THE VOICE OF GOD IS VARIOUSLY UTTERED IN DIFFERENT AGES OF THE WORLD. God speaks to rational beings on earth in two general ways
1. Natural. Everything around and within us is a book; all these are materials of knowledge--the soul alone is the reader, the student, the philosopher, the interpreter; a world is spread out by God, impressed with principles and laws for man, that he may look through them to Him.
2. Supernatural.
(1) Communications before Christ (Heb_1:1).
(2) Communications by Christ (Heb_2:1).
II. THE VOICE OF GOD PRODUCES GREAT CHANGES IN THE INSTITUTIONS OF MEN. There are two classes of things, and but two--things that may be shaken, and things that may not be shaken. There is one Being who exists by necessity--the absolute, immutable God. The nearer things are to God, the more fixed they are; the farther from God, the more changeable.
III. THE SHAKING OF THINGS MUTABLE IS DESIGNED TO LEAD MEN TO THE IMMUTABLE. The immutable things of Judaism are preserved in Christianity; its God, spirit of worship, law--these are retained.
IV. GOD, BY ALL THESE THINGS, BRINGS MEN TO THE TRUE WORSHIP OF HIMSELF. (Caleb Morris.)
The doctrine of Christ not to be refused
I. To REFUSE HIM THAT SPEAKETH, WHICH MEANS CONTEMPT OF GOD, WHO OUT OF GREATEST MERCY HAD RENDERED SALVATION UPON FAIREST TERMS.
II. THE REASON IS TAKEN FROM THE HEINOUSNESS OF THE SIN, AND THE GRIEVOUSNESS OF THE PUNISHMENT, BOTH WHICH ARE SET FORTH BY A COMPARISON IN QUANTITY. Let us apply this unto ourselves, and consider
1. Who speaks unto us.
2. What He speaks.
3. From whence He speaks.
(1) It’s not man, but God; not Moses, but Christ: the law indeed was by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. The majesty and power of Him who speaks is such as angels are bound to attend and obey with all humble submission; and shall we worms, nay, dust and ashes, refuse to hear this glorious Lord?
(2) The matter that He speaks and we hear is the best, the most sweet, the most comfortable, and the most excellent; never better things seen, or heard, or understood by the heart of man. The gospel is a doctrine of profoundest wisdom, or greatest love and mercy, and of highest concernment, and most conducing to our everlasting good. And shall we reject it? Shall we sin against so great a majesty, so great a mercy? Sins against the mercies of God so freely tendered to us in Jesus Christ, are the most heinous of all others. Let us tremble to think of these sins, and those punishments which they must suffer that are guilty of them.
(3) He speaks from heaven; for the gospel is a mystery hid from the beginning of the world, and was brought unto us from the bosom of the Father, by His only begotten Son, and by the Holy Ghost; it’s the clearest manifestation of God’s deepest counsels concerning man’s eternal estate, and of His greatest love to sinful wretches, the brightest light that ever shined from heaven; yet we hear it, and most men regard it not, but reject it to their everlasting woe. (G. Lawson.)
Hear! hear!
I. THERE IS NEED OF THIS EXHORTATION FROM MANY CONSIDERATIONS.
1. The excellence of the word. It claims obedient attention.
2. The readiness of Satan to prevent our receiving the Divine word.
3. Our own indisposition to receive the holy, heavenly message.
4. We have rejected too long already. It is to be feared that we may continue to do so; but our right course is to hearken at once.
5. The word comes in love to our souls; let us therefore heed it, and render love for love.
II. THERE ARE MANY WAYS OF REFUSING HIM THAT SPEAKETH.
1. Not hearing. Absence from public worship, neglect of Biblereading. “Turn away from Him.”
2. Hearing listlessly, as if half asleep, and unconcerned. 3 Refusing to believe. Intellectually believing, but not with the heart.
4. Raising quibbles. Hunting up difficulties, favouring unbelief.
5. Being offended. Angry with the gospel, indignant at plain speech, opposing honest personal rebuke.
6. Perverting His words. Twisting and wresting Scripture.
7. Bidding Him depart. Steeling the conscience, trifling with conviction, resorting to frivolous company for relief.
8. Reviling Him. Denying His deity, hating His gospel, and His holy way.
9. Persecuting Him. Turning upon His people as a whole, or assailing them as individuals.
III. THERE ARE MANY CAUSES OF THIS REFUSING.
1. Stolid indifference, which causes a contempt of all good things.
2. Self-righteousness, which makes self an idol, and therefore rejects the living Saviour.
3. Self-reliant wisdom, which is too proud to hear the voice of God.
4. Hatred of holiness, which prefers the wilful to the obedient, the lustful to the pure, the selfish to the Divine.
5. Fear of the world, which listens to threats, or bribes, or flatteries, and dares not act aright.
6. Procrastination, which cries “to-morrow,” but means “never.”
7. Despair and unbelief, which declare the gospel to be powerless to save, and unavailable as a consolation.
IV. REFUSING TO HEAR CHRIST, THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY IS DESPISED. “Him that speaketh from heaven.”
1. He is of heavenly nature, and reveals to us what He has known of God and heaven.
2. He came from heaven, armed with heavenly authority.
3. tie speaks from heaven at this moment by His eternal Spirit in Holy Scripture, the ordinances and the preaching of the gospel.
4. He will speak from heaven at the judgment. He is Himself God, and therefore all that He saith hath divinity within it.
V. THE DOOM TO BE FEARED IF WE REFUSE CHRIST. Those to whom Moses spake on earth, who refused him, escaped not.
1. Let us think of their doom, and learn that equally sure destruction will happen to all who refuse Christ. Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The murmurers dying in the wilderness. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.
