Mt. Sinai, Mt. Zion and the Consuming Fire of God

The famous second century heretic, Marcion, taught that the Old and New Testaments were totally incompatible. He believed that there was a radical discontinuity between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament – between the Creator and the Father of Jesus. So Marcion created a new Bible for his followers that had no Old Testament and a severely redacted New Testament that consisted only of an edited version of Luke and ten select and edited Pauline epistles [excluding the pastorals]. Though he was excommunicated early on, his destructive teaching lived on for nearly two centuries, and one can argue that it has never completely died out. Then in the 19th century with the rise of liberalism, it underwent a revival among those who wished to separate what they considered to be the crude and primitive parts of the Old Testament from the New. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the 18th and 19th century father of liberalism, said the Old Testament has a place in Christian heritage only by virtue of its connections with Christianity, but that is should be no more than an appendix of historical interest. Adolph Harnack argued that the Reformers should have dropped it from the canon of authoritative writings. Likewise, there are thousands today who have rejected the Old Testament either formally or in practice.

Amazingly, it was none other than the liberal Albert Schweitzer who pointed out the error of this kind of approach to Scripture, when he demonstrated that such thinking amounts to choosing aspects of God that fit one’s man-made theology. He claimed that men project their own thoughts about God back up to him and create a god of their own thinking. Anyone who is in touch with our modern culture knows that this kind of reasoning – Marcionism – is very much alive and well in the 21st century.

What does this have to do with us who hold both Testaments to be the inerrant, infallible Word of God? More than we might like to think or admit. We see this in many evangelical’s understanding of God. While it is true that the New Testament gives us a fuller revelation of God and that we no longer live under the Old Covenant, the God we worship is still the same God! But, sadly, many Christians today are so ignorant of their Bibles, especially the Old Testament, that they have a tragically sentimentalized idea of God – one that amounts to little more than a Deity who died to meet their needs – the sin question is either highly minimized or ignored altogether. The result is an incredible paradox of Christians who “know Jesus” but who have no idea who God is – unwitting Marcionites in reality.

The remedy for this travesty is, of course, the Bible, specifically Mt. Sinai in the Old Covenant and Mt. Zion in the New Covenant – each of which presents a vision or an aesthetic for understanding God. From Mt. Sinai we learn, in Moses’ words, that God is a consuming fire – “Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God … For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” [Deuteronomy 4:23, 24]. The vision is stupendous – a mountaintop blazing with “fire to the very heavens” [Deuteronomy 4:11] – cloaked with a deep darkness – lightning illuminating golden arteries in the clouds – celestial rams’ horns overlaying the thunder with mournful blasts – the ground shaking as God’s voice intones the Ten Commandments. God is transcendentally “other,” perfectly good and holy. He radiates wrath and judgment against sin. God cannot be approached. This is the vision for the heart of every believer – “the Lord your God is a consuming fire.” It is the corrective so needed in today’s church that has shamefully trivialized worship, turning it too often into a self-assured farce. Here God’s divine intention in creating Sinai is obvious because “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Flaming Mt. Sinai shows us God!

On the other hand, the other mountain, Mt. Zion of the New Testament, completes the picture. There we see God’s love as God the Son takes all of His people’s transgressions on Himself so that He “became sin” [2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:10, 11, 13] – writhing under its load like an impaled serpant [see Numbers 21:4-8]. There on the cross we see God the Son dying for our sins and extending forgiveness to all who will believe in Him, trusting in His work alone for their salvation. What a vision we are given from Calvary: God with His arms nailed wide as if to embrace all those who come to Him, His blood covering the earth, speaking a better word than the blood of Abel [Hebrews 12:24] – the consuming love of God. Mt. Zion, crowned by Golgotha, shows us God!

Both mountains – Sinai and Zion – reveal the one true God. Neither can be separated from the other. God is not the God of one hill but of both. Both visions must be held in blessed tension within our souls – consuming fire and consuming love. It is to this great twin-peaked God we come as we marathon onward to “Mt. Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God” [Hebrews 12:22]. The revelation is, of course, meant to shape our pilgrimage. How then are we to march? What are we to do? Obey and worship.

