Do Not Drift from Christ

Hebrews 2:1-4

2 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 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? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, 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.

Pray

I was raised in Texas and I always thought the Hill Country was beautiful. When I was traveling as a young man, driving the winding roads down to Bandera and Leakey, I thought, “Wow! How can it get more beautiful than this?” Then I went to Colorado and spent some time in the mountains and thought, “Wow! How can it get better than this?” Then Krysta and I got to go to Costa Rica and see the mountains on the sea and we both thought, “Wow! How can it get better?” Then Krysta and I were blessed to be able to go to Switzerland around this time last year through her company. It was amazing. On the balcony of our hotel room we could see the highest peak in Europe called the Jung Frau. It wasn’t just a little higher, it was unbelievably higher.

If I would have just stayed in Texas I would never know that mountains could get higher than the hills of the Hill Country. I don’t want to put down those views. I get a glimpse of a little of it from my back yard and it is beautiful, God’s handiwork for sure, but it is nothing compared to a vast mountain range that juts from the earth leaving you feeling small.

Today we get to witness a people realizing that they have been playing in the kiddy pool when there is an unlimited ocean that is accessible to them.

Like I said when we started Hebrews, we don’t really know the author, though some in this room seem to think it is Paul. I am not willing to die on that sword mainly because I can’t prove it and because it doesn’t matter, but we can tell who this is written to. This book of Hebrews is written to exactly that people, the Hebrews. The Jewish people that have turned to Christ.

I wanted to go through Hebrews because it bridges the gap between the New and the Old Testament. You cannot understand the Old without the New and you cannot capture the richness of the New without the Old. This particular letter is written to a people that had a strong grasp of the Old Testament. That is what they were raised knowing. Hebrews assumes a lot of things. In Chapter 1 It assumed that you knew who the fathers and the prophets were, it assumes that you know what the role of a high priest is, it assumes that you have a good handle on the psalms and it assumes you have a good handle on the role of angels.

I hope that many of you have a good handle on all of those things, but my assumption is that you don’t. Thats why this is a worth while book to study, because you may be reading through the New Testament, get to this book and say, “forget it, I don’t know what half of this stuff means.” I pray that as we move farther along this time together opens your eyes and allows you to understand and if nothing else, ask questions to further your understanding.

Let’s look at the text.

2 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

My assumption is that you all don’t spend your week studying Hebrews. Am I correct in my assumption? When we look at the chapter and verse separators, we have to remember that those were added much later, so when we pick up on our text today and it starts, “Therefore” we have to ask ourselves, “What is the ‘therefore’ there for?” You may think those are dumb, but they help. The “therefore” is there to point you back to chapter one. What is chapter one about? Jesus is not an angel, better yet, he is better than the angels. Greater than the angels, but what is it that we are supposed to pay closer attention to? Let’s look at Hebrews 1:1-3

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,

This part is not new to this crowd. This is how God spoke to His people. This is the part they need to pay attention to.

but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

This is the big part. Before this, God gave his people the Law. It was given to Moses. Even if you have a basic understanding of Christianity, you know what the 10 commandments are. These people, the Jews, received this instruction by the Lord through intermediaries, angels. In doing this, the Lord is saying, this is the way of life that pleases me.

2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution,

This is not the flying around angels that you are thinking of. This is the literal meaning of the word “angel” which means “messenger”. When God gave His law it was through His messengers but not from His voice to His people. His voice came to Moses but it was Moses that spoke directly to the people. When God spoke to the prophets, the people didn’t hear His voice but the prophet’s voice. That was the message that was reliable. That was the message that the people had to abide by or else there were consequences. For 1500 years before Christ, the people were following the law that was handed down by God through these intermediaries and they were to follow that word. It was a good word, a reliable word, but it wasn’t the final word. It was a shadow of the final word.

Jesus has a parable that He shares in Matthew 21 about the master of the house building a vineyard. He leases the vineyard out to tenants. When the time of harvest came, the master sends his servants to collect his portion and they beat one, killed one, stoned one. Then he sent more servants and the tenants did the same to them. Then he sends his son. This is his exact representation. When you hear from the son you hear from the Master. The tenants of that vineyard take the son and kill him and throw him out of the vineyard. Jesus then asked a question to those listening, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he returns?” They answer that he would give the tenants a miserable death and then give the vineyard to others.

