Tana City Church Preaching
Kim Midgley | Hebrews 12v12-30 - God shakes that which can be shaken
given me father as we look at your word, I ask you to search our hearts, shine your light inside of us, and bring truth to the innermost parts of us so that we could be set free and serve you with everything in Jesus name. So I'm gonna look at the next passage in Hebrews which is a continuation of the thoughts that we had a couple of weeks ago where the Lord was bringing discipline to those that He loves. And we understand God's discipline and can be painful but it's good for us and how we respond to God's discipline is very important and the encouragement from the writer to the Hebrews is that God disciplines us for our good and that we should therefore in a sense embrace it even while it's not easy and I understand from the language usage the discipline we need to extend the concept not just to a kind of a you're being dealt with because of something wrong with you it's more like you're also being trained and strengthened and so I want to hold that idea of discipline in the question of how we go forward from those scriptures into the next ones to understand that we should cooperate to effectively submit ourselves to being trained and then work on ourselves to train ourselves to discipline ourselves for the same reason given that we are disciplined by God it's that we may have a share in that we may experience His holiness and so it's it's also possible for us to talk about experiencing God without acknowledging that God is home. You don't get to join you to go and in a sense be full of rebellion and sin. God's presence just he won't be there he's not going to hang out with you if you're enjoying sinning and rebellion against God but if you consecrate yourself and you set yourself apart and you say God I want your presence God will look at your heart and say yes someone who has set his heart toward me I will draw near to him and that holds true even for a believer while we know we are justified we also know that we aren't yet fully sanctified and so it's like we're living in between the now and the not yet right now we are seated with Christ in heavenly places but we'll only see the full realization of that when Jesus returns so our status is that we are justified we'll sit right with God but our reality is that we are being sanctified we are not yet fully holy and so the degree to which we set ourselves apart for God is also in a sense the degree to which God then will also come and draw near to us draw near to me and I will draw near to you but you cannot draw near with the dirty conscience so if you're living in sin and rebellion against God you're not gonna find it easy to draw near to God and you're not gonna find that God really shows up you'll feel like he's he's being a better loof why can't I feel the presence of God well maybe that's part of his discipline to say you should want me so much that you're willing to forsake these other lovers that you leave behind these other idols that you would repent of these other things that you need to deal with and so we pick up from where we stopped in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 12 and 13 I'm gonna read right through to verse 29 it was chapter 12 from verse 12 therefore that's in view of God's discipline therefore lift your dripping hands and strengthen your weakness and make straight paths for your feet so that what is led may not be put out of joints but rather healed strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord seem to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defined that no one is sexually immoral unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal for you know that afterward when he decided to inherit the blessing he was rejected for he found no chance to repent though he sorted with tears you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire to darkness gloom and storm to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them because they could not bear what was commanded even if even an animal touches the mountain it must be stoned to death the site was so terrifying that Moses said I'm trembling with fear but you have come to Mount Zion to the city of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem you have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven you have come to God the judge of all to the spirits of the righteous made perfect to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant and to the spring called blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel see to that you do not refuse him who speaks if they did not escape when they refused him he warned them on earth how much less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven at that time his voice shook the earth but now he has promised once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens the words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken that is created things so that what cannot be shaken may remain therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and all for our God is a consuming fire these are strong words but it's also strong encouragement I want to dig into them and draw out a few lessons so when God disciplines us he's doing it we learned from verse 1 to 11 he's doing it because we are his precious sons and daughters in that sense as he God is fighting for us God is actually dealing with us where he could have abandoned us he could have left us like orphans and said you're a mess you're a sinful I don't want anything to do with you but instead God looked at our lives while