open your Bibles to Hebrews 12 please Hebrews chapter 12 Hebrews chapter 12 beginning at verse 25 here's what we read tonight see to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking for if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth much less will we escape who turn away from him who warns from heaven And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven. This expression, yet once more, denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. May we pray. Our Father, we thank you for the privilege we have of studying the precious word of God. It is sacred, it's serious, it's spiritual. We thank you for the great God that you reveal yourself to be in your word. We pray that all of us would be led by the Holy Spirit to have a proper reverence of you, a proper reverence of your Son, and of your precious Word. We pray the Holy Spirit will do that in us. We pray your blessing on each person here tonight. We pray your blessing on their families, on their friends, and on this church. And we'll thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. Back in the year 2000, 62-year-old James Montgomery Boyce, the famed Presbyterian preacher of Philadelphia, was told by doctors he had six weeks to live. He was dying of cancer, and the doctors gave him 42 days. In the last two weeks of his life, before he died, he was bedridden, extremely weak. The cancer was zapping all of his strength out of his body, but Dr. Boyce wanted to stay actively focused on the things of God all the way to the end. So he called in a couple of close friends and he surrounded himself with his family because he wanted to do one final study. What Dr. Boyce wanted to do was to use his final hours of life to muster all of his strength to lay the framework for a book he would call the Doctrine of Grace. When you read this book, it's a book that does nothing but elevate and exalt God. It's a book that really does paint a high and lofty portrait of God. In chapter eight of the book, here is the statement that he says. The goal of theology is the worship of God. The posture of theology is on one's knees. The mode of theology is repentance. Dr. Boyce had the kind of attitude that the mind of the writer of Hebrews wanted all believers to have. He was a man who truly had a reverence for God, and he reverenced Him right to the end of his life. He ran his race, he finished his course all the way to the finish line, and he won. Some people have the idea that since we're under grace, our theology doesn't really matter. What we actually believe about God isn't all that important. Does it really matter if we believe in a pre-Trib Rapture? Does it really matter if we believe in the Doctrine of Election? Does it really matter if we believe in the Doctrine of Predestination? After all, the main thing is we're saved. What we think about God, what we think about the Word of God, how we think and our attitude toward treating God really is not significant. We don't really need to fear God and reverence God. We can live our life our way and just have fun. Forget about being serious about accurately understanding His Word. Forget about being serious about really applying His Word. Since we're under grace, all we have to do is live a happy, jolly life all the way into eternity and never take anything too seriously. Unfortunately, when you compare that idea to the Scripture, you cannot support it from any true interpretation. The last time we were in Hebrews, the writer wanted to drive home the point that award-winning believers will run away from the law and run right to grace. The writer said, you run away from Sinai and you run to Zion. That grace relationship guarantees us that we're already in eternity. As we saw, that grace relationship guarantees we're already seated in the heavenlies, enjoying the wonderful blessings of God. We're already guaranteed heaven. However, when you come to this series of verses, the writer of Hebrews also wants to challenge us, don't get sloppy in your theology about God. Just because you are under grace, I don't want you ever to become light in your thinking about God, because I don't want you to forget our God is a consuming fire. As Kent Hughes said, God is the same God of two hills, Sinai and Zion. Now, I don't know if you've noticed this, but yesterday was just a gorgeous morning. I was up way before light. And I was reading the scriptures, and I saw this beautiful moon that was shining. And then later on, in a couple of hours, here came this beautiful sunset. And as I sat there looking at the scriptures and looking at all that, I said, you know, that's the same moon, that's the same sun that God has shined on this universe ever since creation. That's the same sun, that's the same moon that existed at Mount Sinai. It's the same sun and moon that He has shined on Mount Zion. He has shined this in every dispensation. That sun and moon has shined in the dispensation of law. That sun and moon has shined in the dispensation of grace. He is the same God who shines that same light. The point the writer of Hebrews