Now, let's look at Hebrews.
We've been coming slowly along in the book
of Hebrews.
I hope that you have been marking your
Bible, taking notes, and otherwise veiling yourself of
the opportunity to get something of a theological
education.
We're now to the twelfth chapter and the
twenty-fifth verse, and then the rest of
the chapter.
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh,
for if they escape not who refused him
that spake on earth, much more shall not
we escape if we turn away from him
that speaketh from heaven, whose voice then shook
the earth.
But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once
more I shake not the earth only, but
also heaven.
And this word, yet once more, signifieth the
removing of those things that are shaken, as
of things which are made, that of those
things which cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be
moved, let us have grace, whereby we may
serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear,
for our God is a consuming fire.
Now, the Holy Spirit here refers to two
mighty divine acts, both in the past, at
the time he wrote.
One of them was the giving of the
law on Mount Sinai, with the attendant phenomena.
The other one was the giving of the
gospel with its blessed results.
Then he speaks of a third divine act
which is yet to be.
It was yet to be when these words
were written, and it is still yet to
be.
Yet once more, says God, yet once more,
signifying that he will remove the things that
are movable, and he will shake the things
that are shakable, because they are things that
are made, in order that the things which
cannot be shaken may remain.
Now, let's look at these acts.
The first mighty act was the giving of
the law.
God declared his moral will for his people.
That is, he declared our moral duty toward
God and men.
The Ten Commandments given by God on Mount
Sinai have gone out of vogue.
You don't hear them very much.
Moody used to preach on them very often.
Wesley claimed that he preached on the commandments
in order to get a place for the
gospel.
Torrey said that if you didn't preach the
law, there is no use to preach the
gospel, because it is the law that prepares
us for the gospel, shows us how we
need the gospel.
Otherwise, we don't know we need it.
And there are denominations, I think particularly now,
of the Dutch Reformed who preach the law
and believe in the law and preach it.
Now, I happen to believe that we are
not under the law of Moses.
I happen to believe, and I think I'm
correct, that we are under law to Christ,
which is the law of love, and that
God has delivered us from the law of
commandments.
But I also believe that everything that is
morally commanded in the Ten Commandments given on
Mount Sinai, while not binding upon us because
it was given there, but the moral principles
are binding upon us because they are the
will of God for people.
God there expressed his will for people.
And the will of God for people is
the same.
That is, it's always been God's will that
people should not worship idols, although we are
not under the Mosaic law.
Still, that doesn't free us to worship idols.
We have a different reason.
We have a different reason for not worshiping
idols.
Our reason is that we are in Christ,
we have met God, we love God, and
that there is no sense in worshiping idols.
But nevertheless, we are not to worship idols,
and so it is with the taking of
the name of the Lord in vain, and
so it is with coveting and with killing
and committing adultery and stealing and lying, all
of those things are yet not binding upon
us in that we are in chains, but
it's the normal thing that a Christian ought
to do because he is in Christ.
It shouldn't be necessary for a Christian to
have laws binding him from the outside, because
what the law could not do, if it
was weak through the flesh, God sending his
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and
condemns that we might live according to the
Spirit and have the Holy Spirit bringing righteousness
in our hearts and living it through us.
But nevertheless, the moral law was a mighty
and terrible act, coming as it did in
the midst of a heathen world, coming to
Israel who had just come out of one
of the great pagan nations of the world,
Egypt, and it was accompanied by supernatural terrors.
It tells us here what they were.
It says that the mountain burned with fire
and blackness and darkness and tempest and the
sound of a trumpet and the voice of
words, which voice was so terrible that they
begged that they might not have to hear
it.
And they couldn't endure it.
And as much as a beast touched the
mountain, it should be stoned.
And so terrible was the sight that even
Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.
That was God dramatizing the necessity for people
to live according to his will and setting
before us the high principles of morality that
he requires of his creatures.
That is said to be God speaking on
earth.
And Israel disregarded God's words.
That was her tragedy.
This was Israel's tragedy, that she disregarded God's
words.
The result is, as you know, historically, she
lost her temple, she lost her king, she
lost her land, she lost her home, she
failed to receive the Messiah, and today she
is scattered throughout the whole world, a nation
that is constantly in trouble, with weary feet
and troubled breasts and no home that she
can call her own, wandering everywhere.
That's Israel.
And her wailing wall back in Jerusalem is
symbolic of her great tragedy.
And her tragedy resulted from failing to hear
God who spake on earth.
Now, says the Holy Spirit here, there was
a second mighty act, which was the giving
of the gospel.
And this act was more completely divine than
the first, in that the act was done
by the holy persons of the Godhead.
I don't want to repeat myself too much,
but repetition is sometimes necessary to make a
point.
