SERMON I. HEB. xii. 25. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh; for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven. THE Apostle has been considering the superior advantages of the Gospel, compared with those of the Jewish dispensation. Our text is an inference and serious reflection arising from it: "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh, &c." It is as if he had said, "Since the Gospel state of the Church so greatly surpasses that of the Jewish, take heed, as you value your immortal souls, that you by no means reject the dear Mediator of the new covenant, who, in the most condescending and endearing manner, speaks to you in his preached Gospel: for if they who resisted Moses, and refused to receive the laws of God at his mouth, did not escape the severest punishment, how impossible is it that any of us should escape, who despise the authority, and refuse the grace, of Him who is exalted in the highest heavens, and from thence proclaims to us the glad tidings of eternal salvation?" "Whose voice," adds the Apostle, of tremendous majesty, "then shook the earth," and made mount Sinai and the people round it to quake and tremble: but now he is doing what he hath promised by the prophet Haggai (ch. ii. 6.); "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven," and dissolve and remove the whole frame of the Jewish constitution, civil and religious. "And this word, yet once more," evidently signifies the removing of those things" of the Mosaic œconomy "that are shaken, as of things that are made" with hands, and appointed only for a time; "that those things," the glorious and unalterable ordinances and privileges of the Gospel which are introduced in their stead, and "which cannot be shaken, may remain" till the end of the world. Our text is a serious admonition, and reminds us of several most solemn truths-that in the ministration of the Gospel, the eternal Son of God speaks to us from heaven;-that it is possible some may refuse the offered grace of the Redeemer, and turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven ;that to refuse Him that speaketh from heaven, is to expose ourselves to the most certain and dreadful vengeance; and that it is the business of a gospel minister faithfully and affectionately to warn his hearers that they come not into so dreadful a condemnation. May the Lord the Spirit teach us all to understand these things in their just importance! 1. The first solemn truth we notice in our text is this, When the Gospel is preached, the eternal Son of God speaks to us from heaven. It is God in the person of his Son, Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, that is here intended. He it was who presided in that great solemnity of giving the Law: it was His voice of thunder and awful majesty that then shook the earth and it was He, who, by the ministry and mediation of Moses, afterwards appointed an earthly tabernacle, together with a multitude of carnal ordinances, which served only for the removal of external pollutions, and for consecration to external services. But now "he speaks from heaven." He has established a more spiritual and heavenly dispensation. He himself who is Lord of heaven and earth, in astonishing mercy, came down in his own person, to proclaim the grace of the Gospel, and make a free overture of the invaluable treasures of that new covenant, of which he is the Mediator, to condemned sinners. And since his glorious ascension he has commissioned his apostles and ordinary ministers in his name to "go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." "Now therefore," says the Apostle Paul in the discharge of this his commission, 2 Cor. v. 20. |