on the faith, we are pressing on in our study of the book of Hebrews.

If the Lord blesses and I do not chase too many rabbits today, we actually should be able to finish off the 12th chapter. There are only a certain number of verses left after that, and so someday we will be able to look back upon this study of the book of Hebrews as a past tense study.

But we continue in chapter 12, and you will recall the last time we were together, we had some very strong words about the necessity of seeking that holiness, pursuing peace. Verse 14, with all men, the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

And so that exhortation and yet another word of warning is found here at the end of chapter 12. Let's begin at verse 18. For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched, and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound with such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them.

For they could not bear the command, if even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned. And so terrible was the sight that Moses said, I am full of fear and trembling. But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel.

See to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven.

And his voice shook the earth then, but now he is promising, yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven. This expression, yet once more, denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. And so here we have a section that, once again, I don't honestly think that it normally appears in most people's favorite verses list, probably because, once again, it assumes a very deep and proper familiarity with the text of the Old Testament, and specifically with Exodus chapter 19.

You see that it says in verse 18 here, For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched into a blazing fire, into darkness and gloom and whirlwind, the blast, the trumpet, and the sound of words which sound with such that those who heard beg that no further word be spoken to them.

This obviously is referring us to some incident in the Old Testament, and we need to take a look at what that is, and we can find that in Exodus chapter 19. So if you'll turn back with me there, I really don't think we can make much progress if we do not see what was taking place in Exodus chapter 19.

I'll begin at verse 4. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples.

For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak, the sons of Israel. So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words, which the Lord had commanded him.

All the people answered together and said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, Behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe in you forever.

Then Moses told the words of the people to the Lord. The Lord also said to Moses, Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments, and let them be ready for the third day.

From the third day, the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. You shall set bounds to the people all around, saying, Beware that you do not go up on the mountain or touch the border of it.

Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through. Whether beast or man, he shall not live. When the ram's horn sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.

So Moses went down to the mountain to the people and consecrated the people, and they washed their garments. He said to the people, Be ready for the third day. Do not go near a woman. So it came about on the third day, and when it was morning, there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.

And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. So here is the story, as it is told, of God coming to meet the people there on the mountain, and you have so much emphasis here upon the power of God, upon the holiness of God.

Here, as it is narrated by the writer to the Hebrews, it says, You have not come to... And then he narrates this story, in essence, from Exodus chapter 19. So what we have here is a contrast that is being drawn.

A contrast, because he says, These people, they were so terrible as a sight, verse 21, the most that I am full of fear and trembling. But instead of that, you have come to Mount Zion. So you have Sinai, and now you have Mount Zion.

And the two are being contrasted with one another. And so, as always is the case, and it's interesting that we happen to be right here in light of some tremendous controversy that has been taking place within, again, what broadly is called evangelicalism, even in this case, reformed evangelicalism over the past couple of weeks.

I'm not sure if you're aware of the controversy that erupted in regards to the nature of the law, the use of the law, the eruption of allegations of legalism from one side and antinomianism from the other side.

It is an argument and a controversy that never goes away, and that is really, I think, a necessary part of our existence in this world, because there is a balance that must be maintained between the emphasis upon the holiness that God says, That which we will not see the Lord, and the fulfillment of his commands, the fact that he writes his law upon our hearts, and then the absolute necessity of grace, the fact that there is abiding sin.

All of these things come together, and we have to have balance, and very often we fall off one way or the other, and there needs to be that correction. And in this text, I think, once again, we see the Bible providing us with the very balance that we need.

What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, there is clearly a contrast here. There is no way that you can look at this and go, Oh, well, Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, same thing. There is a contrast. There is a contrast drawn here because on the one, you have the tremendous fear that is instilled in the people.

You have the law that even if a dumb beast, if your donkey gets away from you and wanders onto the mountain while God is meeting with his people in the thick cloud, and you can hear the trumpets, and you can hear the giving of the law, and the establishment of the covenant, and I am going to do all these things so the people will hear and understand and believe in what you are saying, Moses, forever.

You have this tremendous holiness of God so much so that, My poor little donkey, he got away, he got on the mountain. Kill it! Kill it! Its life is to be taken, even if it is a person. You have this fear on the part of the people.

Even Moses trembles with fear at what he is being called to do. And so there is this, obviously, that the people want it to stop. They certainly are not looking forward to this in a positive way because, as it says, they don't want to hear any more.

It is too much. The holiness is so strong. Then you contrast that. You have come to Mount Zion. The city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, myriads of angels, general assembly, the church of the firstborn.