is saying is don't forget about that. Don't forget about the fact that God is the same God, even though we're now wonderfully connected to him by grace. You don't want to get sloppy in life and you lose your theology. You don't want to lose track of the reverence and awe that we need to always have of God. Kent Hughes tells the story of a friend who visited a church one Sunday morning. He said to his amazement, the worship prelude was the theme song from the Paul Newman, Robert Redford movie, The Sting. I was so glad none of you requested that we sing that tonight. It would have changed the whole illustration. The congregation supposedly preparing for worship was looking on a screen at cinematic images of Paul Newman and Robert Redford dressed up in 1920 garb. Hughes said this absurd buffoonery took place in a Bible-believing church that claims to worship God. There was a man and his wife who was in Wyoming a couple of weeks ago from Dallas, Texas. Both of his daughters are going to Frontier School of the Bible. He came up to me to talk to me between lectures, and he said, you know, I live in Dallas, where Dallas Seminary is. My father is a graduate of that great school. He said, you know what I've learned? The majority of churches have moved away from a worship that reverences the word of God. The majority have moved away from a worship that reverences God, period. I had a meeting this week with someone who told me they'd gone to a big church in this area, and there was no reverence for God at all, to the extent they got up and walked out. Ladies and gentlemen, there are churches that are making worship nothing more than a man-centered vaudeville act and performance. These are people who are stressing, we're under grace. These are people who are stressing God is love, but they're losing their reverence for God. They've lost track of the fact that our God is a consuming fire, and you don't ever want to go into the presence of God and having worshiped him irreverently because you're setting yourself up for serious judgment, and that is the point of this very passage. Now when we come to these verses tonight, we come to the final warning text of the book of Hebrews. There are five major warning passages in the book. The first warning passage was a warning against drifting away from the scriptures. Don't drift away from what you've been taught. Don't drift away from the word of God. The second warning was a warning against disbelieving the scriptures. Do not harden your heart to the point that you don't believe the scriptures. The third warning was not developing in the scriptures. Go on to maturity. Grow up, get into the meatier things of God. The fourth warning was a warning against demeaning the grace of God. Don't you insult the spirit of grace by pursuing a lifestyle of willful sin. This fifth warning is a warning against downplaying the word of God and the greatness of God. It's a warning that says, don't you ever forget about the fact your God is a consuming fire. And frankly, that warning is a warning that's being neglected right now by most people who know the Lord. I'm convinced that most people who go to church do not go with a reverence for God and His Word. Most people go to church with the idea, what's in it for me? Most people go to the church with the idea, I'm interested in me. They're not going to stand in awe of God. They're not going to bow in reverence before the Lord and the Word of God. They don't really believe our God is a consuming fire. But this writer of Hebrew says the amazing grace of God must never demean or downplay the amazing greatness of God. And what he says here is even though we have an eternal guarantee of heaven through grace, we must never lose sight of the fact that we need to reverence God and be in awe of God. Just because we're already seated in the heavenly positionally speaking, just because we're already in the future at Mount Zion, doesn't mean we can just live our lives in some haphazard, loose way that has no concern at all for God or His Word. It's critical that we govern ourselves in a reverent fear of the Lord. It's critical that we live in a way that pleases the Lord. And that's what this passage is designed to communicate to us. And there are three ways that we need to govern ourselves in this grace age that are clearly spelled out here. First of all, we need to always accept the Word of God. Verses 25 to 27. Look what the text says. See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. Now I want us all to understand something very important here. When God sends someone into our world that has the gift of God to open up the precious Word of God, it is very rare. The fact of the matter is, it's rare to have somebody that can actually understand and open up the Scriptures, and it was rare in the Old Testament economy too. I'd like you to go back to 2 Chronicles chapter 15. In 2nd Chronicles chapter 15 and verse 3, here's what happened. Back in the Old Testament days when King Esau had done good in the sight of the Lord, he cried to the Lord. And the