The Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken
Faith in the Public Square • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
Introduction
We've been together through four lessons now.
Thursday we sat with exiles in Babylon.
Friday we sat with exiles scattered across the Roman empire.
Last night we talked about how we speak.
This morning we talked about how we hold truth and tears together.
Now, in worship, we land somewhere different. We land at home.
Let’s turn to Hebrews 12:
25 See to it that you do not reject the one who speaks. For if they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth, even less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven.
26 His voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised, Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.
27 This expression, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what is not shaken might remain.
The writer of Hebrews is quoting Haggai. Haggai 2:6.
Spoken to a people who had just come back from exile and were trying to rebuild a temple that looked like nothing compared to the one they'd lost.
And God's word to them was, I am going to shake everything. One more time.
The writer of Hebrews picks that up and says, that shaking is happening.
It is happening now. And here is what it is for.
The removal of what can be shaken, so that what cannot be shaken might remain.
I want you to feel the weight of that. B
ecause most of us have spent the last decade watching things we thought were permanent turn out not to be.
The cultural consensus we grew up inside.
The assumption that our neighbors mostly believed what we believed.
The sense that the country was on a track we recognized.
The sense that the church was respected, or at least left alone.
The sense that our kids would inherit roughly the same world we got.
All of that has been shaking. You don't need me to list it. You've been watching it.
And we have a choice about what to do with the shaking.
We can panic. We can grieve.
We can get angry and look for somebody to blame.
A lot of American Christians have picked one of those three and made it their whole personality.
And I understand it. I've felt all three of them in the last ten years.
But Hebrews tells us something we have to hear. God is the one doing the shaking.
It is not Babylon. It is not Rome. It is not Washington.
It is not the universities.
It is not the algorithm.
The shaking we are watching is, at the deepest level, His voice.
And the purpose of the shaking is not to destroy us.
The purpose of the shaking is to strip away everything that was never going to last so that what actually lasts can finally be seen.
Look at the verbs in verse 27.
Removal of what can be shaken.
27 This expression, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what is not shaken might remain.
That what cannot be shaken might remain.
27 This expression, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what is not shaken might remain.
Some of what is shaking right now needed to shake.
Some of what we're mourning, we were never supposed to depend on in the first place.
The Christian who built her sense of safety on cultural Christianity is finding out that cultural Christianity was never the gospel.
The Christian who tied his hope to a political party is finding out that no party can carry the weight of a soul.
The Christian who assumed the country was the kingdom is finding out that the country never was.
That is not a tragedy. That is a mercy.
Because what God is doing in the shaking is the same thing He has always done.
He is clearing the field.
He is removing the things we should never have leaned on.
And He is showing us, underneath all of it, the one thing that was never going to move.
The kingdom He gave us.
Now, this doesn’t mean the country doesn't matter.
I am not telling you the culture doesn't matter.
I am not telling you the losses aren't real.
I am telling you that the thing you actually belong to, the thing your soul actually rests on, is not on the list of things being shaken.
It cannot be. By definition.
So before we talk about that kingdom, we have to be honest about this one.
Everything that can be shaken, will be.
And the question this morning is not how to stop the shaking.
The question is what you've been standing on.
You Have Come to Mount Zion
You Have Come to Mount Zion
Now, let’s back up to v. 18.
Before we’re told what is being shaken, he tells us where we’re standing.
18 For you have not come to what could be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm,
19 to the blast of a trumpet, and the sound of words. Those who heard it begged that not another word be spoken to them,
20 for they could not bear what was commanded: If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.
21 The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said, I am trembling with fear.
22 Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God (the heavenly Jerusalem), to myriads of angels, a festive gathering,
23 to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a Judge, who is God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect,
24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.
Now look at what the writer is doing.
He gives us two mountains. And he asks us which one we have come to.
The first mountain is Sinai.
18 For you have not come to what could be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm,
19 to the blast of a trumpet, and the sound of words.
Voices so terrifying the people begged for them to stop.
A boundary line at the foot of the mountain so dangerous that if even an animal stumbled across it, the animal had to die.
Moses himself, the man who talked with God face to face, said I am trembling with fear.
That is the mountain of the old covenant.
That is the mountain where God's people heard His voice and could not bear it.
That is the mountain of distance. The mountain of warning. The mountain of do not come any closer.
The writer of Hebrews says — that is not the mountain you came to.
Now, v. 22.
22 Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God (the heavenly Jerusalem), to myriads of angels, a festive gathering,
I want you to slow down on the verb.
You have come. Not you will come. Not you might come if you live well enough.
Not you are on your way and we hope you make it.
You have come. Past tense. Already happened.
The morning you bowed your knee to Jesus, the morning you came up out of the water, the morning the gospel finally cracked you open — in that moment, you arrived at this mountain.
You are standing on it right now.
And look what is on this mountain.
v. 22…
A festive gathering. The first mountain was terror. This mountain is a feast.
23 to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven,…
That is is you. Your name.
Written down in a book shaking cannot touch.
