Part 18 “God is Shaking The World”
Hebrews 12:25-29
Intro – in 2004, Hurricane Charley slammed into the state of Florida packing winds up to 100 mph. Homes were destroyed, trees uprooted and signs were knocked down. But one billboard along a freeway in Orlando survived virtually unscathed. Here’s a picture of it…the storm peeled off the most recent advertizing message, revealing the ad from an earlier campaign…”We need to talk: God”.
Not only do I find this amusing, but I also find it highly significant in light of what’s going on in the world these days…
And I believe it summarizes the heart of the message today found in the last part of Heb. 12…God is trying to get people’s attention and He’s doing it by shaking things up…
Last week we looked at the two mountains found in Heb. 12, Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion…and we contrasted the difference between the two in the way we relate to God…
…Mt Sanai representing the old covenant way of viewing God as distant, angry, unapproachable…where it’s about keeping the rules so we are acceptable to God…and fearing His judgment when we don’t keep the rules…
…and in contrast, Mt. Zion which represents the new covenant way of relating to God where we view Him as loving, welcoming, inviting…where it’s about embracing the righteousness of Christ rather than trying to earn our own…
Mt Sinai is about the 10 commandments, whereas Mt. Zion is about Christ’s blood sacrificed for us on the cross…
Mt Sinai is about the past and going back to a lifeless religious system…
…whereas Mt Zion is about the future and going forward towards heavenly joy and citizenship…
God wants us to live at Mt. Zion…
As I mentioned last week, the end of the chapter is so significant that I didn’t want to rush it by adding it to an already full sermon…it’s about the shaking that is going on in our world these days and the shaking that is yet to come, and what God’s purposes are for this…
So I invite you to open your Bibles with me to Heb. 12:25-29…
Prayer…Read…
Meaning of the Passage
What we have here is an eschatological passage, a biblical prophecy that there is coming a day in which there will be such a violent shaking on the earth and in heavens that the world as we know it will be destroyed.
There will come a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, but this world is going to come to a cataclysmic end some day. And what cannot be shaken will remain, which is the kingdom of God and everyone who is part of it.
We know this because of the prophetic verse the writer of Hebrews quotes from Haggai 2:6 “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land.
This is the teaching of the Bible in many other places including 2 Peter 3:10: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
Rev. 6:12-14 There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
People who live on the west coast are often reminded about the “big one” that is predicted to happen some day…
…the big earthquake that has the potential to do great damage to the major cities along the west coast…anything built on the San Andreas Fault…
Well, the Bible says there is a “big one” coming…bigger than anyone can imagine…and God wants people to be prepared, forewarned…
…that’s why the writer of Hebrews urges us to build our lives on something solid…something that cannot be shaken…on the unshakable kingdom of God instead of the shaky fault lines of this world…
Labor Pains
Listen, before the end comes, God has appointed smaller shaking events to serve notice that something big and decisive is going to happen…
God’s aim is to get people’s attention through natural events like earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, all manner of calamites… even in the proliferation of evil in this world through terrorism and suicide bombers…God wants to make it clear that this world is in the pains of labor…labor pains that are leading up to the birth of the new heaven and new earth…
Just like labor pains for a woman lead to the arrival of something good…so the labor pains in this earth are leading up to the glorious arrival of the kingdom of God…God’s unshakable and eternal kingdom…
Why Would God Allow This?
Now I know this raises a lot of questions about why a good and loving God would allow calamities like these to happen knowing full well that people will suffer and lives will be lost…
While this is too big a question to explore fully now, let me briefly say that according to the Bible, God is sovereign over the events of this world…and He is not the author of evil.
And what He decrees to do in His loving sovereignty… and whatever evil He allows to happen by His loving sovereignty…He is using it all to accomplish His ultimate good purposes for humanity…
I too ask the question, “Why does God allow in His sovereignty what He could prevent in His mercy?” I wrestle with that one too…and when I don’t get it (which I quite often), I choose to trust that God is good and that He knows what He is doing…
Whether we understand all this or not, and truthfully, we can’t understand it fully… we are invited to declare, along with Job… “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” Job 1:21.
Jesus spoke about labor pains in Matthew 24:6-8: You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
I love what John Piper has to say about this passage:
“We should hear in every rumor of war and every famine and every earthquake the voice of the Lord saying "I reign! I am in control. I am a God of mercy, a God of hope. I am bringing in the kingdom. I do not want it to happen suddenly without warning. I have warned you again and again and again with shakings that should have broken you loose from your love of the world."
Keep in mind that there will be an increasing frequency of these things as the end comes near and the intensity of them will increase, because that's the way it happens with labor pains before a birth…the closer it gets, the more intense it gets…that’s exactly what we see happening in the world these days…
What God is Shaking
It goes without saying that God is shaking the world these days. There’s not a one of us who hasn’t noticed, to some degree, the shaking God is doing in this earth.
Consider the Global Shaking that is taking place: earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.
