How Shall We Escape If We Neglect So Great Salvation?

“How Shall We Escape If We Neglect So Great Salvation?” (Hebrews 2:1-4)

Introduction: This week, we begin to see the application which the author to the Hebrews has been driving at in the first chapter of his letter. Two weeks ago, he showed us the superiority of Christ over the prophets before and during the Old Covenant dispensation. God did indeed speak to the patriarchs. And He spoke as well through the prophets. But in this final age prior to Christ’s return, during which the Gospel of the Kingdom has begun to be preached throughout the whole world, He has spoken to us through the agency of His Son. Christ is no mere man. He has the place of preeminence above all of God’s creation. Christ is the divine Creator Himself, the One who shares the very essence of God with the Father and the Spirit, and therefore He is the One who represents God perfectly, in both His nature and His will. Christ is also the One who is in control of all things. He bears all of history along to its inexorable conclusion. He even entered into human history in our nature in order to make atonement for sins. And now He is the One who is high and exalted over all of Creation as its Lord and Ruler. And He shall rule until all of His enemies submit to His will. This One who has spoken in these last days is the greatest conceivable messenger, for He is God Himself in our nature. We may see in Him a perfect revelation of what God is like. Last week, he showed us the infinite superiority of the Son over the messengers of the Old Covenant Law. These, as we shall see more carefully this morning, were the angels. Christ is as superior to them, as the Creator is to the creature. Christ is the eternal Son of God who has always shared the very nature of God. The angels, like man, are like God, but are infinitely below Him. They, as well as we, share some things in common with God, and only in a very limited way. Christ is the One who is worthy to be worshiped, while the angels, like men, are commanded of the Father to worship Him. Christ is the Sovereign Ruler over all, while the angels, like men, are to submit to Him. And Christ is the Creator of all things, and the One who will never change, while the angels, again like men, are but part of the Creation. This morning, the author to the Hebrews will show us why he has been stressing this point. And the application he brings us is this, If the word of the prophets and angels was to be heeded, how much more the word of the Son. I. He warns us that we should not drift away from what Christ has spoken to us. He writes, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” A. For the reasons which have already been given, we must give heed to the Son. 1. Literally, the Greek reads, “Because of this, it is all the more necessary for us to pay close attention to the things we have heard.” 2. But this raises the question, Closer than what? a. The obvious answer is that we must pay closer attention to what Christ says than to what the angels said.

2 b. It is not that the angelic message is unimportant. Whenever God communicates His Word, through whomever or whatever, we must always listen and obey. c. This is why Moses strongly exhorted the people to hear. He writes, “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons” (Deu. 4:9). There seems to be an implication here, that if you purpose in your hearts to do so, then, if God is willing, you will be able to pass it on, not only to your sons, but also to your grandsons. In the keeping of God’s commands, there is the prolonging of life. d. He also said to them, “Take to your heart all the words with which I am warning you today, which you shall command your sons to observe carefully, even all the words of this law. For it is not an idle word for you; indeed it is your life. And by this word you shall prolong your days in the land, which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess” (Deu. 32:46-47). Again there is the command to careful observance of the Law and the promise of blessing, if you do. e. David recognized the value of obedience, and so he taught his son Solomon. Solomon likewise passed this teaching on to his son. In the Proverbs, he writes, “My son, keep my words, and treasure my commandments within you. Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of your eye” (7:1-2). He was seeking a blessing for his children. Therefore, he tried to instill within his sons the truth that the Law of the Lord was a vast treasure. By keeping it, one may live and have fullness of life. Therefore, he was to guard it as that which was most precious to him. f. Now, if the word spoken by angels was to be valued in this way, how much more the word of Christ? g. As I said, It is not that what Christ said has any more authority, but it does come from the hand of an infinitely greater messenger. If we are commanded to obey His Word from the mouths of prophets and angels, how much more should we obey when God comes to earth in our nature and gives us an even greater and clearer revelation of His divine purposes? How much more will He hold men accountable to listen to this?! h. After all, the purpose of the Law was to point God’s people to their need of salvation through the Lord’s Messiah. Now that this One has come, should we not listen to Him? B. Yes, we are. And for this reason the author calls us to pay very close attention to what He says, “Lest we drift away from it.” 1. The idea here is that we are to fix ourselves in the truth of Christ. If we are not firmly planted in it, we will drift away like a boat drifts unless it is firmly anchored. a. Remember what Paul said in Ephesians, “We are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the

