 Today, we're in chapter 12 here, and we're going to be looking at verses 18 through 29. And so what I'll do is I'll read beginning at verse 18, and I'll read to verse 24, and we'll get into our study. Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 18, reading to verse 24. The writer writes, For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore, for they could not endure what was commanded. And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I'm exceedingly afraid and trembling, but you've come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the General Assembly, and the church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of able. Now, the writer is exhorting believers. Let me remind you of where we've been, it's been four weeks since we've covered this portion. The writer's been exhorting believers to persevere through the hard times that they are presently experiencing, and for the hard times that they will in the future experience, because they are struggling. They're struggling against pressures, pressures to reject the Lord. They're struggling against tradition, and especially are struggling against persecution. They are aware of the fact that as Christians, they could very well suffer and were concerned. They were concerned about enduring the pain of suffering. They're being criticized. They're being ostracized. They're being deprived economically. They're fearful of martyrdom. When we were in chapter 10, we looked at verses 32 through 39, and that records some of what they've already been enduring, and also revealed their attitudes up to that point. But Jesus had taught them, and this is something that the writer is trying to refresh their memory. Jesus had taught them concerning these things. He's spoken to His followers and said to us as believers that we are to expect persecution, especially from unbelievers. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10. He said it in verses 16 through 18. He said, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, beware of men. They will deliver you up to the councils. They will scourge you in their synagogues, and you shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them, and he says to the Gentiles, and in verse 22 of Matthew 10, you shall be hated of all men for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end shall be saved. And so he's already prepared believers for persecution, sometimes to the point of martyrdom. But they're concerned. They're aware of the reality of persecution, but they're in need of exhortation, and they need to be stirred to a continued faithfulness in the Lord, and that's what he's doing here. Though they are aware of the reality, they still need to be stirred. They need to be reminded there's something greater to fear than simply persecution. There is something greater to fear than simply being ostracized or spoken evil of. You need to fear something greater than that, and Jesus would remind us once again that the thing to fear is the judgment of God, because in Matthew chapter 10, verse 28, Jesus said it this way. He said, fear not those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. In Isaiah 8.13, the Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy. He is the one you are to fear. He is the one you are to dread. When he says you are to dread, it speaks of profound terror. If you're going to make a choice of fearing, Jesus said, fear God. And instead of fearing persecution and what man can do to you, fear God. So in this passage before us, the writer is making one thing very clear. He's making it clear that his readers ultimately are going to stand before the judgment seat of God, and that there is only one basis of judgment. And the question he would be asking and answering is, are you going to come to God on your own terms, or are you going to come to God on His? There are only two ways to approach Him. One is on His terms, and the other is on your own. Now, Paul, when he was writing in Romans chapter 10, verses 1 through 3, said this. He said, brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. So the choice is, do you want to produce your own righteousness, or are you going to receive the righteousness that you have when you receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? And so you can come to God on His terms, or you come to God on your own. But you cannot create your own way to God. God has given to us that way through His Son, Jesus Christ. I was reading recently a minister in the area, our area, who was saying that the Christian message can sound arrogant. Because we as Christians proclaim a message that indeed to those who don't know the Lord could very well judge it as being arrogant. Because we're saying that there is a God, and there's one way to that God, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the thing that I would remind all of us in this room is that we didn't invent that message. What we simply do as believers is, one, we try to live that message, and two, we proclaim that message. We don't change it. We don't dilute it. We don't try to make it acceptable to men. We simply proclaim and live it. But it is a pretty strong message, and you see it throughout the Bible. In John, in chapter 10, verse 9, Jesus said, I'm the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. Or in Acts chapter 4, verse 12, neither is there salvation in any other. There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Or 1 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 5, there is one God, one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Or Jesus saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. And so when we stand up as Christians and we tell the world, you need to relate to God through Jesus Christ, some might say that's arrogant. But what it is