There is this, it is some place you want to be. It is not some place that you are at unwillingly. And so a clear contrast is being drawn. And so there are some who struggle with contrasts. And they struggle with the necessary distinctions that must be made between the old and the new.

And we have seen so many of these distinctions drawn in the book of Hebrews. We saw it in regards to the priesthood. We saw it in regards to the function of the Aaronic priest versus Jesus, the Melchizedek priest, and the many high priests versus the one high priest now.

And we have seen these distinctions and differences. And so if that is all that was there, it would be fairly easy, I suppose, for someone to say, oh, see, there is an absolute, complete disjunction. That was then, this is now, we do not have to worry about that stuff anymore.

We can forget about all that stuff. And unfortunately, that is what a lot of people do. And that is why there are many people that I say they are canonically challenged. That is, they have a little bit lesser, a lot lesser of a canon than they are supposed to have because when they read the Old Testament, when they read those scriptures, well, that was then, this is now, we are not under law, we are under grace.

And it is just all sort of put over there. It is good for the little kids. We can tell them stories about David and that Goliath thing is really cool. It keeps their attention. But it is not really relevant to us today.

So you end up with this major disjunction on one side. But I want to point something out to you. And that is, as we have seen, the scriptures are rather clear that that old covenant system was meant to point to a fulfillment and the one God who has now established the new covenant is also the one God that established the old covenant.

The God has not changed. It is not that you have the God of wrath in the old and now you have got a God of love in the new. And even here, did you notice something? And I think this is quite purposeful.

Yes, you have at the beginning, you have all the discussion about the holiness of God and He is coming to His people and whoever touches the mountain, it doesn't matter what, it will be stoned, it will be shot through.

Terrible sight and fear and trembling and clouds and lightning and all that stuff. And then you have the much nicer stuff that comes after that. But what was the very last phrase, all the way down, because we have an extended section of warning in the rest of the chapter, but what does the very last section say?

And we will look at this more closely this evening. But the very last section uses very obvious, sacrificial, priestly language, applies it to us, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe.

Reverence and awe, the very things that we see in regards to the people coming to the mountain. And then what is the last phrase? For our God is a consuming fire. We are not coming to a mountain that has fire and smoke and lightning and so on and so forth.

So, here is where we must allow the scriptures to be the beautifully balanced thing that it is. So often we want everything in black and white. We struggle with, for example, the now and the not yet in the New Testament, where we are already seated in the heavenly places, but not yet.

We are still awaiting the redemption of our bodies. We have been saved, we are being saved. We have to allow all of these things to exist in our thinking and to recognize what they are communicating to us.

And here, the author, while making the distinction, while saying we are not coming to that any longer, something has definitely changed at the same time. At the same time, once we understand that, still, we are to offer to God, and the term that is used there is the very word of worship in the temple, the highest form of worship, we are to offer to God an acceptable service, the same terminology that Paul uses in Romans chapter 12.

We'll look at that. With reverence and awe, why? For our God is a consuming fire. And so, the author doesn't leave us with the option of drawing such a strong distinction that we do not see that what was going on at the mountain, and I think there's a tendency on the part of some people to think this way, that what was going on at the mountain was a different God.

We speak of God's dealings with men, and I'm afraid there are a lot of folks today that they'll look at what happened in the Old Testament, and they'll look at what happened in God's dealings with the people of Israel, and they're just simply uncomfortable with that God.

This is a common issue for our young people today, because they'll go into the world and, again, once, because of the Internet and the ready availability of information and communication, bad arguments that will be absorbed by people who aren't even going to take the time to read the Old Testament, that aren't even going to take the time to know what the background is.

They don't really care. They're going to repeat these things in their conversations with our young people, their professors are doing this type of thing, and there's all sorts of stuff that you can pull out of the Old Testament that's much worse than anything here.

I mean, it all speaks to the holiness of God and the very strictness of God in his dealings with his people. I think of one, for example, that's very, very common. You have sort of the idea here. If anyone touches the mountain, they are to be killed, man or beast, doesn't matter.

And the world looks at that and says, so this is the God you want us to worship. Now, first of all, the world sees a real contrast, because they look at us and go, you guys don't really look like you're worshiping that God.

This reverence and awe thing, you know, we sort of watch this stuff, and we sort of see these TV preachers now, and they're kicking back and relaxing, and you've got the one dude down in Texas doing stuff on marriage from on top of his building in a bed and stuff like that.

You know, the reverence and awe thing, y 'all don't seem real big on that anymore anyways, and so there seems to be a little bit of a problem from that perspective. But this is the God that you are saying is relevant to our society today, that would actually kill an animal or even kill a person for just wandering on to the mountain?