And in my book, The Knowledge of the
Holy, I have explained this pretty carefully, and
I've also explained it here in public.
But there were three great things that happened,
and all three persons of the Godhead had
part.
There was the incarnation, when the Father would
tell the woman that she was to bear
the Son, who was to be the second
person of the Trinity.
He said, The Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Most High
shall overshadow thee.
That was the angel speaking from God.
So all three persons were active in the
incarnation, the power of the Most High and
the Holy Ghost and the Son, all there
working.
Then at his crucifixion there were the three
persons.
Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without
spot to God.
There you have the three persons.
At the resurrection you have the three persons.
He was declared to be the Son of
God with power through the Holy Spirit by
the resurrection from the dead.
So in all the great acts of God,
in this one great act of redemption, the
three persons of the Godhead were engaged, working
harmoniously, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Here God declares his redemptive will.
In the first great act of God he
declared his moral will for mankind.
He spoke on earth.
Now he speaks from heaven and declares his
redemptive will.
And this, I repeat, is said to be
speaking from heaven in a way that was
greater than when he spoke on earth at
the mountain.
Now much more, he says here, how much
more shall they be punished if they do
not accept him who speaks on the earth.
Refusing the words of God in the earth
and giving moral commandments.
And it is terrible to disregard them, and
the punishment must follow.
But it is worse to disregard the efforts
in the three persons of the Trinity speaking
from heaven, and there is no escape.
Why did Israel disregard God's speaking on the
earth?
Well, there were numbers of reasons, and here
are just a few of them.
There was idolatry.
They had the example of others all around
about them.
Do you know the greatest teacher in the
world?
The greatest teacher in the world is example.
What we see others do, that's what we
learn to do.
A little child learns by example.
They do things.
I sat across the plane aisle yesterday coming
in from Detroit, from Windsor, with a young
mother, so young she looked like a child
herself.
She had a little year old boy, she
told me his name was Jay.
He was a nice little fellow, and he
would stand up there and wave his little
hand at me.
The mother thought that was the richest thing,
she laughed about that so appreciatively because he'd
waved.
He'd seen others wave, you know, he wasn't
necessarily a genius.
He was learning by example.
She thought he was a genius, and I
didn't disillusion her.
I asked his age and his name, and
her face was shining while she told me
about her little chick.
He had learned to wave, and he was
waving at people.
The stewardesses were coming by and looking at
him, and he was waving.
He learned by example.
One of these days, if he hasn't already
started, he will be speaking words, all by
example.
That is why if you are born in
any language group, you speak that language better
than any other.
I wrote alongside of a man from Holland,
he was in the United States lecturing and
was coming up here.
He didn't tell me what for, but he
was coming up and he had learned to
speak English in Holland.
We had a nice conversation, and he said
that there was something he couldn't understand about
the United States.
There are some things I can't understand.
Why didn't he say something?
Because he had been born in Holland where
they don't have them.
They have to say it another way.
If I were to practice for one hundred
years, I couldn't speak Dutch the way he
speaks it.
I am sure that if he were to
practice, he wouldn't be able to speak English
the way you and I do.
Because that first example that we get when
we are young, you adopt a baby and
it looks like you after a couple of
years.
People say, Why do you think it was
yours?
You know why, because its little facial expressions
have taken your facial expressions on.
It has learned from you, so that it's
not unusual at all for an adopted child,
loved just as much as a natural born
one, looks like the adoptive parents, because it's
the facial expressions.
Our dear little lady, we tried so hard
to get her here for the convention, little
Miss Frances.
Well, I don't know how old she is,
it's not nice to talk about women's age,
but she doesn't even try to walk straight
up anymore.
She just bends over and walks around with
a heavenly smile on her dear little old
face, and everybody loves her, including the teenagers
that mob her for autographs.
She looks like a Japanese.
Now, positively, she has lived in Japan so
long that she has taken on the facial
expressions of the Japanese.
And while if you actually measure her face,
it's an Occidental face.
But she has taken on the Japanese smile
and the Japanese facial expressions, so that if
you just looked at her and looked away
and didn't examine her, you'd say, that's a
little Japanese lady.
Well, that's example that does that, my friends.
The most powerful force operating in the world
is not the H-bomb, but example.
And these Jews lived among the heathen, and
they couldn't resist the power of example.
When they saw the heathen worshiping their idols,
they said, why should we be forced to
worship an invisible God?
Let's make something to remind us, as our
Catholic friends say.
This isn't an idol, it's just a reminder.
Sure, sure.
Let us make a little reminder.
And they did, and God Almighty condemned them
from the start.
Examples of the heathen round about them, they
just couldn't resist it.
