Pay Attention!

Introduction

If you’ve ever been on a boat in a lake, you may have witnessed drifting. I can remember going out on a lake to fish and we stop in a certain place. I get work on casting and reeling and trying to catch something. I’m just working on my task and eventually when I look up, things look different. The shore is closer than it was when we stopped. We had turned off the motor and were sitting still in the water, we thought, but in reality we had drifted quite a ways from where we started.

As fallen humans, our natural inclination is to drift away from God.

In one of my favorite hymns, Come Thou Fount, there is a line that always gets me. “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. ”

There are tons and tons of messages coming at us today. They come from everywhere. News stations, internet sites, social media, church, podcasts, and other people. Sometimes I personally get overwhelmed with the amount of information pouring into my brain during the day. We have to choose which messages we are going to focus on. If we are not careful and are passive there is a danger of taking many of these messages and mixing them all together into a sort of worldview soup. It’s a danger that I see tall the time. People who claim to follow Christ take an approach whereby they push aside the hard truths of scripture and either replace or supplement them with popular cultural teachings that are easier or make them more acceptable to their peers.

There is real danger here. And as soon as you think you are not in danger, you are. The writer of Hebrews steps in here and gives us the first of five warnings in the book of Hebrews. These passages lay before us the hard truth of apostasy and hold up warning messages for us to heed so that we stay true to the faith. Please understand that I believe the Bible teaches that those who are truly in Christ can not lose their salvation.

John 10:28 ESV

28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

It is also evident that not everyone who professes Christ is truly a believer in Christ. For an example, look at Judas. He traveled around with Jesus and knew him personally day to day. He handled their money. No one who was with them would have thought he was not a true follower until he betrayed Christ. A tree is revealed as a good tree by its fruit. In the same way, true faith is revealed by the fruit of our lives. This is serious.

FF Bruce writes,

“The truth and teaching of the Gospel must not be held lightly; they are of supreme moment, they are matters of life and death, and must be cherished and obeyed at all costs. The danger of drifting away from them, and so losing them, cannot be treated too gravely.”

Let’s read Hebrews 2, verses 1 through 9.

Hebrews 2:1–9 ESV

1 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. 5 For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 It has been testified somewhere, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? 7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, 8 putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Chapter 2 begins with the word, therefore, which should point us back to what came before being the reason to do what the author is about to tell us. Last week we looked at the author’s argument for Jesus being greater than the angels. So because that is true, that Jesus is superior to the angels and because of His divine identity, you need to pay attention. He deserves to be heard. So listen, pay attention, and don’t drift away.

The Greek word used there for drift away is actually a nautical term that was used to describe a ship at sail that has drifted off its course or for a ship in a harbor that slipped its moorings. In other uses it can be used to describe when something has slipped from our minds or like a ring that slips from a finger.

When I was a student pastor in Iowa, I would take my students tubing on the river after church a few Sundays during the summer. It was a great youth event because it was after they had come and worshipped at church and it was free. One day we were out in the river and my tube hit a faster area where there was a tree in the water and I got a little hung up. I stood up and looked down and my wedding ring was gone. I didn’t feel it slip off but it was gone. So now I’m standing in river looking through the riverbed like Gollum looking for the One Ring. I didn’t find it. Eventually I got in my tube and continued down the river. That mirrors many of our lives. We feel like we are riding safely down the river in our tubes and don’t even realize that while we are not paying attention, the truly valuable is slipping from our fingers.

This brings me to the first main point this morning:

I. Pay attention (v. 1)

The Greek word translated as “pay attention” is yet another word that has naval implications. It is used for holding to a course or setting an anchor. If you don’t want to drift off course, you have to hold the ship’s wheel on course. If you don’t want the current to take you, then you drop the anchor.

What are we paying closer attention to?

According to verse 1, the author of Hebrews is exhorting us to pay closer attention to the message that we have heard. Remember, he had just argued at length how Jesus was greater than the angels. The message they had heard, that they should pay closer attention to was the message that is all about the Son of God, the message about Jesus, THE GOSPEL.

