Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1689
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, November 5, 1882
“Butyou are come unto mountZion, 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 first-born, 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 speaks better things than that of Abel.” Hebrews 12:22-24.
THE whole passage will be considered, but our special central text will be verse twenty-three— “To the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven.” Paul is displaying the superiority of the New Covenant to the old. He tells us what Israel, after the flesh, came to at their best in the morning hours of the Law and what the first-born after the Spirit have come to under the Gospel. He pictures the great assembly of the chosen people round about Mount Sinai and then His Inspired mind describes an infinitely larger and happier gathering, to which all Believers have come, around Mount Zion. Not only the Hebrews to whom he was writing, but all the people of God are gathered together in one general assembly, of which the blessed God is the center. Paul shows us the joyful difference between the two gatherings and the feelings and pursuits of those who compose them.
What we shall need, this morning, is a little careful attention to the deep meaning of the text and an intensely earnest desire to actually enter into the enjoyment of the privileges which are herein set before us. Our text contains an incalculable wealth of meaning—it is written according to God’s riches in Glory by Christ Jesus. Surely it was written as with a pen of diamond upon plates of gold set with jewels! May God, by His Grace, lead us fully into it. We would not only speak of privilege as possible, but would say with Paul, “We are come unto it.” As surely as we are not come to the terrors of the Law, so surely we are come to the blessings of the Gospel!
Read in verse 18, “You are not come,” and then in verse 22, “But you are come.” We do not only hear of Zion and her festivities, but we are come to them! We do not merely know the letter of the Gospel, but we have come into the inner and spiritual meaning of it by personal enjoyment. “We are come.” I would ring out those words as a sort of musical accompaniment to the Truths of God uttered. All through the sermon let our hearts rejoicingly say, “We are come!” “We are come!” We have obtained, by faith, all that which is set before us in the text!
I. First, I want to set out, as I may be able, A CONTRAST PRESENTED IN THE ENTIRE PASSAGE which we have read—a contrast between the economy of Law and the economy of Grace. Every good thing is enhanced in value by its opposite. Light is all the brighter to eyes which have wept in darkness. Food is all the sweeter after you have known hunger. And Zion is all the fairer because of Sinai. The contrast between Free Grace and Law makes Grace appear the more precious to minds that have known the rigor of the Commandments.
The contrast presented here is sevenfold. It may be that the idea of this sevenfold contrast first occurred to Bengel, that prince of critics, but I have ventured to differ from his form of it and I hope that in so doing I have set forth the contrast as to the seven things more clearly than he has done, so that even the humblest here will catch each point and retain each contrast in his memory. Notice the contrasts. First, as to place (v. 18), “You are not come unto the mount that might be touched.” Verse 22—“but you are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” Behold Sinai with its rugged crags—scarcely had a human foot ever trod it, perhaps, until that hour in which Jehovah descended upon it in splendor—it had remained a virgin peak which the foot of man had never polluted.
There was no habitation of man upon it, neither did it yield pasture for flocks. The Mount of God stood out in terrible sublimity against the sky, holding communion with the stars, but refusing to deal with men. It was sublime, but stern and tempest-beaten. God came upon Sinai with His Law and the dread mountain became a type of what the Law would
be to us. It has given us a grand idea of holiness, but it has not offered us a pathway thereto, nor furnished a weary heart with a resting place, nor supplied a hungry soul with spiritual food. It can never be the place where congregated multitudes erect a city for themselves and a Temple for the living God—it is not the shrine offellowship, but the throne of authority and justice.
The Jews under the Law had that stern hill for their center and they compassed it about with pale countenances and trembling knees. We gather to quite another center, even unto the palace-crowned steep of Zion. There David dwelt of old and there David’s Lord revealed Himself. The hill of Zion rose above the city of Jerusalem and the two, together, formed the favored spot where Jehovah deigned to dwell in solemn state in the midst of His chosen nation—“For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation.” There the service of His sanctuary was carried on and around it clustered all the palaces of Judah and the habitations of the chosen people. It was called “the City of Vision” and the City of Peace. God dwelt in the midst of her and, therefore, she was not moved.