we were sinful and messy creatures even while we were still his enemies and he said I'm gonna die for you so that we could be reconciled and now that God has done that he's taking us into his family and he's saying I'm going to get into your life and I'm going to shake things up I'm gonna confront things I'm going to discipline you so that you can be near to me so that you can enjoy my presence and my holiness so God is fighting for us and the only way we're going to see God is if we're holy I'm sure in the end that all depends on Jesus crediting us with his righteousness and washing away all our sin but in the interim while we work out our salvation with fear and trembling we should also be fighting for ourselves and that's why the first couple of verses we read said therefore lift your dripping hands and strengthen your weakness so you're looking at yourself as if you're a web yeah I'm looking at you you're a strong man but we're all wimps at some point spiritually we're not strong we're all weak to temptation we're all floundered in our faith at times and so we look at ourselves and we say I'm weak the scripture says yes but lift your dripping hands and strengthen your weakness make straight pause for your feet so then what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather healed so there's some training we need where God is disciplining us we should respond by saying I also am now going to work on being strengthened and so this is it we start by saying okay it's not just that God's disciplining me but that I must also fight for myself to be an overcomer I must fight against sin in my life I must fight for the right things the right order in my thinking and in my living so discipline actually leads to self-discipline this is an amazing thing about parenting I've been a parent I am a parent I'm not going to be a parent again I remain a parent six is enough as we discipline our children when they're really really small we bring quite a lot of discipline because they're very foolish they really haven't got a clue about how the world works and so you need to set very clear boundaries for very little children but as time progresses those children they see themselves being disciplined by their parents and they realize yes this is the right way to go and so I will now choose to walk in the right way and once they become older maybe 14 you start to give them more autonomy you say actually you decide but you know that you're gonna have to live with the consequences of your choices you can choose how late you go to bed but you're the one that's gonna be cranky and tired if you go to bed relax so you basically give more freedom as there's more maturity you give more trust and responsibility now some of us as parents get that wrong I've seen people who don't do anything with the little kids they let them grow up wayward and little tantrums and no boundaries and then once they realize this child could embarrass me by getting pregnant they suddenly bring down all the rules they take the teenager and they try and put them in a small space and all they get is conflict and rebellion get it the wrong way around but if you start with healthy strong discipline you end up with greater self-discipline and greater freedom as a result that's what God does with us as believers he comes and he teaches you very clear sets of rights and wrong and by the time you mature he's saying actually you could do whatever you want within reason meaning what is your conscience telling you is this you know a matter of offending someone else then even though you're free enough to do it you restrain yourself you can drink alcohol you know now you shouldn't get drunk ever and seeing as alcohol leads to problems almost every time someone consumes too much you become responsible and you say I'm gonna limit my freedom so that I don't sin and that God's given you all these choices he doesn't give you the right to sin you'll never have that right but you exercise the discipline in the end you do self-discipline believers who say actually I'm gonna control my life I'm gonna control my appetite so I'm gonna control my urges and my lusts and I'm not going to feed them like I said last week to the church you're not dogs they were very glad to hear that that they don't have to run after every urge they don't have to fulfill every last we're not animals we created in the image of God and what makes us different is that we've got will that can override desire or lust or appetite so you can rule over yourself when God put Adam and Eve in the garden he gave them a mandate to rule and that included ruling over themselves as human beings and so what we see in Scripture is that self-control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit now guess what fruit takes time to grow it takes time to learn self-discipline or learn to obey God and we understand you cannot be a Christian and carry on glad the instant that's true we know that carry on glad the instant to enjoy sinning you can't be a Christian however for most young Christians the problem is not that you are sinning glad that's a non-Christian problem but for many of us the problem is we're too easily discouraged by our sin we're too easily discouraged by our sin to the point that you feel like giving up and giving in and you end up in this fast binge cycle I'm fasting I'm fasting I'm fasting I'm gonna be holy I'm gonna be holy and then ah can't ever be holy so to hell with this and you go from fasting to bedging it doesn't work that doesn't work with food doesn't work for health it doesn't work spiritually