Main Idea: We must pay attention to this great salvation, or we will dangerously drift away.
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” (v1)
· The author of Hebrews has been showing us just how great Jesus is, and because Jesus is greater than all, the message of the good news that He has brought to us is greater than everything mankind has previously heard from God.
· Jesus is not only the ultimate prophet, the final High Priest and the Almighty King, He is the Son of God Himself. Jesus is the One who sends the angels and originally sent His messengers to deliver the covenant in part to Abraham and more fully to Moses.
· But now, Jesus has come bringing us the gospel, the good news that we no longer have to pay for our sins because He has.
· We no longer have to fulfill the law or be under the curse of the law when we break its commands because Jesus has completely fulfilled the law and was cursed in our place as a substitutionary atonement for us.
· Now, we don’t have to come through an intermediary to approach God. Jesus has made a new and better way for us to know God and have direct access to God ourselves.
· The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important message that we could ever hear.
· And because this is the case, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard or we’ll drift away.
1.
Pay attention or drift away (v1)
·
It wasn’t as if God’s law
through Moses was something to be taken lightly or ignored.· In fact, God commanded His people and expected His people to obey the law.
· Now, the gospel has come to all mankind and we are told that we must pay closer attention to what we have heard.
· The reason given for why we must pay much closer attention is, “lest we drift away from it”
· This means that if we don’t pay much closer attention then there is a danger of us drifting away from the gospel.
· And this danger is very real isn’t it? All around us, there are Christians and sadly some churches that have drifted away from the central message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
· When drift occurs, the focus can shift from what is most important to social agendas and personal agendas and the power of the gospel no longer functions.
· Why has the Holy Spirit seen necessary to give us this passage in Hebrews? It is because we all are prone to drifting.
· In Hebrews 3:6, we are encouraged to “hold fast to our confidence and our boasting in our hope”.
· In Hebrews 3:14, we are encouraged to “hold our original confidence firm to the end”.
· In Hebrews 10:23, we are told to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
· So we must pay attention and hold fast to the hope of the gospel that we have been given, so that we do not drift away from it.
· Unlike making progress, drifting doesn’t take much effort. In fact, in order to drift, we just need to do nothing; to coast, to let ourselves go. To stop paying attention. To stop trying to make progress. To relax, to lie back, take it easy and not make much of an effort.
· Unfortunately, we don’t realize how far we’ve drifted away from living in the good of the gospel until we are far away from where we started.
· We can drift away from the means of grace that help us pay attention to the gospel in our lives. We can drift away from regular reading and meditation on God’s Word. We can drift away from prayer. We can drift away from fellowship and practicing hospitality. We can drift away from pursuing growth in our relationship with Jesus and with other believers. We can drift away from going to a small group, where we can put these things into practice and be encouraged by others as they too strive to pay attention and hold onto the hope we have been given in Jesus. We can drift away from church and worshipping God –practices that help keep us close to Him.
· We can just do nothing and we can drift away until we no longer see the face of Jesus and instead, we are surrounded by unfamiliar faces that don’t even know Him.
· It can be surprising at times when we wake up from our slumber and find that we are nowhere near where we thought we were and it didn’t take any effort at all.
· In response to this passage, we must honestly ask ourselves the question of whether we are drifting or not? Are you seeking to see Jesus more and more. Are you placing yourself amongst God’s people and committing yourself to godly relationships so that you can guard against drifting? Are you taking advantage of all the means of God’s grace, and hearing Him speak to you through His word, through prayer, worship and His people? Or have you cut the ties that anchor you and allowed yourself to slip downstream?
· Drifting isn’t some pleasant thing or something we should be comfortable with. Drifting takes us off course and drifting can be very dangerous.
· Hear the warning that the author intends us to get, starting in verse 2:
2 For
since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every
transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3 how
shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?
2.
Drifting from the gospel is dangerous (v2-3a)· The author is trying to impress upon the hearers just how dangerous drifting from what we have heard from Jesus Christ, the Son of God can be.
· He says that the message declared by angels: the covenant that came through the forefathers, what we refer to now as the Old Covenant - it was reliable. The Old Covenant could be trusted and this was proved out through the centuries.
· It was proven reliable because when the people of Israel obeyed the laws and regulations of the Old Covenant and approached God on His terms, they experienced provision and protection and all manner of God’s abundant blessings.
· But it was also proven reliable in the negative sense as well. Our text says “every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution”. Every time God’s people intentionally or unintentionally broke their covenant with God, a just retribution was received.
· God was just in both blessing them and also in giving them the consequences for breaking their covenant with Him, disobeying Him, doing what was right in their own eyes and worshipping false gods.
· God’s people received a just recompense and were rewarded or corrected based on how they obeyed Him.
