This is the final sermon on our series in Hebrews, and it’s the end of Chapter 12, verses 25 through 29. So if you have your Bibles, you can turn with me there, and as you’re turning, let me read to you a couple of things…
Here’s something I said during one of those sermons:
Because of God’s grace, we will live eternally as heirs in a kingdom that will never be disturbed or politically unsettled or in any way economically fragile or suffer hardships like drought or famine or earthquakes or defeat; it won’t be a kingdom that will have good rulers and then be taken over by tyrants. We are heirs to an eternal, victorious, wonderful, perfect kingdom. And we should never take that for granted.
This is taken from The Possibility of Prayer by John Starke:
When the Bible seeks to explain God’s holiness, it says that God is a “consuming fire” (Exodus 24:17; Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29)—a dangerous and terrible presence. The presence of not just a fire that warms our hands and charms our campsites, but a consuming fire…. When Isaiah encounters this God, he cries out, “Woe is me! For I am lost;” (Isaiah 6:5)…Something is coming apart in Isaiah in the presence of God. Yet, at the same time, Isaiah and the seraphim don’t flee the terrible presence. The danger is real, but obviously so is the splendor. So terrifying and attractive, so immense and wonderful is God.
Last week, I used the illustration of God’s shaking and what that means. I likened it to sifting and shaking as a gold miner would sift and shake his pan for gold––to sift out the soot in order to find the nuggets of gold. So today, we are going to talk more in-depth about that type of shaking.
Scripture: So let’s take a look at that starting with verse 25.
25 See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 The words “once more” indicate the removal of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our “God is a consuming fire.”
And you may have that last few words in quotation marks in your Bible. That’s because this is referencing Deuteronomy 4:24, where Moses says to the Israelites, “23 Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. 24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”
Central Truth: I will get to that reference of a “consuming fire” later on, but first, one of the interesting things about The Kingdom of God is that it is not just a place called Heaven. The Kingdom of God includes everything and everyone in it. It includes the way of God. When Jesus talked about The Kingdom of God and what The Kingdom of God is like, he didn’t go on about the sky, the trees, the beauty, the mansions, or the streets of gold…he talked about what God is like. What his way is. What his love is like when it pertains to us, and what our love should be like toward others.
So inheriting a kingdom that will not be ‘shaken’ not only gives us an indication of the strength and security of Heaven, but it also gives us a sense of the Holiness and perfection of Heaven. But first, on earth, there must be a sifting among the people of the earth; and within his people. In order to be His Kingdom represented on earth, we must have our impurities sifted out.
We won’t be perfect, but God will do His work in us, and it may take some ‘shaking’ and sifting in order to get that dirt and soot loosened out from us.
Biblereference.com said: Not all things are eternal, and not all things can survive the judgment and holiness of God. In the new covenant, God offers us those things which are truly everlasting, which cannot and will not be swept away with the rest of a fallen world (Hebrews 12:28–29).
So let’s go back to the beginning of those verses. God is talking about a ‘shaking,’ or a separation. In Amos chapter 9, verse 9, God talks about a shaking that he is going to bring about to the people of Israel.
He says, “For I will give the command, and I will shake the people of Israel among all the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve [or a strainer], and not a pebble will reach the ground.”
God is talking about a shaking or a separation of good and evil among His people in Israel in the Old Testament. And in Hebrews, the writer is warning his readers to ‘not refuse him who speaks.’
In other words, God sent his prophets to warn his people. Now, we still have prophets, we still have priests, we have pastors, we have preachers, we have teachers, we have the scriptures, we have missionaries all over the earth, we have radio, TV, and internet, we have books, we have CDs, and we have The Holy Spirit. God is not unjust in that he does not give us ample warning and time for repentance.
When he told Noah to build the ark, he gave the people 120 years to repent. When Jesus told his disciples that he is coming back soon, it’s been 2,000 years.
But God gives everyone a chance to repent, and the Bible says that God makes a way for those who haven’t heard the gospel to still have the chance to find him.
Gotquestions.org says, “Ecclesiastes 3:11 states God has “set eternity in the human heart.” In every human soul is a God-given awareness that there is “something more” than this transient world. And with that awareness of eternity comes a hope that we can one day find a fulfillment not afforded by the “vanity” in this world.”