Why should we listen? Why should we pay attention?

Not to puff ourselves up with theological knowledge for the purpose of winning arguments. Ultimately we aren’t paying such close attention to the message of the gospel to build our knowledge up. We pay CLOSER attention because that is how we keep from drifting. That is how we stay on course in our sanctification.

Pay attention so that you don’t drift but also because paying attention is the antidote to drifting.

II. God holds people accountable. (v. 2-4)

The message of God’s law

-that was declared by angels - God’s law at SInai. Exodus 19-20 does not include angels at the giving of the law but some later biblical texts refer to the presence of angels… Deut 33:2

Deuteronomy 33:2 ESV

2 He said, “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.

Psalm 68:17 (ESV)

17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.

This message proved to be reliable and from this reliable message there was no escape for the sins committed.

One of these words in the Greek describes deviation from a boundary and the other a refusal to obey. I think both commission and omission are covered. So even under the law, sins that we commit by action and also sins that we commit by not acting were not able to escape from judgement.

Ligon Duncan tells the story of Lance Armstrong:

Lance Armstrong was an American cyclist who won the Tour de France, which is one of the most important bicycle races in the world, he won it seven times. He appeared in Olympic races; he was the most famous American cyclist maybe ever. But over the years, he has been dogged by accusations that he was using illegal performance enhancing drugs, that he was doing blood-doping to get his oxygen level up so that he could perform at a higher level than the other cyclists were able to perform and thus he was cheating. And he has recently been stripped of all of his titles by the cycling federations here in the United States and in the world and has come under intense legal scrutiny. But all along, he has denied the truth of the allegations. This week, he went to the high priestess of American culture, Oprah Winfrey, and he made a confession. And he admitted – and now understand that he has actually sued people, he has litigated against people who have accused him of doing this illegal blood-doping, and he admitted it. Maybe some of you saw those programs; I wonder what you thought about what you've heard.

But here's the interesting thing. He wrote an autobiography seven or eight years ago; I think it's called, It's Not About the Bike. In that autobiography at one point he's musing about God. He says he's not affiliated with any particular church and he's musing about God. And he says something like this, “If I am going to be judged someday by some-Body,” and he puts the “B” in a capital, “by some-Body, if there's a judgment for me by some-Body, I hope it won't be on the basis of what church I've joined or whether I've been baptized, but I hope that He will take into account the whole of my life.”

Received a just retribution - God’s law outlines a penalty for the ones who break it. We are to pay attention to the message of the gospel because God’s law is reliable and just and the death of Jesus the Son on the cross is the only sufficient payment for the consequences of not following the law. When you stand before God, you don’t want to say something like, “God, I hope you’ll accept me because You’re taking my whole life into account.” You don’t want what happens to you in judgment to be based on your guilt or innocence. Based on the law, we are all guilty. We have all sinned and broken the law. The writer of Hebrews is saying that you don’t want your whole life taken into account as the basis because you will be condemned. You want the work of Jesus on the cross to be what you stand on. You want to stand there with His righteousness having been imputed to you because you have repented of your sins and trusted in His completed work on the cross. That He died in your place for your sin, taking the wrath of God that you deserve and giving you His right standing before God. So when you stand there in judgment God sees you as His blood bought, paid for, child.

V 3-4 - If those who only had the law were held accountable, how much more will we be held accountable if we have this superior message about the superior Jesus?

If we neglect this great salvation, we will not escape. When you neglect Jesus, you are neglecting your only escape from the judgement of God on you because of your sin. And yet we are prone to drift from it.

This message of salvation - the gospel was first declared by the Lord. It was a message revealed by God Himself. It was attested to us by eye witnesses. Remember that when Hebrews was written there were eye witnesses who had seen the resurrected Christ running around. The people no only had heard this but likely some of them knew some eye witnesses. Do you realize that when we read the accounts in scripture we are reading eye witness accounts of people who saw Jesus. In our court system today, and eye witness is highly valued. Their testimony is crucial to the case. We have a book of eye witness accounts here. Those who heard and saw also wrote these things down.

