This was the closing sermon last week at my meeting in New Carlisle, Ohio. It is part of my Faith in the Public Square Series.
I want to ask you something honest, and I want you to answer it honest.
When did your faith start feeling so heavy?
Not the kind of heavy that comes from carrying a real cross — Jesus said to expect that one. I mean the other heavy. The heavy that shows up in your shoulders on Sunday afternoon. The heavy that wakes you up at 3am with the news cycle still ringing in your head. The heavy that makes you feel like if you don’t argue louder, vote harder, post sharper, or fight one more round at the kitchen table, the whole thing might just collapse.
A lot of us have been carrying that for a decade now. And somewhere along the way we started to believe a lie that the Bible never told us.
We started to believe the kingdom of God needed us to hold it up.
Listen to what the writer of Hebrews tells a church that was watching their world come apart:
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. 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.” 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.
—- Hebrews 12:25–27
Stop and feel the weight of that. The shaking is His voice. Not Washington’s. Not the algorithm’s. Not the universities’. Not whatever bad news is going to break this afternoon. The shaking we’ve been watching — at the deepest level — is the voice of the God who has been holding the world together since before the world started.
And the purpose of His shaking is not to destroy you.
The purpose is to strip away everything that was never going to last so that what actually lasts can finally be seen.
Then verse 28 lands the punchline:
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.
—- Hebrews 12:28
Look at that verb. Receiving. Present tense. Right now, today, this morning, the kingdom is being handed to you. You’re not building it. You’re not earning it. You’re not defending it. You’re not holding it up. You’re receiving it. With open hands.
That’s what worship is. Worship is what you do when you have empty hands and a kingdom is being put in them.
And here’s where I think a lot of us have gotten lost.
We’ve been trying to do something with our faith in this cultural moment that God never asked us to do. We’ve been trying to hold the kingdom up. Like if we lost the argument at Thanksgiving, the kingdom would tip over. Like if the election went the wrong way, the kingdom would fall. Like if the next generation didn’t see it, the kingdom would die out.
Today, I'm telling you what the Hebrew writer told the shaking church. The kingdom you belong to cannot be shaken. It does not need you to hold it up. It is holding you up.
Read that twice if you need to. Because some of you have been carrying weight that was never on your shoulders to begin with, and your hands have been so full of trying to keep heaven steady that you forgot heaven is the thing keeping you steady.
Paul says the same thing a different way:
Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
—- Philippians 3:20
He picks that word citizenship on purpose. Philippi was a Roman colony. Most of those Christians had Roman citizenship or knew somebody who did. They knew exactly what it meant. Citizenship wasn’t where you happened to live. It was who you belonged to. The law that covered you. The kingdom that claimed you, no matter what province you were standing in.
Paul says the kingdom that claims you is not the one with the flag over the courthouse. The kingdom that claims you is the one in Hebrews 12. The mountain. The assembly. The blood. The city no empire can touch.
Here’s a test. You can do it without leaving your chair.
Watch what makes you angriest. Watch what you can’t stop talking about. Watch what wakes you up at three in the morning. Watch what you’d defend before you’d defend the gospel.
Whatever passes that test in your life — that’s the kingdom that’s 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.
The fix is not to try harder. The fix is to put the weight down.
You don’t have to hold the kingdom up. You never did. You picked it up somewhere along the way and you’ve been carrying it ever since, and your shoulders are aching, and your prayer life has thinned, and your patience with your family is shot, and the joy has quietly drained out of your faith — and the whole time, the kingdom was holding you, and you didn’t know 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. Because worship is the thing you do when you finally let go of pretending the kingdom needs you to keep it up.
And then the writer of Hebrews adds one more line:
For our God is a consuming fire.
—- Hebrews 12:29
That’s not a threat. That’s a comfort. Everything shakeable in our lives, in our culture, in our hearts — eventually meets that fire. And the fire burns up what cannot last. What’s left, when the fire has done its work, is the kingdom that could never burn.
You don’t have to be afraid of the shaking.
You belong to the One doing it.
So this week, when the news breaks and your phone lights up and somebody says something at the dinner table that would normally have you reaching for your sharpest line — try something different.
Put the weight down.
Worship instead. Sing on the way to work. Pray for the grandkid you’ve been carrying alone. Be patient with your spouse. Love your neighbor with your hands instead of arguing with strangers with your thumbs. Refuse to be ruled by the algorithm. Live like a citizen of an unshakeable kingdom living in a shakeable world.
And when everything else shakes — and it will — stand.
You’re not holding it up.
It’s holding you.