is just faithful proclamation. It's just faithfully teaching what God's word says. So the choices that he's offering to his readers at this point are very simple. He's saying, you can attempt to come to God through the law, or you come to God through his grace. You will either be judged on the basis of your obedience to the law, remember he's writing to Jews, or you will actually be judged, if you will, on the gospel of grace. And that's a picture he's drawing at this point. Now notice verse 18, how he says, you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire and to blackness and darkness and tempest. When he's speaking concerning this mountain here, and he describes it in verse 19, by saying the sound of a trumpet, the voice of words, those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. They could not endure what was commanded. And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with an arrow. So terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. That's a picture of Mount Sinai. That's where Moses went to receive the law from God. You see that in the book of Exodus in chapter 19. And what he's doing, he's actually quoting from Exodus 19 in chapter 20. And he's speaking about what happened there and describing what scripture says. Notice in verse 18 that he speaks of this mountain that may be touched. When he says this is a mountain that might be touched he's speaking of a tangible mountain. It's something that experienced with the senses. It speaks of a rudimentary relationship with God because the law was basic or a foundational way for God to reveal himself to man. And that's how God communicated his principles of his will, his requirements, his standards. And so he's saying this is something tangible and something you're aware of. You see, when you read Exodus chapters 19 and 20, those chapters record how the people were to set themselves apart. And the way that they were to do that is they were to wash their clothes, they were to abstain from sexual relationships, and they were forbidden to even touch the edge of the mountain. And that's because God was about to reveal himself. He was gonna show himself and reveal his holiness. And it was a picture of the fact that God is holy and separate and no sinner can come near to him. When you read that passage, you read concerning thunder and lightning. And you see clouds and loud blasts of a trumpet. You'll read about fire and smoke and a violent trembling of the earth. All of that occurring. And what is happening is the people are seeing that God is unapproachable, that God is beyond our ability to come to on our own terms. And quite obviously we have forgotten that in the 21st century. We have a tendency of mocking the holiness of God and the world for sure does. Of course we all know that. Those who don't know the Lord have a way of demeaning him and blaspheming him. But one of the things that is especially grieving to me as a believer is that I can even see the church sometimes not seeing God as holy as God actually is. Just tonight I was sharing with our leadership and those who are in the leadership class will remember this because we spoke a bit about this. But I was sharing with those in the leadership class today how that in 50 years ago, 50 years ago, the world was more holy than the church is today. 50 years ago the world was more holy than the church is today. And I was sharing with them. I said, well think of it this way. If somebody back in 1957 was placed into suspended animation and awakened in the year 2007, it would be an incredible shock for them, for their system to see what has taken place in the last 50 years. Because in 1957 when they were placed in suspended animation, nobody swore in public. Girls weren't getting pregnant and calling their boyfriends their fiancees. There wasn't the onslaught of venereal diseases and AIDS. You would go to the movies and see a movie that you didn't have to have rated PG-13 or G or for mature audiences. There was none of that. Swearing was at a minimum. There were actually laws against that. I mean, you would watch the shows on TV and there were only a few channels, three channels on TV anyway. And if you had a television and we're watching television during that day and you saw something like Lucy, I love Lucy. Lucy became pregnant, but they didn't even use the word pregnant. They didn't even have toilets. You wouldn't even know that they had toilets during that day because there was no toilet humor. And when you saw the program, some of you have seen, I love Lucy I'm sure, Ricky and Lucy in their bedroom, always have separate beds. I mean, these people, if you would have placed somebody in suspended animation in 1957 and awakened them in 2007, they wouldn't believe they were in the same nation. They wouldn't believe that at all because things have changed in just 50 years. And the world looked down on things that the church makes excuses for today. The world did not make excuses for fornication. The world did not make excuses for living with your boyfriend. The world did not make excuses for being drunk in public and using profanity. They didn't make excuses for that because the world, the world itself, the non-Christian world, the United States that we live in today looked down on those things and thought those things were immoral and wrong, but not today. Today, things are entirely different and there are people in the church who do not have an appreciation of the holiness of God. And what has happened is we have a tendency, I believe, of exalting and we should, to a large degree, the grace of God, but we fail to realize the holiness of God. And because we have magnified one aspect of the reality of God and his character, we have failed to realize his holiness. But in the Old Testament, when God was