Hebrews 12:1-2 — Don McClure

The Fear of God's Judgment

Harry Ironside, the old preacher of a couple generations before he used to tell a story, of a young boy one day coming home from school. He had a way that he was always supposed to come home. It was a longer way than he could have taken, but because there was an insane asylum on the way home, he was never to go near this insane asylum because of the crazy people and the things that sometimes people feared that they might do.

And so he had always been instructed, you go to school, when you come home from school, you take the long route around and you avoid that and don't go take the shortcut through the field next to the insane asylum.

And he had been instructed to this, but one day he was coming home and he was gonna be late and he thought he was gonna be in trouble for sure for being late, and so he decided he just had to risk it and take the shortcut.

And so he's decided there as he's coming through and he's taking the shortcut, going by the insane asylum. As he's going and they're kind of looking over, checking things out, but sure enough, as he's going, taking the shortcut, he looks and there's this great big fella inside the insane asylum, inside the fence, the inn yard there, and he looks and he sees this kid and he just immediately spots him and as he sees him, he just starts running for the fence.

And he starts climbing this fence and the little boy, just so afraid, he just takes off running as fast as he possibly can as he looks back over his shoulder and you hear the guys come over the fence and he's running after him and he can just feel the foot be pounding behind him there as he's getting closer and closer and he's just trying, he's just realizing the worst thing that could ever happen, it's about to happen to him.

His parents had told him and he knew better but he just had to do it and sure enough though, he's the guy that's getting closer and closer and closer and then as the little kid is running in fear and he looks back and he trips, falls down and then the next thing you know, he turns over and here's this huge guy reaching down to him.

They're in just, he's just screaming out in fear, the guy reached down and he touches him and he says, you're it and he turns around and he runs back and he climbs back over the fence and, but so often, you know, we live in a world that's filled with fears.

You get all of these different fears that are around us and that we're always so often concerned about and some are real and some are not. And yet there are some here that we all have to deal with and as the writer of Hebrews, here is talking, you know, to these people about some of the fears that they have in this section essentially.

They had a lot of fears, these New Testament Hebrew believers. They knew that when they came to Christ it may be that their family would reject them, their friends would reject them. They would find that there would be a lot of fears that came around them.

They were very real fears, very much of the ones that have always been around. Fears of persecution, fear of ridicule, rejection, fear of the loss of their job, their career, fear of imprisonment and even, yes, the fear of death.

This is what was happening in the New Testament, the early church and the persecutions and all of them saw suffering. And no matter who it was, when they seemed to come to Christ there was a price to pay for every one of them.

It was very, very real. Their fears seemed to be very well founded in so many ways. If somebody was gonna live fully for Jesus Christ in the early church, they were going to suffer. There were going to be trials that were going to come and they were very real fears.

Well, here the text wants to tell us something today and that is that there's even something though that is far more fearful than anything that any human relationship, any human fears, any human persecution, any human ridicule or rejection can bring and that is simply that men ought to have a greater fear than all of that.

As great as those fears can be essentially and that is the fear of God's judgment. The fear of what it is to find yourself one day to be standing before God because ultimately there's two ways as this section of scripture tells us about that everyone is going to stand before God.

One of either of two ways. One is is either they will stand before God because they will have come to him as we'll look at through essentially Mount Sinai. They will have come through the law. They will come through their own standards or whatever standards seem to be set up.

They will come on their own way and through their own efforts and their own abilities or else they will come through as we'll see Mount Zion and as it is typified for us here which symbolizes Christ's work.

What Jesus Christ did on the cross for us by his power, by his love and ultimately every human being is going to be judged by one mountain essentially the other. By one manner in which they do come before God.

The Bible makes it clear there's two sets of books that there are in heaven. And one of which has the names of those who have rejected Christ and the other is the names of those essentially who have accepted him and have come to him.

One is called the book of life. There Jesus writes our name essentially down into when we come to him. And the writer here of Hebrews wants to tell them what they really ought to fear isn't persecution and anything that may happen in any worldly or earthly sort of way as a consequence of believing in Christ.

