Kootenai Church: Hebrews

I was having a conversation this last week with somebody after last week's sermon, and they said that sometimes they feel a bit sorry for the Old Testament saints in what they encountered and what they knew about God and how they experienced God compared to the richness and the fullness that we enjoy as New Testament saints. And there is certainly something to that. What they understood was limited compared to ours. The revelation that they had was less than what we enjoy, and the truth that they had available to them was less than what we have available to us. And that is true. When we think about the richness of what we have in Jesus Christ and we compare that with the limited understanding of Old Testament saints and how they related to God, we can only be thankful that we do not live under that Old Testament dispensation. We can only be thankful that we have the wealth of understanding and the depth of revelation that has been provided to us.
But while we acknowledge that, we also have to recognize that though they realized and understood and had far less revelation and truth than we have today and though their relationship with God was less clear and less certain than what we have and their understanding of redemptive truth was limited compared to us, what they did have was entirely sufficient for them to live God-honoring and obedient and faithful lives. What they had revealed to them was sufficient revelation for them to obey God and to relate to Him as He intended and for them to live in obedience to Him. It was everything that God wanted to give to them for that period of time. So, yes, their understanding was less, but what they had and what they understood was sufficient for them to live and walk in obedience to God.
The fact that those things are so much clearer to you and I just means, among other things, that you and I are far more accountable for the truth that has been delivered to us. It means that with greater revelation comes greater responsibility. With greater understanding comes a greater necessity to make sure that we are heeding the words in verse 25 of Hebrews 12 that we “do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from Heaven.”
And last week we looked at the background of this warning passage which begins at verse 18 and goes through the end of this chapter. And we looked at the event at Sinai from Exodus 19 and 20. If you weren't here for that, you can go back and review that passage on your own. We saw an intended contrast in the text, verse 18 and verse 22. “You have not come to a mountain that can be touched” (v. 18). Verse 22: “But you have come to Mount Zion.” So there is a comparison here between two different mountains, Sinai and Zion. Sinai being a symbol of God's judgment, His law, His terrifying presence, His holiness, His righteousness, His wrath, His moral and legal expectations for all of humanity. And then Mount Zion, a different mountain, which is symbolized by all of the spiritual realities described in verses 22–24. The difference between these two mountains is that we have gone from Sinai, trembling before God's law, to Zion, rejoicing in His holy presence, because of a third mountain, Calvary, which stands in the middle of those, which takes away the demands of the law and atones for our guilt before God's law so that we can be brought into His presence, having our sins forgiven, and that we can enjoy His presence forever and ever with the saints on Mount Zion.
So last week we looked at the encounter at Sinai. Today we're going to do something a little different. We're going to come back and, beginning at verses 18–21, we're going to look at three contrasts here between these two mountains, three contrasts between Sinai and Zion. And then starting next week we're going to go through verses 22–24 and we're going to look at those seven blessings that are listed there. What is this myriad of angels? What is the heavenly Jerusalem? What is this general assembly mentioned in verse 23? What is the church of the firstborn? Who is enrolled in Heaven? Who are the spirits of the righteous made perfect, etc.
So today we're going to look at two contrasts between these two mountains. And here are the two contrasts between these, which really help set up and help us to understand the depth of the riches that we have been provided in Jesus Christ. The first contrast is the physical with the spiritual. Second, there is a contrast here between the terror of the law and the assurances of grace. And then the third contrast is between God as distant under the law and then God as near to us in Jesus Christ. The physical with the spiritual, the terror of the law versus the assurance of grace, and then God at a distance under the old covenant and God brought near to us under the new covenant in Jesus Christ. Those are the three contrasts. Now, there are a few other contrasts that are also here mentioned and intended, but these three will kind of stand as category headings, if you will. And we could sum up some other contrasts underneath of these three. But if we just think in terms of these three categories and these three contrasts, then it will help us to see the author's intention here.
Let's begin first with the contrast between the physical with the spiritual. You'll notice in verse 18 if you have the NASB or a translation that does this for you, you'll notice in that verse, verse 18, that the words a mountain are in italics. “For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind.” You'll notice if you have a translation that italicizes words that are not in the original text that those words are italicized because the words for “a mountain” are not in the original text. Those italics indicate words that were added by the translator for the purpose of making something clear in the text, something that is intended.