Or, and this is the very commonly used example, what about that poor guy? Right after the giving of the Law of the Sabbath, he goes out to pick up sticks. Who knows, maybe he didn't know what day it was, his calendar was messed up, the battery on his iPad died, so he thought it was Monday.

You know, we always have excuses, but the idea is he's going out, what's he doing? He wasn't going out and worshipping a foreign god or something, he was picking up sticks, he needed some sticks for a fire or something, and God had him killed.

And the world looks at that and says, disconnect, why? And I think one of the main reasons, I mean aside from the fact they're in rebellion against God, is it's so rare for the world to encounter anybody who calls himself a Christian, who has actually thought through this and goes, yeah, that's the very same God that I worship, and I embrace that, and they're like, oh, you're strange.

Do you understand? If you don't see that the holiness of God is what is in view here, that God had just given his Law, and this man is showing great disrespect toward God and disrespect toward his position amongst the people of God, who are supposed to be representing God to the nations, if you don't see that, then you're never really going to understand the cross.

You're never really going to understand the message that when Jesus said, it is necessary that I go to Jerusalem. You're going to see it as a bunch of disconnected stories, and you're not going to see the consistent thread that is woven all the way through, which is so important to us.

In fact, it's the very reason why we can't bow down to your cultural idols and your new cultural norms would say that certain things are right when the Bible says they're wrong, because it all has to do with God's holiness, what sin is, and what redemption is.

Very rarely do they hear people explaining it that way. Of course, very rarely do they give us time to even mention such things. As soon as you start to mention almost anything of the Bible, all of a sudden they need to go floss their cat or something like that, and so there's all sorts of excuses that they come up with.

But that's what they need to hear, and that's what we need to be saying. We need to have the eagle-eyed view of the relationship of all these things together. And so, my point here is that we need to be balanced as we consider the teaching of the book of Hebrews, and it's the book of Hebrews that gives us the balance.

Because, yes, there is a distinction between how God dealt with the people on that day when he gathered them at the foot of Mount Sinai. And there was a strictness. There was a holiness. Potential wrath for anyone who would violate God's law.

There didn't seem to be a whole lot of obvious grace at this point, but there was when you actually step back far enough to think about it. But there was strictness, and there was... We need to understand this.

We need to recognize this. And now, now we've talked about the blood of the New Covenant, and to the people that are in heaven, and to the perfected saints, and we've got this encouragement to enter into the presence of God and the throne of grace.

And it's so easy for people just to separate those things out and never see how intimately connected they are to one another. How one is so much more deeply to be understood because it is in light of the other.

It's so easy for us to try to just simplify everything and do so at a level that the New Testament never does. And what I really appreciate is that the author himself does not allow us to do that. Because by bookending this section with that last statement, our God is a consuming fire.

What God is that? The very same God that was thundering and lightning and giving his law is the very same God that has provided the throne of grace, and he is the one that has provided the means for us to enter into his presence.

He is the one who actually, in the person of his son, has provided all of these things. And if we don't see this, then our appreciation of the gospel itself is going to be made much more shallow than it should be.

And our ability to look people in the eye and seriously explain to them in our day, yes, I actually happen to think the holiness code is a wonderful thing. I happen to think that God's law is a wonderful thing.

In fact, my Bible teaches me that God has written his law upon my heart, and I can rejoice in it. And then to be able to consistently explain why there are certain elements of that law that remain absolutely abiding and perpetual to this day, and why I don't have to worry about eating shellfish today.

And why I'm not concerned that I think my shirt has mixed fibers in it. And there's actually a consistent way of responding to that. We've got to see how it all fits together. And the writer here provides us with one of those beautiful examples.

One God. One God who, at Mount Sinai, the people are like, can we get out of here? Now, Mount Zion, do we ever have to leave? Can we just stay here? This is awesome. This is wonderful. Still just one God.

And what has changed? Has God changed? No. You see, it was absolutely necessary for the holiness of God to be demonstrated without question there at the foot of the mountain. Touch the mountain, die! It's absolutely necessary to demonstrate that, so that we can then look at the cross and see the Father's wrath being poured out upon the Son, the self-giving of the Son, the fact that this is all directly from the very heart of the Father, that this is the work of the triune God, to understand why that is necessary.

And there are so many people today that are denying that that's necessary. There are so many big names that are saying, oh, that penal substitution stuff, that's barbaric, it's cosmic child abuse, we need to get rid of this stuff.

And the reason they're getting away with that is because so often our understanding of what takes place at the cross is not intimately, directly, biblically connected. Stone that donkey that just touched the mountain.