But the judgment will happen if you don't come to Christ. If you don't believe in him. If you look there and all these other fears somehow or another allowed to keep you from God himself. That all these other things.

Well we'll look at people, my friends don't like him or I may lose my job. It may have an effect here, it may have an effect there. He is saying there is an eternal effect. That ought to be, that this thing shouldn't even be in the same category of thought or evaluation when it comes to the real issues of life.

Mount Sinai and the Fear of Holiness

And so here the writer of Hebrews, he gives us a very simple and wonderful illustration in his story essentially. That telling them that unlike their ancestors of the old covenant, of the old testament times.

That they today, he said you didn't come, when you came to Christ you didn't come to God through Mount Sinai. He describes there as Mount Sinai was given to them as this volcano of fire and rumbling tempest there where there's these blaring trumpets as you go through there.

And he says in verse 18, you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and burned with fire, blackness and darkness and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words so that those who heard it begged that the words should not be spoken to them anymore.

Here is something that when they came before Mount Sinai, they came before this picture as sometimes given to us by people like Cecil B. DeMille and the Ten Commandments and things of this dark mountain and covered with clouds and lightning and thunder as it's typified here and explained to us here in this rumbling, in this fearful thing, the sound of trumpets echoing around.

And there was something that they were very afraid as they stood there. Even Moses himself, it says there, says I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. Moses who on one hand had already spoken to God, had God had called him and instructed him and he knew that he, and essentially wasn't gonna kill him there, but there was something about this sight even for Moses in his closeness with God, his familiarity with God that even Moses said I am absolutely afraid myself.

I'm exceedingly afraid. Moses himself trembled wondering what in the world is all of this about. And here, I think one of the important things here in the text is that we would understand the fear. What is it all about that God was wanting to put within them here in the Old Testament, the fear of Mount Sinai.

And essentially here, what is happening is the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, it was founded of course at Mount Sinai essentially. That's where the law came from. That's where all the structure of the Old Testament approach to God was instituted there at Mount Sinai where God gave these things to Moses.

And there was something that God gave to him the law and the standards, they were instituted there. All the things thou shalt and thou shalt not. And they were just laid out essentially there in the commandments of God.

Of course, not just simply the 10 commandments but the relational commandments, the civil law, the so many things of God just looking there at the world and laying it out and saying you will not do these things.

They will not happen and it was there reinforced by thunders and by lightning and by something very, very fearful. God looked there and he watched his own children. He says that when you go out and thou shalt not kill.

It wasn't like a little suggestion. By the way, killing, I just never liked it. So try to minimize it or something. God wanted there to where there was something, he looked there and he says you will not kill anybody.

You will not commit adultery. You won't go destroying one another. You won't go backbiting one another. You won't go coveting and lusting after one another's lives and other things. These will destroy you.

They'll destroy them. They'll destroy everything that is the sanctity and the wonder and the magnificence of life. You'll keep me before you. You get away from me, you'll lose it all and here God is just shouting it in the most awesome and essentially in profound ways.

He wanted to drive it home. There's no question about that. But here the writer of Hebrews said you didn't come to this mountain when you came to Christ. Here essentially what is happening back in the Old Testament is God was preparing, he was establishing a covenant.

A covenant of their law and essentially there it is something where God even made it very clear you can't even approach this. The standards I'm laying out here are something you can't keep them. You're forbidden even to come near this mountain essentially there.

Even if an animal comes near it. There I mean these standards, even if a beast just comes upon this sanctity, this holiness, this picture of what it is, he says it'll be stoned or you'll shoot it with an arrow, it'll die.

They're the utter unapproachability essentially of God, of his holiness, of his purity. Some people that's, we look at that and we're troubled sometimes by it but let me tell you. I think one of the most glorious things that there'll ever be about heaven is the fact that all of these things that God laid out, they will be perfectly fulfilled within every heart and every life.

When we're in heaven we won't even think of any of the things that would hurt God or hurt another. There won't even be the temptation of it that we struggle with now. There won't even be the coveting or the lusting or the envy or the strife.

There won't even be a thought of another God. There won't even be any of these things. They will all be so fully fulfilled within the heart and the life but until we find ourself having God do his greatest works within us there, we can't approach it.