So they made the golden calf and they
made idols out under trees.
I don't know whether you know it or
how many of you know it, those who
have studied it would.
But the average rank and file Christian wouldn't
have any reason to know it.
But I wonder if you know, in the
Old Testament, wherever the word grove, g-r
-o-v-e, grove, wherever that word appears,
that's not right at all.
And every scholar knows it isn't.
What they did there was to use an
innocuous word to cover up a word they
couldn't put in print.
These idolaters were worshiping idols, and worshiping idols,
the word is phallic, as students know what
that means.
It has to do with sex.
And what they were doing there, in what
they called the groves, they were performing religious
rites that were so foul and filthy that
the police on the street would pick them
up and put them in jail if they
caught them doing it.
Actually, these people who had been brought out
from Egypt by the mighty hand of God,
and it had the law given to them
on the mount, now they fall so low
that they not only commit adultery, which they
were commanded not to, but they make it
a religious rite and worship Jehovah by evil
and licentious acts.
Now, that was an example that did that.
And they escaped not.
God spoke on her, and they escaped not.
Then there was Sabbath breaking.
If you know Sabbath breaking, it was that
they were working seven days a week instead
of the six, and resting the seventh.
And they had an economic reason for breaking
the Sabbath.
Somebody's wheat needed cutting and it looked stormy,
and it was within an hour of time
to quit for the Sabbath, for it began
at 6 o'clock Friday night.
And some old Jew just said to himself,
Listen, I've only got a one-third of
my wheat in, and if I don't work
tomorrow, this wheat will be down.
The storm will hit us here and it
will be down and I'll lose my grain.
So he came out on the Sabbath day
and did his harvesting.
He said, I know God doesn't care, there
are economic reasons for this.
And we have become adept in our day
of finding economic reasons for doing things we
shouldn't.
Even among some of the missionaries, I regret
to say, I'm shocked and horrified to have
to say it, that they are making strong
arguments in favor of polygamy.
They say, Wait a minute, we don't go
to the heathen to change their social habits,
we go to preach Jesus to them.
And if a man has nine wives and
that's his cultural more, we don't go there
and change it, leave him as he is.
Because if we insist that he give up
all but one wife, we have created social
problems for the man.
Jesus said, If your hand is in your
way, chop it off.
If your foot is in your way, cut
it off.
If your eye is in your way, pluck
it out.
He wasn't concerned with these economic and social
problems.
If you're going to be a Christian, you've
got to stand up and take the consequences
of your economic and social problems.
Sure you will have problems.
The Lord isn't going to take you to
heaven on a pink cloud, you'll have to
face up to it.
And those Jews couldn't take it, rather than
lose a harvest while they'd work on the
Sabbath.
And the Lord saw it and displeased him.
In the honoring of the parents, even in
Jesus' day, they had a little trick.
They didn't want to give something to their
poor, broken-down parents, so they said, Corbin!
That's consecrated to God.
God never got it, neither did the parents.
The Lord said he couldn't stand that, and
there was stealing and lying, and the prophets
of Israel.
Sometimes our friends, the Jews and the Benebrith
Anti-Defamation League, stand up on their hind
legs and condemn the people for their attitude
toward the Jews.
Nobody ever said anything against the Jews more
terrible than their own prophet.
Once in the city of Chicago I got
a call from Moody Bible Institute, and they
said, You know, Benebrith is after you.
And I said, After me?
Well, I don't like to be gotten after,
so I said, What's the trouble?
Well, they heard you say on the air
that all the trouble in the world was
caused by Jews.
And I said, Well, I never said it.
Who told you?
Well, they said, The Anti-Defamation League called
us.
So I called the Anti-Defamation League, and
I said, I'd like to talk to the
boss man, the head man.
So they put a man on, and I
said, My name is Toter, and you have
said that I have said that everything in
the whole world, all troubles of the world,
can be traced back to the Jews.
I said, You just hold that receiver to
your ear while I talk to you.
He said, First, ever since the day that
I was converted and began to read the
Bible, I have believed in the Jews.
I have believed in their glorious future to
come.
Some of you don't, but I do.
I said, I know more about the history
of Israel than I know about the history
of the United States, where I was born.
Furthermore, I have baptized Jews.
Furthermore, I am a member of two Jewish
boards dedicated to the blessing of the Jews,
and further, I have had at least one
Jewish assistant pastor.
By that time, the fellow was crawling, and
as soon as I had hung up from
him, I buzzed around a bit, and then
I called Moody's.
I said, He said, Brother, did you?
He said, We got a call here just
before you called, and he said that man
was apologizing all over the place.
He had got the wrong man.
They had heard somebody say that, and it
might have been somebody else with a voice
like mine.