and so what you discover is there are things God wants you to learn when we're fighting in our own strength we can't win when we want instant change in our lives it never works out well where we demand God deliver us from you know attraction to the opposite sex he said no I made you to be attracted to the opposite sex but you must devote yourself to only one get married and live there in that space so God sometimes leaves us in a battle because he wants us to learn some things sometimes we fighting for the wrong reasons we fighting so that we can feel good about ourselves that's not what we learn from these scriptures I'm going to go and show you some lessons I see in these verses that we've just read that will help us to train ourselves not hoping for instantaneous change but fighting to be trained like an athlete who trains themselves over weeks months and years in order to improve their capacity their performance what can we learn about disciplining ourselves well in verse 14 go and read it strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord my first point is you're not fighting to be a better person or fighting so that you can look righteous or be a good Christian good moral Christian I really despise this elevation of morality for the sake of morality morality because all that comes with that is pride see what we fighting for is to see the holiness of God so why am I in a battle against sin in my life it's not just because sin is evil it's not just because that's this pleasing to God it's not just because I should obey a bunch of rules so that I could say that I'm a good person I'm fighting to get past the sin that so easily entangles so that I can get into the presence of God so that I can have fellowship with God so my first point about that I see is you're fighting for fellowship with God if you look at your life and you look at something that's wrong in your life like some synodiction or some problem where you have something that keeps disappointing you hurting your conscience you know God wants you to deal with that you have to say why why must I deal with us if you're dealing with it for any other reason besides that you want to come closer to God you haven't seen the whole picture the real reason that we want to deal with sin the real reason that Jesus died is not just to deal with sin it is to bring people into the presence of God taking restore fellowship with God and so when I look at my life and I see some unhealthy appetite I think why should I quit that because I want more of God because I want nearness of God I want to know him I want to feel his joy over my life so fact for the fellowship with God we want to go to heaven not to escape hell but because we want to meet the lover of our souls we want to see Jesus face to face I want to hear him unimpeded I want to hear his voice I want to see his face I want to be with Jesus who loved me and died for me hell is a small issue okay it's a big issue it's an eternal issue but for a believer it is the past of where you were going but the future of where you are going is Jesus it's not just to escape hell that we go to heaven holiness without which no one will see God that's what that verse 14 says we want the holiness without which no one will see God because it leads us to be able to see God never make holiness and end in itself in your life you know why you mustn't make holiness and end in itself in your life because you will start worshiping yourself you'll be proud of your own progress as a Christian yeah that happens you start to feel like I'm making progress now you know I didn't kick the dog today it's like okay let's begin this stuff but as a Christian you can start to get proud that you're getting it right you haven't you know it done this you haven't said that way you go to church every Sunday and pretty soon you're a proud Christian now you're sending again this is the problem with having holiness as a goal it's not the goal it's the means to be with God holiness is a means to an end God is the end Jesus is the beginning and the end he is the goal that we should have for our lives so that's my first point from verse 14 in that verse it also says be a peace with others this is important strive for peace with everyone see when you sin you need to understand that sin is never just private dealing with people around you is as part of why you fighting for victory if I want victory over sudden my life I don't want victory over pornography because that way I can feel I'm a good guy I want victory over pornography because if I stay in a place where I'm corrupting my mind it's ultimately damaged my marriage it's going to turn things toxic in various ways within my marriage so it's actually I want to be at peace with my wife so I have to deal with that sin I want to be at peace with my co elders so I would deal with this temptation I want to be at peace with my doctor so I watch carefully what I eat okay like there's always other people involved in your story it's it's never completely you and God not in the politics or the negatives so the point there is it motivates me that I think hey I'm going to look after my body so that I can look after my family for longer I'm going to look after my mind so that I can look after God's people for longer I want to look after my life because that way I can be at peace with people around me similarly I don't want to be harboring things in my soul against people around me so the bitterness thing comes in later as well but I want to make a point secondly firstly it was you fighting for fellowship with God