2. Let us see how some have perished in the Church. Judas, Ananias, and Sapphira, &c.
3. Let us see how others perish who remain in the world, arid refuse to quit it for the fold of Christ. They shall not escape by annihilation, nor by purgatory, nor by universal restitutions. They shall not escape by infidelity, hardness of heart, cunning or hypocrisy. They have refused the only way of escape, and therefore they must perish for ever. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The plea of the gospel:
To “refuse” is a positive rejection of the word. But to “turn away” may be only neglect and disregard. To treat the message carelessly is to “ turn away” from the speaker. And as the ancient people were condemned for refusing, so may we be far more terribly overwhelmed in destruction if we turn away from Christ. Christ in His preached Word, Christ in His perpetuated Church, Christ in the continued ordinances of His dispensation, is for ever speaking unto men. If you scorn, then, the feeblest presentation of the gospel, it is not the preacher that you despise, but the Lord Jesus Christ who speaks through the preacher.
I. THE MANIFESTATION OF TRUTH IN THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST HAS RECEIVED THE HIGHEST SANCTION WHICH CAN BE AFFORDED FOR OBEDIENCE AND FAITH. Do you ask for dignity in the person who claims your allegiance and evokes your faith? Where shall you find a higher worth and glory of personal nature and character than were in Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you impressible by power, and will you allow your conscience and heart to follow, where first your senses and imagination have been aroused? What more Divine glory and power shall you anywhere find than in Him, who stills a tempest with a word, who calls the dead back to life, and is the master of the unseen world, whom the very demons hear and swiftly and abjectly obey? Perhaps you ask for wisdom and the light of an intelligence that shines with the lustre of the mind of God. Go and listen to Him who taught upon the mountains, or compelled the wondering multitudes to a reverent attention, as He unfolded the mysteries of the kingdom in the parables that linked the simplest facts and events of earthly life to the sublimest truths of the Divine nature and government. Does moral heroism arouse you? Will the signs of the spiritual and the Divine, found in the conflicts of a true and tried life, stir your heart and compel your admiration? Where in the world hath ever shone a light so signalised by truth and bravery, by virtue, and perfection, as the life of Jesus Christ? Perhaps you will yield to the claims of holiness and justice. Like the ancient statue which broke the awful silence in a deep sweet note of music, when the morning sunlight first fell upon it, your nature answers with an echo of fine melody, to the revelation of law, and to the outshining of the claim of God. Behold, how it breaks in clearest light, from the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ! Or perchance to all these forces you only turn a hard, insensate nature. But surely you can melt beneath the influence of love. The traveller drew his cloak the tighter when the blustering north wind blew, but he cast off his covering when the sunshine came out. Wilt thou not, then, throw from thee thy coverings of self-righteousness, and rebellion, when the grace and pity of thy God stream upon thee from the offered sacrifice of the dying Lamb?
II. THE NEGLECT OF THIS MESSAGE OF GRACE IS THE DEEPEST SIN WHICH CAN RENDER A MAN OBNOXIOUS TO THE JUST PUNISHMENT OF GOD. TO wrong a stranger of his stranger’s right, to rob even an enemy of what justly belongs to him--these are crimes which human law of the imperfect sort punishes. But what is the deeply dyed shame of love outraged? What of the wickedness which tears the hand that is extended to help? These are enormities at which human nature stands aghast. And this is the sin which you commit, when you “refuse Him that speaketh from heaven.”
III. ESCAPE FROM THE RESULT OF THIS UNBELIEF IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. A company of shipwrecked sailors are on yonder raft. They drift helplessly upon the wide ocean. They are thousands of miles from land. That frail bundle of spars can never bring them to the shore. Storms may arise, and if the winds blow, and the waters beat in mountainous surges upon them, they must perish. But see, a vessel comes in sight. It is an ocean steamer. It bears down to them. It comes alongside, and offers to take them on board. Thereupon, they begin to speculate whether they may not still be saved, even if they refuse to accept the offer of succour, and remain upon the raft. Who would not pronounce them mad to the last degree of madness, if they hesitate to climb on board? The question would not even suggest itself. While we speak, every man of them has left the broken spars, and is safe on the deck of the ship. What then of you, of any of us, who wonder whether there may not be yet a chance, even if the salvation of Christ is not made your own? The voice from heaven is speaking. To reject it, is the deepest guilt. What hope can there be if this be not accepted? (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
Refusing God:
1. Doubt of His truth, dissatisfaction with His Word, is perhaps one of the most prominent features of such refusal. When a person begins to say, “This in the Bible is, perhaps, an hyperbolical and figurative phrase; it needs to be palliated in order that we may reach its truth; it needs to be subtracted from in order that we may attain the exact meaning of the Spirit of God”; he shows his tendency to depart from the living God.
2. A second evidence is, disagreement with God. How can two walk together except they be agreed? If two persons are in partnership, they can agree so long as they work together; but if one feels one course to be right and follows it, and the other, another, the two are at issue, and the one departs from the other. Departure begins at the smallest possible point of refusal. When a line starts from another, when a tangent starts from a circle, or one line diverges from another with which it ran parallel, it may be minutely, almost imperceptibly at the commencement, but, however, it will issue in an opposite and contrary direction. So your divergence from God may begin about a small matter; a very little which God demands but which you refuse; a little matter which you think ought to be in your way, but which God has said shall be in the opposite way; but that divergence which begins on that little fact in that little Bible may issue in results disastrous as imagination cannot conceive, and terrible as are pourtrayed in the condition of the lost by the Holy Spirit of God.
