Stay the Course

English Standard Version Chapter 2

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.

How many of you know what a gyroscope is?

Most of us learned something about gyros in school.

The basic principle is that you get something like a flat disc, spinning at a high rate of speed

That spinning object wants to stay in one position

Like a top.

If you take a top and just stand it on its point, what will happen? It will fall over, right?

But if you get it spinning, it wants to stay upright.

Aeronautical engineers know this, and for decades, gyroscopes have been used in airplanes in different capacities

Primary: Navigation

When I would fly, I had in front of me, something called a

Directional Gyroscope, DG for short

Basically a gyroscope spun up to a high rate of speed either by vacuum or by electric, depending on the configuration

And it had a compass card basically fastened to the front of it.

Now, up on the window, there was also a magnetic compass which points to magnetic north

The idea being that at the beginning of the flight, you would set your DG to agree with the magnetic compass.

And then you would fly, using primarily the information from your DG

But here’s the thing.

Nothing is perfect, and DG’s aren’t perfect.

They tend to drift.

yeah, gyroscopes do mostly stay stable in one place, but they can drift

They might have a little drag in the bearings

If the airplane is doing a lot of maneuvering or there is a lot of turbulence, it can start to cause this gyro to gradually drift away from the direction that it was set to.

So, in our training, we learned that, especially on a long flight, you better, every now and then, check your DG against your magnetic compass to see if it still agrees

And if it doesn’t, then you take this little knob, and adjust your DG so that it does agree

Because the danger is, as your DG drifts, you drift with it

And before you know it, you can be 5, 10, or 15 degrees off course, which turns in to a bigger problem the farther that you go.

Drifting.

We can point to other examples

There are all kinds of horror stories of divers who have surfaced and found that the boat they were on had drifted away, or,

as they were under the water, the current had been carrying them and they had drifted away from the boat.

It can turn into a serious problem for a pilot, but it can even more serious for us. People.

People who have heard the truth, responded to the truth, but now find ourselves far away from the truth.

Drifting.

Have you ever sort of had a moment or two to take stock of where you are at in your relationship with the LORD, and have been convicted that

You are not where you want to be, and maybe not even where you used to be

And you wish you could get back there

But you also wonder, “How did I get here? I don’t want to be here. I don’t recall consciously choosing to get here. But here I am anyway”

I’ve thought about it

I think about times in my life when I had such a hunger and thirst for Jesus, and for His Word

And then I think of times just recently when it seems that, I could go days on end without spending any serious time with Him

And I wonder, how did I get here?

And the truth is, I don’t really know. I just sort of drifted here

I lost focus, I got distracted, I got busy with other things

And I just sort of drifted away

Drifting.

It’s not a new thing.

I think of the book of Judges

Chapter 2. It says that when Joshua died and was buried, and his whole generation died and were buried

English Standard Version Chapter 2

And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.

Now, there’s not a lot more about this

But what do you make of this?

Why is it that you had one generation who knew the LORD, and the next generation didn’t?

Do you suppose that the first generation, right up until the end,

was living faithfully and passionately for the LORD, hanging on with all their might to the Law, and teaching it to their children? Teaching them about what God had done?

And then when their children grew up, that somehow they just completely ignored everything that they had been taught?

Possibly.

OR

Do you suppose that after the people had gotten sort of settled in the land of Canaan

That they started to get comfortable. And they started drifting. God’s law started to fade out of their minds,

What God had said for them to do started to get muddled

Their memories of What God had done for them started to get fuzzy in their brains

And they didn’t think about these things as much. They didn’t talk about these things as much to their children

They drifted.

And when their children grew up, they had drifted even farther, and they simply didn’t know about what God had said to do, or what God had done for them

The author of Hebrews certainly knows the history of the Hebrew people

And he certainly knows the tendency of everyone who ever lived to drift away from what they know to be the truth

In the previous chapter, he took a great deal of care to show us that Jesus is greater than the spirit world. The angels

And he actually continues his to talk about the angels in verse 5 of this chapter

But At the beginning of chapter 2, he sort of interrupts himself with a parenthesis

he feels the need at this point to include a warning for us

And he starts this warning with

“Therefore”

Therefore, what?

Well, since we have established that Jesus is far superior to the angels and

Since we have established that what He has done is far superior to anything the angels have done,

Then, at this point, it’s time to take a little break consider ourselves. He tells us first of all to

Pay attention

How many parents have said this to their children

how many teachers have said this to their students?