When we look at verse two and see that, through the Father’s servants, the people received God’s word and when they did not follow those words they received a “just retribution”, we can understand that.

Before Christ, we have a revealed word and revealed law to us. God has written law on every man’s heart. We know that it is wrong to kill someone. We know that we do not like it when people steal from us. That is written in us. If you want to test that hypothesis, go to one of the children in this building and take the toy that they are playing with and see if they like it. I will save you the trouble and the screaming fit that will closely follow and tell you that they don’t. We know that it is not good to be lied to from an early age. No one had to teach you to be sad about someone saying they were going to show up and do something only to let you down. This is the natural law written on all of our hearts from birth. That works and is translated into the laws of the land and it establishes order.

There were also other laws that were given to the Jews by God for the purpose of drawing close to Him. The sacrificial laws were given to the Jews to show them that sin caused a separation from God. To be brought close to God, death must occur. Blood had to be spilled. If you take the time to read through the first five books of the bible, you will see this very plainly. The people, in order to be close to God, had to continually go the the alter and sacrifice an animal to atone for their sins, but when the Son comes and gives you a new law, the old becomes overshadowed.

3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

This new covenant law that Jesus gives us is mightier and weightier than the old. The Word is no longer through intermediaries but God himself. The old law was reliable, the old law taught you that you were a sinner and there was a distance between you and God that only death could satisfy. It showed what your sin cost, but it wasn’t the engine. It is the difference in saying “I need to get to Burnet, so I will get into a vehicle and drive there” and understanding the components of the engine that actually does the driving.

The Old Testament law was understanding sin, repentance, obedience, sacrifice and Jesus was the heart of it all. Jesus coming on the scene and saying “I am the way, the truth and the life” puts flesh on the law. The whole law was wrapped up in Jesus. In Jesus we find sacrifice, obedience, love, justice, perfection, and when He says “come” and we put His perfect life on, we have fulfilled the law.

This audience that Hebrews is written to is not an audience that wants to merge Christianity and Judaism, this is an audience that wants to completely turn back to Judaism and leave Christianity behind. This writer is saying, “If God comes and tells us what worship should look like and we are not satisfied and want to run back to the messengers, how will we escape?

To take from the parable of the owner of the vineyard and the tenants, what will the owner do to the tenants that neglected the son? This is a subject that people are uncomfortable with. There is a real death coming for all of us and our heart will stop and we will cease to exist in this life….then what? The bible says that we stand before our Creator and we are held to account for all we have done. Will Jesus say as we knock, “I never knew you”? Will we stand before him and say, “I did what was right in my own eyes” claiming our own right as a deity? If we neglect this great salvation, this great gift after all that we have seen and heard, how terrible will it be for us when we stand before Him.

This audience of this letter have something that we don’t have and that is eye witness accounting of possibly Jesus but most definitely the apostles preaching the word and performing signs and wonders.

It (the great salvation through Christ) was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, 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

This group saw the glory of the Lord. They heard the Word either by Jesus or the apostles. They saw miraculous signs and wonders. When Jesus meets with Nicodemus in John 3, Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” There was no doubt that this was only a work of God that these people saw and they were thinking of abandoning the faith. If you look at verse one it says, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”

Since I have started Hebrews, I have been reminding you that the entire book is about Jesus being better that all things. In these few verses, Jesus is the better/higher law. He is the Swiss Alps compared to the Texas Hill Country. Much higher, much grander, much better. The author is reminding these Hebrews that Jesus is better than all of their prophets and angels and that it doesn’t make sense to go backwards because now we don’t rely on messengers but on God’s unadulterated word alone, but these men, it seems, are becoming disinterested in Jesus or maybe they don’t know if they believe everything they have been taught about Him, or maybe there are facing some persecution and they are saying, like the Egyptians did, “It was much better back there where we had all of the creature comforts in slavery” so they want to go back.

This is not unfamiliar to us. We know of people that started strong in youth groups or revivals and they get excited about Jesus and then they become indifferent, so they drift away.

