Verse 22
Sinai and Sion.
I. The points of contrast in the text are, that Sinai was the emblem of a sensuous, and Sion of a spiritual, economy, and that Sinai was a system of rigour, and the Gospel is a system of love. Sinai is represented as the mount that might be touched, that is, something palpable, the emblem of a material framework, of a system of gorgeous ceremonies and local shrines, and of impressiveness of external appearance. This was very largely characteristic of the system of Judaism. The giving of the law, for example, was an overwhelming address to the senses of the awed multitude. Of course there was an inner life in all this, at least in the palmy days of Judaism a vital heart pulsing beneath that drapery of symbol. But in the time of the Saviour the Incarnation the religion of too many had become only rubric and creed; the shadow was still grasped tenaciously, but the substance was gone; the whole system was like a corpse awaiting its embalmment, all ready for burial, so that the sepulchre were but in a garden. And this very sensuous-ness of Jewish worship necessitated the appointment of sacred places and a central temple of worship.
II. But, in contrast with this pomp of ceremonial and localisation of interest, ye are come to the spiritual Sion, filled with the inner man and with lively human stones building up a spiritual house. God on Sinai gave to the Hebrews a law; God on Sion hath given to the people a life: and now that the age of visible symbol has passed away, the Lord speaks no longer from the lips of seers or from any chosen or exclusive lawgiver. Religion, as the Gospel sets it before you and asks you to receive it, comes, so to speak, in the bareness of the Saviour's incarnation. No pomps attend it; no patronage commends it to our regard; its glory is not of this world; it stands alone upon the banks of our modern Jordan, unattended by any retinue of circumstance, a living, holy, independent stranger, without form or comeliness to the beauty-seeking eye of nature; it is loved, and it must be loved, for itself alone; it has no preferments in its gift, save those that are beyond the grasp of human hands; it calls men to no reluctant duty, and it offers to mortal weakness no compromises: it only offers the succour of a grace that will stoop down from heaven to help it up.
III. The Sinaitic was a rigorous discipline; the Gospel is a system of love. Our God is not remote, but near. Our very threatenings are fringed with sunlight. Our every precept has a promise. The service to which Christianity invites you is not a drudgery, but a healthful lucrative labour. When the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, when the man is come to Sion and is happy in its citizenship, he rejoices that glorious things are spoken of his city. Everything about him is congenial, not constrained; intimacy, not distrust and distance; the calm of a soul that revels in sunshine, not the unrest of a spirit where tempest mutters and broods. He is satisfied with God's likeness; his delight is in the law of the Lord.
W. M. Punshon, Penny Pulpit, No. 3424.
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