revealing the law to the children of Israel, as the children of Israel saw Moses go to the mountain and they heard that noise and they saw the lightning and heard the thunder and the fire. They said to Moses, you go up there, we don't wanna go up there unless we die. And so the point he's making very simply is that the people's response was fear because of the holiness of God. In Exodus chapter 20 verses 18 and 19, it says, when the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, speak to us yourself and we will listen, but do not have God speak to us or we will die. And so that's what he's pointing to here. He's speaking concerning the law and the terror that the law brought to the people of Israel because the law revealed the holiness of God and the impossibility of completely obeying him. And as such, it wasn't able to bring people to a security of eternal life. According to 2 Corinthians chapter three verse seven, the law was the ministry of death and it was in letters engraved on stones. It was a ministry of death because it awakened us to the reality of our sinfulness and our lost condition, you see. Because no man can keep the demands, no man can escape its judgment. So at Sinai, man stands helpless before a holy and terrible God. Now, the law reveals certain things and when understood properly, it has a variety of functions. For example, the law reveals God's will. The law of Moses reveals God's will. Romans 2.18 says, you know his will and approve the things that are more excellent being instructed out of the law. The law also requires obedience because Romans 2.13 says, for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. But the law also condemns. Romans 3.19 says, we know that what things the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. The law also defines sin. Romans 7.7, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. I wouldn't have known sin, but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law said, you shall not covet. The law had a result, it produced death. Romans 7.9 says, I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. The law brought a curse because Galatians 3.10 says, all who rely on observing the law are under a curse. It is written curse, it is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. You see, you couldn't be made perfect by the law through perfect obedience because if you kept every commandment except for one, you broke the whole law. That's what James says, if you're guilty of breaking one law, you've broken it all. The law had 248 positive commandments, 365 negative ones. 248 represented the amount of body parts that the ancient Jew believed that a human being possessed and therefore 248 were positive commandments so that your body would do the right things before God. 365 represented days of the year and so the negative ones were to remind you that on a daily basis, you had a responsibility to keep the law. And so instead of 10 commandments, you actually find 613 enumerated in the Old Testament and that law had a purpose. The purpose was several of the things that I just mentioned but especially two things. One is to awaken in me an awareness of my lost condition because I wouldn't be able to put a word to my condition if the law hadn't given to me an ability to do that. That's what Paul is saying when he says I wouldn't have recognized lust for what it is except the law says you're not to covet and that awakens all kinds of lustful things within me. In other words, it identifies the situation that I find myself in. But the law also did something. According to the book of Galatians chapter three, verse 24, it was actually intended to lead us to Jesus Christ because it awakens you to the reality of your inability to be a perfect person. No, some people in this room may have had a great desire to be as good as possible. You might have grown up with this attitude. I just wanna be really a good person, believe it or not. That's what I was like for a long time, for a long time. From the time I was about seven years old, I can remember back actually before that but at least seven years old. I had made up my mind that I was gonna be the best kid that any parent could have at the age of seven. And a part of the reason I have to be honest with you as I say this was because my mom had become ill and I had somewhere in my own mind come to believe that if I was good, my mom would get well. And so I tried very hard to be as good as I could possibly be. And from the age of seven, eight, by the time I was 15 years old, I realized that I wasn't any good and that my mom wasn't getting any better. And I started thinking, you know, I've lost out on a lot of things that I wanted to do and that's when I started being crazy. And that's when I started to drink and take drugs and things like that. But for a long time, I tried to be good. Then I just became as bad as I wanted to be. And then once again, when I turned 20 years old, I started looking at what I was doing to people and how I was hurting people and ruining friendships and relationships and all. And once again, I came back to thinking, I need to be better than I am. But at that point, all I realized was I was sinful and I needed help. And that's right around the time when I was driving my Volkswagen and I had been drinking pretty much all night. And I had pulled the shift as a four-speed. I forget what you call that thing, the stick shift. I pulled it out of the transmission, just pull it out. And it was in my hand in fourth gear. And I came to a stop and I couldn't take off because it was in fourth gear. And so some guys were driving in 1965, 66 Bonneville. Some of you might remember those cars. They're as big as a boat. And they pulled up behind me. I was on Pioneer Boulevard at the intersection of Pioneer Boulevard