secondly you're fighting for peace with others because victory doesn't affect only your life thirdly we fight for victory over ourselves this is verse 15 to 17 I'll read it quickly verse 15 to 17 see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God that no root of bitterness brings up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled that no one is actually immoral unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal you know that after it when he desired to inherit the blessing he was rejected for he found no chance to repent very sought it with tears the point about Esau is interesting it's not that anyone would ever be denied repentance if they were genuinely repenting before God his God's word already says that he desires everyone to repent and he would never turn your way so God's not not giving Esau repentance it's the fact that when Isaac blessed Jacob it was too late for Esau after that to receive that blessing so there was no way for Esau to obtain that blessing from Isaac so even though he desperately wanted the blessing and sought it with tears he went to Isaac in tears saying ever haven't you got a blessing for me haven't you got another blessing and Isaac said well that one's already gone to Jacob I have enough you know but I haven't got that one you could never have the first born brats that blessing has been passed on to Jacob and so in a sense Esau says as a warning that there are consequences it's not that God would say you can't repent it's that sometimes you can't get back what was lost in that season sometimes your sin destroys part of your life and you don't get it back okay you maybe broke your marriage or whatever and it's not always your fault to understand that but you see the consequences are sometimes irreversible so Esau serves as a warning and it's his sin is likened though to sexual immorality because what he did when he sold his birthright was what did he do he ate a bowl of stew he came in from the field he said Jacob you're such a good cook give me some of that broth Jacob the sneaky conniving deceiver said you exchange your birthright you give me your birthright and this guy must have been hungry Esau I've got to have this thing I've got to have this stew I'm so hungry what was really going on is that he is the prototypical guy giving into his desires he had a lust that he would not rule over he did not rule over himself and so he took the stew and he forsook the thing of true value and this is the same exchange that everybody is tempted with is that you will take the the now superficial passing stuff of earth and you forsaking the eternal glory of heaven you're saying I'm not going to wait for the greater blessing I'm gonna satisfy my appetite now so that basically is all questions of how we rule over ourselves don't get better remaining the grace of God don't allow your sin your bitterness to spread to others don't be sexually immoral unholy like Esau you saw this birthright for a single meal I want to elaborate a bit more on this in another scripture it says the grace of God trains us to say no to unguidiness the grace of God isn't your license to send the grace of God is actually the thing which draws you to God it says you standing in a good place with God live in that place stand firm resists and so grace the grace of God when it's functioning right in our lives it actually strengthens us over time it trains us why I'm telling you this is when we see self-control as a spiritual spirit we see the grace of God training us over time that it takes time so you may be aware that you should leave behind the sun that so easily entangles maybe you got entangled in a sun in your life when you're a young person you think I've got to have instantaneous repentance and instantaneous change in myself and then this happens you turn to God you say save me from the sin and then a week later you fall again and then you feel really rotten and then you say I'm repenting God save me from the sin and the next day you're going to sin again and I'm not questioning the sincerity of your repentance I'm questioning this whether you really have a right to expect that you would just be free from the fact immediately it's not that simple every time you fall you have to get back up again and turn back to God and you have to have this mindset that even though I failed again I'm going to get up and follow God again and what happens is increasingly and incrementally you get the breakthrough that God gives you in your life over that sin so what I would say is I always want to look at life as this long-term trajectory I was struggling with this issue and it took me six months to rule over it but now I rule over it that's what you should be heading for if you could get it right in six days by all means get it right in six days but if ten days later after you're repeated on it it catches you out again repent again and declare you're going to walk pure live right and then go increasingly from glory to glory you see this this is the way that the kingdom unfolds on on earth it says of the increase of his peace is government and peace there will be no end or God takes us from one degree of glory to another degree of glory and sometimes what's in between is not glorious in other words I'm feeling strong and then I feel weak and then I feel strong and I feel weak and I'm always weak but God is always making me stronger and so we go from glory to glory we don't go we go from one degree of glory to another degree of glory we don't go from this degree of glory to perfection if that where God's planet would go from