“Cool Experiences”-Heb. 12:18-29
You may have heard of the
mother who rebuked her boy for not attending church willingly. She admonished
him, “You go to the movies for entertainment, and you go down to Freddy’s house
and have a nice time. Now don’t you think it is only right that once a week you
should go to God’s House, just for one hour?”
The boy thought it over and said, “But, Mom, what would you think if you were
invited to somebody’s house and every time you went, the fellow was never
there!”
I think some people have quit attending worship services because they think God
is not there.
I remember that the
entertainer and singer Pat Boone, wrote an autobiography back in the
late 1960s or early 1970s. In it, he talked about attending worship services at
a church in the Los Angeles area.
His
life was so drained spiritually, and the sermons to him were so boring, that he
had to do all sorts of tricks to try to stay awake. One of them was to stretch his feet and
legs out under the pew in front of him, and hold them in the air. He would not
let them touch the ground. All of this to stay awake!
When
I was in eighth grade, one of the great Sundays of my life was returning from summer
vacation and finding out that the elders had wanted me and another young man to
go out in the foyer during the sermon and tabulate the Sunday morning’s
attendance. We had a big board on the wall in our foyer with everybody’s name
on it. People had to put a golf tee in a hole by their name if they were
present for worship that morning.
I
still remember thinking, “I am free! I am free!” because I got to miss a portion
of the sermon. It was amazing how diligent and thorough eighth-graders can be
when it means legitimately missing part of the sermon time.
I
wish we could see is happening during worship. I wish our minds could see all
that is going on. I hope this passage in Hebrews can help us get a grasp on
that. My dream would be for everyone to look forward to coming together in
public worship and assembly.
I
am convicted that there are folks in this church in Hebrews who have had the
exact same struggle. According to chapter ten, some have quit attending. In
this passage, the Preacher addresses issues that the church and Christians are
having to deal with.
Some
of these Christians did not want to listen to the word of God anymore. Some of
these folks were getting tired. Some of these people were getting bored, so he
addresses those issues.
To
do so, he offers A
TALE OF TWO ENCOUNTERS:
The
first took place in the material realm;
the
second in the invisible realm.
Each
description tells of two mountains. The first occurred in the material world—on
Mt. Sinai—when God brought the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. Here is how he
recalled it. Look at
Hebrews 12:18…18 You have not
come to a physical mountain, to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and
whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. 19 For they heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice so
terrible that they begged God to stop speaking. 20 They staggered back under God’s command: “If even an
animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” NLT
This
was an event that had taken place 1000 years before. It was a real event in a
real-time and history.
The
second encounter is just as real. It is invisible, and it took place every
Sunday. It continues to do so until this day. Look at verse 22: 22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem,
the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels
in joyful assembly, NIV 1984
The
Preacher is saying: “Draw near to the second mountain.”
What
I understand him to tell these people is this, “Whenever you get together, you
are entering into the very realm of God.”
What happens
when the church gets together for worship?
First of all, We meet God.
As
we read, at Mount Sinai, when God's people were standing at the base of the
mountain, they could hear the thunder. They could feel the mountain shake. They
could see the lightening.
I
will readily admit that in our assemblies today there are no flashes of lightning;
no thunder is being heard, they are no bells and no whistles. But this Preacher
says, “It is never more real than now. You are in the presence of God.”
A
TALE OF TWO ENCOUNTERS
The
first was marked by fear;
the
second by celebration and worship.
21 The sight was
so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”
22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to
the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands
upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,
NIV 1984
Do
you see a contrast between 21-22?
Remember,
he is telling them why they should be looking forward and focused and excited
about being in the presence of God. This was a big deal.
I
remember when my mother took me down to the TV station, Channel 3, in
Shreveport, and I was hoping to get to meet Bozo the clown. I was so excited, I
was going to a real-life television station. I just knew I was going to see,
meet, and spend time with Bozo the clown.
Alas,
it was on a Saturday. Hardly anyone was at the station. Bozo the clown was
nowhere to be found. I took it rather hard. Looking back, I'm sure a lot of
people were wondering why a junior in high school was so upset that he did not get
to me Bozo the clown.
Okay,
maybe my dating on the story is off a decade or so, but here is my point:
during that time in my life, I was more excited about getting to be in the
presence of Bozo the clown, then I was about being in the presence of God.
You
might be thinking, “How frivolous!” And you would be right. I hope I have
outgrown that. I know there a lot of people who have not. They are a lot more
excited about going into the presence of the frivolous, than they are about going
into the presence of God.
If
you have been with us throughout this series, you have noticed that there
are passages that alternate between the reverence of God and the confidence to
go into the presence of God. For example, 21
The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”
22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to
the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands
upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, NIV 1984
This
is important. If we're not careful, we tend to focus on our own instinctive way
of responding to God.
Another
word summarizing this understanding is confidence. Not confidence placed in our
work, but confidence placed in Jesus’ work. Throughout Hebrews, fear and
confidence alternate: they make up two sides of the same coin.