• we see it politically…upheavel in governments, instablility of the Middle East…North Korea and its dictatorial posturing of power…the rise and fall of world leaders…
• we see it economically…weak global economy…rising debt levels of many countries…right here in Canada, the drop in the value of our dollar, the historic low price of oil…
-many people’s retirement financial plan isn’t looking as good as it did…even those plans are being shaken…
And not just the global shaking, what about the Personal Shaking many people are facing…many of you here today…you’re being shaken with: health challenges, family upheavel, personal conflicts, job-related stress…endless list…
-don’t you see it among many people? an unsettledness, dis-ease…growing sense of gloom and doom…hopelessness and despair…this world, your world is being shaken…
The key question though is, can you choose to believe that God is at work through all this shaking? Can you see that God is shaking things up to accomplish His purposes? His good purposes? His eternal purposes?
So what purposes you might ask? Why might God be sending the shaking?
God’s Purposes for Shaking
It’s important we know the Biblical reasons why God shakes things…what His purposes are in the shaking. Here are at least three given in our passage:
1. to get our attention v.25
Mankind in general is oblivious to spiritual things…people are by nature spiritually blind to invisible spiritual realities…that’s why it sometimes takes a very loud wake up call to open the eyes of men and women to the reality of a living God Who is there and Who is speaking and Who is intervening in the course of this world’s history…
-it’s just like the billboard: “we need to talk: God”… sometimes it does take a hurricane to get people’s attention…
God gives labor pains to the world so that people might wake up and realize that something big and eternally significant is going to happen…
Even among God’s people, some of us are in such a deep sleep spiritually that God is using all manner of ways to get our attention…to call to us, to awaken obedience in us, to follow Him by doing whatever He says…
…you asleep? want to stay that way? Why?
eg. 15 years old…my first real struggle with this…invitation for baptism in services…strong conviction, but I resisted God…fear…until baptism was postponed because of tragic motorcycle death of one of our young adults…
I’m not suggesting God let that young man die just because of me…but I do know that terrible accident really got my attention…woke me up…better, it moved me out of my stubbornness and resistance to a place of obedience to God’s call…I obeyed God and got baptized…
What’s it going to take for some of you to respond to God?…like v.25 says, “Don’t refuse Him who speaks…”
2. to dislodge us from the world v.27
-God shakes things so that our grip on the world can be loosened…so that our affections can be redirected…so that we will stop loving the world and instead learn to love the things of God…and God Himself…
God shakes things so that He can remove what is temporary and place us solidly on what is eternal and unshakable, namely His kingdom, Mt Zion, the place Jesus’ blood and righteousness makes available to us…
God shakes people awake so we can see the instability of this world and the desirability of the unshakable kingdom that He offers…
…so we can see how ultimately pointless and futile it is to invest most of our time, energy and hope in a temporary, shakable place…and how wise and valuable it is to invest ourselves in a permanent, lasting, heavenly future…
It’s tragic how in a time of calamity, some people instead of learning this lesson, hold on more fiercely to the things this world offers for hope…hang more tightly onto money and possessions…onto power and control…they seek more help from human leaders and agencies and governments…
…or just get more self-indulgent with alcohol and drugs and sex and entertainment…
eg. Did you hear about the airplane emergency this past Sept in Las Vegas? while still on the ground one of the plane’s engines caught fire, so there was an emergency evacuation. But the surprising thing is, despite clear instructions from the flight crew, people actually stopped during the evacuation to grab their carry-on luggage! Can you imagine the risk in that to all the passengers on board?
As one blogger summarized: "People love their carry-ons more than life itself."
God shakes us so we loosen our grip on this world and it’s temporary pleasures and rewards…
…which leads to the third purpose of shaking:
3. to plant us on the firm foundation of His kingdom v.28
…then God offers to plant us firmly on the unshakable foundation of His kingdom…
God shakes us so that we will look for solid ground, for something unshakable…something that doesn’t shift around and move and sway and knock us off balance…
…and we find it when we place our hope, heart, love, future in God’s kingdom…which is here now and is coming fully in the future…
Jesus Is The Sure Foundation
There is ultimately one foundation upon which we can build our lives…that we must build our lives…which can never be shaken, removed…and that is the foundation of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…
I Cor. 3:11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
-it starts with a confession of faith…receiving of Christ’s great salvation through faith in His finished work on the cross…some of you still need to do that…
…but it goes so much further as we then build our whole lives upon the solid rock of Jesus…so that when things shake, we will not come crashing down along with the world around us…
-we build with spiritual materials and kingdom values and practices and Biblical principles…
Mt. 7:24-27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house;
yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Jesus Christ is our sure foundation…
Let’s make sure that we are building our lives on Him and His kingdom…
Let’s do what v. 28 says, “…be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire…”
Conclusion
-“we need to talk”…
-join me up front to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom…to declare our willingness to embrace His kingdom…to lay hold of that which cannot be shaken…to lay hold of Jesus Christ Himself…
-to pray for this world that is being shaken…
-let’s invite God to shake things up…