and Firestone and in Norwalk. And they pulled up behind me and they were loaded on reds. And so they said, can we help you? And I said, sure. So they put their bumper on my bumper and began to push me. But the guy was so loaded, he forgot to let me go until we got to the stop sign, stop light. And he stops and I'm on my brakes trying to stop my car. But this car is so heavy that's pushing me, he's just driving. And so I went flying through the intersection and I smashed into a signal and then just kind of hobbled off to the side of the road. And when I pulled over to the side of the road, the whole side of this VW was smashed up and I'm just sitting there stunned from an accident and a car of some girls I knew pulled up behind me. And a police officer walks up to me and he says to me, son, you better stay in your car because if you get out of the car, I'm gonna have to arrest you. Now he was being good to me, but when the girls pulled up behind me, I had to be cool. So I climbed out of my car and walked over to them and he ended up arresting me. So I go off to the Norwalk substation and they put me in jail. As I'm there in jail, here comes the guy that was pushing me in the car. He got arrested at the Golden West, he was at a dance and he's bringing reds. So he brings reds in his pocket, I'm there laying down on the ground and he walks in and he says, hey, what are you doing? I said, I'm here overnight and he gives me some reds. And so we reds, they're in jail and that's just that crazy memory that I thought I'd share with you for no reason whatsoever. It was at that point when I started thinking I had to do something because I'm crazy. And they took me to Los Angeles the next day actually took us into another city, I forget where and then took us to LA and dropped me off at the Alley County Jail. While I was there, I sobered up and I thought, oh, I got to get out of here and I called a friend of mine's father. I didn't want to call my own dad. So I called the man, his name was Ed, I called that up and I said, Ed, can you bail me out? Cause this is the third time I've been put in jail and my dad said he's not going to bail me out if I go to jail again. And so Ed instead of bailing me out tells my dad. So my dad comes and picks me up at the jail and my dad didn't smoke, but he had a pack of cigarettes and he chain smoked those from the Alley County Jail all the way home, you know, I mean, one after another, one after another and he says to me, you're a sick boy. And I said, yeah, and he sent me to a psychiatrist. And there I am with the psychiatrist, you know, and just he'd asked me questions and I would just kind of mess with him. I mean, I wasn't going to talk to this guy, I didn't know him from Adam. Why would I tell you my deepest, darkest secrets and all? And so I wouldn't. And I started going to him for a while. And then that's when I finally said, something's got to change cause I'm going crazy here. That's how I got saved. That's why I was open to the gospel when a friend of mine named Bill came and shared with me and said, you know what, you got to get right with God. That's what was going on. And I discovered that trying to be good because the law, you know, it says, God is pleased with this and God is not pleased with that. Well, I thought if I could do the right thing, if I could keep the 10 commandments, then maybe my life will change. And one by one, I pretty much was breaking them all till I got to the point where I was just holding on to one, I hadn't killed anybody yet. And at that point, that's when, that's when the law became a school master to me because I can still remember crying out and literally crying out to God, you know, in my parents' home, when I'd be by myself, they're going through my crazy darkness and all. And I can remember crying out to God saying, you've got to do something to help me. You've got to do something. I can't take this anymore. I still remember praying like that sometimes with tears. God, I cannot take this anymore. I cannot take this anymore. I'm ruining my life. I'm ruining my family. Nobody that I know cares for me anymore because I pushed everybody away. I remember doing that at the age of 19, 20 years of age. The law awakened in me just the reality of my condemned estate. It did not awaken in me an ability to be right with God. And that's part of what it does. It awakens you to realize that you cannot save yourself. Again, in Galatians 3.24, it says, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. It was what led us to Jesus who is the one who saves us. And so you have options. You can try and keep the law, he's saying, but you stand before God in your own righteousness or you can receive the grace of God revealed through Jesus Christ and be saved on that basis. But it's one way or the other and you need to make a choice. Notice how he says in verse 21, and so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. Even Moses himself could not stand before God at Sinai fearless. And it's a picture of every sinner, every sinner standing at the foot of Sinai, trembling before the holiness of God. But he goes on in verse 22 and he says, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of able. And so he begins to speak concerning this mountain. You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem. So the mountain of the new covenant is called Mount Zion. And what that does is it represents heavenly Jerusalem. It's a picture of God's grace. You see, Zion in the mind of the Jews is synonymous with the city of Jerusalem. And remember, the temple was built in the city of Jerusalem. It's where sacrifices are offered to God. So in the mind of the writer, God's grace is revealed through this image, the city that he's speaking of refers to heaven itself. And so coming to God's