We can't do it. And here was something that essentially, there's two mountains here. There was the earthly mountain here of Mount Sinai and the first covenant but then it's contrasted here in verse 22 when it says but you have come to Mount Zion and to a city of the living God, a heavenly Jerusalem.

He says there's an earthly mountain and there's a heavenly mountain, you know, as he gives this picture here to us. He says one of them was an earthly covenant essentially. One of them was there that a covenant of death, a covenant essentially almost of hopelessness to men that if you got near, there was this terrible penalty of death that was there to even think of setting your foot upon it and the other though is contrasted here with this heavenly, you know, Mount Zion.

The Law as a Schoolmaster

There in this new covenant, there of grace and of love and it's something there that Paul tells us in the New Testament that the law, all of this in the Old Testament, all this old covenant, it was merely, the Bible says a schoolmaster to bring me to Christ.

When there's somebody would look there and look at God and just see this thundering, enlightening, this perfection, this holiness, this consuming fire about him so pure, so magnificently pure that only the holiest could even go through it and not have the dross of their entire being, you know, destroyed but somebody there that how could you even dream of coming before a God?

How could you even dream of living a life so pure, so perfect, standards so met and it wasn't there to try to, where God was trying to inspire people to try to do it. Okay, if those are the standards, I'm gonna go try to do them.

No, it was something there to reveal the utter hopelessness in trying to do it and it was something that came true with the time that it happened. It worked essentially there in the Old Testament. Back in Exodus 19 and 20, we haven't got time to go through the chapters so much but to give you a little synopsis of it, there was something there when the law is being given and when the standards being laid out and God even instructs them there to prepare, you know, even for the law to come.

Back there, they are told there that even just to hear of it even just to know about it, they were to wash their clothes were told in verse 10. They were to abstain from all sexual relationships in verse 15.

They were forbidden even to touch the edge of the mountain. Don't you even dream of coming near under this mountain. God was so concerned with all of the restrictions and the regulations of the law that even sent Moses back down the mountain again to give them a final warning.

He said, the standards are there and they're going to be real and they're gonna be instituted and you've got to understand these things. For God was going to demonstrate to them his awesome holiness and there's something there that no sinner, no human being could even dream of coming near to his holiness and to live.

And it was there something that was demonstrated when it does happen there with thunder and with lightning and with thick clouds and the loud trumpet sounds and there was smoke and there was fire and there was a violent trembling of the earth that are told in verses 16 through 18.

But the purpose of all of this was that every human being, there was to be absolutely convinced of the absolute unapproachability of a human being to God. And there was something that sinful man could never dream of coming near to God and it worked.

It did exactly essentially what it was that God wanted to do in one sense. And that is the people were scared, silly. I mean, when they even look at Moses, our great fearless leader who went before Pharaoh, who could do anything, who could lead him before the Red Sea, who had fearlessness in their eyes, they realized Moses is afraid of this.

It says that they trembled and they stood at a distance. And then they even pleaded with Moses. He said, let God not speak to us lest we die. They're saying, what's going on? Are we over? Are we finished here?

Just at the discussion of what the law is. And Moses tried to tell him, we don't have anything to be afraid of unless you disobey. Or he told them, he says, don't be afraid for God has come in order to test you, in order that you fear him and that he may remain with you, that you may not sin.

Reverential Fear and Obedience

Here he is saying, God wants to put within you this fear that you wouldn't want to be any other place than with him. You wouldn't want to be on the opposite side of him. You wouldn't want to be living a life that is opposing to him.

You would find yourself never being casual, essentially, about God, but he would be somebody there that there would be this wonderful, healthy fear. Isn't that something that you and I, we all dream of as parents, that you'd long for with your children, that your parents would have this reverential, healthy fear of you.

And would there be something there that it wouldn't be so much that they are afraid of you, but they would be afraid of disobeying you. They'd be afraid, they'd be fearful of the potential consequences of regarding you lightly.

When you're raising your children, you want to be able to take them out in the front yard and let them play ball, you know, they're catching the front yard or whatever it is. Yes, you can go out, you can do that, but they're inevitably, as they're playing a ball, can go out in the street.