They said, I did it, I didn't.
But anyhow, I don't know how I got
over there on that one.
I'll leave my outline and go off on
a side trip.
But I just wanted you to know that
the Jews, the Prophets of Israel, said more
against Israel than anybody ever said to Hitler.
Hitler went out and gassed them.
Let's keep two things in mind.
The Jews have a wonderful future.
We owe them a great debt.
We owe them our Messiah.
We owe them the book of Psalms.
We owe them a great debt.
And there will be a day when the
prophecies of the Lord are fulfilled, when they
will again be a beautiful nation.
But in the meantime, we are not supposed
to shut our eyes to the fact that
they have been a wicked people, and that
God has judged them, and that they are
now under judgment because they rejected him who
spake from the earth.
Now, be careful, he says, for much more
shall we suffer if we refuse him that
speaks from heaven.
What are some of the reasons that we
refuse him that speaks from heaven?
Well, carelessness is one, and some people have
every kind of excuse.
Some say they are hypocrites in the Church.
Well, sure.
People say to me, I've become quite an
ambassador of goodwill for Canada.
When I go down over the border, they
say, How do you like Canada?
Well, they don't expect a lecture, but I
give it to them.
And I tell them what a marvelous people
you Canadians are and how I've enjoyed my
three years here.
It's wonderful that you know if I say
to them, Listen, listen, you know what?
They have murders in Canada.
They have murders.
People murder people in Canada, and there are
rapes in the newspapers talked about.
And they are gangsters.
Well, that's what I could say.
But am I going to get up and
fly over the border and never come back
because here and there there might be a
bad man?
What nation doesn't have some bad men in
it?
So it's a mighty hypocritical for me to
say, I won't go into the Church because
there are hypocrites in the Church.
Of course there are hypocrites in the Church.
Jesus had a hypocrite or two in his
outfit, and they had in the early parts
of Acts, and they've had all down the
years.
And just as there are some criminals in
Canada.
But who in his right mind would condemn
Canada because there are some criminals in it?
So who in his right mind would say,
I don't believe in the Church?
Of course there are hypocrites in the Church.
It's silly and hypocritical to hide behind a
hypocrite.
The only thing thinner than a hypocrite is
the one who hides behind him.
And then they say, Well, there are too
many churches, and I don't know which one
to join.
And there isn't one word in the New
Testament about joining any church.
It says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved.
Although it's been normal from those days to
this day that people who become believers in
Christ join the Church, some church somewhere.
And some people say there are too many
questions that are not answered.
Boy, if you quit living because you couldn't
answer the questions about life, how many of
you know anything about it?
Oh, William Jennings Bryan, that great old commoner,
that great orator, said, Who can explain how
a black cow can eat green grass and
give white milk with yellow butter?
Nobody can answer that question.
Nobody!
And how is it that a cow can
eat green grass and give milk, and a
goose can eat green grass and they do
and lay eggs?
Nobody can answer those questions.
How is it that a microbe so small
that you have to have powerful magnifying glass
to see it, when it gestates and matures,
may be a Corker Spaniel, or it may
be a Prime Minister?
It depends.
It's all from the same cell.
And who knows whether that is going to
be a Shakespeare or a Dachshund?
Nobody can tell.
So if you are going to quit living
because you can't explain the many unanswered questions,
you'd better go home now and lie down
and get ready to go, because you are
surrounded by mystery.
I said to the crowd gathered at the
Alliance Church on Forest Street in Detroit last
week, there was a pastor sitting down there
looking learned, and I said, We are surrounded
by mystery all the time.
And I said, When you hear your pastor
learnedly holding forth, all he is doing is
giving names to mystery.
We don't know what it is, so we
name it.
And everybody says, Wonderful, we now know what
it is.
No, we don't know what it is.
We have just named mystery.
That's all.
Well, somebody else says, I am too weak.
Another one says, I am too bad.
Another one says, I am too good.
Another one has another excuse.
But remember what he said here, Whose voice
then shook the earth, but now he promised,
I will shake the heavens.
If ye they escape not who refused him
that spake on earth, much more shall not
we escape, if we turn away from him
that speaketh from heaven.
May God grant that these great messages of
God, the great voice of God speaking on
Sinai to give us his moral will for
us, speaking again in the gospel to give
us his redemptive will for us, and while
we wait in the gap between that cross
and the judgment to come, grant that we
may not be so foolish as to emulate
the poor Jew who turned away from God's
voice speaking on earth, with the result she
lost her temple and her king and her
land and her home and her Messiah.
What will we lose if we neglect to
hear the voice of God speaking to us
in the New Testament?
God grant we'll have moral wisdom enough to
listen to the voice of God and believe
it and obey it.
Amen.