Lord sent him a man, a prophet, whose name was Azariah, who said in 2nd Chronicles 15, 3, for many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law. Now what he says here is, look, Israel has had books, and they've had a bunch of religious leaders, and you actually have copies of the law located in the temple, but what you haven't had is somebody who can actually communicate to you the truth of God. What I understand the writer of Hebrews to be saying here is that when somebody is communicating the word of God, don't you dare refuse what you're hearing, because in fact, you're hearing from God. Now in this context, the writer compares the response to the Word of God from those people of the Old Testament with the response to the Word of God for those people of the New Testament. Those of the Old Dispensation with those of the New Dispensation. And the point that the writer of Hebrews is trying to make is regardless of the dispensation you're in, you need to understand that if you're God's people, you need to take the Word of God seriously. You need to reverence the scriptures. You need to take it in and don't refuse it or reject it. Because the same God that spoke in the Old Testament economy still speaks to people through his word in New Testament times 2. I got a book this week. I got so engrossed in it I couldn't put it down, just read it. It's Dalamore's new book on Charles Spurgeon. And in that book, it talks about the fact that when Spurgeon one time was preaching a metropolitan tabernacle in London, the membership grew to 5,328 people. He died in 1892. The membership immediately dropped off. It went down to 2,000 people. In the next 50 years, it went down to 300. Now, Metropolitan Tabernacle, if you can even get 300 total people to attend, that's less than a 10 here at Texas Corners Bible Church. If you can get 300 total people to attend, then you are in a situation that is really, they consider being blessed by God today. Now, ladies and gentlemen, what has happened here? Here was a place that one time reverenced God. Here was a place that one time reverenced the Word of God. But in the course of time, there's been a letdown, and it's almost like the blessings of God that were there are gone. Look, when God sends someone that can rightly handle the scripture and unravel it and communicate it, what this writer says is, see to it that you do not refuse him who is speaking. It is God. It's God who speaks through his word. And in this dispensation, obviously, he uses preachers and teachers who have gifts of God to be able to do that, but we need to take the word of God just as seriously as those who heard it at Mount Sinai. Back in 1944, W.H. Griffith Thomas said, Now, verse 25, the writer is using Israel as an illustration of God's people who did not take the Word of God seriously. They refused to listen to the Word of God when He spoke to them directly. We saw that last time we were together. He's speaking the Word of God directly and they refuse it and He punished them. Israel saw an incredible display of the majesty of God. They heard the voice of God. They heard the word of God. They saw this mountain shake, and they still dared to disobey the word of God. In fact, they were so afraid of the word of God, they didn't want to hear it. They said to Moses, we don't want to hear it anymore. Tell God to stop speaking to us, because we're so afraid of it. And in the years that followed, Israel treated God's word loosely. They didn't seem to care if they even accurately had it taught to them, or they didn't seem to care if they accurately applied the scriptures to their lives as a nation, and that angered God. It angered God to the point that He said, because you won't listen to Me, I'll see to it that you're not going to enter the Promised Land, and ultimately about a million corpses are going to litter the desert. Now, the point that the writer of Hebrews is trying to make in the New Testament age is, look, just because you're under grace doesn't mean you can treat the Word of God lightly. In fact, God is not speaking anymore from this earth. But what God is doing is He's speaking through His word directly out of heaven. And the writer is warning, if He would judge a disobedient people in the Old Testament economy, He can also judge a disobedient people in the New Testament economy. And I want us all to look carefully at what is being implied here. God still has a personal encounter with His people. God still is in the business of speaking to His people through His Word. God is in the business of seeing how His people respond to His Word. He's in heaven. His people are on earth. But He's still monitoring how they're responding to the Word of God. I think that's a thrilling thought. That our God is interested in how seriously we take the Scriptures. How seriously we saturate ourselves with the Word. It's also an intimidating thought. That God knows every single one of us. Right here, right now. He knows who wants to know the Word so they can have a better relationship with Him. And God is looking for