this first moment of glory to perfection then we would all be raptured in our baptism or maybe when we got born again God you just take us straight to glory to heaven to perfection it's not impossible for God to do that he did it to you know you can just come and take you he doesn't he left Israel in the promised land along with some enemies that he left them to fight to teach them certain lessons so that they knew more about themselves and more about God and the consequences that they would worship God all the more you see you're not going to deliver yourself but you need to learn to fight it may take months it may take years and in fact it will take our whole lives because the weight of temptation will not be removed the temptation to sin will not go away until we die in these mortal bodies and are raised to new life and new bodies so I want to add something to that just as a little aside these texts are being written in the context of community once I just read tell us see to it that no one fails that somebody else no one fails to obtain the grace of God that no root of goodness brings up and causes trouble and by many become the father so see to it amongst the community that means that it's within that's a it's a it's a plural structure there it's not it's not written to an individual it's written to people to look after one another it means that we also should recognize that part of this progress towards loneliness cannot happen just in a some kind of a mystical Christian expression that is too much monastic in its form like me and God in the forest you know I'm gonna go and seek a quiet place and I'm gonna go and work out my issues personally before God it's not written like that it's see to it that no one so there's a plurality we're in a community why is this so important well be aware of the narcissism of self-improvement and introspection I've seen many Christians get tripped up by an obsession to know and understand their own personality and improve it so what happens is they work on themselves and then they read books about guys that from guys who are encouraging this kind of just you and God all that matters and that's not scriptural it's you and the people around you who hold you to an account look you in the eye challenge you to deal with the bitterness in your heart ask you how pure your thought life is and confront that together and then you likewise don't get to self-obsessed you don't get to become a narcissist looking just at how holy you are and becoming more and more holy by yourself because ultimately that kind of introspection is toxic it's putting you at the center of your world and you're using God as your tool for self-improvement it's wicked and yet it catches Christians out when they deal with their problems as if this is me on my journey with God sorry you're not on a journey alone with God you're in a community in a body the body of Christ one body made up with many parts and you are just a part of the body stop being so self-obsessed so live in community fight for one another and then verse 18 to 30 there these two big ideas you you haven't come to this mountain with smoke and fire so the first part of this discussion of where you're heading you're not finding God in the old covenant you're not coming to Mount Sinai where Moses and Israel was terrified to go no you're coming to Mount Zion to the heavenly city to the congregation of the saints made righteous the thousands upon thousands of angels and joyful assembly you come into a glorious beautiful wonderful thing not that terrifying condemning law you're coming to the gospel of grace where there is forgiveness for your sins where you will always be received where God welcomes you in because of what Jesus has done it's every motivation for us to look to heaven when we're wrestling with ourselves not look at yourself and become overwhelmed or proud look at your situation say God I'm dealing with this sin but I'm looking at heaven I'm part of it at this destined to be with God in glory I'm heading for that city the New Jerusalem I love the amazing grace him the most in grace how sweet the son had saved a wretch like me do you know the line there says it was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved so that's the picture of Sinai and Zion Mount Sinai taught my heart to fear by the grace of God he gave us the law in order to show us that we sinners we're terrified by our sin until grace our fears relieved until we see Jesus welcoming welcoming us into the heavenly city saying come this is your home Mount Sinai joyful assembly saints made righteous thousands of angels worshiping this is your home that's what God saying it says so now grace taught your heart to fear but now grace relieves your fears because you see the cross and you see the gospel Sinai verses Zion Mount Sinai Mount Sinai we feared but we stopped fearing there was a time in my life where I stopped fearing my sin I realized this is never going to get the better of me this sin will never get the better of me not because of me but because of Jesus what I mean by this is though I may face sin is very difficult for me to deal with my son is not impossible for God to deal with God overcomes all there is no sin that Jesus cannot remove and in fact when his blood was shed for me his blood was efficacious to deal with all of my sin so therefore now I look at sin as a conquered problem in eternity in Christ and a being conquered problem in me I will overcome ultimately because of Christ not because I'm strong enough but because of his grace I know one day I was hanging