They're connected. One God demonstrating His absolute holiness so that we have the foundation to understand why it was absolutely necessary that it would be His Son that provides the only possible way of salvation and peace with Him.

They're absolutely connected. And we have very greatly weakened our message to the world because we allowed those links to be broken. We don't emphasize one God. We see His working with His people. There are so many things we can learn about how He worked with the people of Israel and the absolute necessity of the New Covenant where instead of having that external standard, it's now been written upon our heart.

There had to be a spiritual change. If you've got a heart of stone, that heart of stone is not going to want to be in the presence of that consuming fire. There's always going to be that, I want to get away, I want to get away.

Stop, I don't want to hear any more of the words. I'm terrified. Why? What happened is for many people today, they've gotten rid of the being terrified by changing God. Rather than recognizing the difference here, the reason that we want to come into the presence of the myriad of angels and all these others that are mentioned here we'll look at in a moment, is not because God has ceased being a consuming fire.

God's still a consuming fire. He was then, He is now. He doesn't change. What's changed? Us. How God has formed His people. So it's extremely important to see what the difference between these two things are.

So, you have the writer drawing from a story that everyone would remember. Any Hebrew Christian, and certainly we should be just as quick to recognize an Old Covenant story that's so central like this.

He brings that forward and then he says, You have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Now this follows very clearly from what has already happened earlier in the epistle in talking about how, for example, the Old Testament tabernacle was a type and now we have really the fulfillment in Christ, the heavenly tabernacle.

All those things are still following through here. So we've come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, and there's an issue here as to how this should be translated.

It could be, and to myriads of angels and to the general assembly, or it could be myriads of angels in festive garb or gathered together in a context of celebration or something like that would be the terminology that would be used.

I'm not really, it's sort of a 50 -50 either direction as to how you understand that. But the point is that in the heavenly Jerusalem you have countless angels and either you have just a bunch of angels, then you've got a general assembly, and then you've got the church of the firstborn, or the general assembly is the church of the firstborn, or you've got a bunch of angels who are arrayed in celebration, and then, and the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.

So, it's really a question as to how many different groups here are in the author's thinking, in the author's mind. But the point is that you have not a mountain that you can't touch, that you stay away from.

We've come to heavenly Jerusalem and we enter into the very heavenly worship itself, where you have the angels, you have the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, which I take, and again, if you want to spend some time on all the different interpretations that have been offered, I would simply understand this, the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, you look at that and you notice, to God, the judge of all, and the spirit of the righteous made perfect.

So, what's the distinction between the spirit of the righteous made perfect and the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven? Is there a difference? Well, it's difficult to say. It's possible that what we're looking at here is the assembly of the firstborn, it would be those very first ones who entered into their glory already, or that could just simply be all of the elect taken as a whole, and that the later phrase, the spirit of the righteous made perfect, might refer to martyrs specifically as a possibility.

It's very difficult to say. What the author is clearly doing is gathering everyone and everything that will be a part of the worship of God, as we see, for example, we've been reading through Revelation, you see these images at the beginning of the book.

We're going to get into chapter 4 and 5, and especially in chapters 4 and 5, we're going to have a very similar picture to this, where you have the angelic creatures, you have the elders, and eventually you have all created things, but you also have the spirits of the martyrs under the altar that have a special role.

And so there are these distinctions that are made. But the point is that unlike a darkened cloud that hides God, so that all you hear is the trumpet blast and the voices, we come into the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and you see and you are a part of the angels and the church of the firstborn, in the very presence of God, the judge of all, the spirits of the righteous have made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood.

So the author has to introduce to us and remind us, why is it that we have this access, and under the old covenant they were told, stay away. Don't touch the mountain. Now, come on to the mountain. What's the difference?

A mediator. Shed blood. And what have we already been told in the book of Hebrews? What is the way that was opened up for us into the holy place in heaven? The body of Christ is that very way described for us, that we enter into Christ's presence.

And so there has been a fulfillment that was prophesied, it was pictured, but now it has happened. And so instead of stay away, it is come to me. And notice the description, and to God. Now think about it for a second.

If you're going to try to tell people that they are now being invited into the presence of God, how would you describe it? Come to God, the loving Father. God, the merciful. God, the propitious. God, the one who has provided.

All those things are all true. But did you notice the terminology the writer uses? The judge of all. The judge of all. Doesn't that strike you as just a little strange? You're saying you can come into the presence of God.

The judge of all. It's really not strange at all. I mean, it strikes us that way simply because the idea of judgeship and God as judge seems negative to us. But once you understand what has already been presented in this epistle, this shouldn't be strange to us at all.