that. He's longing for that. In verse 26, he says, and his voice shook the earth then, but now he's promising yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven. God says, I'll tell you how serious I was about my word. I shook the earth in that Old Testament economy. I shook it. And people saw how serious I was about what I was saying. And he refers now to the eschatological shaking of the heavens and earth that are yet to take place. And the point is, I'm the same God. I'm the same God who wants my people to be real interested in reverencing my word. Just as I shook the earth back then, I'm going to shake it up again. Just as I shook the earth in judgment one time, I'll do it again. I shook the earth at Sinai and I'm going to shake it once more. And then when you come to verse 20, 7 he says this expression yet once more denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken as of created things So that those things which cannot be shaken may remain verse 26 he quotes Haggai 2 6 and verse 27 he interprets it and He's giving us a contrast between what happened back then and what will happen now. He's happening what would happen on earth as opposed to what would happen in heaven. And what God is basically saying here is I am going to shake things up again. I did it one time. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it in the finale of things. And what I want my people to do is I want them to fear my word. Now I believe we're on the verge of God shaking this world up in a big time way. Just a week ago he shook Japan. And I was in Wyoming when that thing went down. Now Japan is known to be a blasphemous, idolatrous place that features Buddhism and Shintoism. It's a place that basically denounces any kind of concept of sin. They downplay any need for Jesus Christ. Some have questioned, well, why would God do that? Well, why wouldn't He do that? I mean, my question is, why would God send an earthquake to Japan? Why hasn't He crushed the whole world at this point? But all of this stuff says that we're nearing a time when God's going to shake things up. I'd like you to go over to the book of Revelation just for a moment. I want to just show you a couple of things. First of all, go over to chapter 6. Verse 12. Look when he broke the sixth seal there was a great earthquake and the Sun became black I'd like you to flip over to chapter 8 verse 5 Then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar and threw it into the earth and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake like like you to go over to chapter 11 and Verse 13, And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Drop down to verse 19, And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant appeared in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, and sounds and peals of thunder, and an earthquake, and a great hailstorm. Then go over to chapter 16. And look at verse 18. and there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder and there was a great earthquake such as there had not been since man came to be upon the earth. Ladies and gentlemen, it is quite obvious that once this tribulation starts, God's gonna shake this world up and he's gonna shake it hard. And these glimpses that we're getting are just a prelude to the power and the greatness of God. And what God is basically saying in this text is, my people need to take my word seriously. In view of the fact that that's what I've done before, in view of the fact that this is what I'm going to do again, I want my people very reverent and in awe of me, and I want them taking my word seriously. This Grace Age is not an age to think lightly or loosely about God. This Grace Age is not an age to promote some idea that thinks lightly about the Word of God. Once you and I have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, we have God's spirit in us. And that spirit of God, if we're in contact with it in any way, shape, or form, is driving us to have a reverence for the Lord. It's driving us to want to know the scriptures. And when God's word is accurately taught, we need to be there, we need to hear it. Because this literally is God speaking to us through his word right out of heaven. Which brings us to the second grace way we should govern ourselves. We need to always show gratitude to God. Notice verse 28, therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude. We're headed to a wonderful eternal kingdom by grace. The writer makes that clear. We aren't going into that shaken up period of time. That's a, by the way, I think if you add this text to others, it proves pre-tribulation rapture. We're not headed into the time when God's going to shake up the world and demolish the world. We're headed into a wonderful, glorious kingdom. And what God is saying here is, look, in view of the fact that I'm going to get you out of that, and in view of the fact that I've saved you and I'm delivering you from all of that, what I would like you to do in my presence is just show me a little bit of gratitude. I'd like you to have gratitude in your