I’m sure you’ve heard about conversion testimonies from people formerly of other religions where God made a way to reach people who never heard the gospel. He’s shown up in dreams and visions much like he did with Saul, who became Paul. I’ve often wondered if some of the Native American religions might have been from God having revealed himself as The Great Spirit.
Crosswalk.com reminds us that: Deuteronomy 4:29 proclaims, “But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” This passage teaches an important principle, everyone who truly seeks God will find Him because God makes Himself known in all of His creation. Two passages in Romans explain this point further. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20) and “the requirements of the law are written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). The complexity of the world around us teaches us there is a God.
Paul preaches in Acts 17:26-28, “From one man He [God] made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.”
So the writer of Hebrews is warning his readers not to shirk at the warnings that have come from God in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and are still being preached to this day, and do not ignore the tug in your heart from The Holy Spirit.
If we go to the next two verses, we read, “26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 The words “once more” indicate the removal of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.”
And this is where we get more into what this ‘shaking’ is all about. What does it mean? What is shaking? How is it being done?
This begins with “At that time,” which indicates the ‘shaking’ in The Old Testament. Here’s another set of Old Testament verses to give you an idea.
Haggai 2:6-9 say:
6 “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. 7 I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. 8 ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. 9 ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”
Asbury Bible Commentary says that the metaphor of an earthquake is extended to describe another political upheaval similar to when Darius took the throne. In a future shaking of the nations, God will cause the wealth of the nations to flow into the temple so that it might be decorated in a manner more splendid than Solomon’s. The “desire of all nations” means the precious things, or silver and gold, of the nations.
So shaking is an upheaval. It’s “shaking things up” or “stirring the pot.” It’s unsettling things. It’s God intentionally causing confusion, division, or political or economic insecurity.
But why would a loving God do that? Why would he unsettle things? It doesn’t seem to make sense. Isn’t God a God of unity? That’s what our World would say, that’s what some churches would say, but Jesus said that he came to bring division.
Wait, what? That doesn’t sound like the Jesus I learned about in Sunday School. But there comes a time when God decides it’s time to make a dividing line, and 1 Peter 4:17 says that judgment begins in the house of God.
What does that mean? Well, as we discussed last week, God is a loving father, so he’s going to discipline His children to get their attention. In this word in Haggai, when God caused upheaval, the gold and silver went where? To his temple. It got people’s attention.
Oh, this was an “act of God.”
Have you noticed when there’s a natural disaster, they call it “an act of God?”
I always used to be bothered by that. But what if God caused or allowed these things to happen to get our attention? I don’t think God caused 9/11, but he used it to get our attention. And what happened? People started coming back to church. People started waking up. People started seeking God. It didn’t last, unfortunately, and I think we went downhill pretty quickly afterward.
But I don’t think God is done. I believe, and what I hear from a lot of others lately, is that God is still going to shake the earth and shake the people and sift the wheat from the chaff––or the sheep from the goats––and he’s going to shake out our impurities so that we, His Church, His Bride, can shine brighter in darker times; and so that, as Paul said to the Ephesian church, we can be unblemished when He returns. We need to be purer than we’ve ever been. We’ve gotten some muck on us, I think, from all of our exposure to living in this dirty old world. I used this illustration last time. Have you ever had your mom come at you with a washcloth and scrape your face? You didn’t know you were dirty, and you didn’t care. We might not even see how dirty we’ve gotten spiritually, but God has. And he’s coming to clean us off.
So how do we get cleansed of something if we don’t know we’re even dirty? God uses a personal shaking experience to bring it to the surface. We go through the ‘shaking’ first, and we go through that discipline that I talked about last week to drive out our impurities so that we’re ready to take our positions when the rest of the world undergoes upheaval.
It’s kind of like full-time firefighters. We’ve got to be ready at the station to get our uniforms on and trucks ready to go when the alarm goes off. I think it’s going to be that way with God’s people. We’re going to be the spiritual EMTs when the alarms go off.
We’ve got to be ready, and we’ve got to be trained. We’ve had to get used to a little smoke and scorching. We had to get close enough to the fire to get used to it. Going back to Old Testament prophets again.
Malachi said: But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years (Malachi 3:2-4).
Zechariah said: This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God’” (Zechariah 13:9).
Isaiah said: “See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10).
This is from Proverbs: The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart (Proverbs 17:3).