3 truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ” (4:14-15). b. He is calling us to firmly anchor ourselves in the truth of God, so that we will not drift away. 2. Remember, apostasy does not usually come all at once, but in stages. It comes by degrees. a. You begin to emphasize some truths to the exclusion of others. b. After a while, those truths you have neglected become unimportant, then resisted, and then cast away. c. It is often like the frog in the kettle, which doesn’t realize that temperature of the water is rising, until it is too late. 3. How do you keep from falling away from the Lord? How do you keep from apostatizing? a. First, you must listen to all of God’s Word and give heed to it. b. Second, you must hold it firmly in your heart and purpose never to let it go. c. But thirdly, you must do what it says, you must obey it. Certainly, there is no virtue in merely knowing what your duty is, without the corresponding obedience. d. These truths are all encapsulated in the closing words of Christ in the parable of the Seed Sower. He says, “And the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance” (Luke 8:15). e. Now certainly only Christ is able to make the soil of your heart good. It is only by His Spirit that the hardness of your heart can be broken up and prepared to receive His Word. f. It is also only by His divine enablement that you will be able to hold on to the Word fast, and to do what it says. g. And it is also true that Christ promises to do this for His children. h. And so, if you are to faithfully follow the Lord in what He here exhorts you to, you must trust in Him to do it. Certainly, you must set your heart to listen and to obey. But you must always pray and rely upon Christ to give you the strength to carry this through. i. Only He can enable you to persevere. And He has promised that He will, if you call upon Him in faith. II. But the author to the Hebrews is not content to leave us only with what we are to do, without enforcing what he said with compelling reasons. A. His first reason is, “For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (vv. 2-3a). 1. Do you want reasons as to why we should do as he exhorts us? First, he tells us that even the word which was brought by the angels was unalterable. a. Literally, this means that their words were legally binding upon them. b. They were binding because they were the Words of almighty God. David

4 writes in Psalm 68:17, “The chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them as at Sinai, in holiness.” This speaks of the host of angels who accompanied the Lord at Sinai, when His voice shook the earth. c. Paul tells us the same thing in Galatians 3:19, “Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made.” d. Even though the messengers were angels, there was yet a greater authority behind them, that of God. Therefore, their words were unalterable, or legally binding, for the Lord of the covenant was the One who gave them. 2. Since it was legally or covenantally binding, every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense. a. This means that when the people of God stepped out of the boundaries of what was good and right, God punished them. He also did so when they did not do what He positively commanded. In other words, He punished both sins of commission as well as omission. b. When the children of Israel disregarded God’s Word and made for themselves a golden calf to worship, Moses commanded them in the name of the Lord, “‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’ So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day” (Ex. 32:27-28). c. When Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire before the Lord which He had not commanded them to do, He caused fire to come forth from His presence which consumed them (Lev. 10:1-2). d. A man who had an Egyptian father and an Israelite mother got into a fight with a man of Israel, and he blasphemed God’s name. The Lord commanded that not only him, but everyone who would do so, shall certainly be stoned to death by the congregation (Lev. 24:14-16). e. And examples could be multiplied. The people complained against the Lord, and the Lord kindled a fire which burned up the outskirts of the camp (Num. 11:1). They complained about the manna they had to eat, so the Lord gave them quail and then sent a wasting plague among the greediest of them (11:33). They did not believe that God would fulfill His Word and bring them into the land of Promise, so He sentenced them to wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all of that generation died off. And those who had brought back the evil report were killed by a plague before the presence of the Lord (14:28-37). A man was found picking up sticks on the Sabbath day, and he was sentenced to be stoned to death (Num. 15:32-36). Korah, and all who belonged to his family, were swallowed alive into Sheol, and a number of their men were consumed by the fire of the Lord, because they sought to intrude into the priestly office (16:31-35). Even Moses himself, when he struck the rock in anger instead of speaking to it, because of

