The Shaking of Sinai and Calvary.
I. That voice of Sinai was a shaking of earthly things. How were nations dispossessed? How were thrones tumbled into the dust? How was the course of human history and human life changed or directed by that shaking of Sinai? And so with the shaking voice of Calvary. Earthly things were moved, and are still moved, by the power of that voice Divine. Sinai stands like a rock in the midst of a stream, and turns and separates the current. Calvary, like a mountain round which and at whose feet, in the valley which follows the configuration of the height, a great river finds its way, directs the course of history, of nations, the movement of the world.
II. May we not reverently suggest that the voice of appeal to a forsaking God, the voice of victory in the completion of redeeming work, the voice of final calm commending to the hands of the Eternal Father, wrought even upon the heart of the Infinite One Himself? At least, the issue was a Divine approval, a Divine acceptance, the change of threatening judgment into saving mercy.
III. There was shaking at Sinai shaking of old temporal and earthly relations, of old human and profane habits, and in their place the appointment of things seen in the heavenly kingdom, commanded by God, "made," indeed, by men, but made "after the fashion given on the mount." But now the voice from heaven hath shaken both earth and heaven. Once again, and far more surely and distinctively, are the earthly things shaken, and there topple down all secularities and temporalities and mere passing phenomena of human thought and law of man's mere worldly duty and faith.
IV. Much, indeed, in that awful shaking has departed, and its glory, was great, and its memory is illustrious. But what remains to us? What are the things that not even the voice from heaven can shake, that not even does the voice desire to shake, but only to establish? (1) Law remains, grand, inviolable, Divine. (2) Love remains. (3) Law and love combine, and in their union salvation remains.
L. D. Bevan, Christ and the Age,p. 271.
Reference: Hebrews 12:26-29. C. Kingsley, Westminster Sermons,p. 92.