If you are getting trained on a new job, how many times has this been said

As a parent training my 3 children to drive, I wonder how many times I said this

pay attention! to your speed. Pay attention to the traffic approaching the intersection. Keep your eyes on the road. Pay attention!

as a flight instructor

pay attention to your altitude, airspeed

pay attention to your engine instruments

We understand this. That in these types of situations, attention to detail is so important. In in some situations, your life can depend on if you are paying attention or not

But do we give the same kind of attention to our lives as Believers?

This author is writing to believers and he is telling them to pay attention to what you have heard!

if we consider our lives, you know, most of us would probably say, “Hey, I am paying attention”

I’m living for Jesus the best that I know how, I’m reading my Bible

and doing most of what He said I should do

And, yes, most of us probably are paying attention to what we have heard

But look at how he words this in 2:1. “Pay much closer attention”

Pay much closer attention. What this indicates to me is that there is a danger in thinking

“Hey, I AM paying attention. I’ve heard all that Jesus has to say and I’m doing it. Things are fine

“frankly, I’m too busy to listen much more closely than I am already”

But, what he actually says is for us to pay much closer attention

how many of you in this room this morning would say, “Hey I am paying attention, I think. But you know what? I could probably pay much closer attention to what I’ve heard”

I’m one that could say that without a doubt

If I stop and am honest with myself, and with you all, I have to admit my tendency to allow my attention to start drifting

I’m flying my plane, and I’m paying attention to my DG, but

I need to pay much closer attention because my DG is actually starting to drift and I am drifting with it

So, what are we supposed to pay much closer attention to?

...To What you have heard

What exactly is he talking about here? Pay attention to what you have heard

What have they heard?

He is talking about The Gospel that was presented to them

The Gospel as taught by Jesus

and when I say “The Gospel”, I am talking about the entirety of what Jesus taught

The Gospel, after all, means “good news”

And the Bible says that Jesus taught the Good News of the Kingdom

Mark 1:15 “15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.””

The Gospel is the good news that the Kingdom of God has come

We need to repent, turn around, and change our allegiance from the kingdom of the world to the Kingdom of God!

Everything that Jesus taught is based on this statement.

PAY MUCH CLOSER ATTENTION to that message, that we have changed our allegiance from the kingdoms of this world to the Kingdom of God

Don’t drift away from this message! Hold on to it with all your might!

But as you know there are a lot of other messages that are competing with this message

they are tugging on our mooring rope.

They are causing our DG to drift

And it’s easy for us to starting drifting and saying

Ummm, I’ll have some of Jesus here

And I’ll have some of this over here

I’m going to hang onto Jesus with one hand, but I’m going to get some of this in there too.

I’ve been struggling this week on whether or not to say it, but folks there is something heavy on my heart that I feel like I need to say

But I’ve really thought a lot about this matter of drifting away, especially since the Charlie Kirk memorial

I’ll be up front with you...I didn’t watch the entire thing front to back. I sort of skipped through it to get a feel for what was being said

But honestly, when I was done, “confused” is the only way that I can describe what I was feeling

Because what I saw was:

forgiveness by a widow for her husbands killer, Praise the Lord for that!

I saw the name of Jesus being proclaimed, praise the Lord for that!

I saw conservatism being proclaimed

I saw Republicanism being proclaimed

I heard the proclamation of a revival along side of calls for the government to exercise retribution on evil men

I saw Turning Point being proclaimed (which btw, if you go on the turning point website, there is nothing about the Gospel there)

I heard calls for us to be “Little Charley Kirks”

And honestly, I was bothered. there were alarm bells going off in my heart

Because what I saw was an attempt to bring together an earthly kingdom with the Kingdom of God and make them one and the same

I had a really hard time telling where one ended and the other began

I tried to put myself in the position of someone who didn’t know the Gospel

I tried to put myself in the position of someone with a differing political viewpoint

I tried to put myself in the position of someone from a different country

And I have to say, If I were in either of those categories, I would have been confused at the least, and turned off at the worst

Brothers and sisters, please hear me. There were some good things that happened at that service. Don’t get me wrong

But I fear that we, as the American church, are drifting

Drifting away from the Gospel. We are being allured by power, and the idea that we can change our nation by instituting conservative ideas