glory so right now I can't lose since sometimes might win a battle but Jesus has won the war on my behalf so there is this shaking there that the scripture that we read ends with talking about God will shake things that everything that can be shaken will be shaking you know when things start to shake then when God is disciplining us then we get into the game and say I'm gonna fight against my son and then later on there's also just this shaking things go rock in life the world so it sits on a life edge wars and famines and storms going on in our lives gravity sometimes the storm is raging and you're looking at your life and thinking God why are you shaking things so violently God says I'm shaking things so that everything that rarely matters everything that's true will stand and everything that has no meaning in your life to God will be removed so he might be shaking your view of money by leading your business into financial collapse he may be shaking your view of of of meeting a spouse by keeping you single until you realize that you shouldn't meet a person that way and once you free from meeting a person the wrong way he could give you the spouse there won't be an idol in your life you see God shakes things because he wants us to not fall for the trap he not doesn't want us ensnared but now understand he's shaking things and the storm that rages in my life that is under the sovereign hand of God I can be a peace with God because he's doing something good as difficult as it is so in the fight while unfightings when things still aren't going wrong sometimes things are shaking around me then I think wait God is fighting for me God is fighting for me that's why he's making this hard that's why that's falling apart I have to hold on to God I have to find Jesus in the boat Jesus why you sleeping because I will over the wind in the waves in the storm and Jesus wakes up and he speaks peace be still to the wind in the waves but the storm rages so that you can see God so that you can see him move he's fighting to destroy the things that hold you down he's fighting to destroy the idols in our lives so when I compared this Sinai and Zion the old covenant and the new I see God saying I am giving you a kingdom that cannot be shaken now we live in the kingdom that cannot be shaken we live in the one covenant of grace and mercy the new covenant in Christ I don't live under the condemnation of the law I don't live under the fear grace taught my heart to fear but grace my fears relieved and moved from the old living in fear that sin has power to the new where I say Jesus has power and sin yes though it is a trouble it is a conquered trouble and I will conquer to in his grace I'm gonna read a song I like sharing with you some you know good poetry once in a while she from rich melons before I'll share some words from his song home as I close I want you to endless see the picture of God shaking things and why he shakes things in our lives so that we can inherit the kingdom that cannot be shaken and why as we fight sin it's not always instantaneous deliverance but we fight he says I see the morning moving over the hills I can see the shadows on the western side and all those illusions that I had they just vanish in your light though the chill in the night still hangs in the air I can feel the warmth of morning on my face though the storm had tossed me till I thought I'd nearly lost my way and now the night is fading and the storm has passed and everything that could be shaken was shaken and all that remains is all I ever really had what I have settled for you've blown so far away what you brought me to I thought I could not reach and I came so close to giving up but you never did give up on me I see the morning moving over the hills I feel the rush of life here where the darkness broke and I'm in you and you're in me here where the winds of heaven blow and now the night is fading and the storm is through and everything you said to shake me from my dreams they came to wake me in the love I find in you and now the morning comes and everything that really matters become the wings you send together me to my home to my home I'm going home you right set for the same reason that the writer to the Hebrews finishes this passage we looked at by saying our God is a consuming fire our God is a consuming fire there's God is shaking everything that can be shaken he's taking away all the things that distract and don't matter and sometimes your life you go through this place where you think this is terrible God is saying afterwards you go to see this is the stuff of heaven this is the stuff of earth this is the thing that really matters this is the stuff that doesn't matter at all a lot of the time that's how God consumes the junk in our lives violently passionate love can the band come up we're gonna try and sing that song that you guys managed to put the words in you positive be hopeful okay right you all stand let's pray heavenly Father we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken but yet in this life sometimes we are very much shaken Lord we see you fighting for us disciplining us wrestling with us to deal with our son God we want to learn to fight and to keep on fighting so we could be free from the same things free so that we can come into your presence free so that we can know you free so that we can worship and draw near to you God set us free today Lord Jesus and for those who are fighting a battle personally Lord I pray that you give courage and strength today that we would never give up because you never give up on us in Jesus day