Hebrews 12:25-29 See that you refuse not him that speaks. For if they escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth, much more shall not we escape… The gospel dispensation is the "kingdom which cannot be moved." It is described as a "kingdom which cannot be moved," because it is the complete development of God's design towards this earth, and not a mere herald of a fuller manifestation. And when St. Paul appeals to the reception of an immovable kingdom as furnishing a motive to earnestness in the service of God, he is to be considered as arguing from the fixedness of the present dispensation to the duty of a reverential and filial obedience. The object, therefore, of our discourse must be to display the fairness of such reasoning; in other words, to explain how the fact that the kingdom that cannot be moved furnishes a motive to the serving God "acceptably with reverence and with godly fear." I. First, then, upon general grounds. WHY SHOULD THE FIXEDNESS OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION URGE US TO DILIGENCE IN THE SERVICE OF GOD? Suppose we take the opposite supposition, and imagine that there had been none of this fixedness in the gospel of Christ. Let us conceive ourselves placed under an imperfect and temporal economy, and see what difference would be made in our moral position. If you could throw an air of doubtfulness around the completion of revelation — if rather you could prove that there was still a portion of God's will to be made known; that we are not in possession of all that knowledge in respect of redemption which shall be communicated to man on this side of eternity, then immediately there would be engendered a feeling of restlessness and uncertainty; our minds, in place of setting themselves earnestly to the study of what was given, would waste themselves in conjecturing what was withheld. It is evident that under the Jewish dispensation there was a vast deal of this moral dissatisfaction. An absolute sickness of heart appears to have been felt by the most upright and pious at the long delay of a fuller revelation. There is just the difference between our condition under an immovable kingdom, and the condition of those who were under the movable kingdom, that there would be between a man who should be bidden to do something in the dark, and that of another man who should be told to do the same thing in the daylight. We will not say that the darkness is an apology for remissness, but that the sunshine takes away a great show of excuse. Receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, there are not brought to bear on us the disturbing forces which acted within the moral orbit of the Jew. We look straightway to Christ as a sacrifice, and are not set to behold Him in bulls and goats led up to the brazen altar. We can mark the Mediator, entering by His own blood into the holy of holies, and are not left to search out His intercession in that of a priest who, compassed with infirmity, needed for himself what he presented for others. We can go at once to "the fountain open for sin and uncleanness," and are not required to learn the methods of spiritual purification from the multiplied processes of ceremonial. We have been made acquainted with the abolition of death, of life and immortality being brought vividly to light, and we are not reduced to a vague hope or dim conjecture of the resurrection of matter and of its fresh inhabitation by spirit. But in these and numerous like points of distinction lies the difference between a kingdom which can be moved and a kingdom which cannot be moved. That which cannot be moved is the substance, whilst that which can be moved is only the shadow. He, therefore, who is under the immovable, has realities within his grasp, whilst he who is under the movable has only figure and parable; and just in proportion that the knowing with precision what is to be hoped and what feared will make a man more decisive in action than the being left in doubt and uncertainty — in that same proportion ought energy under the immovable dispensation to carry it over energy under the movable dispensation. The statutes of this kingdom are not written in hieroglyphics; the laws of its citizenship are not propounded in enigmas; everything wears the aspect of a final and complete revelation; the figurative has given place to the literal: prophecy has sunk into performance; who, therefore, will refuse to acknowledge that there is laid upon those who receive the immovable kingdom a mighty weight of responsibleness over and above that which rested on the recipients of the movable? And if the fixedness of the dispensation thus enhance the responsibleness of its subjects, we put beyond controversy that the fixedness should furnish motives to the serving God " acceptably with reverence and godly fear." II. Now we propose, in the second place, to make good the same truth on the particular ground which the apostle lays down. St. Paul argues the duty of obedience from the fixedness of the dispensation; BUT THEN HE SUBJOINS AS HIS CONCLUDING ARGUMENT — "For our God is a consuming fire." Let us see how the several arguments are associated. We cannot be wrong in arguing that until the gospel was published — until, that is, the spiritual kingdom was finally settled on an immovable basis, there were points on which God's will was not clearly ascertained, and men might easily have formed incorrect suppositions, forasmuch as they proceeded on an imperfect knowledge. Informed of God's gracious design of providing pardon for the guilty, but not informed of the details of the arrangement, it might well come to pass that they would indulge in expectations which a