And they may be not old enough to understand there, well, let's see, if you run on the street, cars are coming down, they move at 35 miles an hour, and you're running out there, a car weighs so much, you don't weigh much, car hits you, you're gonna give, not the car.

You know, and the kid can't understand all these things, and they haven't got the ability to comprehend it. You want a relationship with your child, you can just simply say, don't go in the street. And they fear you.

There is something that, well, I don't understand why, and I don't know anything about what's wrong with getting a ball particularly, if it goes out there, but if he says, don't go in the street, I don't want to go in the street.

I don't want to test and find, even when somebody says, oh, go get the ball, doesn't he love us, doesn't he want us to play ball? What's wrong with your dad, is he against us? Oh, he hates us, that's it, he said, he wants no more fun.

No, but there would be something, there would be this healthy, reverential fear that just says, I don't understand it. But I know that the way that he has created me is that somehow or another, all this is the preservation of my life.

You know, that if it could be something that the human soul, you know, could have that instilled, that any thought of anger, hostility, jealousy, any thought of hurting another person, any thought of walking away from God, any thought of taking my own heart, my own mind, my own inner thoughts unto myself and going doing whatever recklessly I want to with, after all, it's my life.

God didn't want me to have a good time. God didn't want me to enjoy, hey, she's not doing anything, I'm not doing anything, you know, or something. She's available, I'm available, who knows? I don't see any streets and there aren't any cars in the street, we won't get hit.

But to realize, he just simply says, don't think that way. And there's something in the heart that says, I don't under, my mind, it is wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can understand it? But I fear God.

I fear what it'll do to me if I take my heart, I take my life and I cross a line there that he has laid out. The most wonderful thing that I think can ever happen to a human being is a wonderful, healthy fear of God that he can put within them.

Something there that they could have. God bless you, I was hoping to get through to one person anyway. But the, just kidding. But here's Sinai, it represented for them. A mountain there where God wanted us put and still, you know, deeply within them.

Essentially to say that if you turn away from me, if you backslide from my grace, from my love, you'll go back to a life of raw fear. You'll find yourself there under judgment. You'll find yourself there heading for death.

The Passover and the Need for Atonement

That's what the writer of Hebrews is saying. You know, in the Old Testament, you know, you live under law, you live under standard, you're gonna die. But wonderfully there, when God in the Old Testament, when he instigated the law and he instigated this mountain and he instigated the standard, he also instigated the Passover feast.

He also instigated a way there that when a man would realize but God, I've done those things. I can think that way. I can behave that way. I say those things. I fail. You say you're holy and you're consuming fire.

And these things are wrong and that they'll kill me and that I'm worthy of death and the penalty of death for thinking and doing and behaving this way. And God knowing all of this, he just didn't put up something to say, here, I want an excuse to kill you all because you all blew it.

No, he said, this is who I am. And this is what heaven is. The glory you see in heaven, this will be your nature as well. And God, rather than saying, hey, my job in life is to adapt to your fallen nature.

God says, my job in life is to reveal to you the high glory eternal nature that you will one day have. That will just be your not, it'll be your first nature, your primary nature. You will live this way and love living this way.

You will find yourself, and one of the things that make heaven heaven is the fact that the thought and the heart and the life and the relationships and the love, the love for God, the love for one another, it is perfectly pure.

There's no shadow of turning. There's no wavering in it. Every resident of heaven has been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. You have come up here. And here it was something where God, though he says, but I have to show you here.

I have to show you who I am. And you've got to determine, do you want it? And when they would realize they do, and far from it, then he gave them the Passover feast. He gave them the blood of the lamb that was shed for them.

When they would come there and they would look at Mount Sinai and they realize, I can't, I can't keep this. I fail all the time. And I come and I say, God, here, an animal has sacrificed for me. His blood is shed for me.

I'm confessing I've failed. I'm confessing I'm a sinner and oh how I have. But in the process of it, there was something that God wanted them to know is infinite holiness. And here was something, you know, one of the things I think is so important that we know little of in this life, and there seems to be little preaching on it or teaching on it sometimes in the church, but God took the children of Israel out there into the wilderness where there was basically absolutely nothing, nothing at all, just he and the mountain.

