Sinai is law. Zion is gospel. Which one will save your hearer? Which one is the author’s audience being directed to? Which one are you directing your hearers to?
Disciplining dads and a tale of two mountains are what the epistle pericope presents this week. Sinai and Zion overshadow the rest of the reading, climactic as they are. And Jesus sits atop the climax, as He did in last week’s pericope as well, the messianic icing on the cake. The pericope presents its argument by employing contrast (“you have not come... you have come”), and preaching a biblical sermon can take its cue straight from the text. Sinai is law. Zion is gospel. Which one will save your hearer? Which one is the author’s audience being directed to? Which one are you directing your hearers to?
Be certain, preacher, that you see a fundamental truth about the distinction between law and gospel in the contrast the Hebrews author advances. One is superior to the other in this reading, just as one is superior to the other in all of Christian doctrine and practice. The gospel is the goal, the gospel is to predominate, the gospel alone saves. This is not to say that the law is not meaningful, significant, and effective in the life of your hearer (indeed, the author dilates on discipline to underscore the point!). But the things the law does are weak and inferior compared to the gospel; certainly, the law serves the gospel, not the other way around.
The very fact of the law’s inferiority and weakness to vivify the sinner should draw you away from the bad habit of trying to keep them equal. The aim of preaching should never be to keep law and gospel in balance, to offer the best combination that lets both counsels have their say, as if your task were to play mediating chaplain between the two, presenting to your hearer two options, just hear them out, they both make good points, etc. No, balance is not the goal. Attempting to even out their distribution will lead to mixing the two as well, which is what we mean by confusing them, that is, fusing the two together. The result of mixing is that it turns one into the other. Law presented as gospel. Gospel commanded as law.
Hebrews 12 makes it clear that law and gospel are apples and oranges. They occupy different territories (geographically different in fact!). The vivified saint is yet beset by the law in discipline, the curb and rule that guides the “struggle against sin” (Hebrews 12:4). The law has not become something new, as if it does not matter to the saint. The law has not been transformed into a good to pursue for its own sake. The law has been fulfilled in Jesus, who endured the cross. As the faithful fix their eyes on Jesus (12:2), they are invited to see the Jesus of the cross, the one who endured to the point of shedding blood, and, therefore, to see the cross as law. “Considering Him who endured” has its purpose, that you do not surrender in fatigue (12:3) in the face of the struggle against sin. When the author quotes the Proverbs 3 command at Hebrews 12:5, not to grow weary when the Lord disciplines, he uses the same vocabulary as he had at 12:3. Facing discipline head on is no different than facing the law of God, and the readers/hearers are reminded with this repeated vocabulary what exactly to see when they face it: The Jesus who endured, the Jesus of the cross, where He fulfills the law.
The gospel is the goal, the gospel is to predominate, the gospel alone saves.
So, the encouragement to Christian discipline is not an encouragement to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and give it the old college try. The encouragement to Christian discipline is no more nor less than to keep the Jesus of the cross constantly in view, to consider the cross. This is a discipline “for our good” (12:10), which yields us a share in His holiness. The author is saying that sharing in God’s holiness (the goal of discipline) is sharing in the cross. This looks a lot different than the human wisdom that assumes the markers of God’s pleasure and righteousness are success and prosperity. Striving for this kind of holiness (“without which no one will see the Lord,” Hebrews 12:14) is owning the cross, living the cross. The cross is where sin goes to die. And the cross is where godliness is revealed, in the God who died, in the man who lives, the mediator of the new covenant whose sprinkled blood shouts louder than Abel’s (12:24).
That kind of godliness looks ugly in the world’s eyes, by the way. Make no mistake, the cross is an offense. Christian faith in the creation of the world, Noah’s witness against his generation, Abraham’s offering of his son, Moses’ messy liberation and the Israelites’ wanderings, not to mention those who were sawn in two and boiled in oil of whom the world was not worthy (all of the examples of Hebrews 11). These are not style divas and beauty queens, nor peddlers of leadership principles and successful gurus of your best life now. No, sojourner-exiles on their way to the heavenly city are a motley crew simply relying on promise, and that means messy. This is ugly stuff. That is what a theology of the cross is. It is a theology of something ugly. Where the gospel is there will always be a cross, always be death. Fix your eyes there, sojourner-exile, consider Him, embrace His scandal and you will be running the race straight.
It is reasonable to read the distinction the author draws between Sinai and Zion as one of the physical and material versus the spiritual (you will find commentaries pointing this out too). After all, he says, you have not come to that which can be touched (Hebrews 12:18), but to something better, something heavenly (12:22). You were not of the group that had the stark and spooky experience of Sinai, he says. Rather, you have come to Mount Zion. I would admonish the preacher not to present this gospel climax as something invisible or esoteric, though, in comparison to the experience of Moses and the Israelites, as if the progression is from body to soul, or flesh to spirit, in such a way that your hearers are left with a duality which requires their imagination to get the goods. We deal with enough modern Gnosticism without contributing to it from the pulpit. You do not want to leave your hearer with fine feelings. You do want to leave your hearer with something substantial, and substantial is what the text offers. As ideal as the picture of the sojourner-exile’s rest is, it is, in fact, quite tangible. Listen to the description. The gospel in this reading is that the readers/hearers have arrived to the location where they are gathered together with the whole Church on earth, with the whole Church in Heaven, with saints and with angels and archangels and the whole company of Heaven (...do you hear the rest of that liturgical text ringing in your ears, “evermore praising Him and saying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’”?). In other words, the author of Hebrews describes gloriously what we experience every time we celebrate the Divine Service. Do not miss this opportunity to confess the sacrament of the altar and invite your people to the ongoing feast set for them by Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, to Jesus whose sprinkled blood is fed to the faithful for the forgiveness of their sins.
As you extend the invitation, recognize for your hearers (and for yourself!) that you are involved in enfolding everyone who receives your proclamation in the rolls of the great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), all who live by faith. Encourage them in Christian discipline! Comfort them with the gospel promise! And give God the gratitude for the privilege of proclaiming Him to His sojourner-exiles this week.
God bless you in your service!
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Hebrews 12:4-24 (25-29).
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Hebrews 12:4-24 (25-29).
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