3. Another element is, dissatisfaction with what God is and what God does. God rules in providence. Some great blow falls upon your home, some disastrous loss occurs in your circumstances; you have light enough to see that God is in this, and grace enough to feel that it is God’s hand that strikes the blow, and you murmur against God; you object to religion; you are dissatisfied with Him who is its author, and you begin a course of departure from the living God. The tenant leaves the house with which he is dissatisfied; the friend leaves the friend’s company with whom he is offended; and you, dissatisfied with the providential government of God, believing that He has punished when He ought to have rewarded, arrested when He ought to have given impulse, retire from Him, forget His Word, forsake His sanctuary, and refuse Him. And such a course, I again remind you, may begin from very little indeed, but it must issue in terrible results. A person departing from God walks in the company of the ungodly. He stands in the way of sinners. Then, he sits in the seat of the scornful. Here you have, then, the course of one who refuses God. What are some of the signs or evidences that a Christian can take cognisance of?
(1) The first trait of refusal of God is dissatisfaction, perhaps, with the people of God.
(2) Another trait is less delight in His Word. Whenever men begin to think the Bible and religion very dull, and to long for a romance as the only exciting book, there is something wrong.
(3) Another strong mark, too, of refusing God is less delight in prayer. He that really has the grace of God in his heart will be always discovering deeper wants that need to be satisfied, infirmities that need to be removed, prejudices that require to be scattered, passions that require to be broken, and his heart will be ever rising quietly, but fervently, to God for strength to be made perfect in weakness, and grace to be made sufficient.
4. Another evidence is excessive love of the world. “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” I have submitted these as simple tests or criteria by which to ascertain either our growing acceptance of God, or refusing Him. It is a serious question, Am I a child of God? Is my heart set on heavenly things? (J. Cumming, D. D.)
Refusing God’s voice:
I. THE SOLEMN POSSIBILITY OF REFUSAL. NOW, to gain the whole solemnity of this exhortation, it is very needful to remember that it is addressed to professing Christians, who have in so far exercised real faith as that, by it, they “ are come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God.” Then, again, it is to be noted that the refusal here spoken about, and against which we professing Christians are thus solemnly warned, is not necessarily entire intellectual rejection of the gospel and its message. For the Israelites, who made the original “ refusal,” to which that which we are warned against is paralleled, recognised the voice that they would not listen to as being God’s voice; and just because it was His voice wanted to hear no more of it. Then, remember, too, that this refusal, which at bottom is the rising up of the creature’s will, tastes, inclinations, desires against the manifest and recognised will of God, may, and as a matter of fact often does, go along with a great deal of lip reverence and unconsciously hypocritical worship. The unconscious refusal is the formidable and fatal one. Will God’s voice be heard in a heart that is all echoing with earthly wishes, loudly claimant for their gratification, with sensual desires passionately demanding their food to be flung to them? Will God’s voice be heard in a heart where the janglings of contending wishes and earthly inclinations are perpetually loud in their brawling? Will it be heard in a heart which has turned itself into a sounding-board for all the noises of the world and the voices of men? The voice of God is heard in silence, and not amidst the noises of our own hearts. And they who, unconsciously perhaps, of what they are doing, open their ears wide to hear what they themselves, in the lower parts of their souls, prescribe, or bow themselves in obedience to the precepts and maxims of men round them, are really refusing to hear the voice of God.
II. THE SLEEPLESS VIGILANCE NECESSARY TO COUNTERACT THE TENDENCY TO RERUSAL. “See that ye refuse not.” A warning finger is, as it were, lifted. Take heed against the tendencies that lie in yourself and the temptations around you. The consciousness of the possibility of the danger is half the battle. If there is any need to dwell upon specific methods by which this vigilance and continual self-distrust may work out for us our seem try, one would say--by careful trying to reverse all these conditions which lead us surely to the refusal. Silencethe passions, the wishes, the voices of your own wills and tastes and inclinations and purposes. Bring them all into close touch with Him. Let there be no voice in your hearts till you know God’s will; and then with a leap let your hearts be eager to do it. Keep yourselves out of the babble of the world’s voices; and be accustomed to go by yourselves and let God speak. Do promptly, precisely, perfectly, all that you know He has said. That is the way to sharpen your ears for the more delicate intonations of His voice, and the closer manifestations of His will.
III. THE SOLEMN MOTIVES BY WHICH THIS SLEEPLESS VIGILANCE IS ENFORCED. “If they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth”--or, perhaps, “who on earth refused Him that spake”--“much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.” The clearness of the voice is the measure of the penalty of non-attention to it. The voice that spoke on earth had earthly penalties as the consequence of disobedience. The voice that speaks from heaven, by reason of its loftier majesty, and of the clearer utterances which are granted to us thereby, necessarily involves more severe and fatal issues from negligence to it. Mark how the words deepen and darken in their significance in the latter portion. The man that stops his ears will very soon turn his back and be in flight, so far as he can, from the voice. Do not tamper with God’s utterances. If you do, you have begun a course that ends in alienation from Him. Then mark, again, the evils which fell upon these people who turned away from Him that speaketh on earth where their long wandering in the wilderness, and their exclusion from the Land of Promise, and final deaths in the desert, where their bleaching bones lay white in the sunshine. And if you and I, by continuous and increasing deafness to our Father’s voice, have turned away from Him, then all that assemblage of flashing glories and majestic persons, and of reconciling blood to which we come by faith, will melt away, “and leave not a wrack behind.” We shall be like men who in a dream have thought themselves in a king’s palace, surrounded by beauty and treasures, and have awakened with a start and a shiver to find themselves alone in the desert. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Unheeded warnings:
As he (Caesar) crossed the hall his statue fell, and shivered on the stones. Some servants, perhaps, had heard whispers, and wished to warn him. As he still passed on a stranger thrust a scroll into his hand, and begged him to read it on the spot. It contained a list of the conspirators, with a clever account of the plot. He supposed it to be a petition, and placed it carelessly among his other papers. The fate of the empire hung upon a thread, but the thread was not broken. (A. S. Froude.)
