Shaken and Unshakable
Scripture Reading: Hebrews 12:25-29
This text is a marvelous interweaving together of warning and promise. “Don’t refuse him who is speaking…Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens…our God is a consuming fire.” Warning.
“Be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…” Promise.
We live on a trembling planet. We stand on unstable ground. We live around, work with, and even worship with shaky people. Yet, for those in Christ, we are simultaneously now in and also anticipating an unshakable kingdom. It is already and not yet. The kingdoms of this world must necessarily be shaken. Their economies, governmental structures, cultural systems…everything must rattle and totter because God is the One who shakes them. They cannot resist Him. They are crumbling and the kingdom of God still stands.
John Calvin therefore prayed:
Grant, Almighty God, that as you constantly remind us in your Word, and have taught us by so many examples, that there is nothing permanent in this world, but that the things which seem the firmest tend to ruin, and instantly fall and of themselves vanish away, when by your breath you shake that strength in which men trust – O grant that we, being really subdued and humbled, may not rely on earthly things, but raise up our hearts and or thoughts to heaven, and there fix the anchor of our hope; and may all our thoughts abide there until at length when you have led us through our course on earth, we shall be gathered into that celestial kingdom which has been obtained for us by the blood of your only-begotten Son.