23 to a Judge, who is God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect,
Yes. He is still the judge. The mountain has not gone soft.
to the spirits… Every faithful believer who has ever gone before us.
Abraham is here. Moses is here. Ruth is here. Paul is here.
Your grandmother who taught you the Bible is here.
The brother who sat in the pew next to you for thirty years and went home last spring is here.
They are not gone. They are on this mountain.
And then v. 24
24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which says better things than the blood of Abel.
Abel's blood, you remember, cried out from the ground for justice.
Jesus' blood cries out for mercy.
The whole reason you can stand on this mountain instead of trembling at the bottom of Sinai is that the blood on this mountain speaks a better word over you than your sin ever could.
So feel where you are this morning.
You did not walk into a building this morning.
You walked into the heavenly assembly. You sat down next to angels. You sat down next to the saints.
You sat down at a festival God has been throwing since before you were born.
The singing in this room is not the only singing happening right now.
We are joining something already in progress.
This is what the writer of Hebrews wants the shaking generation to know.
Yes, the world is shaking.
Yes, the things you thought were permanent are turning out not to be.
But look where you are standing.
Look at the mountain under your feet. Look at who is on it with you.
Look at the blood that brought you here.
Friday night I told you that you are beloved exiles, not displaced hosts.
Some of you heard that and it landed, but a quiet question came with it. If we are exiles, where is home?
This is home. This mountain. This assembly. This Jesus. This blood.
You have not come to Sinai. You have come to Zion.
And the assembly you have come to is not shaking.
It cannot shake.
It will outlast every empire that ever stood, every culture that ever rose, every news cycle that ever roared.
It was here before America.
It will be here after America.
And on the day every shakeable thing has finally fallen, this mountain will still be standing, and you, by the blood of Christ, will still be on it.
That is the kingdom you belong to. That is the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Our Citizenship is in Heaven
Our Citizenship is in Heaven
Now, let’s briefly go to Philippians 3.
Paul says the same thing here that the Hebrew writer said, but he says it the type of wording that lands different in 2026 than it did in the first century:
17 Join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us.
18 For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
19 Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things,
20 Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
21 He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.
Look at v. 19
Paul names the pull.
19 Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things,
That is Paul's diagnosis of the people around the Philippian Christians.
Appetites running their lives.
Ashamed of nothing.
Eyes locked on what is in front of them and nothing past it.
Sound like anybody you know?
Paul wrote that nineteen hundred years before the smartphone, before cable news, before the algorithm, before the political tribe became somebody's whole identity.
And the diagnosis still fits.
The pull on us is the same pull that was on them.
Earthly things.
That phrase is doing a lot of work.
It is not just sin in the obvious sense.
It is anything down here that gets to define you.
Anything you let name you. Anything you let tell you who you are and what you are for.
And then v. 20:
20 Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That word — citizenship — Paul picked it on purpose.
Philippi was a Roman colony.
Most of the people in that church had Roman citizenship, or knew someone who did, and they understood exactly what it meant.
Roman citizenship was not where you happened to live.
It was who you belonged to.
It was the law that covered you.
It was the kingdom that claimed you, no matter what province you were standing in.
Paul says — that is not your real citizenship.
Your real citizenship is in heaven.
The kingdom that claims you is not the one with the flag over the courthouse.
The kingdom that claims you is the one we just read about in Hebrews 12. The mountain. The assembly. The blood.
Now here is why this matters this morning.
The greatest danger we face in a polarized age is not persecution.
It is identity confusion.
It is forgetting which kingdom we actually belong to.
It is letting some other citizenship — political, national, tribal, generational — quietly take over the one Christ paid for.
You can tell when it is happening.
Watch what makes you angriest.
Watch what you cannot stop talking about.
Watch what wakes you up at three in the morning.
Watch what you would defend before you would defend the gospel.
Watch what gets your loyalty when your loyalty has to choose.
That is your real citizenship.
Whatever passes that test in your life — that is the kingdom that has actually got you.
For some of us, our citizenship is technically in heaven and functionally somewhere else.
We sing about Zion on Sunday and live in Babylon on Tuesday.
We confess Jesus is Lord and let some other lord set our calendar, our temper, our anxieties, our conversations.
Paul says no. Our citizenship is in heaven. Singular. Primary. Above every other claim.
This is not Paul telling the Philippians to disengage.
He is not telling them to stop being good neighbors in Philippi.
Thursday we said God sent the exiles to Babylon and told them to plant gardens.
Friday we said you are beloved exiles, watched by a world Peter promised would, on the day of visitation, glorify God for what they saw.
None of that changes.
You still live here. You still vote here. You still raise your kids here.
You still love your neighbors here.
But you do all of it as a citizen of somewhere else.
With a different king. Under a different law. Headed for a different city.
And that is what makes you unshakeable.
Not because you stopped caring about the country.
Because the country was never what was holding you up.
Your citizenship is in heaven.
The kingdom you belong to cannot be shaken.
And the way you live, vote, speak, and love this week is the way a citizen of that kingdom lives in this one.