Now, obviously, the author does intend for us to understand a mountain in verse 18 since he describes that mountain down in verse 20: “If even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned.” And the description that he gives in verse 18—the blazing fire, the darkness, the gloom, the whirlwind, the blast of the trumpet, and the words with the command, etc.—that all comes from Exodus 19 and 20, which was at the scene of Mount Sinai. So the author has in mind a mountain in verse 19, and the authors translate it, “You have not come to a mountain that can be touched.”
But again, the mountain is not mentioned in the original. So the sense is this: You have not come to that which can be touched. You have not come to the physical. You have not come to the tactile, the tangible, that which can be seen by sight, that which can be handled with the hands. That is not the covenant into which we have been brought. You have not come to that which is touchable. Instead, we've come to something that is untouchable, something that is intangible. In fact, that would be a good way of summarizing some of the other contrasts here, the earthly with the spiritual or the earthly with the heavenly.
Now, there is no doubt that what the author intends here is Sinai. And Sinai was the place where they witnessed and experienced all of the phenomena that are described in verse 18—the whirlwind, the gloom, the darkness, the massive fire on top of that mountain, the trembling and the quaking of the land, that voice that made them terrified at Mount Sinai. They experienced all of that. Those were things which could be smelled, things that could be seen, things that could be felt, things that could be heard. Sinai was a very tangible experience. But you, in the new covenant, you have not come to the touchable. You have not been brought to that which can be physically grasped. All of the experiences at Sinai were sensory experiences—sight, sound, feel, and smell.
And then you contrast that with Zion, and look down in verses 22–24. Which of these can you sense with any of your five senses? The city of the living God? Can you see that now? You can't see that now, can you? How about the myriad of angels? Do you see that? Can you touch that? What does an angel smell like? Do you know? Do angels have scent? You don't know that. The general assembly, those enrolled in Heaven—how many of you have seen the role that's going to be called up yonder when you're there? Anybody seen that? You haven't seen that. You haven't touched that. You haven't heard that voice. You haven't seen the spirits of the righteous made perfect. You have not seen Jesus. The eye of faith has beheld these things, but your physical eyes have not. And you haven't seen or smelt or felt the sprinkling of the blood. Those are all spiritual realities. Those are all spiritual things that are true of the reality into which we have been brought, things that are not available to our senses.
So there are a number of contrasts or a number of ways that we could describe this contrast. He is describing here the earthly with the heavenly. Sinai was an earthly mountain. Zion is a heavenly mountain, or at least Mount Zion, which is a physical mountain on which Jerusalem is built, one of the mountains upon which the city of Jerusalem is built, is a physical reality, but in Scripture it stands for something beyond that. It stands for a spiritual reality. And that is really what he is contrasting here. The physical with the spiritual, or the earthly with the heavenly, the tangible with the intangible, the temporal, the temporary, with the eternal. In other words, Sinai didn't last forever, did it? You can go to Sinai today, but you won't see the blazing fire and the smoke and hear the sound or any of that. That was all a temporal and a temporary experience, a sensory experience. But Zion, the realities in verses 22–24, these are eternal. The blood sprinkled, which is better than the blood of Abel, signifies a spiritual and eternal reality, something that does not pass away. If your name is enrolled in Heaven, that is an eternal thing. That doesn't go away. Sinai vanished after a period of time. Not the mountain, but the tangible and tactile experiences of it vanished after a period of time. But the spiritual realities listed in verses 22–24, those continue, and those are eternal realities.
He is contrasting the seen with the unseen. He is contrasting sight with faith. Now, do not miss the fact that the argument of the author is that what you have, which cannot be touched, which cannot be heard, which cannot be smelt, and which cannot be felt, is better than all of the old stuff, which could be. That's the argument. Don't miss it. What you have been given, things which cannot be detected by the senses, is better, and not just marginally better but far superior, to all of those things which could be sensed with the senses. You have not come to what can be touched. Instead, you have come to what cannot be touched. And what cannot be touched is greater by far, by an exceeding measure, than anything that could be touched under the old covenant.