Solitude, Sinfulness, and Dependence on God

And he took them away from, and of course Egypt, he took them away from all the distractions and all the attractions and all the busynesses and issues of life so much. And they essentially for a time, they had nothing essentially to focus on but God.

And in so doing, they became very aware of their sinfulness. They became very aware as they were just allowed to get away. I think one of the things we are not very good at and we're afraid of doing is just getting away from all of the things that attract us or distract us or keep us busy or keep us occupied.

I've got to go do this, I've got to go do that. But to take our heart and just to be able to sit before God and say, who are you? It's a fearful thing to even begin to do that, I think, in many ways because we feverishly try to keep ourself occupied sometimes because as soon as we're quiet like this, we'll become tremendously aware of the deep need for God.

But we'll also become infinitely aware that there's got to become a repentance and a dependence upon God. There's something that's got to happen to the heart to where we're going to become so totally aware of our sinfulness and of his holiness.

We'll find that need. How do I get right? How do I get right? When I could sit down and I could look at my life or I look at my thoughts or look at my marriage or look at my relationships in life, look at the way that I think, the way I do business and then just sit there before an infinitely holy God.

Not everybody else. Jesus told the Pharisees once, he said, you know, you measure yourselves by one another. You know, you just live with one another and so everybody else is doing it and that's justification for you to do it.

Everybody else thinks that way, so you think that way. Everybody else behaves that way and so you behave that way. Well, heaven isn't that way. Heaven is how God lives. And how we ought to be one is that we find ourselves sitting there and say, God, how do you live?

How do you love? How do you care? What are your standards? And that's a fearful thing to do because when I do it, now I'm gonna immediately fall up very short, very short and need help. This is what Hebrews here is about.

Grace Through Mount Zion

When God wants to tell them, though, that when you'll do that, though there is a fearful thing, the Bible says to fall into the hands of a living God, that'll instill the real fear. But I think God would love within us is that we would look there and say, God, I don't fear, you know, for my friends.

I don't fear losing my even family. I don't fear losing my job. I fear losing you and not being right with you. St. Augustine once said, Augustine, pardon me, anxiety has its use, stimulating us to seek with keener longing for that security and peace where peace is complete and inassailable.

That there, if there's an anxiety, and if there's a fear that happens, it can have a great effect. It can have a wonderful result if there's something there that stimulates me there to seek something.

God, I must be right. And he says, there's a healthy fear and a wonderful thing. And this is what he said, but here he says, this isn't how you've come to God because then he says, after he gives them a little bit of a history of Mount Zion and the law, he wants to give them an understanding of grace.

For he tells them in verse 22, he says, but you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly, and to the church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of the sprinkling that speaks of better things than that of Abel.

Here is something he says, but today, the wonderful thing is, is here you've got, either I'm gonna come before God on my behavior, my strength, I'm as good as anybody else, I'm not afraid to die, look at all the other people, I'm good, I'm nice, I keep good standards, oh sure, I fail, kinda, we all fail.

But when somebody really goes back and says, is that the way you wanna go to heaven? Is that the way you really think? Let me introduce you to the God you're gonna meet. If that's how you think, you're going alone?

Let me tell you, a beast would get shot in the spot, he tells him, but he looks here and he says, I don't think if I were you, I'd wanna go that way. But he says, rather than that, come to Mount Zion.

Come there to the city of the living God. As he looks at the heavenly Jerusalem, one of them is this earthly condemning, you know, accusing way of judgment that comes upon us. We're Zion and it represents the law and standards, pardon me, Sinai does, but Zion symbolizes grace.

God's absolute love, the law attacks and the law condemns, but the wonderful thing here is that grace presents us, it just offers to us forgiveness. It offers to us their atonement, it offers to us salvation.

When I come there and I come over here first to Mount Zion and it says, you're in trouble, buddy. And I really listen and I really look and I hear the standards and I see the law, I'm gonna step back and say, I can't, don't talk to me anymore, I'm scared to death.