grace is another way of saying you have come to God's heaven. Notice he speaks of that heaven being our home. From the moment of salvation, heaven becomes our home. One of my favorite scriptures is Philippians 3.20. In Philippians 3.20, it says our citizenship is in heaven. We eat really a way to savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 Peter 1, 3 and 4, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he's given us a new birth into the living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, reserved in heaven for you. Now in verse 23, he speaks of the general assembly. When he speaks of the general assembly, that's the angelic hosts. He speaks of the church of the firstborn, which is another way of speaking of the body of Christ. He speaks of us being registered. That means that our names are on the Lamb's book of life. He speaks of God who is the judge of all. So we can now come to this holy judge without fear. He speaks of the spirits of just men made perfect, which refers to the Old Testament saints who looked forward to forgiveness. And in verse 24, he speaks of Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant and the blood of sprinkling. And this is who we look forward to being with. He's the one that we ultimately go to. Now notice in verse 24, he says to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. That's a picture of the atonement through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. Abel's offering was received because it was offered in faith, but he only offered animal blood. Jesus's blood, on the other hand, is portrayed in Scripture as cleansing us from all sin. And it's Jesus's blood that makes it possible for us to have peace with God. In Colossians 1, 19 and 20, God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Jesus through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. That's the way that I have peace with God and that's the way that I can have the peace of God because it requires the shedding of blood for sins to be dealt with. Jesus shed his blood on the cross. In doing so, he satisfies his father's perfect will and in doing so, he makes it possible for me, a sinner, to actually approach God because I don't come to him on my basis of my own goodness or my own effort, but I come to him on the basis of the perfect work of his son Jesus Christ on my behalf. So I'm able to say that I can come to him not by works of righteousness which I have done, but according to his mercy because he saved me by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. And so we come to Christ who brings us to God. Now in verse 25, see that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth. But now he has promised saying yet once more I shake not only the earth but also heaven. Now this yet once more indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken as of things that are made that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. And therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire. We have a personal responsibility to respond to the gospel. Notice how he says in verse 25, see that you do not refuse him. That's my responsibility. I don't know if you got saved the first time you heard the gospel. I wonder how many in this room did. I didn't, but then again I didn't hear the gospel until I was in my late teens. I can tell you the first time I remember hearing the gospel I was 16 years old. That's the first time I remember hearing the gospel. I was on the beach in Newport and I was laying there as a 16 year old boy filled with hormonal impulses looking at girls in bikinis. I can tell you that. And my buddy was next to me and here comes some Jesus freak and he wants to minister the word of God to me. And I remember him kneeling down next to Bill and me and I remember this young guy saying, do you guys mind if I talk to you for a moment? And that was the first time anybody'd ever talked to me about God outside of when I went to a catechism classes when I was a little boy. And I remember, I was taught to respect religious people and so I said, if you'd like. And so he begins to tell me about Jesus and he starts telling me about grace and faith in God and things like that. And I can still remember at the age of 16 looking at him thinking you need to leave and the reason he needs to leave is because he was blocking my view. You know, there are all these girls there. I mean, what do you... And I remember smiling at him and talking to him and saying, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, do you believe this? I say, yeah, I do believe that. Are you born again? I don't know what you mean by that but yeah, I believe the things that you're saying and I said something like, but you know what, I'm not ready to commit myself like that because in my mind at the age of 16 I had a lot of sinning to do. I mean, I'm only 16 years old because I figured that if you got saved that your life would be so boring from that point on and I figured I'll become a good man when I'm older. I'll marry a good Catholic gal who'll pray my soul out of purgatory and you know, that's how I thought. I like a lot of you very much like you. I wasn't opposed to church. I thought church was good for the wife. So it's a good thing for the wife, you know? Because she'll go to church and take the kids and I can mow the lawn and I can hang around and drink a beer. I can do these things while she's gone and if church goes two hours, that's all the better because I'll be occupied with myself for that time and get the kids out of the house. I mean, I was already thinking that way at 16 and so when they're coming and saying things about God and heaven and all of that, I mean, I wasn't interested because I thought that I would become a good person when I was an old man and I'd gotten all of