We prefer sight to faith. We're creatures like that. We prefer sight to faith. We prefer—maybe not everybody in this room—but instinctively, humanity prefers the audible voice of God to the written Word of God. You ask 90 percent of evangelicals, “Would you rather have for you the book of Amos or an audible voice?” and they'll take the audible voice a hundred times out of a hundred, asking just your garden-variety evangelical. But what we have been given, which is spiritual in nature, is greater than anything that we could be given which is physical in nature under the old covenant. We would prefer to see the terror of blazing fire and smoke and thunder than to experience God in the quiet solitude of prayer. We would experience the sensational.
This is why, in fact, people in charismatic circles seek after lying signs and wonders and will follow after any televangelist charlatan who is willing to promise them miracles and sensational spectacular events just like happened in the New Testament. They can make bank by promising people to do all kinds of miracles, just like in the New Testament. Because people want to see the angel feathers falling out of the ducts, the air vents, and they want to see gold fillings in their teeth, and they want to see limbs being lengthened, and they want to see people brought up onto the stage in a wheelchair and then stand up and walk across the stage before they collapse into another chair and have their healing announced before everybody on TV. That's what we want to see. That's the instinct within us. We desire the tactile, the physical, over the spiritual realities.
This is why liturgy is so appealing to so many people, especially if you grow up in a church with all kinds of smells, all kinds of bells, all kinds of sounds, all kinds of things. You'll notice that during our worship, we didn't have somebody walking around the perimeter of the sanctuary jiggling a little incense burner or whatever you would call those things, bringing the right scent in here to bring in the atmosphere. We didn't have anybody ringing bells and chimes and stuff like that to sort of get us into the mood. There is something alluring about the things that we can see and hear and touch and taste that are tactile. And by the way, just as an aside, the Lord has not left us without anything that appeals to the senses because every few weeks we partake of the Lord's table, which is intended to give us something to touch and to see and to taste and to feel that reminds us of His spiritual presence.
But compared to what we have under the old covenant, we got nothing. Under the old covenant, they had all that. And this is why the Hebrew Christians of the first century would have been so inclined to go back to their Old Testament Judaism, because they came out of the temple with the sacrifices where they would go out and they would grab their own lamb and they would bring that down to the temple and they would lay their hands on that lamb and then turn it over to the priest. And then they would watch as the priest killed that animal in their stead and they burned the flesh and they burned the incense and the priest did his thing and then audibly interceded for the people who had brought that sacrifice to him. And those are all things that they could see and experience. They could smell the incense, they could smell the burning meat, they could smell the blood. They could see it, they could feel it. They grabbed ahold of that lamb. They did something. They brought it there to the temple. And then everything about their experience was appealing to those five senses.
And then they come out of that and they come into Christianity where we sit and we sing and we take the Lord's supper. And that just—you’d feel like a ship without a rudder. You’d feel like you're naked. I've been stripped of everything that's meaningful to me, everything that was proof to me of my standing before God. And so the original audience would have had this question: how do I know that I am accepted before God if I haven't brought an animal sacrifice and I haven't heard it bleat its last bleating in my ears and I haven't watched the priest do that and then heard that priest intercede for me. And the argument of the author of Hebrews is that another sacrifice which you never saw was offered by Somebody you have never met in a place where most likely you have never visited, and He intercedes for you now in a place that you have never seen, with words that you have never heard, and that is better than all of those physical things under the old covenant, far superior.
See, there's a contrast here between the spiritual and the physical. The spiritual realities are as substantive and solid to the eyes of faith as the physical realities are to the eyes of flesh. The believer is called to embrace by faith a sacrifice that he has never touched, he has never seen, and he has never witnessed. And listen, you and I are called to bank the well-being of our eternal soul upon that sacrifice and to lay hold of it by faith. That is superior to everything under the old covenant, that faith. That is hard to grasp, isn't it? The author is saying you've not come to that which can be touched, you have something far better, something which cannot be touched.
The second contrast is between the terror of the law and the assurance of grace. There is one word that you would use to describe Sinai, and it is terrifying. Look at verse 18: a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and whirlwind and the blast of the trumpet and the sound of words which was such that those who heard those words begged that no further word be spoken to them. Remember, we saw that last week in Exodus 20.