The
Preacher of Hebrews has alternated between
confidence and fear before God:
Fear Confidence
4:12-13 4:14-16
6:4-8 6:9-12
10:19-25
10:26-31 10:32-36
12:18-29 12:18-29
Some
of us instinctively respond to God with reverence and awe; however, we do not
have the ability to appreciate Christ's work, Christ’s affection, and Christ’s fellowship:
21 The sight was
so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.” For others of us, it is
the opposite. Notice
verse 22: 22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem,
the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels
in joyful assembly, NIV 1984
Express
your worship to God in a way consistent with your temperament and calling, and
don’t judge God’s other servants.
I remember one time we had
a guy that led our communion thoughts, and he said, “Take a moment as we share
the bread and tell your neighbor what God has done for you this week.”
Well, a fellow
jumped on him in the foyer after service and chewed him out in front of
everybody around. How dare he violate the worship service by doing something
irreverent!
That fellow is
no longer with us, and I ache for the guy because the book of Hebrews is missing from his
Bible; he is missing a significant portion of the rest of the Bible as well.
He's
pulling a “Thomas Jefferson.” Did you know Thomas Jefferson cut out all of the
miracles of Jesus out of his Bible? They did not fit his belief system. Likewise,
our former member was cutting out all of the things that did not fit his belief
system.
He
cut out Exodus 24 and the story of the meal God had with Moses and the elders.
He cut the fellowship offering out of Leviticus 3; he cut out a bunch of the
Psalms.
Here
is the gist of the pre-cross celebration: God did not kill us, yea!
Our
friend cut out passages of the New Testament, including Hebrews. He overlooked
Heb. 9:1-10:18. Remember:
Reverence and
joy are two sides of the same coin—how we relate to God.
It
is precisely because of the holiness of God and the work of Jesus that we are
motivated to joyfully gather.
Now…
I know this
is difficult for some people. There is a lot of church growth material out
there that says you cannot have a community that is too far apart on the
spectrum. And if you notice, a lot of these congregations that are written
about as congregations that are growing are in fact, swelling. That is to say, they
are not adding fruit to the Kingdom. They instead add people from other
churches. Nevertheless, there seems to be a restricted view of how to do
things. Furthermore, everybody buys into that view.
That
method appears to be the most successful, but is that the call of God? Am I
being idealistic to think that it would be nice to have a community that could
stretch as far as it can on things that are negotiable, and do so with love and
respect for people? And while Christians in the body of Christ are loving and
respecting each other, they are allowed to be authentic, and each embraces the
authenticity of the other. Is this a naïve vision?
It
is hard to live in community. It is hard live in a family. There are always
things in families that you view differently. You feel as though you are out of
your comfort zone; however, you have got to embrace that fact… and move on.
It
is the same in spiritual families.
Wrapping
this up, it's especially this way in this thing called the worship assembly.
You got some who are inclined toward the point on the spectrum of joyful
worship, for which they are gifted. Others are inclined toward the other end of
the spectrum—reverential worship (their gifted in that area as well.)
In
the church, you lean toward that for which you are gifted. You do what you are
good at. Others do what they are good out. You can have both.
In
the assembly, it is the community that expresses worship before God, is not one
individual. We compensate for each other. So don't lose that important dynamic
in Hebrews.
What
Happens in the public worship of the church?
1.
We meet God.
2.
We encounter and
those spiritual beings who have run the race before us.
Look
at verse 23–23 You have come
to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven.
You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come
to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. 24 You have come to Jesus, the
one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled
blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the
blood of Abel. NLT
I have previously written
that I like this teaching. He's made us think about others present in the
assembly: Abraham, Moses, and others. Consequently, in the worship assembly, we
have a little bit of heaven. We have come into the heavenly world. Better yet,
the heavenly world has come into our midst.
Here
is a second theme in this section of Hebrews–we encounter angels and those
spiritual beings who have run the race before us. We looked at this earlier in
chapter twelve, verse 1–the cloud of witnesses. According to verse 22–when we
gather together and worship… we are in the world of angels. We can't see them;
he understands that. But they are present.
Folks,
he does not promise this access if I ignore the worship assembly on Sunday and
take off to the woods by myself. We are so individualistic in our culture, that
for a number of Christians, time alone in the woods would be a perfectly
acceptable alternative. However, the world of the Bible was a world of
community. In our world, we have made individuality an idol.
If
I shun you in order to go off into the woods by myself to be with God, there no
promise that I would have access to these angels and those who have gone on
before us.
This
letter was not written to a church like Shiloh Road; it
was written to a little house church… or to a series of little house
churches. They did not meet in impressive buildings. The preaching might very
well have been bad, the singing might have been bad, people may have had to
stretch out their legs to stay awake during the sermon, there were no bells and
whistles that were making the people want to go. Perhaps some of them were
asking themselves, “Should I go to church or should I stay home.”
Nothing
their eyes saw at the assembly was impressive. It may have been even dreary.
Yet, look at this image that the Preacher gives them of what is happening: 25 Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who
is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to
listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we
reject the One who speaks to us from heaven! 26 When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth,
but now he makes another promise: “Once again I will shake not only the earth
but the heavens also.” 27 This
means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable
things will remain.
