Hebrews 12:22-24

It is a glorious privilege the elect people of God enjoy today having been brought by His grace to a place and position even angels might envy!

Israel, when redeemed from Egypt’s bondage, came to Mount Sinai with all its darkness, fear, and thunder, and learned the terrifying unapproachableness of God (Hebrews 12:18-21). Mount Sinai was for them a revelation of the dark mystery of God, the fearsome majesty of God, and the dreadful judgment of the God of thrice-called holiness. For Israel at Sinai it was all terror, fright, and alarm! Even mighty Moses the servant of God turned pale and cried, “I exceedingly fear and quake”! As someone has expressed it, ‘The Law has its Sinai, but Faith has its Zion’, and that is where divine grace has brought us today. “Ye are come unto Mount Zion”. Hallelujah!

Yes, God’s elect today have not been brought to any earthly mount, no matter how awesome or holy that Mount might have been! Neither have they been redeemed by the blood of a sacrificial lamb from the flocks of earth - but nobler blood that flowed from richer veins has redeemed them from a worse tyrant than ever Pharaoh was and, led by a Deliverer greater far than Moses, they have been brought to another Mount, a heavenly Mount! Being brought there they learn the secret of God’s nearness, the joy of living with Him in the shadow of His Presence – they discover the security of His everlasting arms, and what it means to be carried in His bosom.

In the following meditation we shall follow the seven glorious verities we Christians have been brought to today. They were written originally by Paul to distinguish the sharp contrast between the superior things, or better things of the Christian dispensation over that of the old Jewish religion. It was meant to encourage and inspire the Jewish believers to see they had gained far more under grace than they had left behind when under law! In these seven glorious truths Paul is lifting these besieged and persecuted saints high above their earthly Sinai under Law, into the reality of a position they now occupied on the heights of that heavenly Zion under grace!