²⁶ And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.”

We left off in verse 24 with being told of having come to a new Jerusalem and to Jesus as the mediator of the new covenant. I suppose one could say that such wording does not indicate actual salvation, but that the readers have been confronted with the truth of these things. In fact, any non-believer coming into a meeting of a local church has indeed entered into the sphere of hearing the good news of God’s grace in Christ and the message of forgiveness and righteousness and sanctification that is not law based, but rests in the perfect, completed, unique sacrifice of Christ. In a sense, just as the unbelieving spouse is “sanctified” through the believing spouse (1 Cor 7:14) , so unbelievers attending church are in a special position when they are part of the congregation of believers.

In verse 25, the tone abruptly changes, as we have already seen. Unbelievers are warned because the consequence of rejecting that message, to which they are in such close proximity, will bring the judgment of God. The law made no one perfect—so if one rejects the message of God’s new way of forgiveness in Christ, and His mediatorship as a priest in the order of Melchizedek who lives forever, then that person who rejects this message is left to God’s judgment which the law dictates. And if there is judgment for failing to live up to God’s standards in the law, how much more is there judgment for rejecting God’s solution – Christ as our necessary and sufficient sacrifice?

Now, in verses 26-27 we are reminded of the natural phenomenon that occurred when Moses received the Law from God. When God spoke, the earth trembled, “Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently” (Ex 19:18). Even when Isaiah envisioned the Lord, high and lifted up, he saw that “…the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke” (Is 6:4).

Quoting from Haggai 2:6, we are directed to look forward to the future time of God’s judgment when again He will engage. We humans are arrested with the so-called “acts of God” that overwhelm the senses. Nothing will do that more than an earthquake. We are rendered helpless before God, in the same way as we are helpless physically in the face of an earthquake. God will again speak, and there will not only be an earthquake, but also a heavenly quake.

Lord, in faith I tremble before You—with confidence and security.