That's good. Because now, that ought to put the greatest anxiety that ever happened to the human soul, where I go and sit and I say, is there any resolution to this? Are we all dead? On those terms, yes.

But he says, but there is another mountain, a mountain of grace, where instead of being accused and condemned, you're literally presented with a way of forgiveness, a way of love, a way of mercy. It's offered to us.

He begs us to take it. God himself there, I mean, Jesus Christ looked at us and he begs, I've come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. As he looks there, I came to seek and to save the lost.

He says, those that are healed, whole have no need of a physician, but those that are sick do. Are you sick? Because if you do, I'm the greatest doctor in the world. I can cure the eternal sickness just like that.

And the wonderful thing, that's when why Jesus Christ very simply came. But he came there and now when we look, not instead of coming before the law, coming before judgment, coming before condemnation, we now come to Zion.

The Old Testament, David, when he got the Ark of the Covenant that had been gone for a long time, but he brought it to Jerusalem. Later, also synonymous with the word Zion. There in Mount Zion, there the city of the great God, as he moved essentially from God, moved his presence essentially from Sinai to Zion.

In Psalm 132, David writes, he says, for the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his habitation. This is my resting place forever. Here will I dwell, for I have desired it. God says, over here you won't find me, but you will find death at Sinai.

But if you come to Zion, you'll find my habitation, my resting place. This is where I desire. This is where I want to dwell. And here is something Mount Sinai is the law and it's essentially closed to all humans.

You can't touch it and live. But Zion is open to all. It is something there where the wonderful thing here is that the writer of Hebrews, he's saying, you have come to Mount Zion. When you come there to Christ, when you come to his blood shed for you, when you come to his atonement and you come there and say, God, I see this law.

I see the standard. I'm not it. I wish I was. More than anything in the world, I want to be that. I'd love to be that eternally, but I am not and I cannot. And that's when the Lord smiles and he says, let me take you over here to Zion.

Let me take you to the city of the great king. Let me take you to where the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was offered on the cross at Mount Calvary and Mount Zion, where Christ gave himself and that every sinner who stood over there and it was a fearful thing to come before him, it was a hopeless thing, it was a disaster, terrifying, the most fearful thing in the world.

He says, now that ought to prepare my heart that when I come and I see Jesus, he says, I can take you to the top of that mountain by my blood into the very presence of the living God. And not only that, here wonderfully he goes on.

The Heavenly City and the Perfected People of God

He says, you come to Mount Zion and he said, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of angels. Here he says, when you come to Christ, you come to a city, you come to a heavenly city.

It's innumerably filled with angels there with it. And he says, and the general assembly of the church, the firstborn of the registered in heaven. He says, you also come to be a part of the body of Christ, the general assembly of all the redeemed.

You are now a part of their family. Instead of this law, instead of your hoping there and I'm gonna keep the standard and being destroyed, you can come here and be born into a city whose builder and maker is God.

You can be born into a place to where it's filled with angels. It's filled with the body of Christ. This wonderful assembly there of the firstborn who are registered in heaven. The word firstborn means preeminent, the honored.

All of those, instead of God judging us over here at Mount Hermon and Mount Sinai and destroying us, he takes us to Mount Zion and he honors us. He makes us his own children. And Jesus said, I am not ashamed to be called your brother.

I'm your friend. When you come to me through this mountain. And he says, and you come to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect. You will now find yourself there with a whole, there are the body of Christ and all where all men are made perfect.

You imagine one day, you know, waking up in his likeness and then waking up and looking there and seeing the rest of the body of Christ, seeing those. The Bible says that you and I, that we will know even as we are known.

The wonderful thing is, is that right now, we know a lot of trash about each other, probably, if you're married particularly. And, but you know, all sorts of things about one another and you've hurt one another and you failed one another and you've let each other down.

We're humans. And we've got all these things and all this happened and we're constantly, oh, but I still love them. And I've, yes, that happened, but I don't care. And we, but could you imagine one day knowing somebody only as we are known by God.

The Bible tells about you and me that when I come to Jesus Christ, he takes my sin. He removes it as far as the East is from the West. He buries it in the depths of the sea. He hides it behind his back.