Fear due to authority:
Julius Caesar once said to one who appeared to treat his words with indifference: “Know, young man, he who says these things is able to do them.” (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)
The word has not done with us:
We seem to have done with the word as it has passed through our ears; but the word, be it remembered, will never have done with us, till it has judged us at the last day. (Judge Hale.)
“Where are his ears?”
A nobleman, skilled in music, who had often observed the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Cadogan’s inattention to his performance, said to him one day, “Come, I am determined to make you feel the force of music; pay particular attention to this piece.” It was accordingly played. “Well, what do you say now?” “Why, just what I said before.” “What! can you hear this and not be charmed? Well, I am quite surprised at your insensibility. Where are your ears? … Bear with me, my lord,” replied Mr. Cadogan, “since I, too, have had my surprise. I have often, from the pulpit, set before you the most striking and affecting truths; I have sounded notes that might have raised the dead; I have said, ‘Surely he will feel now,’ but you never seemed to be charmed with my music, though infinitely more interesting than yours. I, too, have been ready to say, with astonishment, ‘Where are his ears?’”
Yet once more
Yet once more:
The expression implies an approaching change. Whenever we speak of doing a thing once more, of visiting a place once more, of seeing a person once more, we imply that there is about to be, after that one act, a cessation, removal, separation, the thought of which is already casting its shadow over it and us. It is an old remark, but none the less true, that even things which we have little prized may awaken in the mind a tender feeling when they are viewed as for the last time, as what we shall never see or never do again. A man may become so habituated to a desert island or to a prisoncell, as to shed tears in quitting the one for his country or the other for freedom. And certainly the dullest home, the most monotonous occupation, the most uncongenial and unattractive circle, may easily be invested with an interest not its own, an interest which never belonged to it while it was regarded as permanent, the moment we feel that our hold upon it is shaken, that we are going forth from it to another abode, or in quest of another abode, which is as yet to us but an unrealised idea. Whenever we use the term “ once more,” in the sense here intended, let us remember, that it signifies “ the removing of the things that are shaken,” of things that are capable and in the process of shaking, “as of things that are made.” When God Himself said, in the passage quoted, “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven,” if was implied that the convulsion of nature, as it was the last, so also was the prelude to an actual removal and displacement of the framework of nature itself, in preparation for the introduction of that which should be absolutely indestructible. Every change, from the very greatest of all to the very least, from that which convulses empires to that which agitates a little world like ours, is the removing of something made, of some thing or some person that is temporal and transitory, with a view to the greater prominence, perhaps the restoration to notice, of things or of persons immutable and eternal. What, then, are some of these things which cannot be shaken?
1. I might bid you to think of this school which we all so much love, and to remember that through centuries of changes and fluctuations it has already stood its ground, and that it is now one of those institutions of our country which possess in themselves, by God’s blessing, an element of vitality and of permanence.
2. I will bid you, in the second place, to contrast with those human agencies which are necessarily so transitory in a place like this, and even with the institution itself in which they are carried on, those individual results of our work which we express by the comprehensive term of a human character; that mind, that heart, those habits, that life, which are the ultimate result, in each particular case, of education considered as a complete whole.
3. To speak of the formation of character, just and true though the words be, has a somewhat chilling sound. But when we go on to the verse following the text, and read there of “ a kingdom which cannot be moved,” and hear of our receiving it, and find ourselves charged to “have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably,” as though that also were by His gift in our own power; when we are thus brought, as it were, into His living presence, and made to view all things as coming to us from Him, and being ours already in Him; then whose heart does not burn within him; who does not then feel that there is, in deed and in truth, a rock higher than lie on which his feet may, if he will, be securely set, and that, if only we can reach that place of safety, no change can ever come amiss to us, no change can ever touch us, us ourselves, though it may make strange havoc of every earthly shelter which we had provided for ourselves or for a time rested under and trusted in? (Dealt Vaughan.)
I shake not the earth only, but also heaven
The gospel as a power:
I. As A REVOLUTIONARY POWER. Falsehood, evil, corruption--these, wherever they exist, in hearts, governments, commerce, literature, science, or art--Christianity has shaken and will shake.
II. As A REIGNING POWER. It is a “kingdom.”
1. He that does not receive it as a reigning power, does not receive it at all.
2. He that does not receive it as a reigning power, is exposed to the fate of a rebel against heaven.
III. As A PERMANENT POWER. “A kingdom which cannot be moved.”
1. Its elements are immutable. Love and truth.
2. Its fitness is eternal. Man through all the ages will never outgrow it, never cease to want it, never be able to get on without it.
IV. As A PRACTICAL POWER.
1. The mode of acceptable service. “Reverence and godly fear.”
2. The qualification for acceptable service. “Let us have graces,” i.e., thankfully realise the high blessings conferred on us, and with devout gratitude engage in the work.
3. The motive of acceptable service. “Our God is a consuming fire” Deu_4:24). The God who rolled thunder and flashed light-nings on Sinai has not changed, His antagonism to sin is as great as ever. (Homilist.)
The shaking and the kingdom
I. There are two shakings here referred to by the apostle; the first is that of Sinai, which is already past, the second is that at the Lord’s coming, which is still future. Of this STILL FUTURE SHAKING he affirms three things.
1. It is a final shaking. It is but “once more,” and then all creation is at rest for ever. It is but “once more” that the stormy vengeance of Jehovah is to be let loose upon the earth to work havoc there. That last tempest is even now drawing together its clouds of darkness from every region, and mustering its strength for the terrible outburst--an outburst terrible indeed, but yet the last!