18 All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance.
19 Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.” (Exod. 20:18–19 NASB)
They had been warned about touching that mountain. They could not approach that mountain. A boundary was set around it, and the people could go no further. And any beast that wandered beyond that boundary and any person that stepped beyond that boundary was to be executed. And to the people who executed them, you remember the instruction was they shall be stoned or shot through. You were not even allowed to touch the one who had transgressed God's boundary around that mountain. Not only were you not supposed to go across the boundary, but if anybody else did, you weren't to touch them. You were to kill them and make sure that you killed them, executed them, for that crime of crossing God's boundary without touching them yourselves. You did not want to be defiled by somebody who had violated the boundary around that mountain. Everything about that mountain was terrifying.
They had been warned about touching the mountain. They had been warned about beasts going beyond it. They couldn't approach unto God to gaze upon Him. They weren't to look at Him as a curiosity and try and just get a glimpse of Him in some way. The people were at a distance and they were not allowed to approach and they were warned about approaching. So everything about that mountain was terrifying, horrifying. The people stood at a distance and they trembled when they saw that.
Here's my question for you. Couldn't God have done that in a way that was a little less terrifying? He could have done it like a whispering voice. He could have just had a little bit of smoke, like a campfire smoke, or even something as big as the pillar that had led them around in the wilderness and through the Red Sea. God could have done something like that, a pillar of fire or a pillar of smoke. But everything about this was intended to instill in them fear. They were to fear God. In a right way, they were to fear God. They were to understand the wording of Hebrews 10:31: “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” They were intended to stand at Sinai, at the base of that mountain where the law of God was given, and to tremble before it and to say to themselves, “This is the God with whom we have to do, and if we violate this law that He has given to us, our sin would demand the justice of execution by His wrath. That is what our sin demands.” That's what they were to understand.
And the people were fearful and should be fearful because violating that law would mean that they would stand before that holy and righteous God. So the effect of it was to thunder from Sinai and to show them God's power, that He was to be feared, that He is holy, that He is righteous, that He is just, and to remind them that they are not. That is the terror of Sinai.
Now if that is the terror of Sinai, imagine the terror on the last day when sinners and rebels will stand in the presence of that God made flesh and they see His eyes of flaming fire, a sword in His mouth, and He comes back to judge and to wage war. What will be the terror of unredeemed sinners on that day? They will use the wording of Revelation 6 and they will say “to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’” (Rev. 6:16–17)
Revelation 19:11: He will come on “a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.”
Revelation 20:11: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.”
When sinners realize that they have to stand before the One whose name they have blasphemed and whose grace they have spurned and whose righteousness they have sinned against and that they are without a sacrifice and they're without atonement and all they have in the courtroom of God's justice is the Judge and themselves and their guilty record, with no payment for their sin, their terror will make Sinai look like a birthday party with a party clown. They will be so terrified and so horrified that they will be undone because Sinai is only a glimpse of the kind of judgment that is to come. People cried out for a mediator in the presence of Moses. They said, “Let not the Lord speak to us. You speak to us. We'll take your words, but we cannot bear that voice.”
And so it will be on the day of judgment when Jesus Christ says the word and all the dead, the great and the small, are raised and stand before Him for that final judgment. On that final day, there will be no defense attorney, no one to plead their case, and the sinner will be alone with their sin before the undiluted fury and wrath of a holy God. This is why, if you have never trusted Jesus Christ for salvation, you must turn from your sin and repent and believe upon Him for salvation. For there is coming a day when He will judge the living and the dead according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you do not have a sin-bearer on that day, you will stand there in His presence and give an account for every word you have spoken, every deed you have done, every thought you have ever considered, and you will do so in the presence of One who is infinitely holy and infinitely righteous and knows your every deed from before you ever committed those transgressions and those crimes.