CS Lewis has a great quote:

“if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?"

In other words, it isn’t an argument from an atheist or someone from another religion that shakes people out of Christianity it is just drift.

Some of you have flight experience. When you are flying a plane, you put in your flight path the direction of degree that you are flying and that will take you to your destination, but if you are one degree off could take you to a completely other destination.

We have a recovery ministry called Regeneration that some of you are involved in. There isn’t a person there that said, “You know how I want to make my life harder? I’m going to do….these things.” It was a gradual drifting to sin patterns that damaged them. A thing here and sin there took them to destinations that they didn’t want to be in.

Passivity in the Christian life is not an option. We must be vigilant in this life so as not to be caught by sin. 1 Peter 5:8 says,

be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith,

I was recently listening to an interview with Matt Chandler, a pastor up in the DFW area. He had an incident a few years ago that made him take leave for a while while he worked through this sin. He is back in the pulpit now and if fully restored with his church and family. He was asked in the interview why so many pastor’s are falling into sin. We recently have heard of several high profile pastors lose their jobs or step down because of some scandal. His answer was wonderful and I feel like it doesn’t just fit with pastors but the church as a whole. He said something along the lines of when you start out in ministry, you start preaching or doing something for the church and you deal with sin and put most of it away but you keep a pet lion cub. It is just a little sin that you think you can manage. You continue to grow in favor and the Lord still uses you, because He still uses sinners, and you start taking on more responsibility, maybe preaching and leading a larger church or for the church goer, people start seeing you as this person that they can look up to, but you still have the pet lion. This lion represents a secret sin, one you still think you can manage, but as you have grown, so has the lion. Then one day you look over and that lion is not longer a baby but it is full grown and it is about to devour you. From the beginning you should have taken it out back and shot it, but you didn’t and now it has become a big problem.

No one plans to blow up their entire ministry. No one plans to lose status in the community or blow up their families, but because of not being diligent and setting all things at the feet of Jesus, people drift.

I want to close with a excerpt from a John Piper sermon that I found was very poignant on this very subject.

Consider this word “drifting.” It means float by. It’s what a piece of bark or a leaf or a dead fish does in the river—it floats by the boat that is being rowed up stream. It takes no life and no motion to float by. One need only do nothing, and you will float by. Hebrews says that if we do not vigilantly pay closer attention to the Word of God, we will float by—we will drift away from God’s Word. We all know people that this has happened to. Some are in this room. There is no urgency. No vigilance. No focused listening or considering or fixing the eyes on Jesus. And the result has not been a standing still, but a drifting away. ....Failing to pay close attention to God’s Word and the drifting away that results is described in verse 3 as “neglecting a great salvation.” And this is said to be extremely dangerous. How dangerous? So dangerous that if we go on in the way of neglecting this great salvation—not listening to Jesus day by day, and not considering Jesus, and not fixing our eyes on Jesus—the result will be that we will not escape. That is, we will not escape the judgment of God (Hebrews 12:25; 1 Thessalonians 5:3). We will be lost. We will not inherit eternal life. We will perish in hell. Drifting is infinitely dangerous. O that I could waken you all to be joyfully vigilant in living the Christian life of looking to Jesus, and considering Jesus, and listening to Jesus. His yoke is easy and his burden is light—as easy as listening and as light as looking. But if we neglect this great salvation, and drift into the love of other things, then we will not escape. We will perish. The mark of the true child of God is that that he does not drift for long. If you are drifting this morning, one of the signs of hope that you are born again is that you feel pricked for this—a rising desire in your heart to turn your eyes on Jesus and consider him and listen to him in the days and months and years to come. And one of the signs that you may not be born again is that you hear what I am saying and feel no desire to guard against drifting.

I pray that if you have been disinterested in Jesus, that today would be the day that you become interested. If you have just been playing church and only come just to be seen, I hope you realize that attendance will not save you, only a relationship with Christ can. I pray that if you have kept a pet lion or secret sin, today you would take steps toward killing it before it takes all of your attention and your eyes off of Christ. God has asked you to be a part of His great plan of redemption and is reaching out to you to give you more abundance than you ever thought imaginable in his wonderful love. He is better. Wake up and run to Him