2. It is a more extensive shaking than any heretofore. “I shake not the earth only but also heaven.” The heaven here spoken of is not the “third heaven,” which is the peculiar dwelling place of God and the shrine of His glory; but the visible heavens above us--the same as those of which we read, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This universal shaking is that which Jesus Himself predicted (Mat_24:29). It is also that of which the prophet Isaiah (chap. 24.), has given at length so dark a picture. Very fearful will these convulsions be. Above, beneath, around; earth, air, and sea shall be all one dark, wide circle of infinite desolation and terror. Careless sinner! What shall then become of thee?
3. It is a shaking followed by a glorious issue. It is not for the annihilation of this material fabric, nor is it for reducing all things to their primitive chaos. It is for a very different end. That end is twofold. There is first “the removing of those things which are shaken as of things which are made,” that is, things of perishable workmanship. Then there is the consolidating of what resists and survives this shaking into an immovable creation. The foreground is dark, but the scene beyond it is all glad and bright. The commotions in immediate prospect of which we are already beginning to descry the forerunners, are apt to depress and sadden; but all beyond that is so stable, so unchanging, and spreads itself out before us in such refulgent, holy beauty, that we can overleap the dreary interval and stay our hearts as well as refresh our eyes with the glory to be revealed when the skirts of the last cloud shall be seen passing off in the distance, and the echo of the last thunder heard remotely upon the joyful hills.
II. The apostle having thus foretold the convulsions of the last days, and alluded to the “times of the restitution of all things,” proceeds to show THE EFFECT WHICH THESE THINGS SHOULD HAVE UPON BELIEVERS, and in what a solemn attitude it places them. This is the object of what follows, which, from the use of the word “wherefore,” is obviously an inference from his preceding statements.
1. The kingdom. It is “a kingdom which cannot be moved.” All present things are to be shaken, and out of these is to come the kingdom that cannot be moved--a kingdom unchangeable and eternal. Sin, we know, has loosened everything, transforming a stable world into a decaying, crumbling ruin. In order that stability may be restored, all things must be shaken, and after these shakings comes this immovable kingdom. There is no kingdom like this among all that has ever been. Everything about it is incorruptible, as well as undefiled. Its territory, its subjects, its laws, its throne, its sceptre, its sovereign, are all everlasting! Nothing can shake it. No war, no enemy, can disturb its peace. No storm, no earthquake, can assail it. No internal weakness or decay can dismember or dissolve it. The day of its duration shall be the eternal Sabbath--the rest that remaineth for the people of God.
2. The kings. Who are they? “We,” says the apostle--that is, not “we apostles,” but “we saints.” As believers, we have received a kingdom, being made kings and priests unto God; being made “ heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.” Angels are but “ ministering spirits”: we are kings--partakers with Christ Himself of His crown and throne! Behold whatmanner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us! What a holy life should then be ours! Surely we may be expected to keep in mind our coming glory, and to walk worthy of such a calling, and of such a kingdom!
3. Our present position and employment. “Let us serve God.” Our whole life is to be one of service: not merely certain portions of our life, but our entire life from the moment that we believe. It is the life of men redeemed to God, and who have therefore become His property. Each saint is a priest unto God as well as a king. And as Jehovah’s priesthood, we serve in the true sanctuary which the Lord pitched and not man. Ours is a consecrated life, and therefore a continual service, the service of priests. We are sprinkled with blood set apart for God, and our whole life is to be one of priestly service. With our holy garments upon us, our censers in our hands, and standing under the shadow of the glory, how can we give way to levity, or wickedness, or indolence in circumstances so unutterably solemn and overawing. Oh! what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness!
4. In what manner is this service to be performed?
(1) Acceptably--that is so as to please God. In all our service this is to be distinctly kept in mind. In our prayers, praises, duties, we are not only to gratify ourselves but to please God. Let us observe, however, that to serve God acceptably, is not to serve for the purpose of making ourselves accepted. No; before our services can be accepted, we must be accepted ourselves. A saint is not one who serves God in order to be forgiven, but one who, having found forgiveness, serves God in love and liberty as a forgiven soul, and with an enlarged heart.
(2) With reverence and godly fear. There is to be no irreverence, no rashness, no presumption in our service, as if God were one like ourselves, or nearly upon our level. There is to be fear and solemn awe when we consider whom we worship; who we are who are thus permitted to draw near; in what temple it is that we worship, and what blood it cost ere we could be permitted to enter.
5. How are we to maintain this service? By holding fast grace, says the apostle. When that free love of God entered our souls, it brought with it liberty and gladness and light. It dispelled all our darkness, it removed all our sorrow, it struck off every fetter, and blessed us with the liberty of
God’s beloved Son. And it is in this same love that we are to abide to the end. We are to beware of losing sight of it, or letting it go.
6. Our God is a consuming fire. This evidently comes in as an additional reason to the preceding. And a most weighty and solemn one it is. The fire, indeed, has not consumed us, but still it is consuming. The God with whom we have to do is a God who has saved us, yet still this very God whom we call ours is a consuming fire. Should we not, then, serve Him with reverence and godly fear? (H. Bonar.)