God further bore witness to the truth of the message by the working of miracles and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to believers as His will determines. The miracles in the Bible were not just miracles for miracles’ sake. They were not just shock and awe. The miracles were done specifically so that people would believe that Jesus is the Son of God. They were done to confirm the truth of the message of the gospel. And the message was further confirmed by the Holy Spirit giving spiritual gifts to each one who is a child of God. This confirms that the message is true and it also edifies the church.

How do we protect against drift?

So what is the solution to the tendency we have to drift? The solution is in the very first verse with the warning. Pay attention. Paying closer attention to the gospel is how you keep from drifting. So, how do you pay closer attention? What are we talking about here?

“… God’s Word is the anchor that secures our salvation, and it is the rudder by which we safely steer the ship of our souls.” - Richard Phillips

1. We stay anchored to the message by being anchored in the Word of God.

Where are you at with your engagement with the Word of God. I can tell you from scripture that when you depart from focusing on the message of Jesus you will drift. I can share with you from personal experience that this is true. When I go through times where I am not intentionally focusing on study of the Word, it will show in the fruit of my life.

2. Stay anchored in church that will encourage you in the Word.

Active membership in a local church is Biblical. I say that because I just don’t know how you can do the “one another” commands in scripture without being part of a local church.

All of us here have to decide if we really believe the message of Jesus. Because the world is shipping out message after message that conflict with it. Message after message comes and sometimes, they seem like they aren’t that far off. They seem like maybe that wouldn’t hurt to sort of be okay with. But that is high danger. The risk is great. I fear that so many people in our churches have been living day in and day out saying they follow Jesus, coming to church, maybe even doing stuff at church, and then go out in their day and do nothing to pay attention to their own spiritual condition… and they…are..drifting. Are you drifting? Friends, there is real, true, eternal danger here and I want to jump out in front of people and yell at them to stop! And that is a good inclination. But what the writer wants for us here in this passage is not to warn others. He’s warning us about us. So we must look internally. Take stock of our hearts and our relationship with the Lord.

I hang out with a lot of pastors. We talk about what the past 25 months have been like in our churches. People have drifted. You see this. When people were hindered from coming to church, their own lack of paying attention to the true message of the gospel became more and more evident. Some never returned to church. Some simply faded away. Why? Because left alone our spiritual condition will deteriorate. The amount of people we have seen fade away from churches in the last couple of years, I’m afraid have shown that we have not done a good job individually of paying close attention to our spiritual condition.

2 Peter 1:10 ESV

10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.

2 Corinthians 13:5 ESV

5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

To follow the world is to reject Christ. Stay anchored in the Word. Stay anchored with the body of Christ.

In the introduction I mentioned one of my favorite hymns. Warren Wiersbe wrote about in this way:

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Two: Greater than Angels (Hebrews 1:4–2:18)

The next time you sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” recall that the composer, Robert Robinson, was converted under the mighty preaching of George Whitefield, but that later he drifted from the Lord, He had been greatly used as a pastor, but neglect of spiritual things led him astray. In an attempt to find peace, he began to travel. During one of his journeys, he met a young woman who was evidently very spiritually minded.

“What do you think of this hymn I have been reading?” she asked Robinson, handing him the book. It was his own hymn! He tried to avoid her question but it was hopeless, for the Lord was speaking to him. Finally, he broke down and confessed who he was and how he had been living away from the Lord.

“But these ‘streams of mercy’ are still flowing,” the woman assured him; and through her encouragement, Robinson was restored to fellowship with the Lord.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word. Work it into our hearts. Press it into us.Grant us to believe in this generation where there is toxic unbelief in the air that we breath, give us the gift of faith, let us be those who believe.

I pray especially for the young people among us. Let them see through the cynicism of their day and our times and grand them an embrace of the gospel. Let them and us walk those old paths of faith and cling to the cross as our only hope. I ask this in the holy name of Jesus, Amen.