Jesus Is. . .! - Part 3 Series

Jesus Is . . . The Greatest!

SERIES: Jesus Is . . .!

Hebrews 2:1-18

June 18, 2017

I’ve never heard anyone say . . . when I grow up I want to be a drifter! We usually have something in mind about who we want to be and what we want to accomplish Even when we’re struggling to make a decision, if someone said, ‘so it sounds like you just want to be a drifter.’ We’d shout out “NO WAY! I want to do something with my life.”

That’s part of the problem which was confronting the audience in the book of Hebrews. We’re taking a journey through the book of Hebrews, and answering the question of who IS JESUS! We want to gain a better understanding of who He is and what that means for our lives.

We’re in week 3 and we’re going to tackle Hebrews 2 this morning. There’s a lot of meat in this chapter and I’m going to try to break it down section by section so we can gain a better understanding and belief of who Jesus is.

The writer starts out saying ~

1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we DRIFT away from it. – Hebrews 2:1

That’s why I started talking about drifting. Have you heard of people relaxing on a raft in the ocean, and before they know it, they’ve drifted away from land? Drifting is not what we want to happen in our lives.

Have you had a parent, a spouse, a boss, a teacher, even a good friend look at you and say . . . “Hey, pay attention, what I’m telling you is really important.” I had a teacher who used to say give me your undivided attention. That’s what the writer is saying. Because if we don’t give our undivided attention, we will drift.

Professor D. A. Carson warns, “People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to the Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. No —

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance.

We drift toward disobedience and call it freedom.

We drift toward superstition and call it faith.

We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation.

We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism.

We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

Understand, when it comes to this spiritual drifting Carson talks about, we usually don’t realize it’s happening. But like the person who’s drifting out to sea, before we know it we’ve let go of our foundation — we’ve gotten off course in our journey toward Christlikeness.

That’s what was happening to these 2nd generation Jewish believers. To escape persecution for their faith in Jesus, many had drifted away - - - to the point where they were embracing the belief that Jesus was just a great angel. It would be easy to drift this way, since angels were an important part of the Jewish faith. God used His angels to do powerful things for the Israelites.

The writer wasn’t denying angels, instead he’s warning the Christians against drifting as they beginning to worship the messengers, not the Message.

People are obsessed with angels and look at angels as the Savior, not Jesus. It may be worse today than in the early church. Remember the program Touched by an Angel? The show was so popular because it glamorized angels helping people through difficult circumstances.

Doreen Virtue, wrote the book, Angels 101: An Introduction to Connecting, Working, and Healing with the Angels. She explained - - - angels love every person unconditionally. They help everyone who calls on them, regardless of their religious faith or lack of it. She wrote, ‘They look past the surface and see the godliness within all of us. Angels aren’t judgmental and they only bring love into our lives. You’re safe with the angels, and you can totally trust them.’

She says angels will ~

- Help you avoid lines at check-in, and work with sweet and competent personnel.

- Let you sail through airport security without being searched.

- Protect and deliver your baggage so that your suitcases are the first ones on the

luggage carousel when you’re there to collect it

She claims, ‘Angels make no demands on us; rather, they wait to be summoned to help us overcome every difficulty. You never have to be afraid that the angels would ever ask you to do anything that would make you feel afraid.’ She’s been on CNN, Oprah, and The View.

She has 398,463 followers on Instagram, 1.4 million Facebook followers. That’s just a few more than me. That’s just 1 person, so, consider the influence she has.