· If breaking the law that was brought by angels had consequences that were inescapable and hard, then how much more serious would it be to neglect the message from Jesus, the Son of God, who is far superior to the angels?
· The people whom this letter was originally written to were likely giving in to the subtle pressures of just not publicly professing their faith and just not sharing the good news that they had been given.
· Perhaps they were persistently neglecting what God had called them to? Both failing to profess their faith, not sharing the good news, and neglecting what God had called them to, was a neglecting of Jesus Himself
· The warning is that God is a just judge, who will reward and also sift the works of those who claim to be His children.
· For those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus Christ, this should function to show us the seriousness of neglecting the gospel and spur us on to disciplining ourselves for the purpose of godliness – to recommit ourselves to living out our lives as passionate disciples of Jesus.
· It should also serve as a reminder to make our calling and election sure.
· If God has called us and saved us and we have placed our faith in Him, we have been born again and we cannot undo the re-creation that He has done in us, when He made us new in Him.
· But at the same time, Jesus said, if we love Him, we will keep His commandments. So if we have been made new, it will be seen in the overflow of our obedient lives – lives given to serving our great Savior.
· We should also be sobered by the ease with which we can drift away.
· This should not cause unnecessary doubt but it should cause us to make sure we are not those who are deceived and whom Jesus said will say to Him on the last day,
Matthew 7:22-24 “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your
name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your
name?' And then will I declare to them,
'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.' "Everyone then who hears these words of
mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock”
·
Let us respond to Jesus
and build our entire lives on Him. Ultimately, He is the rock and if our
foundation is on Him, we can be sure our house will not fall.
3.
The Gospel Can be Relied On (3a-4)
“It was declared
at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard”· Jesus first brought us the good news. He declared to us His kingdom, and His ministry was the first phase of God’s final revelation.
· His proclamation of the good news: His life, His death and His exaltation to the right hand of God all declare the good news of salvation.
· But it was not only through Jesus. This great salvation message has also been attested to us through His disciples and all those who heard and saw Jesus speak and perform miracles too.
· His message was confirmed, without a doubt, through the ones who heard Him and walked with Him on the earth. It was attested to by eyewitnesses to His life and death and ascension into heaven. We can be sure that the message we have received has been validated by many witnesses.
4 while God also
bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy
Spirit distributed according to his will.
·
Not only has the salvation message been
attested to by eyewitnesses, God also clearly showed that the message was from
Him, by giving many signs and wonders and various miracles.· The purpose of the many signs, wonders, various miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are to show that the message His Son delivered was really from God and that Jesus truly is God’s living Son.
· The signs and wonders that the author is talking about are all of the miraculous works that Jesus and His disciples, those who proclaimed the message of salvation in Christ, have done in His name.
· It includes everything that Jesus has done and it also includes all of the miracles that His disciples have done in His name and by the Holy Spirit.
· From the miraculous conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit and the appearance of a star to guide the wise men, to the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus and God proclaiming with a loud voice, “this is My Son, listen to Him”. It included Jesus’ first public miracle when He turned water to wine.
· Then Jesus healed every kind of disease and every affliction among the people of Galilee. Matthew tells us He healed those with diseases and pains, those who had demons, epileptics, and paralytics - he healed them all.
· Jesus cured leprosy and just spoke a word and healed the centurion’s servant without even going to his house. He healed Peter’s mother, cast out evil spirits with a word and healed all who were sick and came to him in Capernaum.
· When His disciples woke Him up in the middle of a deadly storm, He calmed the wind and the seas and stopped the storm simply saying “peace, be still”. Only God commands the weather.
· Jesus confronted a Legion of demons and cast them out with just a word. Then, He proved His authority over them again when they begged Him to go into the pigs and He let them.
· Jesus healed a man with palsy and then raised the ruler’s daughter to life and cured a woman with an incurable issue of blood. He healed the blind and the deaf and mute. He multiplied bread for over 5,000 people – only God gives mankind bread from Heaven. He walked out across the sea and even enabled Peter to do the same while he trusted in Him. Another time when Jesus walked on the water to them in the middle of the lake, as soon as He stepped in the boat, the boat was immediately transported to the other shore.
· Our Lord healed people who just touched his garments. He multiplied bread for over 4,000 on another occasion. He was transfigured on the Mount and healed lunatics. He cursed the fig tree and it withered immediately. He commanded the disciples and made fish to go into their nets, when they had been none. He raised the widow’s son to life again and commanded Lazarus to come out of the grave after he had already been dead four days and started to rot and stink. He put the ear of the servant of the High Priest back on his head.
· At His arrest, when the soldiers approached Him and He said I am He, they all fell back onto the ground. At His death, the graves were opened and the dead were raised to life. He was resurrected again to life on the third day and He ascended to heaven in front of hundreds of witnesses!