There are many reasons to obey God’s Word not the least of which is because it is unstoppably effectual: “See to it that you do not refuse Him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from Him who warns us from heaven?” [Hebrews 12:25]. In the first case, God’s earthly warning at Sinai first suffered subtle refusal by the Israelites when they “begged that no further word be spoken to them” [Hebrews 12:19; Exodus 20:19] – though their refusal there at Sinai was more from fear than it was from outright rejection of God. However, in the years that followed, they explicitly refused God’s Word by by repeated disobedience during the four decades of wandering in the wilderness. So grievous was their disobedience that Numbers 14:29 records that God pronounced judgment in that everyone who was twenty years old and older would die in the desert. And, indeed, none did escape except faithful Caleb and Joshua. More than a million corpses littered the desert.

Considering the inexorable penalty for disobeying God’s earthly message, how much greater the penalty should we disobey His heavenly message given to us through His Son? [see Hebrews 1:2]. Surely no one will escape! This, of course, has been the writer’s message all along. In 2:3, he warned, “How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” Later in 10:28, 29 he said much the same thing, emphasizing a greater punishment: “… How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that has sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?” The message could not have been said more plainly; we had better obey God’s Word because His threat that no one who disobeys will escape is ineluctably effectual. It is a done deal. No one who refuses the gospel will escape. Our God is a consuming fire!

If this alone is not reason sufficient to obey God’s Word then there is another, and that is His Word is final! “At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ The words ‘once more’ indicate the removal of what can be shaken – that is, created things – so that what cannot be shaken may remain” [Hebrews 12:26, 27]. The initial historical event when God’s voice shook the earth was at Mt. Sinai when He gave the Ten Commandments with a thunderous voice. Imagine how terrifying it must have been at the base of the mountain that day, the ground literally trembling beneath one’s feet in response to God’s audible Word. There certainly were no sleepers in the congregation that day! But there is an infinitely greater shaking coming, an eschatological cosmic shaking of the entire universe, and it too, will be triggered by God’s Word. Here the writer quotes God’s promise via the prophet Haggai – “Once more I will shake the not only the earth but also the heavens” [Hebrews 12:26] – indicating that every created thing will be shaken to utter disintegration. This is in accord with what the Scriptures teach us about the power of God’s Word. Genesis says that He literally spoke the universe into existence and thus a single Word from His mouth can end it.

Isaiah says of the future, “Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the Lord Almighty, in the day of His burning anger” [13:13]. And Peter identifies this with the Day of the Lord, “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 in it will be laid bare” [2 Peter 3:10]. It is incredible to even consider. All one hundred thousand million galaxies -- each containing at least that many stars – each galaxy at least one hundred light years across – will hear His Word and be snuffed out of existence. All with a single Word.

The reason for this is clearly spelled out, “So that what cannot be shaken may remain” [v. 27]. The people of God, who are a part of the order of those things that are unshakable, will survive. But everything else will be shaken and therefore purged. Everything that is wrong will be eradicated. No sin, no imperfection will remain. Then there will be a blessed reconstruction – “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” [Revelation 21:1]. To those who are obedient this is good news. And the writer means it to be a powerful encouragement to the beleaguered little church he writes, in which some feel as though their very lives are being shaken to pieces by Rome. On the other hand, to those who are ignoring God’s Word and drifting further away, this was a disquieting revelation and a challenge to obedience. But to all of us, it is a mighty call to obey God’s Word, because it is effectual and final. No Israelite who disobeyed God’s earthly Word survived the desert, and how much more will be the case with those whose disobey the heavenly Word given to us through Christ. God’s Word is effectual – it never fails. God’s Word is also final. It started the universe and it will stop it. So the forceful command to all of us pilgrims in v. 25 still applies, “See to it that you do not refuse Him who speaks.”

Lastly, the other great “to do” is worship: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverance and awe, for ‘our God is a consuming fire’” [Hebrews 12:28, 29]. It is difficult to see how our society could drift any further from this concept of God than where we are now. The awesome God of the Scriptures – a God who tolerates no other gods before Him, who forbids idolatry and who demands holiness from His people. Note our text well. It says “our God IS a consuming fire.” Not WAS a consuming fire! The God of Mt. Zion is the same God as the God of Mt. Sinai. God has not changed. When we come to worship, we must keep both mountains in view – the approachable Zion with its consuming love, and the unapproachable Sinai with its consuming fire – and then come in reverent boldness.