You
don't think this was going to give them a charge? He was telling them, “You
think you are in your little house church where the singing is bad and the
preaching is bad. But no, you are meeting with the household of faith. You are
joining God and the angels and those who have gone on before you.” It did not
look like that, but he was telling them to get in touch with the “real” reality.
I
think of that and I think about how many people today are going to church
buildings, and the key question in their minds as they leave will be, “Did I
like the worship service.” They will have missed it all, because they could not
see who was really there.
This
reminds me of a movie you may have enjoyed seeing, “Field of Dreams.” Remember,
Kevin Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a farmer who builds a baseball field on his
farm.
A
voice had told him, “If you build it, he will come.” Indeed, Shoeless Joe
Jackson comes and brings along his friends from the past.
One
afternoon, Ray and his family sit in the stands and enjoy a game. If you
remember, no one else can see the players except for Ray’s immediate family.
Ray’s
brother-in-law and his mother-in-law arrive, and they can’t see what's
happening out on the diamond. They get quite upset with Ray and his family.
It
bothers them that Ray’s family can see something they cannot see. They just
don't get it, and they do not react well.
God
is calling us to see what the world can't see. Typically, the world is not
going to react well. Nevertheless, we choose to see what God wants us to see. There
is blessing from that. Just as Ray and his family were blessed by what they
saw, so too are we.
The
last part of this passage is … A
Call To Worship (Heb. 12:28)—
Invest in the unseen
28 Since we are receiving
a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping
him with holy fear and awe. NLT
The
Preacher calls us to invest in the unseen.
Remember
in Hebrews eleven, verse 1, what his definition of faith was? Faith is the substance of all things hoped for and the
evidence of things not seen. That
is a big theme in this letter. There is a world above ours; it transcends ours;
you cannot see it, feel it, touch it, hear it, or smell it. But it is more real
than what you do see, feel, touch, hear, or smell.
Invest
in what you cannot see. They had been investing in the world around them. They
had been investing in what they could see. Sometimes it is because they were
attracted to what they wanted; something that meant more to them than the Kingdom
did.
This
guy has consistently devalued worldly possessions, worldly citizenship, and
worldly status. He has said: if you invest in the world, then you will lose
like Esau did.
He
said to them, and he says to us—invest in the heavenly world.
It
is easy to look at Esau, today, and think “Wow! What a dummy.” But folks, there
are people who do this every day. Some of them, sadly, are Christians. They go
for what they can see.
Have
you noticed how many times he says we have an unshakable kingdom? They were
surrounded by a world that was shaky.
How about you?
Have you got an IRA that is shaky? An investment?
He
gives them hope in an unshakable kingdom… and in a lasting city.
Earlier,
we addressed one extreme concerning the way we approach the Father, now here is
a reminder of another extreme.
There
are an abundance of passages that talk about the need to hold reverence for
God. Many in our culture view God like Aladdin. Make a wish!
Consequently,
they have excised passages regarding the holiness of God from their Bibles. God
is not a genie!
Albert
Einstein said something that fits this subject well, “He who can no longer
pause to wonder, is as good as dead.”
When
we as Christians gather together before God, we should do so with a sense of
wonder.
In
the worship assembly, God comes to dwell among us.
A
Call To Worship (Heb. 12:28)
Invest
in the unseen and if we do…
we will be grateful worshippers.
If
we invest in the unseen, we will be thankful. When we go before God with other
Christians, we should definitely be shaken out of the “automatic pilot” mode.
28 Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let
us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe.
29 For our God is
a devouring fire.
If
we could really see what is happening in the worship assembly, would it not
motivate us to more easily pay attention to what a guy is praying? Would it not
be easier to focus at the Lord’s Table? How would it not impact our singing?
Would
we not be more grateful?
Some
of our members live in the Chapel Hill School District. Last Fall, Chapel
Hill won the state championship in football. This was a big deal.
This
Spring, the people at Chapel Hill got so excited because their football team
won the state championship, they had a special assembly where they offered
championship rings to the players.
People
were grateful. They showed their gratitude in various ways. Some with their
voices, some with hugs, some with tears, some with smiles, some with clapping…
but they were all grateful.
Imagine
people in the presence of that team ignoring them, or being bored with the
team, or feeling apathetic toward the team. Can you imagine?
What
is it like for God when he says, “Here is something that I would appreciate: A
loving look… all of your voice in praise… your enthusiasm… your reverence…”
Do
you forget what he desires from you?
I
know Romans 12:1-2 talks about daily worship. I am all for that. Indeed, I
think the product of what we do in assembly ideally reflects what we have been
supplying the world in daily worship throughout the week.
Still,
the weekly assembly helps us recalibrate our daily walk.
I
lived several years in cotton farming country. Long ago, there was a time when
people would plow the ground with push plows. One fellow was asked how he
plowed his rows so straight, and he said, “I just look at a point as far ahead
as I can see. I position my plow toward it, and I head in that direction.”
The
worship service is, in a lot of ways, like old time plowing. We look at what is
ahead—unseen—and we encourage each other to head in that direction.
By
the grace of God, these actions help our lives to be straight.
Thanks Dr. James Thompson and David DeSilva.