Sinai is a mountain of God's justice and judgment. And the law demands justice for our sin. The law condemns us, and it pronounces us guilty. But listen, it does something more than that. And it does something even worse than that. The law not only pronounces us guilty, but the law demonstrates that we have no ability to keep the law or to make ourselves right in the sight of God. The law offers no hope, not only for justification, but the law offers no hope for sanctification either, to be made holy and righteous in His presence. There's no ability. The law is powerless to do that. It is powerless to take away our sin. It is powerless to motivate obedient living. It is powerless to pay the price for our previous sins. And it is powerless to motivate us and encourage us and empower us to live holy lives from this day forward. The law can do none of those things. All that Sinai does is make us tremble in the presence of a holy God.
We need something more. We need a mediator. We need someone to stand between a holy God and His righteousness and us and our sinfulness. We need someone who is able, in the words of Job, to lay their hand upon Yahweh and their hand upon us and to reconcile us together because every one of us has violated this law. We need a mediator. This is where verse 24 comes in. We have been brought to Jesus and to the sprinkled blood. He's the mediator of the new covenant. And we've been brought to this blood which is sprinkled and speaks better than the blood of Abel. That is why there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. All the weight of our sin is taken away in Jesus Christ and we are brought to Mount Zion and we are brought there by the sacrifice of that mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, because of His righteousness.
We needed somebody who was just to die in the place of the unjust, somebody who was righteous to stand in the stead of the unrighteous and to bear the wrath for all of their unrighteousness and then to provide for them His own righteousness. And this is what Jesus Christ has done in the gospel. And this is what justification is. It's the taking away of our sin and the giving us of His righteousness so that His perfect life is credited to our account and our sinful, rebellious, transgressive life is credited to His account. So He bears all of the wrath for our sin, gives us all of His righteousness, and this is all by grace. So you and I have come to something that is greater, something that is beautiful, something that is righteous, something that's far better than anything provided under the old covenant.
That's the second contrast, and that brings us to the third contrast, which is the contrast between God as distant under the law but near in Jesus Christ. The purpose of all of that phenomena in verses 18–19, the purpose of it is intended to show that God was unapproachable. God was unapproachable. Not unapproachable because of something in Him but unapproachable because of something in us. We could not come to Him. We could not approach unto Him. People had to prepare themselves to even be at that mountain. Do you remember what we looked at last week? No marital relations for three days after this, prepare in three days, you're going to see God. Wash your clothes, wash yourself, cleanse yourself from your evil ways. There was to be repentance and humility. There was to be a consecration and a pursuit of holiness for three days just for the people to look at the mountain, just for the people to be there for the giving of the law. They weren't to approach unto God in any way because of the boundary that was around the mountain. So people and animals could not approach, and anybody was to be executed who tried to approach or gaze unto God.
And then there was the warning in Exodus 19 that if the priest or any of the people came in and passed that boundary and wanted to approach unto God, that God Himself would break out against them. So holy was He, so righteous was He that the mere infraction of His law by transgressing that boundary, God Himself would pour out His wrath and break out against the people. Such was His wrath, such was His distance from the people.
Now why was God distant? Why was He unapproachable? Just had a lot of things going on? Not really the time to meet with people so He met with Moses and really couldn't fit anybody else into His calendar? Is that why He was unapproachable? Was He unapproachable because He's just not a people person, didn't like hanging out with large crowds? Is that why He was unapproachable? In Exodus 19:3–4, “Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself.”’” It's not that God is not a people person, didn't want people around. It's that God had brought this nation of people out to Himself, but sin was a barrier, and sin had to be dealt with on certain terms. So that giving of the law not only revealed the holiness and the righteousness of God, but it also made a way by which people could approach God, that is, through a sacrifice. Man is sinful, and because he is sinful, he cannot stand before God. Because of our guilt, we shall not enter in. We cannot approach Him because His holiness is so pure, and our sin is so polluting that that barrier exists for our own good and because God cannot have any unclean thing enter into His presence. And so there was this distance under the old covenant.
But you remember that God had made all of this into an object lesson. And the entire law was part of an object lesson which demonstrated just how unapproachable God was because of our transgressions and our sins. So a way had to be made for sin to be dealt with, and so a remedy was provided. And that was the Day of Atonement. On top of all the other sacrifices and offerings that were part of the nation of Israel's law and their ceremonial law and their religious worship, there was that Day of Atonement. And you remember what happened on the one Day of Atonement, one day every calendar year, only one man could go back to the place where God was, between the cherubim on the ark over the mercy seat. That's where God was and the visible manifestation of that behind the veil, inside the tabernacle. And only one person got to go back there on one day of the year, and his instructions were very specific: you offer the sacrifice, you bring the blood back behind the veil, and you apply it to the mercy seat to make atonement for the sins of My people.