The shaking of Sinai and Calvary:
That voice of Sinai was a shaking of earthly things. How were nations dispossessed, how were thrones tumbled into the dust, how was the course of human history and human life changed or directed by that shaking of Sinai! And so with the shaking voice of Calvary! Earthly things were moved, and are still moved, by the power of that voice Divine. Not a home to-day in all our land, not a single relationship in life, no duty of the ruler, no obligation of the subject or the citizen, but is bent and swayed and governed from Golgotha’s hill. But heavenly things are shaken by the voice which cried on Calvary. Some have understood, by the term “heaven” as here used, those high states of human faith and worship, not only in the Jewish economy but in the idolatries of the world, which were as “heaven” to the men who received them; and these, the “It is finished” of our Lord has utterly overthrown. Is it a mere play of imagination, if we suppose that the voice which shook the heavens, was indeed heard by the inhabitants of that celestial world, and arrested the very worship of the skies, and startled angels from their lofty stations, to look with absorbed gaze upon the wonders of that sacrifice? Furthermore, may we not reverently suggest that the voice of victory on the completion of redeeming work, wrought even upon the heart of the Infinite One Himself? At least, the issue was a Divine acceptance, the change of threatening judgment into saving mercy. There was shaking at Sinai--shaking of old temporal and earthly relations, of old human and profane habits, and in their place the appointment of things seen in the heavenly, commanded by God, “made” indeed by men, but made “after the fashion given on the Mount.” But now, the voice from heaven hath shaken both earth and heaven. Once again, and far more surely and destructively, are the earthly things shaken, and there topple down all secularities and temporalities and mere passing phenomena of human thought and law of man’s mere worldly duty and faith. But with these also pass the heavenly things that Sinai established. The rules of life, the precepts of morality, the very commandments received as mere external ordinances, the gorgeous ritual of priest and sacrifice of temples, offering of chant and incense, of blood and altar--all these “things made” are shaken, and being shaken, show their passing temporal character as they quickly vanish and disappear. But what remains to us? what are the things that not even the voice from heaven can shake, that not even does the voice desire to shake, but only to establish?
1. Law remains, grand, inviolable, Divine. A law may have vanished, the law may have grown effete and dead, but law is now personal and incarnate, and dwells for ever serene, benign, almighty in the Son of Man, who is raised into the glory of the Godhead, and who sways, with the power of the Father, alike the hosts of heaven and the inhabiters of the earth.
2. Love remains. Love is the form that dwells in heaven, love is dominion and the rule of God in Jesus Christ His Son.
3. And law and love combine, and in their union salvation remains. All the preparations and the promises, all the weary wanderings of human life, God-led or man-directed, all the times and dispensations, all the aims and hopes and despairs and sins of men, these have all ended now, and there is naught but salvation free and full and certain and eternal, for all who will believe--salvation for the worst--salvation that cannot fail, for it stands assured upon the foundation of the sovereign God, the suffering Son, the ever-gracious Spirit. And so abides for ever the kingdom of our God. Human weakness shall not sap its strength, and Satan’s malice and the wildest assault of hell shall never overthrow its glory. (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
The shakings of Jehovah
These Hebrew Christians were living in the midst of a great shaking. It was a time of almost universal trial. God was shaking not earth only, but also heaven. The Jewish tenure of Palestine was being shaken by the Romans, who claimed it as their conquest. The interpretation given to the Word of God by the Rabbis was being shaken by the fresh light introduced through the words and life and death of Jesus. The supremacy of the temple and its ritual was being shaken by those who taught that the true temple was the Christian Church, and that all the Levitical sacrifices had been realised in Christ. The observance of the Sabbath was being shaken by those who wished to substitute for it the first day of the week. In such a time we are living now. Everything is being shaken and tested. But there is a Divine purpose in it all, that His eternal truth may stand out more clearly, when all human traditions have fallen away, unable to resist the energy of the shock.
I. THEOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING SHAKEN. There was a time when men received their theological beliefs from their teachers, their parents, or their Church, without a word of question or controversy. It is not so now; the air is filled with questionings. Men are putting into the crucible every doctrine which our forefathers held dear. In these terrible shakings, not one jot or tittle of God’s Word shall perish, not one grain of truth shall fall to the ground, not one stone in the fortress shall be dislodged. But they are permitted to come, partly to test the chaff and wheat as a winnowing fan, but chiefly that all which is transient may pass away, whilst the simple truth of God becomes more apparent, and shines forth unhidden by the scaffolding and rubbish with which the builders have obscured its symmetry and beauty. “The things which cannot be shaken shall remain.”
II. ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING SHAKEN. Teachers of religion are challenged to show reason for their assuming their office, or of claiming special prerogatives. Methods of work are being weighed in the balances, missionary plans trenchantly criticised, religious services metamorphosed. Change is threatening the most time-honoured customs, and all this is very distressing to those who have confused the essence with the form, the jewel with the casket, the spirit with the temple in which it dwells. But let us not fear. All this is being permitted for the wisest ends. There is a great deal of wood, hay, and stubble in all our structures which needs to be burnt up, but not an ounce of gold or silver will ever be destroyed.
III. OUR CHARACTERS AND LIVES ARE CONSTANTLY BEING SHAKEN. What a shake that sermon gave us, which showed that all our righteousness, on which we counted so fondly, were but withered leaves! What a shake was that commercial disaster, which swept away in one blow the savings and credit of years, that were engrossing the heart, and left us only what we had of spiritual worth! What a shake was that temptation, which showed that our fancied sinlessness was an empty dream, and that we were as sensitive to temptation as those over whom we had been vaunting ourselves. What has been the net result of all these shakings? Has a hair of our heads perished? The old man has perished, but the inward man has been daily renewed. The more the marble has wasted, the more the statue has grown. As the wooden centres have been knocked down, the solid masonry has stood out with growing completeness. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
A lesson from the great panic
It is a most popular error that the world stands still, and is fixed and immovable. This has been scouted as an astronomical theory, but as a matter of practical principle it still reigns in men’s minds. Galileo said, “No, the world is not a fixed body, it moves”; Peter had long before declared that all these things should be dissolved; at last men believed the astronomer, but they still doubt the apostle, or at least forget his doctrine. “This is the substance,” cries the miser, as he clutches his bags of gold; “heaven and hell are myths to me.” “This is the main chance,” whispers the merchant, as he pushes vigorously his commercial speculations; “as for spiritual things they are for mere dreamers and sentimentalists. Cash is the true treasure.” Ah, you base your statements upon a foundation of falsehood. This world is as certainly a mere revolving ball as to human life as it is astronomically; and hopes founded thereon will as surely come to nought as will card houses in a storm. Here we have no abiding city, and it is in vain to attempt to build one. Every now and then, in order to enforce this distasteful truth upon us, the God of providence gives the world, in some way or other, a warning shake. The Lord has only to lay one finger upon the world, and mountains are carried into the midst of the sea, while the waters of the ocean roar and are troubled until the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