· The attesting miracles weren’t limited to Jesus though. He gave His disciples authority to cast out demons and heal the sick and the dead were raised to life through them as well. Countless miracles were performed through His disciples and apostles as a testimony to the veracity of the message of salvation and the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
· In addition, every Spiritual gift that has been given not only to the early church but to the church today; to normal people like you and me, is meant to testify to the truth of the great salvation that we have received and bear witness to the transforming power of the gospel.
· All of this has been given to us by God, it says, to bear witness to us of the truth of the salvation that He has given to us in Jesus and the power of the gospel.
· So, how are we meant to respond? We are to respond in faith. We are to respond in hope. And we are to pay much closer attention to what we have heard.
· This means, we aren’t entitled to live life for ourselves. We can’t just put our lives on cruise control either.
· We are on a mission and we’ve been given a message to pay attention to. So how do we pay much closer attention to what we have heard? We must seek to apply it.
James
1:22-24 But be doers of the word,
and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man
who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at
once forgets what he was like.
·
We must constantly ask ourselves, what are we
doing with the Word we’ve heard?· Not to earn favor before God but because we have been given such a great salvation and we don’t want to squander it.
· The Christian life is not meant to be a safe life or an easy life - we are called to lose our lives. We are called to step into the rushing current of the world and not go along with the current. We are called to pay attention to our walk each step of the way, as worship to God.
· We are called to stand out and to be different because we shouldn’t just be moving in the same direction as the world around us.
· Have you ever noticed when the Salmon swim upstream to spawn? It is clear that they have a purpose and that they are driven and they give their entire lives for their goal of laying eggs and giving life to the next generation.
· If the whole river of life that we are in is flowing downstream and you are headed upstream, folks will start to take notice. If you are fighting for joy and fighting for faith; if you are hoping in the life you have in Jesus, it will be markedly different. If you have joy in the midst of trials and difficulties, it will show.
· Have you ever met someone who is madly in love and just got engaged? It seems like all they care about it the other person. At times, you may wish they talked about something else, but their passion for their love is inspiring and it makes you think about whether you have the same kind of passion in your life. Our passion for the message we’ve received is to be like this.
· What do you dream about? Do you dream about the gospel changing your family and friends? Are you hoping for the gospel to have an effect not only on your life but on the lives of all those around you? Are you hoping to be different and to grow?
· Do you pray for God to change you and strive to grow because you just don't want to be encumbered by the things of the world? Do you apply the good news of the forgiveness of sins to your life each day and remind yourself that you are no longer condemned but now you are free in Christ?
· What are you all about? If we asked your close friends and family, what would they say you are all about and what would they say you are most passionate about? Do you have a cause you champion?
· We’re called to be about the gospel – to be salty – to be light and to let our lights shine.
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its
saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything,
except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. "You are the light of the
world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp
and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light
to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew
5:13-16 NIV)
·
Paying attention to what we have heard it
isn’t just a matter of external actions though, it is a matter of our hearts
and our attitude.· This passage in Hebrews was written to people like us who were at risk of no longer being in awe of the atonement of Jesus; to people who may not have been hungering and thirsting for the Word of God; to those who were not asking for the Holy Spirit’s empowering; to the ones who were drifting back slowly.
· But there is hope. If you’re in an inner tube and you are drifting, you just need to stand up, get out of your tube and walk or swim in the right direction again. If a little john-boat has become untied from its moorings, you need only to row the boat back again and make your anchor in Christ secure again.
· Let’s all hear the warning, ask God to enable us by His grace to respond and pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we can glorify our Father in heaven, who has given us this great salvation.
Potential
Application Questions:
1.
How is the message of salvation that we have
received from Jesus Christ great?2. Do you believe that it is great and if so, how is this seen in your life?
3. Did you experience the gift of conviction when you read this passage in Hebrews or heard it preached on Sunday morning?
Have you drifted from what you have heard in any way? (laziness, neglect, inattention, complacency, etc.).
If so, how is the Holy Spirit calling you to repent and turn back to Him practically and personally?
4. How are you paying close attention to “what we have heard”? How can you encourage those in your small group to pay attention and help you do the same?
5. How do the various means of God’s grace like prayer, fellowship, reading the Word, evangelism, hospitality, hearing the Word preached, worship, fasting, etc. help us pay attention to the salvation message we’ve received?
6. Do you think of drifting as dangerous? If not, why do you think that is? How is drifting from the gospel dangerous?
7. How does it give you assurance to build your life on the rock to think about the “signs and wonders and various miracles and… gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will”?
8. How can we let the light of our reliance on the gospel shine in our lives practically? At home, in the workplace, at school, in our neighborhood, etc?