my sinning out of me and I'm too old to do anything anymore and that's kind of how I figured it. And so, man, I didn't appreciate that at all. You were raining on my perager in my way. I can't see the girls and all of that but that's the first time I got witness to it. The second time was when I was 19 years old, three years later and I was at a tasty freeze in Whittier and here comes a guy talking to me about Jesus Christ and once again by that time I'm dropping acid and so I'm saying to him, listen, I think that the Bible was actually written by 12 guys who were on acid and that's what I told him. I said, I think they were just loaded and they had weird visions, they wrote it down. I said, can you prove to me that I'm wrong? And the guy says, no. I says, well, then how can you believe that book? You think that book's from God and all of this, can you prove to me that it is? And he says, I can. I said, then what makes you hold fast to it? And he says, I have faith that it is. I say, your faith isn't good enough for me. I don't believe that and that's how I was. I was 19 years old and I was arguing with this guy. It was an interesting thing. I got saved shortly after and I went into the military and while I was in basic training, I got permission to go to chapel one evening and the chaplain's assistant was this guy who witnessed to me there at the Tasty Freeze and I walked up to him and I said to him, you won't remember me but I remember you. You walked up to me at the Tasty Freeze there across the street from Sierra High School there in Whittier and you shared with me the gospel of Jesus Christ and I argued with you and he's looking at me and goes, I really don't remember. I said, I remember you and I said, I just want you to know that I gave my heart to Jesus Christ. I got it right with God. But see, I'd only been witness to on a couple of occasions and both times I rejected it. It wasn't until later on as the Lord actually began to minister that I did not reject it. You see, ultimately, as he says here, you and I have responsibility to receive or refuse and that's why he says in verse 25, see that you do not refuse him who speaks because you can reject, you can't avoid, you can decline the Lord as he invites you to get right with him. We have a personal responsibility to respond to his gospel. You see, at Sinai, God shook the earth but once again, the earth will shake and this time it will be in judgment. In 2 Peter chapter three, verse 10, it says the day of the Lord will come like a thief the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. So the earth is gonna be shaken but according to verse 28, there are some things that cannot be shaken. He says since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. God has promised to give us something that is unshakable and that's a heavenly home. Jesus said I go and prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will receive you unto myself that where I am, he says there you may be also. He has gone to prepare a place for us, it's called heaven. In Isaiah 65 verse 17, God said behold I create new heavens and a new earth, the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. And that's a beautiful promise to me. In Revelation, this is one of my favorite passages, Revelation 21 verses one through four, John said it this way. He said I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away also there was no more sea. Then I John saw the holy city knew Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, behold the tavernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death nor sorrow nor crying. There shall be no more pain for the former things have passed away. Think about that for a moment. Some of us in this room, many in this church have illnesses that the doctors have basically said there's no cure for. Some of us have seen those whom we love very much go home to be with the Lord through things that we had no power to help them to avoid. As some of us have grown up as I with a family member who is very ill my mama has been ill in my life from the time I was four years old. And so for the last many years my mom has had one illness after another and I've seen my mom struggle and many times with great pain on many occasions to the point sometimes of great tears that she will cry that we as her kids would cry as we would see her in the pain that she has gone through one thing after another. And yet at the same time as I read my Bible the Bible says there's gonna be a place where there is no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain because the former things have passed away. That's heaven. That's gonna be a place where there's nothing but joy, nothing but peace, no more pain, no more tears, no more depressions. No sin, no struggles, just joy. I look forward to that. That's the thing that is unshakable. We look forward to that, to that place that we will be with the Lord. And he says finally in verse 29 our God is a consuming fire. You need to remember he's saying some of you have come to the edge of receiving Christ but don't withdraw from him don't go back to the former life, don't return to Judaism, the Jewish way that rejects Christ but seeing that you've heard the message you need to commit yourself to the grace of God because if you don't fully commit yourself to him you have only judgment awaiting you because if you try to become righteous by the law remember that it's through the law that you shall be condemned because if you cannot keep it in every aspect of it and if you break just one you have broken all the law and therefore you have an option he's saying to them either commit to Christ or commit to the law. If you commit to the law you'll be judged by it. If you commit to Christ you enter into the grace of God and you enter into heaven.