Sermon Audio: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ministrybymail

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.

For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. (For they could not endure what was commanded: “And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.” And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.”)

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

Dearly Beloved Fellow Believers,

I wonder if any of you remember the Irving Berlin song from years ago that goes like this: “When I’m worried and I can’t sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep. And I fall asleep, counting my blessings.” We recognize the wisdom in those simple words: if you are having trouble sleeping, it is much better to think of your blessings than to think of your troubles. And it should not be difficult for any of us to come up with a list of blessings to count, a list long enough to last until we fell asleep.

It isn’t only when we are having trouble sleeping that it is good for us to count our blessings. It is always helpful to remember how many good things we have. But counting blessings takes some deliberate effort on our part; we have to make a of point of doing it. We tend to dwell on our problems. We tend to dwell on what we don’t have, what is missing from our lives, rather than on what we have.

Realizing the extent of our blessings is especially appropriate for us as God’s children. We of all people have been the most richly blessed, with spiritual blessings above all. The remembrance of them helps to put the other things in our life into perspective. It is right for us to remember what we have, to be content, and to praise God rather than to complain or be despondent.

Today’s text lays out before us what we have in Jesus Christ. It’s a glorious recital of our spiritual blessings, one of the most magnificent such sections in all the Bible. It exclaims to us who may tend to be downcast or despairing,

I. That you may not foolishly trade it away.

The writer to the Hebrews invites his readers to weigh what they have because they were in danger of foolishly giving it up. He shows us what we have so that we don’t make what would be the most tragic error.

Our text warns us by means of the Old Testament Bible history lesson of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau, in which one of the brothers traded away something of great value for something of little value. “Don’t be like Esau,” the writer says. He calls him a fornicator, a sexually immoral person. Now if we go back to Genesis and read what it says there about Esau, we don’t find anything explicit about his being a sexually immoral person. But we do read about how Esau took two wives, both of them from the neighboring Hittite people. The narrative says these two daughters-in-law were a source of grief to Esau’s parents, Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 26:34,35). We understand that to mean that Esau’s wives were ungodly women and that this showed itself in the way they conducted themselves, the way they talked, the way they raised their children. Because of their ungodly way of life, they were a constant vexation to Esau’s godly, believing parents. Why did Esau choose such women? No doubt it was for the same reason that young men and young women from Christian homes today sometimes choose ungodly husbands and wives: they find them attractive. The picture we get of Esau was of a man who was drawn to women he found physically attractive and that he cared nothing about whether they were believing, godly, and upright. Those qualities just didn’t matter to him.

This fits with the other word that the writer here applies to Esau: profane; that is, godless. He was concerned only about earthly things like hunting, eating, and sleeping. Nothing wrong with those things, of course, but Esau’s problem was that anything higher than those things simply didn’t register with him. He cared nothing for God, didn’t worship, didn’t pray, didn’t give thanks, didn’t care whether he pleased God or not. One incident in Esau’s life especially shows this; the writer refers to it here: he sold his birthright for one serving of food.

Genesis tells the complete story. One day Esau came in from the field, exhausted from a hard day’s work. Jacob his brother had cooked some stew, so Esau asked him for some of it. Jacob said he would give Esau some of the stew, if in exchange Esau would relinquish to him his rights as the firstborn in their family. Esau said that he was tired and hungry, so what good to him was his birthright anyway? He agreed to give it to Jacob in exchange for a helping of stew. In Genesis it says that Esau “despised his birthright” (Gen. 25:34). This was no small thing, especially when we remember that Esau was the firstborn in the family that was in the Messianic line. It was from their descendants that the Christ was to come, for God had promised this to Abraham. But to Esau none of that mattered.

Many have made a foolish bargain similar to Esau’s. There are many who have traded away what they had in Christ for something of little value. I say, little value, for notice that what Esau traded for wasn’t something of no value at all; he was hungry and tired and needed something to eat. So also, the things for which people sometimes trade away their blessings are often things they need: an education, a career, a spouse. These are God-pleasing things, but we need to go after them in a God-pleasing way. The problem arises when people, like Esau, begin to despise what they have in Christ. The blessings of the Christian faith begin to look small, unimportant, things to be taken for granted rather than things to be treasured and zealously guarded.

Trades made in spiritual things are not always so obvious. People don’t usually wake up one day and decide to renounce the Christian faith in favor of something else. Those who give up what they have in Christ usually don’t do it all at once; they trade it away a little bit at a time. And they may imagine that they aren’t trading away anything at all; they may insist that they aren’t giving up anything. It’s just that right now something else has to take priority. Later—they tell themselves—they will come back to the Lord, hear His word, receive the Sacrament. And the danger isn’t only to those who quit coming to church. There may well be those also who come to church on Sunday, but their heart is no longer in it. They aren’t listening to the word. Their life with the Lord is deteriorating, but this may remain largely hidden, at least for a time.

Because the temptation to trade away what we have in Christ is often a subtle one, great care is in order. Our text helps wake us up and bring us to see these matters clearly.

II. That you may marvel at it and rejoice in it.

Our best defense against the danger of trading away our blessings in Christ is to look at what we have, to see the value of what we have, to marvel at what we have, and to rejoice in it. This our text leads us to do. It not only presents to us the glory of what we Christians possess in Christ, it places these things in contrast to the alternative. The first readers of these words were Jewish Christians who were in danger of forsaking Christ and going back to the synagogue where Christ had been rejected. So, the writer contrasts the blessings of Christ with the Old Testament Law apart from Christ. He presents the contrast between these two alternatives using the picture of two mountains, Mount Sinai and Mount Zion.

He doesn’t mention Mount Sinai by name but the mountain that he describes here is most certainly Sinai, for that is where God gave His people the Law through Moses. The writer invites his readers to recall the scene at that mountain. He reminds them of what it was like for their ancestors who were present at that great event. It was terrifying: “blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words.” “The voice” was the voice of God speaking to the people. The sound of God’s voice was so frightening that the people pleaded with God not to speak to them directly. The writer’s point is that if you forsake Jesus Christ what you’re left with is the prospect of facing the holy God as a sinner, by yourself, on your own.

In contrast to that, our text presents the blessings of Christ as another mountain: Mount Zion. Mount Zion was one of the hills on which the city of Jerusalem was built. But here it is clearly figurative, for it is not a mountain “that may be touched,” not an earthly city but “the heavenly Jerusalem.” Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are already part of a heavenly city. In other words, we have fellowship with God, we live in His presence and under His favor. This is so because in Christ we have the forgiveness of our sins and are reconciled to God. As companions in the heavenly Jerusalem we have “an innumerable company of angels.” They are God’s agents for our protection as we daily pass through the dangers of life in this fallen world. We are part of “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” We are among those whom God Himself recognizes as His people. We are in the presence of “God the Judge of all,” which starts to sound frightening again. But, in its context here, it isn’t meant to frighten, for in the heavenly Jerusalem are “the spirits of just men made perfect,” those who believe in Jesus who is here called “the Mediator of the new covenant.” In Jesus we have a Mediator who stands between us sinners and the Holy God. Without Him we could never stand in God’s presence or live with Him in heaven. But with Him as our Mediator we can stand in God’s presence and live with Him.

Look what is ours! With Jesus we have an eternal place with God in the company of saints and angels. As long as we have this clearly in view, we will not want to trade it for anything but zealously guard it and hold onto it. Amen.

—Rev. John Klatt

Watertown, SD

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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.