Here’s a similar Proverb. Think about this one: The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but people are tested by their praise.
So God puts us through the fire to see if we’re still willing to praise Him, like Job. The very next verse in Proverbs says:
“Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding them like grain with a pestle, you will not remove their folly from them.”
Think about how it means that some who are not His, or maybe on the edge of being His, will fall away when the going gets tough rather than drawing closer.
And lastly, the psalmist said: For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver (Psalm 66:10).
So this process can be described as a sifting, a shaking, a pruning, or a refining. They all require a little heat, a little pressure, being uncomfortable, and being divinely discontent. That ‘ouch!’ that comes with pruning or refining. That ‘ouch!’ that comes from God’s loving discipline.
That’s what this shaking will require. Like that image of the old ‘49er, you’ve got to sift out the dirt to find the gold. Then you have to refine the gold in the crucible. In order to purify gold or silver, you have to turn up the heat, melt the silver and let the impurities rise to the surface. Then you scoop the impurities out.
Let’s take a look at the last couple of verses:
“28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our “God is a consuming fire.”
What does it mean to worship God acceptably? Let’s go back to that Asbury Bible Commentary.
It states:
To receive it [our inheritance, the Kingdom of God], we dare not disregard Christ. Rather, the proper attitude is gratefulness for the opportunity now given us through our High Priest to worship God acceptably. Nor should this opportunity be taken for granted or exercised half-heartedly, for God is ever the God who shook the mountain in thunder and smoke, lightning and quake. Reverence and awe are due him. In the white-hot purity of his holiness every lesser thing shall be consumed as dross is devoured by fire, whether it be spiritless worship or listless service or staunchless faith.
Gotquestions.org puts it this way:
In both Deuteronomy passages in which God is called a consuming fire, Moses is speaking first to warn the Israelites against idolatry (Deuteronomy 4:23-25) because God is a “jealous God” and will not share His glory with worthless idols. Idolatry provokes Him to a righteous anger which is justified when His holiness is disrespected. In Deuteronomy 9:3, Moses again refers to God as a consuming (or devouring) fire who would go ahead of the Israelites into the Promised Land, destroying and subduing their enemies before them. Here again we see God’s wrath against those who oppose Him depicted as fire that utterly consumes and destroys anything in His path.
Our worship can be, and should be, joyful and sung in gladness; we can get up and shout for joy or dance as David did. But there are times when we need to be reminded of God’s power and holiness. We can’t take God for granted. We can’t treat Him as that “benevolent grandfather in the sky” or think of Him as someone who just shirks at the same sins that the rest of society does. That’s a different God. That’s the “Jesus of this world” or perhaps an idol of your own making, which Paul reminds us are demons––so again, the “god of this world.”
We have to worship God in spirit and in truth [that means with both our hearts and our minds], and in reverence and in awe. We cannot take God––his love, his grace, his unmerited favor, his blessings, his provisions, his sacrifice, his righteousness, his righteous judgments, his righteous decrees, his awesome power––anything about God for granted. That’s why we pause and have communion as often as we do. I don’t know a single church that has communion as often as we do. I used to think it was overkill, but now I understand how necessary it is.
We have to remember even though he is to be feared that, his ‘consuming fire’ is also an example of his love. Do you see how these verses go together? They seem different, but God is a consuming fire, and we have to go through the purification process of God’s fire.
Two quick verses from Psalms before we close:
Psalm 96:4 and 9 says, “For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods…Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.”
Let’s remember to do that, and let us also never take God’s incomprehensible love, unmerited favor, sovereignty, incomprehensible power, great righteousness, both his forgiveness and judgment, or our citizenship in an unshakable eternal home for granted.
Let us also be thankful for the uneasy and hard discipline that shakes all of that muck and mire from us, and just when we thought it was over, let us thank God for that heat that purifies us even more.
Remember, we can’t be effective spiritual EMTs when there’s a worldwide upheaval like an economic collapse or a natural disaster or more wars and rumors of war, and we’re just as shaken up by it and as hurt and hopeless and broken up inside as everyone else.
We have to be refined, of sober mind, full of faith in God’s goodness and love because of His faithfulness in our own lives when we have been shaken. And because of that, this church can be ready to minister to the lost and broken souls of this community.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Tobias Rademacher on Unsplash
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