I. The original draft of the statement refers to THE OLD JEWISH DISPENSATION. Why was it that it could be shaken?
1. One reason was that it had so much to do with materialism. It needed an altar of earth or stone, and such altars the hand of the spoiler can overturn; it required a bullock that hath horns and hoofs, and such sacrifices the plague may slay; it demanded a priest of the house of Aaron, and a race of men may be cut off from the families of the nations; it needed a tabernacle or a temple, and buildings made with hands are readily demolished; hence it could be shaken. These were but things which are made, and they have been shaken and removed; but the things which cannot be shaken still remain; our spiritual altar still endures, our great High Priest still lives, our house not made with hands is still eternal in the heavens.
2. The Jewish religion could be shaken because it could be combated by material forces. Antiochus could profane its altars, Titus could burn its temple, and cast down the walls of the sacred city; but no invader can pollute the heavenly altar of our spiritual faith by brute force, or destroy the celestial bulwarks of our hope by fire and sword. Material forces are not available in our warfare, for we wrestle not with flesh and blood. The tyrant may burn our martyrs and cast our confessors into prison, but the pure truth of Jesus is neither consumed by fire nor bound with chains; it hath within itself essential immortality and liberty.
3. Moreover, the Mosaic economy passed away because it could be affected by time. But see the doctrine of the Cross of Christ! No time affects it. The message of salvation by grace is as fresh to-day as when Peter preached it at Pentecost. The great command, “Believe and live,” has as much life-giving power about it as when it was first applied by the Holy Ghost.
II. ALL THAT IS TRUE IN OUR PROFESSED CREEDS AND STANDARDS WILL STAND WHEN MERE OPINIONS ARE SHAKEN.
III. THE REAL IN OUTWARD PROFESSION STANDS, NOTWITHSTANDING TIMES OF SHAKING. I do not think times of storm to a Church are in the long run to be regretted; a calm is much more dangerous. The plague bearing miasma settles and festers in the vale till the atmosphere becomes deadly, even to the casual passenger; but the storm fiend, as men call him, leaps from the mountains into the sunny glades of the valley; with terrific vigour hurls down the habitations of men, and tears up the trees by the roots; but meanwhile all is superabundantly compensated by the effectual purging which the atmosphere receives. Men breathe more freely, and heaven smiles more serenely now that the heaviness of the death-damp is gone, and the poisonous vapour clings no longer to the river’s bank and the valley’s side.
IV. We will further apply the principle to our OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. LET me mention a few methods of soul-shaking.
1. Affliction is one of them. The man thought that he had resigned everything to God--death came and took away his child; where was his resignation then? Tribulations, losses, crosses, sicknesses, and bereavements, are very stern trials, and the things within us which may be shaken will be shaken by them; but if we can bear them well and trustingly, and yet praise God for all, we have evidence of possessing gracious qualities which cannot be shaken, and therefore will remain.
2. What a shake temptation gives us! Why, we shall then know whether our grace is the grace of God or the grace of man; we shall now see whether we have the faith of God’s elect or not. The faith of God’s elect can write “Invicta” upon its escutcheon; it is unconquered and unconquerable. There is a time of shaking coming which none of us shall be able to avoid.
3. If we should live without affliction and without temptation, which I think will be impossible, yet we cannot enter into the promised land without passing through the river of death, unless the Lord shall come. What a testing-time will the death-hour be!
V. I must now bring before you ALL THAT YOU HAVE IN POSSESSION. The things which can be shaken will be removed, but things that cannot be shaken will remain. We have many things in our possession at the present moment which can be shaken, and it ill-becomes a Christian man to set much store by them. Yet some of us have certain “ things which cannot be shaken,” and I invite you to read over the catalogue of them, that if the things which can be shaken should all be taken away, you may derive real comfort from the things that cannot be shaken, which will remain.
1. In the first place, whatever your losses may have been, you enjoy present salvation.
2. In the next place, you are a child of God to-day. God is your Father. No change of circumstances can ever rob yon of that.
3. You have another permanent blessing, namely, the love of Jesus Christ. HE who is God and anon loves you with all the strength of His affectionate nature. Now, nothing can rob you of that.
4. You have another thing, namely this truth, that whatever may happen to you you have God’s faithful promise which holds true that all things shall work for your good. Do you believe this? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Things passing and things permanent:
The giving of the law shook the earth, the giving of the gospel is to shake earth and heaven. The concussion begins when Christ comes; it is going on now; and it will continue till the world receives its last shock and falls asunder. This is not a very common view of the gospel history, but it has its side of truth. The gospel cannot build up and make strong without shaking down. The things that are shaken are “things that are made.” They are created things, and therefore they can be and must be changed. But the things that are not made cannot be shaken. They are things that belong to God’s own nature, His truth and righteousness and love, which are unassailable and eternal, and give eternal power and life wherever they enter and become part of a creature. It is a very great thing for us to feel assured of this in the midst of the perpetual breaking down of everything around us.
I. IN ILLUSTRATING THE LAW, WE, MAY BEGIN WITH THE MORE GENERAL AND COME TO THE PERSONAL.
1. The Jewish dispensation was shaken, but the great realities enclosed in it remain. The New Testament Church emerges like a spirit clothed in a new and ethereal body fitted for a greater time.
