Sermon from August 27, 2025

Sermon Based on Hebrews 12:18-24, 28

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen (Psalm 19:14).

The Scripture passage just read gives us two picture images. The first is of God’s Old Testament people at Mt. Sinai, where there was blazing fire and darkness and gloom, and the sound of a very loud trumpet and the voice of God Himself speaking His Law, His 10 Commandments. The people were so fearful that they begged that no further messages be spoken to them. They asked Moses to go up on the mountain and hear the message of God for them. And that whole experience and the rebellion of the people at Sinai was so terrifying that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”

We don’t have quite that experience today, but as we look around our world, even now, we see so many troubles and difficulties and so much rebellion against God and His Word. Just before our text, the writer to the Hebrews spoke of people with “drooping hands and weak knees” (Hebrews 12:12). That’s sometimes the way we feel, physically, too, as we get older, when there are many more aches and pains, and our bodies just don’t work the way they used to. That can be so discouraging. Or when we begin to get forgetful, and there’s a name we know, but just can’t bring it to mind, at first. So frustrating!

But in context, drooping hands and weak knees can also refer to spiritual weaknesses in our lives, where we are getting off track from God’s Word and will in some ways. Right before this text, the writer to the Hebrews also speaks about the need for discipline - discipline even from God, precisely because He loves us and wants us to know the difference between right and wrong, and to realize when we are falling short before God (Hebrews 12:5:11). That’s what the Law, represented by the picture image of Mt. Sinai, in our text, does for us, primarily.

Paul put it this way, in Romans 3:19-20: “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the Law, no human being will be justified in His (in God’s) sight, since through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”

The Law of God, in the Scriptures, shows us our sins and where God wants us to go instead in our lives, but it doesn’t get us there. Primarily, it condemns us and shows us our need for help beyond ourselves.

That is why we also need, so desperately, the second picture image in our text, that of Mt. Zion and the city of the living God. Mt. Zion was located on earth in the city of Jerusalem, in the land of Israel, and it is there, through the Scriptures, we meet Jesus, God’s own Son, sent into this world to be the Mediator, the only One who could and would go between us and God to fulfill a New Covenant with God.

God’s Old Testament people failed miserably in following Him and His will and His Old Covenant. That is represented in our text by Cain killing his brother, Abel, and Abel’s blood crying out for vengeance and judgment for sin. There were then, later, the Old Testament sacrifices, including sacrifices of animals, but these only prepared the way for a much, much greater sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus and His shed blood in His suffering and death on the cross. His sprinkled blood, our text says, speaks a much better Word, a Word of the Gospel and the forgiveness of our sins and peace and new life with our Lord and God.

Jesus earned all of that for us by taking the judgment for our sins upon Himself and paying the penalty for them all, in our place. That forgiveness has come to us personally through the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of God, and the Word connected with water in our baptism, and the great promises of God that are ours by the gift of faith in Christ.

Our text also speaks of the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Mt. Zion, and the blessings that are guaranteed to us in Christ. We struggle with sin. We try, but we never overcome it all in this life. Yet we are counted as “the righteous made perfect” in God’s eyes, through the perfect work of Jesus.

Our text also speaks of the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. That includes all believers who have died in faith, including all of our loved ones who have lived and died in faith. And we hear that innumerable angels are there, as well. And guess who else is extolled, whose names are written in the Book of Life? Your name and my name - not because we are so great, but because God is so great in His love for us and in giving us the gift of His only Son, Jesus, who has already accomplished everything we need for our eternal future, as we hang onto and trust in Him and His Word.

All this keeps us going in difficult days in a very troubled world. Paul writes again, in Romans 8:18, 24-25: “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us…” “In this hope we were saved… and we wait for (that heavenly home) in patience.”

And as Hebrews 12 ends, we hear that heaven and earth will be shaken and pass away, as we know it, but God’s Word will never pass away, and our heavenly home will never be shaken (Hebrews 12:26-28, Mark 13:31, 1 Peter 1:23-25).

And we have the promise from the Lord that we’ll hear in next week’s lesson, Hebrews 13:5: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” And Jesus says to us, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). And we even have, in a few moments here, a taste of that heavenly home, as Christ Himself comes personally to us, with His very Body and Blood, in and with and under the bread and wine, in the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 10:16, 11:23-26). May the Lord continue to bless and strengthen us with these amazing gifts and promises. Amen.