fuller intelligence would have caused them to reject. They knew that God was "a consuming fire"; but they derived this knowledge from that tremendous outbreak of thunder and flame which accompanied the delivery of the law. But you will, we think, allow that if the Israelites knew God as "a consuming fire," because so revealed on Mount Sinai, and if they did not as yet know thoroughly the character under which lie would reveal Himself on Mount Zion, it might be a matter of question with them whether the mildness of the one revelation would not so temper the fierceness of the other, that "a consuming fire" might no longer be a just description of God. They lived under a movable dispensation; the immovable which was to follow, came charged with discoveries of God's purposes of lovingkindness; might there not consequently have been somewhat of hesitation on their minds as to whether the tire which blazed awfully before mercy was allowed to shine out in its brightness, would be equally devouring when the day of free pardon had dawned on the creation? But so soon as the kingdom became "a kingdom which cannot be moved"; the possible union of characters — the characters of the punishing God and the pardoning God — was established beyond the reach of a question or a doubt. We cannot, unless we hoodwink our understandings, and take pains to be the victims of a lie, flatter ourselves that judgment when brought out into action will be less fiery and less tremendous than when graven on the statute book. Ours is the immovable kingdom, and the very process by which this kingdom was set up and wrought into steadfastness witnesses with a testimony the most thrilling, that it was a law with God, the least swerving from which would be the shaking of His own throne, that sin must be punished before the sinner can be pardoned. It was on Zion ten thousandfold more than on Sinai, that the Almighty proved Himself "a consuming fire." When the eternal Son in the might of the coalition of Deity and humanity went up the mountain side and laid Himself down on the altar, the substitute of a lost world, and there blazed forth the fires of justice to consume the sacrifice. Oh t then, far beyond the demonstration of Sinai, wrapped in flame and smoke, was there given a proof to all intelligent creation, that the emblem of God, when He deals with the guilty, shall be ever that of "a consuming fire." Thus it was in giving fixedness to the dispensation that God manifested Himself as "a consuming fire." The fact that the kingdom cannot be moved is an irresistible proof that the fire cannot be extinguished. Thus there is a connection, the very closest between the fixedness of the gospel dispensation and that character of God which sets Him forth as the devourer of the impenitent; and hence we gather that the argument to the "serving God acceptably," which is drawn from His being "a consuming fire," is but a particular case of the general argument derived from our "receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved." Therefore, all our former reasons on the general argument must be applicable to the particular. Futurity comes charged with no softenings away of God's wrath against sin; this is the fact that should nerve to obedience. We ought, perhaps, to say a word on the somewhat singular expression — "Let us have grace." It can only refer to our seeking grace, to our improving grace. Without grace is it impossible that we should serve God acceptably, for man himself is void of all capacity for performing the will of his Maker; hence the being admonished that we may have grace to serve God acceptably is the same thing as being admonished that we set not to the work in any strength of our own, but that we go to God for assistance in order that we may honour God by obedience. And we may further observe that the service here demanded at our hands is of a nature which marks the awfulness of God. There is to be nothing of familiarity, there is to be nothing of forgetfulness of the unmeasured distance which, even when brought nigh by the blood of His own Son, separates between God and ourselves. Therefore we are to serve "with reverence and godly fear"; and though undoubtedly the fear which a Christian entertains towards God will be filial fear rather than slavish, the fear of a son who loves rather than that of a servant who dreads, yet it is certain that in our text an apprehension of wrath is supposed to be an element of godly fear. "Such would have been my lot," will the Christian say, when musing on the fate of the impenitent, "had not free grace interposed, and God of His rich lovingkindness brought me up from destruction." Carry away with you, then, this truth — the truth that peculiar interest in God is no encouragement to the throwing aside the most awful fear of God. "Our God is a consuming fire." How rich the summit of privilege when you can say, "O God, Thou art my God! " And yet when the summit is reached you must still look to the blazing, burning Deity for "our God," my God, "is a consuming fire." "At first glance," says an old prelate, "these two expressions, 'our God,' and 'a consuming fire,' seem to look strangely at one another, but the Holy Ghost hath excellently tempered them." He is our God — this corrects that despairing fear which would otherwise seize on us from the consideration of God as "a consuming fire." But then, He is not only "our God"; He is also "a consuming fire" — this corrects that presumptuous irreverence to which else we might be emboldened by the consideration of our interest in God as "our God." (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: |
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