And we are drifting away from the Good news of the Kingdom of God

a Kingdom that knows no geographical boundaries and no political boundaries

it has no political identity

And in many cases around the world, His Kingdom might be lived out differently than what MAGA says or Turning Point says or the Republican party says

It is God’s upside down Kingdom where His followers are unique, the salt of the earth, and the light of the world

And I’m not saying that we don’t keep teaching that God has created us uniquely male and female

I’m not saying that we don’t keep teaching that marriage between one man and one woman is God’s unique design

These are all important things,

But folks, salvation for us and our country is not found in a set of ideas held by the Republican party

it is only found in the message and the person and work of Jesus Christ

We could talk about this for a while. And there are a lot of other forces and messages out there which are pulling us, causing our DG’s to drift

We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard

To the Good news of the Kingdom of God!

Because why? What is the result?

The possibility of judgement

Hebrews 2:2–3 “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,”

The message declared by angels. What is he talking about?

Well, he’s talking about the Law.

Last Sunday, we talked about this a little bit. That there was the belief that the Law actually was transmitted to Moses through the angels

This comes from the final blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy 33:2 “2 “The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand.”

The Septuagint version says, “At his right hand were angels with Him”

So there came to be a belief that angels were the ones to transmit God’s Law to Moses

Nevertheless, the message that he is talking about here is The Law

And he says, “Look, this message that the angels gave to us did prove to be reliable.”

And we know that if someone disobeyed the Law, there was a punishment for that disobedience”

my version—retribution, payback

Now, if that’s the case, how can we think that there is not a consequence for ignoring or neglecting the salvation message that we have received

This is the first of a number of warnings given to us in Hebrews.

If we neglect the salvation message given to us by Jesus, how do we think that we can possibly escape the consequences?

now, we could look at this warning like this: We could say, “He’s talking to unbelievers”. I’m an unbeliever, and I simply don’t want to be a Christian. I’m bitter against Jesus, and Christians in general, and I just don’t want any part of that

That could be one way that we look at this warning

But I don’t think that is the right way

Because remember, he is talking to Believers here. And as Believers, we need to pay close attention to what he is saying

And what this indicates is that there is indeed a danger that we can neglect the salvation message

And this message is of extreme importance and it has extreme authority behind it

Listen to how he describes this message of salvation, the message of the Kingdom of God

It was declared by the LORD

That is, Jesus. We are talking about the Gospel message of the Kingdom of God

You can see that already, we are “upping the ante” so to speak

The Law according to belief, was declared by angels

But the message that we are talking about was declared by Jesus Himself

The Word of God made flesh

Which gives this message extreme weight, extreme importance

This is far more than a get out of hell free card

There is a message of extreme importance here

It was attested, or confirmed to us by those who heard, that is, the apostles, the disciples, those who walked and talked with Jesus

those who were with Him and heard Him speak and who recorded His very words

And then who took His words and broadcast them to the world

They came along and said, “Yes, this actually happened. Jesus actually preached this message.”

And the apostles, they went out and declared the good news of the Kingdom of God

God Himself bore witness to this message. He confirmed the good news of the Kingdom of God by

signs and wonders

Various types of miracles

healing, tongues, victory over demonic forces

And by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will

interesting how this is worded

Remember in Romans 12 how Paul says there that the gifts are distributed according to the will of God

But this is how God Himself confirmed the message of the Kingdom of God

So, if this message was declared by the LORD, and confirmed by the apostles, and confirmed by God Himself

Then we, as His people, who bear His name, had better pay much closer attention than ever before

Because the danger is that we will drift away and get off course

And when that happens, what makes us think that we will not suffer the consequences of that?

he’s not clear on exactly what he’s talking about here, but, honestly, I don’t know if i want to find out!

If we drift away from the Good News of the Kingdom of God

Because outside of the salvation message of Jesus, there is no other means of salvation

we and our nation won’t be saved by “embracing truth” as defined by the Republican party

we won’t be saved by just sort of paying attention and trying to live a moral life

the only way of salvation is by repenting, changing direction, believing in the Good news

this may seem pretty heavy this morning, but it is not meant to be a condemning message

Rather, it is meant to be an exhortation to set Jesus and His message of the Good News of the Kingdom at the very highest place in our lives

It is meant to be an exhortation to endure

No believer can cope with adversity unless Christ fills his horizons, sharpens his priorities and dominates his experience. Raymond Brown “The Message of Hebrews”

This warning is meant to be an exhortation to hold on and to not let ourselves drift