relationship toward me. What should you do if you are one of the elect who's been saved? You can show gratitude to God. You can thank God. You can thank God every day of your life for the fact that he has saved you. Out in Idaho, there was a friend that I had whose name was Charlie. He was quite a guy. He was in the military. He got out of the military, took a loan, figured out a way to go out in the Arco Desert and turn the Arco Desert into a multi-million dollar potato producing operation. Man, he had a Kwanza Hut, a lot bigger than this church. When you walked into his Kwanza Hut, there were tractors and there was equipment in there that were just, I don't know what they were worth. They were worth more than I could even compute. But he lived on the area that was by this desert. And one night, a couple decided that they were going to go out in the desert and look for game. And they got out there and it started snowing. And they got stuck. I mean, really stuck. And they were scared. They were scared they weren't going to make it out. And Charlie's ranch had a light on, and he lit up his area, and they spotted the light. So they decided to walk to his ranch and ask him if he could help them. So Charlie did. He went and got one of his tractors. He went out, he pulled their car out, he pulled the car back to his house. The couple was scared to even drive back to Pocatello. Pocatello was probably 30 miles from where Charlie's ranch was, and they were scared. So Charlie said, I decided, well, this couple's scared, so he had his wife follow him. He said, I'll drive them to their home, or where they're going in Pocatello, and then ultimately we'll see that they get home safely. He said, I drove them to their home. When they got to their home, they never even said, thank you. He said, I was up all night. I got my tractor out. I drove out into this desert. I pull this couple out. I get in my car. I drive them. I have my wife follow them. They don't offer a cup of coffee. They don't even say thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, God has saved us from all of our sin. He saved us from all of our sin by His grace. Out of this massive sea of humanity, He chose you. He didn't have any merit that he saw in you. I didn't either. He says, I'm going to share my kingdom with you. I'll see to it that you escape the time that I'm going to shake up the world. And some people never bother to say, thank you. You get up every day this week and in reverence for God, show him some gratitude. He's going to share his eternity with you and me. So you get up tomorrow morning and you thank him. Because in this grace age, don't ever stop showing gratitude to the Lord. You thank him for his grace. Which brings us to the third way we are to govern ourselves. We're to offer acceptable service to God. Verse 28 says, that we may offer to God an acceptable service. Now notice this, with reverence and awe. Do you see what acceptable service is? It's service that's qualified. It's qualified by reverence and awe. And when he says you offer this acceptable service with, that preposition with, meta, in companionship with, in harmony with, you offer me this kind of service. You have a reverence for me and you stand in awe of me. And that word reverence means you have a godly reverence and fear. You have great caution. in the way you're thinking about God. And that word awe means you need to give him the proper due awe that he deserves. When you put these words in combination, it clearly instructs us that God's people in this grace age need to be very reverent in the way we worship God. We need to take Him seriously. We need to have a fearful awe of God in any service in which we are involved. And may I say this, anything we do for God that is acceptable to God will be done with an attitude of reverence and awe. That is why you'll never convince me that God accepts people jumping around on a stage who are just leaping around with electric guitars and pounding on drums. That's not producing this atmosphere. This reverence and awe is something that Christ had for his own father. It's interesting that in chapter five, verse seven, we read, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his piety. And that word piety is the same word translated reverence right here. Jesus had a reverence and awe for his own father. You and I need that. Now, what we see here is something that most people will never see, and this is something that you and I need to grasp. A reverent attitude of God takes priority over any practical Christian activity we're ever in. We need to understand this point because that is the point. There are people who think the more active I am, the more I'm running around, the more involved I am, the more pleasing to God I am. That isn't necessarily true. Action that's pleasing to God is action that's acceptable, that is done with reverence and awe. The more reverent you are, the more you stand in awe of God, the more your life, the more your service, the more your work is acceptable to Him. And if a person is not interested