The Call, Mount, and Fear of the Prophet Like Unto Moses - Jesus Christ
Hebrews 12:18-21 - The Covenant mediated by Moses, its establishment at Sinai, and the reason to FEAR and obey emphasized.
Hebrews 12:22-24 - The Covenant mediated by Christ, its establishment at Zion, and the greater reason to FEAR and obey emphasized. "For ye are not come unto The Mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)" (Hebrews 12:18-21) |
“For ye are not come unto the Mount” of Sinai (Hebrews 12:18) where that holy and “terrible sight” was seen (Heb. 12:21) when “Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.” Rather, as the “Church of the firstborn” (Heb. 12:23), the writer speaks of a holier Mount of the New Covenant unto which we have already come.
“But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Heb. 12:22-24).
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That which was seen in its holy terribleness at Sinai cannot be compared with the Mountain of Zion. The voice of God on earth, at Sinai, shook as all the people gathered before it. But the voice of our Covenant “speaketh from heaven,” and will not shake Sinai only but the whole earth, not the earth only but also the heavens – such a shaking that all things will crumble and fail until only the Kingdom of God remains! Not Sinai only but the whole “earth also and the works therein” will be inflamed in fire “at His appearing and His Kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:1). Think of the heavenly sight that the apostle John saw – “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Sion, and with Him an hundred forty and four thousand, having His Father’s name written in their foreheads” (Rev. 14:1)!
"See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is A Consuming Fire" (Hebrews 12:25-29).
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