5 the sons of Israel’s murmuring, was not able to enter into the Promised Land as a part of God’s discipline for his disobedience (20:11-12). f. Every sin received, not an unjustly severe recompense, but a just reward. Each got what they deserved, except in the case of Moses, who received the mercy of the Lord, since he was Christ’s. He was disciplined, but not condemned. The others, for the most part were, even as Jude says, “Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe” (v. 5), and as also the apostle Paul confirms, “Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things, as they also craved. . . Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:5-6, 12). 3. Now if this is true of the word spoken by angels, his conclusion is, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” a. If the people were severely punished for rejecting the word brought by the angels, how much more shall we not escape if we reject the word of Christ? The point is, we will not. b. The Gospel is a two-edged sword, which strikes both ways. When the Lord Jesus Christ is whole-heartedly believed and embraced, then the sword of the Gospel cuts off our chains and bonds and sets us free from the reigning power of sin, as well as releasing us from all of our guilt, as we saw earlier this morning from our reading in Acts 13. c. But when it is rejected, it brings the most severe punishments with it. It becomes a sword of vengeance which will cut us off from the land of the living and send us straight into the fiery pits of hell. d. The author to the Hebrews writes in 10:28-29, “Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” The answer of course is much more severe! e. Therefore, what does he conclude? He writes in 12:25, “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven.” Do not refuse the Lord who speaks to you even now from His Word. Embrace the Son of life and enter into eternal life while the opportunity is still present. B. The last reason he gives has again to do with the messenger, and the confirmation which the gospel He brought received. After all, look with what power of testimony it comes to us. “After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will” (vv. 3b-4).

6 1. As we have seen, Christ was the first One of the New Covenant age, to preach the message of salvation through faith in His name. a. After His baptism and 40 days of fasting and temptation, Matthew tells us that Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (4:17). b. Mark tells us that it was also after John the Baptist was taken into custody. This happened shortly after he announced the presence of the Lamb of God, for that was why he was sent forth: to prepare His way. He writes, “And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (1:14-15). 2. But Jesus wasn’t the only One to preach it. It was also confirmed by His apostles. a. Remember, Jesus sent them into the world to “preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). b. Jesus told them, “You will bear witness also, because you have been with Me from the beginning” (John 15:27). c. From the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact is to be established (Matt. 18:16). These eleven original apostles, and Paul, were eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, and were therefore to bear witness to the world of what they had seen and heard. Peter said to Cornelius and his clan, “And we are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. And they also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. God raised Him up on the third day, and granted that He should become visible, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us, who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:39-42). 3. Lastly, God Himself also bore them witness, “both by signs and wonders and various kinds of miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” a. This idea of God bearing witness to His messengers through the miraculous is not new to you. This is the way in which He would distinguish those who were really of Him from those who were not. b. But I want you to pay close attention to the terms which are used to describe this witness. They are signs, that is they are to signify that God is present and that He is speaking. They are wonders, that is, they create amazement and fear in those who see them. The Greek word is “teraj” from which we get the word “terror.” And they are miracles, powerful works beyond the capability of any man. They are supernatural feats. And they are sovereignly distributed by the Holy Spirit according to His will. c. Now in order for God to distinguish His messengers from false ones, and in order for these signs to create the kind of wonder and amazement described,

7

d.

e.

f.

g.

they must be seen. They were visible and unmistakable miracles. When they were performed, there was no doubt that God was present, and this caused the people to tremble with fear and take notice. I submit to you that such things as this do not take place today. This can be argued from the fact that the canon of Scripture is completed and closed, and therefore there is no longer a need for God to testify to its truth, at least in this way. This can be argued from the author’s own separation of himself from these particular acts of the miraculous, “God bearing witness with them,” showing that these things were for a select group of men to authenticate their revelation, as well as those of their associates. And it can be argued from the nature of those things which people today claim to be miracles at the hands of men. They are not supernatural acts which defy reason. They are hidden feelings and secret healings which no one but themselves can verify. The kind of sign which the Lord used to authenticate His Word was one which was high profile and terrifying, so that all who were present would fear and believe. It is not that God cannot or will not work a miracle today, something which is above nature, but He does not do it through the instrumentality of men anymore, as though He needed to authenticate again His Word. If we would know whether or not the One bringing us His Word is speaking the truth, we need but look at the Word of God, which was verified by God Himself, through His Son and through Christ’s apostles. May the Lord, through His Word, elevate our estimation and admiration of His Word, and may He help each one of us here to listen to and obey it from the heart. God has spoken that we might hear. May He now graciously grant us the ears to hear by His Spirit. Amen.