Because God as judge will always act in a righteous manner. Maybe that's where it's falling apart for us anymore, because when judges do that, we're actually surprised anymore. I mean, the moral and ethical infanticide that we see in the judicial realm today is enough to cause all of us to start losing some confidence.

But thankfully, we know a judge who always does right. We know a judge who is always righteous and just. But we also know that we have a mediator. We also know that we have one who has entered into his presence.

And we know that he has sprinkled the mercy seat with his own blood and that he does not have to leave because he is not like the old high priests. And so we already have that down. And so now we can understand why he would say, come into the presence of God, the judge of all.

Holding both together. God doesn't cease being judge. There's so many people today, it's not really comforting to me. Holds it all together. Perfect balance. He's a consuming fire. He's a righteous judge.

You've got to deal with sin. You've got to deal with holiness. You can't just put it on the side. But it's been dealt with. And as long as you truly have faith that what Jesus Christ has done, his sacrifice has been accepted in the presence of the Father, then God as judge no longer frightens you because you know who Christ is and you are confident in the perfection of his work.

And so instead of the unmediated terror of Sinai, you have the mediated recognition. God is judge consuming fire. I am in Christ. And as long as I am in him, that judging has already been fulfilled. His righteousness is mine and therefore that consuming fire, if I am in Christ, finds nothing in me that would cause that fire to break forth and to cause my rejection.

I am in Christ. And so we come into the very picture of the heavenly worship. That's what we are being invited to enter into. And we are to have a completely different attitude, a completely different mindset because we now see what God has done for us in Christ Jesus.

We have the big picture. And again, I know, broken record, but what's this book all about? There's nothing to go back to. And we're going to notice that chapter 13, chapter 13 is going to be tough. I mean, if I was really a good Puritan, it would take us at least two years to get through chapter 13.

Because if you've read it, it's a number of moral exhortations and things like that strung together and there isn't a lot of long context. And so if I was a Puritan, what I do is I take every single one of those moral exhortations and I make a whole sermon out of it.

You just go through the whole Bible and all the places where that's mentioned and so on. And it would take another two years or so to finish off the last chapter. I'm not going to do that. I'm not sure how I'm going to get around that, but I'm not going to do that.

But this is pretty much, as far as the chapter division goes, the break between 12 and 13 is actually pretty good. We can thank Brother Stephanos for having done a fairly decent job at this particular point.

And so what you really have here is sort of a summarizing, bringing together a number of the threads of what we've had mentioned to us before. And so just as so many times in Hebrews, what do we have?

We have warning and yet exhortation and encouragement. Here is the exhortation and encouragement. You've not come to what you had before. And since you're writing this to the Hebrews who are under all this pressure, come back, come back, come back, do you see how this is a pretty strong argument right here toward the end?

Summarizing it all together saying, why do you want to go back to the foot of the mountain? Why do you want to go back to the thick cloud? Why do you go back to a place where there's that fence that has been put up?

Don't go there. You are not ready. Your sins really have not been dealt with. You need to understand there's a mediator. And the very one that they were being put under so much pressure to go back and offer the sacrifices, and by so doing saying Jesus' death was not the sacrifice for sin, and Jesus' death is just like the sacrifice of a bull or a goat or a calf or something else, to spit upon the Son of God.

That's what they were being encouraged to do. And now the writer is saying, so you want to stand there? And always stay on this side of the fence? And always be filled with terror? And always have the presence of God is over there, and I'm over here, and I like it that way because there's still this issue.

There's still this problem. You're telling me that's what you want rather than what I'm invited to, and I'm invited into Mount Zion. And I'm invited to enter right into the presence of the myriad of angels in celebration, and the church of the first form, and God the judge, and Christ the mediator, and what's the last phraseology, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel, the point going all the way back to the first shedding of blood.

There's been a lot of blood that was shed in that story, but you see there's been a final shedding of blood, a voluntary self-giving. No more sacrifice. There's no sacrifice to offer. You see the argument?

You see how here, right at the end, he ties all this together and gives any thinking person who's looking at the Old Testament Scriptures and sees the prophecies, followed the argument. This is the final concluding argument in the law court.

This is the last thing you want the jury to hear. What you want them to hear is, it's nothing to go back to. All those people, all the pressure being put under, you need to understand they want to keep you outside the boundaries.

They want to leave you in a system that will never allow you to touch the mountain, to enter into the presence of God. You're stuck just with the dark cloud, rather into the presence of God, the judge, who has given the sentence of not guilty, not because of who you are, but because of what Christ is.

And once he makes that final argument, once he gives that final conclusion, then you have the last part of the chapter that we'll look at this evening. That's the last warning. The last warning is, okay, it's been explained.