So Let Us Worship
So Let Us Worship
Now, back to Hebrews 12. v. 28.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
Therefore.
Everything we have said this morning lands here.
The shaking is real. Mount Zion is where you are standing. Y
our citizenship is in heaven. Therefore — what?
Let us be thankful.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful.
Some of your translations say let us offer acceptable worship.
Same idea. The response to an unshakeable kingdom is not strategy.
It is not a five-point plan.
It is not a stronger argument for the next conversation. The response is worship.
And look at the verb in verse 28.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe,
We are receiving. Present tense. Right now, in this room, the kingdom is being handed to us.
We are not earning it. We are not building it. We are not defending it. We are receiving it. With open hands.
That is what worship is.
Worship is what you do when you have empty hands and a kingdom is being put in them.
You know I wonder if A lot of us have been trying to do something with our faith in this cultural moment that the Bible never asked us to do.
We have been trying to hold the kingdom up. Like it depended on us.
Like if we lost the argument, or lost the election, or lost the next generation, the kingdom would fall.
Brothers and sisters — the kingdom you belong to cannot be shaken. It does not need you to hold it up. It is holding you up.
So let it.
The most defiant thing a Christian can do in a shaking world is worship.
Not louder politics. Not sharper arguments. Not bigger platforms.
Worship. Sunday after Sunday, in a room like this one, with people like these people, singing songs about a King the news cycle cannot touch —
that is the act that says, I know which kingdom I belong to, and it is not the one on the screen.
And worship is not just what we do in this room for an hour.
Notice again.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe,
we worship by serving God acceptably, with reverence and awe.
The worship that starts here keeps going. Into Monday.
Into the kitchen. Into the office.
Into the conversation we were dreading.
The way you treat your spouse this week is worship.
The way you go to work is worship.
The way you pray for the grandkid who is not coming home yet is worship.
The way you refuse to be ruled by your phone is worship.
Every one of those is a citizen of an unshakeable kingdom living like one.
And then verse 29.
29 for our God is a consuming fire.
That is not a threat. That is a comfort.
Because everything that is shakeable in our lives, in our culture, in our hearts — eventually meets that fire.
And the fire burns up what cannot last. And what is left, when the fire has done its work, is the kingdom that could never burn.
You do not have to be afraid of the shaking.
You belong to the One doing it.
And the fire that is consuming what cannot last is the same fire that is making sure what does last will.
So this morning, with everything in you, with all your heart, with hands that have finally stopped trying to hold up what was never yours to hold up — worship.
Worship the King who cannot be moved.
Worship the King who is receiving you into a kingdom no empire can touch.
Worship the King who is, even now, shaking everything that is not Him so that you can finally see what is.
That is what citizens of the unshakeable kingdom do.
As We Close
As We Close
Thursday night we sat with exiles in Babylon and we said — you were sent here.
Friday night we said — you are watched here, and the watching is doing work the arguments never could.
Saturday night we sat at the kitchen table with Paul and we said — pray first, speak with grace and salt, trust the God who opens doors.
This morning we stood at a tomb with Jesus and we said — truth and tears, both, always, walking humbly together.
And now, we come home. To the mountain. To the assembly. To the kingdom.
Five sermons. One trajectory.
Sent. Seen. Speaking. Walking humbly. And now — worshipping.
Everything I have said to you this weekend assumes the kingdom you belong to cannot be shaken.
Every challenge from Thursday, every comfort from Friday, every conversation on Saturday, every tear yesterday — all of it rests on what we read this morning.
You have come to Mount Zion. Your citizenship is in heaven. You are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
You can plant gardens in Babylon because the kingdom cannot be shaken.
You can be watched by hostile neighbors and trust God for the day of visitation because the kingdom cannot be shaken.
You can speak with grace and salt to the deconstructing grandkid because the kingdom cannot be shaken.
You can hold truth and tears together at the tomb of someone you love because the kingdom cannot be shaken.
Take that home with you.
Take it to work tomorrow.
Take it to the kitchen table this week.
Take it to the conversation you have been dreading.
Take it to the news that is going to break this afternoon and the news that is going to break next month and the news that is going to break next year.
Take it to your knees tonight when you pray for the people on your list whose names you have been carrying alone.
The world is shaking.
A lot of what we thought was solid, was not.
A lot of what we mourned losing, we were never supposed to lean on.
And the God who is doing the shaking is not against you.
He is clearing the field. He is showing you, finally, the one thing that was never going to move.
You belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
You belong to a King the news cycle cannot touch.
You belong to a mountain the empires cannot burn.
You belong to a city the algorithm cannot find.
You belong to a Savior who is, right now, receiving you into a kingdom that will outlast every kingdom that ever called itself permanent.
So go and live like it.
Worship Him with your singing.
Worship Him with your Monday.
Worship Him with your speech, your patience, your tears, your conviction, your kitchen table, your vote, your grief, your hope.
And when everything else shakes — and it will — stand.
You are on the mountain that does not move.