2. The forms of human society are shaken, but the principles that regulate if remain. Every chaos has its harmonising voice, “Let there be light”; every flood its ark and its rainbow. Amid the tumults of nations and the guessing plans of politicians, a Christian man need never lose hope, for he has his foot on a kingdom that cannot be moved; and the communities of this world are being shaken and broken that they may be built up again, with more in them of that kingdom which is truth and righteousness, and which at last shall be peace.
3. Outward systems of religion are shaken, but the great truths of the Church of Christ remain. By outward systems of religion we mean the organisations that men form, with a particular human name and locality and administration; by the Church of Christ we mean the spiritual children of God, called together by His grace out of every country, and built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone. The great wants of man’s soul cannot be changed any more than the necessities of his physical nature, and the great truths of the Bible that satisfy them can no more be shaken than the ordinances of heaven that furnish man with bread and light and life.
4. The temporal circumstances of man are shaken, but the great possessions of the soul remain. There are few who pass through life without experiencing many changes in it. All our possessions are in things of earth, and we hold them by a clay-tenure. Perhaps the saddest change of all is that which takes place in our feelings. How different the dreams of the opening of life from the realisations of its close! What broken hopes, what frustrated aims, what a poor handful of ears for the rich sheaves we saw before us! So God shakes our lives till all seems gone, things of possession and things of promise. And yet, the while, the soul may have within its grasp things that cannot be touched, that youthful expectations once thought little of, but that now grow into bright and great realities. It may have faith rising to God and laying hold of the treasure that nothing can endanger or diminish. It may have hope going down like an anchor and keeping the heart stable in every storm. It may have love within and around, dwelling on the things of God and giving, in communion with Him, a peace in trouble that is above all earthly good. If these have become part of the soul they may be clouded, but they are never lost. When we lose hold of them Christ holds them fast for us, and brings them out like stars over drifting sky-rack, and brightens them as night deepens.
5. The material frame of man is shaken, but the immortal spirit remains. Where the Divine life enters, it brings with it not only the promise but the pledge and foretaste of the immortal life. The light of faith already spoken of, shining when all else that looks out at the windows is darkened, is one of its foretokens. Augustine said of his mother, Monies, that the crevices of the falling tabernacle only let the celestial light shine in more clearly.
“The soul’s dark cottage shattered and decayed
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.”
And when death gives the last shock to the frame the work is completed. The soul is that light in Gideon’s pitcher which shines out most clearly when the earthen vessel that held it is broken.
6. Last of all, we observe, as an illustration of this law, that the whole system of nature is shaken, but the new creation remains. That which we can trace in all past eras, rising still to a better and brighter, must reach its brightest and its best if there be truth in earth or heaven. The passing things in the universe must lead to something permanent, for time no more than space can have a sea without a shore. That new material creation shall be suited to the nature of man’s glorified, material frame, as that frame is suited to his perfected spirit. It must be free from all the elements of disorder and decay that press upon us here--a soil that never opens for a grave, a sky that never darkens with a cloud; to describe which God’s word fails, because it can only use figures drawn from things that are passing, and speak to finite minds enclosed within these limits. I do not know if there is anything that can give us a higher idea of that great end than this, that it is the end--the close to which all the events and processes around us are conducting--the one permanent, imperishable result of the history of the universe.
II. WE NOW COME TO INDICATE SOME OF THE BENEFITS THAT RESULT FROM THIS LAW. Could not God, it may be asked, have made a permanent world at first, without requiring us to pass through this process of change deepening so often to ruin? After all, this may be asking why God has seen fit to make this world under the condition of time, for, wherever time enters, change, as far as we can see, must accompany it. It may be that finite minds can learn, or at least begin their learning, only under some such forms of change as we see around us--processes of birth and growth and death and revival, taking place under our eyes, arresting our attention, and stimulating our study. It is a book where God is turning the pages to every generation, and giving it something new, an advancing development that bids men look back and forward. The world as we here see it is a becoming--a process where constant change is imprinted on all. It has seemed fit toGod’s wisdom to put us through such a course of learning, where change should be so prominent, and yet the permanent never far off to those who will feel after it till they find it; and if we could understand all things we might see that the proportion in which the two are mingled is best suited to our present condition. We come, however, to something more practical when we remark that this is a world into which moral disorder has entered, and that the painful changes that touch us are the consequence of it--the consequence of it, and yet an aid to the cure of it. Without sin there might still have been mutation, but it would have wanted the sting and the shadow. We have lost through our fall the true perception of spiritual and eternal realities, and we must be made to see them through painful contrasts. It is by this process, too, that we not only see the greatness of these permanent things, but learn to cleave to them as our portion. This at least is the purpose, and if God’s Spirit stirs the heart when His providence shakes the outward life this will be the result. Still further, things that are shaken preserve those things that are to remain until their suitable time of manifestation. God gives us earthly comforts and hopes, till He gives something better in their stead. A young Christian could not be reconciled to many things which the more advanced cheerfully accept. In our present state we could not bear the view of another world, and the veil is kept between till our souls are attempered. Meanwhile, the seed of the incorruptable is here now--the seed of the everlasting inheritance in these frail hearts, of the glorious body in these dying frames, of the new creation in the world we look on. The things that perish encase them, as winter’s snow covers the seed, as the husk the flower. When all is ready, the sun will come and the snow will melt, the husk will fall, the flower will blossom to the summer day, and we shall see that the things which perish have also their place in the plan of God. They are the veil between grace and glory, very needful, and only to be done away when that which is perfect shall have come, and we are ready to take possession of it. (J. Ker, D. D.)
A kingdom which cannot be moved
The immovableness of the gospel dispensation
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 consumi