That whole drama was intended to show that our sin separates us from God and God made provision for all of those sins to be taken away. It had to be by the blood of a sacrifice and through a high priest who would apply that blood over the broken commandments inside the ark of the covenant. The symbolism there is rich. And all of it was intended to show that God is distant, that He is far away in terms of our sins that have alienated us from Him. And now in the new covenant, because of the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel, you and I have been brought near.
Ephesians 2:13: “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
Colossians 1:21–22: “You were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
Everything under the old covenant, everything that you could touch, reminded you, “I am a sinner, and I cannot approach God. Blood must be shed to pay the price for my approach unto God.” But now in Jesus Christ, you've been brought near, you've been reconciled. Now you've come to the city of God. Now you've come to the heavenly Jerusalem. Now you've been welcomed into the presence of angels, and not the angels that met at Sinai, that were mediators of that old covenant, that thundered from Heaven, but now you have been brought into the company of angels. And you have come to God, the Judge of all, and now we don't fear judgment. Now we don't fear wrath. Why? Because the condemnation has been taken away for all who are in Jesus Christ.
Now we have come to these spiritual realities. God is at Zion, God is approachable, and at Zion we come to Him freely, we come to Him fully, we come to Him without condemnation, we come to Him without shame, we come to Him without reproach. Why? Because all of our condemnation and shame and reproach and sin and wrath has been borne by another. So now in the cup of God's wrath there is no wrath to pour out on you if you are in Christ Jesus. None. Because the full price of your sin has been paid in Jesus Christ because God loved you that much. And before the foundation of the world, He chose you in Christ that He might display in you and on you the riches of His grace for all of eternity. You, being dead in your trespasses and sins, unable to please God, unable to approach Him, at a distance, alienated from His grace, and He has demanded that you do nothing to make up for your sin, to pay back that price, or to bear that wrath. But instead He has sent another, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came into this world and lived a perfect life and has borne that wrath in your place, in your stead, in full, forever. And now the price has been paid and the wrath has been poured out. Every last bit of God's wrath for the sin of His elect has been poured out on Christ. So there is nothing left for you to drink. Nothing. That's good news.
Now there is nothing for you but grace, nothing for you but love. And now you're welcomed in, arms wide open, the veil torn in two, the gates of Heaven thrown open, the entryway proclaimed. And you are commanded and you are told and you are encouraged to draw nigh unto Him and come unto Him. Be saved, all you ends of the earth. Jew, gentile, man, woman, slave, free, doesn't matter. Come unto Him and be saved. Atonement has been made. There is payment in Jesus Christ sufficient for the sins of any and all who will trust in Him. And if you will come to Him, you will find your sins are taken away completely.
So now what do we do? Hebrews 10:19:
19 Brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:19–22 NASB)
Let us draw near in full assurance of faith, full confidence. God welcomes you in. He brings you in. He draws you near. He removes the barrier that separated you from Him. And then He welcomes you, not as a slightly hostile Judge, but as a Father who is longing and welcoming His children to come into His presence.
And how long can you stay there? As long as you want. And in Zion, in the new heavens and the New Earth, in His kingdom, when we finally step into His presence, guess what. It's nothing but the unmitigated presence of God for all of eternity. It is nothing but endless joy. It is nothing but perfect peace, perfect love, perfect fulfillment without any thought at all to that which separated us from Him in the beginning. That will never enter into His mind in terms of His relationship with us. And we will remember all of our sin and the weight of it, and we will praise and honor and glorify Him forever because He has taken it away.
The riches in Jesus Christ: He has removed the terror of the law and He has given us the assurance of grace. He has brought us near to God who once were far off, a God who was before because of our sins separated from us. That is the riches of what we have been given that we cannot touch. Is that better or worse than all the stuff you could touch? Far better. You haven't come to that which is touchable. You come to something far greater, something which cannot be touched, something that is timeless, something that is eternal, and something that will last forever.