in carefully hearing from God through His precious Word, they'll never develop the kind of reverence and awe that God is interested in every one of us having in this grace age. What is actually acceptable to the Lord is an attitude of piety and worship that reverences Him and fears Him. I'm reading through the scriptures like many of you are. I'm in the book of Psalms. And in the book of Psalms, chapter 2, verse 11, David says, worship the Lord with reverence. Psalm chapter 5 and verse 7 says, I'll enter thy house at thy holy temple. I'll bow in reverence for thee. Now, most of you know I just got back from doing that lecture series on Daniel. Again, I was moved by Daniel's reverent attitude toward God. To Daniel, he says in chapter 9, verse 4, God is a great and awesome God. I was really interested in that prayer business that got him cast into the lion's den. You know, he was praying three times a day. He opened his window toward Jerusalem, which means he was in Babylon. He faced west. And he opened his window three times a day and he knelt down and he prayed to God. He wanted to be praying to the area where the Messiah ultimately is going to return. May I ask you a question? Number one, have you ever knelt down and prayed to God? And have you ever knelt down and prayed to God facing east? Have you ever thought about that? I'm not only going to pray. I'm going to pray physically facing the area where the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return. I'm actually going to pray by facing east. That's reverence. That's thinking about things seriously. That's thinking about things like Daniel thought. We need to think very seriously about how we serve God. Oh, it's true, we're under this new covenant of grace, but we have the responsibility to offer an acceptable sacrifice to the Lord. And if we're going to do that, it has to be done with a reverence and awe of God. As W.H. Griffith Thomas said so eloquently, the freeness of grace is perfectly compatible with the fullness of all. And our freedom in grace must never replace that fullness of all that we have for the Lord. Now when I track this idea of acceptable sacrifice to the Lord, there are three that are mentioned. And all three were to do with reverent awe. First of all, we need to reverently offer the sacrifice of our own person. Paul says present yourself as a living sacrifice to the Lord. How do you do that? Well one way you do it here is you have a reverence for the Word of God. You stand in awe of the greatness of God. Secondly, there's the reverent sacrifice we're to have for reverent praise. We're to offer Him praise and we're to offer that praise to the Lord. And thirdly, there is the reverent sacrifice of our possessions that I'll mention later in chapter 13 and verse 16. We are to stand in a reverent awe of God in everything we do, in everything we do for Him that He accepts, we will do with a reverent awe. And you want to know why? Here's why we're to do that. It's that conjunction 4 verse 29 for our God is a consuming fire. And I want you to know what it says. It does not say our God was a consuming fire. It says our God is a consuming fire. He is a consuming fire right now in the grace age. He deserves our reverence and he deserves that we view him with awe. That fact about God is a fact of the Old Testament. It's a fact of the New Testament. This same God that puts that sun and moon in the sky every day, this same God that brings light into existence, says the book of Genesis, is a consuming fire. He is a God. He is judge. He is God. He will punish. He'll shake up this world. He's going to do some tremendous things, and He's going to allow you the privilege of sharing in His kingdom. And what this writer of Hebrew says, in view of that, you show gratitude. You have reverence and awe of your living God. May we pray. If you're here tonight and you never bowed before the Lord in salvation, right where you sit, you can do that. You acknowledge to God the truth, you're a sinner. And acknowledge to the God of the Bible that you're believing only in His Son, Jesus Christ, to save you. I challenge all of us who know the Lord here tonight. You spend some time every day this week thanking God in a reverent spirit, in a spirit that stands in awe of how great He is. Our Father, forgive us for the times that we have not governed our ways that would please Thee. Oh, we've been involved in a lot of religious stuff. But frankly, Lord, there have been times in our lives when the attitude that we had just wasn't what this writer says it should be. I pray, Lord, that as we come more and more in grasp of the scriptures, that you will allow us to develop a sound theology and also a reverent piety I pray that your Holy Spirit will take us deep in our understanding of the word. May we realize the tremendous value we have in studying the scriptures. And also may we develop deep in our perspective of how great you are. You are a holy, holy God. And we thank you for your grace and patience with us tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.