Hebrews 12:27

Hebrews 12:27

Things which cannot be shaken.

In this remarkable verse the writer goes to the heart of the philosophy of religion and of history. He declares that through the ages runs one ever-increasing purpose, and this purpose is the will of God.

I. It is said that when the King of Prussia visited the playing-fields of our Eton college he said, "Blessed is the land in which the old is ever mingled with the new, and the new ever mingled with the old." To cling to the old when the new demands our attention and our allegiance has been a constant error and indolence of mankind. They look back to the east when the west is calling them. The noontide is approaching, and they linger amid the shadows of the dawn. So it was with the Jews in the days of Paul and Apollos. Christ had come, and they could not get beyond Moses.

II. Apollos, if he was the author of this epistle to the Hebrews, tells us that there are systems, doctrines, institutions, organisations, which God continually shakes to the ground in the earthquakes of history. He does so because they have had their day and done their work, because they have become obstructive and obsolete. These things are but shadows, and men take them for the substance; these things are quivering, unreal, evanescent as the reflection of the bulrush upon the shimmering wave. But there are other things which are unshakable and eternal, as are the cedars of Lebanon, yea, as the very crags on which they stand. There are foundations which no earthquake can make to tremble, much less rock to the ground. Such was the case in the days of Christ and of the great Apostle Paul. The Jews thought that their temple, and their sacrifices, and their ritual, and their priesthood, and their Pentateuch legislation were perfect, eternal, and Divine. Christ taught them that they were imperfect and transitory, and vanishing away. That was why they crucified Him. The cross was the reward of Pharisaism to the Son of God; and as it was with the Master, so shall it be with the servants. Wherever any great human soul utters new truth, there is once more the shadow of Calvary. But God not only gives, but gives back; and what He gives back is better than what was taken away. The earthquake can rock no sure foundation. Shadows of theory, shadows of opinion, shadows of tradition, shadows of hierarchy and party, may be shaken; Christ remains.

F. W. Farrar, Sermons and Addresses in America,p. 128.

Things Passing and Things Permanent.

I. Let us, first, illustrate the law of things which is declared in the text. (1) The Jewish dispensation was shaken, but the great realities enclosed in it remain. The coming of Christ in the flesh was the signal for the overthrow of that venerable and magnificent system. That shaking broke to pieces a Divinely instituted system, and the wreck of it can be seen in a nation still scattered over the face of the whole world. But there were things intended to remain. The daily sacrifice was taken away, but the great sacrifice of Christ abides to the world's close. The Jewish nation has ceased to be the peculiar people of God, but there is a spiritual Israel, all of them priests that offer sacrifices continually in lives holy and acceptable through Jesus Christ. (2) The forms of human society are shaken, but the principles that regulate it remain. Let us have confidence in the fact that God made man for society; let us have faith in the experience of all past history; above all, let us have trust in the word of Christ that the things which cannot be shaken shall remain. Every chaos has its harmonising voice "Let there be light" every flood its ark and its rainbow. (3) Outward systems of religion are shaken, but the great truths of the Church of Christ remain. (4) The temporal circumstances of men are shaken, but the great possessions of the soul remain. (5) The material frame of man is shaken, but the immortal spirit remains. (6) The whole system of nature is shaken, but the new creation remains.

II. Consider some of the benefits that result from this law. Could not God, it may be asked, have made a permanent world at first, without requiring us to pass through this process of change, deepening often to ruin? After all, this may be asking why God has seen fit to make this world under the condition of time, for, wherever time enters, change, as far as we can see, must accompany it. This is a world into which moral disorder has entered, and the painful changes that touch us are the consequence of it the consequence of it and yet an aid to the cure of it. Without sin there might still have been mutation, but it would have wanted the sting and the shadow. We have lost through our fall the perception of spiritual and eternal realities, and we must be made to see them through painful contrasts. It is by this process, too, that we not only see the greatness of these permanent things, but learn to cleave to them as our portion. This at least is the purpose, and if God's Spirit stirs the heart when His providence shakes the outward life this will be the result. Still further, things that are shaken preserve those things that are to remain until their suitable time of manifestation. They are wrapped round them, and fall away when men are ready for their reception. It is Christ who shakes all things, but He stands unshaken. Amid tottering commonwealths, and conflicting creeds, and shifting scenes, and dying friends, and fainting hearts, He abides ever, and He shakes all beside that we may cling more closely to Himself alone. "To whom can we go but to Thee?" and as we come we shall find a peace and strength that are the pledge of eternal life laid up in Him, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever."

J. Ker, Sermons,2nd series, p. 320.

References: Hebrews 12:27. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 690; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 345.